WI: CNN was a flop

(accidently posted this on the wrong board):

What if CNN never really took off and went off the air by the mid-80s. Would this mean we'd never see the rise of the 24-hour news channel? While we're at it, how would this affect other turners other channels? Would TBS go back to being local to Atlanta? Would TNT and Cartoon Network never get off the ground due to turner having a lousy track record with CNN (as well as the cable music channel which did flop heavily IOT).
 
That is a very interesting question. I don't know how the developments in news were around that time, but if CNN is turned into a salutary lesson for the wider market, it is quite likely that news will be viewed as unsaleable. 24-hour niche channels are still likely to surface, but dedicated to entertainment (if funded by advertising) or to very specific information (e.g. stockmarket coverage). The 24-hour info channel is likely to still arise, but it might be based on a different model. Europe's public TV has spawned a number of such channels, many of them consciously aping CNN, but the idea was there before to have educational channels. All these have a legal obligation to provide news. So rather than news with occasional lifestyle chatter and would-be documentaries, we would have documentaries and annoying 'social content' reportage interspersed with news. It would probably not be thought commercially viable. On the other side of the equation, people might tune into economic coverage channels (running in business class lounges and hotel lobbies around the world) to get a rundown of basic news, so one of them could morph into a more general news channel. There is demand there, I don't think it will go unmet in the long run.
 
ESPN is already successful, and the no-cost, no-budget model for the weather channel means it's likely to happen. It's hard to imagine that someone wouldn't try to capitalize on that market at some point.

The way NBC got into the 24-hour news market was relatively safe, partnering up with Microsoft to spread any losses around. However if they wait too long, we might see attempts to forego the high expenses of tv news and start up an internet news channel. If that fails (as it probably will) then we'd have to wait even longer.

However...

Without its extra cable stations to devote to coverage of the Olympics, we would likely see a bit more pressure earlier on to get digital tv up and running with a deadline of 2006 or 2004 at the earliest.

As soon as digital tv arrives, we'll definitely see the birth of 24-hour news networks.

The techies will probably come back and tell me that the infrastructure or technology wasn't available that early, which is fine. Just fill in a date you think digital tv could be available if a multi-billion dollar contract were on the line and with greatly increased institutional pressure.
 
Rolling News was a concept already popularised on radio and without a Gulf War in 1990/1991, it would have been slower to spread.

And Sky News had been launched in the 1980s so it's possible that Murdoch could have succeeded where Turner failed.
 
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