Word: furnad
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Terry Anderson is talking now, but Furnad's main concern is the West Palm Beach courtroom, where testimony is resuming. "C'mon, Terry, speed it up," he urges. At 4:20 Anderson finally finishes. Turn on the anchor's mike ("He's leaving! Talk, Lou!"), cut to a commercial, then back to the trial. Only seven minutes of the accuser's testimony has been missed; her emotional account of the incident is yet to come. Count it another CNN success...
...Turner is in charge of getting news into the building, Furnad, senior executive producer, is the man responsible for getting it on the air. An 18- year veteran of ABC News who joined CNN in 1983, Furnad is a feisty field general who can berate his troops for a technical slipup one minute and praise them warmly the next. Staffers stand in awe of his poise and judgment under fire. "As wild as he is," says anchor Bobbie Battista, "there isn't anybody I'd rather have in there...
Under Johnson, CNN's penny-pinching habits have been somewhat relaxed. Early in the Smith trial, for example, Furnad learned that Greta Van Susteren, one of CNN's Washington-based legal experts, had to be in Detroit for two days the following week. The cost of setting her up in a Detroit studio would be $2,000. Furnad was inclined to get another Washington commentator, but Johnson decided to spend the money. Result: Van Susteren was on hand for the verdict...
...network has been diligent about running in full the candidacy announcement of every major-party presidential aspirant. Live coverage of presidential press conferences is another CNN tradition. But when Bush called a session during the Smith trial to announce that Samuel Skinner would be his new chief of staff, Furnad chose to stick with the trial. Johnson ventured into the control room during the conference and nervously watched as Bush took questions, unseen by CNN viewers. "I still feel some anguish about that," he said later...
Even in handling the trial itself, an instinct for fairness carried CNN through the slow stretches. "If you leave out one witness because he or she is dull, you lose a building block," said Furnad. "We have some obligation to the audience to be consistent in the way we cover it." Viewers may have been alternately bored and titillated, but they were not shortchanged. For all the salacious material, CNN's coverage was sober, well balanced and informative. That it was a ratings hit as well (the average audience was 1.9 million homes, nearly five times normal) should come...