CNN+ launched on March 29. The subscription news streaming service, which charges $5.99 a month or $59.99 annually, only became available on Roku on Monday and still isn’t on Android TV. Still, the paltry audience casts doubt on the future of the application following the recently completed combination of Discovery and WarnerMedia into Warner Bros. Discovery.
To put that daily user number in perspective, CNN’s cable network suffered a sharp decline in viewership last year but still rang up an average of 773,000 total viewers a day.
It’s possible, if not likely, that CNN+ programming will be offered as part of a larger bundled offering of HBO Max and Discovery+, according to people familiar with the matter. Both of those services have millions of subscribers.
Ex-WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar decided to push ahead with CNN+’s launch two weeks before merging the company with Discovery. Kilar left the company last week. He was upbeat about subscriber numbers in an interview with CNBC, but didn’t cite any figures.
Alex Sherman
Speaking of the unchecked proliferation of streaming services, here is an indication that consumers are tiring of paying for new monthly plans with minuscule added value.
Many years ago, I used to tune into BBC several times a day and I have come to notice that most of their news coverage was recycled at various timeslots, with small variations depending on the length of the news segment for that hour. The same thing was happening on local TV stations. Recently, I started watching short clips from the BBC and Deutsche Welle on YouTube to keep up with the news I didn’t already saw on Twitter. I don’t think you need more than 15–30 minutes a day to stay informed, considerably less on weekends and holidays.
I see several problems with paying for a news service. On one hand it limits your information sources because you are less inclined to consume news from other broadcasters, increasing the risk of polarization and misinformation. On the other, the value proposition is somewhat antithetical to other subscription services: with music and movies you want more content available to fill your free time, whereas with news you want a digest, as short and concise as possible, to free up time for work, family and relaxing – probably why there were so many news digest apps years ago. Their failure to build a loyal user base and make money should have been a warning for the people now pushing for paid news streaming.
Today news is bundled with data-harvesting — 86% of Americans consume news on a digital device, with 1 in 3 getting it from Facebook and 1 in 5 getting it from YouTube. In sum, we don’t have much experience paying for the most important content we consume.
It’s possible, however, that America is done with misinformation posing as news on social platforms — and this could be the wind in CNN+’s sails. Yes, you can still find CNN content on Facebook, but your diet there is determined by the algorithm, which wants to enrage vs. inform you. The streaming option (CNN+) feeds our digital habit with a diet shaped by an editorial board of journalists. The cable news players are also guilty of relying on novelty and opinion to keep you around until the next ad for an opioid-induced constipation medication.
Scott Galloway
Update: well, that didn’t take long: CNN announced that it will shut down the streaming service on April 30, just one month after launch. By some estimates, the company invested $300 Mio., or $9.4 Mio. a day, making CNN+ one of the most wasteful ventures into streaming to date…
The prior management team’s vision for CNN+ runs counter to Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s plan to house all of the company’s brands under one streaming service. Some CNN+ programming may eventually live on through that service. Other programming will shift to CNN’s main television network.
In a complex streaming market, consumers want simplicity and an all-in service which provides a better experience and more value than stand-alone offerings, and, for the company, a more sustainable business model to drive our future investments in great journalism and storytelling
, Discovery’s streaming boss J.B. Perrette said in a statement.
Oliver Darcy & Brian Stelter
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