The crash gave CNN’s ambitious new competition a chance to do some real journalism, showcase its A-list NBC News talent and, more important, brand its coverage with the MSNBC logo. ““Branding’’ is business-school jargon for taking your company trademark and stamping it on anything that’ll sell. MSNBC is a meeting of brand names, a merger of convenience. The deal gives NBC a 24-hour news network paid for in large part by someone else. And from its $500 million investment, Microsoft gets another product – news – for its metastasizing software empire. Incredibly slick (the set is like a really cool Starbucks), there are times when the channel looks like a giant ad for Microsoft.
Like laptops or Windows 95, TV news is becoming a commodity. The target market for MSNBC is clearly Gen X: prospective on-air contributors were instructed to wear Gap clothing to their auditions. The language NBC and MS use to describe their hybrid venture is steeped in marketing mumbo jumbo like ““unmatched news experience’’ and ““creating communities of interest around a story.’’ In English, this means info junkies can get their fix either by watching on cable or by logging onto their computer. There were start-up glitches on both sides of the service last week. The first reports on Flight 800 were short on pictures. Attempts to download data from the Web site often stalled with the message, ““network error.''
Tom Brokaw got interactive during his interview with President Clinton by posing a question about Social Security asked online by an MSNBC user. But does this ““egalitarianism’’ Brokaw has touted as MSNBC’s big advantage necessarily make for better journalism? We watch Brokaw for his years of experience, not so some amateur can feed him questions. That’s talk radio. Humorist Dave Barry once likened the Internet to ““CB radio with typing.’’ For MSNBC to succeed, it will have to prove itself as something more than CNN with typing.
