CNN is trying to be hip. Take from a guy with a gray beard: There’s nothing more pathetically cringeworthy than an old fart trying to be with it. (Just ask for my son’s reaction when I play hiphop in the car.)
But that is what CNN is dying to do with its new video podcast called The Grist. They announce that “this isn’t news, people, and it certainly isn’t important” as they show wacky clips and try to deliver wacky lines from a would-be-wacky host (Jarrett Bellini, a media operations feeds coordinator, according to MediaWeek).
I’ll tell you what would be a lot cooler: Take all those wacky, unused clips and put them up online so anyone can download and remix them and put the results up on YouTube et al. Go ahead and put the CNN bug in the corner; by all means, take credit for providing the grist for the bigger mill that is the creative community on the internet. If you do that, your stuff will be everywhere and you’ll be cool for helping to make it happen.
And since I’m giving unsolicited advice to CNN, I wish they would also put up Howie Kurtz’s Reliable Sources online so I don’t have to skip church to watch it, thereby going straight to hell, and also don’t have to bother recording it — and also could link to what’s said in it. I want to subscribe to the show and every week I’ll watch it, together with commercials — I promise — on my iPod. And if there were a particularly great clip, I’d even put it on my site (with CNN’s brand and advertising) if you’d let me. I’d help promote and distribute the content that is never seen again once it’s on and off the air. Wouldn’t that be ever so hip?
I always enjoy your blog. I’d say your idea is more than hip. It’s what people want. Why wouldn’t a network want to get every bit of value out of every single bit of content?
I don’t have a problem with “The Grist” in and of itself; electrons are free, after all, so if CNN wants to throw together a few cheap podcasts and toss them up on their website, more power to them. It’s the two big underlying issues behind the creation of “The Grist” that I find pathetic.
First, CNN has made it quite clear that this sort of podcast is part of their master plan to reach a much younger demographic. It’s not going to work, for obvious reasons: This sort of “wild and wacky” video isn’t anything that isn’t already available in five zillion other places, and more importantly, it just isn’t very good. Slapping a CNN bug on crap doesn’t make it any less crap. What 18-year-old is going to go out of his way to visit CNN.com to grab this? There are ways to reach out to younger potential viewers, but this isn’t one of them.
Second, “The Grist” and the other five new video podcasts CNN has launched all show that the CNN newsroom culture is completely devoid of people who have any original ideas. Every single one of these new minishows is derivative, nothing more than the umpteenth iteration of the same old same old. (In this case, I shouldn’t be singling out CNN, of course; no cable news channel has come up with a single original concept in years.) CNN and MSNBC desperately need to hire some producers who are willing to take some big chances, and then they need to actually allow the chances to be taken. (Not that Fox will be able to stay static forever, but at least their model works, for now.)
[...] BuzzMachine » Too hip for words CNN is trying to be hip. Take from a guy with a gray beard: There’s nothing more pathetically cringeworthy than an old fart trying to be with it. (Just ask for my son’s reaction when I play hiphop in the car.) (tags: Media, CNN, Buzz) [...]
Hi,
I think you’re missing the real issue, which is that CNN’s trying to figure out how to stay a relevant news source as — now — 31 percent of Americans surveyed go online to get their info. It’s not just having a website, but what the website has. Also, CNN’s trying to reach a younger crowd, which not only gets most of it’s news online — 70 percent, I think — but recognizes new CNN personalities like Brianna Keilar who was with MTV-U, which went right into college campuses.