CBS Shakes Up TV-News Format With Streaming ‘Whip Around’ Debut
Even Walter Cronkite might be overwhelmed.
When the news program “CBS News 24/7” surfaces Wednesday morning on streaming venues, it may surprise the average information junkie. There’s no typical anchor behind a desk here.
More from Variety
Instead, on-screen hosts too busy to read scripted lines from a teleprompter will guide viewers from one story to the next, many of which are happening in real time. All are displayed prominently on a screen of insta-feeds from CBS newsrooms around the nation or from points of interest around the world. When it’s time to move beyond the quick headline, or some chatter about what’s happening at the moment, the host is meant to identify the feed, then let viewers hear from people and experts on the ground. It’s entirely possible that a host might start talking to producers and assignment editors while on camera about what’s going on in the feeds and what needs to be looked at first.
“This is a program that immediately immerses you in the biggest stories of the day,” says Wendy McMahon, president and CEO of CBS’ news, stations and syndication operations, during an interview. “It feels urgent. It feels of the moment. And it feels spontaneous.” And yet, the new product is part of an ambitious plan: McMahon believes the concept will help CBS meet its goal of becoming the most-watched live-news service in ad-supported streaming.
CBS News has for decades served as the ne plus ultra of TV journalism. This is the news unit that has boasted of Cronkite, the unflappable presence who told the nation of the assassination of President Kennedy or of the toll of fighting in Vietnam; the longform newsmagazine “60 Minutes”; and heartwarming “On The Road” vignettes from Steve Hartman. Now executives hope to be the first to win a new generation of viewers with a full-scale shakeup of the format their predecessors watched for decades.
The goal is to get viewers “sucked into the massive wall of monitors” on screen, says Jennifer Mitchell, president of CBS’ stations in the west and Midwest, “where you see all of the live feeds coming in at the same time, and you find yourself immersed in what’s happening in that box on the wall.” CBS will stream hours of the show at 10 a.m. from New York, led by Vladimir Duthiers, and at 1 p.m. from San Francisco, guided by Reed Cowan.
Audiences may be seeing a lot more of “CBS News 24/7,” says Sahand Sepehrnia, executive vice president of digital content strategy for CBS. “If the show does well, and we expect it to do well, we will start expanding those hours.”
The best-known TV-news shows have relied on conventions that seem carved in stone, such as the anchor speaking in as formal a manner as possible on any and every possible subject. But the rise of streaming has upended so many tried-and-true TV behaviors, and now viewers expect interactivity and even gamification of their content, whether it be commercials or sci-fi dramas. The streaming audience — seen as being as much as 20 years younger than its linear counterparts — has come to expect to build its own primetime schedule; to decide whether to watch recaps or end credits; and to pause a show at moments of its own choosing. Why wouldn’t it expect new flexibility out of the news?
CBS was the first of the nation’s mainstream TV-news outlets to jump into streaming. In late 2014, the company launched CBSN, a streaming news service meant to take CBS News to a broader, digitally savvy audience, without the start-up costs required to launch a new cable network. Viewers could watch when they wanted, rather than having to tune in each day for a morning show or evening newscast. But CBS, and, later, rivals ABC and NBC, filled streaming schedules with programing that looks a lot like what viewers might see on traditional TV.
This new “CBS News 24/7” will not. “This is a free-flowing show. It doesn’t have a traditional format. It doesn’t have a traditional rundown,” says Sepehrnia.
The new presentation aims to offer more action and movement. It borrows from “whip around” formats like “NFL RedZone,” where host Scott Hanson takes pigskin fans through pivotal and interesting moments from as many as eight games in play on any given NFL Sunday. The offering is so popular that NBCUniversal has hired Hanson to lead a “GoldZone” program on the Peacock streaming service this summer during the 2024 Paris Olympics. Other shows, such as the one-time reality-show phenomenon “Live PD,” also rely on real-time maneuvering among a plethora of locations, taking viewers to where action seems about to break.
Others have noticed the appeal of such stuff. CNN in April of last year launched “News Central,” a daytime format that has two or three anchors moving from story to story, with behind-the-scenes producers throwing video snippets, graphics and you-are-there reportage onto giant video screens.
Figuring out a viable news model will be crucial in the streaming era. “A live-news component, whether it’s in SVOD or AVOD, is a big draw to consumers,” says Brent Magid, president and CEO of Magid, a longtime media-industry consultant. “Those who can do it well will definitely have a shot at having a competitive advantage.”
Indeed, the only thing that can shake news aficionados out of their current habits is when things are breaking, says Sepehrnia. “It’s that time when you are looking for something specific and the competitor doesn’t have it,” he says. “We think breaking news will drive audiences,” particularly in daytime, which is when streaming users tend to look for news the most.
CBS News won’t, however, cut important coverage to cater to shorter attention spans. “We devote the time that the story deserves. If something is huge, like if a tanker runs into a Baltimore bridge, we will probably spend the whole hour doing that,” says Scott Warren, general manager of KPIX in San Francisco, who has played a role in developing the new programming. “But if it’s news stories from around the country, we will run with them, and when it’s time to dip out of that, we will go to something else,” he adds. “It’s a very loose format.”
There could be some challenges in embracing such a concept, suggests Magid. What if there’s just not that much going on, even in real time? “Being live for the sake of being live doesn’t really work that well. It all kind of comes down to the takeaway value of the content.”
CBS will have plenty on hand in case the world isn’t turning so frantically on a particular day. There will be emphasis on the weather. New augmented-reality graphics the company is rolling out can put a meteorologist in the middle of a mountain pass, in a patch of fog or under replicas of the actual clouds floating by over a particular city. It can also be used to make a news host appear to be standing on an island in San Francisco Bay or alongside a major landmark about to undergo renovation.
“This technology used to be Hollywood. It was too expensive and too technical for us to do on a daily basis,” says Warren, but now “we are able to take the technology from Hollywood and breaking it down to a daily, hourly, by-the-minute news operation.”
There are other pieces that can fit in the mix, whether they be pre-recorded segments from CBS News programs or enterprise reporting from stations, or segments form CBS News Confirmed, a new unit aimed at combating disinformation.
Chances are “24/7” will evolve over time, but no matter what its final format, it will be light-years away from whatever Cronkite envisioned when he told “CBS Evening News” viewers each night that “that’s the way it is.”
Best of Variety
Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
