If you haven’t heard, CNN has been struggling to make ends meet as of late. In fact, things are so bad for the once great and world-renowned cable TV channel that it is about to be kicked out of its own building due to a growing problem with viewership and keeping audiences entertained.
To explain, we take you to the bustling city of Atlanta, Georgia, a place where CNN has had a major presence and claim to fame for decades now. If you didn’t know it, this city is actually where the network first sprouted.
In 1980, Ted Turner decided to co-found a rather incredible idea: 24/7 cable news telecasts.
Naturally, at first, Turner and his employees were mocked, especially when he moved a bunch of young and most disorganized reporters into what is now known as the Techwood Turner Broadcasting campus. At the time, however, it was the turf of old-time reporting. As such, the network earned such names as the “Chicken Noodle Network” by those it soon ousted.
As history proves, though, the idea caught on rather quickly. By 1987, the network had grown so much that they had to move to a much larger building to maintain operation.
Built in 1976 as the Omni Center, the building featured a massive atrium that included places to shop, eat, and, once CNN moved in, take in a near continuous loop of tours to see CNN’s popular telecasting abilities. The atrium also included a theater, which classically showed the Atlanta-bases 1939 film “Gone With the Wind,” which Turner had purchased from MGM studios.
To say the building was awe-inspiring was somewhat of an understatement, especially after taking in the massive CNN letters on the side of the building. Even before the World of Coca-Cola, College Football Hall of Fame, Centennial Olympic Park, and the Georgia Aquarium moved into the neighborhood, it was the CNN Center, as it became known that, some would say, put Atlanta on the map.
As A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, said, “That building and that real estate is part of the postcard of Atlanta. Ted created an entire industry here and helped build the city’s international status.”
The building became so renowned, in fact, that if you were promoting anything in the Atlanta area, the CNN Center was sure to be mentioned or filmed, as it was a near-instant icon for the city.
However, after housing what might be called the better part of the network for more than 35 years, the network has recently announced that they are moving.
And no, it’s not because they have once again grown too large for their current space. Instead, following a rather dismal couple of years, they are being forced to downsize. In fact, they are even moving back into the place where it all began, the Techwood Turner Broadcasting campus.
Of course, how they got to this point should be no real surprise to anyone.
While the network started out as one whose editorial slant was quite different from the progressive agendas of media outlets in New York and Washington, DC., that more conservative slant has been lost over the years.
Now, names like “Clinton News Network” or even “Communist News Network have been used to describe it as viewership has tanked in recent months. Once the pinnacle of cable news services, it now ranks near the bottom, with no real way to ever see itself at the top where competitors and much more conservative outlets like Fox News currently sit.
That isn’t to say that network hasn’t tried to change its stripes a bit in recent days. With new leadership, it’s clearly started to make some changes, including attempts to adjust programming and change up the seemingly partisan view of its reporters, which have undoubtedly hurt their ratings over the past few years.
I mean, even in a year like 2022, with the midterms and all, ratings are still as bad as they have ever been.
Naturally, it’s pretty apparent that too much damage may have already occurred for the network to ever fully recover.
Until it either officially makes it or breaks, it’s being forced to make some major sacrifices. Embarrassingly enough, that includes their most iconic and international presence getting kicked to the curb.
