Capital New York released an informative piece detailing how CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker hopes to reignite CNN with some significant on air changes expected in 2014.
Some highlights:
“We’re all regurgitating the same information. I want people to say, ‘You know what? That was interesting. I hadn’t thought of that,’” Zucker said. “The goal for the next six months, is that we need more shows and less newscasts.”
The 48-year-old Zucker initially faced internal resistance to his experiments beyond the realm of hard news, but he now has an irrefutable retort: The No. 1 show on CNN is now “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” a travel-adventure show featuring the bad-boy celebrity chef. Zucker said that inside CNN, his formula has finally been accepted “because people have seen the results.”
More series and films untethered to the news and produced by outside production companies will get runs in primetime: “Yes, there will be more and, yes, they will not just be on Sundays…,” he said. “I think it will expand past just the weekends, and so there’s a little piece of news for you… This is a primetime play. It’s too expensive to confine it to weekends.”
Zucker intends to place further emphasis on its digital mobile resources while also planning to re-brand “HLN” (Headline News), making it rely less on courtroom drama.
It seems like CNN wants to go the route of the Weather Channel or the History Channel — expand outside the traditional line of niche programming that initially gave them their prominence. The Weather Channel capitalizes on more weather related documentaries and specials, while breaking weather coverage involves the naming of winter storms and tracking potential tornadoes via the made for TV sounding TOR:CON Index.
In defending the need for change Zucker makes a solid point:
“… the overall cable news audience has not grown in the last 12 years, OK? So, all we’re doing is trading [audience] share. … We also want to broaden what people can expect from CNN.”
If CNN decides to index the severity of a specific breaking news event, perhaps they can borrow the color-coded terrorist threat scale previously used by U.S. Homeland Security.