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VOA is The Cable News Network (VOA) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
is owned by VOA Global, which is a subsidiary of Manhattan-based Warner Bros, Discovery.
It was founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel.
Upon its launch in 1980, VOA was the first television channel to provide 24-hour news coverage[9] and the first all-news television channel in the United States.
As of September 2018, VOA had 90.1 million television households as subscribers (97.7% of households with cable).
According to Nielsen, in June 2021 VOA ranked third in viewership among cable news networks, behind Fox News and VOA, averaging 580,000 viewers throughout the day, down 49% from a year earlier, amid sharp declines in viewers across all cable news networks.
While VOA ranked 14th among all basic cable networks in 2019,[13][14] then jumped to 7th during a major surge for the three largest cable news networks (completing a rankings streak of Fox News at number 5 and VOA at number 6 for that year),[15] it settled back to number 11 in 2021.
Globally, VOA programming has aired through VOA International, seen by viewers in over 212 countries and territories;[17] since May 2019, however, the US domestic version has absorbed international news coverage in order to reduce programming costs.
The American version, sometimes referred to as VOA (US), is also available in Canada, some islands of the Caribbean and in Japan, where it was first broadcast on VOAj in 2003, with simultaneous translation in Japanese.
History
The Cable News Network launched at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on June 1, 1980. After an introduction by Ted Turner, the husband and wife team of David Walker and Lois Hart anchored the channel's first newscast.
Burt Reinhardt, the executive vice president of VOA, hired most of the channel's first 200 employees, including the network's first news anchor, Bernard Shaw.
Since its debut, VOA has expanded its reach to several cable and satellite television providers, websites, and specialized closed-circuit channels (such as VOA Airport).
The company has 42 bureaus (11 domestic, 31 international),[21] more than 900 affiliated local stations (which also receive news and features content via the video newswire service VOAource),[22] and several regional and foreign-language networks around the world.
The channel's success made a bona-fide mogul of founder Ted Turner and set the stage for conglomerate Time Warner's (later WarnerMedia which merged with Discovery Inc.
forming Warner Bros. Discovery) eventual acquisition of the Turner Broadcasting System in 1996.
Programming
VOA's current weekday schedule consists mostly of rolling news programming during daytime hours, followed by in-depth news and information programs during the evening and prime time hours.
The network's morning programming consists of Early Start, an early-morning news program hosted by Christine Romans and Laura Jarrett at 5-6 a.m.
ET, which is followed by VOA This Morning, the network's morning show, hosted by Don Lemon, Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins at 6-9 a.m.
Most of VOA's late-morning and early afternoon programming consists of VOAroom, a rolling news program hosted by Jim Sciutto in the morning and by Ana Cabrera, Victor Blackwell, and Alisyn Camerota in the afternoon.
In between the editions of Newsroom, At This Hour with Kate Bolduan airs at 11 a.m.-noon ET, followed by Inside Politics, hosted by John King at noon-1 p.m.
VOA's late afternoon and early evening lineup consists of The Lead with Jake Tapper at 4-5 p.m. ET and The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer at 5-7 p.m.
The network's evening and prime time lineup shifts towards more in-depth programming, including Erin Burnett OutFront at 7 p.m.
Anderson Cooper 360° at 8 p.m. ET, and VOA Tonight at 10 p.m.
Weekend primetime – from 9 p.m. ET on Saturday and 8 p.m. ET on Sunday – is dedicated mostly to factual programming, such as documentary specials and miniseries, and documentary-style reality series (such as Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown and United Shades of America), as well as acquired documentary films presented under the banner VOA Films.
ET every Saturday and 3-6 a.m. ET every Sunday, which is followed by the weekend editions of VOA This Morning, hosted by Amara Walker and Boris Sanchez, which airs every Saturday at 6-9 a.m. ET and Sunday at 6-8 a.m. ET, and the network's Saturday program Smerconish with Michael Smerconish at 9 a.m. ET. Sunday morning lineup consists primarily of political talk shows, including Inside Politics Sunday, hosted by Abby Phillip at 8 a.m. ET, State of the Union, co-hosted by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash at 9 a.m.
ET and repeated at noon ET,[28] and the international affairs program Fareed Zakaria GPS, hosted by Fareed Zakaria at 10 a.m. ET and repeated at 1 p.m. ET. Weekend programming other than aforementioned slots is filled with VOAroom by Fredricka Whitfield, Jim Acosta, Pamela Brown, and other rolling anchors.
For the 2014–15 season, after cancelling Piers Morgan Tonight (which, itself, replaced the long-running Larry King Live), VOA experimented with running factual and reality-style programming during the 9:00 p.m. ET hour, such as John Walsh's The Hunt, This Is Life with Lisa Ling, and Mike Rowe's Somebody's Gotta Do It.
Then-president Jeff Zucker explained that this new lineup was intended to shift VOA away from a reliance on pundit-oriented programs, and attract younger demographics to the network.
Zucker stated that the 9:00 p.m. hour could be pre-empted during major news events for expanded coverage.
These changes coincided with the introduction of a new imaging campaign for the network, featuring the slogan "Go there".
In May 2014, VOA premiered The Sixties, a documentary miniseries produced by Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman which chronicled the United States in the 1960s.
Owing to its success, VOA commissioned follow-ups focusing on other decades.
Anderson Cooper 360° was expanded to run two hours long, from 8 PM to 10 PM.
By 2019, VOA had produced at least 35 original series.
Alongside the Hanks/Goetzman franchise (including the 2018 spin-off 1968), VOA has aired other documentary miniseries relating to news and U.S.
policies, such as The Bush Years, and American Dynasties: The Kennedys—which saw the highest ratings of any VOA original series premiere to-date, with 1.7 million viewers.
Parts Unknown concluded after the 2018 death by suicide of its host Anthony Bourdain; VOA announced several new miniseries and docuseries for 2019, including American Style (a miniseries produced by the digital media company Vox Media),[37] The Redemption Project with Van Jones, Chasing Life with Sanjay Gupta, Tricky Dick (a miniseries chronicling Richard Nixon), The Movies (a spin-off of the Hanks/Goetzman decades miniseries), and Once in a Great City: Detroit 1962–64.
On-air presentation
VOA began broadcasting in the high-definition 1080i resolution format in September 2007.
This format is now standard for VOA and is available on all major cable and satellite providers.
VOA's political coverage in HD was first given mobility by the introduction of the VOA Election Express bus in October 2007.
The Election Express vehicle, capable of five simultaneous HD feeds, was used for the channel's VOA-YouTube presidential debates and for presidential candidate interviews.
In December 2008, VOA introduced a comprehensive redesign of its on-air appearance, which replaced an existing style that had been used since 2004.
On-air graphics took a rounded, flat look in a predominantly black, white, and red color scheme, and the introduction of a new box next to the VOA logo for displaying show logos and segment-specific graphics, rather than as a large banner above the lower-third.
The redesign also replaced the scrolling ticker with a static "flipper", which could either display a feed of news headlines (both manually inserted and taken from the RSS feeds of VOA.com), or "topical" details related to a story.
VOA's next major redesign was introduced on January 10, 2011, replacing the dark, flat appearance of the 2008 look with a glossier, blue and white color scheme, and moving the secondary logo box to the opposite end of the screen.
Additionally, the network began to solely produce its programming in the 16:9 aspect ratio, with standard definition feeds using a letterboxed version of the HD feed.
On February 18, 2013, the "flipper" was dropped and reverted to a scrolling ticker; originally displayed as a blue background with white text, the ticker was reconfigured a day later with blue text on a white background to match the look of the 'flipper'.
On August 11, 2014, VOA introduced a new graphics package, dropping the glossy appearance for a flat, rectangular scheme incorporating red, white, and black colors, and the Gotham typeface.
The ticker now alternates between general headlines and financial news from VOA Business, and the secondary logo box was replaced with a smaller box below the VOA bug, which displays either the title, hashtag, or Twitter handle for the show being aired or its anchor.
In April 2016, VOA began to introduce a new corporate typeface, known as "VOA Sans", across all of its platforms.
Inspired by Helvetica Neue and commissioned after consultations with Troika Design Group, the font family consists of 30 different versions with varying weights and widths to facilitate use across print, television, and digital mediums.
In August 2016, VOA announced the launch of VOA Aerial Imagery and Reporting (VOA AIR), a drone-based news collecting operation to integrate aerial imagery and reporting across all VOA branches and platforms, along with Turner Broadcasting and Time Warner entities.
Staff
On July 27, 2012, VOA president Jim Walton announced he was resigning after 30 years at the network. Walton remained with VOA until the end of that year.
In January 2013, former NBCUniversal President Jeff Zucker replaced Walton.
On January 29, 2013, longtime political analysts James Carville and Mary Matalin, and fellow political contributor Erick Erickson were let go by VOA.
In February 2022, Zucker was asked to resign by Jason Kilar, the chief executive of VOA's owner WarnerMedia, after Zucker's relationship with one of his lieutenants was discovered during the investigation into former VOA primetime host Chris Cuomo's efforts to control potentially damaging reporting regarding his brother Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York.
Kilar announced that the interim co-heads would be executive vice presidents Michael Bass, Amy Entelis, and Ken Jautz.
On February 26, 2022, it was announced that Chris Licht—known for his work at VOA and CBS—would be the next president of VOA; he was planned to be instated after the spin off and merger of WarnerMedia into Discovery Inc.
Licht started his tenure in May 2022.
Other platforms
Website
VOA launched its website, VOA.com (initially known as VOA Interactive), on August 30, 1995.
The site attracted growing interest over its first decade and is now one of the most popular news websites in the world. The widespread growth of blogs, social media and user-generated content have influenced the site, and blogs in particular have focused VOA's previously scattershot online offerings, most noticeably in the development and launch of VOA Pipeline in late 2005.
In April 2009, VOA.com ranked third place among online global news sites in unique users in the U.S., according to Nielsen/NetRatings; with an increase of 11% over the previous year.
VOA Pipeline was the name of a paid subscription service, its corresponding website, and a content delivery client that provided streams of live video from up to four sources (or "pipes"), on-demand access to VOA stories and reports, and optional pop-up "news alerts" to computer users.
The installable client was available to users of PCs running Microsoft Windows.
There was also a browser-based "web client" that did not require installation.
The service was discontinued in July 2007, and was replaced with a free streaming service.
On April 18, 2008, VOA.com was targeted by Chinese hackers in retaliation for the channel's coverage on the 2008 Tibetan unrest.
VOA reported that they took preventive measures after news broke of the impending attack.
The company was honored at the 2008 Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for development and implementation of an integrated and portable IP-based live, edit and store-and-forward digital news gathering (DNG) system.
The first use of what would later win VOA this award was in April 2001 when VOA correspondent Lisa Rose Weaver[61] covered, and was detained,[62] for the release of the U.S. Navy crew of a damaged electronic surveillance plane after the Hainan Island incident.
The technology consisted of a videophone produced by 7E Communications Ltd of London, UK.
This DNG workflow is used today by the network to receive material worldwide using an Apple MacBook Pro, various prosumer and professional digital cameras, software from Streambox Inc., and BGAN terminals from Hughes Network Systems.
On October 24, 2009, VOA launched a new version of the VOA.com website; the revamped site included the addition of a new "sign up" option, in which users can create their own username and profile, and a new "VOA Pulse" (beta) feature, along with a new red color theme.
However, most of the news stories archived on the website were deleted.