Internet Changes Everything

CNN puts broadband in Pipeline

CNN puts broadband in Pipeline - Yahoo! News

By Paul J. Gough Mon Jul 18,12:00 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - CNN on Sunday took the wraps off its top-secret premium broadband service in a move to remake the digital space and offer viewers unprecedented control over their news.

CNN is no stranger to the Web. Its site, http://www.CNN.com, is one of the oldest at 10 years and has offered video from nearly the beginning. But this new premium service, called CNN Pipeline, will go beyond what's been offered recently by such other competitors as ABC News Now and CBS News' broadband site when it begins in the fall.

The downloadable product, available for an as-yet-unannounced monthly charge, will offer four live, on-demand streams of video from the day's major news centers as well as extensive on-demand video news reports, the usual range of CNN.com and wire stories, and a search feature.

"We thought we needed to take something to the next level," said CNN Networks chairman Jim Walton, who gave an onscreen tour of CNN Pipeline during the Television Critics Assn.'s summer press tour at the Beverly Hilton.

He likened the competitors' products to Pong, the earliest video game that took hold in the U.S. in the 1970s.

"What I'm about to show you right now is PlayStation or Nintendo or GameCube," Walton said. The four live streams of video content will be available 24/7; what ones to show will be chosen by CNN.com's editors. He said that it will be live but it won't be raw. There will still be an editorial process, and CNN.com will turn away from anything that doesn't fit standards.

The downloadable player, which was developed by CNN.com during the past 18 months, will only be offered initially for Microsoft Windows users. Apple
Macintosh users will be able to access many of the features but through a Web-based product. Walton said the benefit of CNN Pipeline is that it is tailored for the at-work audience with only a small footprint on the computer workspace.

"You can set up on your screen a small TV in the corner and still do work," Walton said.

Just last week, CBS News made public an extensive broadband Internet site that will remake CBS News' presence on the Web and its video-on-demand capability. But CNN-US president Jon Klein said in an interview Sunday that the projects were on parallel and separate tracks, and CNN did not take any cues from CBS News in the development of its CNN Pipeline. Klein is not only a longtime broadcast journalist but also the founder of FeedRoom, a pioneering broadband service that exists to this day.

Earlier this spring, CNN had announced that it would no longer charge for online video on its Web site, which it had done for many years. Walton said a decision on the price for CNN Pipeline will be made in the next few weeks.

July 19, 2005 at 12:02 AM in Journalism | Permalink | TrackBack (57) | Top of page | Blog Home