Live from ad:tech: CNN Re-engages Viewers

Whoever emerges as the president-elect from the current campaign, CNN will be a clear winner as a content provider and sampler.

Addressing an audience at the ad:tech conference in New York City yesterday, Jonathan Klein, CNN president and CEO, said the objective of its coverage has been to not lean one way or the other—like MSNBC and Fox—but to “sample everything.”

That started several months ago with what had been an internal daily memo circulated among CNN’s editorial staff.

“We took an internal note—called political ticker that everyone got everyday and made it available to the public,” Klein recalled. That ticker has drawn100,000 page views in a short space of time.

The cable/Web network also introduced what it labeled “I-reports” from viewers that are vetted before posting on CNN.com “to make it a semi-permeable network,” Klein said. The eight-minute I-Reports are proliferating, with 30% coming from film school students.

He said CNN’s objective over the past four years has been “to differentiate” and “not be afraid.” The early results indicate that it has succeeded, currently winning the 18- to 49-year-old vote against the broadcast networks news operations.

“It blows the minds of the broadcast networks that we had the biggest audience 18 to 49,” he said.

It’s a process of taking calculated risks, such as the introduction of the popular touchscreen blue-and-red political maps and the response lines that coursed across the screen during the presidential debates, charting reactions of an Ohio voter focus group.

“If we really meant what we said about innovating, we had to try it,” he said.

CNN’s post-election plans are to “pivot” into coverage of the “transition-to-power” mode, Klein said. He predicted the winner would have “one of the shortest honeymoons in history.”

He declared that people are decidedly disposed to processing a lot of information at once, and CNN wants its reporters to be thinking in terms of multiple platforms for their stories.

The network will continue to air footage shot by viewers, like the video Virginia Tech student Jamal Albarghouti sent CNN from his school’s campus during the shootings there—the only live footage taken during the rampage.

“It would be interesting,” Klein said, “one day it might be considered a responsibility to report something when you see it.”