The three cable news channels are all owned by media conglomerates, and all have corporate siblings heavily involved in other media sectors, from broadcast networks and local TV stations (all three), to newspapers (News Corp.), to magazines (Time Warner) and movie studios (all three). Yet each plays a very different role inside its corporate structure.

Time Warner Company & CNN

The Time Warner Company is CNN’s umbrella corporation.1 [1] It classifies its business operations into five reportable segments: AOL, Cable, Filmed Entertainment, Publishing, and Networks. Within the networks, there are three main groups — the Warner Bros. television network (WB), Home Box Office (HBO), and Turner Broadcasting System Inc. (Turner Networks). The CNN brand is in the last group, Turner Networks. CNN has a number of siblings or subsidiaries that profit from the CNN brand built by the news channel.2 [2]

Over the years, some critics have argued that the brand identity is losing value, and commented on what one described as “CNN’s endless struggle to come up with a single, durable style of presenting the news.”3 [3] In 2005, recognizing that significant changes were necessary to retain viewers and win over new ones in the face of stiff competition, CNN seemed to be trying to re-establish the brand. The year saw changes in management, programming and on-air talent.

In management, Jim Walton, head of the CNN news group since 2003, brought in Jonathan Klein, a former CBS executive and then head of the Internet news venture FeedRoom Inc., to take over as CEO of CNN in December 2004. Among his changes, Klein introduced new shows, focused on on-air talent and made changes to programming (see Cable TV Newsroom Investment [4]). It is too soon to evaluate how much headway has been made, but many critics saw Klein’s actions in 2005 as confusing and were not very optimistic about 2006. As one critic put it, “CNN keeps changing people, programs and news executives these days in moves that confuse its audience and aren’t making much headway in helping the network catch up with the Fox News Channel.”4 [5]