Repositioned to snag younger, casual viewers

By Heidi Vogt

   The OJ Simpson trial famously made Court TV, and the Gulf War made CNN. And with a new war coming in weeks, the question, one of many, arises: Who will this war reward? 
   Certainly CNN and Fox News will be scrapping for viewers, with CNN attempting to reassert itself as the cable news network that's best in battle.
   But also out there, though with a very different approach, will be the the eternal laggard of cable news, CNN Headline News.
   This is the network that put the plain in plain vanilla news, and it's been solidly reflected in its ratings, which have been swimming in the basement for the two decades of its existence.
   But quietly, and almost unnoticed in the great hullabaloo over the sinking of CNN and the rise of Fox, Headlines News has been undergoing a revamping, and the last touches were applied just yesterday.
   Will Headline News become the war network? 
   Most assuredly not, but it it may well be positioned to become the war network for younger war mongers and certainly for younger casual news viewers who want a quick synopsis of the headlines.
   A year and half after Headline News began its repositioning, the network is simply doing a better job of what it always did: targeting the news-lite viewer who tunes in for quick stories and breaking news.
  The new format offers viewers shorter news segments in a chatty, quick-hit environment, with more graphics.
    “Headline seems to be less erratic than other networks,” says Reese Schonfeld, who co-founded CNN with Ted Turner in the late 1970s and was president and chief executive officer of the network until 1982. 
   “The network has been all gussied up, and it continues to keep the same ratings at a time when other people’s ratings are declining.” 
    Both CNN and CNN Headline News have lost viewers since 2001. Headline News has lost even more than its sister network. It’s down 12 percent since 2001 compared to CNN’s 7 percent.
   Headline News' ratings drop puts it right in step with other news networks, all of which have lost viewers since the news-hungry year after 9/11. CNN’s drop in ratings, however, accentuates the fact that it is no longer viewers’ first choice for cable news. Fox News took over that role a year ago, and CNN has continued to fall farther behind.
   Monday Headline News completed one of the final transitions of its repositioning plan. It introduced 18 hours of live coverage from 6 a.m. to 12 a.m. – up from the previous 10 hours. The network also ditched solo talking heads altogether, moving to a format that consists exclusively of anchor teams.
   “This way we can cover more stories,  and the tossing back and forth speeds up the pace of the newscast,” says Headline News spokesperson Lauren Hammond.
   The network will cover DVD releases and the newest gadgets, as well as airing cooking segments. “We give viewers the things that are important and interesting to their lives and lifestyles,” says Hammond. This positioning also makes it less likely that Headline News will cannibalize CNN's audience.
   The transformation of Headline News into a younger, hipper version of itself was spearheaded by recently departed CNN head Walter Isaacson. At Isaacson’s first public appearance as chairman and CEO in the summer of 2001, he announced that the stodgy 20-year-old Headline News would get a fresh update with web-inspired graphics, conversational anchors and a faster pace. Headline News quickly chopped its traditional half-hour blocks into 15 minute segments and began introducing anchor teams for some dayparts.
    Plenty of critics scoffed at at the changes, aimed at attracting a younger audience, but the perpetually low-rated network didn’t have much to lose.
    The network’s median age is currently 51.1 overall and 51.3 in primetime, giving it the youngest viewer of any of the cable news networks. Before the repositioning, the median age was 54 overall and 52.8 in primetime.
   The young viewers of Headline News don’t tune in for longer than a quick update (about 14 minutes), but they do tune in.
    And that’s all that Headline News wants them to do.

February 4, 2003© 2003 Media Life

-Heidi Vogt is a staff writer for Media Life.