Tổng quan về CNN - Marketing news as a product

It was in June 1980 that the world saw the birth of Cable News Network ( CNN ) – the world’sfirst 24 hour news channel, thereby heralding the new era of immediacy and linking the worldto major events, no matter where they occurred. The tagline ‘It is always primetimesomewhere’ best summed up the ambitions of the founder of this new cable network TedTurner. The word immediacy may sound archaic and blasé in our WWW and Twitterizedworld but it needed great vision and courage in Ted Turner to think of launching a 24 – hournews channel at that time. The...
Nội dung trích xuất từ tài liệu:
Tổng quan về CNN - Marketing news as a productCNN: Marketing news as a productMEDIATHE NETWORK IS FACING NEW CHALLENGES AS IT COMPLETES 30 YEARS, WRITES ASHOK ORGASmaller Default LargerIt was in June 1980 that the world saw the birth of Cable News Network ( CNN ) – the world’sfirst 24 hour news channel, thereby heralding the new era of immediacy and linking the worldto major events, no matter where they occurred. The tagline ‘It is always primetimesomewhere’ best summed up the ambitions of the founder of this new cable network TedTurner. The word immediacy may sound archaic and blasé in our WWW and Twitterizedworld but it needed great vision and courage in Ted Turner to think of launching a 24 – hournews channel at that time. The first broadcast became an event by itself with a ‘married pairof news anchors hosting the show’. This perhaps was the first indication of the rules that theNetwork would change to meet its objectives and capture the world -wide audiences. In fact,CNN changed the way TV journalism worked – get the news now as it happened and notwait for the evening broadcast. For the first time the morning newspapers realized that theyhave had to compete with CNN for attention of its readers. Initially, the newspapers ignoredthe network on the assumption that it was so unpolished and staffed with so many low-paidyoungsters, and dubbed it as ‘Chicken Noodle Network’ (short for CNN). Perhaps, thenewspaper veterans did not realize then that for the new Network, News is a product to bepackaged and marketed – initially to Americans and later to worldwide audiences. It,therefore, made perfect sense that the Network started its operations from a Shopping Mallcomplex in downtown Atlanta.It began its operation in June 1980 with a minimal staff of 25. However, at the time of thelaunch ceremony, the flag of the United Nations was raised alongside those of the UnitedStates and the state of Georgia, hinting at Turner’s global ambitions. Quoted in a book called‘CNN- Making News in the Global Market’, by Don Flournoy and Robert Stewart, Turner saysthat his worldwide yacht racing activities had given him a global perspective: “The thing thatmade me think internationally was… sail-boat racing. It made me realize how parochial mostAmericans are. We think like the Romans did at the time of Roman empire that the worldsomehow circles around us, and that we are the centre of the universe”.Ted Turner was born in 1938 and took over the family business of Billboard after his fatherdied when he was 24 . A skilled yachtsman, he won the America’s Cup in 1997 with hisvessel appropriately named Courageous. Ted Turner was driven by the notion that existingbroadcasts networks did not serve viewers well enough, that they had similar narrowagendas and did not cover the world as it should be covered. His vision was to have CNNbecome a truly international news channel, spanning the globe. His plan, in any case, was aradical one for the period. He had realized that by using satellites for delivery, he could reachconsumers without the helping hand of local broadcasters. The challenge lied in the fact thatin 1980 only about 20 per cent of US televisions households could receive cable television,and Turner’s News Channel reached only 1.7 million of those households – far fewer thanwere needed to make a profit. But Ted Turner persisted with his venture convinced that thenetwork will turn profitable and in 1981 launched a second channel, CNN Headline News –which provided quick news updates, as opposed to CNN’s broader analysis. By the mid-1980s things were changing. Both CNN and CNN Headlines News were uploaded onto aninternational satellite, creating CNN International in 1985. Most credit the networks coverageof the CHALLENGER disaster in 1986 as the moment that CNN came of age, when it wasthe only TV channel broadcasting the catastrophic launch of the space shuttle. However, itwas the Tiananman square protest with students trying to stop the march of tanks thatprovided the channel an opportunity to report an international event.CNN further enhanced its global reputation in the 1991 Gulf War when it was the only newsoutlet to broadcast directly from Baghdad during the initial air strikes. The channel dominatedperhaps the biggest news story since Watergate of interest to the US audiences. Soonafterward, academics and Pentagon officials began talking about the CNN effect. Firststudied by Professor Steve Livingston of the George Washington University, the CNN effectdescribed how the broadcast of events from around the world affected US foreign policyformulation.Similarly, CNNs coverage of the anarchy and famine in Somalia in 1992, for instance, was amajor factor in the decision by the first President George Bush ( Sr.) to send troops there onan ill-fated humanitarian mission. A year later, CNNs footage of the body of a US soldierbeing drag ...