CNN is its own disaster: How a perversely immature news channel blew its opportunity — salon.com

A month after its launch, on June 29, 1980, the New York Times reviewed Ted Turner’s embryonic cable channel. It was a fairly positive write-up, in which the critic presciently identified the outfit’s bread and butter. “It is evident so far that disasters are perhaps the best news the network can hope for,” he wrote. “Volcanoes, airplane crashes and riots are ideally suited to CNN’s gritty, live coverage.” For CNN, he continued, “disasters offer a justifiable means of filling time.”

Read More