Yesterday, I read over at NewTeeVee that CNN has laid off all of it’s news staff for their online channel – information that came serendipitously to NTV blogger Liz Gannes just as the day was wrapping up on the NewTeeVee conference:

Just as I got off the stage at NewTeeVee Live with CNN Worldwide VP of Digital Marketing and Development Andy Mitchell, I saw a report that CNN is cutting back on its web video newscasts. The company laid off its four CNN.com Live anchors as well as “several production staffers,”according WebNewser.

I followed up with Mitchell in the green room to ask about the layoffs, and he said that CNN is in no way pulling away from online video. However, linear, anchor-led broadcasts are more appropriate for television than for the web. He emphasized that CNN.com is all about web video, citing its recent redesign.

Mitchell said CNN expects to expand its coverage of major live events, which is exactly what we’d just been talking about onstage. A memo obtained by WebNewser said CNN expects to hire seven original video production staff by the end of the year.

I have to wonder, though, what it is exactly that CNN is doing wrong in its execution of their online model that’s preventing them from making this format work, given that this move is in direct opposition from the movement others are trying and succeeding with in the rest of the online video world.

For instance, take a look at UStream.tv and Justin.tv – it’s a site built on the idea of live video (the very thing that CNN is deprecating).

They’re both doing quite well – they’re not growing meteorically, but I doubt anyone would call between 1.2 – 1.6 million monthly uniques a bad thing, or something unmonetizable (and it’s about on par with the unique viewership numbers for CNN’s cable channel).

Obviously, CNN isn’t UStream.

  There’s one key differentiator between the UStream style of streaming and what CNN was doing, and that’s that UStream style sites are almost entirely UGC, whereas CNN is curated and professional content. I include them as a comparison point because the first instinct for many is to say streaming is dead – I’ve even said it in the past.  The truth is that certain types of streaming are dead, and that axiom mostly applies to the audio realm, where the freedom of podcasting has significantly impeded the growth and dominance of streaming radio.

Are there professionals or organizations moving towards a more traditional streaming video approach to delivery of news and information content? Absolutely.  Leo Laporte has talked a number of times over the past year quite publicly about his desire to turn his TWiT network into a 24/7 tech news channel, with the primary delivery method being a live channel available to users in the living room as well as the computer.

The response to that has been particularly impressive, especially when it comes to watershed news events. During the summer of 2007, Leo and his team delivered a 24/7 uninterrupted broadcast on his live stream around the launch of the iPhone that played to over a quarter of a million viewers.

Similarly, fellow SiliconANGLEr Michael Sean Wright and I hosted a week of streaming video from Austin, Texas during the SxSW interactive and music week in 2008. The broadcast, over the course of the week, garnered well north of a million viewers to our live stream, where we delivered the news coming out over the event, interviews with movers and shakers in tech and music, panel discussions with event attendees and speakers as well as live musical performances.

What is it that CNN was doing wrong?

I’m not sure if you’ve ever sat down to watch extended periods of CNN’s live online coverage, but while it’s a well produced event, it clearly suffers from a lack of program direction.  I always got the impression that the hosts were unpaid interns or the “cable channel farm team,” particularly since they seemed to follow the news cycle playing on the cable channel almost issue for issue.

A program director, or a desk editor that was more responsive to online trends might have done wonders for the channel.  In short, the stream suffered from the same problem most new-ish news content organizations suffer from, which is the struggle to find your identity in the sea of editorial angles out there to pursue.

I think the biggest failure of CNN Online would be that it’s a nascent news outlet that wasn’t given time to find it’s voice.

Is this a bad thing for online news though?  Only if we let it be.  I think it’s important to note that this isn’t a failure of the medium (live online news), but a failure of the channel itself. The trends in online video don’t all lead to short news clips arranged by topic and attached to accompanying news stories. Certainly that’s an important component to it, but if you intend to be a respectable online news provider (which I assume CNN intends to be), live streaming needs and consistent anchoring to be a part of the strategy.