CNN International & Domestic

But here's the problem, I would do the same as you, but we're not normal viewers. Many people stick with the one station. I was in the states for the first few months of 2020, Almost no one had Covid on their radar, compared to the UK or Ireland. All that CNN was on about was Trump, Trump, Trump. Now that might be good for ratings but it doesn't make it a good news channel.

I used to watch CNNi all the time and indeed CNN domestic but over the last 5 years both have declined sharply as actual news outlets. CNNi seems to be dying from a thousand small cuts, while domestic are more concerned with how they look, what they're doing for the weekend and what Trump had said about them that day.

Here's an article from today's Irish Times about CNN's Donie O Sullivan and issues with his mental health.

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/donie-o-sullivan-the-chaos-i-ve-had-in-my-mind-is-more-terrifying-than-the-riot-at-the-capitol-1.4477117

Fair play to him for talking about this subject.

The big difference though being that while Al Jazeera’s speciality does seem to be the Middle East it’s not their sole focus. They cover stories across the globe - the range and breadth of stories in just a half-hour AJE bulletin normally seems to trump what you’d get from watching CNNI all day who seem to cover a smaller range of stories and often similar types of stories day-after-day. Similar is true of BBC World News in comparison to CNN.

Whereas even pre pandemic you could be forgiven if you watched CNN that nothing at all happens outside of America, the UK and the Asia Pacific region and the increased simulcasting in the past year has made this even more of an issue. Coverage of some regions and countries is limited if not non-existent.

I think too most viewers find a channel and mostly stick with it (though some may flick between say Sky and BBC domestically) and it’s not the case that viewers will flock en masse to say TRT if a story develops from Turkey, they’ll likely stick with their go-to channel. I'm not a big fan of 'some other channels cover it so it's fine if this channel ignores it' argument either.

That said I think we all probably need to accept what CNNI now is how it has been recently and will be for the forseeable so there's not much benefit in hoping for the channel to return to something similar to what it was even a decade back and complaining all the time if it isn't. I've accepted that's the situation and watch the channel far less than I used to unless it's a big American story. It must be said though CNNI does feel rather unloved these days as a channel.

It is ok. Of course I'm not going to post daily stories they don't cover (it would take me all day long considering how many stories they don't cover ). I was just trying to make a point that a potentially big news headline, which is connected to a decade old story that CNNI had great coverage of, does not even get a mention today.

But yes, we are all quite familiar with what CNNI is today, and what it has been for the last year and the last 5 crazy years of Trump era. Our complaining is not going to change anything.

Just increases my admiration for him. He's a terrific reporter, comes across as an all-round likable bloke and it speaks to the person that he is that he's using his platform to bravely talk about his mental health struggles and to bring attention to mental health issues and support other who may be suffering them.

NHK isn't available in many parts of the world. If a major natural disaster happens, I would expect world news channels to cover it. Why should viewers have to switch to a Japanese network to find out about events there, or by your logic, a Brazilian network for events there, we could go on! Viewers should be able to expect that world news channels would cover global news, not just news from their home countries. Otherwise they should not be called world news channels!

Because the US-based news channel you normally watch was covering a different story: the 4th impeachment trial of a President in the country's entire history (also a pretty significant event).

Different channels have different editorial (and perhaps commercial) priorities, it's not that confusing.

And CNN are not unique in not really covering it - it's not easy to find on the UK news sites either. Haven't seen it trending either.

Speaking of this, neither BBC News 24 nor BBC Parliament has covered the start of each day's impeachment trial (maybe just the final day). Other than that, you would have needed to hunt for BBC World to watch gavel-to-gavel coverage of the issue.


If Domestic were airing newscasts like these, would you mind a simulcast?

This is a rough estimate, but there are many int'l hours on CNNI weekdays... on average:

12mid-5am ET ==> 5hrs
9am-12noon ET ==> 3hrs
2-4pm ET ==> 2hrs
TOTAL: 10hrs

compared to 14hrs of Domestic on CNNI of which a huge chunk is overnight for Europe.

I get that CNNI u-s-e-d to be different from what it is now, no question... but c'mon: saying it's "mostly simulcast" even during non-impeachment/election/... coverage times appears over-dramatic.

Yes, and about two years ago, the simulcasts were limited to one hour of New Day, The Lead, and 3 hours of prime time, with the remainder made up mostly of live international content. So in something like two years, its international programming has nearly halved.

With the Trump Impeachment saga over, you would think even CNN would close the book on it and just move on. After all, so many other things are happening in the US and around the world.

But no, 2 days after the trial finished, the top story on both CNNI and CNN US this morning is that Trump could potentially face criminal charges. So now we can expect months and months of speculation and coverage of this.

They just can't accept losing those Trump ratings. It's beyond laughable at this point.....