I find myself in an odd place: abroad. Until recently, I had CNN International included in my cable package. I had come to view CNN when there was something that resonated in an immediate way in my life. What was happening in Paris? Who was winning in New York? At those times, I would leave CNN International on as background static for a couple of hours. I tuned into CNN by force of habit. But I found myself more and more alienated as time went on.

CNN International insisted on taking breaks at inopportune moments, and the channel does not fill its ad air time with ads for commercial product as does domestic US CNN. CNN International never takes a real break. It fills its ad time with pushy self-patting slots for any one of its stars. Becky Anderson with her emphatic and staccato speech patterns is featured over and over again. CNN defines Anderson as an important world presence simply by having her repeat from various geographies across the globe, in Jordan, in Rome, in New Delhi, in Istanbul, in Abu Dhabi.

Okay, I got it the first time. I had and have no need to see the promo for the umpteenth time every time I tune in. But there is no stopping the repetition on CNN International. It just goes on and on.

Way ahead of Anderson, Christiane Amanpour is the CNN star who gets to greet the real movers and shakers of the world. Her brand is Amanpour. – the period or dot seems to emphasize priority or seniority. Amanpour’s main CNN promo, repeated again and again, is built on her greeting the national, international and cultural or Hollywood leaders of our contemporary world; Mr. President, Welcome to the program. Welcome Robert Redford. Prime Minister, Welcome to our program. Foreign Minister, Welcome.

 Repeatedly, Hala Gorani tells us that When you speak to a person directly affected, that is when you complete your understanding of the news. It sounds good until you realize that those of us who cannot speak directly to a person affected in Iraq or Nigeria or Orlando have no understanding of the news, I guess.

CNN International does that to you. By insisting on their promo ads ad nauseam (pun intended), they give you the opportunity to overthink the basis of their claims. CNN is the news source that we trust. Do we?

Going further, on CNN International we are now advised when planning travel abroad to unabashedly consider staying in a CNN enabled hotel.  

CNN’s repetitive loop of self-promotion ultimately began to come across to me as no more than benign but irritating propaganda.

For me, the question came down to whether I should continue to tune in, to continue to reward CNN for its sophmorish approach to its international viewers. Should I continue to tune into CNN International as a news source?

In my mind’s eye, the presented news programing came to occupy about a 50% window of the total broadcast; self-propaganda the other 50%.

Cable provider to the rescue

Case resolved by Claro, my local cable provider! Claro did me a great service last month by dropping CNN International from my coverage. I would now need to pay extra, Claro told me, to view all the Becky Anderson, Christiane Amanpour, Richard Quest et al repetitive promos. Are you kidding me? No, thank you.

Ouff! I could finally breathe. The repetition was over. Claro forced me to see that I have options, perhaps not as intutitive as tuning in to CNN, but options nevertheless.

I just needed to refocus my habits. CNN does not provide a live internet stream unless I have a cable contract with a local U.S. provider. I do not. NBC’s live stream, their website tells me, is not available where I live; ABC’s live stream doesn’t load.

On the other hand, newspaper sites, including the New York Times, are continually incorporating video into their breaking news coverage. And I was ecstatic to find that CBS (Always ON) provides a free internet live video streaming news service available where I live – Colombia. I have no idea who their stars are, but CBS has quickly become my go-to place for breaking news. Sky News from Britain is also available live 24/7, as are various other channels worldwide from India to Spain to Al Jazeera English.

Google News had become an essential player in the transfer of news from the cable world to the internet. At Google News, any keyword entered will pull up reporting of what is going on right now with thousands of references, TV and print, at various locations around the world.

Am I willing to pay a premium over and above my regular cable bill just to have CNN International. Uh-uh.

Adios CNN. (At least for now!).

The post Adios, CNN International…for now appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Slogans are sort of micro tweets, intended to sell brand by as much repetition as possible.

“This is CNN” is innocuous enough, even as comfortingly intoned by James Earl Jones. But CNN has also long espoused its “Most Trusted Name in News” slogan, which is straying a bit. This is the magic of marketing. You repeat the “Most Trusted Name in News” every few minutes and what do you know, the “Most Trusted Name in News” begins to sound pretty reliable.

Thanks, Ted.

Of course, the pendulum swings both ways. Fox News has “Fair and Balanced.” Trust and fairness are both highly personal and individualized concepts. They are, in fact, uncountable concepts in English. You cannot put a number on them. And therein lies the rub of their success. The concepts are impossible to verify. You cannot count how many people trust or believe a particular story fair at any moment in time. There is no way to do this.

You can do a sampling. You can phrase a question in such a way to get a particular response. And who is to differ with your results? In other words, who’s to differ with behemoths? Nobody, actually. You or I as individuals don’t have the resources on any given date to conduct a contrary poll to CNN or Fox News with questions phrased to elicit different answers.

“Fair and Balanced?”

Thanks, Rupert.

And then there is the New York Times.

For me, the myth of the New York Times has always been partially based on the paper’s genius slogan, “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” I have forever loved the apostrophe in That’s. For me, this is where the Old World leaves off, and the New World begins. A disregard for the past, businessmen in control, no baloney, and factual truth acknowledged. Adolph Simon Ochs adopted the slogan in 1896, a much simpler time. I imagine Adolph coming up with “All the News That’s Fit to Print” sitting at the dinner table with his wife Effie, and his daughter Iphigene. Here’s what we’ll do. It’s settled. We’ll brand the paper with “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Iphigene laughs – she may have coined the phrase. Decision made. A scene out of a George Cukor movie.

It turns out, though, that the present-day New York Times is not immune to the marketplace. Adding more content to its constant on-line redefinition, the paper is in the process of seeking out a viable position as an essential provider of minute-by-minute video news. When it recently redesigned its Magazine, the New York Times said this: “We admit it: We’re late to this party.”

Yeah, and how.

Do you have an iPhone? You are a news medium.

What do you know? “All the News That’s Fit to Print” is no longer the guideline. First it was “All the News That’s Fit to Click.” Ouch! So last century, distant from the culture supposedly being mirrored. We don’t click news. We breathe it when we need it. But they got that! The nytimes.com new slogan as of just this past month is “Countries have borders, Stories don’t.”

Really. What a limp, CNN-inspired copy!

What happened to news? Now all we are interested in are stories, personal interpretations of what happened. We no longer care for the facts?

What a turnaround.

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