SHAM
Completing the troika of shame today is the makeover-in-progress at Chicken Noodle News. The Boston Globe has taken advantage of the recent fallout resulting from the retraction of CNN's "Operation Tailwind" story to do a profile on the network's efforts to reinvent itself. CNN took back the story that alleged that U.S. forces used nerve gas against deserters in Vietnam, and in the process has nearly thrown out the reputation for solid journalism it built over the last two decades and nearly lost the hot-shot executive, Rick Kaplan, who is being charged with leading CNN's news operation into the next millenium.
The problem is that his vision for CNN is something of a bastardized cross between the Associated Press and Seinfeld.
Despite being the most-respected news organization and the network everyone turns to when stuff happens, Kaplan calls the CNN an "underperforming network," and when he says that, he's talking about ratings.
The problem is, if you're trying to sell an audience to advertiser, you have to make sure stuff is always happening. And stuff doesn't always cooperate.
Apparently, CNN might have to resort to making stuff up to make sure there's always enough stuff happening to keep people glued to Wolf Blitzer and away from South Park.
CNN NewsGroup Chairman Tom Johnson-- who offered his resignation to Ted Turner after the tailwind fiasco but was refused-- described Kaplan's vision of CNN's future as "appointment programming":
These days, ''appointment viewing'' has become the CNN mantra: In a May interview, Johnson said ''appointment shows'' would help mark the ''third major wave or cycle in the life of CNN.'' The term refers to programming that viewers will make a point of watching. NBC's ''Must-See TV'' on Thursday night is the most spectacular current example.
One might imagine that CNN changing its call letters to NAN, and referring to itself as the "Network About Nothing."
What's lost in the Globe coverage and all the hoopla about must-see tv is that there isn't any way for CNN to make these kinds of changes without ruining what made CNN respectable in a media industry that's forgotten the meaning of the word.
People trust and believe CNN because when CNN sits up and pays attention to something, everybody knows its important. What happens when CNN starts pitching everything as must-see news? If they lose their ability to descriminate between what is and isn't really news, they'll lose the coveted place they have in the media spectrum. They are the agenda-setter. If they call everything they put on the air breaking news, they'll end up relinquishing their agenda-setting to the newsmagazines and fall into a death spiral of "trend" stories and Cosmo sex-quizzes.
Judy Woodruff put it best in a quote to the Globe:
''We really are at a crossroads. We're rethinking: 'What is news?'"
I hope CNN thinks a little longer about the answer to that one.
