CNN is known for its live reporting of breaking news, and people come to the website for it. So where do viewers go when they have had enough serious information? Studies of the CNN.com's user behaviour showed they are surfing to entertainment websites. But now they don't have to. The show will come to them.
From next week, CNN.com is offering two new web series in partnership with Vice's VBS.TV and Sub Pop Records.
This is material of a sort that CNN would be unlikely to produce itself. Vice magazine is known for its controversial content which features violence, sex and social issues. The video version of the magazine VBS.TV launched in 2007 and is overseen by creative director Spike Jonze, founders Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi, and executive producer Eddy Moretti.
The episode of VBS.TV which will introduce Vice to CNN will be the "Vice Guide to Liberia", in which the magazine's founder Shane Smith travels through the war-torn country, interviewing former warlords and residents who are struggling to move past a decade of violence. Available at www.cnn.com/VBS, each episode in the series will be accompanied by photography from the field as well as a first-person narrative to bring the story into full context.
In CNN.com's second deal, the Washington-based label Sub Pop will present films of one of its bands, the Handsome Furs, during their tour in Asia.
It will be interesting how CNN's core users will react to the new media partnerships. Or is the media landscape is so fragmented these days that they won't even notice the difference?
