CNN
The Cable News Network is an American multinational news media company and the flagship namesake property of CNN Worldwide, a division of Warner Bros. Discovery. Founded on June 1, 1980, by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, CNN is the first television channel to provide 24-hour news coverage and the first all-news television channel in the United States.
As of December 2023, CNN had 68,974,000 television households as subscribers in the United States. According to Nielsen, down from 80 million in March 2021. In June 2021, CNN ranked third in viewership among cable news networks, behind Fox News and MS NOW, averaging 580,000 viewers throughout the day, down 49% from a year earlier, amid sharp declines in viewers across all cable news networks. While CNN ranked 14th among all basic cable networks in 2019, then jumped to 7th during a major surge for the three largest cable news networks, it settled back to number 11 in 2021 and had further declined to number 21 in 2022.
Globally, CNN programming has aired through CNN International, seen by viewers in over 212 countries and territories. Since May 2019, however, the American domestic version has absorbed international news coverage in order to reduce programming costs. The American version, sometimes referred to as CNN, is also available in Canada, and some islands in the Caribbean. CNN also licenses its brand and content to other channels, such as CNN-News18 in India. In Japan it broadcasts CNNj which started in 2003, with simultaneous translation in Japanese.
CNN has often been subjected to criticism from conservative media and other organizations for having a perceived left-wing bias; conversely, it has also been criticized for false balance in support of conservative positions.
History
The Cable News Network launched at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on June 1, 1980. After an introduction by Ted Turner, the husband and wife team of David Walker and Lois Hart anchored the channel's first newscast. Burt Reinhardt, the executive vice president of CNN, hired most of the channel's first 200 employees, including the network's first news anchor, former ABC News Capitol Hill senior correspondent Bernard Shaw.Since its debut, CNN has expanded its reach to several cable and satellite television providers, websites, and specialized closed-circuit channels. The company has 42 bureaus, more than 900 affiliated local stations, and several regional and foreign-language networks around the world. The channel's success made a bona-fide mogul of founder Ted Turner and set the stage for conglomerate Time Warner's eventual acquisition of the Turner Broadcasting System in 1996.
Programming
Current schedule
CNN's current weekday schedule consists mostly of rolling news programming during daytime hours, followed by in-depth news and information programs with a focus on political news and discussion during the evening and primetime hours. The network's morning programming consists of Early Start, an early-morning news program now hosted by Rahel Solomon at 5:00 a.m. ET. This is followed by CNN This Morning, hosted by Audie Cornish, at 6 a.m. ET. Since April 2023, CNN News Central has served as the network's rolling news block on weekdays, with a morning edition anchored by John Berman, Kate Bolduan, and Sara Sidner from 7 a.m–10 a.m., and an afternoon edition from 1–4 p.m. ET anchored by Brianna Keilar and Boris Sanchez. The gap between the two editions of News Central is filled by The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown, and Inside Politics with Dana Bash in the noon hour. CNN's late afternoon and early evening lineup consists of The Arena with Kasie Hunt followed at 5 p.m. by The Lead with Jake Tapper.The network's evening and prime time lineup from at 7 p.m. onward is devoted towards personality-based discussion programs. including Erin Burnett OutFront, Anderson Cooper 360°, The Source with Kaitlan Collins, CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip, and Laura Coates Live. The East Coast late-night hours were previously filled by reruns of prime time programs; in October 2025, the network introduced a live program anchored from Los Angeles, The Story Is with Elex Michaelson, which airs from 9–11 p.m. PT.
Weekend programming follows a different schedule, with the morning show CNN This Morning Weekend with Victor Blackwell, followed on Saturday mornings by Smerconish with Michael Smerconish, Table for Five, and ''The Amanpour Hour with Christine Amanpour. The Sunday morning lineup consists primarily of political talk shows, including Inside Politics with Manu Raju. State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, and the international affairs program Fareed Zakaria GPS. Weekend afternoons are filled by the rolling news block CNN Newsroom''.
The prime time schedule on weekends is dedicated primarily to factual programming, such as documentary films, miniseries, and specials relating to current affairs, politics, and popular culture, as well as reality-style docuseries.
Past programming
For the 2014–15 season, after canceling Piers Morgan Tonight, CNN experimented with running factual and reality-style programming during the 9:00 p.m. ET hour, such as John Walsh's The Hunt, This Is Life with Lisa Ling, and Mike Rowe's Somebody's Gotta Do It. Then-president Jeff Zucker explained that this new lineup was intended to shift CNN away from a reliance on pundit-oriented programs, and attract younger demographics to the network. Zucker stated that the 9:00 p.m. hour could be pre-empted during major news events for expanded coverage. These changes coincided with the introduction of a new imaging campaign for the network, featuring the slogan "Go there". In May 2014, CNN premiered The Sixties, a documentary miniseries produced by Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman which chronicled the United States in the 1960s. Owing to its success, CNN commissioned follow-ups focusing on other decades. Anderson Cooper 360° was expanded to run two hours long, from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.By 2019, CNN had produced at least 35 original series. Alongside the Hanks/Goetzman franchise, CNN has aired other documentary miniseries relating to news and US policies, such as The Bush Years, and American Dynasties: The Kennedys—which saw the highest ratings of any CNN original series premiere to-date, with 1.7-million viewers. Parts Unknown concluded after the 2018 suicide of its host Anthony Bourdain; CNN announced several new miniseries and docuseries for 2019, including American Style, The Redemption Project with Van Jones, Chasing Life with Sanjay Gupta, Tricky Dick, The Movies, and Once in a Great City: Detroit 1962–64.
With the takeover of CNN by Chris Licht and Warner Bros. Discovery, it was announced in October 2022 that CNN would cut back on acquisitions and commissions from third-parties as a cost-cutting measure, but Licht stressed that "long-form content remains an important pillar of our programming", while the network announced a slate for 2023 that would include commissions such as Giuliani: What Happened to America's Mayor?, United States of Scandal, and The 2010s. In May 2024, CNN ordered an American version of the long-running British news comedy panel show Have I Got News for You.
On-air presentation
CNN began broadcasting in the high-definition 1080i resolution format in September 2007. This format is now standard for CNN and is available on all major cable and satellite providers.CNN's political coverage in HD was first given mobility by the introduction of the CNN Election Express bus in October 2007. The Election Express vehicle, capable of five simultaneous HD feeds, was used for the channel's CNN-YouTube presidential debates and for presidential candidate interviews.
In December 2008, CNN introduced a comprehensive redesign of its on-air appearance, which replaced an existing style that had been used since 2004. On-air graphics took a rounded, flat look in a predominantly black, white, and red color scheme, and the introduction of a new box next to the CNN logo for displaying show logos and segment-specific graphics, rather than as a large banner above the lower third. The redesign also replaced the scrolling ticker with a static "flipper", which could either display a feed of news headlines, or "topical" details related to a story.
CNN's next major redesign was introduced on January 10, 2011, replacing the dark, flat appearance of the 2008 look with a glossier, blue-and-white color scheme, moving the secondary logo box to the opposite end of the screen, and framing its graphics for the 16:9 aspect ratio. On February 18, 2013, following Jeff Zucker's arrival as head of the network, the "flipper" was dropped and reverted to a scrolling ticker.
On August 11, 2014, CNN introduced a new graphics package, dropping the glossy appearance for a flat, rectangular scheme incorporating red, white, and black colors, and the Gotham typeface. The ticker alternated between general headlines and financial news from CNN Business, and the secondary logo box was replaced with a smaller box below the CNN bug, which displayed either the title, hashtag, or Twitter handle for the show being aired or its anchor. In April 2016, CNN began to introduce a new corporate typeface, known as "CNN Sans", across all of its platforms. Inspired by Helvetica Neue and commissioned after consultations with Troika Design Group, the font family consists of 30 different versions with varying weights and widths to facilitate use across print, television, and digital mediums. CNN International would also adopt these graphics, but with the CNN logo bug having a white on red color scheme to differentiate it from the domestic network.
In August 2016, CNN announced the launch of CNN Aerial Imagery and Reporting, a drone-based news collecting operation to integrate aerial imagery and reporting across all CNN branches and platforms, along with Turner Broadcasting and Time Warner entities.
On June 1, 2023, CNN refreshed its graphics to mark the 43rd anniversary of its launch, using gradients and rounded corners, thinner fonts, and a modified layout that moved the show title to a secondary tab on the lower third next to the segment title, and replaced the ticker with a static "flipper" for the first time since 2013, among other changes. Amid poor internal reception to the redesign and the firing of Chris Licht as head of CNN, elements of the prior graphics began to be reinstated later that month, including the bolder typography previously used for lower third headlines. Further changes were made on August 14, 2023, with the return of the scrolling ticker and the show title box to make it closer resemble the 2014–23 graphics, but maintaining most of the other visual changes.
On June 27, 2024, CNN hosted the first presidential debate for former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. CNN claimed that more people watched the CNN Presidential Debate than any other CNN program in history.