CNN

CABLE NEWS NETWORK:CNN

1. History

     In 1970, R.E. Turner bought WJRJ-Atlanta a small, struggling UHF station. He renamed it WTCG for the parent company: Turner Communications Group. Through careful programming acquisitions the station became a success, and in fact, WTCG is the first superstation—able to transmit by satellite to cable systems. Then in 1979, Turner Communications Group was renamed Turner Broadcasting System, Inc, and the WTCG was renamed WTBS.
     In 1980, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. introduced the first 24-hour, all-news network calling it the Cable News Network (CNN). This 20 million dollar investment was the biggest gamble of the mogul’s career.    The first broadcast was launched at 5:00 pm EST Sunday June 1. Ted Turner actually introduced the husband and wife anchor team, David Walker and Lois Hart. TBS launched a second CCN called HLN (Headline News) in 1982, which aired 30-minute newscasts at all hours, with the intention that anyone could tune in at anytime for a quick briefing of the daily news.
allowed the station to grow – from 225 staffers broadcasting to 1.7 millions viewers to 4,000 staffers broadcasting to 260 million.
The rest of the televsion industry took notice.  Turner is not modest concerning the network’s impact on televisions, "Today, 25 years after CNN first launched, there are more than 70 television channels broadcasting 24-hour news coverage around the world -- a true testament that CNN changed the world of broadcasting and journalism”   However, with new competition like FOX and MSNBC, CNN’s network viewership has been dropping.

2. Functioning: Production, Distribution & Transmission

 

CNN: Cable News Network is owned by its parent company, Time Warner. Along with its global headquarter, CNN Center, in Atlanta (Georgia), there are numerous CNN bureaus across the world: CNN International, CNN Arabic, CNN Chile, CNN Español, HLN in Asia Pacific, CNN Turk and etc.

    CNN broadcasts its news coverage and other shows via cable, satellite and telecommunication. CNN is the first news corporate to offer online news service, CNN.com, in 1995. Today, CNN.com is ranked No.1 among the news websites with 38.7 million users in March, compared with MSNBC.com's 33.8 million and Foxnews.com's 17 million (Nielsen NetRatings, National Journal). As a part of a recent improvement in its online service, CNN.com launched iPhone application that offer live news videos. In a data collected from Nielsen’s Mobile MediaView in February, CNN is said to have 14.8 million unique visitors to its mobile site in February and CNN Digital beats its closest rival, Yahoo News, by 174 percent. CNN Digital has topped the news and current events category for 38 consecutive months. ( Nielsen's Mobile MediaView, National Journal). 
 

     Besides CNN.com, CNN reaches its audiences via its other widely available services: CNN Airport Network, CNN Newsource, CNN Radio, CNN Mobile, and CNNMoney.com, CNN/U.S. and HLN. Although CNN has strong viewership for its news coverage, it has been doing very poorly with its prime-time programming. It received low ratings for the past few years and still the rating is low compared to its rivals MSNBC and Fox News. It earns only about 10% of its revenue from its prime-time shows and the rest 90% come from its non-prime-time programming on the network and on the above mentioned CNN-branded news and information platforms (National Journal).

 

3. Branding Strategies/ Reaching Audiences

References:

1.

 McPike, Erin. "Away From Prime Time, CNN Thrives." National Journal (2010). Academic OneFile. Web. 7 Oct. 2010.

Document URL
http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=AONE&docId=A227089974&source=gale&srcprod=AONE&userGroupName=vol_m58c&version=1.0

2.  Corporate website: http://www.turner.com/about/networks_and_businesses.html