Media mess - 2

A story on recode.net:

“Please! Failing? CNN is completing its Hall of Fame year,” John Martin, the CEO of Turner, which owns CNN, said at An Evening with Code Media event in New York Wednesday.

.........

Trump has also been good for business. CNN will book $1 billion in profit this year, and profits could go even higher next year since the network will get higher carriage fees from distributors. It will also see lower expenses from not having to cover a presidential election.

And despite advertising likely being down, a Trump administration could spur audiences to keep tuned to CNN.

“Tough to predict what the ratings will be,” Martin said, “although with the Trump administration, there will be a general fascination that wouldn’t be the same as under a Clinton administration. ... Trump will be a little bit better from a business standpoint.”

 This via Alex Ross at The New Yorker who wrote:

Traditional media outlets exhibited the same value-free mentality, pumping out Trump stories and airing his rallies because they got hits and high ratings. At some point over the summer, it struck me that the greater part of the media wanted Trump to be elected, consciously or unconsciously. He would be more “interesting” than Hillary Clinton; he would “pop.” That suspicion was confirmed the other day when a CNN executive, boasting of his network’s billion-dollar profit in 2016, spoke of “a general fascination that wouldn’t be the same as under a Clinton Administration.” Of the clouds and shadows that hung over Clinton in the press, the darkest, perhaps, was the prospect of boredom.

Martin's interview can be viewed here.

First "Media mess" post here.

PS:

A September interview between the same pair is here:
Excerpt:

CNN is having a great year this year, courtesy of Donald Trump.

Best year in history.

What happens next year?

It’s going to have a better year. Financially.

Because?

We’re going to have a big affiliate fee step-up. We are going to probably attribute more of our prime-time lineup to originals. And we’re going to spend a lot less money on election coverage.

There’s been a lot of soul-searching in the press about what responsibility they’ve had for Trump’s rise. Everyone likes having Trump on TV. CNN in particular seems friendly to him. Are you comfortable with the way you’ve treated Trump?

I am. I don’t agree that we’ve been particularly friendly to him. He’s been everywhere. And I think we’ve had some of the most honest conversations with him, of any news organization. It’s always a judgment call, it’s always a balance that we’re trying to achieve every day. But I’m really really proud of the journalistic integrity that CNN has been able to maintain throughout the election.

If you just look at the stats, the fact that CNN has hosted more debates and town halls than every other network, broadcast and cable, combined, I think should tell you something about how the DNC, the RNC and others view the ability of CNN.

Did Jeff Zucker tell you, "I’m going to hire (former Trump campaign manager) Corey Lewandowski" before he did that?

It’s within his approval to do that. I knew about it.

And you’re comfortable with that?

Yeah. Do you want to explore on that?

It seems pretty straightforward, but you tell me.

The idea there was consistent with everything else that CNN has done — to make sure that we have people on both sides of the argument. And Corey obviously was a very meaningful player. And if viewers wanted to gain a particular insight, we thought he would be a valuable asset and contributor to the network.

And you’re not the first person to have someone who was working for a political campaign on your payroll. But there was a particular issue with him, because he was still getting money from Trump — there was a debate about whether it was severance or not.

I’m not even aware of that.