Monday, December 27, 2004
CNN-US and CNN-International--Do You Know the Difference?
Source: Washington Post DC Post contributer Jerry V. Haines shows the simalarities and differences of CNN-US and CNN-International in an essay in Monday's Post. Here's an exerpt from the article:
As my wife and I have traveled throughout the world, we have found CNNI practically everywhere, and thus foreign travel has become like a series of family reunions. It's an extended family, though. While wacky Uncle Larry always comes to these things, there are distant cousins here, too -- friendly enough, but talking about issues we only sort of remember from World Civ.
CNNI news stories are more worldwide in scope than those at home, even on our network news: much more on African issues, for example, or train crashes in Turkey, or elections in Indonesia. But where's the Scott Peterson trial? Have these people never heard of "The Apprentice" or Joe Gibbs? And what is this unhealthy preoccupation with soccer?
Nigel Pritchard of the network's public relations office estimates that only about 3 percent of CNNI's worldwide audience consists of American expats. Rather, the service is directed generally to the English-speaking populations of the countries we're visiting.
About 90 percent of CNNI's programming is produced exclusively for the international network. Most of the remainder consists of material shared with CNN's domestic service: "Larry King Live," for instance, or "NewsNight with Aaron Brown," or on weekends Wolf Blitzer's "Late Edition." (True to his program's name, King is aired live even overseas, contributing to travelers' disorientation when they see him at sunrise in some distant time zone.) Newscasts are CNNI's own, except for breaking news, when CNNI may simulcast domestic CNN or vice versa. Some CNNI news stories may have an American core but, Pritchard says, often they must be expanded to provide context for viewers unfamiliar with the subject or to explain certain American colloquialisms.
# posted by ATN @ 12:37 AM 
