AHC: CNN does not survive Time-Warner buyout

What POD has to happen to make things at Time Warner so dire the buyer is able to dictate harsher terms, namely cheerypicking only what they want and throw the rest away, with CNN among those who got an axe?

Could happen in many ways though.
  • Maybe the state-owned world services grow bigger and faster than OTL that the buyers don't think CNN world serivce is a viable business anymore.
  • Contract negotiations with cable companies break down and too many cable services, U.S. and overseas, willing to bite the bullet and drop CNN alonside HBO they were forced to buy as a package deal.
  • etc.

Anderson Cooper and Amanpur being poached by foreign state-owned international services could be an icing on the cake in this ATL.
 
IOTL negotiations was a done deal in 2016 with AT&T as a buyer, and it was a packaged deal with no cherrypicking option. It seems AT&T wanted to enter the content market so much it was willing to pay for lemons and turkeys in Time Warner's porfolio to get what they actually want, the HBO channel.
 
2016 is probably too late, CNN is too institutionalized by now unless they are planning to replace it with another cable news channel that is basically son of CNN.
 
I now for sure that the right will have a big fucking party
The celebration could be a little subdued if we go with 'Cable news channel is a sunset industry' in this ATL. It is hard for either FOX or MSNBC to celebrate the fall of the competitor when they, too, could be on the chopping block themselves soon.

Heck, the buyer of Time Warner in ATL could have their stocks hammered and protests from its own shareholders for throwing good money after bad.

2016 is probably too late, CNN is too institutionalized by now unless they are planning to replace it with another cable news channel that is basically son of CNN.
Institutational status does not mean much if money does not coming and it continues to bleed talents and viewers.

Could you come up with a scenario that someone else could get CNN brand in a separate deal and relaunch it later? And would it still resulted in Time Warner no longer an independent company?
 
I admit that making CNN fail in the 2000s is not plausible (the network is too well-entrenched), but I think this sequence might work.

The POD would have to be in the late 1980s, early 1990s at the very latest.
  • Roger Ailes lines up financing, talent and cable carriage agreements and starts a conservative-leaning news channel in the early 1990s. Just like Fox News in OTL, the conservative-leaning news network quickly becomes a massive success. (Bill Clinton still being elected President in 1992, and the various controversies and scandals surrounding his administration, can play largely into Ailes' hands.) Any chance of the network fading away anytime soon ends when Fox ends up buying the upstart news channel a few years later to join it with their then-equally-upstart broadcast network (which had no national news presence).
  • Some other company starts up a liberal-leaning news network, providing a alternate perspective from the newly-christened Fox News Channel. As the partisan divide over the Clinton administration grows, the liberal network becomes highly successful, and eventually it too is purchased by a larger media conglomerate with deep pockets.
  • We now effectively have the clear partisan news divide at least a decade earlier than OTL, with both networks draining CNN's ratings.
  • CNN reacts by taking a more tabloid-style approach to news coverage, aided by a series of high profile crimes (e.g. the O.J. Simpson murder case). It stems the ratings bleed for a while, but at the expense of some of their credibility.
  • The final nail in the coffin comes when the BBC launches a American news network. "BBC NewsNet America" successfully combines U.S.-based anchors and reporters with the BBC's prestige, reputation and worldwide reporting staff, and takes the remaining "straightforward news" viewers from CNN.
  • Inspired by the BBC, Canada's CBC also starts a American news network to modest success.
  • CNN hangs on with near-rock bottom ratings, as Ted Turner remains 100% committed to the network. Turner's other broadcast ventures (TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, etc.) are just as successful in TTL as they were OTL, and are clearing subsidizing CNN at this stage.
  • Just like in OTL, Turner sells his media holdings to Time Warner. The deal takes place a few years later though (around 2000), since due to CNN tanking, the company is less valuable and desirable. Time Warner is far more interested in Turner's other cable networks and sees CNN as a bottomless money pit with little-to-no chance of turning things around, and makes the decision to shut down CNN. The in-universe joke is that Time Warner made more money selling CNN's assets (like studios and broadcasting and news-gathering equipment) then they would have by actually running CNN.
 
I admit that making CNN fail in the 2000s is not plausible (the network is too well-entrenched),

So whoever buy TimeWarner itself later will have to pay for and keep CNN on air even though some POD could turn the channel a money loser, even losing broadcasting contracts from most international airports?
 
Bill Clinton still being elected President in 1992, and the various controversies and scandals surrounding his administration, can play largely into Ailes' hands.
How how important was Clinton to Fox News' success? I'm not really familiar with the US media landscape.
 
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