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Comment by olivermarks | Hacker News Reader

CNN's arc has been interesting to say the least. Widely lampooned as 'Chicken Noodle News' when it launched in 1980 as a lightweight 24 hour cable channel in the style of the broadsheet 'USA Today' newspaper it gradually became more and more top heavy with pompous oped bloviators, pretentious 'situation room' shows.

A minor part of inexpensive cable packages in 1980 alongside MTV, it somehow became very expensive to buy despite running endless ads. CNN's current Neilsen numbers are abysmal, it's hard to imagine why they thought people would pay even more for 'plus' content, especially given their predominantly retirement age+ demographic. Meanwhile Joe Rogan is averaging 11m views per podcast with Tucker Carlsen and his script writers a very distant second at around 3.2m. (CNN got .8m fpr their most viewed primetime show Q3 2021)

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The making of CNN was Desert Storm. They covered it better than anyone else. There and then they hooked the 30-40 demographic of the time and exploded. They've lived off that reputation for decades at this point.

> They covered it better than anyone else.

Doesn't CNN still have more reporters world wide than any other US based news org? I imagine the BBC has the most when comparing news orgs around the world.

I think this is why CNN still gives better news coverage than other stations, but the opinion shows drown a lot of that out.

CNN had reporters hanging out a hotel window reporting live, and then basically did the absolute funniest con at the door while one of the reporters hid in the bathroom. I remember watching it at my friends during the first night of the bombing. They were the only network with any clue. As a 20ish year old those were reporters I could respect.

@toyg so true, they were 'young', fresh and growing in credibility in that era compared to the crusty old network free terrestrial TV news anchor shows. They sold shock and awe really well for the MiC. https://youtu.be/oPNHYi0x2Mk

> They sold shock and awe really well for the MiC.

Like that time they interviewed Osama bin Laden right before the 1998 Embassy bombings to make sure the public knew who he was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orawG7vt68o

Several good points above.

Don't forget about the captive audience in airports, too. That kept CNN artificially in the public eye.

Zucker's decision to axe CNN Airport was yet another bluster on his part. It was used not only for live CNN and HLN but it syndicated content from Turner's other networks like Cartoon Network and TBS. His decision kept Discovery from adding its content to the rotation.

Zucker rationalized the decision by blaming streaming services and other mobile media but I don't buy that because Airport was still invasive - i.e., people look up from their devices and could still be seeing CNN, etc. today. And, from a business perspective, it required very few internal technical resources (a single master control system and operator) so the costs were almost certainly exclusive to whatever fees CNN paid to airports to install their receivers and displays.

(Full disclosure: I'm a former operations-level CNN employee, half speculating from my time at CNN WHQ)

Trump kept CNN in the public eye, too, with all his outbursts against Jim Acosta and near constant mentions of 'fake news CNN'. Thereafter, anyone who opposed Trumpian tyranny would seek out CNN.

CNN is bland news. That's one reason why it does so poorly. Fox News is entertainment and it is entertaining. Rupert Murdoch wanted to indoctrinate Americans and he knew just how he'd do it when creating Fox News in the early 90s. An unending line of leggy blondes and unbridled, brash male hosts that would make you want to watch it. And voila, you have today's Fox News, where you can barely get notice of that scandalous Kevin McCarthy audio versus their coverage of his defense against the story itself. Does truth matter when getting entertained feels so good?

Podcasts + YouTube have made legacy media close to irrelevant now . Even someone like Lex Fridman brings in bigger numbers than cable tv.

Bloggers and Vloggers would be absolutely lost without mainstream media. 99% of what they do is comment on news stories broken by real reporters and digest it with a heavy layer of opinion.

don't forget that until recently, CNN used to be shown nonstop in airports, not just domestically but internationally as well.

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