Believe it or not, I was one of the first people in the world to hear of the Cable News Network before it covered a single story. WAAAAAAAAY back in 1979, I was researching a term paper on the history of what was originally called the Radio Corporation of America and shortened to RCA Corporation as it had become one of the major diversified companies of the late 20th Century, when I happened on a few news report that outspoken yachtsman/baseball team owner/media mini-magnate R.E. "Ted" Turner who had already shocked the world by turning tiny independent station WTCG Channel 17, Atlanta into SuperStation WTBS , was about to challenge the Big Three Networks' stranglehold on TV news with CNN, the world's first 24-hour all-news network. I wrote them for some promotional material on what made them different from RCA's crown jewel, NBC, and they happily complied. This was also the unofficial beginning of a beautiful friendship between Yours Truly and CNN's small, but mighty, New York team at a building that could hardly be called "small," One World Trade Center. When CNN officially hit the ground running on June 1, 1980, I was introduced to a veritable plethora of talented reporters not just from CNN New York and its content provider Independent Network News (a division of local powerhouse WPIX), but from networks all over the world such as the BBC (and ITN, now ITV News), Italy's RAI, and, after much arm-twisting on CNN's part, Russian state TV before it adopted a Western-style business model. From coast to coast and border to border, CNN had become a force to be reckoned with, debuting an international service by the end of the 80's and moving into radio in addition to starting CNN 2, which has since evolved into Headline News. CNN soon outgrew the WTC and moved to 5 Penn Plaza, right across from Madison Square Garden, The World's Most Famous Arena, and Macy*s, The World's Largest Store, with the Empire State Building watching over them. The area proved a better fit for CNN, which, in addition to its already-popular financial news show MONEYLINE (anchored by Lou Dobbs, later to become one of the most popular pundits at a competing network), challenged ET with SHOWBIZ TODAY (later SHOWBIZ TONIGHT), originally anchored by Bill Tush and Liz Wickersham, and later anchored by (at various points) Bella Shaw, Laurin Sydney, Lee Leonard, Jim Moret, and A.J. Hammer, with a team of entertainment experts including (every so-often) the man who shook up Top 40 radio the way Ted had shaken up TV news, Scott Shannon, as well as sports coverage,(with two reporters being my erstwhile friends Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick) talk shows,(including LARRY KING LIVE) and breaking news ,the most significant story happening on September 11,2001, when two planes flew into the World Trade Center and CNN became the go-to network in the days and weeks to come, as it had been during the first Gulf War. In 1995, Ted, after attempts to buy CBS and fending off advances from other networks, agreed to let Time Warner Inc. buy the percentage of CNN (and its fellow divisions of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. such as Cartoon Network and Hanna-Barbera Productions) it didn't already own, thus marrying it into a family that already included Warner Bros., HBO, DC Comics, and MAD Magazine, and five years later, America Online, the internet service pioneer, purchased TWI, lock, stock and CNN camera. Despite all attempts to portray AOL Time Warner as one, big happy family, the initials AOL were dropped from Time Warner's corporate name, and AOL was spun off a few years later.
Despite increased competition, CNN has held its own after all these years as it continues to make and cover the news from its studios in Manhattan's Columbus Circle area, just a short walk away from Lincoln Center, with next-gen reporters Frederica Whitfield, Brooke Baldwin, Carol Costello, and Anderson Cooper.What next for the network once derisively known as "Chicken Noodle News" as its parent has agreed to be acquired by AT&T who already owns Direct TV and the telephone business that put it on the map? The sky's the limit,but then, hasn't it always been?
Steve
