June 1st 1980 was definitely a notch on the U.S. pop culture bedpost as it marked the sign-on for CNN. They were the first – the Purple Cow – and others followed their lead to compete in the newly-birthed 24-hour news format.
Growing up in rural Ontario, our 12-channel black-’n-white didn’t offer CNN for many years, but by the time 1991 rolled around we did receive it (in color!). Their scoop of the opening-night hostilities of the first Gulf War is now the stuff of journalistic legend and they became a powerful media force to be reckoned with. (An alternate account of the same events can be found in the book Where War Lives…)
Something happened, however, over the next 10 years. They ballooned in staff size, reporters themselves became media darlings, they opened bureau offices everywhere, they entered the fray of online coverage, and – I would argue – killed much of what we then understood to be “news”. They accomplished this by providing hours upon hours of mindless coverage on issues that in years past would’ve been distilled down to a short report at 6:00, and they did so because they needed to as they had nothing else to fill the time with.
Seth Godin had a great recent post on how the media don’t sell news anymore, they sell drama and I couldn’t agree more. Remember the girl trapped in the well? The OJ saga? The images of the twin towers falling over, and over, and over again for hours on end? All courtesy of CNN…
They became irrelevant to me… noisy… and I tuned them out both online and at channel 33.
You might be thinking that all my negativity would have them heading for a Rant, but (bing!) you’d be wrong.
Having a personal connection to the area affected by the recent earthquake in China, I went online this morning for the latest information and was surprised at what I found.
Perhaps I’m way behind the curve, but I just discovered that have created a new service, and while I haven’t studied it in depth, that I think could border on brilliant!
Tapping into the ubiquity of both the culture of YouTube and digital pictures (in a variety of forms), they’re giving anybody the ability to upload pictures and video to their site. Called iReport, they’re now soliciting “reports” from anyone, anywhere. Covering the fire at Universal Studios, they have a 10-picture montage taken (and captioned) by different people. Here’s a 2:00 video report from a guy who was on the hunt for cheap gas.
Now… a few hundred reporters being paid by CNN has ballooned into a potential pool of millions of volunteers wanting to get their content pushed first to the Internet. Brilliant!
For free, they’ve figured out a way to further engage their audience (and/or open up a new audience), generate new content, and reinforce their brand.
For figuring this out, CNN gets a Rave!
Posted by kiteboy 