J201 Cable and network TV news A brief history of network TV news 1950s Network news as a loss leader 1960s National news broadcasts lengthened to 30 minutes 1970s Public officials increasingly seek network correspondents first 1980s Network news as a profit center producer driven anchor reported correspondent scarce but then new cable channels and audience segmentation CNN 1980 Started by Ted Turner as 24 hour live news 1985 CNN International now 31 int l bureaus 1991 CNN rises to fame during Gulf War 1995 CNN Interactive CNN com 1996 CNN sold to Time Warner 2000 AOL purchases Time Warner and CNN Walter Isaacson former editor of Time Ratings don t necessarily translate into money or success or respectability or good journalism I could get extremely good ratings by putting on every car chase plus wrestling and SpongeBob Fox News Channel 1996 Debut by Rupert Murdoch s News Corp 2002 Drew larger audience than CNN Fair and balanced We report you decide bringing talk radio to cable TV conservative audience chairman Roger Ailes former Nixon Reagan Bush adviser John Moody news editor if we are accused of being conservative it s because we haven t fallen for the same truisms that have masqueraded as journalism for the last twenty five years MSNBC Debut in 1996 synergy between Microsoft and GE Microsoft put up 500 million to buy into cable news and continues to pay GE a 30 million license fee each year Jerry Nachman vice president and editor in chief was former editor of the New York Post GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt appeared on Fox to announce his dismay over MSNBC s performance I think the standard right now is Fox I want MSNBC to be as interesting and edgy as you guys are what does 24 hour news mean edgy raw superficial subject to spikes in viewership no longer innovative prime time on 24 hour news channels hard news during the day pundits in the evening Fox O Reilly at 8pm each night is the show to beat 2 4 million viewers few long form documentaries talk is cheap give viewers what they want beat the story to death Nielsen figures showed that viewers immediately switched to a rival network whenever one of them bailed out of the top story to give other news so who s winning the cable news war buzz number of homes reached or viewers tuned in amount of money spent on gathering news size of audience during prime time respect and trust amount of revenue and profit quality of reporting compare to 82 on nightly network news
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