CNN’s New President Takes Big Steps to Attract Viewers

When Rick Kaplan addressed the troops in Atlanta and Washington after being named president of CNN/USA, he told employees, “If people here hated you before but you do good work, this will be a fresh start. If you’ve been well-liked and you do good work, this is not the time to go to sleep.”

A former ABC News executive who won 35 Emmys as executive producer of “Nightline” and “PrimeTime Live,” the 6-foot-7 Kaplan has been given the mandate to take CNN “to the next level,” as CNN News Group President Tom Johnson puts it--from a 24-hour news service whose ratings spike and fall with breaking news to a network with shows and newscasts that bring in viewers even when there isn’t major news.

“CNN has great people, and an extraordinary news-gathering operation,” Kaplan says, “but the muscle was being flexed mostly in breaking news. If we aim high and go for the serious news viewer throughout the day, I believe we can bring in more viewers.”

Five months after joining CNN, Kaplan is moving on several fronts to improve the network’s programming and ratings. He has limited repetition of news footage among CNN’s newscasts and consolidated CNN’s many anchor teams, letting go anchors Linden Soles and Kathleen Kennedy in the process but adding a nightly Los Angeles-based newscast anchored by Jim Moret.

“We had 24 different anchors on the air,” Kaplan says. “That’s too many people for viewers to connect with.”

Kaplan also has produced more than a dozen special reports, marshaling CNN’s anchors and correspondents for prime-time instant specials--on subjects such as U.S.-China relations and campaign finance--that have nearly doubled the audience for regularly scheduled programming.

And Sunday, CNN plans to announce its first full-scale programming tie-in with its corporate parent, Time Warner Inc. Under the umbrella title of “CNNewsstand,” CNN will air prime-time newsmagazines based on Time, Entertainment Weekly, Fortune, Money, Sports Illustrated and People.

Three of these will be on the air beginning late this spring, Kaplan said, with the goal of adding two others so that “CNNewsstand” eventually would air Monday through Friday.

The first to appear will be one based on Entertainment Weekly and co-anchored by former “PrimeTime Live” correspondent Judd Rose; a combination of Fortune and Money; and the Time magazine show, anchored by CNN veteran Bernard Shaw and newly hired Jeff Greenfield, former ABC News political analyst. The latter program will replace a current CNN program, “Impact,” which has used some resources of Time magazine.

The premiering newsmagazines similarly will use editorial resources of the print publications--perhaps having a round-table of critics from Entertainment Weekly, for example--but otherwise will have separate staffs and separate stories.

All this activity has CNN producers working harder than usual. “People here are working to the max, but they’re enthusiastic,” says one staffer.

“There could have been blood on the floor,” says Eason Jordan, executive in charge of CNN’s international networks, “but Rick has mainly used people here. His standards are very high, but he’s shaking the place up in a positive way.”

Beyond the prime-time magazine shows and the addition of a new weekly documentary series, Kaplan has his sights set on competing with the broadcast networks. He plans to create an hourlong nightly newscast that would begin at 8.

“At a time when the broadcast networks are trying to figure out how to attract more 18- to 49-year-olds to their half-hour nightly newscasts,” he says, “we’re going to do an hour of serious news. I don’t know how many viewers we’ll attract, but we’re going to make it our flagship program.”

Despite his emphasis on hard news, Kaplan knows that dial-stopping news anchors can be the quickest route to higher ratings.

“We’re improving our newscasts, and having a famous anchor would get us sampling for what we’re doing,” he says. In recent months, Kaplan and Johnson, his predecessor as president of CNN, have tried to hire Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and “Good Morning America” anchor Charles Gibson to be the main anchor at CNN. All three turned them down.

With few other big-name anchors readily available, Kaplan is focusing for now on wooing people like the well-regarded Greenfield, offering him opportunities for air time and anchoring that he didn’t have at ABC. CNN recently has had discussions with “Good Morning America” weekend anchor Willow Bay, for example.

Kaplan says he is benefiting from what he calls the “boutiquing” of news at the broadcast networks. “My phone has been ringing off the wall with people from the broadcast networks who are turned on by the idea of working here,” he says.

Many observers believe that the audience for cable-news networks is limited. But Kaplan disagrees: “If we’re doing our job right, we can draw viewers from the broadcast networks as well as from other cable networks.”