CNN is Back on Top with Primary Election Coverage

CNN's comprehensive coverage of the 2008 presidential primaries has vaulted the network back to the top of the cable news channel hierarchy:

The morning after the Democratic primary debate on Feb. 21, while both sides argued over who had come out ahead, there was one clear winner: CNN. The debate, broadcast by CNN and Univision, the Spanish-language network, drew 7.6 million viewers, one of the biggest audiences ever for a primary debate on a cable network.

The debate was held at the University of Texas, Austin, but Jim Walton, president of the CNN news group, was savoring the victory a long way off — in his 21st floor office at the Time Warner Center in New York. For Mr. Walton, the high ratings from this year’s presidential race are an indication of a broader achievement.

In his five years at the helm, Mr. Walton has taken a network beaten down from its competition with the Fox News Channel and managed to streamline top management, raise its profits and increase its audience.

“It was a combination of a lot of things,” Mr. Walton said, commenting on the low morale at the network when he took over. “CNN had gone for 15 years without competition. Profits of the company were not where they should have been. There were management changes. It was like the perfect storm.”

After a long malaise, CNN is finally getting its swagger back. In the last four years CNN, which includes not just the flagship American network, but Headline News, CNN International and CNN.com, doubled its profits. “There are not a lot of 27-year-old companies in America that can make that claim,” Mr. Walton said.

All three cable news networks — CNN, Fox News and MSNBC — have enjoyed ratings bumps during the primaries. But CNN is able to brag about something it had not been able to since 2001: it topped Fox News in the prime-time ratings for a single month in the 25 to 54 age category, the group most coveted by advertisers.

In February, CNN attracted an average of 750,000 viewers in that category during prime time, compared with 550,000 for Fox News and 363,000 for MSNBC, according to Nielsen. (Across all age groups Fox News remained No. 1, with an average of 2.2 million viewers in prime time, compared with 2 million for CNN.)

“If you look at the ratings, in 2006 they stopped the bleeding,” said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “In 2007, that continued, and there was some overall growth at CNN.”

I've been watching CNN quite a bit thoughout this primary season, including some days where I watch the "Ballot Bowl" segments pretty much all day (especially for the weekend primaries, like South Carolina's).

For all of CNN's liberal bias (which is substantial), I appreciate the networks considerable resources, which facilitate large-scale and multifaceted coverage of events.

And not only that, to be perfectly honest, CNN's got a few "Ballot Bowl" hotties who make the coverage simply irresistable (in my book, Suzanne Malveaux and Jessica Yellin are tied for most genuinely smart and attractive schoolboy-crush reporting).