Debating Jeff Zucker…
In a must read, the Washington Post’s Paul Farhi pens a mega opus on Jeff Zucker and CNN. There’s enough here for the kibitzer’s to chew on for a while…not the least of which is Phil Griffin chiming in about the (in ICN’s view) real timeframe to judge where CNN is going and why star buying isn’t not necessarily a winning recipe (which I agree with)…
“I wouldn’t read anything into his first two months,” says Phil Griffin, the president of rival MSNBC. “This is going to take years. They’ve got to figure out what works and what doesn’t. The idea that you can figure it out by April 1st is crazy. Check back on April 1st, 2014, and you’ll know the direction.”
If anyone can relate to Zucker’s challenge, it might be Griffin, a longtime NBC News hand who worked with, and then under, Zucker. A half-dozen years ago, MSNBC was languishing — unfocused, unpredictable, a grab bag of news and blab. Since then, it has stutter-stepped forward, surpassing CNN in overall ratings in 2011 and fighting to within view of the dust cloud kicked up by Fox News, the longtime leader.
The obvious thing about MSNBC was that it embraced a passionately liberal perspective, segmenting the audience from the conservative Fox and the middle-of-the-road CNN. The less-obvious thing, says Griffin, is how it did it: by patiently developing a roster of home-grown, out-of-the box personalities — Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Chris Hayes and Joe Scarborough’s “Morning Joe” crew. All started as guests or contributors, he notes, not as established TV personalities hired for their star power.
In perhaps a veiled message to his old boss, Griffin offers a sports analogy: “When a team buys stars, you never know if the chemistry is right for the team or the fans. When you grow [from within], you know the chemistry is right.”
Then there’s this…
CNN still captures a premium from advertisers relative to competitors. Baine estimates that sponsors pay $5.96 to reach a thousand viewers on CNN, compared with $5.02 for a thousand on Fox and $4.19 on MSNBC.
Why? “It’s a safer place to be” for advertisers, says Gabriel Kahn, co-director of the media economics and entrepreneurship program at USC’s Annenberg journalism school. “It can be a more boring place to be a viewer, but for an advertiser, you’re not going to hear: ‘Obama was born in Indonesia. Let’s go to a commercial!’ ”
And then there’s this from a obviously semi-frustrated Farhi…
Zucker wasn’t available to discuss the lighter, brighter (and perhaps dumber) CNN he seems to be molding; he has declined all media interviews since his arrival. CNN also prohibited any of its senior executives from speaking for the record. The network’s chief spokeswoman, Allison Gollust, initially offered to answer a reporter’s questions on an off-the-record basis; she later had no response to a list of questions.
Inside Cable News 
April 10, 2013 at 5:34 am
“The less-obvious thing, says Griffin, is how it did it: by patiently developing a roster of home-grown, out-of-the box personalities — Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Chris Hayes and Joe Scarborough’s “Morning Joe” crew. All started as guests or contributors, he notes, not as established TV personalities hired for their star power.
“When a team buys stars, you never know if the chemistry is right for the team or the fans. When you grow [from within], you know the chemistry is right.”
^^ Couldn’t agree more. When MSNBC promotes it’s hosts from within it has, for the most part, worked. There have been some duds (Sharpton and MHP come to mind) but on the whole it’s been a success. When they have gone for the untested outside ‘star’ (like Martin Bashir) it’s usually been a disaster.
April 10, 2013 at 4:46 pm
I find Bashir unwatchable, but there’s nothing in the ratings that shows he’s been a “disaster”, or a failure at all. His numbers were sharply up over the much better Dylan Ratigan Show, go figure.
MHP’s profile is pretty high and rising for a weekend host. She provides intellectual credibility and a strong minority voice, and she gets attention for saying things right wingers hate. She’d be too polarizing for a weekday gig, but I think she’s being used correctly.
Anyway, I agree with the larger point, and the sports analogy is a pretty good one. Griffin is right to note that it takes years. Even if they’d wanted to promote from within, you have to build a bench worth promoting, and CNN didn’t have one.
April 10, 2013 at 5:07 pm
Even if they’d wanted to promote from within, you have to build a bench worth promoting, and CNN didn’t have one.
So “the face of CNN” is going to be some food/travel guy. They’re better off getting Michael Keaton to play his character from the HBO “CNN in Iraq” flick.
April 10, 2013 at 6:52 pm
His numbers were sharply up over the much better Dylan Ratigan Show, go figure.
^^I thought Ratigan’s show was almost as bad as Bashir’s but that’s another topic. A test pattern will get ratings; the question is how are they compared to show hosted by someone who isn’t an arrogant idiot; which best describes both Bashir and Ratigan.
I liked MHP when she subbed for Maddow and others on MSNBC, but her weekend show is unwatchable – to me anyway.
April 10, 2013 at 11:11 pm
Regarding Bourdain: it’s probably a good move for CNN, and one that long predates Zucker. I’m not even sure he is Zucker’s style exactly, but they’re highly invested and won’t turn back. Unlike almost everyone else they’re trying to promote as a star, he does have a genuine built-in fanbase. His previous Travel show was smart, worldly, and more topical than you might think. Unlike tabloid and crime crap, this is actually smart “expanding the scope” programming.
It’s a weekend documentary series. It’s not like they hired him to host 8PM weeknights. They need to do a hell of a lot more to save the network, but by itself, it’s one of the few smart things the previous regime did.