Your Views on the News, April 9, 2010

Here's a little light reading to fill your weekend. All have to do with CNN's ratings woes and what can/should be done about it.

This first article is called CNN May Need ABC/CBS to Survive, by Phil Rosenthal
Here's a short sample:
For years, the potential of a partnership or merger with a broadcast network news division has been discussed. Between CNN's troubles and economic-driven cuts and concerns elsewhere, this might be the time to pull the trigger with either ABC or CBS.
Whichever broadcaster CNN married, the two would share resources and spread out costs the way NBC News does with MSNBC. Cable would provide a place to rerun broadcast reports and reuse network reporters over the course of the day. But it's more than just a time and money play.

The next article is from the New York Times: Can CNN Be Saved by Ross Douthat
Here's a snippet:
People at CNN see themselves as victims of a polarized political culture — and to some extent, they are. But high-minded self-pity only gets you so far. At a media event in Washington recently, I watched a CNN producer try to persuade a gaggle of skeptical right-wing journalists that the network’s hosts really are objective. (“You’d be surprised how some of them vote!”) Even if they were, it wouldn’t matter. The disinterested anchorman pose worked when TV news ran for 30 minutes every night at 6 p.m. It doesn’t work across hours and hours of prime time, with Campbell Brown blurring into John King blurring into Wolf Blitzzzzzz... .

What CNN Should Do With Itself in Primetime by Jay Rosen
In Rosen's opinion:
Maybe the View from Nowhere has failed, not because audiences want opinion rather than news but because the Voice of God isn’t as convincing as it once was. From this point of view, nothing will improve at CNN until the people running the news report consider that viewlessness may not be an advantage but ideology-in-command is not the only alternative.



And finally a two part series in Vanity Fair entitled To Save Itself CNN Needs to Get Smarter by Andrew Cohen
Here is a sample of Cohen's analysis:
The problem with CNN these days is that when there is no major breaking news it cannot consistently offer up compelling television. I see that as a virtue, not a vice—after all, screaming tabloid-y headlines aside, the world is not in a state of perpetual crisis and television journalists shouldn’t pretend it is. Unfortunately, however, television-news executives evidently think the world is still holding a gun to their heads requiring them to provide live programming at all costs, even when the news of the day does not warrant it. Watching CNN these days when nothing big is happening feels a lot like watching bad tap dancing.

And the VF follow up article that took a look at reaction to the original article.
The Future of CNN: Readers React

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