CNN's Transformation Says a Lot About What's Working in Television Today

The network's got major problems, and (chief of world operations) Jeff Zucker's looking to (starting to, actually) shake things up.

At the Economist, "Cable television: News you can lose":

Part of problem: who knew he had a late show? RT @AmPowerBlog: CNN Cancels Anderson Cooper's "AC360 Later." http://t.co/CXqiQxaOYJ #CNN

— Em (@lamblock) February 8, 2014

JEFF ZUCKER, boss of CNN Worldwide, a cable-news firm, likes to start his morning with a shot of numbers. Every weekday at 9am he confers with his teams in New York, Atlanta, Washington, DC, and other bureaus to discuss ratings and web traffic, and to decide what news to cover. On February 4th a story reconstructing the final day of Philip Seymour Hoffman, an actor who died of a heroin overdose (see obituary), boosted CNN’s website. Mr Zucker wanted to “push it” on TV too. As producers pitch the stories they plan to cover, Mr Zucker pitches them his own, including more on Hillary Clinton’s election prospects, how bad weather affects America’s economy and whether drinking two fizzy drinks a day will actually kill you.

Previous bosses at the channel rarely attended morning news meetings, but Mr Zucker has been hands-on since January 2013, when he took over the role. However, he also believes that CNN cannot live by news alone. The cable channel, owned by Time Warner, a media conglomerate, has often performed poorly in the ratings compared with its politically partisan rivals in America—left-leaning MSNBC and conservative Fox News—unless big news is breaking. There is no glory in the role of unbiased “referee” between two partisan networks, Mr Zucker tells his staff. “Nobody goes to the game to see the ref.”

Instead CNN is trying to lure viewers by airing original films and television series that are either licensed or produced in-house. In October it showed “Blackfish”, a splashy documentary about a trainer at a marine park who was killed by a whale. Last month Mr Zucker attended the Sundance film festival to show three films produced by CNN, and to buy the rights to air another, called “Dinosaur 13”, about palaeontologists discovering a Tyrannosaurus skeleton. Next month “Chicagoland”, a reality-TV show for political junkies, set in the windy city, will begin. A travel series in which Anthony Bourdain, a celebrity chef, travels to exotic places, called “Parts Unknown”, has become one of CNN’s most popular shows, and may have helped the channel to attract around 8m new viewers.

Let them entertain you

Unfortunately, CNN and other American cable-news channels continue to travel to unfamiliar and dark ratings terrain themselves. Last year median prime-time ratings for Fox News, CNN and MSNBC declined by between 6% and 24% (see chart). The picture is not much brighter for business-news networks, such as CNBC. There is a “ceiling” to how many people are getting their news from television today, says Amy Mitchell of the Pew Research Centre’s Journalism Project. More people are turning to the internet.

CNN’s transformation under Mr Zucker is an attempt to boost ratings that are well below their peak five years ago...

Keep reading.

Expect to see more original programming on the network. Anthony Bourdain's "Parts Unknown" is doing very well in the ratings, for example.