Jeff Zucker has made some changes since officially taking over as CNN’s boss Monday.
• Darth Vader is back: James Earl Jones’ voice once again announces “This is CNN” during breaks, Brian Stelter reports: Zucker “directed the marketing department to put the sound bite back into regular rotation, a CNN spokeswoman said.”
The channel subsequently renewed its licensing deal for the sound bite, and that’s why Mr. Jones’s voice was heard during some of the commercial breaks on CNN’s inauguration coverage.
• But don’t think the network is bound by the past: CNN “must think even more broadly, and not always be bound by what has come before us,” Zucker wrote in a memo.
• An early win: CNN beat other cable outlets in inauguration coverage.
The network came in first place during the oath and inaugural address (11:45am -12:15pm) among total viewers, drawing 3.136 million viewers in all. MSNBC came in second with 2.273 million total viewers, while Fox News had 1.316 million total viewers.
However, viewership of the inauguration was down overall.
• Enter Tapper: Jake Tapper started at CNN Tuesday with a scoop about Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Tom Nides. But is it really a scoop? “Tapper’s article does not mention that Nides is married to CNN vice president and deputy Washington bureau chief Virginia Moseley, who like Tapper recently joined the network from ABC News,” Dylan Byers writes.
A CNN spokesperson later told Byers “Jake Tapper did not discuss this story with Virginia Moseley.” Byers maintains this doesn’t dilute his point: The statement, he writes, “doesn’t really shed light on disclosure practices at CNN, which is the crux of the issue.”
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