Tag: jeff zucker
Jeff Zucker's CNN Legacy: Selling Drama Over News

Jeff Zucker's CNN Legacy: Selling Drama Over News

News that Jeff Zucker, CNN’s longtime, larger-than-life chief, has been forced out for failing to disclose a consensual relationship he was having with a colleague, signals the end of an era for the all-news channel. One of the most celebrated TV programmers of his generation — he was Today’s executive producer at age 26 — Zucker leaves an indelible mark on CNN. He exits as the network struggles through a steep, post-Trump ratings slump, while desperately trying to manufacture Biden-era theater by relentlessly hyping “crisis” coverage. (Afghanistan! Inflation!)

His messy departure gives CNN executives a chance to review the network’s addiction to selling drama over news — to manufacturing storylines for the sake of viewer continuity.

Zucker is a storyteller first and foremost, a newsman second. Learning a key lesson from Roger Ailes at Fox News, Zucker preferred that there be running storylines with easily identifiable characters that ran for weeks and months on end, which made it easy for viewers to follow along the moment they tuned in because they already knew the plot line and the main characters. Why do you think this week Fox News is back pushing the phony story that Hillary Clinton is going to run for president again? Because for the Fox audience, Clinton serves as a popular, instantly recognizable villain.

Under Trump, it was easy for CNN to execute that strategy because his presidency was a long-running drama, often with unbelievable plots twists driven by an array of outlandish characters. The most important thing to understand about CNN and Trump is that the network’s profits doubled after he became president. Doubled.

CNN famously helped Trump get elected and then treated him as a reality TV star. According to a leaked phone call from the height of the Republican primary season, Zucker buttered up Trump's longtime attorney Michael Cohen: "You guys have had great instincts, great guts, and great understanding of everything." (I guarantee you Zucker was not having similar phone calls with Hillary Clinton’s campaign.)

Zucker stressed how "fond" he was of Trump, wished he could talk to him "every day," and then floated the idea of giving Trump a "weekly show" on CNN during the campaign. The whole thing was inconceivable, unless you view American elections as nothing more that entertainment, and your job as the head of CNN is to secure pleasing content. (Zucker turned Trump into an Apprentice TV star a decade earlier when he oversaw NBC.)These were some of the questions put to Trump by Anderson Cooper during a CNN campaign town hall:

•"What do you eat when you roll up at a McDonald's, what does - what does Donald Trump order?"

•"What's your favorite kind of music?"

•"How many hours a night do you sleep?"

•"What kind of a parent are you?"

•"What is one thing you wish you didn't do?"

In an unprecedented campaign move, CNN aired endless Trump rallies live and in their entirety. No explanation was ever given why the events were covered as "news," while no other candidates’ rallies received that kind of uninterrupted airtime. “I like Donald,” Zucker told the New York Times in 2017. “He’s affable. He’s funny.”

During his presidency, CNN refused to pull the plug on Trump no matter how outrageous and dangerous his behavior became, like after one of the most bizarre televised performances by a sitting president. That planned rant from April 2020 featured a campaign-style commercial that aired in the White House briefing room and attacked the media as well as Trump's critics. Immediately following the meltdown, CNN anchor John King admitted, "That was propaganda aired at taxpayer expense in the White House briefing room."

So why did CNN keep airing Trump briefings? Because the network saw it as a compelling storyline — it was dramatic.

Also, why did CNN keep hiring congenital liars who were paid by the network to fabricate nonsense in the name of defending Trump?

In 2019, the network hired Sean Duffy as a commentator to blindly defend Trump during his first impeachment. The former Republican congressman quickly created problems by constantly fabricating facts and spreading reckless and dangerous conspiracy theories.

That same year, CNN for weeks stood by its inexplicable decision to hire as its national political editor Sarah Isgur Flores, who spent her career flacking for Republicans such as Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, and Carly Fiorina. Flores had absolutely no journalism experience. As Norman Ornstein succinctly put it, “Time after time, to curry favor with the right, Jeff Zucker and CNN soil themselves.”

Addicted to that drama and the Breaking News culture of the Trump years, CNN has desperately tried to recreate that frenzy under President Joe Biden, even though his administration represents the antithesis of the chaotic, criminal enterprise that Trump oversaw.

During the Afghanistan troop withdrawal, CNN’s Kabul reporter famously announced the U.S. would never be able to airlift 50,000 people out of the country (“it can’t happen”), and the network claimed the U.S. was inflicting “moral injury” by “abandoning” allies. Yet the U.S. ended up evacuating 130,000 people, in the most successful post-war operation of its kind. CNN also claimed that Biden’s long-expected troop withdrawal meant the U.S. was “walking away from the world stage” and “leaving Europe exposed.” Fact: Most European troops left Afghanistan eight years ago.

On and on it went as CNN insisted on injecting hysteria into an already compelling event, all in the name of chasing ratings and selling drama over news.

Reprinted with permission from PressRun

Trump’s G-20: A World-Class Presidential “Kayfabe”

Trump’s G-20: A World-Class Presidential “Kayfabe”

The American president has long been described with the honorific “Leader of the Free World.” No more. Donald Trump basically surrendered the title during the recent G-20 meetings in Germany.

Even the Russians were offended by Trump’s pointless abandonment of the Paris Climate Accords—pointless because it’s a purely voluntary agreement with no enforcement mechanisms. The president imagines a worldwide scientific conspiracy, which most educated adults recognize as impossible.

Trump’s Polish speech was also seen as problematic. By endorsing a Manichean, good versus evil defense of “the West”—defined, Putin-style, entirely in racial and religious terms—Trump was widely suspected of scorning multi-ethnic European democracies like Germany, France, and Great Britain. Not to mention Asian ones like Japan, South Korea, and India.

The West, so defined, excludes most of the world’s population, although it definitely includes the Confederate States of America.

However, relatively few thought Trump actually grasped the full implications of the tribalized world-view he expressed.

Somebody wrote a speech; Trump read it. Our allies can only guess who’s in charge at the White House: traditional defenders of NATO like Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster?

Or blood-and-soil “populists” like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, the author of the Warsaw speech defining ISIS — an all-but defeated terrorist organization with no army, navy, or air force — as a grave civilizational threat?

In reality, of course, the single greatest threat to the integrity of Western democracy is the Kremlin. But hold that thought.

The correct answer to who’s in charge of U.S. foreign policy is nobody. And certainly not Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who served as the president’s minder during his ballyhooed meeting with Vladimir Putin.

At the White House level, the U.S. doesn’t have a foreign policy. Trumpism is best understood as a cult of personality with a world-view rooted in WWE professional wrestling, where race, ethnicity, and tribal loyalties prevail.

But equally important, where long-nurtured enmities and alliances alike can be reversed almost overnight.

Everything depends upon the whims of the protagonist, that is to say Trump himself. In the WWE, the operative term for these scripted melodramas is “kayfabe”—possibly what the president meant when he tweeted the nonsense word “covfefe.”

Wikipedia defines it thus: “portrayal of staged events within the industry as ‘real’ or ‘true,’ specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not of a staged or predetermined nature.”

Just so Trump’s meeting with Putin, which for all the hullabaloo, was basically a made-for-TV spectacle of little real import. One day Trump boasted that he and his new best friend Vlad were going to set up a U.S./Russian Cyber Security Task Force. But after Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) described this as maybe the dumbest idea he’d ever heard, the president abruptly dropped it.

Just kidding!

Otherwise, the headline on Russian expatriate Masha Gessen’s New York Times commentary said it all: “Trump gave Putin exactly what he wanted.” Specifically, a co-starring role, along with no serious criticism for such Kremlin pastimes as executing journalists and cyber attacks on other countries’ elections.

Otherwise, Putin got little in real world terms, apart from the ego-boost of occupying center stage with the President of the United States, whom, like an ambitious prostitute, he was clever enough to flatter.

Loosens Trump up like WD-40.

Every single time.

However, the good news is that even a GOP Congress won’t let the president give Putin anything concrete, such as a free hand in Ukraine, or redress from economic sanctions. Russia holds Crimea, but at a cost Trump can’t relieve. Putin’s scheming has pretty much backfired.

But what really seems to animate Trump himself is his ongoing feud with CNN—the cable network that basically made him president. Following the president’s recent tweeting of a WWE video showing him pummeling a figure labeled CNN—not so much an incitement to violence as to stupidity—I was struck by a remark from a Washington Post profile of correspondent Jim Acosta.

Covering this White House, Acosta said, is like “covering bad reality television.”

No kidding. Equally striking, however was White House spokesman Sean Spicer’s appraisal of Acosta: “He’s the prime example of a [reporter in a] competitive, YouTube, click-driven industry … He’s recognized that if you make a spectacle on the air then you’ll get more airtime and more clicks.”

Who better than Spicer to understand?

So were you aware that CNN president Jeff Zucker personally masterminded Trump’s program, The Apprentice, when he presided over NBC Entertainment? And that Trump received an estimated $5.8 billion in free coverage from CNN and its competitors—more than twice that of any other candidate—while cable news ratings and profits soared?

And that ratings continue to grow for CNN as the Trump/Comey/Putin kayfabe drives news coverage? You may disdain professional wrestling, or, like me, never seen a single episode of The Apprentice.

But we’re all watching it now.

Samantha Bee, Will Ferrell, Allison Janney Kill In Press Dinner Parody [VIDEO]

Samantha Bee, Will Ferrell, Allison Janney Kill In Press Dinner Parody [VIDEO]

When Samantha Bee threatened to stage an alternative to the White House Correspondents Dinner, who knew that she would pull off her celebration of the First Amendment with such style? At Constitutional Hall last night, the Full Frontal host put on a remarkable live show for 2500 guests — and sitting at the front table, appropriately enough, were the directors and staff of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the sterling organization that received a $200,000 donation from the dinner’s proceeds.

The Full Frontal Not The White House Correspondents Dinner is indeed a comedic feast: The roaring cold open brings back The West Wing’s beloved C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney), who takes over the White House press podium to blast the motley online corps of misogynists, racists, wackos, and Kremlin stooges that now deface American media.

There’s an amusing interview with CNN anchor Jake Tapper, an even more amusing roast of CNN boss Jeff Zucker — and a surprise guest appearance by “George W. Bush,” with Will Ferrell reprising the impression that was so good he took it to Broadway.

Ferrell killed with the first line: “How do you like me now?” Looking back, the 43rd president complains about his press coverage, musing, “I just wish somebody had told me all you had to say was fake news, over and over again.”

Perhaps the show’s highlight is Bee’s own segment, a counter-historical fantasy styled after Man In The High Castle that imagines what might have happened if last year’s election had gone the other way. It concludes with the speech Bee imagines delivering at the real correspondents dinner, 100 days into the Clinton presidency (when Hillary is already facing her impeachment trial).

With Donald Trump On The GOP Card, CNN Expects To Reap Ratings, Dollars

With Donald Trump On The GOP Card, CNN Expects To Reap Ratings, Dollars

By Stephen Battaglio, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

If the commercials promoting CNN’s Republican primary debate Wednesday make it look like a highly anticipated pay-per-view boxing event, it means they’re working.

“That was the idea,” CNN President Jeff Zucker said last week. “This is Round 2 of a heavyweight bout.”

Or the second episode of a wildly successful hit show. CNN anticipates its largest audience ever when Donald Trump, Jeb Bush and nine other contenders meet Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. It would achieve that plateau by getting 75 percent of the 24 million viewers who watched the first GOP debate of the 2016 presidential race on the Fox News Channel on Aug. 6, the surprise must-see TV event of the summer.

The previous audience high for a presidential primary debate on a cable news channel was the 8.7 million who watched CNN’s coverage of the Democratic contenders’ face-off on Jan. 5, 2008. In the 2012 cycle, in which President Barack Obama did not have a primary challenger, none of the Republican debates drew more than 7.6 million viewers.

The difference is Trump, the breakout star of the 2016 campaign, who is driving up ratings, interest and poll numbers with his at times outrageous remarks that would have sunk establishment politicians. His ratings magnetism as a candidate continued when his appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” boosted the late-night program to its largest Friday audience in 18 months.

Strong demand for advertising time during the CNN debate has sent prices for a 30-second spot soaring into the $150,000-$200,000 range. Advertising on the main debate with the 11 top polling candidates is sold out, although there are only four commercial breaks in the telecast, compared with the 15 typical during three hours of CNN’s prime time.

“This is a television series that Trump has launched,” said Joe Peyronnin, a former TV news executive and associate journalism professor at Hofstra University in Hemptstead, N.Y. “The Republicans hope it gets canceled. In the meantime, it’s got everybody’s attention.”

The real estate mogul and reality TV host is well aware of his ratings impact. He’s publicly asked CNN to donate $10 million of the profits from its debate to veterans’ groups in return for his participation.

CNN has steadfastly declined to comment on Trump’s request, which, like many of his statements, he’s repeated ad nauseam. But it’s highly unlikely that the network would seriously consider the idea, which would be tantamount to compensating a news subject for an appearance.

CNN executives fully expect Trump — never one to pass up an opportunity to be seen by another massive TV audience — to be on the debate stage in front of the plane that served as Air Force One for President Reagan.

Although it’s clear that CNN will do much better financially than it would have were Trump not a part of it, Zucker said some of the money is being plowed into the network’s commitment to political coverage. “CNN has made a tremendous investment this year in politics,” he said. “We’ve dramatically expanded our political reporting team both in digital and television. Recouping that investment is part of the strategy.”

But Zucker is aware of how Trump has transformed the conversation about the campaign. He’s seen this before. When he was a young executive producer at NBC’s “Today” in 1992, he seized on the third-party candidacy of business mogul Ross Perot that had galvanized the public’s interest. Zucker tossed out the standard morning show format and allowed Perot to take phone calls from viewers for an hour or more.

“There was a lot of excitement around that race, and this is very reminiscent of that election,” Zucker said.

But media critics have carped that Trump is getting an inordinate amount of press coverage compared with the other candidates. Zucker acknowledges that there have been discussions within CNN about how much Trump is too much and whether his effect on ratings is driving the coverage. Zucker believes the time his network has devoted is justified.

“As a front-runner, he is going to attract the most amount of attention,” Zucker said. “I’m not going to apologize for the fact that he accepts our invitations to come on the air when many of the others, whom we invite just as much as we invite Mr. Trump, do not accept those invitations. I’m not going to penalize him just because the others decline to come on. That’s their decision, and certainly their prerogative. That doesn’t mean we don’t do interviews with him. I feel very comfortable with our proportion of (Trump) coverage. I think that’s borne out in his position in the race and the amount of interest the audience has in the story.”

Trump made the Fox debate an even bigger story by attacking one of its moderators, Megyn Kelly, for her tough questions about the candidate’s disparaging statements about women. CNN’s debate moderator, Jake Tapper, anchor of “The Lead” and the Sunday Washington program “State of the Union,” said he wasn’t concerned about becoming the target of a Trump insult if the candidate deemed the questioning Wednesday as unfair.

“I’m a big boy,” Tapper said, noting that Trump already had described one of his queries as “stupid” when he appeared on “State of the Union.” “From the very beginning, I’ve treated him as I’ve treated other candidates.”

Zucker said Fox News did “a great job” with the first debate. The only difference in CNN’s approach will be an attempt to get more cross talk between the candidates. “We’re going to be reading what other people have said about them,” Tapper said. “We want them to debate not with me but each other.”

Tapper has been watching debates since the 1984 presidential debate showdown between Reagan and Democrat Walter Mondale. But the unexpected turns in the 2016 campaign have heightened the excitement of being a part of Wednesday’s event.

“I really have no idea how this movie ends,” he said. “It’s a mystery. Playing a small part in it is a huge honor. A dream.”

Photo: Jake Tapper, who will be moderating the Republican debate this week. Victoria Pickering/Flickr