Full Version: CBS Said to Consider Use of CNN in Reporting

CBS Said to Consider Use of CNN in Reporting

[url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/cbs_corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org]CBS[/url], the home of the most celebrated  news division in broadcasting, has been in discussions with [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/time_warner_inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org]Time Warner[/url] about a deal to outsource some of its news-gathering operations to CNN, two executives briefed on the matter said Monday.
      Overthe last decade, CNN has held intermittent talks with both ABC News andCBS News about various joint ventures. But during the last severalmonths, talks with CBS have been revived and lately intensified,according to the executives who asked for anonymity because of theconfidential nature of the negotiations.
Broadly speaking, theexecutives described conversations about reducing CBS’s news-gatheringcapacity while keeping its frontline personalities, like [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/katie_couric/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Katie Couric[/url], the CBS Evening News anchor, and paying a fee to CNN to buy the cable network’s news feeds.
Anotherpossibility, these people said, would be for CBS to keep itscorrespondents in certain regions but pair them with CNN crews.
But,these people cautioned, no deal was imminent. Sandy Genelius, aspokeswoman for CBS News, said, “We are extremely pleased with andproud of our news-gathering operation. No outside arrangements arebeing negotiated.” A CNN spokeswoman said, “we don’t comment onspeculative business matters.”
For CNN, a deal with a broadcastnetwork would mean a new revenue stream without having to add much incosts. For CBS, an arrangement with a cable channel would allow it tocut costs while maintaining the CBS News brand, although in a muchtrimmed-down fashion. CBS is mired in last place amid the continuingstruggles of Ms. Couric, who was given a $15 million a year contract,to attract new viewers.
The discussions are being led by SeanMcManus, the president of CBS News, and Jim Walton, president of theCNN news group. Many questions remain regarding unions, rights issuesand the level of involvement of other CBS News products like “60Minutes” and “The Early Show.”
If a significant deal is reachedbetween CNN and CBS, it would mark a watershed in broadcast history, astrategic shift in the face of changing market forces by the networkthat is widely credited as having invented television news,establishing a powerful tradition with journalists like Edward R.Murrow and [url=http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/walter_cronkite/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Walter Cronkite[/url].
In2007, however, “CBS Evening News With Katie Couric” was in third place,averaging 6.43 million viewers a night, down 13.4 percent from 2006,according to Nielsen Media Research. ABC averaged 8.38 million viewersfor its nightly newscast, and NBC averaged 8.29 million. (Fox, thefourth major broadcast network, does not have a national newscast; FoxNews Channel is a cable network like CNN.)
In the morning, CBSNews is also the perennial third-place finisher. In 2007 “The EarlyShow” on CBS averaged 2.5 million viewers, less than half that of NBC’s“Today,” which averaged 5.38 million. ABC’s “Good Morning America”averaged 4.77 million.
CNN and CBS have had a long flirtation,and there is no guarantee that this latest round of talks will be anymore fruitful. In 1998, it emerged publicly that the two sides weretalking about an extensive joint venture, and later, in 2002, CNN wasclose to reaching a deal with ABC News, but those talks eventuallybroke down over control issues.
More recently, CNN and CBS talkedabout sharing resources in Baghdad in order to save money but no dealwas reached, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.
Noneof the corporations that own the three broadcast networks break outfinancial figures for their news divisions, but advertising revenuetends to closely track ratings.
Combined, according toestimates from TNS Media Intelligence, the three evening newscastsbrought in about $478 million in advertising revenue in 2006, the lastfull year in which figures are available. The morning shows generatemuch more in advertising revenue, a combined $1.4 billion in 2006.
Bothof those figures were down slightly from the previous year,underscoring the fact that, at least for now, broadcast news is still asizable, although declining, business.
While broadcast televisionas a medium is in decline because new platforms — the Internet, mobiledevices — are fragmenting audiences, the problems at CBS News are moreacute. While overall evening news viewership across the three networksdeclined 5 percent last year, CBS’s fell 13 percent.
In itsrecently released annual report titled “The State of the News Media,”the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which is led by TomRosenstiel, stated that broadcast news outlets needed to diversify morequickly across platforms if they were to survive.
“In the end,”according to the report, “if the problems of network news can be mostlyattributed to the decline in the overall audience of broadcast networktelevision generally rather than something having to do with thenewscasts in particular, then the survival of the networks’ newsdivisions in some ways may well depend on their liberating themselvesfrom the broadcast television platform on which they were founded — andeven perhaps from the networks themselves.”