“We won’t be signing off until the world ends,” Ted Turner said in 1980, just before the launch of his latest media venture. “We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event.”
Turner died on May 6 at 87. The world hasn’t ended yet, nor has his project, Cable News Network, but the latter changed the former in a big way.
If you’re too young to remember the pre-CNN era, trying to describe it feels like pulling a fish out of water and showing it a non-aquatic landscape:
On television, “the news” was generally broadcast twice a day, morning and evening, in half-hour local and half-hour national/world shows. Morning network shows included short news segments between entertainment content. Truly earth-shaking events might call for “SPECIAL BULLETIN” interruptions.
Radio stations often carried very short “top of the hour” news updates between their other programming, but prior to CNN Radio (launched at the same time as CNN’s cable television news channel) there were no “24-hour news” stations.
About half of the American population cared enough about “the news” to subscribe to a daily newspaper, delivered to their front porches each morning or evening. Such newspapers — apart from a few big-city publications — tended to be very local in focus, with perhaps a smattering of national stories from wire services like Associated Press and United Press International. USA Today, the first really intentionally “national” newspaper, launched two years after CNN.
At the time of CNN’s launch, about one in five US households subscribed to cable television. Three years later, that number had doubled and eventually approached 90% (streaming options have dragged it down, but the percentage remains higher than in pre-CNN days).
Since CNN’s launch, “the news” has gone from short daily feeds covering pre-deadline events to 24/7/365 real-time coverage of far more things, in far more detail, by numerous and varied outlets.
In theory, that should make the public much better informed than we used to be. We can know more OF what’s happened, and know more ABOUT what’s happened.
In reality, I’m not sure our attention to important facts about important events has really increased.
The 24-hour news environment seems far richer in sensationalism, pearl-clutching, and outrage bait than in useful information about the important stuff.
Former football star leads police on low-speed chase in a Bronco.
One movie star’s divorcing another movie star and it’s getting ugly.
Someone said a bad word on a hot mic.
That’s not Ted Turner’s fault. It’s our fault. CNN and its media children and grandchildren give us what we want to watch, because that’s how businesses make money.
That they’ll keep showing us whatever keeps us watching isn’t news.
Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
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