Jonathan Klein, disappointingly, does not know who won today's presidential election. Speaking at ad:tech in New York today, CNN's president informed the audience that his parents asked him last night and he wouldn't know until it was up on CNN before outlining how CNN has become the most popular network with the 18-49 demographic.
Klein attributes a lot of the growth to the integration of user generated content:
Klein sees that two campaigns are currently being waged in news gathering: The "Mad Men" approach, that is more broad based, and the "Next Gen" approach that uses any number of tools to communicate with the next generation of voters."
No one has any idea who’s going to be most influential, Klein says, but he now thinks that his network is "much closer to eBay than network news."
It used to be that people who had the news were anchors and such, now it can be a twitterer or citizen reporter "who just knows something or has something to say," according to Klein.
This new approach is "forcing our producers to think multi-platform in everything they do," says Klein, which is also how he views advertising for the network. Klein says that CNN is selling its content across as many platforms as possible to create a consistent relationship with advertisers. As for smaller brands dealing with a faltering economy in the coming year, he says that they should align themselves with larger players: "Join up with the Crips or the
Bloods... It doesn't matter how good your content is if no one is going to see it."
