BOB GARFIELD: This is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. One score and ten years ago Ted Turner brought forth on this continent a new cable network, CNN, conceived of as a 24-hour news service dedicated to the proposition that all news all the time was a profitable strategy. But three decades later, can we hallow this ground, as CNN, MSNBC and FOX News engage in a three-way war over whether 24-hour news or partisan commentary is the only path to survival? Gabriel Sherman has investigated the personalities and the politics of cable news in the last decade, and he's written a piece called “Cable Ugly” for New York Magazine. Gabriel, welcome to the show.

GABRIEL SHERMAN: Thanks for having me.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Most people don't watch cable news. So why should the casual news consumer care about the overheated cable news wars?

GABRIEL SHERMAN: Combined, the cable networks get fewer viewers per night than just one of the network nightly newscasts, but these are national political conversations. This summer the whole debate over the so-called Ground Zero mosque, that was really pushed on cable news. If you look at Shirley Charade's dismissal from the Agricultural Department, she was pushed out because the Obama White House was worried that she would end up as a subject on Glenn Beck's program. So you can really see that these are small programs that have a tremendous cultural impact.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: At what point did it become clear that FOX News was a force to be reckoned with?

GABRIEL SHERMAN: There's really two moments where FOX News established itself. The first is the Monica Lewinsky scandal during the Clinton years. FOX covered it around the clock, nonstop. And then the second moment was after 9/11 and this whole patriotic upswell that followed the terrorist attacks. And since then it's been a runaway success. And it wasn't until 2006 really that MSNBC decided to embrace a partisan identity in prime time. And CNN still hasn't really responded in that. They have really stayed the course. If you look at Lou Dobbs who was one of the rare exceptions at CNN, he was pushed out because he didn't fit their model of traditional news.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Meanwhile, they seem to be hemorrhaging viewers, and yet, one of the most surprising observations in your piece is that CNN is quite profitable.

GABRIEL SHERMAN: Well, the prime time programming only accounts for 10% of their revenues. CNN makes its money all different kinds of ways. They have web sites, they sell their news to affiliates. So the primetime part of the business, even though it gets a lot of media attention, is not a big part of their revenue stream. But at the end of the day, what kind of programming you put on at night ultimately defines you as a network. And CNN has really struggled to explain themselves.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Which brings us to the question of flow. Who's got it and how do you make it?

GABRIEL SHERMAN: Flow is having a discernible consistent storyline that runs between your programming. With cable news programming you have Keith Olbermann who feeds into Rachel Maddow, who now feeds into Lawrence O'Donnell in the prime time lineup at MSNBC. At FOX News you have Bill O'Reilly at 8 o'clock, Sean Hannity at 9 o'clock, Greta Van Susteren at 10 o'clock. So, all of these programs have a flow that builds through the night that helps their audiences migrate from one program to the next.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: It's the same thing again and again and again. This is the opposite of the model that CNN had.

GABRIEL SHERMAN: What is the flow between Eliot Spitzer and Anderson Cooper? They're both smart media personalities, but you don't know what they're gonna say on any given night. What executives at MSNBC and FOX News will say is you need to program to an audience who will come to you, expecting to find a certain sensibility.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: So in the midst of CNN's struggles, it brought in as a new president Jonathan Klein, who was independent, formally of CBS. What did he try to do to stake out an audience?

GABRIEL SHERMAN: What's fascinating to note is what John originally tried to do in 2006 was to hire Keith Olbermann from MSNBC, and Jon's boss, Jim Walton who is the president of CNN Worldwide, nixed the deal because he felt that Keith Olbermann wouldn't fit at a non-partisan news network like CNN. And so, what Jon was left to do was to try to develop programming and court controversy and buzz in a non-partisan way.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: You know, it's kind of interesting. Anderson Cooper became well known during Katrina —

GABRIEL SHERMAN: Mm-hmm [AFFIRMATIVE].

BROOKE GLADSTONE: — for expressing the outrage of the people, Sanjay Gupta for taking into his hands injured children and trying to save them in Haiti.

GABRIEL SHERMAN: Mm-hmm [AFFIRMATIVE].

BROOKE GLADSTONE: I mean, this is a way to generate emotion without partisanship.

GABRIEL SHERMAN: That's been CNN's mission, is to try to appeal to the emotions of the audience through journalistic storytelling. When a big story breaks, that may work for a few days but eventually the story moves on and then they're left with the challenge how do you appeal to the emotions of your viewers who — the easiest way to do that is through partisanship?

BROOKE GLADSTONE: We appear to have one successful model right now for cable news.

GABRIEL SHERMAN: What now works in cable news primetime is programming to a very specific audience night after night. And CNN, for the first years of its existence, really provided [LAUGHS] a news service that we all now get on the Internet. And by dinnertime we've all been on our computers all day, and the service that CNN used to provide has largely been filled by news websites.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Let's end with something that MSNBC's Chris Matthews told you. He was talking about Walter Cronkite's famous signoff, which seems to succinctly sum up the old style of TV journalism, when the anchors spoke from perches, high above the masses, with seeming omniscience. Cronkite used to say:

WALTER CRONKITE: And that's the way it is.

GABRIEL SHERMAN: What Chris Matthews told me was Uncle Walter didn't know the way it was. He was an establishment liberal.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] Gabriel, thanks very much.

GABRIEL SHERMAN: Thanks for having me.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Gabriel Sherman is a contributing editor to New York Magazine.