1115.org

For a spell earlier this year, CNN US president Jon Klein couldn’t go three days without making a jackass of himself. Stories popped up everywhere about his plans for revamping schedules and personnel, not to mention his bloviatings on CNN’s own brand of journalism as he saw it. As someone who remembers the pre-AOL days, Klein’s buffoonery was just the latest in a string of insults as car chases, missing white women and infotainment replaced the hard news that had been CNN’s trademark. Regular readers will no doubt remember my jihad against Klein when this past summer he made the rounds of nearly every media column explaining his plan to staunch the ratings bleeding, proving only that he is better at getting quoted than running a news operation.

For a time, it seemed that the only real changes at CNN would amount to more Blitzer and less Novak which was a marginal improvement in standards if not quite in the ratings. But then came Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing media-on-media coverage, where it was determined that Anderson Cooper avoided drowning with more style than his competition. Klein, latching onto the Cooper press as if it were actual market research rather than the hagiography-by-herd it was, seized upon circumstance and timing by declining to renew Aaron Brown’s contract and giving his 10pm time slot to Cooper.

“Anderson is one of the most distinctive voices anywhere on television,” said Klein in a press release. “He has broken through the clutter with his candor, his humanity and his emotional connection to the most pressing stories of our time. As a result, he has gained a strong following among viewers that we hope to build on.”

Maybe not that strong:

For the week ended Nov. 13, its first week, “Anderson Cooper 360,” as the new 10-to-midnight show is called, averaged 593,000 viewers, according to Nielsen…down 27 percent from October’s 813,000 average for “NewsNight,” on which Cooper and Brown shared hosting responsibilities for the past month. It’s also well below the 842,000 Brown’s show averaged during 2004.

Cooper also lost 37 percent of “Larry King Live’s” lead-in audience.

Ouch. But the early numbers only tell part of the story of Klein’s incompetence. On 9/11, Brown was so new to CNN that they hadn’t yet found a place for him in their lineup. Nevertheless he was rushed to the roof to anchor their coverage and arguably did a better job than any of his competition. His eventual home on 10PM’s NewsNight, surrounded by shoutfests and celeb features, was one of the most thoughtful looks at the day’s news. It was also possibly the only remaining show that differentiated CNN’s substance from its competition’s flash. The fall of Brown and the rise of Cooper recalls 9/11 in a different way, as described by San Francisco Chronicle TV critic Tim Goodman:

A reminder: Ashleigh Banfield.

Banfield got a ton of ink. She got buzz. She got satirized. Then she got lost.

Banfield, as you’ll remember was the MSNBC reporter who attempted to interview World Trade Center survivors through the debris clinging to their faces. She, like Cooper in Louisiana, achieved buzz for what seemed like little more than stepping out of the studio. Has Klein done any research on whether people liked Cooper’s coverage, or if they just really enjoy watching people in yellow slickers getting thrown around by the elements from the comforts of their own home? The smart money is on the latter, which is a virtual guarantee that Klein’s bet on the former is dead money.