AT&T's proposed $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner has cast renewed attention on the financial performance and journalistic independence of one of the media conglomerate's best-known possessions, CNN.

Internally, some hope CNN's financial performance will help ensure its independence and continued funding. The network has turned a financial corner thanks to the painstaking initiatives of its chief, Jeff Zucker, and to the unpredictable words of another man not employed by CNN: Donald Trump.

Presidential election years always give a huge boost to all three major cable news channels. For CNN, this campaign cycle has been particularly good.

According to two people with detailed knowledge of the network's financial performance, CNN will make approximately $100 million in television and digital advertising revenues more than it would expect in the typical election year.

That's thanks to the huge interest in Trump, who seemingly received blanket coverage of every public pronouncement and rally during the extended Republican primary season.

The heightened level of viewers meant CNN could guarantee advertisers relatively high audiences — and lock in higher advance rates rather than simply take pride in an unexpected spike in ratings. CNN has also landed big-name sponsorships that were hard to get in the past.

"I think it's pretty obvious what made this year pop from an election cycle perspective," says Tracy Stallard, the senior director of media for Anheuser-Busch InBev's U.S. operations. "It's certainly been a fun one to watch."

AB InBev, the world's largest brewer, struck a sponsorship deal worth several million dollars to CNN. It included video vignettes — more than just a 30-second spot, Stallard says — that ran on CNN's television channel and digital platforms. But AB InBev's most famous labels, Budweiser and Bud Light, were sponsors of the CNN Grill, which served as both a television studio and an actual bar at the Republican and Democratic national conventions this past summer.

"CNN in particular was an exciting partner because of this 'on-the-ground' activation aspect," Stallard says. "They were like-minded to us. They didn't just believe they were going to sell us television ad placements." The sponsorship brought added visibility for political, corporate and journalistic big-shots at the conventions but also won periodic mentions on the air, she said.

To be very clear, Zucker, the president of CNN Worldwide, has pursued a strategy featuring multiple prongs in recent years.

He placed an emphasis on breaking news, leading initially to much-lampooned blanket coverage of a missing plane believed now to have crashed in the Indian Ocean and a sinking cruise liner off the Italian Coast, and the sense among some critics that the definition of what news is actually breaking has been stretched past recognition.

CNN has also spent more time reporting on conflict, disaster and politics from abroad than its cable news peers. Indeed, Zucker has authorized the hiring of waves of journalists to cover stories on the air and online, raiding Politico, the Los Angeles Times and other prominent news outlets.

Additionally, Zucker invested in outside documentaries and highly produced original taped series too, featuring such stars as Anthony Bourdain and Lisa Ling, as he sought to give viewers a recurring reason to tune in during prime time in the absence of big news.

And, Trump became a big reason to tune in starting more than a year ago.

"We recognized much earlier than most that there was a little bit of a phenomenon to Donald Trump," Zucker said to a group of students and faculty at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center earlier this month. "I'd say that if we made a mistake last year it's that we probably did put on too many of his campaign rallies in those early months unedited and just let them run."

Zucker neatly summarized why Trump captured a television programmer's heart as a rogue presidential candidate: "You never knew what he was going to say. You never knew what was going to happen."

Viewers responded.

Zucker declined to comment to NPR about the AT&T deal or CNN's performance.

Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes tells NPR that Zucker's strategy prior to the election cycle set the table for this year's financial gains, citing coverage of hard news abroad, and the documentaries and special taped series. "We were on this track without regard to the election," Bewkes says. "We have the biggest newsgathering organization in the world with, increasingly, the best expertise in how to serve it into [video on demand] offerings, mobile offers, short-form offerings."

Source: Excerpted from NPR.org

Date Posted: Tuesday, October 25th, 2016 , Total Page Views: 1641