I wonder if Ted Turner still owned CNN if it would be the right-wing rag

[patricia92243]

that it has become. I remember him raging at the new owners saying that they had run CNN into the ground.

I am really, really frustrated with their news coverage. I know lot of the old hands - that are no longer there - at least tried to give real "fair and balanced" news.

I don't believe they have said two sentences about John Edwards that are positive. Grrrrr. :(

We can't get our message out because of no coverage, and when we do get coverage it is 99% negative.

[fertilizeonarbusto]

1. Short answer

NO
On edit- one consolation:
Some elections end up being about more than the election itself. I predict one of the ancillary results of this one will be that the traditional media, especially TV, will lose quite a deal of power and credibility because they will be too clearly seen as blatantly biased for the Rethugs. And people ain't dumb; they have a fair idea how much, say, Judy Woodruff makes and how she (and he fellow media-star millionaires) benefit personally from *'s economic policies. The whores better enjoy themselves; they are about to lose a lot of their relevance to the "non-traditional" media-like this one.

[Warpy]

2. It's been shite since Turner left

Once he was gone, the geniuses at the top decided to compete with Faux.

[ProfessorGAC]

5. Yes, And . . .

. . .those geniuses pulled one of the great marketing blunders of the last 10 years!

The audience that Faux targeted was that which already disliked CNN, but watched it anyway. When Faux stole them away, (by hook AND by crook, pun intended), they misread the situation. The "geniuses" thought that people wanted a conservative bent to the news.

The people who did want that had already migrated to Faux. So, targeting them was never going to restore the ratings. That horse had already left the barn.

The intelligent decision would have been to swing the other way, and compete against Faux in a philsophically similar way, but targeting the audience Faux had no intention of trying to attract.

That whole audience was abandoned by the "geniuses" and their ratings are still just as bad as they've been since Faux launched. Good! I hope they all get axed.
The Professor

[cjbuchanan]

3. Ted lost control of CNN in the mid-90's

And that's when the network started heading down (both in ratings and quality).

I think CNN was much more balanced in those days.

[NYCGirl]

4. I remember when Turner banned the use of the word "foreign"

on CNN when speaking of countries outside of the US. He preferred "international" since he thought "foreign" was too alienating.

[Melodybe]

6. Ted is a democrat, and as far as billionaires go he is suppose to be

pretty decent. The moment he sold CNN they started to suck. I wonder if he could or would ever buy it back. It sure was nice when it was owned by an American and not Bush's Saudi friends.

[No Mandate Here.]

7. I remember seeing a print story about CNN in the good old days,

and the main point I remember was that the news anchors were hired for their experience and integrity, not their malleability and good looks. This was on both CNN and headline news. These were the days of Bernie Shaw, and others (senility sets in and I can't recall any other names)

Contrast that with the "bubbleheaded bleached blondes" on the network now. (This is a non gender specific remark, by the way. Hemmer's as bubbleheaded as anyone else.)

[Media_Lies_Daily]

8. Only if he and Jane Fonda were still married.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

9. ted isn't a democrat

except for backing leahy, he supports the GOP and corporate lobbying groupshttp://newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=GA&last=Turner&first=Ted