Greta Expectations   

The cable news follies--that’s entertainment.

I'm confused. Weren't these 24-hour cable news channels supposed to cover the news, not make the news?

Maybe not.

In recent months we've been treated to an endless banquet of tidbits and morsels about the likes of Greta and Paula and Ashleigh and (inevitably) Geraldo. Not to mention a dizzying series of updates on which luminary is jumping from one cable bastion to another.

If it wasn't Greta Van Susteren's eye job, it was Geraldo Rivera packing heat in Afghanistan. Not to mention the raging debate over a briefly run promo about the "just a little sexy" Paula Zahn, or the updates on the state of Ashleigh Banfield's hair.

Obviously someone was paying attention to the cable soap opera. When Van Susteren debuted as a Fox fox in early February, she attracted about 1.62 million viewers, a far, far greater audience than normal for Fox News Channel's 10 p.m. news.

Trouble is, once apparently was plenty for many of them. The next night, her audience shrunk by half a million.

That's the heart of the challenge facing the cable news combatants: not only building a large audience, but keeping it.

Having news on all the time sounds like a great idea. But often there just isn't enough news--that is, enough compelling, drop-everything news that will keep viewers from defecting to "Fear Factor" or, God forbid, reading a book.

For years, of course, CNN had this terrain to itself. Its numbers would ebb and flow, soaring during the Persian Gulf War, then falling back to earth like a Scud missile. But at least it was the only player in the game.

Things got more complicated in 1996, when Fox News Channel and MSNBC entered the fray. Suddenly the struggle for viewers became fierce indeed.

CNN's shtick had always been your basic meat-and-potatoes. While the networks would highlight their marquee names, CNN for the most part eschewed the flash and glamour. The news was the star.

But as the cable rumble heated up, Fox counterprogrammed with a vengeance. In contrast to CNN's sometimes numbing, just-the-facts-ma'am approach, Fox stressed attitude--lots of high-decibel pundit shows featuring personalities and conflict, programs far better at bringing the heat than shedding the light.

And you know what? It worked, to the point that Fox surpassed the cable news pioneer. In January, an average of 656,000 people watched Fox during prime time, compared with 596,000 tuning in to CNN.

What about MSNBC? you ask. That's one of the oddest aspects of the cable confrontation. Despite the impressive lineage of its parents, NBC and Microsoft, it's simply not a player. MSNBC averaged 296,000 prime time viewers, less than half as many as its foes.

In the face of Fox's onslaught, CNN's response hasn't been what you would call sure-handed. It has flailed about, zigzagging from one approach to the other. In an attempt to deal with the basic problem--how do you get people to watch when nothing much is going on?--CNN brought in Rick Kaplan to jazz things up. One of his goals was to create some "appointment TV," shows that people would turn to week in and week out. One initiative was "NewsStand: CNN & Time," a much-ballyhooed effort to exploit the "synergy" of the two Time Warner properties. The bloom was quickly off that rose after NewsStand's program on Operation Tailwind imploded. And soon Kaplan was gone.

After former Time Managing Editor Walter Isaacson took the helm at CNN last year, he made noises suggesting that he would take the network downmarket, trading in some of that seriousness for glitz.

In the aftermath of September 11, of course, seriousness was back in, for awhile anyway. Meanwhile, with personality now the name of the game, CNN and Fox have been raiding each other and the networks like football teams pursuing high-priced free agents. And the rest of the media world has responded with wall-to-wall coverage of the comings and goings of the Gretas and Paulas and Connies and Aarons.

There is an irony to this, of course: While the media lavish all this attention on the cable foibles, not all that many people are watching the news channels (a point made recently in an excellent column by Richard Huff of New York's Daily News and in repeated rants by AJR Managing Editor Lori Robertson). Their audiences are dwarfed by the networks'--9 or 10 million people watch their nightly newscasts.

If only the cable news channels could attract as many people to their programs as they do to their antics.