Thursday, August 15, 2013

CNN To Place Greater Emphasis On Mobile Audience

Jeff Zucker
CNN is increasing its emphasis on consumers who get its content from mobile phones and tablets, its top executive said Wednesday, investing about $15 million so far in 2013 on reworking its digital infrastructure to make the placement of news content and advertising across different digital outlets easier, according to Variety. The maneuver, said Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, is aimed at grabbing new viewers who increasingly reach for the nearest screen when breaking news erupts, not necessarily the one that is part of a TV set.

“The future of CNN is as much about digital as it is about a television screen,” Zucker said at a media event. “I fervently believe mobile is a big part of our future,” he added later.

To that end, CNN intends to unveil a new digital face in November. Its system will free up editorial staff to focus on reporting the news while facilitating the posting of stories across a variety of devices and screens ranging from desktops to Androids, said KC Estenson, senior veep and g.m. at CNN Digital. The Time Warner cable network has seen more rapid growth in people accessing its content from social networks and mobile outlets and believes those figures are only going to increase –and more rapidly than TV viewership and even desktop viewing, he said. Additional interest from international audiences is also fueling some of the activity, he added.

The challenge has been great: CNN publishes news across 20 different media venues, supporting nine different editions in six different languages, he said.

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