Why you're stuck with CNN at the airport
Bottom Line: If you travel with any degree of regularity you're likely familiar with a trend from airport to airport across the country. When you're at a gate, there's often no escape, you'll be subjected to CNN. Once upon a time this wasn't a controversial thing. As recently as 2014, most Americans viewed CNN as the most balanced of the news networks politically. Then the 2016 election cycle came around and everything changed. CNN sold out to political interests and hasn't looked back. Btw, that's not conjecture on my part. According to the Media Research Center CNN has been the most biased news network over the past year. Yes, CNN has been to the left of MSNBC over the past year... But about it being on in seemingly every airport. Is that a political statement being stuck in your face? The answer is yes but no, at least not for the sake of politics.
According to data from the Media Research Center and CNN's airport network (the version of CNN that's specifically tailored for airports), CNN airs in 61 airports currently - including of course the busiest in the world, Atlanta's - home to CNN. But what you probably didn't know is how it happens. CNN pays for the plays. This was news to me as well. CNN has deals in place to pay airports for airing their news. Commonly CNN pays over $100,000 per year to the airports which air their news and no the airline folks in the gates, nor the airport workers themselves have the ability to change the channel or even the volume. CNN remotely has the ability to control all of that with these deals. So that's what's really going on. But for airports like Atlanta's or Miami's to alienate many of their travelers over a $100k or so per year might not seem like a good value proposition these days.