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Happy 25th, CNN
In the beginning, it was dubbed the Chicken Noodle Network.
Industry experts and TV critics alike made fun of Ted Turner when he launched the worldwide Cable News Network on June 1, 1980. The concept of 24-hour cable news seemed ludicrous, and CNN launched with fewer than 2 million U.S. households.
Turner made a big deal of having no-name, noncelebrity anchors and reporters on the air in order to stress his story-over-star approach to news. That seemed ridiculous, too. How could a news network exist without a Walter Cronkite or a David Brinkley?
People laughed then, but nobody, especially in the broadcast networks’ news divisions, is laughing now.
As CNN lights the candles on its quarter-century birthday cake, it is available in more than 89 million cable households in the U.S. and more than 160 million households outside the U.S. Around the world, the combined networks of CNN reach more than 2 billion viewers. That’s billion, with a “b.”
Yes, CNN has lost its ratings dominance in the past few years to Fox News, but that advantage often disappears with breaking news, especially international breaking news. Fox has become popular on the strength of its conservative commentary rather than its hard-news coverage. And it has a comparatively slender foreign news staff.
So, happy birthday, Chicken Noodle!
For a trip down memory lane, check out “Defining Moments: 25 Stories That Touched Our Lives,” tonight at 7 on CNN, followed at 8 by a special edition of “Larry King Live,” now celebrating its 20th year of interesting but often puffball interviews.
Spacey gets real
In the aftermath of his disastrous Bobby Darin bio-pic “Beyond the Sea,” Kevin Spacey is diving head-first into reality TV. So much for big-screen snobbery.
Scheduled to debut in the fall, “Going Hollywood” will feature Spacey as a mentor to show-biz interns working for his production company. The TLC series plans to show off the hard work that goes into making Hollywood dreams come true.
Without even trying, it might also show what happens when an Oscar-winning actor turns out a dud that opens and closes in less than a month. Suddenly TV doesn’t look so bad after all.
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