TV Goes to War and Targets Different Audiences Home & Abroad

Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times examines some of the different ways in which TV networks are marketing the war in the US and abroad. CNN in the US has been careful not to transmit too many images of the Afghan civilian victims of US bombings, but CNN International is showing the rest of the world different images. In other words CNN is targeting audiences by supplying the different images their different viewers most want to see, typical in the world of TV marketing and ratings wars. The real war has become the next hot ABC "reality show," with "America '01" soon to replace "The Mole," becoming a program ABC promises will have uplifting messages. Meanwhile, at FOX the word "we" is used so interchangeably that "some viewers could have been confused into thinking that Rupert Murdoch's network was dropping bombs over Osama bin Laden's caves."