TELEVISION : If CNN Can’t Eat the World, Who Can? : The all-news channel continues down the path toward a truly international operation, even it it means being less American

In corners of the football field-sized CNN newsroom here is an enterprise that executives call the future of the all-news channel.

In one area, anchorwoman Bobbie Battista is standing by to introduce U.S. Senate hearings. In another, producers in a swirl of phone banks and monitors are looking at footage from Turkey, Mexico, South Africa, Bosnia and other countries to decide what to broadcast. A group of writers downstairs is writing newscasts in Spanish for South America, while another group elsewhere is selecting stories for a business show aimed at stockbrokers in Asia.

Welcome to CNN International. It originates in the same headquarters as CNN and uses some of the same personnel, news footage and programming--but it is not the same satellite network that U.S. viewers have grown accustomed to seeing during the past 13 years. Indeed, CNN I, as it’s known at the company, was originally criticized as “too American” and quietly has been building its own distinctive image, with more foreign news and a different worldview from CNN. It has its own writers, is hiring its own anchors and is producing newscasts that increasingly are tailored to specific international audiences.

“Our goal is to be a global news network in English, serving the world,” declares CNN President Tom Johnson (a former publisher of The Times). “We want to get CNN I into as many homes as possible around the world. CNN I is the highest priority of Turner (Broadcasting).” Ambitious as that sounds, it is not going uncontested. World Service Television, from the British Broadcasting Corp., is challenging CNN International in the race to provide worldwide news coverage.

When CNN International was launched in 1985, it was essentially a repackaged version of CNN’s Headline News channel aimed at business travelers and beamed by satellite to hotels in 20 countries. “Today,” Johnson says, “CNN I is a separate network, and we are providing news programs designed for the prime-time news hours of Europe, Asia and South America.” The leader in the global distribution of television news, CNN I reaches 69 million households in 142 countries, from Tahiti to Russia, from Denmark to the Sudan.

Reasons both journalistic and financial are fueling the channel’s evolution.

CNN founder Ted Turner was an early internationalist in TV news, building bureaus around the world and, several years ago, even banning the use of the word foreign (ethnocentric, he thought) on the CNN domestic channel. Viewer response from other countries encouraged taking the broader view. “Audience reaction to CNN I and our own research shows that viewers want more content about their part of the world,” Johnson says. “They want a significant amount of international news, without dropping the important stories from the U.S.”

Accordingly, the ratio of U.S. to foreign news, about 70-30 when CNN I started, will be about 30-70 by the end of the year, Johnson hopes. CNN correspondents frequently do different versions of their stories for CNN I, and the network also draws footage from a slew of foreign TV networks. In addition, CNN I has increased the coverage that appears only on the international network: In recent weeks, for example, it did hourlong specials on politics in South Africa and on the royal wedding in Japan. The network also provided live coverage of a recent news conference by Chinese leader Li Peng, his first in two years.

Even more important as an impetus to CNN I’s changes are the possibilities for new revenue. With expansion in the United States relatively limited, CNN is not alone in realizing that going international means reaching a still-untapped market of huge proportions.

There are more than 1 billion TV sets worldwide--a 50% increase in the last five years--and the number is expected to grow by 5% each year. Countries that heretofore had little or no TV are suddenly accessible by satellite, and U.S. program services such as HBO and MTV are among those racing to fill the anticipated demand for programming.

“There are going to be 10 global TV networks,” predicts Ed Atorino, media analyst for the Dillon, Read investment firm in New York. “The ones that will succeed will have internationally known brand names.”

The financial potential of global TV--from both subscription fees and advertisers--is enormous. According to Steve Winram, research director for London-based Zenith Media, an international media-buying subsidiary of the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency, global TV advertising totaled $217 billion last year and is expected to grow to $259 billion by 1995.

Whereas U.S. television advertising revenues are expected to increase by a relatively small percentage (from $31 billion last year to $35 billion in 1995), those in Europe are expected to grow at a faster clip during the same period (from $19 billion to $27 billion) and in Asia are projected to grow from $18 billion to $22 billion.

CNN does not disclose its revenues but, according to an industry source, revenues from CNN International have grown nearly tenfold in the past three years--from $14 million in 1990 to estimates in excess of $100 million this year.

Spurred by both the success and influence of CNN I, the BBC launched its World Service Television two years ago. The service, produced in London from the reporting of BBC correspondents around the world, is a for-profit subsidiary of the publicly financed BBC. The BBC is known around the world for its 60-year-old radio service, which, before CNN, frequently was the only source of uncensored news for citizens in countries behind the lines during World War II or behind the Iron Curtain before the fall of the Soviet Union.

It is in Asia, home to two-thirds of the world’s population, that the BBC is mounting its most powerful challenge to CNN I. CNN I reaches 6 million households in Asia. Thanks to placement on AsiaSat, the strongest communications satellite in the region, World Service Television reaches 11 million households across Asia, including 3.3 million in India, 2 million in Taiwan and nearly 5 million in China, where satellite dishes are not yet even legal, although they are easily obtainable.

“We are targeting the top 5% of the Asian market,” said Arnold Tucker, executive vice president at Star TV, the Hong Kong-based TV venture that launched BBC World Service (along with four other networks, including MTV Asia) on AsiaSat two years ago. “Asia has an emerging middle class of English speakers with a fair degree of disposable income and an interest in international lifestyle choices.”

Both CNN I and the BBC are beefing up their presence in Asia. Both networks produce daily programs about Asian business; later this month, World Service will begin airing a business program from New Delhi that will be the first World Service program from Asia not produced by the BBC (an independent production company in India is creating it).

CNN, meanwhile, has added bureaus in New Delhi and Bangkok, and CNN President Johnson says the network plans to build an Asian production facility, where there will be locally produced and locally anchored newscasts. (CNN I already has a second production center, in London, where a daily business program for the European continent originates.)

Analysts say the BBC has an additional advantage in several Asian countries because of the BBC Radio tradition and the cultural links between Britain and its former colonies. In India, for example, the BBC is a highly regarded institution, and its coverage of religious riots there last year was said to have had considerable effect on public opinion.

World Service Television reaches viewers in about 110 countries now and hopes to be available on every continent by the end of this year. BBC officials estimate that it is available to 45 million households. That figure, however, includes subscribers in Canada, where World Service Television is not a separate channel but has its reports carried on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

In the BBC’s move into global TV, an Old World-New World rivalry is fueling the competition.

BBC executives maintain that their service has less of a British cultural bias than what they consider CNN’s American cultural bias. “We’re not Londoncentric or Eurocentric,” said Jonathan Crane, head of the BBC in New York. “Our newscasts, from BBC correspondents around the world, reflect the news of the day from around the world, without any regard for a domestic news agenda of what’s important in England.”

In fact, you’d think the Queen of England had been asked to dance with Willie Nelson the way the head of the BBC service responded to a question about the differences between the BBC’s international TV network and that of the arriviste CNN.

“CNN is very good at instant reportage. I like to think of what we do as journalism--journalism being more analytical than instant reportage,” said Christopher Irwin, chief executive of World Service Television.

“The BBC is very good at broadcasting for an international audience, with an international agenda,” he said. “CNN’s preoccupation is America. If you want an American perspective on the news, CNN is a marvelous perspective on that.”

In Atlanta, CNN staffers have seen an interview on Japanese TV in which Irwin said that one BBC subscriber there said she knew the news was true when she saw it on the BBC (as opposed, the implication was, to CNN). Privately, some of them acknowledge being offended by the remarks, but Turner has instructed them not to trash the competition.

“I’ve got a lot of respect for the traditions of the BBC,” Eason Jordan, the 32-year-old international news editor of CNN, said sincerely. “They’ve got strengths and we’ve got strengths. We’re more into live event coverage; the BBC traditionally has been staid in their presentation and proud of that. But it’s no secret that--particularly during the Gulf War--CNN struck a nerve within the BBC because they had always seen themselves as the global player in news.

“They’re determined now to gain global distribution for their TV network, and they’re trying to say they’re better than we are. But CNN already is a global news network. And we’re going to fight to maintain what we figure to be our dominant position--not with any grudges, just by being the best network we can be.”

CNN executives readily acknowledge, however, that being the best means being less American.

“When you ask whether there’s an American bias to what we do, I think it’s valid to say that there is too much American content to what we do, and too many of us are Americans,” Johnson said. “We will not be a truly global network until we have a truly global staff. This means not only going into joint ventures with international partners but also building more production centers in other countries and hiring more non-Americans here.”

In addition to hiring more nationals as correspondents abroad, CNN I recently has hired a number of anchors from other countries, including Yemen-born Riz Kahn, German Bettina Luscher and Bulgarian Ralitsa Vassileva, who are now based in Atlanta.

It is the American-born writers who are performing what may be the most interesting cultural leap on CNN I: trying to overcome their natural biases to write like citizens of some nonaligned world capital. “The challenge is to try to rise above your time zone, your hemisphere and even your culture,” said Ted Iliff, a producer and editor for CNN I.

Iliff ticked off some examples of what he has told CNN I writers to watch out for. “No baseball metaphors like ‘Clinton struck out with his jobs package’--the rest of the world may not play baseball--and it’s U.S. President Bill Clinton, like British Prime Minister John Major. If we have a story about troops in Tibet walking around a Buddhist temple counterclockwise, we note that as a sign of disrespect. And some Americans get mad at us for things like this, but if Iraq says they shot down U.S. warplanes, and the Pentagon says they didn’t, we give both statements equal credence. We don’t say, ‘Iraq claims ,’ implying we don’t believe them, while ‘the Pentagon says ,’ implying we’re sure the Pentagon is telling the truth.”

Stuart Ewen, a professor of communications at Hunter College in New York, believes CNN I has made a real effort to view the world through international glasses. “When you travel abroad, it’s striking to see the difference in attitude between the newscasts on CNN I and CNN,” he said. “I watched their coverage of the investigation into the Waco, siege during a recent trip to the Netherlands, and I was surprised to see that the underlying attitude in the news copy was to question what the authorities were saying. I think CNN I is more questioning of the U.S. government, the way other countries might be, than CNN is.”

Despite the emphasis on internationalization, CNN I is likely to continue carrying a substantial amount of U.S. news.

“It sounds jingoistic, but American news, along with American movies, is one of our great exports,” said Ed Turner, vice president in charge of news-gathering for CNN. “Love us or hate us, many people around the world are fascinated with American culture.”

Surprisingly few governments have resisted having either CNN I or the BBC World Service, a testament perhaps not only to their appeal but also to the fact that the huge “footprints” of communications satellites today make it virtually impossible for any local government to keep one of the news networks out.

“Traditional barriers to information are falling,” Johnson said. “They’re falling like the Berlin Wall.”

The implications of such access to a worldwide audience are potentially far reaching. CNN I has become the instantaneous channel of global communication, watched by world powers and hitherto unknown warlords alike. How CNN I and the BBC World Service cover and reflect the world can have serious effects.

“We’re witnessing the development of global news networks that are beholden to no particular nation or state,” said Hunter College professor Ewen. “I don’t think we know yet what the cultural implications of that are.”

Executives at both CNN and the BBC say they are mindful of their power, but they point out that it is difficult for Americans to understand the tremendous desire--and salutary effect--in other countries for independent sources of news. “There is an audience out there for news that is not considered propaganda, news that is not tied in some way to government-controlled media,” said CNN’s Johnson. “We’ve seen that in Central Europe and the Soviet Union, and we’re seeing it in many other parts of the world.”

Beyond the continuing rapid growth expected for CNN I and World Service Television, some observers believe that regional networks will be the next wave in global news. In Europe, for example, a group of countries is producing “Euronews,” a “pan-European” network with audio tracks in several different languages. NBC is beaming a Spanish-language news feed to 11 countries in Latin America. The BBC has begun simultaneous translation in Mandarin in Asia and may create a Japanese audio channel when World Service moves into Japan.

“We are seeking local partners who can help us market and program our service in various regions,” said the BBC’s Crane. “From a purely business standpoint, it’s obviously superior to originate in the indigenous language of the region. If you’re broadcasting only in English, you’re not going to reach great numbers of people.”

The BBC recently signed an agreement with the Telemundo network and Reuters to develop a Spanish-language network service in various regions. CNN is a partner in n-tv, a German-language TV network, and the network is exploring possible partnerships in French and other languages.

Another potential BBC partner is ABC, which made a deal with the British network in March to share technical costs and news footage in foreign news gathering. The arrangement could also lead to jointly produced programming, such as an international newsmagazine--perhaps a union of the BBC’s “Panorama” and ABC’s “PrimeTime Live”--that might air in both countries.

Industry observers speculate that ABC has a hidden agenda in the deal: taking on CNN. Network sources say that ABC periodically has studied the idea of competing with the cable network and that Roone Arledge, the president of ABC News, is not pleased by CNN’s brand-name dominance of the TV news marketplace abroad.

In an interview, Arledge said that ABC did not make the BBC deal to compete with CNN, but he did leave the door ajar. “The BBC has their own plans for the BBC World Service, and while our alliance with them could lead anywhere, the most fundamental thing we were after was to strengthen our foreign news coverage,” he said.

The news chief indicated that ABC might pursue partnerships in regional networks abroad: “We’ve always felt that a world broadcasting service should be in the language of the individualized countries, localized to that country. What the BBC is doing (with World Service Television) is a little bit different from how we would proceed.”

Nonetheless, CNN’s achievement has not been lost on him. With English speakers to be found around the globe, Arledge noted, “there’s no question there’s a big market for English-language news worldwide. Somewhere in the world, it’s always prime time.”