Altering News Norms--the Influence Of Cnn (4)

By Author: FIRELEAVES
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Most of the commercial television stations are affiliated with a network. Until 1986, when someone said "the networks" they were referring to ABC, NBC, CBS, and, occasionally, CNN, but in that year the Fox Broadcasting Company began developing the Fox network. Owned by Media Corporation president Rupert Murdoch, the Fox net-work expanded its number of affiliate stations from 130 to 200 when it purchased the rights to broadcast NFL football games. Unlike ABC, CBS, and NBC, the Fox network does not offer national news shows in the morning and the evening, although several local Fox affiliates have their IWC Replica Watches own news teams and local news programs. In mid-1995, Fox, in conjunction with the news service Reuters, began developing a news program that would be available twenty-four hours a day for Fox affiliates.

More than the other commercial networks, Fox has focused on attracting younger viewers with programs such as The X-Files, Beverly Hills, 90210, and Melrose Place. One of Fox's continuing hit shows is the offbeat cartoon program ...
... The Simpsons. Between 1989 and 1990, this single show boosted Fox's Sunday night ratings 21 percent.28 Brandon Tartikoff, former president of NBC's entertainment divisions, explains Fox's strategy this way:

Fox is after the 18--34-year-old demographic. Why? Because that is the most fickle group of people on the planet today who have any sort of disposable income. They don't have lifelong habits formed, they haven't always bought a Buick, they haven't always drunk Yuban coffee, and they haven't always used Tide. If you come in with a brand new splashy advertising campaign for a Nissan car or for a new brand of toothpaste, you've got a real buyer there.

In the last quarter of 1994, Fox was the network with the youngest audience, with an average age of 29.6, while CBS had the oldest, with an average age of 50.

Two new commercial networks, United Paramount Network (UPN) and Warner Bros. (WB), began broadcasting new entertainment shows in January 1995. WB began with one night of broadcasting, and UPN started with two nights. By the end of the regular broadcast season, 7 of the UPN and WB shows occupied the lowest positions of the 142 shows rated during the year. Only UPN's Star Trek Voyager, which built on fans' decades-long loyalty to the show's concept, was consistently among the top-100 rated programs.31 Learning from Fox's success, however, UPN and WB aggressively targeted youth, a strategy that has paid off. WB is currently the number-one rated network for teens, driven by such youth-popular shows as Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Dawson's Creek, Charmed, and Seventh Heaven.-12 By spring 1999, however, WB had surpassed UPN in viewership and revenues, a surge partially attributable to the teen audience. The fall 1999 season for WB included spin-offs from both Buffy and Seventh Heaven. In response, UPN added the World Wrestling Federation's Smackdown and an action sci-fi movie night for fall 1999. Two other networks were in the offing in 1999: USA Networks, owned by Barry Diller, and Paxson Communications, whose administrators see its niche as providing wholesome family entertainment. Paxson operates television stations in seventy-five markets.

Government regulations limiting media ownership have been under scrutiny since the beginning of the 1990s. The Telecommunications Replica IWC Watches Bill passed in February 1996 lifted the law that banned a single company from owning a television station and cable system in the same market. Efforts to relax other single-ownership regulations--for example, ownership of multiple radio or television stations in a single market--had been