Word: cnn
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...news operation after last month's California earthquake. KRON, the NBC affiliate in San Francisco, tried to transmit its footage of the disaster to NBC via satellite. But for more than an hour after the tremor, a glitch-prone NBC network was unable to broadcast any live reports. Meanwhile, CNN, which had access to the same satellite signal, was airing KRON's vivid images of the destruction...
What's going on here? In almost any other industry, CNN's coups would be viewed as nothing short of piracy. But television is a business built on tenuous alliances. While the three major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- have long been the dominant U.S. television programmers, they own only 20 stations. The other 620 that carry network programming are known as affiliates. These stations have traditionally served as supplementary news sources for the networks, but only loyalty and a common stake in competing against the other networks have prevented the affiliates from gathering and selling their stories elsewhere...
...broadcast stations, though, perhaps the most important new partnership is the one they have formed with CNN. Both KRON and WSB are among the 121 network affiliates that are CNN partners. The Atlanta-based cable network airs stories provided by its partners via satellite, and distributes the stories to other station partners for their use. Broadcasters believe local viewers who catch their news teams on cable may be more likely to tune in the station if they like what they see. Says Peter Herford, a former CBS News executive who directs the Benton Broadcast Fellowships at the University of Chicago...
Until now, the broadcast networks had not viewed the CNN partnerships as much of a threat, since most of the stories involved never ran on the networks anyway. Those days are gone. When NBC News delayed switching to live coverage the night of the California earthquake, for example, CNN effectively replaced the network for CNN's 45 NBC affiliates by feeding them the live coverage from KRON in San Francisco and KNBC in Los Angeles...
...frustrated Michael Gartner, president of NBC News, later told the New York Times that the arrangements his affiliates had made with CNN "must be explored sooner or later." But the NBC affiliates rebuffed Gartner's suggestion. "It's too late for the networks to go back to the old way, when / they were the only ones we associated with," said Bob Jordan, news director of NBC affiliate KCRA in Sacramento. "Too many affiliates have other partnerships now and are unwilling to give them...