Warner Bros. Discovery has decided to shut down CNN+ on April 30th, the once-highly-promoted streaming service that CNN had hoped would be its entrée into the digital future, just weeks after its debut due to widespread disinterest.
Michael M. Grynbaum, John Koblin, and Benjamin Mullin for The New York Times:
“While today’s decision is incredibly difficult, it is the right one for the long-term success of CNN,” Chris Licht, the incoming president of CNN, wrote in a memo. “It allows us to refocus resources on the core products that drive our singular focus: further enhancing CNN’s journalism and its reputation as a global news leader.”
MacDailyNews Take:
The shutdown is a stunning and ignominious end to an operation into which CNN had sunk tens of millions of dollars, from an aggressive nationwide marketing campaign to adding hundreds of new employees to hiring big, high-priced media stars, including the former “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace and the former NPR co-host Audie Cornish.
CNN had planned to spend more than $1 billion on CNN+ over four years, according to people familiar with the matter, budgeting for 500 additional employees, including producers, engineers and programmers, and renting out an additional floor of its offices in Midtown Manhattan to accommodate them.
MacDailyNews Take: Once, a very long time ago, one of us asked our Newhouse professor (we wish we could remember his name) what kept the news organizations from slanting their “news’ one way or the other. His reply, paraphrased: Nothing, but, eventually, if they strayed too far one way or the other, they would damage their credibility and their subscribers would respond accordingly.
CNN’s chickens have come home to roost.
It seems that people aren’t quite as stupid as CNN assumed. Looks like zero credibility equals zero subscribers.
Bottom line: One less subscription service means more SVOD subscription dollars available for Apple TV+ and others.
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