Sunday, May 08, 2011

Explaining Why CNN Is So Desperate For A Hit And Quaint Niceties Like “Truth” Be Damned

Posted by Peter Quennell

[Above: Jeffrey Bewkes, the head of CNN’s owner Time Warner, with the actress Hayden Panetierre]

A top-rated night-time show on the American TV frontrunner network CBS will pull in over 10 million viewers.

Fast-tanking CNN is lucky if it pulls in over FIVE PERCENT of that audience on any average day. A typical audience is just over 1/2 a million. Here is the story from last September.

Jonathan Klein, president of CNN’s US network, leaves his post today after a sudden announcement that he has been replaced by Ken Jautz, the head of CNN’s downmarket but more popular sister channel HLN.

Klein’s departure comes after a disastrous year for CNN, as its daily ratings slumped by 36% to an average of 640,000 weekday viewers, putting it in third place behind Fox News and MSNBC among cable news channels.

Fox News averages 2.4m viewers while MSNBC has nearly 850,000. HLN averages around 550,000 on weekdays.

The American stock market knows of this CNN fiasco, and it values all three accordingly. You can see this in the 3-year chart just below - the period shown is about half that.

The red curve below is for the US stock market average (the Dow Jones Index and you can see that it GAINED about 10 percent.

The green curve below is for Viacom Corp, which is the owner of CBS, and you can see that it GAINED about 50 percent.

The blue curve below is for Time Warner, the owner of CNN, and you can see that it LOST about 30 per cent in the same period.

We have no beef with CNN overall. But to try to boost its viewer ratings and stockmarket price with appalling reports on the back of the very sad death of Meredith? That seems to us to be in very sick territory.

Ironically CBS’s owner, Viacom, has seen its impressive recent gains since the CBS network STOPPED airing biased and misleading reports on the case and reacquired some integrity

The Meredith Effect?

Posted by Peter Quennell on 05/08/11 at 02:08 PM in News media & movies, Media developments, Hoaxers: media groups, CNN Network

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In addition, CNN is claiming to have an “exclusive” interview with Mignini. This is nonsense. Mignini has been interviewed by the other networks.

It seems odd to me that the focus is on Mignini anyway. Other than Doug Preston’s desperate and self-serving attempt at a tie-in, there is no relationship between the MoF and the murder of Meredith Kercher.

Expect a hatchet job on Mignini tonight. I wonder who will be cast in Tom Cruise’s MoF film to play Evil Mignini against dashing George Clooney’s Doug Preston.

Posted by Skeptical Bystander on 05/08/11 at 08:56 PM | #

I rarely ever watch this network. I just dont really trust the US media with the exception of NPR and The Christian Science Monitor.

Posted by Barry on 05/08/11 at 10:30 PM | #

Hadn’t planned to watch, but happened to catch the final 10 minutes or so of the usual nonsense and convenient omissions. And footage of a tearful Curt. (The stepdad was shown from the back of his jauntily capped head, by contrast). Curt was teary because a recent family snap of his lovely daughters was missing daughter #1. Sad. At least her aging mug can still be photographed!

Next chance for good news for the accused: May 21. Coincidentally, the same day some born-again zealot here has proclaimed as the day of the (yet again….) Rapture. Perhaps AK can stand up in court and declare J.C. to be her personal saviour after all, and she can float up out of Capanne that way.
Wonder what the Zealots will do when they don’t get their acquittal from hell on earth?

Posted by mimi on 05/09/11 at 11:59 PM | #

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