CNN: Ted Turner's 24-Hour News Bet and the Loss of 11 Million Homes

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When Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld launched the Cable News Network on June 1, 1980, it was the first 24-hour all-news channel in the U.S., and broadcast executives mocked the idea. The first broadcast was anchored by husband and wife David Walker and Lois Hart, and Bernard Shaw was among the first anchors hired. Time Warner acquired CNN in 1996, and as of 2026 it is owned by Skydance. Running around the clock meant paying for producers, satellite trucks and correspondents on days when little happened, so the schedule settled into rolling daytime news blocks and cheaper personality-driven evening shows such as Anderson Cooper 360. Under Jeff Zucker it added Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown and Tom Hanks-produced decade series.

CNN.com launched in 1995 and CNN Digital became the most viewed U.S. digital news outlet in 2021 with 144 million unique visitors, but experiments came and went, including CNN Pipeline, the Beam app bought from Casey Neistat for a reported $25 million, a VR unit, Great Big Story and CNN+. U.S. subscribers fell from about 80 million in March 2021 to 68.9 million by December 2023, and the network slid from seventh among basic cable channels in 2019 to 21st by 2022. A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of guest airtime from 2010 to 2021 found a liberal bias that grew during the Trump administration. CNN settled with Nick Sandmann in 2020, fired Chris Cuomo and let Don Lemon go, and faced staff complaints over its Gaza war coverage.

• A 2008 redesign introduced dark flat graphics and a static flipper in place of a scrolling ticker.
• CNN introduced its own typeface, CNN Sans, in 2016.
• Rounded on-screen graphics tried for the 43rd anniversary in 2023 drew backlash and were largely reversed.
• Chris Cuomo reportedly sought $125 million after his firing.
• CNN teams uncovered modern-day slave auctions in Libya and reported from Wuhan at the onset of the pandemic.