The Cable News Network

THE CABLE NEWS NETWORK

News Network

The Cable News Network (CNN) was the first television network to devote its entire programming schedule to reporting the news—in the process the network changed the definition of news itself. Previously, the nightly news broadcasts offered by the three major networks were summaries of the day's events, condensed into a half-hour format that allowed little room for detailed coverage or analysis. Live reporting of events that occurred outside the "news hour" of 6:00-7:00 P.M. was unusual. But CNN's round-the-clock dedication to current events gave the network the ability to cover events as they occurred and the time to follow those events, however long they took to develop.

Turner's Vision

CNN was the brainchild of Ted Turner, the unconventional entrepreneur who in 1981, when the news network debuted, was known primarily as the owner of the Atlanta Braves baseball team. Turner had also owned Atlanta's independent channel 17 since the early 1970s and was quick to see the possibilities for cable television: in 1976 the SuperStation WTBS (for Turner Broadcasting System) became the first broadcast station to transmit via satellite and thus was one of the cornerstones of cable television. At that time Turner was already considering the possibility of an all-news network, but the conventional wisdom of the television industry was that the public's taste for news was limited to about an hour a day, minus commercials.

Risky Business

Turner gambled most of his holdings on the Cable News Network, to the dismay of his stock-holders and employees. But Turner had faith that the public would be lured to the drama of a breaking story, something that the network news usually lacked. In May 1979 he hired Reese Schonfeld to serve as president of his new network. Schonfeld had been a reporter, editor, and executive for the failed UPI Television News and then managing editor for the Independent Television News Association; so he had experienced firsthand the frustrations of an independent news source trying to compete directly with the three major networks. Schonfeld and Turner went to work assembling their news bureau, which included Daniel Schorr, veteran of CBS's news team, as their senior Washington correspondent. Unlike the polished network news, CNN was intended to be spontaneous and sometimes awkward. Schonfeld and Turner were convinced that any miscues or ragged edges would add to the excitement of watching news as it developed. To add to the sense of viewers being involved in the process of news gathering, the anchors would deliver the news from the newsroom itself, surrounded by reporters, producers, and technicians.

First Broadcast

Cable News Network began broad-casting at 6:00 P.M. on 1 June 1980 with a dedication by Turner from the station's Atlanta headquarters: "To provide information to people when it wasn't available before.…To offer those who want it a choice; For the American people, whose thirst for understanding and a better life has made this venture possible; For the cable industry, whose pioneering spirit caused this great step forward in communication;…I dedicate the News Channel of America—The Cable News Network." At 6:05 the network began its first news broadcast, anchored by Dave Walker and Lois Hart. CNN's first several hours of broadcast were audacious, but they were also some-what chaotic. Live reports were aired from Fort Wayne, Indiana, where President Jimmy Carter was making a statement; Jerusalem, where correspondent Ned Bushinsky was waiting to report on Middle East politics; and the Florida Keys, with a live report on an arriving flotilla of Cuban refugees.

Predictions of Failure

Media critics recognized the importance of Turner's great experiment but also predicted it would fail. The expense of maintaining an organization that could supply twenty-four hours of news daily was too great, with little promise of return from advertising revenues. Veterans of broadcast journalism noted that CNN's coverage of the news lacked "focus," but focus implied exactly the set format that the network was trying to avoid. In addition to its newsroom coverage the network featured daily shows dedicated to sports, financial news, and entertainment news, as well as interview and viewer call-in shows. Any of these might be interrupted to cover a breaking story, however. The desire of the producers at CNN to catch a big event as it developed led them sometimes to devote considerable attention to stories that never developed at all.

Early Successes

At the same time, the network had its early successes: after the Shah of Iran died the network brought live coverage of his funeral, and at that summer's national convention of the Republican Party CNN was the first to get former president Richard Nixon's thoughts on the upcoming presidential race. CNN put its own spin on the presidential debates between Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan that fall, using tape delay to include independent candidate John Anderson as well. For its live coverage of many news stones CNN relied on reciprocal agreements with stations around the country to provide them with coverage. One such arrangement provided the news network with dramatic material when the M-G-M Grand Hotel in Las Vegas burned in November 1980; using a satellite feed from local station KLAS, CNN broadcast the tragedy to a nationwide audience.

Losing Money

Despite encouraging successes the network was still losing money at an alarming rate. When President Reagan was shot in March 1981, CNN covered the story for twenty-nine continuous hours, and its coverage led directly to a confrontation with the major news networks over the use of "pool" footage from the White House press corps. The three network news divisions had an agreement with the White House in which news released by the White House staff was pooled for use by all of the networks, and CNN had been excluded from that pool. Denied the pool footage of the president's shooting, CNN taped it from ABC and rebroadcast it. In May 1981 the network sued NBC, ABC, and CBS for illegally excluding them from the press pool; the suit also named the Reagan administration, faulting them for limiting CNN's constitutional freedom of the press. Competition between CNN and the "Big Three" remained fierce: when CNN had exclusive pictures of Pope John Paul II's shooting that same month, ABC broadcast the same footage a few minutes later.

Cable Competition

By the end of that year CNN was also facing even more direct competition from the growing cable market. ABC and Westinghouse had joined forces to create two all-news cable networks, the Satellite NewsChannels, which would be offered free to cable operators around the country. Ted Turner decided to respond aggressively by creating CNN-2, which would condense CNN's material into a more traditional half-hour format that would be updated every few hours. To beat the Satellite NewsChannels to the punch Turner proposed that CNN-2 go on the air at midnight, 31 December 1981. The second news network, soon renamed CNN Headline News, debuted on schedule; and as a further assault on the Big Three, Headline News offered its news show in syndication to stations across the country. The first Satellite NewsChannel debuted in June 1982 into the homes of more than twice as many cable subscribers as received Headline News. With ABC's resources at its disposal, the SNC network had the finances and journalistic experience to pose a considerable threat to CNN. While the networks competed to scoop each others' news coverage, Turner waged a legal battle with ABC and Westinghouse, charging that they had made secret deals to exclude his news networks from cable companies. The SNC owners were clearly unwilling to make the same commitment Turner was: in the fall of 1983 they accepted the $25 million he offered them for the network.

Superior News

Having survived the challenge from the SNC, CNN was poised to solidify its status as one of the nation's major news sources. The lawsuit to end the major networks' monopoly of the White House pool had been a success, and CNN's coverage of the national party conventions in the summer of 1984 was considered by many to be superior to that of the giants. By that time the network was also distinguishing itself internationally, broadcasting in twenty-two foreign markets. It was in January 1986, however, that the difference between CNN's news coverage and the Big Three became clear to the nation: due to its routine coverage of space-shuttle launches, only the cable network had live footage of the tragic explosion of the Challenger.

Tiananmen Square

In May 1989 the network scored what was possibly the scoop of the decade, when Bernard Shaw and a staff of CNN reporters and technicians were on hand for the student uprising in the streets of Beijing, China. CNN was there to cover Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev's visit, the first official meeting between the two great communist powers in more than thirty years. On their last day there, the CNN crew recorded the dramatic spectacle of one million Chinese demonstrating for freedom in Beijing's Tiananmen Square as well as the Chinese government's brutal response. As would be the case with later events, CNN's coverage became part of the story itself, as the news team stalled the efforts of Chinese government officials to end their satellite access. American viewers were spellbound, and White House officials issued statements on the crisis based on what they saw on the cable network. Even the Kremlin was reportedly following CNN's coverage. Tensions mounted, and for a time it seemed as if the CNN news crew might be in actual jeopardy before they were finally allowed to return to the United States.

Audience Gains

By the end of the decade, as CNN's tenth anniversary approached, the news network's place as a major player in television journalism had been established. The Nielsen ratings for 1989 indicated that the network's share of the news audience had risen from 16.5 percent to nearly 25 percent, while the three major networks had all lost viewers; CNN's audience share actually exceeded that of NBC Nightly News. Turner's gamble had changed the face of the news, ending the monopoly the three major networks had enjoyed for decades.

Sources:

Robert Goldberg and Gerald Jay Goldberg, Citizen Turner (New York & San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1995);

Hank Whittemore, CNN: The Inside Story (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990).