Monday, November 28, 2005
The Future of TV News is NO Anchors? I Don't Think So
There's a must read article in New York Magazine about all the anchor switching, both network and cable, going on lately. The article starts off with quotes from CNN President Jon Klein and what he is banking on to be the future of CNN. Here's part of the article:" Jonathan Klein, the boyish 47-year-old president of CNN, walks through the fourth-floor newsroom in the Time Warner Center with the supreme confidence of one who knows the Future of Television News will be reporting for duty down the hall in about ten minutes. And yet, as he later settles into his fifth-floor office, with a Central Park view on one side and a panel of TV screens on the other, Klein offers a more radical vision of the future.
“Within five years, people will be saying, ‘I want the news about Jordan,’ and they’ll type ‘Jordan’ into their handheld device and up will pop the news about Jordan that they want, nothing else,” says Klein as he sits opposite the panel of anchor-filled screens broadcasting the news in the format that has worked well for the past half-century. “There won’t be anchors. There won’t be people introducing the stories. Consumers won’t have the time or the need for that. They’ll just be getting the news they want, when they want it, in whatever form they want it.”
Life is tough for television news anchors these days, especially the ones who aren’t Anderson Cooper. Even Cooper’s having it rough lately; at last count, he’s down to only three or four fawning media profiles a week.
Much as the news chiefs might not want to admit it, Anderson Cooper is the best hope for the future, with Klein the behind-the-scenes architect of his ascendancy. Other networks have inquired about Cooper’s status, only to be reminded that his ironclad CNN contract lasts two more years. No matter what he might say about the future of television news, Klein knows there will still be anchors five years from now; that’s why he’s banking so heavily on Cooper, while he still has him under contract. Two weeks ago, the 38-year-old CNN star began hosting the two-hour-long Anderson Cooper 360° every weeknight at 10 p.m., combining the passion of Edward R. Murrow and the pacing of MTV into a jazzy, if still low-rated, package. No one can afford to be content anymore with the idea of a gray eminence (CBS chairman Les Moonves’s famous “voice of God”) behind a desk anymore, unless he’s prematurely gray."
Read the full article HERE.
# posted by ATN @ 9:33 PM 
