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Reese Schonfeld, CNN's first president. (Photo courtesy Reese Schonfeld)

The house that Reese built

NEW YORK — Cable News Network turns 20 years old today and is marking the occasion with a lavish, all-day celebration in New York. Reese Schonfeld plans to drop by for a couple of the events, but he said he has not been invited to the VIP party — which is odd considering that without Reese Schonfeld, there would be no CNN.

Today cable news is synonymous with Ted Turner, the maverick who audaciously bet his entire fortune on CNN's success. Yet it was Schonfeld, a veteran TV news executive, who had been carrying the idea around in his head for four years before Turner finally embraced it. And as the first president of CNN, it was Schonfeld who was left alone by Turner — for a while at least — while he built the first 24-hour, worldwide television news operation.

Look at any television news operation now and you can see CNN's impact: Anchors reporting from their newsrooms. Nonstop live coverage of everything from combat to freeway chases. And perhaps most troubling, the notion that a news story can be branded to a news reporter or network.

Cable News Network is by far cable's most-watched news source. It's one of the most trusted, far ahead of its print counterparts in surveys. And it has the widest reach, with CNN International being carried in 10 languages to more than 100 countries. Nearly a million hotel rooms carry CNN, and there's a CNN Airport Network screen at 1,500 passenger gates.

Yet in the beginning, just getting CNN up on the satellite on June 1, 1980, proved a Herculean task. Starting with nothing but $20 million of Turner's money (a pittance even then), Schonfeld and his team built and staffed an organization with hundreds of employees and several bureaus in only 11 months.

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In a retrospective look at itself, CNN will air two live prime-time specials from 9 to 11 p.m. today and Friday. Some of the biggest news stories of the last 20 years will be recalled by the journalists who covered them. CNN's Larry King is host of the programs and will interview select newsmakers from the last two decades.

Knight spins ESPN


Indiana's Bob Knight was calmer during his interview with ESPN on Monday.

By Harrison Wyman

Bobby Knight could not have found a better friend in his time of need than Roy Firestone. Some PR flack had undoubtedly told the embattled Indiana University basketball coach that a live interview with ESPN would help salvage what reputation Knight has left outside of Bloomington. After all, ESPN is the equivalent of CNN — a televised forum for newsmakers to speak directly to viewers in a cordial, even friendly setting.

Sports media in general has a problem with being felicitous toward those on whom it should be toughest — owners, coaches and managers — while feeling free to ride roughshod on players (Bob Costas' current scolding campaign against Portland's Rasheed Wallace comes to mind). The problem is magnified at ESPN, which offers a daily, half-hour live venue in its "Up Close" program. "Up Close" promotes itself as fresh and hard-hitting, but the questions asked are routinely puffballs. And when controversial questions do come up, they are rarely followed up. You almost sense the interviewer setting the incendiary question on the table and then running away, like some smoke bomb left anonymously at a neighbor's doorstop.

So no one should have had any illusions that ESPN's live interview with Knight on Monday — the first, as we were reminded often, since the coach was exonerated for various abuses of his office — would produce anything interesting or scandalous, making this possibly the first Bobby Knight press conference in history devoid of such content.

Nonetheless, it was appalling that ESPN's Roy Firestone should arrive in Bloomington for his interview so ill-prepared. A key piece of evidence in the university's investigation into Knight's conduct was a videotape of Knight grabbing a player on his team during a 1997 practice session and then pushing him back across the floor. To this day, despite this indisputable memento, Knight still denies that he choked Reed. For those familiar with the coach, this should come as little surprise.

The surprise is that Firestone admitted on the air that he had not seen the entire tape of the incident, but rather a series of stills. And then had the gall to ask the coach why he hadn't looked at the tape.

"I didn't need to look at the tape to know that I hadn't choked anybody," Knight replied calmly. But in the opening of the broadcast, the tape of Knight grabbing Reed by the neck is prominently featured. It was Firestone's job to put him on the spot about an incident on public record. By not looking at the tape, he allowed Knight to turn an objective document into an issue of perception. (In an online chat after the interview, Firestone lamely offered that not watching the video was part of an "experiment"; his idea was that he and Knight would watch and react to it together on the air. Not surprisingly, the coach vetoed Firestone's cuckoo scheme minutes before airtime.)

With little else with which to pin down Knight, Firestone allowed the coach to assume the familiar smug posture he often has with the press. When Firestone dropped his notes on the floor a few minutes later, Knight made no attempt to hide his amusement. By contrast, when ESPN's Digger Phelps took over for the interview's second half, you sensed Knight's respect level rising — not because the questions got tougher but because Phelps was a peer (and likely a pal), having coached for many years at cross-state rival Notre Dame.

If Bully Boy Bob is going to treat an actual journalist as shabbily as he did Firestone, the question then arises — why not at least give him good reason to hate you? That's the question Firestone and his colleagues at ESPN should be asking themselves.

Pick to click

If you're one of those die-hard viewers of "Biography" (8 p.m., A&E) and are fed up with all the repeat episodes, this is your month: Beginning with tonight's portrait of Candice Bergen, A&E will air 27 all-new biographies in June.

As usual, the profiles run a wide gamut, from Mary Magdelene (June 20) to Morgan Fairchild (June 5), Peter the Great (June 28) to Clint Black (June 6). They'll also take you behind the scenes to meet game-show impresario Mark Goodson (June 3), newspaper baron Robert McCormick (June 17) and CBS founder William Paley (June 24). No fewer than three members of British royalty merit a "Biography," as does Gerald Ford (June 9) and perhaps the best-connected person of the bunch, Billy Graham (June 30).

Also, the final rounds of the National Spelling Bee from Washington, D.C., are televised on ESPN beginning at 1 p.m.

On this date...

in 1966, Laura Petrie displays her seemingly photographic memory while reading husband Rob's memoirs, on "The Last Chapter," the final episode of "The Dick Van Dyke Show." She's able to remember all the events he's written about as if they were cheesy flashbacks on a television show. -- Tom Heald

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