While working with broadcast talent, we do our best to provide examples and remind clients about the importance of the many, many factors that can add up to success.  We have a list of “deadly sins” to avoid and “best practices” to embrace.  But when it comes down to it and if we put pure talent aside for just a minute – sheer preparation, content treatment, brand vision, making smart decisions, and understanding the strategic opportunity and the expectations of the audience are big determining factors in how successful a show or network will be.

Today we’d like to share an example of how things can go very, very wrong, thanks to the brilliance of Jon Stewart (and the fine folks at UpRoxx) and at the unfortunate expense of some poor preparation and bad decisions at CNN.  While we could write a dozen different lesson pieces on what went wrong in just this clip alone, we all make our mistakes and we applaud some degree of risk taking with content.  However, CNN – which actually has a clear opportunity to grow this year – is so far off the mark in every phase with this bit that it’ll likely further water down the brand’s image by the negative, viral activity taking place.