R.I.P CNN+. Warner Bros. Discovery is shutting it down April 30, a month after its highly touted launch which included CNN+ getting Chris Wallace from Fox News.
Was it a concept that was killed to soon or a concept that should never have gone from concept to reality?
Warner Bros. Discovery is shutting down CNN+ as of April 30, marking one of the company’s first significant maneuvers since completing the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery less than two weeks ago.The decision puts an abrupt end to an ambitious and aggressive venture that people familiar with the matter say rankled David Zaslav, the new CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, from the start. Zaslav was annoyed by the decision of Jason Kilar, the former CEO of WarnerMedia when it was owned by AT&T, to launch CNN+ just weeks before Discovery was set to take over operations. But he was unable to communicate with WarnerMedia management, owing to legal boundaries surrounding the merger process.
Variety continues:
The decision curtails CNN’s efforts to join the TV-news streaming wars, which are already being fought by NBCUniversal, CBS News, Fox News and ABC News. MSNBC has unveiled plans to roll out more opinion-led shows in a bid to generate more subscriptions for Peacock, its corporate parent’s streaming outlet. Fox News has expanded the purview of Fox Nation, adding true-crime documentaries and even movies to service in a bid to attract not only fans of its cable-news outlet, but also a broader array of potential subscribers CBS News recently overhauled its streaming-video efforts and added new shows led by anchors including Norah O’Donnell and Tony Dokoupil. Both NBC News and ABC News have bet on live news programming, setting up anchors like Tom Llamas and Linsey Davis in early-evening weekday programs.
CNN plowed millions into the venture, raiding news executives and producers from places like ABC News and NBC News, and singing on notables like food writer Alison Roman and business professor Scott Galloway. Current staffers like Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon were assigned, respectively, to lead a show on parenting and a talk show with a live audience. A show led by Jemele Hill and Cari Champion had yet to launch. CNN had also made some deals with talent for CNN+ that it had to unveil, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Inside CNN, executives were pleased with early progress of the new venture, which they said had nabbed 100,000 to 150,000 subscribers in its first few weeks online. They were encouraged by response to new programs like “5 Things,” an early-morning news roundup, and “Reliable Sources Daily,” an extension of CNN’s long-running media-affairs program. Earlier this week, Chris Wallace, who jumped to CNN from Fox News Channel for the streaming venture, landed an interview with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on his new CNN+ interview show.
Earlier this week, CNN played down reports of a stumbling start to its multimillion-dollar investment, saying it was pleased with how the launch has gone and dismissing early reports suggesting the new venture is in trouble as premature.
“After only three weeks of being available to customers, CNN+ is one of the top news subscription services on the market,” a spokesperson for the network told The Hill on Tuesday. “We remain very happy with CNN+’s performance to date and are proud of what our teams have built.”
The network seemed to be doomed from the very beginning. CNN imagined the service as a new way of thinking about news coverage, with new personality-driven shows and access to some of CNN’s best original series. It had a somewhat confusing relationship with the parent network; CNN Plus didn’t offer a streaming version of the linear channel and instead tried to build a different, more personalized version of the news report. The company was also attempting to figure out how to bring news content to a more on-demand audience and make the news a more interactive process.
It has been widely reported that CNN planned to spend about $1 billion on CNN Plus over a few years and had already poured at least $100 million (and as much as $300 million) into the service. Given the size of the investment, the early subscriber numbers were pretty bleak: Axios reported that about 150,000 people had signed up for the $5.99-a-month service as of this week, while CNBC reported that fewer than 10,000 people were using it on a daily basis.
It’s hard to say whether CNN Plus could have worked over time because it was shut down at least in part because it violated a broader corporate strategy. The service launched in the middle of huge turnover at the company, both with Licht’s appointment and with the newly combined Warner Bros. Discovery corporate structure being finalized. Executives were reportedly frustrated that CNN Plus launched at all, especially as Warner Bros. Discovery shifts its strategy toward building one massive combined streaming service that includes both HBO Max and Discovery Plus. In that world, CNN Plus likely makes more sense as a feature than a standalone service.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.