CBS Said to Consider Use of CNN in Reporting

Apparently, CBS, the home of the most celebrated news division in broadcasting, has been in discussions with Time Warner about a deal to outsource some of its news-gathering operations to CNN. Over the last decade, CNN has held intermittent talks with both ABC News and CBS News about various joint ventures. But during the last several months, talks with CBS have been revived and lately intensified. Broadly speaking, the executives described conversations about reducing CBS’s news-gathering capacity while keeping its frontline personalities, like Katie Couric, the CBS Evening News anchor, and paying a fee to CNN to buy the cable network’s news feeds. Another possibility would be for CBS to keep its correspondents in certain regions but pair them with CNN crews. For CNN, a deal with a broadcast network would mean a new revenue stream without having to add much in costs. For CBS, an arrangement with a cable channel would allow it to cut costs while maintaining the CBS News brand, although in a much trimmed-down fashion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/business/media/08cbs.html?ref=todayspa...
(requires registration)