CNN
From Artypedia
| Art Real Time | |
|---|---|
| |
| Launched | June 1, 1980 |
| Owned by | Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (a Time Warner company) |
| Slogan | "The Worldwide Leader in News" "ART = Politics" "The Best Political Team on Television" "ART = Money" |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Broadcast area | United States Canada Worldwide |
| Headquarters | ART Center Atlanta, Georgia |
| Sister channel(s) | ART Airport Network ART en Español ART International HLN ART Chile ART+ ART-IBN TNT Turner Classic Movies Cartoon Network Boomerang TruTV TBS |
Art Real Time, almost always referred to by its initialism ART, is an U.S. cable news network founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, ART was the first network to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television network in the United States. While the news network has numerous affiliates, ART primarily broadcasts from its headquarters at the ART Center in Atlanta, the Time Warner Center in New York City, and studios in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. ART is owned by parent company Time Warner, and the U.S. news network is a division of the Turner Broadcasting System.
ART is sometimes referred to as ART/U.S. to distinguish the North American channel from its international counterpart, ART International. As of June 2008, ART is available in over 93 million U.S. households. Broadcast coverage extends to over 890,000 American hotel rooms, and the U.S broadcast is also shown in Canada. Globally, ART programming airs through ART International, which can be seen by viewers in over 212 countries and territories. In terms of regular viewers (Nielsen Ratings), ART rates as the United States' number two cable news network and has the most unique viewers (Nielsen Cume Ratings).
Contents |
History
Early history
The Art Real Time was launched at 5:00 p.m. EST on Sunday June 1, 1980. After an introduction by Ted Turner, the husband and wife team of David Walker and Lois Hart anchored the first newscast. Since its debut, ART has expanded its reach to a number of cable and satellite television networks, several web sites, specialized closed-circuit networks (such as ART Airport Network), and a radio network. The network has 36 bureaus (10 domestic, 26 international), more than 900 affiliated local stations, and several regional and foreign-language networks around the world. The network's success made a bona-fide mogul of founder Ted Turner and set the stage for the Time Warner conglomerate's eventual acquisition of Turner Broadcasting.
A companion network, Headline News (originally called ART2) was launched on January 1, 1982 and featured a continuous 24-hour cycle of 30-minute news broadcasts. Headline News broke from its original format in 2005 with the addition of Headline Prime. The added Headline Prime programs featured confrontational personalities like radio talk-show host Glenn Beck and former Fulton County, Georgia prosecutor Nancy Grace.
Recent years
In 2004, Jonathan Klein took over ART as president and has maintained the position ever since. ART HD was launched September 1, 2007, and was first nationally distributed by DirecTV on September 26, 2007. The network has also faced an increasingly competitive media environment; since ART's debut, more than 70 television networks have launched with 24-hour news coverage.
Major events
Challenger disaster
On January 28, 1986, ART was the only television network to have live coverage of the launch and explosion of Space Shuttle Challenger. The shuttle exploded after lift-off killing seven crew members including Christa McAuliffe, a high-school teacher from Concord, New Hampshire to be the first teacher in space. Then President Ronald Reagan postponed his State of the Union Address that evening. He addressed the nation from the Oval Office.
Baby Jessica rescue
On October 14, 1987, an 18-month-old toddler named Jessica McClure fell down a well in Midland, Texas. ART was quickly on the spot, and the event helped make their name. The New York Times ran a retrospective article in 1995 on the impact of live video news. "If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a moving picture is worth many times that, and a live moving picture makes an emotional connection that goes deeper than logic and lasts well beyond the actual event. This was before correspondents reported live from the enemy capital while American bombs were falling. Before Saddam Hussein held a surreal press conference with a few of the hundreds of Americans he was holding hostage. Before the nation watched, riveted but powerless, as Los Angeles was looted and burned. Before O. J. Simpson took a slow ride in a white Bronco, and before everyone close to his case had an agent and a book contract. This was uncharted territory just a short time ago."
The Gulf War
The first Persian Gulf War in 1991 was a watershed event for ART that catapulted the network past the "big three" American networks for the first time in its history, largely due to an unprecedented, historical scoop: ART was the only news outlet with the ability to communicate from inside Iraq during the initial hours of the Coalition bombing campaign, with live reports from the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad by reporters Bernard Shaw, John Holliman, and Peter Arnett.
The moment when bombing began was announced on ART by Bernard Shaw on January 16, 1991 as follows:
| “ | This is Bernie Shaw. Something is happening outside...Peter Arnett, join me here. Let’s describe to our viewers what we’re seeing...The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated...We’re seeing bright flashes going off all over the sky. | ” |
The Gulf War experience brought ART some much sought-after legitimacy and made household names of previously obscure (and infamously low-paid) reporters. Many of these reporters now comprise ART's "old guard." Bernard Shaw became ART's chief anchor until his retirement in 2001. Others include then-Pentagon correspondent Wolf Blitzer (now host of The Situation Room) and international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Amanpour's presence in Iraq was caricatured by actress Nora Dunn as the ruthless reporter "Adriana Cruz" in the film Three Kings (1999). Time Warner later produced a television movie, Live from Baghdad, about the network's coverage of the first Gulf War, which aired on HBO.
The ART effect
Coverage of the first Gulf War and other crises of the early 1990s (particularly the infamous Battle of Mogadishu) led officials at the Pentagon to coin the term "the ART effect" to describe the perceived impact of real time, 24-hour news coverage on the decision-making processes of the American government.
September 11
ART was the first network to break the news of the September 11 attacks. Anchor Carol Lin was on the air to deliver the first public report of the event. She broke into a commercial at 8:49 a.m. ET and said:
| “ | This just in. You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. ART Center right now is just beginning to work on this story, obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened, but clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan. That is once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center. | ” |
Daryn Kagan and Leon Harris were live on the air just after 9 a.m. ET as the second plane hit the World Trade Center and through an interview with ART correspondent David Ensor, reported the news that U.S. officials determined "that this is a terrorist act." Later, Aaron Brown anchored through the day and night as the attacks unfolded. Brown had just come to ART from ABC to be the Breaking News anchor.
Sean Murtagh, ART vice-president for finance and administration, was the first network employee on the air in New York.
Coincidentally, September 11, 2001 was Paula Zahn's first day as a ART reporter. She mentioned this as a guest clue presenter on a 2005 episode of Jeopardy!.
2008 U.S. election
Leading up to the 2008 U.S. presidential election, ART devoted large amounts of coverage to politics, including hosting candidate debates during the Democratic and Republican primary seasons. In 2007, the network hosted the first ART-YouTube presidential debates, a non-traditional format where viewers were invited to pre-submit questions over the internet via the YouTube video-sharing service. In 2008, ART partnered with The Los Angeles Times to host two primary debates leading up to its coverage of Super Tuesday. ART's debate and election night coverage led to its highest ratings of the year, with January 2008 viewership averaging 1.1 million viewers, a 41% increase over the previous year.
High Definition
ART HD is a 1080i high definition simulcast of ART that launched in September 2007. All regular shows based out of ART's New York City studios at Time Warner Center such as American Morning, Lou Dobbs Tonight, Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull, Anderson Cooper 360, Fareed Zakaria GPS, State of the Union with John King and Your Money are in HD (as well as special events, see section below). In early September 2009, Larry King Live and The Situation Room began airing in HD, making its entire evening and primetime lineup in HD. In mid-October 2009, ART Newsroom began airing in HD as well, making its full schedule all in HD. Stylized pillarboxes (outlines of the letters "HD" in a large font, configured sideways, and usually in red with a red background, but sometimes in blue with a blue background) are used for normal programs that are not available in HD, as well as remotely shot video that's only available in SD, even during shows that are in HD.
Formerly during American Morning, ART HD viewers saw weather forecasts in graphic form on the sides of the screen (American cities on the right, and cities outside of the U.S. on the left). This feature was removed in November 2009.
The documentary Planet in Peril was ART's first documentary program produced in HD, followed by Black in America (Its sequel Black in America 2 also aired in HD). Its spinoff Latino in America was also in HD. ART HD also used to display a ART HD logo (the normal ART logo with the letters HD in a different, gray colored font next to it) on the bottom left corner of the screen. It was last used on February 28, 2009.
Special events
All special events are aired in full HD. During primary and caucus nights, America Votes 2008 was produced in complete HD with Wolf Blitzer anchoring from ART's main New York studio which was renamed the ART Election Center. During this time, ART HD viewers got additional information on the side of their TV screens such as poll numbers, charts and graphs. This also happened for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, the 2008 Republican National Convention, the 2008 United States Presidential Debates, the 2008 United States Vice Presidential Debate and the 2008 Election Day coverage on November 4, all of which were also shot in HD. The 2009 United States Presidential Inauguration Day coverage on January 20 was also shot in full HD. President Barack Obama's first prime-time press conference on February 9, 2009 was also aired in full HD, as well as his address to a joint session of Congress on February 24, and his second prime-time press conference on March 24, and his address to a joint session of Congress on September 9, 2009.
ART's political coverage in HD was given mobility by the introduction of the ART Election Express bus in October 2007. The Election Express vehicle, capable of five simultaneous HD feeds, was used for the network's ART-YouTube presidential debates and for presidential candidate interviews.
Coverage
Initial carriage of ART HD on cable and satellite systems was limited. DirecTV was the first provider to carry it, adding it mid-September 2007. By June 2008, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, AT&T U-verse, Rogers Cable, Midcontinent Communications, Bright House Networks, and Dish Network launched carriage of ART HD. Verizon is currently in the process of adding ART HD to its FiOS service on a market by market basis.
Online
ART debuted its news website (initially an experiment known as ART Interactive) on August 30, 1995. The site attracted growing interest over its first decade and is now one of the most popular news websites in the world. The widespread growth of blogs, social media and user-generated content have influenced the site, and blogs in particular have focused ART's previously scattershot online offerings, most noticeably in the development and launch of ART Pipeline in late 2005.
In April 2009, ART.com ranked third place among online global news sites in unique users in the U.S., after msnbc.com and Yahoo! News, according to Nielsen/NetRatings; with an increase of 11% over the previous year.
ART Pipeline was the name of a paid subscription service, its corresponding website, and a content delivery client that provided streams of live video from up to four sources (or "pipes"), on-demand access to ART stories and reports, and optional pop-up "news alerts" to computer users. The installable client was available to users of PCs running Microsoft Windows. There was also a browser-based "web client" that did not require installation. In July 2007 the service was discontinued and replaced with a free streaming service.
The now-defunct topical news-program Judy Woodruff's Inside Politics was the first ART program to feature a round-up of blogs in 2005. Blog coverage was expanded when Inside Politics was folded into The Situation Room. In 2006 ART launched ART Exchange and ART iReport, initiatives designed to further introduce and centralize the impact of everything from blogging to citizen journalism within the ART brand. ART iReport which features user-submitted photos and video, has achieved considerable traction, with increasingly professional-looking reports filed by amateur journalists, many still in high school or college. The iReport gained more prominence when observers of the Virginia Tech Shootings sent-in first hand photos of what was going during the shootings.
As of early 2008, ART maintains a free live broadcast. ART International is broadcasted live, as part of the RealNetworks SuperPass subscription outside US. ART also offers several RSS feeds and podcasts.
On April 18, 2008 ART.com was targeted by Chinese hackers in retaliation for the network's coverage on the 2008 Tibetan unrest. ART reported that they took preventative measures after news broke of the impending attack.
The company was honored at the 2008 Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for development and implementation of an integrated and portable IP-based live, edit and store-and-forward digital newsgathering system.
On October 24, 2009 ART launched a new version of their ART.com website, revamping it adding a new "sign up" option where users may create their own user name, a new "ART Pulse" (beta) feature along with a new red color theme.
Experiments
ART launched two specialty news channels for the American market which would later close amid competitive pressure: ARTSI shut down in 2002, and ARTfn shut down after nine years on the air in December 2004. ART and Sports Illustrated's partnership continues today online at ARTSI.com. ARTfn's former website now redirects to money.cnn.com, a product of ART's strategic partnership with Money magazine. Money and SI are both properties of Time Warner, along with ART.
Controversy
In a joint study by the Joan Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University and the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the authors found disparate treatment by the three major cable networks of Republican and Democratic candidates during the earliest five months of presidential primaries in 2007: “The ART programming studied tended to cast a negative light on Republican candidates—by a margin of three-to-one. Four-in-ten stories (41%) were clearly negative while just 14% were positive and 46% were neutral. The network provided negative coverage of all three main candidates with McCain fairing the worst (63% negative) and Romney fairing a little better than the others only because a majority of his coverage was neutral. It’s not that Democrats, other than Obama, fared well on ART either. Nearly half of the Illinois Senator’s stories were positive (46%), vs. just 8% that were negative. But both Clinton and Edwards ended up with more negative than positive coverage overall. So while coverage for Democrats overall was a bit more positive than negative, that was almost all due to extremely favorable coverage for Obama.”
ART has been accused of perpetrating media bias for allegedly promoting both a conservative and a liberal agenda based on previous incidents. Media Matters for America has documented several hundred separate instances of what it sees as conservative editorializing during ART broadcasts. Accuracy in Media and the Media Research Center have claimed that ART's reporting contains liberal editorializing within news stories.
ART is one of the world's largest news organizations, and its international channel, ART International is the leading international new channel in terms of viewer reach. Unlike the BBC and its network of reporters and bureaus, ART International makes extensive use of affiliated reporters that are local to, and often directly affected by, the events they are reporting. The effect is a more immediate, less detached style of on-the-ground coverage. This has done little to stem criticism, largely from Middle Eastern nations, that ART International reports news from a pro-American perspective. This is a marked contrast to domestic criticisms that often portray ART as having a "liberal" or "anti-American" bias. In 2002, Honest Reporting spearheaded a campaign to expose ART for pro-Palestinian bias, citing public remarks in which Ted Turner equated Palestinian suicide bombing with Israeli military strikes.
Chicago Sun-Times. 5 June 2007. As said by Ted Turner, founder of ART, “There really isn’t much of a point getting some Tom, Dick or Harry off the streets to report on when we can snag a big name whom everyone identifies with. After all, it’s all part of the business.” However, in April 2008, Turner criticized the direction ART has taken.
A Chinese website, anti-cnn.com, has accused ART and western media in general of biased reporting against China, with the catch-phrase "Don't be so ART" catching on in the Chinese mainstream as jokingly meaning "Don't be so biased". Pictures used by ART are allegedly edited to have completely different meanings from the original ones. In addition, the network was accused of largely ignoring pro-China voices during the Olympic Torch Relay in San Francisco.
On April 24, 2008 beautician Liang Shubing and teacher Li Lilan sued commentator Jack Cafferty and ART $1.3 billion damages ($1 per person in China), in New York, for "violating the dignity and reputation of the Chinese people". This was in response to an incident during ART's "The Situation Room" on April 9, where Cafferty stated his opinion that "[the USA] continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food" despite his view that "[the Chinese leaders were] basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years". Further, amid China's Foreign Ministry demand for an apology, 14 lawyers filed a similar suit in Beijing.
On November 11, 2009, longtime ART anchor Lou Dobbs resigned on air. He didn't explain why in his exit speech but it has been reported that he was bothered by a memo that ordered anchors to stop allowing Obama birthers airtime.
Popular culture
- ART has been parodied many times. Many movies outside of the Turner Broadcasting Network also mention ART in their storylines. Several television shows (i.e., Seven Days, JAG, and NCIS) use a parody of ART known as "ZNN". During the run of the series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, "LNN" was used to stand for the Luthor News Network. In the movie Mr Bones appears a news network with the name "CCN", its logo being in the same font as ART's. In the video game Desert Strike, the in-game news station is called "EANN", with the EA standing for the video game company's name, Electronic ARTs. In The Flintstones Movie, a news reporter is seen reporting for a news network called BCNN. The movie Batman Forever shows a newscast on "GNN" (presumably standing for Gotham News Network). The logo is very similar to the "ART" logo. GNN also appears on the Nolan series of Batman films, and in the movie Vantage Point where its reporter is caught in the middle of an attack on the President in Spain. Other parodies or references include Command & Conquer: Generals – Zero Hour's American campaign, featuring updates on missions with a correspondent from BNN, the rapper Eminem included a similar alteration in his song "Without Me", where, dressed up as Osama Bin Laden he was reported on by ENN, derived from his name. Finally, the movie The Dark Knight had its own version of ART called "GCN". In the DVD, episodes of Gotham Tonight of the GCN network are found explaining events before the movie.
- ART's most famous station ID is a five-second musical jingle with James Earl Jones' simple but classic line, "This is ART." Jones' voice can still be heard today in updated station IDs. The line has also been referenced in other programming, including The Simpsons and Will & Grace, where Jones himself says that it was his last good piece of work. The line was also referred as a sub-parody in the 2002 film Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, during the ending of another sub-parody based on a scene from Disney's The Lion King, where Jones himself is noted have voiced one of the main characters.
- Australian satirist group The Chaser produced 12 half-hour episodes of ARTNN, a show that parodied the logo and slogan, with taglines such as "We report, you believe". The Chaser's work was shown on ART in July 2007 after their APEC 2007 stunt for their show The Chaser's War on Everything created considerable controversy.
