Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 129

Live CoveraRp of War

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by CNN as a principal source of their information. The German
weekly. Die Zeit, reported that President George Bush had ended a
press conference by noting that he was going to call Turkish President
Turgut Ozal. When the call went through, Ozal himself answered.
He did not have to be called to the phone; he had been watching
CNN. The director of CNN International, Peter Vesey, states that
his network's feed is available to 103 countries and 12 million
subscribers outside the U.S. and Canada, including nine million homes
in Europe. Vesey also estimates that CNN is viewed regularly by
such officials as John Major of Great Britain, Robert Mugabe of
Zimbabwe, Moammar Gadhafi of Libya, King Hussein of Jordan, and
Saddam Hussein of Iraq, among others.
Because of the worldwide nature of the event, foreigners had
a chance to see the United States' method of reporting, and vice
versa. For instance, American Public Radio stations carried BBC
radio newscasts hourly. Another measurable impact was that
Americans bought short wave radios in record numbers to hear other
countries' versions of events. The 7,000 outlets of the Radio Shack
company reported a sellout of all shortwave units during the Persian
Gulf crisis, quadrupling the amount of similar radios sold in the same
time period a year earlier. The largest catalog store for shortwave
equipment in America, the Electronic Equipment Bank, reported sales
increases in the 500 to 1,000 percent range.
Many of those who watched the television coverage were
practically hypnotized. A survey by the Times-Mirror media
company revealed that half of Americans could not turn off the TV.
People watched into the wee hours of the morning, caught a quick
nap, then began viewing immediately when they woke up. This,
phenomenon became known as the CNN syndrome. For the first time
a cable network had higher ratings than any of the big three
commercial broadcast networks.
The wall-to-wall coverage by radio and television networks
had a huge price tag. By the time the cease-fire was announced, the
three broadcast networks and CNN put their collective costs at $145
million. National Public Radio estimated its costs to be $1.4 million.
CNN spent $12 million during the Gulf buildup alone. Of all the
media in the Persian Gulf, none profited more than CNN. The all
news network increased its Nielsen ratings by three to four times
what they were before the war. Some reports had CNN's ad rates