CNN's Klein Says He Fears Social Networks, Not TV

CNN President Jonathan Klein said he worries more about competition from social- networking sites such as Facebook than from other cable news networks.

"The competition I'm really afraid of are social- networking sites," Klein said today at a media conference in New York. "That threatens to pull people away from us. The people you're friends with on Facebook or the people you follow on Twitter are trusted sources of information. Well, we want to be the most trusted name in news." CNN, owned by Time Warner Inc., has lost ground in television ratings. News Corp.'s Fox News has retained the top spot with 2.3 million primetime viewers this year, and NBC Universal's MSNBC is second with 800,000, according to data from Nielsen Co. CNN, once the most-watched cable news network, has averaged 687,000 primetime viewers this year. Klein said ratings are only one way of measuring the audience and that growth will come from the Internet and mobile phones, pitting CNN more against social networks.