I don't understand this obsession with New York at all. It's a very expensive city, and it also happens to be rather peripheral geographically (and often psychologically) to the rest of the United States. Yes, it's a media hub, but in these days in instant communications, does that even matter?
I'm thinking that they will lose many talented producers and behind the scenes talent because of the move. Many may not want to deal with the living expenses, the cost / stress of a move and upending their families. It definitely will be a culture shock.
Maybe they will just dump the excess real estate and build a new production hub on their TechWood campus where the other Turner properties are located.
I've never quite been able to understand why this space (which is on air for so much of the day) is so cramped. They never seemed to have a problem with newsroom space in the past. In the days of CNNfn and American Morning, the newsroom set was positively cavernous. Have they downsized since then?
Not sure about why the set up is this way. Its horrifying cheap looking on air. Doesnt feel big and important as the newsroon did from CNN Center. But I suspect because they are planning to leave the current Time Warner Center when the new Time Warner Center is built at Hudson Yards...so Zucker & Co is happy with the status quo for the time being. But I dont think a piece of steel has been erected yet. They seem to be in a holding pattern studio wise.
But as the TVLive Rumor said some MC operations will remain at Techwood so something of CNN will be left the channel itself will be virtually gone from Atlanta. Knowing Zucker & Co they will probably be glad to get rid of Atlanta based employees because they wont have to pay for relocation costs and they will hire NYC area talent that already work at other channels in the city, resulting it in a even greater samey-ness CNN has developed. Ugh
The cheapest thing about that newsroom set (just about visible on the monitor on the bottom right of the pic) is that the presenter has to fold down their laptop screen to avoid it appearing in the close-up shots. And it's not even a proper anchor desk - the presenter has to perch on the end.
Hard to see any real need for them to relocate to New York, other than to follow the crowd. If CNN was able to revolutionise broadcast news from Atlanta in a much less hi-tech age, there's even less reason for them to be in New York nowadays.
Didn't I read something a while ago that said that Zucker's office is just to the left of that picture, and that he likes watching the shows that way? It is interesting to see how little CNN cares about set design post-Zucker. Aside from the New Day studio (which is totally off brand, in my opinion), every other set that's used on CNN is just recycled bits of old ones.
For the record, I do like that newsroom setup, but it shouldn't be used for all dayside programming, especially after they mothballed that beautiful old CNNfn/American Morning/AC360 space.
I also quite like that set up. It is a bit strange that it's in the middle of the newsroom, maybe it would give us a better view if it was at one end of the newsroom. Anyway, they used it nicely back in 2014 for World Biz Today on CNNI.
BTW, only Brooke Baldwin sits at the edge of the desk in order to show her legs. Other presenters use a normal position.
As an aside, there are some pretty interesting pictures of sets and workspaces on this Behance page of an architectural firm that used to work with Clickspring and Jack Morton. The Time Warner Center has always confused people on here and on other sites as to what's where. From what I do know, the current newsroom setup is in the old CNN Money newsroom, which is on a different floor from the "Communication Center" set, which was originally the space for CNNfn. From what I've been able to dig up, CNNfn moved into the Time Warner Center around 2004 into this gorgeous studio below, only for CNNfn to fold that same year.
CNN Domestic then claimed that space as their own when they moved out of the Time Life building. Clickspring updated the set, and it didn't look quite as grand without the windows, but it still looked nice. For a long time, every New York show came from here aside from Lou Dobbs and the occasional Larry King. Who knows what this space is used for now, though it was looking a little tattered after the almost constant modifications to it.
I loved that American Morning set, it was a perfect mix of newsroom view plus videowalls, newswall and other presenting areas. After AM was replaced with a bunch of short lived flop morning shows, the destruction of this set started as well. It was constantly changed, updated and messed with. Does it even exist anymore? I don't think anything comes from there anymore. The last time I saw it was during one of Amanpour's random NY visits, I think.
American Morning's streetside set from the early 00s is still my favourite...
The studio, in the Time Life building, was very close to the Fox News studios - in fact, you can see the red ticker on the outside of the Fox studios in the background on the first video.
Always seemed an odd place to base a news channel. In terms of size it's the equivalent of having Sky News based in Nottingham
Thats what made CNN unique because it wasnt stuck in the NYC based media machine. Atlanta is not one of the largest cities in the US but its far from insignificant. Its by far the largest in the Southeast and is the home of Coca-Cola many other large global corporations and has a huge media media/movie scene. Part of which was created by Turner. And the city has a great cultural influence in the US. If CNN was based in a city like Pittsburgh or Cleveland, etc or even Charlotte then I'd have to agree.
Last edited by Mouseboy33 on 16 August 2016 1:12pm
Plus home to the busiest airport in the world, and host of the 1996 Olympics!
Certainly not an insignificant city. The problem is that national media (and therefore the people who work in it) has a habit of clustering in one or, at most, a handful of big cities - Paris for France, London and (somewhat artificially) Manchester for the UK, New York, LA and DC for the US.
I can only assume that, as a result, they feel there's a better talent pool in New York. Although, as Jeff Zucker originally said, CNN's heart and soul is in Atlanta - so a channel staffed by ex-network, Fox News and MSNBC folks won't be the same as the ground-breaking CNN that grew up in the south.
