Nonstop News: CNN and the Birth of the 24-hour News Channel
"And that's the way it is."
For almost two decades—starting with his (and CBS') first Evening News broadcast on April 16, 1962 and ending on March 6, 1981—Walter Cronkite established himself as "the most trusted man in America", guiding the nation through the tragic assassinations of JFK, his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King, Jr.; the pinnacle of human achievement that was Apollo 11; the race riots of the 1960s; and the murky quagmire called Vietnam. His calm demeanor and fatherly—some would say worldly—countenance made him a giant in the news industry, a person who had no equal except possibly Edward R. Murrow (in fact, Cronkite was so good at what he did that my alma mater, Arizona State University, named their Journalism and Mass Communication building in his honor; his name is also on my degree, but I digress.)
He wasn't the only larger-than-life force that shaped the news, far from it. Nine months before Cronkite gave his final sendoff from behind a news desk, Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting System launched a little-known station called CNN on June 1, 1980.
Before that could happen (and because life never goes how we expect it to), a satellite had to be lost.
Ted Turner in 1980, the year he launched his Cable News Network and changed the news landscape forever.
Ted Turner was in a pickle.
His Cable News Network was supposed to be beaming from RCA's new SATCOM 3 satellite in low Earth orbit, except there was a problem.
There was no SATCOM 3 satellite.
Artist's depiction of a SATCOM communications satellite, like the one that was lost on December 7, 1979.
Why? Because soon after its rocket left Cape Canaveral's launch pad on December 7, 1979, NASA had lost communication with it during its apogee—in layman's terms, the satellite went kaput as the rocket ran out of fuel.
No satellite meant a very unhappy Ted Turner, so he did the only thing he could: He sued RCA.
One thing to keep in mind is that unlike today where finding anything RCA is the technological equivalent of finding Bigfoot (meaning the odds are astronomically low), this was the late 1970s/early 1980s—the company may have been around six years away from being acquired by General Electric and having all of its assets liquidated, thus ensuring its extinction, but it was still alive and kicking. It wasn't exactly running marathons, but it was alive.
Ted Turner didn't care about any of that. He had his Turner Broadcasting System; a newfangled idea of a news channel that he was dying to get off of the ground and onto television sets; was practically dreaming in dollar signs; and, put simply, Mad As Hell. In November 1980, the head of Turner Broadcasting and the former Radio Corporation of America ended up in a federal kerfuffle.
RCA was sued for $35.5 million in damages (the equivalent of about $117.8 billion in today's money); in addition, Turner wanted RCA to give him space on their older SATCOM 1 satellite—remember, the SATCOM 3 decided to up and leave in the middle of a rocket launch—in order to broadcast his new channel. In short, Turner and RCA settled on a consent order; he got his money and satellite usage, and RCA ended up with (practically) empty pockets and a big pile of nothing. Six years later, RCA would exit stage left.
CNN launched on June 1, 1980 with a newscast that included an interview with President Carter as well as a debate between the president and his rival Ronald Reagan (in case you've slept through the past forty years, Reagan won the election that year; he won the one after that, too). The network also covered the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983; was the only live coverage of the launch—and subsequent explosion—of the shuttle Challenger in 1986; as well as the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California (the same one that occurred in the middle of a World Series game between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics).
Then 1991 rolled around.
By this point, CNN had become experienced in covering live events as they happened (having done so for almost 10 years), but the early morning hours of January 17, 1991 in Baghdad cemented its status as the de facto leader in breaking news. Thanks to constant on-the-ground reporting by Bernard Shaw, John Holliman, and Peter Arnett, the network was able to stay on the air long after the Big Three of ABC (Peter Jennings), NBC (Tom Brokaw) and CBS (Dan Rather) had signed off for the night.
CNN went through the decade covering the 1992 beating of Rodney King by white Los Angeles police officers (and the ensuing riots that same summer); O.J. Simpson's infamous White Bronco chase on a Southern California freeway on June 17, 1994; the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; and the impeachment of President Clinton in the closing days of 1998 and beginning of 1999; but it was the network's coverage of the Persian Gulf War that put it on the media map.
January 17, 1991—the day that turned CNN into a household name.
So how did CNN change the news landscape?
The first answer should be obvious—because Ted Turner designed it from the get-go as a 24-hour service, it was able to stay on the air when traditional networks like ABC and NBC would be forced to abandon their own coverage of an event. Because of this, viewers could see the event unfold and follow it through all the way to its conclusion—without waiting the next day to know how it ended.
Second, it paved the way for other stations to launch their own television news channels; NBC launched MSNBC on July 15, 1996, while FOX News followed suit three months later on October 7 (after FOX itself launched on October 9, 1986). News executives were quickly realizing that they'd have to either get with the program, or get left behind.
Finally, the arrival of CNN impacted the market share of more "traditional" news outlets like newspapers and radio; television might have given the news a physical form when it was first introduced, but it was still limited to specific times throughout the day—the morning news before work, and the evening news when people were gathered around the dinner table. CNN's launch, while not outright killing radio and newspapers, forced them to admit that their era of dominance was ending; now, people could get their news practically whenever they wanted, and the former communications giants couldn't do anything to stop it.
Not to mention the fact that if it weren't for a lost satellite, RCA might still be in business.
About the Author: Ronald Hamilton, Jr. is a graduate of Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication and Media Studies. When he's not writing for COM-GAP, Ronald is a volunteer with the nonprofit Live Forever Project.