Like broadcast television, cable television is in decline. People are increasingly getting their news from social media and digital media (hello), which means the big cable news channels are seeing declining ratings and, with them, advertising revenue. Now, CNN Chief Executive Mark Thompson has outlined some early plans in a memo to try to save CNN from cable TV and expand its presence on mobile phones.
as pointed out wall street journalPeople who have seen the memo say the first step will be to consolidate CNN’s numerous newsgathering groups into a single team. CNN’s current structure includes television-centric operations, streaming operations and digital operations. They communicate, but they are separate organizations with different leaders and goals. Thompson will combine them and create a new organization focused on finding new ways to grow CNN’s audience.
Such mergers are not unusual for media companies that need to pivot amid declining audiences. Over the past 20 years, we’ve seen many magazines create a digital division separate from their print edition to serve their digital readers. Often, these two separate organizations eventually merge into one group – although there are still many magazines that continue to have both groups under one brand.
Thompson did something similar when he joined New York Times Became CEO in 2012. He poured money and resources into the paper’s digital arm and built a very thriving digital subscription business.
In addition to a major reorganization of CNN, Thompson is also working on how to get people to use CNN on mobile phones. “For many people today, smartphones are a more important consumer news device than televisions,” he wrote in the memo. “Their news prime time is in the morning, not in the evening.”
Thompson and CNN haven’t found a solution yet for people to watch CNN on their mobile devices. “I don’t think anyone has cracked the code yet on how to turn this into a truly great journalism experience,” he wrote.
exist this New York Times, Thompson achieves this through a powerful app experience and subscription. I spend an hour every day playing daily puzzles on my newspaper app version, and on the weekends I’m more than happy to make recipes from its cooking section – which I pay a subscription to access.
But this is not necessarily a solution for organizations creating a 24/7 news concept. “Since it is necessary [the] A mountaintop,” Thompson wrote – quoting him in this New York Times“I choose to start at the bottom of the other one.”
