CNN
AFTER THE MERGER:
FIRST, 400 OF THE STAFF LOSE THEIR JOBS, THEN LOU DOBBS RETURNED,
AND NOW THERE'S MORE 'TALK' ON THE NETWORK.
BY
NEIL HICKEY 
On
January 17, just six days after America Online and Time Warner
completed their $112 billion merger, CNN announced "new operating
efficiencies" that would require cutting 400 jobs -- fully 10
percent of the network's staff. The firings were the opening salvo
of big changes at CNN over the past half-year, ever since the
network became a cogwheel in the world's largest media company.
In
March, AOL Time Warner reorganized its entire television division,
binding all of the networks into a single bundle: CNN, along with
its sister networks, Headline News, CNN-Money, CNN/SI, CNNRadio,
plus TBS, TNT, HBO, Turner Classic Movies, WB, and the Cartoon
Network -- creating the world's largest group of television networks.
Hired to run it was Jamie Kellner, the TV executive who had built
the WB network and its hits, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
Dawson's Creek. Earlier, from 1986 through 1993, Kellner
created Rupert Murdoch's Fox Broadcasting Company.
One
well-publicized change turned out to be an exploding cigar: the
network hired a former actress, Andrea Thompson, forty-one, (NYPD
Blue, Baywatch, Silk Stalkings) who had less
than a year's TV news experience at a New Mexico station, and
then discovered she'd once posed for nude photos for an Italian
erotic film called Manhattan Gigolo; the pictures were
only too visible on the Internet.
Kellner
is looking for "stars," to boost the network's audience appeal.
"We respect stars," he told USA Today in April. "We come
from a world where stars are very, very important, and we understand
how to work with them." Among the possibilities? Katie Couric,
whose contract with NBC expires next year. One semi-hot rumor
that nobody at AOL Time Warner has so far denied: the company's
co-chief operating officer, Robert Pittman, approached former
President Bill Clinton about playing host for an interview program
on CNN.
Another
rumor was better documented, namely that CBS News and ABC News,
separately, have been huddling with CNN about combining their
newsgathering capabilities into a single, cohesive, cost-saving
operation. That would bring plenty of star journalists to CNN
-- either Dan Rather or Peter Jennings, and their supporting casts.
Rather is all for it. He has said he'd love to do a prime-time
newcast called something like: The CNN Global News with Dan
Rather and the Resources of CBS. Jennings told CNN's Larry
King: "I think it makes absolute sense that CNN is talking to
ABC." No deal yet, but CNN issued a statement in May: "CNN's worldwide
newsgathering capabilities have made us a natural potential partner
for other news organizations. We are certainly open to discussing
this issue with our colleagues at other networks . . . ." Such
a marriage of news organizations, if it happens, will be a precedent-shattering
event in the history of TV news.
CNN's
happiest moment in the new AOL/TW era was the triumphal return
to the network of its star business anchor, Lou Dobbs, founder
and host for almost twenty years of Moneyline until he
quit in 1999. On May 14, Dobbs resumed his chair in the 6:30-7:30
p.m., ET, timeslot, taking up arms against CNBC's Business
Center with Ron Insana and Sue Herera. During Dobbs's absence,
the CNBC entry became the ratings winner, easily defeating CNN's
interim team of Stuart Varney and Willow Bay. Dobbs's mission:
to restore Moneyline to its dominance. So far, he hasn't
succeeded -- despite his star-status salary, a reported $4 million.
For the week ending June 10, Business Center was ahead
by 39,000 households.
Elsewhere
in the prime-time schedule, CNN on June 4 installed the veteran
political observer Jeff Greenfield in a half-hour talk-interview
show at 10:30, and pitted the right-wing, preppy-ish Tucker Carlson
against the liberal Bill Press on Crossfire. That gives
CNN an eye-catching personality parade each evening, from Dobbs
to Wolf Blitzer, Greta Van Susteren, Larry King, and the up-and-comer,
thirty-six-year-old Bill Hemmer. In May, the network raided ABC
News to hire Aaron Brown, and announced he'd be anchoring a new
evening news broadcast in the fall, originating from New York
rather than from Atlanta or Washington. CNN's underlying strategy:
minimize audience erosion from the surging Bill O'Reilly on Fox
News Channel, and from the menacing pincers movement of MSNBC
(Brian Williams, Mike Barnicle) and CNBC (Chris Matthews, Geraldo
Rivera). Prime-time cable news was rapidly becoming a battleground
of personalities rather than a competition over who covers the
news best.
Still,
CNN was claiming laurels for its handling of a number of stories
in recent months. It attracted more viewers than MSNBC and Fox
combined for its coverage of breaking stories, among them: the
arrest on March 31 of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic; the
U.S. bombing of Baghdad on February 16; the death of the NASCAR
race driver Dale Earnhardt, which drew a phenomenal 2,664,000
viewers. It had April's highest-rated cable news program: Larry
King's interview with First Lady Laura Bush, and President Bush's
first live interview since taking office, with senior White House
correspondent John King.
CNN
was the only network to deliver live pictures from the Chinese
island of Hainan as twenty-four crew members of a U.S. surveillance
plane climbed aboard an aircraft bound for Guam after eleven days
in captivity. The CNN crew surreptitiously drove to a spot near
the Chinese airfield, and began broadcasting via satellite with
a recently invented, briefcase-sized transmitter called a videophone.
Chinese security officials spotted them, confiscated the videophone,
and detained the crew for several hours -- but not before CNN
had scored a world beat.
The
network has continued in the post-merger period to expand internationally.
A new bureau in Lagos, Nigeria, brings the worldwide total to
forty-two -- far more than all other networks combined -- and
gives CNN for the first time a presence in West Africa. Another
is planned for Sydney, the tenth in that part of the world, along
with Beijing, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, New Delhi, Bangkok, Jakarta,
the Philippines, and Islamabad.
So,
in journalistic terms, is CNN changing for the better or the worse?
On a Web site called TedsTurnovers.com, created by former staff
members who were among the 400 fired in January, you can find
a lot of opinion that the latter is the case. (A legend on the
site's main page reads: "A community site dedicated to the memory
and success of those who, following the AOL Time Warner merger,
went the way of the dodo.") The content is newsy, irreverent,
parodic, funny, but it also seriously laments what it perceives
as the weakening of the network's muscle and fiber in the wake
of AOL Time Warner's cost-cutting. The site's operators are anonymous
because all signed confidentiality agreements preventing them
from derogating CNN, at the risk of jeopardizing their severance
packages. When cjr approached the site via e-mail, TedsTurnovers
supplied a spokesperson, and the following exchange took place:
How
has CNN's ability to cover the news been affected by the layoffs?
Resources
are spread very thin. For example: a few days after the layoffs,
Seattle got rocked by the biggest quake there in fifty years.
CNN had trouble getting people on the ground in a timely fashion
because the West Coast bureaus were ravaged in the layoffs. A
crew had to be flown in from back east, and CNN had to rely on
local coverage for some ten to twelve hours. That's too long.
Other networks had their own people on-air much sooner.
The
CNN daily program schedule is oriented more toward talk than it
used to be. Why is that?
The
short answer -- money. Plain and simple. For a network, the cost
of producing a talk-oriented show is next to nothing. Producing
for-air packages involves a lot more in the way of cost.
Jamie
Kellner has said he wants to hire news "stars" for CNN. Won't
their very high salaries mean that less money is available for
actually covering the news?
Yes
and no. Newsgathering has its own budget -- money set aside for
going into the field, shooting tape, doing interviews. Anchors
generally get paid from another budget. The two are related, but
separate.
What's
the worst possible scenario for CNN's future in light of AOL Time
Warner's announced intention to seek higher profit margins?
We
hate to use this as an example, but the next time a passenger
jet goes down, the network will have to put hundreds of people
in the field to cover it for weeks. If the resources are stretched
too thin, coverage may suffer. In the meantime, we'll see talking
head after talking head hosting in-studio shows. Time will tell
whether this is the product viewers want.
How
would you describe morale at CNN among those who have managed
to keep their jobs?
It
fluctuates, but morale has suffered. The top brass has admitted
this in the media. Considering the very generous severance package
offered by CNN, more than a few people who kept their jobs wish
they had been laid off.
Was
it really necessary for CNN to fire 400 people after the merger?
We're
a bit biased here, but several "experts" have said no. The layoffs
were much better for the company's stock price than for anything
else.
As
of mid-June, the TedsTurnovers site reported receiving more than
23 million hits and thousands of e-mails -- one from "Denise,"
who wrote: "You people have balls -- big ones! Keep it up."
CNN
denies that the firings in January have had any significant effect
on the network's ability to cover the news. "It was a very painful
time at CNN," says Sid Bedingfield, the executive vice president
and general manager of CNN/US. "But we had never really stepped
back and taken a head-to-toe look at the entire organization.
It was time to do that." He denies that the network is embarked
on a more-talk-than-news strategy. Its big plans for the Aaron
Brown newscast in the fall "should put that to rest," says Bedingfield.
The new program, intended as the keystone of a revamped prime
time schedule, "will be about storytelling, about reporting, about
our reach around the world. It will be what CNN is all about.
And it's not all talk. It's reporting."
Oh,
yes: that broadcast will originate from newly rented studios on
Manhattan's West Fifty-seventh Street, just down the block from
CBS News. If the two networks ever should get together,
Dan Rather won't have far to walk.
Neil
Hickey is CJR's editor-at-large.
