CNN: A Loss Leader For Its International Operation

Paul Mirengoff of Power Line explores CNN’s myriad woes:

In my view, CNN’s problem is that it matter-of-factly presents the news from a liberal perspective. Viewers might watch an old-fashioned, matter-of-fact news cast on cable television, but only if they are confident that it actually is down-the-middle. Tone, in other words, should match content.

Viewers might also watch left-liberal dogma if it is entertaining, although MSNBC’s use of this model is hardly a raging success. But at least its tone matches its content

However, viewers clearly have no use for slanted news presented blandly. Thus, Anderson Cooper, who found it so amusing to talk about “tea-baggers,” finds himself losing at times to repeats of shows on MSNBC and HLN, according to the New York Times. And liberal Larry King, formerly CNN’s rock, has only a little more than one-fourth of Sean Hannity’s audience, is losing to Rachel Maddow, and is even threatened by a new host, Joy Behar (a comedian) on HLN.

I tend to view CNN’s U.S. broadcasts as a kind of loss leader for its international operation. Even so, this is getting to be ridiculous.

CNN is owned of course by Time-Warner, and the latter half of that corporate moniker is short for Warner Brothers, one of the pioneering motion picture companies. And it’s not a coincidence that the American movie industry is kind of loss leader for their international operations as well. Most Hollywood movies are produced as much, if not more, for the overseas market. American audiences have demonstrated since 9/11 that they reject Hollywood’s toxic brew of anti-Americanism, pacifism, multiculturalism, and the like, preferring only to turn out for popcorn fare such as Transformers 27, Ocean 253, and Rocky 39. And even then, increasingly grudgingly so.

The film industry and 24-hour cable news were both American inventions; as nutty as Ted Turner can be, he certainly deserves kudos for getting there first on the cable TV platform. But apparently, the diversified multinational corporations that now produce these products are, apparently with the exception of Fox’s Roger Ailes, rather embarrassed to be making products geared primarily towards an American sensibility.

And yet, apparently they wonder why, when it comes to their American viewers, the feeling is mutual.