Fergie's Tech Blog

Naval Academy drops CNN over Fox News?

Lauren Weinstein writes to Declan McCullagh, over on his PoliTech Blog:

It was recently brought to my attention that CNN was dropped a bit over two weeks ago from the U.S. Naval Academy's (USNA) internal video network used for academic functions, which feeds to classrooms, more than 4000 students, etc. This left FOX News as the only news channel on the USNA video network, which is operated by the academy's Multimedia Support Center (MSC).

While there are reportedly some at the academy who are not sorry to see CNN go -- I'm told it is routinely referred to as the "Communist News Network" by many USNA officers and civilians -- there are also persons at the academy who are very upset at CNN's plug being pulled.

Remarkably, this all appears to be about a $3500/year fee that I'm told CNN wants the academy to pay, and that MSC has determined they cannot afford, given other budget priorities.

This is the information that I've been able to collect to this point, and I'll update if I learn more.

If CNN's signal is really being withheld at USNA over $3500, then we're looking at a sorry situation indeed. In particular, it would seem in the best interests of CNN (and this country) to make sure that the U.S. Naval Academy network has full access to CNN programming, even if that meant not collecting any fee at all.

FOX News has its place of course, but leaving them as the only news channel on a venue as important as the USNA video network, makes it look like CNN is trying to shoot themselves in the foot.

posted by Fergie @ 8/25/2005 10:54:00 AM