Outfoxing Fox -- take 6

Jonathan KLEIN’S vast new office is situated in a wedge-like southern wing of the new Time-Warner Center. The floors for CNN jut into midtown Manhattan like the prow of the infotainment industry’s proudest ship, and Klein speaks eagerly about what he sees ahead. Antagonists are out there, but he greets them as friends.

There are the bloggers, who have been rattling sabers against network decision-makers such as CBS’ outgoing anchor Dan Rather and CNN’s deposed news executive Eason Jordan. “Y’know, it’s something we ought to embrace and investigate and shine a light on and wrap our arms around and welcome,” says Klein, of the blogosphere. He’s re-caffeinating in the midmorning, glancing at his computer screen and caller-ID panel as he jots notes, still talking. “Cuz it ain’t going away. It’s all part of this wave of democratization ... that began really with CNN.”

Another rival force, Fox News, has usurped the lead in cable-news ratings and now nearly triples CNN’s average prime-time viewership, but Klein offers praise. “They’re excellent television producers,” he says. “They are interesting. They’re exciting. You wanna watch ‘em, y’know? And we are in the process of getting more interesting and exciting and intelligent ourselves.”

Klein, president of CNN/U.S., is the latest of a half-dozen executives in the last five years who have unfurled plans to fight the Fox News phenomenon. His strategy plays to the network’s legacy of exhaustive coverage, and he’s made it clear he wants to shake things up.

But the odds are daunting, and for those who know the news business, his we-can-win approach can seem foolhardy. CNN’s audience is slipping away to other news sources and diversions on cable. And the network, worried about its sagging ratings, is not only promoting its anchors and website in offbeat commercials, it’s trying to drive up revenue by allowing advertisers to sell vodka during its programs. Even longtime fans say CNN has lost its way.

Four months into his job, Klein is trying to reenergize CNN’s U.S. operations in time for this summer’s anniversary hoopla, when Ted Turner’s brainchild turns 25. Another tough task is to remedy the network’s head-splitting identity problem. CNN has expanded its global news-gathering ability, yet it has struggled to develop on-air personalities and showcases.

Klein is an apt embodiment of the network at this moment. The Bronx-born news junkie is a data digger in the traditional sense, with solid early-career achievements at CBS News. His avowed emphasis on reporting especially pleases the CNN veterans based in the Atlanta headquarters, who identify with the network’s glory days and have watched talent, resources and now management move to New York.

But he is also a voluble salesman with sharp edges, the disrupter of a corporate culture known for its earnestness and orthodoxy. The exuberant new boss is eager to get more staid broadcasters to loosen up and show some passion for this big opportunity, like he does. At the very least, he wants on-air talent to connect to stories, not just deliver them.

If the 46-year-old Klein can rescue the media empire from its sad slump, it’ll be through some harnessing of this media moment, when viewers get the gist of events through online browsing or the muted motion of ubiquitous TV screens. Before CNN, Klein founded and ran an Internet broadband company that delivered 1 million video bites per day. He knows which sensational scoops get the most hits, and he knows also how to package stories as he did on CBS magazine shows such as “60 Minutes” and “48 Hours.”

“For too long, CNN was a place where, come prime time, we kept on doing the same thing we’ve been doing all day. Keep giving you the headlines. And that was fine when we were the only game in town,” he says. “Now there’s kind of another outlet for people to get their headlines on demand, and it’s no longer cable news. It’s the Internet.”

CNN.com averages 7 million visitors a day, and only a fraction of them tune in for the prime-time offerings, even when news breaks. On a ho-hum news night, CNN’s numbers plummet, while Fox holds steady or even grows.

“Many mainstream news organizations forget there is an audience,” he says, gesticulating around his office, with its glorious view of Central Park. “Look at us! You’re in a big, fancy building and, y’know, you meet famous people and you eat good meals,” he says. “Even those reporters who get out there and roll up their sleeves and report often get treated special.... And you can forget that you’ve got actual customers.... Any business that forgets about its customers is in big trouble.”

Just off Klein’s office, a conference room is laced with cables that connect tabletop phones and cameras with producers in Atlanta, Washington and bureaus nationwide. Klein takes his seat at the head of the table, facing a screen with grainy video-cam views of similar conference rooms.

When he took this job, someone suggested he attend these meetings regularly, something his predecessors rarely if ever did. Klein viewed the prospect of long, mundane sessions with dread. While some producers were wary of yet another new boss with new priorities, they say they like what they’re hearing from Klein and that the meetings are surprisingly lively and rah-rah.

This day, he keeps his comments off the record, but his directives emphasize the network’s hard-news mission. He has put out word that he wants to hire producers who know how to dig, dissect and dress up the day’s events, to push the coverage “beyond the headlines.”

Every story gets a suggestion. A dispatch on California weather should have something on the curious geology of mudslides. With Harvard President Lawrence Summers stirring a debate about gender-based aptitude, there is a call for a sense of the current research on women in the sciences. A report on traces of rocket fuel in breast milk should include guidance for any viewer wanting to test her own. And the Michael Jackson trial, mired in the tedium of jury selection, might best be covered with a camera-and-sound team, Klein says, rather than a whole reporting crew.

Audiences, he explains later, should expect more layers to a CNN story to lure them in and make them stay tuned. As an example, he cites the recent Texas murder of a pregnant mom, which could become another grim Laci Peterson episode of sensationalism. One CNN team picked up information that homicide is the No. 1 cause of death for pregnant women in America. Klein touted reporter Rudi Bakhtiar’s story throughout the next day and his decision to give the Headline News personality a new gig on Anderson Cooper’s show.

Klein scoffs at the ossified formalism of many on-air styles. “So much of traditional journalism imposes artificial ways of communicating -- like the reporter doing his stand-up, with his microphone, frozen solid -- which have arisen over the years and [are] now embedded in cement,” he says. “So I’m working hard to get the organization as a whole to loosen up about its definition about what news is.”

The Alpha males make nice

Anderson Cooper’s set is the most impressive in the new CNN suite, akin to a Hollywood soundstage for the news business. Cooper, 37, takes his place each night amid modish, angular furniture surrounded by faux brick walls. The Yale alumnus and son of Gloria Vanderbilt is gracious but careful in discussing his new boss.

“He has a vision and he has the humility to know that not all his ideas are going to work, but I’ll take anyone with ideas any day. I’ll support anyone who has a strong vision, even if it doesn’t work.”

Klein takes part in the volley of compliments, deeming Cooper the on-air talent with the most dynamism. Cooper displays a fascination for the human scale and an authenticity Klein wants to see more of and notes his tsunami coverage, which dwelled on the tragedy at the sensory level.

“It’s OK to be yourself and to show that you’re having fun or that you really care or that you’re really angry or that you’re really curious. You don’t have to be just a solid block of ice in front of the camera,” Klein says.

Cooper admits that news anchors had once seemed the worthy butt of jokes; he cites the stentorian Kent Brockman of “The Simpsons” and many needlers on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” as apt satire. “I don’t want to fall into the trap of becoming what I used to make fun of,” he says. “It’s interesting, because the whole process is geared toward that.”

Even at an all-news network, three hours are crucial for showcasing the best talent -- and making the most money for the network. In prime time, viewers surf en masse, and a news channel must stand out among the 388 others on the cable dial, 49 of which cropped up in the last year alone.

Klein is focused most on the prime-time lineup, according to some talent who have heard him say their shows are not in need of immediate fixes. “Crossfire” pundit Tucker Carlson asked to move his preppy brand of conservative provocation into prime-time, but Klein in December pushed Carlson out the door, with a parting shot. He said he agreed with Stewart’s remarks about “Crossfire’s” low worth.

Within the network, people find it curious that Klein would “hang Tucker out to dry,” in the words of one producer. Is he trying to demean on-air talent or undermine the new deal with MSNBC that Carlson has since finalized, a talk show that will face CNN’s lineup?

Within that lineup is Larry King, CNN’s highest-rated show. Klein issues breathless praise and says it needs no tweaks or changes. “Believe me, if you were me, if you were sitting in this chair, the least of your worries would be what to do with Larry King,” he says.

But there can be disconnects. Klein hails the septuagenarian interview host as “the tent-pole” of CNN in the ratings game. And yet new Nielsen data shows that, as of February, “Larry King Live” had lost more than a fifth of its viewers compared with the same period a year ago. Stewart’s “Daily Show,” meanwhile, drew a third more viewers in what CNN argues is a sleepy time for politics.

Klein says he doesn’t like the head-butting debate of shows like “Crossfire” and yet he is a fan of Lou Dobbs, a dogmatic voice on trade and immigration, as well as Nancy Grace, the acerbic Court TV/Headline News host. Klein implies that there’s a distinction between newscasts and talk shows, although viewers might not see the difference.

Is King a journalist, and for that matter, would Klein use that term for Grace, who often seems an evidence-skewing witness for the prosecution?

“I define a journalist as someone who asks questions, finds out answers and communicates them to an audience. Larry King has proven that he’s among the best in the world at doing that. We’ll find out if Nancy is up to the same level,” he replies. “She certainly asks great questions and demands answers. So I think she meets the bar of a Sam Donaldson. How is she any different?”

CNN is promoting Grace’s new prime-time show -- and a new one-hour entertainment program -- on CNN Headline News, its smaller sister channel. It’s all part of the “synergistic” energy Klein and his boss, Jim Walton, president of CNN News, say they want to bring to the network.

Different approaches

The network had long distanced itself from celebrity-driven artifice, from tying its fortunes to any on-air figurehead. “When I used to work at CNN, they always said the news was the star,” says Brad Adgate, a former sales researcher at CNN who researches its relative strengths for Horizon Media. “Now Fox News will draw viewers on a slow news night, whereas CNN runs a little bit of the risk of going in-depth or in detail that is really not that important to viewers.”

Another advertising analyst, Shari-Anne Brill of Carat USA, appreciates the renewed CNN mission but mostly as a consumer. “I think there’s an appetite for it,” she says. “As a citizen, I have to go out and do reading on my own.”

But Brill, who advises advertisers who are weighing a big buy at a revamped CNN, says the audiences will have to commit before the sponsors will. At the moment, the network is having trouble just holding onto viewers. Fox News posted gains in February, when compared with the same period last year, particularly in prime time.

Klein, asked about the CNN slide, says he’s focusing on the “quality battle.” “Look, running a TV network is not like cooking a turkey, where you stick the thermometer in at a certain point and judge the temperature at a moment in time. This is all about trends. It’s all about building a foundation of quality reporting.”

Though Fox has more average viewers at any given moment, CNN finds hope in small victories. On the Sunday when Johnny Carson’s death was announced, CNN beat Fox in prime time. The network also has boasted that company profits increased 35% over last year, an indication that its brand is doing well with several networks and services growing.

On average, executives say, a larger number of viewers tune in to its network than Fox during a month. That “reach advantage,” they say, translates into higher advertising rates when combined with CNN’s affluent viewership and ability to sell ads in packages over television, the Web and other platforms. Still, viewers who watch Fox log more minutes.

The network is running ads showcasing its on-air talent while promoting its website. In one of the oddball spots, international correspondent Christiane Amanpour tries to explain the difference between Iran and Iraq -- and the correct pronunciation of each -- to a fuzzy-minded viewer. The ad campaign actually seems to say something about the whole brand, as if CNN was publicly crying, “What do you want from us?” while touting the network’s expertise.

(In another move to compete with specialty channels, CNN announced that it will allow liquor ads, which is a first for a national cable news network but follows other cable networks, like E! and VH1.)

As much as Klein hopes the network is doing things differently, Cooper leads his show that night with Michael Jackson: A 12-person jury is impaneled with no African Americans. Later in the hour, Cooper attempts one geology-of-mudslides piece, assisted by Bill Nye the Science Guy, who turns a ketchup bottle upside down to illustrate a point about gravity and the stability of solids.

Also that evening, Dobbs moderates a gender-aptitude discussion with immoderate suggestions that Harvard President Summers is the victim of critics who are “passionate,” “emotional” and “so sensitive.” Then in an on-air exchange with Lisa Randall, a Harvard physics professor and Summers critic, Dobbs asks a leading question and defends Summers for his “discourse that, it seems to me, at least, to be scientifically based because there is no adequate science on it.”

This is the kind of debate Klein calls “great television.” “Wait a second. Scientifically based because there’s no adequate science?” says Randall, a small voice rising up with facts and logic against a big voice with fame and shtick. “I think we have a little bit of a problem there.”

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Prime problems

CNN viewership continues to fall while Fox’s audience grows, particularly in prime time.

Average daily viewership (in millions)

*--* Total Viewers age viewers 25-54* Feb. ’04 Feb. ’05 Change Feb. ’04 Feb. ’05 Change CNN 4.6 3.8 -16% 1.5 1.3 -18% Fox News 7.9 8.2 4% 2.7 2.7 1% MSNBC 2.3 2.0 -15% 1.0 0.8 -16% Headline 1.9 2.1 9% 0.8 0.9 4% News

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*Viewers age 25-54 are the most important to cable news networks. Their viewership is used to determine ad rates.

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Total prime-time** viewership (Monday to Friday, in millions)

*--* 7 to 8 p.m. Feb. ’04 Feb. ’05 Change% CNN ‘Anderson Cooper 360’ 0.47 0.49 3% Fox News ‘The Fox Report With 1.34 1.37 3% Shepard Smith’ MSNBC ‘Hardball With Chris 0.44 0.38 -14% Matthews’ 8 to 9 p.m. Feb. ’04 Feb. ’05 Change% CNN ‘Paula Zahn Now’ 0.61 0.52 -15% Fox News ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ 2.24 2.39 7% MSNBC ‘Countdown with Keith 0.31 0.29 -6% Olbermann’ 9 to 10 p.m. Feb. ’04 Feb. ’05 Change% CNN ‘Larry King Live’ 1.3 1.02 -22% Fox News ‘Hannity & Colmes’ 1.52 1.62 7% MSNBC ‘MSNBC Investigates-MSNBC 0.25 0.29 16% Reports’*** 10 to 11 p.m. Feb. ’04 Feb. ’05 Change% CNN ‘NewsNight with Aaron 0.69 0.55 -20% Brown’ Fox News ‘On the Record With Greta 1.05 1.3 24% Van Susteren’ MSNBC ‘Scarborough Country’ 0.35 0.29 -16%

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** Eastern Standard Time. Programs are seen from 4 to 8 p.m. Pacific Time and most are aired again in prime time.

*** Reflects a programming change.

All percentages have been rounded.

Sources: Nielsen Media Research