It8217;s no longer CNN8217;s war

CNN seems to have lost its monopoly on war coverage as fledgling networks run a fierce competition with the all-news giant to bring the u...

CNN seems to have lost its monopoly on war coverage as fledgling networks run a fierce competition with the all-news giant to bring the unfolding tragedy in Kosovo to the American public. Unlike the 1991 Gulf War, Kosovo is not a 8220;CNN war,8221; as newcomers like MSNBC and Fox News Channel vie for ratings in the round-the-clock news market.

8220;All news channels have become an extremely competitive market,8221; said Joan Konner, dean of the Columbia University Journalism School in New York and publisher of The Columbia Journalism Review.

8220;MSNBC has thrown a lot into this, they made a real commitment,8221; to covering the Kosovo war, Konner said. Neil Hickey, a journalism professor at Columbia, described Cable News Network as 8220;the granddad8221; of round-the-clock news coverage with its 19 years in existence.

8220;The others are barely three, but they are performing very well,8221; he added, however. 8220;They all welcome such a thing,8221; Hickey said, referring to NATO Air strikes against Yugoslavia. 8220;When you have 24 hours aday to fill, this is solid gold.8221; During the first week of the strikes, which began on March 24, the number of homes watching CNN in prime time went up by 79 per cent to 1.08 million viewers, according to the Nielsen television index.

MSNBC, co-founded by Microsoft and the NBC network, experienced a 107 per cent increase in its viewing audience, some 348,000 homes. And Fox, created by Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, gained 23 per cent to 269,000 viewer households.

CNN is available in some 76 million homes, compared to 48 million for MSNBC and 39 million for Fox. But the numbers still represent a small percentage of total television viewers. Over the same week, the three regular networks ABC, CBS and NBC scored just as high around 3:00 a.m. as CNN did in prime time, while more than 14 million households watched the 60 Minutes news show on CBS. The war in Kosovo began just as the Fox News Channel was celebrating its strongest growth yet with its audience tripling between early 1998 and thefirst quarter of 1999.

8220;We report. You decide,8221; Fox viewers are told. But the politics of Murdoch and Fox News Channel President Roger Ailes, a former adviser to Republican presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush, clearly sets Fox apart as the most conservative of the three news cable networks.

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Some analysts say this conservative image is behind Fox8217;s success as a network providing a different perspective in a sea of liberal media outlets. After all, CNN has more foreign bureaus than Fox and MSNBC combined, while MSNBC can count on the solid reputation and quality of NBC journalists, they point out.

8220;The public doesn8217;t care. Most of them think the media tips to the left anyway,8221; Ailes wrote in The New York Times, echoing the findings of several US public opinion polls. 8220;If our enemies keep attacking us as tipping to the right, fine,8221; he added. 8220;That helps us attract more viewers.8221;