That's the CNC!

A month and a half ago I asked, What's the CNC?, and was politely informed that it stands for

Chess News Corporation. It's a joint venture between FIDE and other parties to commercialize some of FIDE's IP.

I had already blogged on the topic at the beginning of the year -- Global Chess, Chess News Corporation, Chess Lane, and FIDE -- but failed to make the connection with the acronym. According to Google, the site Chess Network (Chessnc.com) went live about the same time the Anand - Topalov match started, 21 April. Looking at it now, the site also went dormant the same day the last game of the match was played, 11 May. Every page on the site currently carries the same title, 'Chess Network', and appears in the Google search results with the same description...

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...whatever that means. The content is also somewhat thin: lots of photos plus Anand - Topalov game analysis by GM Efstratios Grivas, downloadable as Word documents. Giving the benefit of the doubt, all of this might be just a stub. In David Kaplan's revolution in chess, Chessbase.com quoted Kaplan, 'CEO for Development in FIDE', saying,

We plan to pass all the rights on chess information to Chess News Corporation (CNC) -- a company created with FIDE’s support. The reason is simple; free data broadcasting, which is not always precise and correct, will never help the development of interest towards chess and its commercial success.

and later

I hope that modern chess is on the brink of a revolution. For four years FIDE and a number of companies have been conducting a research. There are about 40 people working on projects: psychologists, specialists in marketing, PR professionals. The product is not on the market yet. It will happen only in September/October 2010. I hope we can give a new impulse to our beloved game. If we don’t succeed in rebranding chess in the next five years, no one will manage to do it in the next 50.

In September/October 2010, we can already look forward to the Olympiad and the FIDE election. Now we can add a fully operational CNC, or was Kaplan talking about something else?