They Said It Would Never Happen: CNN Turns 10

Before there were controversial reenactments of news stories, before there were stand-up prime-time news shows and long before comedians moonlighted as weather reporters and home video clips became commonplace on national newscasts, somebody came up with a really bizarre idea for TV news.

A nonstop newscast. Seven days a week, 24 hours a day. To be broadcast around the world.

When media magnate Ted Turner announced his ambitious Cable News Network 10 years ago, he was roundly laughed at. Not surprising, considering the announcement came from a man whose TBS “superstation” in Atlanta used to fulfill its federal broadcasting requirements with a pie-throwing anchorman who once invited a German shepherd to co-anchor his newscast.

What’s more, the pending cable TV explosion had barely started to crackle. Still, Turner forged ahead, his sights set on unsettling the Big Three networks, which he compared to dinosaurs. “You know why they’re not here anymore?” he said in 1980. “Because the mammals ate their eggs. I’m a mammal.”

CNN’s beginnings were less than auspicious. During the Republican National Convention in Detroit a decade ago, CNN’s slipshod broadcasting booth was located in the rafters above the band, so that every time the band played “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” anchor Bernard Shaw was drowned out.

In time, however, Turner would sue the Reagan Administration and the three networks for CNN to be included in the White House press pool. The network’s paltry audience of 1.7 million U.S. households would swell to more than 50 million. Its broadcasts would reach--indeed span--the globe to about 90 countries. And CNN’s continuous live coverage of breaking news events would become a reliable trademark that no broadcast station could match.

The Times asked some CNN veterans to briefly reminisce about their early experiences.

Ted Turner, president, CNN: “I came up with the idea for CNN back in 1975, when TBS first went up on satellite. Home Box Office was already in existence. Since they had the new movies and we had the old movies and non-network sports on TBS, I thought the next channel that would be convenient would be an all-news channel. That’s where I got the idea. Even though I did not have the money and did not know anything much about the news business, I just figured the concept was good enough to go ahead and give it a shot.

“The networks pooh-poohed us a little bit at first. But I really cannot say that I minded in retrospect.”

Bernard Shaw, Washington anchor: “In 1980, I was dissatisfied with the new contract I was being offered at ABC as senior Capitol Hill correspondent. I was tired of the network pool I had been swimming in. (ABC News president) Roone Arledge spent an hour in his office warning me it would be very bad for my career to go do something called CNN. When I left, most people weren’t even trying to conceal their derision, their snickers. My attitude when I walked into CNN was the same attitude I had at Marine Corps boot camp the first day. ‘I’m here. Let’s get on with it.’

“The moment I knew we were really onto something was when we carried Reagan’s speech before a labor group at the Washington Hilton Hotel. During a break, we were monitoring the Secret Service radios. Suddenly someone said, ‘They’re shooting at the President.’ We turned up the audio and you could hear agents running, screaming and cursing. I said, ‘Let’s get on the air,’ and we didn’t get off until 10 hours later. We stayed with the story, no commercials. Our coverage of the assassination attempt convinced me that we were onto something. I wasn’t making as much money as Dan (Rather), Peter (Jennings) or Tom (Brokaw)--I still don’t--but I knew I was in the right place.”

Mary Alice Williams, anchorwoman, NBC’s “Sunday Today” (Williams left for NBC last year after nine years as a CNN anchorwoman): “In the industry, CNN was a quiet revolution. But the fact is there was nothing quiet about it. On June 1, 1980, we went on the air at 6 p.m., Eastern time. Our lead story was live. Vernon Jordan had been shot, and we showed President Carter walking out of the hospital where Jordan was staying. At 6:30 p.m., Eastern time, the broadcast networks went on with their evening newscasts, and their lead story was Carter walking out of the hospital, and the footage said ‘Courtesy of CNN’ in the corner. That was our first night on the air.

“It never occurred to us that we couldn’t make this thing happen. In January of 1981, when we welcomed the hostages back at West Point, we set up cameras all along the bus route where they were arriving. But we didn’t have a switcher to cut between cameras. I was standing on top of this building in the freezing cold with an engineer, and the buses were coming. I said, ‘How do we do this? We have to switch between cameras!’ He said, ‘No problem,’ and he pulled some wires out of this box and touched them together, and the pictures switched. Nobody told me or him that it wouldn’t work.

“That was our mentality. The networks had a giant generator truck, and we were manipulating wires by hand. We had one small minicam van, and we had to use a topographical map and drive to the highest point of land in the area just so we could get our broadcast out. I knew then that our can-do attitude could overcome anything.”

Sandy Kenyon, senior entertainment correspondent: “When I first walked into the Washington bureau, it was like going backstage at a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland MGM musical. They were still building the bureau about three weeks before air time. George Watson, a giant in journalism, was testing a microphone. Producers were literally hammering the sign of the bureau into place. And Daniel Schorr was walking around saying, ‘This is just what CBS was like after World War II.’ As a young journalist, I felt like this big ship was leaving, and I knew I had to be on it or get left behind.”