[oscillon]

State of the Race comes from Studio D.

The intro music is the usual Elections one

[mouseboy33]

Uhhhh. Thanks for the screen shots. OK. Im conflicted about this. It looks EXACTLY like i thought. Barebones. Fredricka on a DTL. Jim's blocks seemingly will get to use a set. To get around the US pay-tv providers agreements. They lean HEAVILY on CNNi, schedule-wise to do the heavy lifting. If this stream is eventually going to be shown on MAX globally, thats not a bad thing. More internation news...maybe? But I suspected the MAXNewsroom blocks from Atlanta would be barebones. And it is. And yes I realise they are still moving from CNN Center to Techwood. I just hate these backwards feeling launches.

BUT NOW. They re-invent the wheel with CNN Max and they act like its something completely fresh. They are so behind the wheel. Its frankly so frustrating. The 24hr streaming arena should have been their arena. Back in the day when CBSN launched in 2014 they should have took notice as it was the first serious stab, in my opinion at a Headline News rival. They essentially gave up the game and allowed others to take over the space and completely dominate a place they solidly had locked in for DECADES. A place they completely created.

I mean really what are we doing? Come on!? The leadership upheaval has been so disastrous for CNN. My sticking point starts with the closure of Headline News. So the channel was deemed past its sell-by date, yet we have the launches of numerous streaming 24x7 rolling news channels in the US. When the entire infrastructure was already in place at CNN Center. I blame Zucker & Co. Maybe the channel needed to be shrunk, by it didnt need a huge set Studio7 blah blah blah. But i do think that they should have returned it to its roots. Get rid of the linear cable channel and go full streaming. Return it to its roots. Get rid of the double-head presentations and multiple presenters. Just old school Headline News.

I would have killed off all the crime programming , rename it CNN Headline News. (Dropped the HLN moniker, as its a completely tainted brand from all the rubbish "talking head" crime and political programmes. Ugh remember Glenn Beck) That junk was EXPENSIVE. Big sets and production teams behind it. It was a financial drain. Which resulted in more executive tinkering to make the channel profitable. Dump all that rubbish. I would have created a simple set (in the Atlanta newsroom) and created a new version of what made Headline News popular. Maybe a little less buttoned up but not the "news in the round" format that started all this mess. Thats when they ramped up the money on the channel and it was no longer profitable and the tinkering began to fix it.

So this lame halfhearted attempt feels lame actually. Jim Scuitto and Fredricka seems like a waste to use on this. They have some great anchors that dont need to be wasted in this way. Its basically CNNi with new added newsblocks. What is the eventual end goal of the channel? I cant see it being profitable. I wish them best but clearly they dont know what there are doing. Seemingly. WHich is sad and hard to watch.

Just yesterday everything started to branded breaking news Again....I hope hope hope Mark Thompson can serious-up the channel. The NY Times alongside PBS/NPR are the serious news orgs in the US. I dont expect Mark to recreate CNN into the BBC. Because thats just boring.... like paint to watch. CNN created this space but have ceded it to others. How can he fix it.? Tinkering isnt going to work. I still stand by what I said that NewsCentral was the start of something new and fresh. But its slowly being dismantled.


Whew ok. Long rant over. Sorry guys.

[ginnyfan]

Will they ever change that boring election music? The visuals and set are the usual CNN fare.... Kasie Hunt looks and sounds like Kate Bolduan, just a brunette version with an even more liberal, MSNBC, mindset.

[alex.w]

CNN has just released the full MAX line-up:

cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com 

One World, Amanpour and QMB are there.

8-10 am is billed as "CNN Newsroom with Amara Walker, Fredricka Whitfield and Jim Acosta" (in rota?)
11am is just Rahel Solomon, as well as 2pm is just Jim Sciutto.

Are we getting double headed CNNI Newsrooms?! I see a number of them in the evening hours with two anchors!

[oscillon]

Are we getting double headed CNNI Newsrooms?! I see a number of them in the evening hours with two anchors!

If you're talking about "with Michael Holmes and John Vause", then, most likely, no.

John does Mon-Thu, Michael does Fri-Sun, so in the Mon-Fri schedule that treats their hours as the previous day's late night, they both get a mention.

Max Foster and Bianca Nobilo, on the other hand, already do a genuine double-headed bulletin.

[sky303]

CNN Max was going to bare bones , because they are more testing a ground and then hoping they'll be able to just simulcast CNN US on Max without any problem. Especially since they burned themselves on CNN Plus ,which also was the strangest output they thought up and stuck it together.

It also explains why they launched the very unnecessary politics show on CNN International, probably a part of CNN I's very cut budge to make something that will be for the Americans stumbling on Max, and why Max viewers won't be getting Connect the World (still on CNN I and on CNN I stream still on the CNN app in the US). Then like the press release might have alluded to, they retrofitted One World to be pretty much now focused more on American stuff, might as well call it One America (if there wasn't a US news channel that had that name and don't want to talk more about them). Amanpour airs in the US already, and the current CNN management seems to really be uplifting her , which is nice, but they should also be uplifting Becky Anderson, and the many other quality folks at CNN International. Isa's show doesn't make it to Max either. Then they run Quest, which is fitting since it's the only business show they have. Hmm , since it's the only business show, shouldn't have a studio to use instead of some room? huh?

If they didn't crater themselves with CNN Plus stupidity last year, I feel HLN's news programming wouldn't have been cut the way it was. Robin Meade's Morning Express and Susan Hendrick's Weekend Express would have been great programmes to simulcast on here. It would have given them 5 hours free live news on weekends and 6 hours on weekdays. I will probably repeat the better things they could have done with Robin Meade thing for years.

The only real smart thing here is they put it on Max and don't seem to be throwing extra money at it to hurt the rest of CNN this time.

I saw the idea of an online CNN headline News in this thread too. The funny thing is you kind of don't need CNN for your news (on weekdays) NBC News Now, CBS News (the channel) , ABC NEWS Live are covering things for free online. (Weekends you might CNN) The FOX owned station in Phoenix created what is now Live Now from FOX which is a great raw feed news channel thing, it's very FOX without the opinion stuff. There's Scripps News, There's Grays' Local News Live, There's Newsnet, which uses the old Headline News model, if the old Headline News had 80% less money. CNN just sat there, did nothing. It's not even like they didn't online products (I still miss the great Big Story) but they seemed to clinch at doing anything like an online headline stream.

[interestednovice]

Chris Licht threw HLN’s Morning Express under the bus in a vain attempt to juice the ratings for CNN This Morning - which was his one and only flagship schedule change in the early days.

Of course, we all know how that went! There was probably no financial reason to axe Morning Express; since it came from Atlanta instead of NY it was probably relatively cheap.

[EastCoast]

Jim Sciutto with a traditional view of the Capitol behind him and US newsroom graphics.



Agreed regarding Morning Express. HLN would have been the perfect brand to launch on Max if they didn't destroy it. Robin Meade would be the perfect face of morning news for a streaming service.

[sky303]

Here's how a simulcast with CNN I looks like 



Here's a CNN US simulcast 



I will mention they are using the CNN International North American Feed , during the Lead I saw promos that use the same things at CNN I North America. They really made sure not use CNN US to get around. 

[ginnyfan]

It will be interesting to see how CNN Max impacts CNNI's daily scheduling and by this I mean, how often CNNI joins CNN US for breaking news and any other sort of events. Since most of CNNI shows are also on Max, and they have certain limits when it comes to showing domestic shows on Max, CNNI might actually have to stick with its own presenters and shows for breaking news. You know, just the way it used to be before Trump & Zucker took over! Let's see.