CNN struggles to find its footing

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for CNN.

Ratings were released showing the all-news network had lost more than half of its audience from the wartime high of a year ago. It ousted the executive producer of two key shows -- leaving nearly all of its prime-time programs without a top executive. And it suffered reporting miscues on several high-profile stories.

A year after the Iraq war, which could have been a turnaround point for CNN, the network still finds itself in rebuilding mode. Coming on the heels of other rebuilding years, with completely different strategies for success, insiders say they feel as though the network may never get its groove back.

In March of last year, under then-new leader Jim Walton, CNN decided to dump glitz and gimmicks and settled on a strategy that emphasized its news roots, to differentiate itself from the opinion-driven talk that had propelled Fox News Channel to dominance. But the network couldn’t convince the viewers that flocked to it for war news to stick around.

New prime-time programs weren’t put into place until months after the war was over, when many viewers had left. A new general manager for CNN’s U.S. channel, Princell Hair, was hired in October and took several months to put his own reorganization into place.

As that plan has recently been implemented, a number of veteran correspondents and producers have left, or been reassigned, new faces have come in, and Internet message boards are buzzing with talk of demoralization among many who remain. Even ABC News’ daily political e-mail, the Note, took a shot at CNN, noting that at the March 24 Washington D.C. Radio-Television Correspondents Assn. dinner, CNN staffers weren’t talking about how great their big party was but “wondering whether, if their company spent a quarter of that money on, say, keeping excellent correspondents, Mike Boettcher would still be breaking stories.”

Stories about the possible capture of a senior Al Qaeda official, the role the White House might have played in David Letterman’s yawning-boy video, and the coverage of college student Audrey Seiler’s brief disappearance last week all cast the network’s reporting in an unfavorable light. (In fairness, all of the cable news channels mishandled Seiler’s “was she or wasn’t she kidnapped” story.)

CNN said its top executives wouldn’t comment on the changes or the ratings. But spokeswoman Christa Robinson pointed to a number of positive signs that have led network executives to believe they are on the right track, noting, “In just the last few months, we’ve broken more news, won more journalism awards and hired more terrific new talent than any of our cable competitors.” All of CNN’s new shows have gained audiences since they launched, she said, and CNN ratings for the recent string of presidential primary nights have surged an average 43%, significantly narrowing the gap with Fox on those nights.

Those election-night gains weren’t enough to offset other first-quarter declines. Compared to the first three months of 2003, when the country was in a buildup to war, CNN is off 52% in its total-day audience, to an average of 458,000 viewers, and 48% in prime time, to an average of 806,000. By comparison, Fox is off 36% in both total-day and prime time but still draws an average 824,000 in total-day audience and 1.39 million in prime time. Third-place MSNBC averaged 234,000 in total-day audience, off 49%, and 333,000 in prime time, off 50%.

Just days into the war, Walton took one of his first stands when he told Connie Chung, who before the war had been hosting a prime-time hour that some insiders found too tabloid-y for the network’s new demeanor, that her program wouldn’t be coming back. She was offered a weekend slot but instead chose to leave the network, which had to buy out her contract.

Ripples from that move are still being felt. To replace Chung, CNN tapped popular morning host Paula Zahn. But getting an executive producer and putting a show together took longer than expected, and Zahn’s show and a companion program hosted by Anderson Cooper didn’t officially launch until September.

Cooper’s March ratings were the highest they have been, drawing an average 497,000 viewers per night, and up 17% since the show’s launch. But Zahn’s show, which peaked in December, is now up a mere 5% from its official launch, to 605,000 viewers per night, hardly the kind of prime-time growth the network had hoped to see. Robinson said “both programs are attracting new viewers and we expect the audiences to continue to grow.”

To boost Zahn’s show, executive producer Jim Miller recently made the rounds of Hollywood, looking for contributors to give it more of an ensemble feel. But on March 23 he resigned, under pressure, for reasons CNN declined to disclose. Robinson said it was a “mutually amicable departure that had nothing to do with the performance of the shows.”

The departure left every CNN prime-time show except for “Larry King Live” rudderless , although CNN is expected to hire Sharon van Zwieten, a former CNN producer and ABC News producer, to head up “News- Night With Aaron Brown,” whose producer was transferred to be the Washington bureau chief.

In January, Hair put in place the broadest changes of his tenure, a sweeping reorganization of bureaus and personnel. The changes are meant to free up correspondents so they can spend more time reporting and less time doing live reports.

Many of those correspondents are new. In the last three months, CNN has gone through a period of staff turnover. Veteran correspondents such as Jeff Flock, Art Harris and Tom Mintier have left, as did and Martin Savidge, who headed to NBC.

In turn, CNN has hired eight new correspondents, many of them from local TV stations. Alina Cho from ABC, Joe Johns from NBC and Ed Henry, from Washington’s Roll Call magazine, have also joined. “What we’ve experienced is a normal ebb and flow for any news organization,” Robinson said.