This is CNN ... still settling on its voice

When 22-year-old Jim Walton began at CNN as a lowly video journalist in 1981, a year after its inception, he got a lot of blank stares when he mentioned his employer.

“Most people didn’t know what CNN was,” Walton recalled. “‘They said, ‘CNN -- what’s that? A bank?’ ”

The few who did derided the new cable channel as the “Chicken Noodle Network” because of its cash-strapped beginnings and scoffed at founder Ted Turner’s notion that viewers would tune into a 24-hour news network.

CNN celebrates its 25th birthday Wednesday in a decidedly different landscape.

Walton is now president of the CNN News Group, an international news organization that distributes stories in seven languages through 14 cable and satellite television networks, six websites, two radio networks and a syndication service.

But for all of its success in hitting on a new formula for a 24-hour television network, the original CNN channel has struggled to maintain its standing in the very niche it pioneered. A slew of rivals -- most notably Fox News, another upstart channel that was initially disregarded -- has substantially eroded CNN’s viewership.

“It used to do huge ratings, but now it’s facing not just competition from Fox News but regional news networks and the Internet,” said Brad Adgate, a former CNN sales researcher who now directs corporate research at Horizon Media. “The concept of around-the-clock, all-day news that CNN invented in this country -- they’re not the only source for it anymore.”

Meanwhile, two turbulent mergers and a succession of corporate executives created a sense of constant upheaval at the network in the last decade.

More change is in the works as CNN enters its 26th year. Six months into the job, Jonathan Klein, CNN/U.S. president, is undertaking a wide-ranging evaluation of programming.

He has added an hour of international news from CNN’s sister channel to the midday schedule, beginning next week. Klein is also revamping the 3 to 6 p.m. hours, canceling afternoon staples such as “Crossfire” and “Inside Politics” in favor of a three-hour block of news anchored by veteran correspondent Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

The new format won’t begin until midsummer, but Friday is the last day for both “Crossfire” and for “Inside Politics” host Judy Woodruff, who is leaving the cable network as a full-time anchor.

Despite Klein’s assurances that hard news remains CNN’s mainstay, the latest shake-up there has ushered in a familiar sense of wariness among CNN veterans, according to current and former editorial staffers.

“It’s safe to say there is at least a component of CNN employees, particularly those of long duration, who are still wondering what the sense of direction is,” said Charles Bierbauer, dean of the University of South Carolina’s College of Mass Communications and Information Studies, who worked as a CNN correspondent for 20 years.

“The challenge is to get back to the things they have learned to do so well and in some way distance themselves from what Fox and other followers are doing,” Bierbauer said. “They need to stand out as unique again.”

CNN made its mark with its coverage of major news stories in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. In 1986, it was the only network airing live coverage of the Challenger launch when the space shuttle exploded. Five years later, the world tuned in to watch CNN correspondents Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett and John Holliman as they reported live from Baghdad on the first night of the Gulf War. In 1995, the network’s ratings soared when it devoted massive coverage to the O.J. Simpson trial.

Flush with success, the news channel’s executives paid little mind when Fox launched in October 1996. But in 2002, Rupert Murdoch’s network -- with its fresh brand of personality-driven programming -- pulled past CNN in the ratings and has regularly beaten the competition ever since.

Walton maintains that he’s pleased with CNN’s performance, adding that the overall news group had record profit growth in 2004. (According to Kagan Research, CNN remains more profitable than Fox News, although the margin has shrunk in recent years.) The news group president insists that the CNN name is unparalleled and draws the kind of affluent viewers that advertisers want to target.

“There’s a brand promise recognized the world over,” he said.

Still, while Walton noted that CNN continues to pull in a higher number of cumulative viewers a month, Fox’s viewers watch longer.

Fox has pulled an average prime-time audience of more than 1.5 million viewers this year, while CNN has drawn an average viewership of 789,000, according to Nielsen Media Research. Across the entire day, Fox has averaged 831,000 viewers, compared to CNN’s 449,000.

While both networks are faring about the same in their overall daytime numbers compared to last year, Fox has seen a spike this year in its average prime-time viewership, which has increased 15% over the same period last year.

Meanwhile, CNN’s average prime-time viewing has risen about 1%. CNN noted that it made gains in prime time among 25- to 54-year-olds, the key demographic for advertisers.

“I would like to see the numbers on CNN/U.S. go up, and I’m confident that Jon and his team are working really, really hard,” Walton said of the network’s new president.

Klein’s challenge is a perennial one for CNN executives: getting viewers who flock to the channel for breaking stories to stick around afterward.

“That’s a problem,” admitted Walter Isaacson, a former CNN chairman who is now president of the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C. “When you’re basically a hard-news reported network, there are going to be periods when the news isn’t as compelling.”

Isaacson believes the answer is filling those hours with “good storytelling,” and Klein agrees.

Rather than ape Fox’s successful talk formula, the CNN/U.S. president said he is focusing the staff’s energy on generating pieces about topics essential to people’s daily lives: their security, health, employment and families.

“It’s terrific that Americans know to run to CNN whenever there is breaking news,” Klein said. “But we want to create a new habit, which is to turn to us every night before they go to sleep to find out what’s going on in their world.”

Some observers are skeptical, noting last week’s “Survivor Week” theme, in which the network’s prime-time shows featured a spate of stories about people who survived the likes of plane crashes, chimp maulings and storms at sea. (The week before, CNN promoted “Crime Scene Week,” with similarly themed programming.)

On “Anderson Cooper 360,” correspondent Rick Sanchez sought to demonstrate survival techniques for viewers, allowing himself to be submerged underwater in a car, dumped out at sea with only a life vest and trapped in a smoke-filled room.

“What we learned is that there’s a common thread through all of these and that is simply this: If you practice ... it’s not going to guarantee that you’re going to survive, but what it certainly will do is, it will increase your odds,” Sanchez reported.

CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson said the survivor stories made up a small portion of the week’s programming.

Still, Deborah Potter, a former Washington correspondent for CNN who now runs NewsLab, a nonprofit journalism training and research center in the nation’s capital, said the promotional gimmicks indicate that the network is still searching for its identity.

“They’re basically trying to get their ratings up in any way possible,” Potter said. “If you watch what they’re doing on the air, it seems softer, rather than harder. It seems to me they’re casting about.”