News - No free ride

Fees slow CNN.com deal with newspapers

A struggling new media venture by CNN Interactive intended to attract content from daily newspapers may finally get off the ground this month, according to network officials. Originally planned for a launch by the end of 1999, the CNN Online Newspaper Affiliate Program will run three stories from each newspaper per day on CNN.com in exchange for video feeds offered to the papers’ websites.

The sticking point has been fees. To get on the site, newspapers must pay between $50 and $500 per week, based on a paper’s circulation and related factors, says Derek Nolen of uclick, the Kansas City-based firm that’s selling the program to newspapers and administering the content exchange for CNN. The fees, says Nolen, will go to uclick, not CNN. Similar programs at AOL, BellSouth and DigitalSouth offer content swaps, branding and links for free.

To date, 30 newspapers have signed on, including the New York Daily News, Boston Herald, Arizona Republic, Las Vegas Review Journal, Houston Chronicle and Detroit News.

Dave Ragals, vice president of news-features for CNN Interactive, says another 20 are expected.

Ragals and Nolen agree that launching by the end of July is now realistic.

The newspaper content will be found through CNN.com’s Local link, where there already is content from CNN’s traditional TV affiliates. Nolen says contracts for the affiliate program wouldn’t allow the content to appear on AOL — even if the merger of AOL and Time Warner (parent company of CNN) is completed.

“Everyone else approaches you with a free deal,” says a new media director at a newspaper in north Georgia, who requested anonymity, “but CNN pushed it over to Universal Press, who of course has to make some money. We were supposed to pay $400 a week.” The paper passed on the opportunity. (Since the sales push began, Universal — a syndicator of newspaper columns and other features — has spun off its new media unit into uclick, says Nolen.)

Gerry Barker, website manager for Belo Interactive in Dallas, has signed on the company’s Dallas Morning News for the program, which he says is a good fit.

“Belo owns local TV stations, almost 20 around the country,” which makes the video-content exchange worthwhile. “What I looked at was CNN, with a large national audience, as a way to take advantage of their traffic with my great content. It has advantages for large media companies or papers in large markets.”

But at this point, Barker is just waiting to see the program launched. “I’ve heard ‘a week or so’ for quite awhile now. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

In other not-so-happy CNN news, the embarrassing Tailwind saga is back in the news nearly two years after it ruined the network’s launch of its “Newsstand” magazine show. The original fallout included a retraction, apologies, the firing of producers April Oliver and Jack Smith, the resignation of executive producer Pamela Hill and the disappearance of the story’s anchor, Peter Arnett, whose contract eventually wasn’t renewed.

This May, the network settled a lawsuit filed by Oliver, after which Smith filed his own wrongful termination suit this month. In April, the network settled a suit by retired Gen. John Singlaub, who was named as a source in the story. CNN isn’t commenting on the suits.

All this comes amid news that CNN’s ratings for the second quarter of 2000 have fallen compared to last year while competitors MSNBC and Fox News are up some (though CNN still attracts more viewers than both combined).

What wasn’t reported following Tailwind — which contended the U.S. military gassed American defectors in Laos in 1970 — was CNN’s quick creation of a new in-house office of standards and practices for vetting stories and checking facts, particularly for the long-form news shows and investigative pieces.

All together, this 20th anniversary summer has been no damn fun for Ted’s gang on Marietta Street.

But AOL is coming to the rescue. Quick, name the No. 1 online site for news. CNN.com? Nope. MSNBC.com? No. FoxNews.com? Wrong. It’s America Online, which in March, according to the Internet tracking service Media Metrix, attracted 14.5 million unique viewers to its news offerings. That’s good news for CNN.com, which is anticipating the eventual sale of Time Warner to AOL this year pending regulatory approval.

According to CNN Interactive President Scott Woelfel, more than 100 new jobs will be added this year in anticipation of the CNN-AOL relationship. Linkage and cross-promotions will be paramount to CNN.com’s online battle with MSNBC.com. “That’s really been the key to their success,” says Woelfel, referring to MSNBC.com promos by TV’s NBC and MSNBC networks and online via part-owner Microsoft’s MSN network. After all, everyone’s basically reporting the same daily news, it’s getting folks to your site that’s the financial point.

According to Media Metrix, MSNBC.com attracted 8.6 million hits in March, while CNN.com managed 4.8 million unique news viewers. CNN notes that MSNBC.com offers sports and business, which CNN parcels out to dedicated websites CNNSI.com and CNNfn.com, which brought together comes close to MSNBC.com’s numbers, says Woelfel.

Well, expect plenty of AOL links to these and every CNN site, as network sources agree that beating MSNBC.com is a major goal in this on-air/online-conglomerate-vs.-conglomerate future.






Activism
Issues
The Blotter
COVID Updates
Latest News
Current Issue