By Paul J. Gough
CNN has finally joined the broadband big leagues, lifting the veil on an extreme makeover of its Web site that has been in the works for more than a year.
The long-awaited premium broadband service, dubbed Pipeline, went live December 5 and already has signed up a number of subscribers in its initial week, though CNN executives decline to cite specifics.
The killer app for Pipeline is four live video streams, which offer mostly unedited looks at news events throughout the world. These streams -- or "pipes" -- can be played in a special video player and chosen by Pipeline's editors in Atlanta.
On Thursday night, Pipeline offered video streams from CNN International, a memorial service for slain Beatle John Lennon in Central Park, the House of Representatives and a traffic cam on a snowy Chicago night. That last pipe turned out to be prescient an hour later when news broke out from Chicago's Midway Airport when a Southwest Airlines jet slid off a runway. The third stream became video live from the scene at WFLD-TV.
A day earlier, when a passenger was shot and killed by federal agents at the Miami airport, Pipeline offered several live camera angles of the scene.
"When the plane shooting happened, we had three different affiliates' coverage. We had multiple angles on the story; you could select the one you wanted," said David Payne, senior vp CNN News Services and general manager of CNN.com. "I think even more intriguing, as that was happening, there was a bank robbery in Oregon and a rescue in Georgia." All were represented on the streams.
NEWSROOM'S-EYE-VIEW
Payne thinks this is the promise of Pipeline. He said the mostly anchorless live streams show what the news is. The live coverage of the plane shooting allowed viewers to see the same feeds that the network control rooms were viewing at the same time.
"As the story was unfolding for the plane shooting, and it became clear that that was under control, all these other events were happening," Payne said. "That really shows the power. On linear television, you're so limited in what you can do and what you can show. We have four times the capability."
Live coverage isn't the only hallmark of CNN Pipeline. The video player offers users the ability to see the top stories in video, get other news on demand and even browse CNN's vast archives.
But the one thing you won't see: whole programs. Payne doesn't think that's a good thing, despite what others in the news industry are doing on their Web sites.
"We think that showing shows, creating specific programing, is not the right approach. Consumers are pretty loud and clear about that to us," Payne said. "Our goal is to let the news take you to wherever it goes and we're going to go along with it. I don't anticipate creating shows or linear programing."
Payne doesn't think the $2.95 a month -- or $24.95 a year -- price tag is a deal-killer, despite the evidence that consumers are generally still resistant to paying for premium content on the Web.
"There's no question in my mind that there's a $2.95 value that can be created of an entire month that would enable somebody or cause somebody to this," Payne said. "I can't even find an analogy to spending 9 cents a day."
More innovations are coming, predicts Payne, that will go far beyond the mostly TV-centric news Web sites.
"We can do so much more than a set-top box or rabbit ears on a TV," Payne said. "Once you think about your computer as a set-top box, with all the capability it has and all the advancements it has, I think in the future what we see on our converging scenes is something that we can't even dream of."
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.
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