Not quite. But next week will be the official Anniversary Week. CNNFan has more information on the details about what will happen next week. This culminates what has seemed like an eternity of shows and stories on the Anniversary which has continued Cable News’ dubious tradition of running a story into the ground; even when it’s a self-serving one.

This isn’t to dismiss the significance of CNN’s Anniversary or what CNN did to influence the course and direction of Television News in general, which was considerable, but come on….just how many different ways do they have to beat us over the head with this Anniversary?

Both NBC and CBS celebrated an Anniversary within the past decade, an Anniversary much longer than CNN’s. Yet they didn’t feel the need to harass their viewers with the story for months as CNN has done. They kept it short and to the point. CNN opted to flood the zone for what seemed like an eternity. Some of the ways CNN has gone about their self-promotion of their Anniversary have bordered on the ridiculous (The recent Jeopardy week special being probably the biggest stretch at cross-promotion).

One has to wonder what is behind this overkill. Is it an attempt to recapture past glory before FOX began trouncing them in the ratings and to try and get some of those viewers back? One could argue that the CNN that existed during the first 20 years bears almost no resemblence to the CNN that exists now as CNN is still suffering a bad case of identity crisis trying to come to grips with FOX’s dominance.

It is amazing the amount of self-restraint FOX has shown during all this CNN self-congratulatory promotion. The amount of blow back from FOX has been relatively tepid compared to some of the stunts that FOX has pulled to humiliate CNN in the past. But then the official Anniversary hasn’t happened yet and maybe FOX’s PR department has something special planned for next week.

While I don’t want to begrudge CNN for rightly pointing out that they were there first and were a major force for news coverage throughout the 80s and 90s that every other news channel, broadcast and cable, wanted to attain, I can’t wait for next week to be over soon enough…