CNN is hemorrhaging viewers. One article I read said that CNN’s policy of playing it right down the middle is not working.
What a hoot! Only a liberal would think CNN plays it down the middle. If CNN really played it down the middle, they would probably have a huge audience.
CNN is violating the four basic rules of marketing: Position, Differentiate, USP (Unique Selling Point), and Brand.
I won’t bore you with a detailed marketing analysis of how CNN has violated all four. But, discussing one of the four – Differentiate – will shed some light on CNN’s problems.
CNN does not differentiate itself from CBS, ABC and NBC news coverage. Nor, for that matter, does it differentiate itself from the major liberal print news publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine, Newsweek, etc.
When the typical American (the 80% Gallup says are not liberal) looks at CNN, what do they see?
They see the elite of America. They see those who attend the New York charity balls, the Washington cocktail receptions, and the Hollywood fundraisers.
Even the occasional Republican who appears on CNN is usually an establishment Republican. The trouble is, establishment Republicans are in great disfavor with most Americans (including conservatives).
In recent years, CNN had two right-of-center voices, but they are no longer there – Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck.
On the other hand, when Americans look at Fox News, they see people who they instinctively feel are like them, people who are not part of the ruling class, didn’t go to the elite schools, and don’t belong to the upper-class social clubs.
Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Shepard Smith, Fox and Friends, etc., don’t look, walk, or talk like the country’s elite ruling class that most Americans have come to dislike and distrust.
The elite liberals who run CNN appear to have very little, if any, idea what’s on America’s mind; their views, their values, their hopes and their fears.
CNN executives seem to think that the opposite of a liberal Democrat is a big-government, liberal Republican. When NBC, CBS and ABC were the only available networks, they could get by presenting that false, narrow view of the real American political landscape.
When CNN has a steady stream of guests, experts, or panelists comprised mostly of America’s ruling class, and only an occasional conservative guest (and usually for the role of criticizing Republicans, or the foil not to be “taken seriously”), they’ve branded themselves as a cable channel version of CBS, NBC, and ABC News.
I guess some genius at CNN thinks putting disgraced, former left-wing Democratic New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer and pleasantly wishy-washy, mostly plain vanilla Republican Kathleen Parker on at 8:00 p.m. (prime time) will appeal to their vast lost audience.
Who is CNN’s vast lost audience? Americans frightened about their financial circumstances, and angry at the ruling class such as Spitzer and Parker, that’s who.
And, once your brand is formed in the minds of the American people, it’s exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to change it.
CNN has not only failed to position or differentiated itself, or provide a “Unique Selling Point” to draw viewers, it has strongly branded itself as another “ruling class, establishment” news organization out of touch with America’s views and values.
In today’s world with most Americans worried – even frightened – about their economic future (as well as America’s), does anyone really believe CNN has a viable future?
Richard A. Viguerie pioneered ideological and cause-related direct mail in the 1960s and 1970s.
