Nov 9th, 2008 at 8:45 am
International Travel Fact of the Day
There’s a “global edition” of The Daily Show produced for a foreign (or, perhaps, expat and tourist) audience and aired on CNN International.
Also — every time I find myself abroad in a hotel that gets CNN International I’m shocked all over again by how much better it is than the American version of the network. Less talking heads, less random crap, more efforts to cover actual news events from around the world, and a generally calmer, more informative presentation all around. Basically, the guys who own the CNN we see in the U.S. know how to produce better news content — they just choose not to thanks to their contempt for the American audience.
56 Responses to “International Travel Fact of the Day”
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November 9th, 2008 at 8:54 am
fewer talking heads
less crap
November 9th, 2008 at 8:56 am
I know, I’m always surprised by CNN International. Much less of the FoxNews-ification that CNN has adopted in the last decade, the flash-bang graphics and the hokey, dumbed-down style of speaking. It resembles BBBC World (aired on PBS channels) more than it does the American news channels.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:03 am
True! Also, Matt, can you please find out why all American news broadcasts are orange? All the colors are oversaturated, and there’s a slightly orangey cast to much of it — on the backdrops and the whirling CGI graphics, on the lighting and the makeup.
By contrast, CNN international has a cool, whitey-blue look, like a lot of European news — and like real life.
Why do Americans want everything to be orange?
November 9th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Because of their contempt for the American audience? You’re kidding, right?
Seriously. You think that what Americans REALLY want is what you describe. And therefore, if someone were to offer it, all these serious-minded Americans would tune in. Which would of course make it a ratings boon. Which would of course draw huge advertising dollars and make lots of people lots of money.
But instead of doing that, each and every one of the news networks is run by guys sitting around a conference table saying, “Yes, Johnson, we know that would be a ratings boon. But see, American are FUCKERS, and we feel contempt for them. And we will lash out at them by offering low-brow content. And orange screens! Orange!”
Or maybe they think Americans are buying what they are currently selling. Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong. But either way, that’s pretty far removed from offering crap because they hate us. Misunderstanding? Underestimating? Perhaps. But consciously offering junk because of contempt? Come on. isn’t there a SINGLE executive whose greed would overcome his ill will?
November 9th, 2008 at 9:18 am
You think that what Americans REALLY want is what you describe. And therefore, if someone were to offer it, all these serious-minded Americans would tune in. Which would of course make it a ratings boon. Which would of course draw huge advertising dollars and make lots of people lots of money.
Maybe…just maybe…the reporting of current events is a civic responsibility, and shouldn’t be subject to consideration of advertising revenue.
[ducks]
November 9th, 2008 at 9:18 am
I certainly agree about CNN International. However, it is still well below Al Jeezera English. We in Geneva are lucky to have easy access to it. As for the coverage of election night it was heads above any of the networks, BBC World included (we were running three computers in addition to the TV).
November 9th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Absolutely. I hate to use this word, but I just feel like it is a much more mature network than its domestic equivalent.
fewer talking heads
less crap
Yeah, I have trouble remembering this one myself. “Less money means fewer dollars.” If it’s something that can be counted individually, use fewer. If it’s something that can’t be counted individually, use less. So fewer hours, but less time.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Generally CNNi is better than CNN. The Daily Show there is really a weekly show and it is nice to have. But CNNi has one major drawback: Richard Quest and his semi-infomercials. Yuck.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Basically, the guys who own the CNN we see in the U.S. know how to produce better news content — they just choose not to thanks to their contempt for the American audience.
Remember, this is the network that wasted an hour each evening on right wing moronic fucktard Glenn Beck who thankfully has moved on to he rightful home on the fascist news channel.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Here in Lat Am I have permanent access to CNNI.
It’s good, but sometimes it can be so darned earnest it’s boring!!! (but then, you need to watch it with some frequency to realize that….).
November 9th, 2008 at 9:59 am
I’ve never seen CNN, only CNNI, so I can’t compare, but from the look of the ads on CNNI it seems to be aimed at business travellers.
And Daily Show Global Edition is just highlights with a specially-made intro. In the UK they broadcast both (the US edition with one day’s delay and the Global Edition on Mondays).
November 9th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Luckily I also can get both services on TWC. CNNi, however, is the more reliable and informative service. I might add, though, that even RTVi (a Russian language network) has better news broadcasts and commentaries than the above, and the BBC. It seems that focus groups and financial considerations point the networks and local channels toward fluff, crime, and feel-good stories, rather than news that affects the world, and our country.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:43 am
CNN International, which I agree is better than CNN, used to be on DirecTV virtually 24/7. I never understood why they discontinued it.
November 9th, 2008 at 11:14 am
CNN-i is better than the regular CNN? Oh, god. I’ve been travelling for a couple of years now (a year in Asia, a year in Europe) and feel I’ve gotten a real feel for the English language news channels. I frequently find CNN-i an embarassment and vastly inferiour to almost every other international news channel out there. It seems to fixate on one and only one story at a time, and then produce a mediocre selection of panelists who blather on. Although it has been the one place I could go, as an American, to get a flavour of how things play back home. The BBC or al-Jeezera might say what happened, and I actually seem to be more thorough and accurate, but it lacks the same political prism to get an idea of how things play out in the public.
Interestingly, I’ve found the best reporting on the financial crisis at the beginning of October to be on Russia Today, along with Bloomberg and the BBC. And in general, I really enjoy CCTV-9, the international Chinese propaganda arm. When I was traveling in China (and it as the only news you could get), it actually told you all the important international events, gave you a pretty good feeling for what China itself was like and all the great things the Chinese government was doing, had interesting and informative long-form interviews with various newsmakers and analysts, and had a lot of cultural and history programs where you pick up all sorts of weird facts. Even traveling outside of China, I still finds it has the best Asia-centric news reporting and I still enjoy the more fluffy programs. It’s propaganda along with russia Today, no doubt, but it can still be informative.
November 9th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Maybe…just maybe…the reporting of current events is a civic responsibility, and shouldn’t be subject to consideration of advertising revenue.
News is something people select and purchase, just like any other product. There are many print, broadcast and online alternatives to choose from, and the consumers of news will gravitate to the ones that present news of the kind, and in the form, that they most prefer.
November 9th, 2008 at 11:49 am
I agree with the commenter that mentioned Al Jazeera International. It’s head and shoulders above CNNi and BBCW. I’ve heard that you can’t get it in the States. Anyone know if this is true?
November 9th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I was watching CNN International on a daily basis while on a trip to Germany in September. They were my source of news when the credit crunch hit, through McCain’s suspension of his campaign and the first debate. Wow. Almost no sensationalism, just reporting. It reminded me why CNN had such a great reputation when I was growing up in the Middle East.
November 9th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
CNN had an hour of simulcasting CNNi for a while, then dropped it for the dumb “Issue #1″ bit.
Point is, the CNN bosses clearly could dip into the CNNi pool more, but they choose not to do so, because daytime local-news-style coverage gets eyeballs. That’s to say, they think that not-so-dumb news programming — let’s pass over Richard Quest and the various travel/golf/yachting features aimed at the International Traveller With Expense Account — doesn’t sell to Americans.
Even CNNi is pretty dumb compared to Al-J I, D-W, France24, BBC World — and BBC’s news for domestic consumption can be pretty tabloidy at times. (C-SPAN had a nice montage of foreign reactions to the election from international broadcasters.)
I suppose you can make the argument that the audience for rolling news is self-selecting, and just as the WSJ’s news pages are aimed at people whose income depends on no-bullshit coverage, the international broadcasters have to compete on news value rather than being first to show a car chase or a dog trapped in a ditch to grab the attention of people watching in a gym or hair salon.
Do you get Sky News on your hotel system? Now that’s an interesting case study: it’s a Murdoch-owned station that has to abide by the standards and regulations for news broadcasters. So while the newspapers are proudly partisan, Sky News really isn’t.
November 9th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
A big part of the explanation is that CNN America and CNN International cater to very different groups. CNN Amrica targets the average viewer while CNN International’s viewers tend to be what the Economist calls cosmocrats.
November 9th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
You can load CNN international on the web right now. That’s what I do.
November 9th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Funny. Being European, I only know CNN International. Still, I think it sucks. Too many talking heads, too much crap, too much sensationalism. The truth is I don’t watch any TV at all because I think it’s mostly crap, so… Maybe you should just ignore TV!?
November 9th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
I live in Mexico and have two t.v. services, one has cnn U.S.
the other cnn international.
You are correct, there is less, I’m the greatest, and no LOU DOBBS. that is the best part. I was an avid Dobbs fan for a long time, however his anti everything really got boring…
November 9th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Americans have been conditioned by Murdoch and others to be gullable and stupid. Sarah Palin is walking, talking truth of this. As such, your average American couldn’t sit through an intelligent news program. They’d be wondering where all the dancers were.
November 9th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Is it CNN’s contempt for Americans, Matt? Or Americans contempt for journalism? I’d vote the latter. Corporations go where the money is.
November 9th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
This phenomena seems not only limited to CNN, but to some of our most popular magazines, one of such was/is the Newsweek International issue. Also, the IHT publishes articles, opinions and stories that never surface in the US.
Wonder why?
Houston,TX
November 9th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
You are correct, there is less, I’m the greatest, and no LOU DOBBS. that is the best part. I was an avid Dobbs fan for a long time, however his anti everything really got boring…
He’s as dumb as a box of hammers when it comes to the economy, too. It’s astonishing he got his start reporting on business news. I don’t know if anybody caught his latest interview of Paul Krugman, but it was really painful to watch. Major props to the good professor for his patience and good humor.
November 9th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Remember the demographics Matt – you watch CNN International while staying in pricey overseas hotels in Switzerland, and watch CNN domestic while at home in a scuzzy flophouse in DC. That’s pretty representative of the respective demographics, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the respective news values are different.
November 9th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
PEOPLE GET THE TV THEY DESERVE (period)
November 9th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
You can get live streaming of Al Jazeera newscasts in English here
November 9th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Funny, I just got back from abroad and found CNN International to be annoyingly repetitive and absurdly lacking in content, which was partly due to the fact that interviews would be cut to two or three questions. But, I don’t watch CNN, so I can’t really compare them.
The number of commercials CNNi has for vacationing in exotic locals was just silly.
November 9th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
CNN International is horribly bland and repetitive.The production values are a disgrace, vintage 1985.
Even Sky News is better.
And if I tune in to English news, I don’t want to hear heavy Russian or Greek accents.
November 9th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
A while back, TvNewsLIES.org did an analysis of the amount of actual news on CNN… seems that they US version offers less than five percent in news stories during a typical hour of infotainment.
http://tvnewslies.org/html/cnn___contains_no_news.html
November 9th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
I get CNN-Int in Australia, it comes with the cheapest cable TV subscription plan so here is not restricted to the high faultin’ business jet setters. In this election period I was sometimes forced to actually switch to Fox News for American politics news because CNN Asia was doing something else. When the first debate was on, they went right up with their ordinary european golf event highlights or whatever up to 30 seconds before the candidates walked on stage. Sure Wolf and the team can be annoying but sometimes you want talking heads. They must’ve got complaints because we got the full lead up with exploding maps and everything for hours before the other debates.
And, yes, I appreciate that the live CNN American block during (our) day cuts back to the Hong Kong studio just before Lou Dobbs.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
I think CNN would own the news market if they just got enough cable outlets to run CNN international. I know I would watch it.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
fewer talking heads, less crap
DuBois, get a fricking dictionary. Lots of things your high school English teacher may have told you were “incorrect” English were and are no such things. “Less” can mean fewer in number. Or do you go to the “10 items or fewer” aisle at the market.
November 10th, 2008 at 12:44 am
This reminds me of the difference I noted between commercial TV in the US vs. the Armed Network recently while spending a week in an overseas BOQ.
AFN shows a selection of the same crap that’s on the commercial networks, except for the ads. It’s all public service announcment material: do the right thing by your family, follow the UCMJ, patriotic themes, etc.
I never considered how the ads set the tone for the network tv experience, especially now that even PBS has been forced to run
November 10th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Oops, Armed Forces Network.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:29 am
My public TV has BBC news at 10:00 p.m. M-F on a sub-channel. I also watch a quarter hour of the “after midnight” news summary from bfmtv.fr out of Paris on internet stream. I generally understand the crawl and catch enough to fill in some detail.
Which I guess is to say that I gave up on the mainstream media during the Bush regime.
November 10th, 2008 at 10:37 am
CNN-I is definitely head and shoulders above CNN. I think the main reason is the “international” part. A typical newsday on CNN-I has reports of coups and near-coups, this opposition leader arrested, this one released, a bomb in a marketplace, a protest at a Chinese factory, an earthquake here, a tsunami there, business news from Asia and Europe. Just giving the most important headlines generated in vast, diverse and ever-changing world fills the broadcasts without the need to look for filler.
November 10th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Re: Simeon Wildman’s comment:
“I really enjoy CCTV-9, the international Chinese propaganda arm.”
We Americans are so lucky that our corporate news media doesn’t peddle propaganda.
Yeah, right.
The only difference between nations with state-controlled media (like China and Iran) is that people in those nations KNOW that what they’re being fed is propaganda and they know to take it with a grain of salt.
By contrast, Americans are blissfully unaware of the pro-corporate, pro-Military Industrial Complex propaganda that they’re fed by the MSM. After all, we have “Freedom of Speech” in America, right?
The MSM in America exists for the same reason as our government: to serve the interests of the rich and powerful.
November 10th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
The Global Edition is basically just the same show a day later and with a special intro/outro from Jon.
Totally agree about the quality of the news. Having lived outside of the US for many years now, I’m always shocked when I come back and watch American cable news: from the topics that they choose to cover to the way the anchors speak, US cable news is a weird monster.
November 11th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
In Australia I watch CNNi and sometimes it is very interesting. The Daily Show Global Edition is on CNN in the weekend but now it is also going to be on Free to Air network 10. I always thought that Sky News is a New Zealand network.
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