CNN to Deliver More Local News On Its Web Site
Content-Swap Deal — Will Raise User Traffic; — A Push for Ad Revenue — In a strategy shift, CNN, known primarily for national and international news, is expected to announce a deal that will allow it to offer more local news on its Web site and …
Context & Ripple Effects
CNN.com enters this deal off a demonstrable traffic engine: in April 2007 its Virginia Tech shooting coverage drew a confirmed record 11.4 million video views in a single day, against a 2.1 million daily average — proof the site's audience surges when big stories break. A local-news layer would give advertisers inventory that performs every day, not only on event days.
The Wall Street Journal frames the move as a strategy shift for a brand built on national and international news, with the explicit goals of raising user traffic and boosting ad revenue. Per the reporting, the arrangement is a content swap with local outlets, announced as expected rather than confirmed — the partner structure matters because it lets CNN add local coverage without fielding its own bureaus.
First-order effects
- Local station partners gain national distribution for their footage and reporting on CNN.com without having to build a comparable web audience themselves.
- CNN.com's editorial identity widens beyond national and international headlines, directly serving the traffic-and-ad-revenue goals the Journal attributes to the plan.
Second-order effects
- Local broadcasters' own websites face a fork: supply content to national portals for reach, or hold it exclusive to keep visitors on their own domains where they sell the ads.
- Rival national news sites come under pressure to negotiate similar content swaps so their ad sales teams can match CNN's newly broadened local inventory.
Third-order effects
- If content swaps become standard practice, the economics of local TV news tilt toward national aggregators that control the audience and the advertising, with stations becoming suppliers rather than destination publishers — a monetization question CNN itself was probing as far back as its July 2006 'Follow the web 2.0 money' examination of how web ventures turn audiences into revenue.
The trend: Television news brands are extending their web reach by trading content with local stations instead of producing it themselves, moving the industry toward portal-supplied distribution.