Saturday, January 14, 2006
Q and A with CNN's Susan Grant on CNN's Pipeline
CNN Pipeline is just over a month old. WHAC e-mailed Susan Grant, Executive Vice President of CNN News Services a handful of questions about the new product.> What has been the response to CNN Pipeline so far?
Grant:The response to CNN Pipeline has been breathtaking, and the critical response has been unbelievably positive. CNN Pipeline is just five weeks old, so our first order of business is to get consumers to test drive CNN Pipeline, and listen closely to their feedback. We hear anecdotally that they love the player, think the product is easy to use (both as a download and once it’s installed), and deeply value the live video and the searchable/browseable VOD and video.
> Can you comment on the number of subscribers to date?
Grant :We cannot comment on the number of CNN Pipeline subscribers to date. However, we are very pleased with the response and feel confident that consumers will continue to pay the small fee to subscribe to CNN Pipeline.
> During the overnight hours two of the pipes ‘go dark’, are there any plans to program something in them in the future?
Grant :CNN Pipeline serves 25 countries and multiple U.S. time zones. Pipeline’s objective is to be available 24/7/365 – and we are. If there is a live event occurring in the world which CNN or its affiliates are covering, that live news content will appear on CNN International (Pipe 1 on CNN Pipeline from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. ET) or on the two “live Newsource” channels (which are conduits into the newsrooms of over 800 local North American TV stations) (pipes 2 and 3). It is true that we do not produce programming for Pipe 1 24 hours a day, but we like to think we have “pipeline during the day” and “pipeline after hours/weekends;” and that differentiating the look and feel of Pipeline resonates very well with our users.
> Are there any plans to increase the synergy of Pipeline with the other CNN products?
Grant : Pipeline is pretty ‘synergized’. All of our content is available to us in-house. We have a wealth of live material, and taped and archived material available to us from CNN’s global newsgathering resources. CNN Pipeline is itself a global product.
> Are there any plans to add other features to Pipeline?
Absolutely! Our launch objectives for CNN Pipeline were to make a compelling product that was easy to use, worked for as many consumers as possible, and was feature rich. Now we want to continue to listen to the needs of online consumers and improve and evolve CNN Pipeline going forward. But “adding features” for the sake of adding features is not our objective. We need and want to maintain Pipeline’s accessibility, continue to give more choice and control to the consumer, and continue to showcase compelling and relevant CNN video.
# posted by ATN @ 12:28 AM 
