Key Points:

• CNN, owned by Warner Brothers Discovery, struggles with declining viewership as people shift to online news.
• Once respected, CNN now ranks third among cable networks, despite multiple reinventions.
• The network’s leftward shift has alienated centrist viewers.
• Also: Smart investors are scooping up shares of these 2 Dividend Legends, hand over fist

Lee and Doug discuss the challenges facing Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ: WBD), specifically focusing on CNN, which the company owns. They describe CNN as a “train wreck” due to declining viewership, as more people get their news online or through social media platforms like Facebook (NASDAQ: META) and Twitter. They note that CNN now ranks third among cable news networks, behind Fox News and MSNBC, and has struggled despite multiple attempts at reinvention. The conversation also touches on CNN’s history, recalling its heyday during the first Gulf War when it was widely respected as a middle-of-the-road news source. However, they observe that as CNN shifted further to the left politically, it lost a significant portion of its audience, particularly centrist Americans.

Transcript:

Well, a good example for people who don’t know, you know, Warner Bros. Discovery well, other than the Warner Bros. studios, is they own CNN.

Now, CNN’s a train wreck.

And I don’t know that that’s anybody’s fault.

It’s just that people do not watch a lot of news anymore.

They get it all online or it’s pushed to them through Facebook or Twitter.

And then there’s also CNN and MSNBC and Fox News.

And Fox News has a lot of audience because it’s highly conservative.

And CNN now runs number three among the cable networks in terms of ratings.

And that’s a good example of something you cannot do anything about.

They’ve been number three.

It’s like they’ve reinvented CNN a bunch of times and they’re just not getting anywhere.

Yeah.

And it’s funny for old-timers like ourselves.

There was a day when CNN was highly respected.

The first Gulf War in the early 90s.

Oh, God, yes.

They had huge eyeballs.

I mean, that’s how Wolf Blitzer got big.

And, you know, people of that ilk.

And, you know, and for years, whether people know this or not, but you know, Ted Turner owned all of that.

He owned CNN and it was run well.

And it was some down the road, middle of the, you know, middle of the road news organization that was well-respected.

But it drifted left.

Ted, you know, Ted finally, you know, got out and drifted farther left, farther left, farther left to the point where, you know, centrist Americans were, even if they’re independents or libertarian or whatever, they won’t watch it because it’s too far left.

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