Maybe CNN Should Rename Itself The Cable Feature Network?

Philip Stone April 2, 2009

One of the major reasons for watching cable news is that one should be able to switch on and get a news fix within a reasonably short time. But that’s no longer guaranteed with CNN.

It was a Thursday night when the weary traveler checked into his hotel room in a small French mountain village. There was cable TV in the room but only one station in English – CNNI. But that should be okay, the traveler thought, since it was 7:05 in the evening, prime news time. But no, instead there was a half-hour Talk Asia interview with an Indian actor. Come the half-hour and the traveler figured then there would be news, but no, instead it was another feature program, this time with its Dr. Gupta in India on why foreigners are going there for operations that are much less expensive than at home. Not even news headlines preceding Dr. Gupta’s program. So, one full hour of feature programs in prime news time! CNNI obviously needs Ted Turner back cracking the whip reminding the network of its news heritage!

What’s going on here? Is CNN running out of news anchors, or they’re not available because they’re travelling for their own feature programs? Is it getting too expensive to produce newscasts? Have budget cuts really hit that hard? If the network thinks it is getting away with this type of cheap scheduling then it should think again.

It was not that long ago that CNN had a four-hour solid news block for the European late afternoon and early evening. But now that time block is littered with feature programs, too, but at least one could count on a news program at the top of the top of the hour.  Apparently no longer. Maybe the feature programs have fixed sponsors whereas news doesn’t   so it’s a money thing going on, but it sure goes against the network’s news heritage.

And on weekends, news now takes a firm second position to the repeats upon repeats upon repeats of feature programming. It used to be that when a feature program began on the half-hour then at least it would be preceded by a couple of minutes of headlines, but those days are long gone.

All of that would really be no big deal if the viewer has cable delivery or direct satellite with loads of news channels. But for that very tired traveler in that French hotel room with just CNN that uptick in feature programming was a real bummer. CNN used to do heavy promotions about choosing a hotel that featured CNN on its internal cable system. If CNN is the only English language news station available then these days maybe that’s a good reason to give that hotel a miss.

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