Trump asks CNN to share ad revenue from debate with veterans

Leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump today asked US media giant CNN to share advertisement revenue it would generate from the next round of presidential debates with various military veterans' groups.
"You should view the second debate broadcast as a public service and not accept the massive profits that this airing will generate. I believe that all profits from this should go to Veterans' groups," the real estate tycoon wrote in a letter to CNN president Jeff Zucker ahead of the second presidential debate to be hosted on the network.
Trump said he wrote the letter after reports that CNN has increased its ad rates from USD 5,000 to USD 200,000, a whooping jump of 4,000 per cent which is expected to go up even more.

He attributed this to the increase in viewership of CNN because of his running in the presidential race.
Soon thereafter the network announced that it will be streaming the Republican presidential debate on September 16 for free without the need for any cable authentication.
CNN said it would be making the debate available on every platform and electronic device.
"We are offering this as a preview. To me, there's a longer play here, which is that we want our audiences to know this is a service they can get from CNN going forward. We want to build that user behaviour," Andrew Morse, head of US editorial operations and worldwide digital at CNN, told Mashable website.

The first Republican presidential debate was hosted by Fox News and had a viewership of a record 24 million.