CMGN News

Introduction

CMGN News (Abbreviation of Croft Media Group Network) was a short lived new channel that only ran for 6 weeks from the 1st January 2000. The channel was set up and owned by the now defunct Croft Media Group which was owned in turn by the then prosperous British Croft Family.

Vision

CMGN was supposed to be the first news channel to be broadcast in every single country in the world (Bar North Korea). This was to be achieved by positioning satellites in such a way that every county could be reached, however only 4 of the intended 6 got up into space at a massive cost to the Croft Group. The news programs were broadcast from the CMGN studios at Canary Wharf London. The studios were built high atop number 1 canada square at a massive cost. The channel run 24/7 news with only small advertisement breaks.

News Readers and Staff

From the start the Croft family were the only hosts on CMGN, the principal owner Maxx Croft being the main news anchor, his son Theo Croft daytime anchor and his sister Anabel Croft his counterpart at night, and cousin Ben Croft did the early morning slot. Most of the production and behind the scenes staff were taken from Maxx Coft's time as MD at NBC news in America.

Studio

The studio was very futuristic for the time featuring state of the art touch screen computer systems from Apple, glass desks and a huge window of london to the rear which was covered in a special touch sensitive film that could be turned into a giant screen for weather forecasts and news features. The news features were filmed in HD which at the time was considered as mad the entire cost of the studios were estimated by Fortune magazine at £7-Million.

Demise

From the start CMGN got into difficulties with money, Maxx Croft demanded that all the news readers (his family) be paid 6 figure salaries in the first week of filming. Maxx Croft's high demands also fell on advertisers who were unwilling to pay billions of dollars in worldwide advertising so the only takers were CMGN themselves. Apple also briefly flirted with CMGN showing macintosh adverts and broadcasting Macworld and WWDC, 2000 live on the channel.

Finally the channel closed in mid February displaying an on screen message "Due to technical difficulties CMGN cannot be broadcast, broadcasting will regain shortly, thank you for your patience", this message never left the screen and is still viewable if you tune a satellite box correctly as CMGN still owns the rights to the broadcasting frequency.

Post CMGN

After the demise of CMGN the Croft family were financially ruined, they now reside in the remains of the central London studio which was never officially used by CMGN. The building is a very substantial Victorian fruit growing greenhouse and was converted by CMGN into a large studio and state of the art production suite. The family now lives in the un-finished studio. Maxx Croft is still desperately trying to get CMGN back on the air and to save his reputation. He was given a desk job at Apple headquarters in London and earns a fraction of the millions that he used to.

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