Ted Turner Talks CNN & Politics With Charlie Rose

From Business Insider today:
Turner Broadcasting founder Ted Turner appeared on "CBS This Morning" Thursday and told Charlie Rose that he wishes CNN had “a little less fluff" these days.
Turner lost control of CNN when Time Warner merged with AOL in 2010, which, he reveals, is his biggest regret in business.
"I didn't think I was selling it, I got maneuvered out," Turner explained during the interview. "At Time Warner, I had ten percent of the stock after the merger. But when we merged with AOL, I was diluted down to three percent."
Turner added that the merger was one of the worst days of his life.
As for who should take over as president of the news network when Jim Walton steps down at the end of this year, the media mogul says "I don't know, there's no point in me speculating ... I don't have an influence over CNN anymore."
But as for how to boost the network's recent record-low ratings, Turner says "I'd like to see more hard news and international news."
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Candy Crowley on ABC's The View

Candy Crowley sat at the table with the ladies of The View on Wednesday morning to discuss the previous night's Presidential debate:

AC360 Transcript
AC360 Podcast
ANDERSON

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CABLE NEWS RATINGS FOR SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

Photographer: David S. Holloway © 2012 Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. 

CABLE NEWS RATINGS FOR SECOND PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE MODERATED BY CNN’S CANDY CROWLEY

Tuesday, October 16/Nilesen Fast National Ratings Data

• CNN tops MSNBC by double digits among total viewers and key demos (25-54 and 18-34) throughout the night.
• CNN had its strongest performance yet among adults 25-54 during this year’s presidential debate cycle.
• CNN also tops Fox News in younger viewers (18-34); more than doubles MSNBC.
• While CNN, Fox News and MSNBC were up versus their prior four "non-event" Tuesday averages, CNN's growth of +758% among total viewers and +1117% among adults 25-54 was the most substantial.
• Compared to 2004 second presidential debate (most similar), CNN was up +70% among total viewers and up +56% among adults 25-54.

9:00-10:45 PM (Actual Debate)

CNN:                5.754 million total viewers/2.581m adults 25-54/1.424m adults 18-34

MSNBC:           4.910 million total vewers/1.920m adults 25-54/658k adults 18-34

FNC:                 11.086 million total viewers/3.460m adults 25-54/900k adults 18-34

8:00-11:00 PM (Prime Time)

CNN:                4.343 million total viewers/1.896m adults 25-54/1.028m adults 18-34

MSNBC:           3.884 million total viewers/1.490m adults 25-54/487k adults 18-34

FNC:                 9.001 million total viewers/2.687m adults 25-54/670k adults 18-34 

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CNN Coverage Plans for Tonight’s Presidential Debate

CNN Coverage Plans for Tonight’s Presidential Debate

CNN anchor and chief political correspondent Candy Crowley will moderate Tuesday the second presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. The network’s special debate coverage will begin at 7 p.m. with Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper and John King in Washington, Soledad O’Brien, Jessica Yellin and Dana Bash inside the debate hall, and Erin Burnett in Ohio, where she will be joined by a group of undecided voters. On hand throughout the evening’s coverage to provide expert analysis will be chief political analyst Gloria Borger and senior political analyst David Gergen, as well as Alex Castellanos, Ari Fleischer, Van Jones and Dee Dee Myers.

Prior to the start of the debate, the network will unveil:

• New, unaired portions from recent interviews with both of the candidates’ wives. Chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin sat down with First Lady Michelle Obama and chief political analyst Gloria Borger interviewed Ann Romney.

       

Coverage during the presidential debate will include:

• Real-time feedback from CNN’s focus group at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
• A running time clock that tracks each candidate’s speaking time and the time spent on major issues at the end of the debate.

               

Post-debate coverage will feature:

·         Political fact checks from the “reality check” team of anchor John Berman and correspondent Tom Foreman from the network’s virtual studio.

·         A CNN/ORC International poll of viewers across the country who watched the debate.

               

Reporting from the debate site at Hofstra University will be:

• Chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin and national political correspondent Jim Acosta will report from the debate and bring viewers instant reaction from the Spin Room upon conclusion of the debate.
• White House correspondents Brianna Keilar and Dan Lothian will report from the debate site leading up to the evening’s face-off.
• Political director Mark Preston, political editor Paul Steinhauser and political reporter Peter Hamby.

               

Where to watch:

• CNN will air special coverage of the debate beginning at 7 p.m. ET. The 90-minute debate will air live beginning at 9 p.m. and will replay at 12:30 a.m. The debate will air again in its entirety beginning at noon on Wednesday, Oct. 17.
• CNN will provide unrestricted access to the network’s presidential debate programming through CNN.com and via CNN’s apps for iPhone and iPad. Additionally, Web users can become video editors with the new clip-and-share feature that allows them to share favorite debate moments on Facebook and Twitter.

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Ratings for the Week of October 8 - 12, 2012

*Indicates special programming
Rating calculations are weekly averages based on nightly ratings provided by TVNewser with data by Nielsen Media Research. Numbers reflect Live and same day (DVR) data.

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Can a new CEO save CNN?

From yesterday's USA TODAY:

Can A New CEO Save CNN?
 by Michael Wolff 

CNN, the news network that nobody likes, or watches or can fix, is looking for a new CEO.
Even if you actually believed you could fix it, it's far from clear that anybody would want you to. Although the network is an embarrassment to everybody who works there, as well as to the industry as a whole, it still, confoundedly, makes tons of money — in part because it is so unfocused and ineffectual.
It's the dim and pointless yin to MSNBC and Fox, the sharp and pointed yang. CNN is every cable system's beard. You couldn't have the rancorous networks people really watch without the cover of the middle-of-the-road pallid one whose ratings sink ever further.
So the main job for the new CNN CEO may be just to bear the humiliation of it all.
There are quite a lot of people who would undoubtedly do that job. Television people, after all, need television jobs.
In the permanent class of contenders, you have David Westin, the former head of ABC News; Andrew Heyward, the former head of CBS News; Neal Shapiro, the former head of NBC News; and, most notably, Jeff Zucker, the former head of NBC Entertainment who went on to run the whole network, before Comcast, NBC's new owner, fired him.
Other candidates include the people currently in these jobs, who fear losing them — and who are more likely to keep them if someone else tries to hire them.
The first thing that is obviously wrong with each of these gentlemen is that they are network television guys and not cable guys. One critique about CNN is that, while it is a cable network, what it really wants to do is news the way networks used to do it. It yearns for a kind of virtuous respectability that no longer seems to exist.
It probably isn't just happenstance that CNN exists within the same company that produces News Night on HBO, a fictional news show that does not seem to know the difference between cable news and network news. Indeed, after News Night banned any mention of the Casey Anthony murder trial in one of its story lines as too louche for good people, so did CNN.
Of the network news execs, Zucker is the superstar favorite for the job — not least of all because he tells everyone he is. Phil Griffin, the head of MSNBC, who says he, too, has been approached about the CNN job, also says that the hypercompetitive Zucker is the only potential CNN chief he'd be afraid of.
On the other hand, the hypercompetitive and high-profile Zucker would have to pass muster with the low-key and low-profile Phil Kent, who is CEO of Turner Broadcasting, under whose umbrella, CNN — for historic if not logical reasons — falls. And Zucker and Kent seem like Mutt and, well, Jeff.
Zucker would also have to get by Jeff Bewkes, the CEO of Time Warner, CNN's ultimate owner, whose job, everybody knows, Zucker wants.
Inside CNN, there is managing editor Mark Whitaker, the former editor of Newsweek, who has been trying to reinvent himself in television. Whitaker is the earnest news choice, but Time Warner tried this once before, when it gave Walter Isaacson, the former editor of Time, the top CNN job, with mostly unhappy results. (Also, Whitaker has gotten most of the blame for CNN rushing to be the first to air the Supreme Court's Obama heath care ruling — and getting it all wrong.)
Then there is cable television. Among cable's leading executives, there's Nancy Dubuc of the History Channel, who took a faded programming concept (Nazi reruns), which is pretty much CNN's lot, and gave it a new look (reality programming). Indeed, there are a lot of women in the upward ranks of television, all who have the advantage of not being the same old men.
And then there's a digital hire. CNN might wisely prepare itself for when news leaves television altogether for desktop, laptop and mobile devices.
Except that people in television don't really know people in digital, other than Arianna Huffington, who actually might take the job.
But here's the thing: Everybody knows what makes a cable news station work — the opposite kind of person from the one Time Warner would ever hire.
CNN stands between two competitors that succeed at the expense of CNN — Fox News and MSNBC. That's because they were created by two outsized and pretty much uncontrollable personalities.
Roger Ailes, at Fox, is television news' most powerful voice and greatest talent. Keith Olbermann, who effectively ran MSNBC, is television's most peculiar and irascible voice. (Even though Olbermann was finally fired at MSNBC, the network is still his programming vision.)
So in the end, even after much gnashing of teeth, this is how they'll look at it:
Sure, people make fun of CNN, but it makes money, doesn't it? So all we really have is a PR problem.
In that case, there is Gary Ginsberg, Time Warner's vaunted PR chief, formerly Rupert Murdoch's consigliere, who has long wanted to leave the corporate office and run an operating company. Ginsberg isn't a television guy. He's a brilliant and powerful corporate smoother and handler.
That's how you manage the unmanageable.
Life is just too short to remake cable news.

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This Weekend's Programming 10/13/12

SATURDAY, October 13, 2012

SANJAY GUPTA, MD – Airs Saturday 4:30PM – 5:00PM

This week on 'Sanjay Gupta MD', with the he deadly – and growing – meningitis outbreak affecting a good portion of the country. At the center of it all: contaminated steroid injections that 14,000 people in 23 states may have received. Sanjay goes to the compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts to look for answers.  Also, Sanjay talks to Dr. Rochelle Walinksy, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, about OraQuick, the first FDA-approved in-home, rapid HIV test. Will people who are too afraid to get tested at a doctor’s office buy the $40 kit and test themselves in the privacy of their own homes?

THE SITUATION ROOM WITH WOLF BLITZER – Airs Saturday 6:00PM – 7:00PM

Topics:     2012 Politics; Debate

Guest:     Ron Brownstein, CNN Senior Political Analyst; Editorial Director, National Journal

Topics:     2012 Politics; Debate

Guest:     Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate

Anchor:    Wolf Blitzer

LATINO IN AMERICA: COURTING THEIR VOTE – Airs Saturday 8:00PM – 9:00PM and 11:00PM (Sunday 2:00AM)

Will Latino voters decide who becomes the next president?  Nearly 60,000 Latinos turn 18 every month in the United States and many pollsters predict the Latino vote will make a difference in several of the most contested “battleground states” in 2012.  CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien focuses on two people trying to tip the scales in their party’s favor in the swing state of Nevada, which has the fastest growing Hispanic community in the nation, in a state which has voted for the last 24 of 25 U.S. presidents.  State senator Ruben Kihuen (D-Clark) rose to success in America after arriving with little more than a backpack from his native Guadalajara.  He feels he’s ideal for Latino voter outreach efforts because his life reflects many of the issues important to Latino voters.  Cecilia Aldana, a GOP activist feels she can help her party do more to reach Latino voters by improving their outreach – and language – about Latinos.  She wants Republicans to focus on jobs, business-friendly immigration policies, and education.  O’Brien also interviews Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) and Hector Barreto (R), chairman of The Latino Coalition, representing senior business and government executives, for their views of the national impact of the Latino electorate.

SUNDAY, October 14, 2012

SANJAY GUPTA, MD – Airs Sunday 7:30AM – 8:00AM

This week on 'Sanjay Gupta MD', with the he deadly – and growing – meningitis outbreak affecting a good portion of the country. At the center of it all: contaminated steroid injections that 14,000 people in 23 states may have received. Sanjay goes to the compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts to look for answers.  Also, Sanjay talks to Dr. Rochelle Walinksy, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, about OraQuick, the first FDA-approved in-home, rapid HIV test. Will people who are too afraid to get tested at a doctor’s office buy the $40 kit and test themselves in the privacy of their own homes?

STATE OF THE UNION WITH CANDY CROWLEY – Airs LIVE Sunday 9:00AM – 10:00AM and NOON

Topics:   2012 Politics; Tuesday’s Presidential Debate

Guest:    Robert Gibbs, senior adviser, Obama campaign

Topics:   2012 Battlegrounds; Florida

Guest:    Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), chair, Democratic National Committee

Guest:    Al Cardenas, former chairman, Florida Republican Party; chairman, American Conservative

Topics:   2012 Politics; Presidential Debates

Guest:    Bill Burton, senior strategist, Priorities USA Action

Guest:    Grover Norquist, president, Americans for Tax Reform

Guest:    Susan Page, Washington bureau chief, USA Today

Guest:    Jim Acosta, national political correspondent

Anchor:  Candy Crowley

FAREED ZAKARIA GPS – Airs 10:00AM – 11:00AM and 1:00PM – 2:00PM  

Topics:    Foreign policy perspectives and the 2012 U.S. presidential election

Guest:     Bill Keller, writer, The New York Times

Guest:     Kishore Mahbubani, dean and professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

Guest:     Bret Stephens, Global View columnist, The Wall Street Journal

Topic:      The true story behind the Hollywood film Argo

Guest:     Tony Mendez, former CIA operations officer

Topics:    150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War and how it changed America

Guest:     Ric Burns, documentary filmmaker

Guest:     Drew Gilpin Faust, PhD historian, president of Harvard University

Anchor:    Fareed Zakaria

RELIABLE SOURCES – Airs LIVE Sunday 11AM - NOON

Topic:    VP Debate Aftermath

Guest:   Keli Goff, political correspondent, TheRoot.com

Guest:   Steve Roberts, professor of media and public affairs, The George Washington University

Guest:   David Frum, CNN contributor; contributing editor, Newsweek/The Daily Beast

Topic:    Previewing the Second Presidential Debate

Guest:   Candy Crowley, CNN chief political correspondent; anchor, “State of the Union with Candy Crowley”

Topic:   Switching Politics Loyalties

Guest:  Buzz Bissinger, author, Friday Night Lights

Host:    Howard Kurtz

THE NEXT LIST –  Sunday 2:00PM – 2:30PM

This week 'The Next List' profiles Jim Newton, founder and chairman of TechShop, a membership-based workshop for do-it-yourselfers that provides access to tools, equipment and instruction.  TechShop, which opened its sixth location allows tinkerers, artists, entrepreneurs and lovers of all things handmade can have access to the tools to build whatever they can dream up.

VOTERS IN AMERICA: WHO COUNTS – Airs Sunday 8:00PM – 9:00PM and 11:00PM (Monday 2:00AM)

CNN senior correspondent Joe Johns investigates the impact of tough new voter laws with a particular focus on 80 new voting law changes in the battleground state of Florida – and how those changes may affect the outcome of the 2012 presidential election.  Supporters of Florida House Bill 1355, including sponsor State Rep. Dennis Baxley (R-Ocala) and national voter ID advocate Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) say that they want to secure the election from voter fraud.  Former Florida GOP chairman, Jim Greer tells Johns that the state’s new voting law was developed during a series of meetings following the high minority turnout in the 2008 presidential election.  And, opponents to the bill like LaVon Bracy, a long-time Orange County Florida voter registration activist, says she feels sponsors of the law intend “to suppress the minority vote.”  Deidre Macnab, president of Florida’s the League of Women Voters (LWV), says the consequence of the new registration form filing deadline, which includes the risk for a $5,000 fine and potential felony prison penalty for false registration, forced her organization to stop registering voters in the state.  Johns speaks to people on all sides of the debate and reports independent analysis of voter fraud data

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