Welcome to “Wolf Blitzer Reports.” The network that came of age bringing vivid pictures of the gulf war into living rooms all over America is in the middle of its biggest shake-up since it was launched by Ted Turner 20 years ago. Last month it formally dropped its traditional prime-time news show in favor of “personality driven” news segments like “Wolf Blitzer Reports.” And when the ratings dropped off after the presidential election, CNN executives began signaling that the sprawling network is in for a harsh pruning. Get ready for “aggressive changes in the way we gather the news and bring it to our viewers,” warned one memo. Stalwart anchor Bernie Shaw has stepped aside, and some senior producers and correspondents are polishing their resumes. “The question here is,” said one harried staffer, “what’s this network going to look like when all the cutting is done?”
According to CNN insiders, projected cuts are aimed squarely at the network’s already lean news-gathering machine. Some divisions–like the struggling Financial News Network and CNN’s popular Web site–may be gutted, while the entertainment unit looks as if it will be shut down altogether. (Full disclosure: this reporter was a correspondent for CNN for three years ending in 1998.) Prime-time news and the news-magazine show “NewsStand”–once considered the jewel in CNN’s crown–are already being replaced with news-based interview and talk shows recycling CNN regulars like Blitzer, Greta Van Susteren, Larry King and Tucker Carlson.
Has CNN, whose initials have become synonymous with hard news, lost its direction? “We’re still a hard-news network,” says Sid Bedingfield, executive vice president in charge of domestic programming, refusing to comment on staff changes. “But we believe people want to watch people. Personalities and, yes, a bit of entertainment.” Which is almost exactly what its younger and increasingly successful rivals–the Fox News Channel, which features low-cost talk shows, and MSNBC, with its access to NBC’s vast archives–have done all along.
There was a time when CNN stood alone. Back in 1980, the underfunded upstart vowed to tell the news cheaper and faster than the established networks. Eventually it did. With live coverage of the bombing of Baghdad, Christiane Amanpour’s impassioned reports from Somalia and Bosnia and, of course, O. J. Simpson, CNN became what one analyst called “America’s hearth,” where people turned for breaking news. But by 1995, its ratings–always low during quiet news periods–began an in-exorable slide. News junkies turned to the Internet for their fix. And MSNBC and Fox began nibbling away at CNN’s audience. Three years ago ABC honcho Rick Kaplan was brought in to revitalize the net-work, but when his innovations failed, he was shown the door. Lately, Fox’s “O’Reilly Factor” sometimes gets better ratings and, more significantly, more actual viewers than CNN’s Larry King.
CNN’s Bedingfield predicts that the new lineup will bring viewers back. But insiders fret that the next big disaster will overwhelm a smaller, lighter news-gathering staff. And if it can’t stay out in front, the network will be risking the franchise that made it a household name.
