I give them credit for trying and failing quickly.
I personally don't see how it was ever going to work, but it's not my business and I don't know what I'm talking about. They clearly thought they had a chance, tried it, saw it flop, and are willing to quickly admit the mistake and stop the bleeding. You can't succeed if you're not willing to fail.
I am torn between "I give them credit for trying and failing quickly" and "How on earth did user/market research not show them this would be the result?" I.e. I would love to know if the latter had been optimistic and disproven by the reality.
It's possible it didn't cost that much to develop, or that what they did develop can be used for non-plus products. Might have been deemed worth a small risk.
It is an oddly emotionally satisfying rationale and I reflexively agree.
But upon closer examination part of me wonders if this particular project was a victim of creation by committee, where there was only one person, who could make decisions and the rest were well-paid bobbleheads.
I have no doubt marketing did their research ( and as much as I hate ads, marketing people look for how things really are ), it is possible only some pieces filtered up and/or dissenting voices were just drowned out by 'why are you holding us up?' type of responses.
I am obviously speculating here, but elites ( however you define them ) are people too and subject to most of the same issues as most of us.
I think you're spot on. CNN, as a company, is not run like a news organization any more. There is a specific objective and the content they produce is designed to influence rather than to inform. The broader market is onto this dynamic. They are selling a very specific product to a specific audience. It turns out that the audience doesn't think it is worth much.
Having been in the trenches on a large scale initiative gone awry, my hunch would be the same as yours: the lack of strong/well informed leadership leads to bad decision-making despite all the checkboxes being checked (market research, etc).
In that case, it's easy to blame the "elites" (who certainly do deserve blame). Doing so blindly without deeper reflection is cathartic but not too productive or meaningful. A lot of times, the "elites" are victims of a system bigger than them (established culture, procedures, politics, etc). Spending energy to change said system would IMO be more productive than playing the blame game.
I think this is actually a result of the WarnerMedia / Discover merger. In a different article they say that the new CEO wants to consolidate under a single streaming service. So they are likely just going to move the content into Discovery+ or HBOMax.
They spent 300 million on this and got 18k subscribers. There are single youtubers who have more paying patrons on Patreon than that. Merger or not, CNN+ was never going to crawl, nevermind fly.
> I give them credit for trying and failing quickly.
What ever happened to 'pivoting' rather than giving up and throwing in the towel?
I don't think any investors would be happy with projects just giving up and losing their money like what had happened to Quibi. The difference is, that the raised money for Quibi was returned back and CNN+ lost. it. all.
Totally giving up even after what happened to Quibi is inexcusable for CNN. It means that they have not learned anything and have admitted to repeating the same mistakes they did and lost more money and shut down quicker than Quibi.
Now they are part of list of the worst launch failures in history. Oh dear.
With only 18k subscribers, trying to salvage that situation with a pivot seems like a manifestation of the sunk costs fallacy to me. 18k is miniscule even by rando on youtube standards.
I was looking forward to CNN+. I wanted an ad-free way to consume the daily news and mindlessly listen to pundits. I think if it was just Anderson Cooper doing this for 20-30 minutes it would've been totally worth the $3/month for people like me.
Instead what they delivered was the crap, low effort documentaries they put on to fill gaps in their airtime. Reruns of Anthony Bourdain, weak medical information from Sanjay Gupta, and more social justice than you can shake a stick at.
How on earth did they waste $300m on this? Anderson Cooper 360 with no ads is all they needed.
No because "Anderson Cooper 360 without ads" isn't what they put on there, they put on the documentaries—not the pundits. Perhaps you don't like the pundits but the average CNN viewer does and I think might willing to pay $3/month for it.
In fact I was surprised that paying for CNN+ I couldn't even watch Anderson Cooper 360 with ads! All you get is a 10-minute per day preview live stream of CNN unless you can "login through your cable provider".
Their point is that the average CNN viewer might be willing to pay for a service with different content. CNN+ did not serve the content they were referring to, so your flippant footnote does not apply.
Sounds a classic case of innovator's dilemma. The "classic" CNN simply wouldn't let CNN+ have all the resource they needed for that would hurt the cash cow of the "classic" CNN.
Well the market has spoken, you're right, Anderson Cooper (as far as I know) is a very popular show. It just also spoke in this specific context.
I don't really care for CNN much either way, but every once in awhile somehow I get the "right" CNN International channel/vibe/show and it feels like what I thought international journalism should be.
> Anderson Cooper (as far as I know) is a very popular show
No, it's not a very popular show. Anderson Cooper is last amongst the three major primetime cable news shows. For example, for the week ending March 30th at the 8 PM slot you have (Total Viewers in thousands) [0]:
Tucker Carlson Tonight: 3676
All In W/ Chris Hayes: 1445
Anderson Cooper 360: 890
Now keep in mind that >300,000,000 people live in the United States. So, not that many people are watching cable news to begin with. And definitely not that many young people who may subscribe to a streaming service instead of cable. I don't think there is any sizable market for a streaming service of Anderson Cooper.
It seems pretty popular to me. You're misconstruing "that's popular and people watch it" for "I agree with what the person is saying".
Many people watch it. It makes money. Anderson Cooper makes money. Ergo the market is speaking quite clearly.
For example, as vile, absolutely stupid, and wrong as Tucker Carlson is, the market is clearly speaking and he's quite popular.
Now if you want to change your definition or raise your bar or something, sure go for it, but without any parameters I think anyone on prime time on CNN or any major news channel is by definition popular.
> You're misconstruing "that's popular and people watch it" for "I agree with what the person is saying".
Not at all. I just cited some statistics. Making a value judgement is actually what you did:
> For example, as vile, absolutely stupid, and wrong as Tucker Carlson is, the market is clearly speaking and he's quite popular.
The first definition of popular is “regarded with favor, approval, or affection by people in general”
The key word being the last one in this case “general.” Based on the statistics I cited cable news is a niche to begin with. And based on his viewership, Anderson Cooper is a niche within a niche. Not “generally” popular.
For the record I don’t watch any of these shows so I don’t have a horse in this race. Not sure why you feel you need to defend Anderson Cooper’s (non) popularity so hard? It’s certainly not a very popular show as you originally stated. But you’ve since lowered the bar that anything on mainstream cable is “popular.”
I made a value judgement to demonstrate the ability to separate preference from fact. Maybe I didn’t need to do that, but if I can get in a swipe at Tucker Carlson I’ll take it, because he is despicable and vile.
I’m not defending Anderson Cooper. Don’t care about him. To say he’s unpopular though without defining popularity is a mistake you are making, not me. Even if we used your definition here, which we weren’t, it would still be true that he’s popular. He’s a household name. He’s clearly popular. We are talking about him right here. What more proof do you need?
So back to the original discussion regarding Anderson Cooper, the market has spoken. He’s popular. To say the market hasn’t spoken would be incorrect, given he’s on Prime Time on CNN lol.
So what exact point were you trying to make here? Because I think you’re just arguing to argue and it’s really not a good use of time for you or me.
You are now confusing the person Anderson cooper with his show. Your original comment was about the show which is the 22nd highest rated news program. Relative to the others that doesn’t seem very popular to me.
Both Anderson Cooper the person and Anderson Cooper the show are popular, and the market is validating that by the fact that he’s on prime time on CNN.
Being 22 just proves that it’s popular. Would you say the #22 app on the App Store isn’t popular? It’s fine if you draw a line there. I don’t.
Yes, there are a lot of people whose identity is totally wrapped around politics. Got to Twitter. There are people who would spend hours on Twitter engaging in toxic fights with random people on internet.
This is the reason I think reality TV shows have some utility for society. At least it lets people engage in something that is less harmful and less toxic than the Twitter culture war. It's better for society if people spend time on reality TV shows than Twitter culture war.
I don't watch CNN in the same way I read WSJ. CNN is mostly just entertainment watching people argue with some news and information. I don't consider it high-brow at all.
I put it on in the background while I'm doing something else for mindless entertainment. In my experience this is how most people watch CNN. I don't think people sit down to watch it like they do a film. I certainly don't, neither does my family.
I quit subscribing to cable because I was tired of the endless repetitive ads for hair loss pills that came on every 10 minutes. Get rid of that and I'll happily continue consuming their content.
There is a thriving piracy scene on YouTube and somewhat on twitch of CNN, MSNBC, and fox. Tend to have commercials edited out. I'm not quite sure why they are being streamed because almost none of them are monetized or linked up to patreons or anything. Sort by upload date and over twenty minutes
So...with everyone blocking out ads (which I do hate and am pro-ad-blocker), how do journalists get paid? I'd personally rather pay for access to decent journalists (which I do), from numerous different sources. CNN being one of those sources (mainly for Fareed Zakaria, Anderson Cooper, John King, Jake Tapper). I would just personally rather do without the opioid constipation and mesothelioma lawsuit ads.
> Anderson Cooper 360 with no ads is all they needed.
That would be a good way to get a little money from streaming and lose a lot of money from cable distribution, not a net win. There's a reason none of the news networks whose owners have streaming services do that with their big-draw cable news programs.
Well an entire generation of people aren't watching those big-draw cable news programs so status quo thinking = eventual death. Not that they can't pivot when it's really necessary, seems like Disney made the switch at near the optimal time for example, but it's gonna have to happen some day.
That’s not a collapse, it’s a right-sizing. TV news and CNN in particular got a ratings boost during the Trump administration and a huge bump during the 2020 election. The numbers they have now are around where they were in 2015. IMO it doesn’t suggest terminal decline. A headline like that doesn’t get as many clicks, though.
not sure how hundreds of people and millions of dollars spent to produce content that gets the views of a mildly popular bedroom YouTuber doesn't suggest "terminal decline."
The ads on all of the cable news channels indicate that their audience is rapidly aging. These channels have become background noise for nursing homes.
how much news do you really need? I ask Google Assistant to "play the news" every morning and it covers the bites from many different sources in around 15 minutes while I'm still half asleep and I'm up to date with everything non-tech for the past day.
It’s kind of an addiction that I had to learn to step away from. Especially when COVID first broke out and you could have dramatic things happen in the span of a few hours. However at the end of the day it’s just entertainment and had little bearing on my life.
This sounds like something is changing somewhere, for a company to admit defeat that quickly either indicates there are internal politics at play, or the industry as a whole thinks the streaming pie is drying up fast.
The something that changed was WarnerMedia (CNN's parent company) being bought by Discovery Communications earlier this month. The new people in charge saw what everyone else saw and axed this boondoggle ASAP.
Quibi lasted for longer than this. I wouldn't be surprised if this is one of the shortest run in recent memory for a service with this much investment behind it
There are too many streaming services, people will only pay a recurring fee for a small number of them. Journalism is probably at the bottom of the priority list for what people would pay for as well, with the plethora of free journalism available online, or the services that workaround paywalls.
We agree on that fact that people are willing to pay for content that is perceived as valuable to them.
Part of the issue is that CNN is not exactly news. It is mostly opinion pieces ( please don't think I am being biased -- same is true for FOX, MSN and so on ). There is a reason for that, it sells and can gather quite a following as some personalities do show in terms of ratings.
With that in mind, the issue is that 'personalities' on CNN do not offer an 'opinion' that is palatable to a large or valuable segment of population. Amusingly, they seem very much out of step with those. We can argue over why, but I don't think it will help discussion here.
In terms of analogy, Tucker might offer you a Big Mac type opinion; it is a drive-by, easy and rather unhealthy long term, but CNN is not sushi, it is not a gourmet steak.. it is a guy telling me I should try cauliflower dropped quinoa - you could argue it is good for you, but not exactly broad appeal.
My point is.. CNN, if you want to do opinion pieces, you DO need to cater to the lowest common denominator. If you want to be above it all, then do news and abstain from putting a finger on the scale of public opinion.
Doubtful. At least doubtful that the reputational damage will be their demise. Fox News has done worse for longer and are still the number one in cable news.
They should have either done it while Trump was in office or whenever Democrats lose the election next time... because that's when their primary audience seems to seek comfort in their stories about how they are in the right and how the opposition are the bad guys.
In CNNs defense, they propably planned this with the expectation that Trump would win the second term.
It is actually pretty amazing how quickly they self-imploded their brand reputation the past few years, culminating with the Brian Stelter self-own where he's whining how "they" are the real journalists, not Joe Rogan.
The time when they made a calculated lie and said it was illegal to possess leaked documents of the politician they were carrying water for was really sad too. There's actually countless instances of major deliberate lies and misinformation like this from CNN going back over the years. It's not a recent phenomenon.
First off, this has little to nothing to do with the issue of CNN+ closing, so it smells a lot like flamebait to me... but, assuming this comment was made in good faith:
> Journalism is about reporting events, not interpreting them.
This is a description of an idyllic fantasy world that's never existed.
One can (I think reasonably) argue that the current generation of for-profit news is far more likely to spin the facts according to a predetermined agenda in their never-ending pursuit of viewership and associated profits.
But journalism has never, ever, involved simply "reporting events". Just the decision as to which events to report on is an editorial decision.
Opinionated hosts and guests is the only path to profitability for cable news. Most people read or listen to their news now; TV is for entertainment.
CNN’s problem is that their “personalities” are absolute snore-fests. Fox’s bread and butter are their hosts but they are doing fine for now (cable will die eventually). In the current post-ironic zeitgeist, audiences are drawn to more transgressive discourse. But Don Lemon can’t make hot takes when his audience is Deloitte managers and urban moms (also he’s terminally unfunny).
The left leaning media has become too safe and staid. I think that’s why left sympathetic people are drawn to the new “left” podcasts like Chapo Trap House
They do have news segments. Every News org has news sections and opinion sections that are de-lineated. I’m not really a fan (they do have good investigative reporting sometimes) but acting like they are aberration does not make sense
That’s a good point. On cable the distinction between news and opinion is definitely blurred as compared to a newspaper with a very clear editorial section
That was quick. I read an article about three weeks ago about Chris Wallace "looking forward" to his new show on CNN+. They also had Audie Cornish signed up! Wow.
The real question is what they thought would happen. Launching a for-pay venue hosting the same people hosting the same type of content which has driven their viewership into the ground on cable - or, to be more precise, on airports all over the western hemisphere since that was about the only place most people ever were exposed to CNN - was a sure-fire recipe for failure. Those who planned this and executed upon those plans were either desperate or so wrapped up in their own bubble that they could not see the reality of CNN having lost nearly all credibility.
I'm sorry, this is a dumb comment.... but every time I hear "plus" after a streaming service (CNN+, Disney+, Paramount+, etc...) - all I can think of is "Grape Juice Plus"
Edit: Wow, didn't expect the down votes, but okay. Grape Juice Plus is a reference to Planet of the Apes - specifically, the 3rd movie in the sequence - the 1971 movie "Escape from the Planet of the Apes". When Zira tries wine for the first time and asks "what is this?", instead of saying "wine", they say "that's, uh, grape juice plus". For whatever silly reason, that scene always stuck with me.
3/4ths of BBC's funding apparently comes from the license fee every Brit with a TV is charged, and I can't help but think that the only hard-news media that can survive these days is one with a captured income stream.
PBS seems to do pretty well! As best I can tell, they have virtually no captured income streams (other than people forgetting to cancel their donations).
I think your understanding is wrong. PBS receives the majority of its money from small donors, followed by the federal and state funds.
The Koch brothers were involved in the Meredith Corporation's purchase of Time back in 2017, but I think that's the most direct involvement they've had with media institutions themselves. They're much bigger fans of the "independent institute that writes policy briefings for conservative politicians" model.
I believe the Koch brothers are bankrolling the newshour, but not PBS as a whole. By the way David is dead now, and I don't think Bill was considered part of the "Koch Brothers" since he was bought out of the company decades ago. Really it's just Koch brother now I guess.
CNN is very economically conservative, it's just socially (cynically 'performatively') liberal.
Ask your local Bernie bro what coverage was like when he was campaigning for social programs that would materially benefit the lower and middle classes.
> CNN would be extremely liberal on social issues pretty much everywhere in the world.
Debatable, but even if true, its corporate capitalist economic stance would have it somewhere between the center and center-right, definitely no further left, the economic axis being the main determinant of left-right position.
I’d like to see an end to this trope of “US liberalism would be conservative anywhere else.” In terms of social issues, it’s blatantly untrue, and US liberals are easily the furthest left of any foreign liberal group on most social issues. In terms of economic issues, it’s only true when comparing actual laws – the progressive wing of the US Democratic Party is at least as far left as any liberal political group holding similar power in any other country.
I know. I can't turn on CNN for more than 30 seconds without hearing about seizing the means of production from the capitalist ruling class and abolishing commodity production.
There exists more than a “communism to laissez-fairs capitalism” axis when people are talking about right vs left. I don’t think it’s productive to point this out when I think it’s generally understood what they mean in this specific context. In “mainstream” American politics (by which we can define by what appears on television and newspapers”) “left” implies mostly advancing the progressive front on racial and sexual issues, as distinguished from the American right, which would rather stop where we are on those social issues and cut taxes or something. Both of them sometimes play a little lip service to the other issues but not much more, since most other things are dictated by long-term service personnel and/or large mega corporations.
Even that I don’t think should really be thought of as a single axis - though they’re few enough now, there’s reactionaries who see capitalism as the source of all modern ills beginning with a very old ideological tradition that would look down just as much on communism.
If discussing "left" vs "right" then I agree there's ambiguity. If discussing "left wing" vs "right wing" I think the scales skew further towards communism vs capitalism.
> Doesn't mean CNN+ was a roaring success, but it's just not enough time to tell if it was a flop.
The service CNN+ shutdown quicker than Quibi did and lost even more money per day than them. That is enough time and money to call it a flop. They gave up and called it a month.
It is one of the worst product launches in history since Quibi.
> I'd imagine all of CNN and WarnerMedia programming moving onto Discovery+
I thought the consistent messaging was that the branding of the consolidated streaming service would be HBO Max, not Discovery+.
> Doesn't mean CNN+ was a roaring success, but it's just not enough time to tell if it was a flop.
Yeah, they planned a four year period to profitability with a $1 billion investment over that period, 1 month doesn't tell much of that story (though launching it while the merger was going on and when it was in clear conflict with the incoming brand strategy was an odd choice.)
> Yeah, they planned a four year period to profitability with a $1 billion investment over that period, 1 month doesn't tell much of that story
If they were doing ok-but-not-great after 1 month, I would agree. But their numbers were through the floor, they basically didn't get anybody to join. And it's important that for any media product, the first month is your biggest period of growth, after your biggest launch and marketing push, and before any kind of attrition has set in. If you can't grow your media streaming service in your first month, you're never growing.
I can't read whatever WSJ is saying about this because of the paywall, but I under the impression it was a bit more complicated than other comments reveling in the failure of a mass media channel are indicating. AT&T spun off entertainment completely, then Discovery and Warners merged, but that left a single company running HBO Max, CNN+, and Discovery+, which is stupid. I believe they plan to consolidate those into a single service, probably using HBO branding, which is still by far the most reputable out of what they own. I don't think it means CNN content won't stream anywhere.
It's inevitable that more events like this will happen. Remember when CBS hilariously "re-merged" with Viacom and CBS All Access rebranded as Paramount+ and swallowed up PlutoTV and Nickelodeon? There wasn't much reason to keep the others around.
Peacock and AMC+ stand out right now as having no reason to exist on their own and seem ripe to merge with at least each other and probably with something else, too.
> CNN’s just-launched direct-to-consumer streaming service CNN+ is shutting down, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
An announcement is expected as early as Thursday, the person said. Incoming CNN Chairman and Chief Executive Chris Licht, who hasn’t even officially assumed his role yet, told staffers of the decision on Thursday morning, the person said. Andrew Morse, the executive in charge of the service, is leaving the company, the person said.
> The move to shutter the service on April 30, merely a month after it launched, comes only a week after CNN’s parent company WarnerMedia was taken over by Discovery Communications. Discovery’s executives were dubious about the strategy of the service even before its deal to acquire the company closed, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking.
> CNN’s previous regime, with backing from former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, spent $300 million on developing CNN+, people familiar with the operation said. CNN wooed big-name talent, including Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, to join the service.
This got caught up in the Warner Media merger and CNN's executive leaving the company. Warner Media wants CNN to focus on hard journalism, and the CNN+ content of soft shows doesn't really fit with that. Plus, CNN+ never included the CNN cable channel since it would put at risk their main cash cow: distribution agreements to carry CNN. Warner Media wants to have HBO Max to be their big all encompassing streaming service, so I doubt they see a need for a separate CNN+ service anymore. The timing is interesting though, since was launched right before the merger closed. I wonder if the CNN folks just wanted to get this out the door before the new leadership took over. I do give credit to Warner Media execs for killing this early as soon as they decided on long term plans for the combined company.
> Warner Media wants CNN to focus on hard journalism, and the CNN+ content of soft shows doesn't really fit with that.
Specifically, it doesn't fit the CNN brand vision. Discovery already has lots of brands (with various niches) tied to non-news documentary and infotainment content.
This is kind of hilarious. who was cnn+ even supposed to be for? I personally like CNN, and would probably pay <$x/month or something to get it unbundled. But no way would I ever pay for "cnn+" that doesn't even have cnn!
There are some Disney shows you can't find on Disney+; but the majority of what you think of as "Disney" is there. But trying to have CNN+ not even include CNN is a huge branding error at best.
It's worth pointing out the reasoning: the bigger factor is the exclusivity that the cable providers get for carrying CNN. The cable providers don't want you dropping them because you can get CNN elsewhere, and CNN doesn't want cable providers to think about dropping the channel because customers can get it elsewhere.
Exactly. It was doomed to fail and it sounds like everyone knew it (or they were hoping to make it into a life raft for when the cable companies collapsed).
>they were hoping to make it into a life raft for when the cable companies collapsed
interesting point. maybe there was some benefit to building the cnn+ infrastructure prior to their merger, and they did it because they figure they'll need it eventually
These people are not clever. Their calculations are apparent if you allow for sufficient sleaziness. CNN+ made sense back when Jeff Zucker was to be the man behind the throne of the Cuomo presidency. CNN+ would then have had the access to stay relevant as YouTube and Netflix ate up cable and satellite. Probably would have panned out if De Blasio hadn’t continuously sucked the oxygen out of the entire state for short-lived ego points. BLM was meant to be Cuomo’s road to the White House, not a city crosswalk, stupid bastard.
ESPN+ is the the same way. It has "ESPN exclusives," but only niche-tier live sports broadcasting that couldn't make it to the cable-only ESPN channels.
ESPN+ is so annoying. It used to be that you could watch anything streaming but not broadcast on cable with a cable login, but they moved most of that content to ESPN+. For example in the early Australian Open rounds you could watch matches on smaller courts with a cable login, but now you have to pay for ESPN+ for this even if you have a cable login.
Sure but the "niche-tier" live sports are very valuable their audience, which cannot be said of the CNN+ content. ESPN+ is very popular in my social circle to watch college baseball, womens' sports, some MLS and European soccer, and more obscure games in the big college leagues.
Not only is there no alternative for this content, it was unavailable entirely before ESPN+ launched. Of course I'm not defending the lack of cable ESPN content on ESPN+; I would love to have that as well.
Back in the day, CNN was a new thing, it was kind of amazing. There was just news when you needed it or wanted it. Then somehow it became a brand. HLN was supposed to just loop the top stories every 30 minutes, you know Head Line News... Somewhere, between the politically targeted "news" market and streaming, it's a shell. Maybe worse than a shell, "CNN" and "HLN" are literally just brands now, to the top decision makers it's a channel with a pool of viewers, they could give a shit about actual content.
The irony of all of this is that I think a lot of people would pay a few bucks a month for a real hard news streaming service. I could even imagine some sort of a package deal where like the NYT or some other top shelf paper worked with such a new service and you could get both as a package. Ironically, or maybe not, the pay per household model of how carriers pay for the content has really driven the lowest common denominator and as more people pull out of cable, it's actually strengthening the Fox like market share. During lunch here at home, I'd love a 15 minute quick hit of news and the market as I make a sandwich and eat it.
patreon for Channel 5 and a handful of super-independent instagram war photographers like Finn Depacier. Hasn't congealed into a product yet, but it will.
“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.”
They can focus on hard journalism or they can be profitable but they can't do both. Fox is incredibly successful and charges many times higher rates for cable carriage but running a fine-tuned outrage machine.
> They can focus on hard journalism or they can be profitable but they can't do both.
I'm not sure that's true. When everything we consume all day is from rage machines, some hard journalism would be very, very welcome. Just a display of sensibleness would be rejuvenating, no matter what they were reporting.
Rage machines were once the new, exciting thing. Now, I think many if not most are worn out.
That's your opinion but it's not the majority opinion. Like I mentioned, Fox is not only the most profitable news org, they have growing competition who are even less ethical. We could have been elevating NPR or the New Yorker this whole time but it hasn't happened.
> Warner Media wants CNN to focus on hard journalism
Where can I read more about that? It would be fantastic! Imagine a Walter Cronkite in this day and age; my completey amateur guess is that it would be enormously popular. Just imagine watching news without the stressors of constant emotional assaults (try PBS's News Hour for an idea of that alternate reality). But very possibly I'm projecting my fantasy of 'hard journalism' onto Warner Media's concept.
My understanding is the old guard launched as the new guard (Discovery-Warner: http://cnn.com/2022/04/08/media/discovery-warner-media-merge...) was taking over. Probably should have waited to see how the new management wanted to play it, but likely the new team didn't have much say before everything closed. If I was to guess they are pulling it now because the numbers are terrible, but more importantly it needs to be rethought to fit into an HBO Max + Discovery + CNN mega service.
Exactly this. Everyone here is acting as though CNN+ was a failure as a product, when the real issue is that, in the context of the Warner Media Discovery entity, the new management no longer feels that product is aligned with their corporate strategy.
I think we can expect a lot more of this kind of trimming as the combined organization continues to remove redundant services and programming, etc.
Do you have access to their internal modelling? I don't. I have no idea what they were expecting.
I agree, that seems like a slow start, but that's a single month in a very challenging quarter. Given Netflix, one of the biggest participants in the space, missed their subscriber projections by 2.7M in the first quarter, and are forecasting a further 2.5M contraction, I see a very crowded field where a niche offering should be expected to find a small audience and grow slow.
Regardless, I stand by my claim that commenters are missing the forest for the trees, here, and using this as an opportunity to bash the CNN brand rather than stepping back and looking at the broader context.
> Do you have access to their internal modelling? I don't. I have no idea what they were expecting.
That's pretty rich considering you asserted it did not fail as a product, then demanded this of someone who disagreed with you (and is obviously right).
> Do you have access to their internal modelling? I don't. I have no idea what they were expecting.
This info is already out there [0] and they were laughably off the mark. They were expecting 2M subs this year and up to 18M in four years, according to McKinsey.
It's funny watching people defending a dying brand. The broader context is that CNN and the rest of cable news has been self-immolating for awhile now and are circling the drain, desperate to remain relevant.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 305 ms ] threadI personally don't see how it was ever going to work, but it's not my business and I don't know what I'm talking about. They clearly thought they had a chance, tried it, saw it flop, and are willing to quickly admit the mistake and stop the bleeding. You can't succeed if you're not willing to fail.
Oh but it did! That's the problem when you pay people a lot of money to find the evidence you tell them you want
Unfortunately, reality does not care about said "studies".
But upon closer examination part of me wonders if this particular project was a victim of creation by committee, where there was only one person, who could make decisions and the rest were well-paid bobbleheads.
I have no doubt marketing did their research ( and as much as I hate ads, marketing people look for how things really are ), it is possible only some pieces filtered up and/or dissenting voices were just drowned out by 'why are you holding us up?' type of responses.
I am obviously speculating here, but elites ( however you define them ) are people too and subject to most of the same issues as most of us.
This is another sign that CNN is on life support.
Having been in the trenches on a large scale initiative gone awry, my hunch would be the same as yours: the lack of strong/well informed leadership leads to bad decision-making despite all the checkboxes being checked (market research, etc).
In that case, it's easy to blame the "elites" (who certainly do deserve blame). Doing so blindly without deeper reflection is cathartic but not too productive or meaningful. A lot of times, the "elites" are victims of a system bigger than them (established culture, procedures, politics, etc). Spending energy to change said system would IMO be more productive than playing the blame game.
What ever happened to 'pivoting' rather than giving up and throwing in the towel?
I don't think any investors would be happy with projects just giving up and losing their money like what had happened to Quibi. The difference is, that the raised money for Quibi was returned back and CNN+ lost. it. all.
Totally giving up even after what happened to Quibi is inexcusable for CNN. It means that they have not learned anything and have admitted to repeating the same mistakes they did and lost more money and shut down quicker than Quibi.
Now they are part of list of the worst launch failures in history. Oh dear.
They didn't fail, they got a new owner with different brand vision.
It was 300M in complete losses. That's a crazy amount of money.
Instead what they delivered was the crap, low effort documentaries they put on to fill gaps in their airtime. Reruns of Anthony Bourdain, weak medical information from Sanjay Gupta, and more social justice than you can shake a stick at.
How on earth did they waste $300m on this? Anderson Cooper 360 with no ads is all they needed.
To each his own, I wouldn't watch that even if THEY paid me for it. Also, the market has spoken ...
No because "Anderson Cooper 360 without ads" isn't what they put on there, they put on the documentaries—not the pundits. Perhaps you don't like the pundits but the average CNN viewer does and I think might willing to pay $3/month for it.
In fact I was surprised that paying for CNN+ I couldn't even watch Anderson Cooper 360 with ads! All you get is a 10-minute per day preview live stream of CNN unless you can "login through your cable provider".
No, that didn't happen, see [1]
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31111276
I don't really care for CNN much either way, but every once in awhile somehow I get the "right" CNN International channel/vibe/show and it feels like what I thought international journalism should be.
No, it's not a very popular show. Anderson Cooper is last amongst the three major primetime cable news shows. For example, for the week ending March 30th at the 8 PM slot you have (Total Viewers in thousands) [0]:
Tucker Carlson Tonight: 3676
All In W/ Chris Hayes: 1445
Anderson Cooper 360: 890
Now keep in mind that >300,000,000 people live in the United States. So, not that many people are watching cable news to begin with. And definitely not that many young people who may subscribe to a streaming service instead of cable. I don't think there is any sizable market for a streaming service of Anderson Cooper.
0: https://www.mediaite.com/daily-ratings/cable-news-ratings-we...
Many people watch it. It makes money. Anderson Cooper makes money. Ergo the market is speaking quite clearly.
For example, as vile, absolutely stupid, and wrong as Tucker Carlson is, the market is clearly speaking and he's quite popular.
Now if you want to change your definition or raise your bar or something, sure go for it, but without any parameters I think anyone on prime time on CNN or any major news channel is by definition popular.
Not at all. I just cited some statistics. Making a value judgement is actually what you did:
> For example, as vile, absolutely stupid, and wrong as Tucker Carlson is, the market is clearly speaking and he's quite popular.
The first definition of popular is “regarded with favor, approval, or affection by people in general”
The key word being the last one in this case “general.” Based on the statistics I cited cable news is a niche to begin with. And based on his viewership, Anderson Cooper is a niche within a niche. Not “generally” popular.
For the record I don’t watch any of these shows so I don’t have a horse in this race. Not sure why you feel you need to defend Anderson Cooper’s (non) popularity so hard? It’s certainly not a very popular show as you originally stated. But you’ve since lowered the bar that anything on mainstream cable is “popular.”
I’m not defending Anderson Cooper. Don’t care about him. To say he’s unpopular though without defining popularity is a mistake you are making, not me. Even if we used your definition here, which we weren’t, it would still be true that he’s popular. He’s a household name. He’s clearly popular. We are talking about him right here. What more proof do you need?
So back to the original discussion regarding Anderson Cooper, the market has spoken. He’s popular. To say the market hasn’t spoken would be incorrect, given he’s on Prime Time on CNN lol.
So what exact point were you trying to make here? Because I think you’re just arguing to argue and it’s really not a good use of time for you or me.
Being 22 just proves that it’s popular. Would you say the #22 app on the App Store isn’t popular? It’s fine if you draw a line there. I don’t.
This is the reason I think reality TV shows have some utility for society. At least it lets people engage in something that is less harmful and less toxic than the Twitter culture war. It's better for society if people spend time on reality TV shows than Twitter culture war.
What is the appeal to pay for TV news, both with your time and your money?
Online news, from various sources, with an ad-blocker isn't sufficient?
I put it on in the background while I'm doing something else for mindless entertainment. In my experience this is how most people watch CNN. I don't think people sit down to watch it like they do a film. I certainly don't, neither does my family.
I quit subscribing to cable because I was tired of the endless repetitive ads for hair loss pills that came on every 10 minutes. Get rid of that and I'll happily continue consuming their content.
That would be a good way to get a little money from streaming and lose a lot of money from cable distribution, not a net win. There's a reason none of the news networks whose owners have streaming services do that with their big-draw cable news programs.
0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2022/02/21/cnns-rat...
I have no idea why they insisted on wasting so much money launching a service 5 years after everyone else.
One of the biggest launch failures since Quibi, but again very unsurprising that it was shut down so quickly.
Well, their parent company (Warner Bros. Discovery) just completed a big merger 2 weeks ago.
We agree on that fact that people are willing to pay for content that is perceived as valuable to them.
Part of the issue is that CNN is not exactly news. It is mostly opinion pieces ( please don't think I am being biased -- same is true for FOX, MSN and so on ). There is a reason for that, it sells and can gather quite a following as some personalities do show in terms of ratings.
With that in mind, the issue is that 'personalities' on CNN do not offer an 'opinion' that is palatable to a large or valuable segment of population. Amusingly, they seem very much out of step with those. We can argue over why, but I don't think it will help discussion here.
In terms of analogy, Tucker might offer you a Big Mac type opinion; it is a drive-by, easy and rather unhealthy long term, but CNN is not sushi, it is not a gourmet steak.. it is a guy telling me I should try cauliflower dropped quinoa - you could argue it is good for you, but not exactly broad appeal.
My point is.. CNN, if you want to do opinion pieces, you DO need to cater to the lowest common denominator. If you want to be above it all, then do news and abstain from putting a finger on the scale of public opinion.
They should have either done it while Trump was in office or whenever Democrats lose the election next time... because that's when their primary audience seems to seek comfort in their stories about how they are in the right and how the opposition are the bad guys.
In CNNs defense, they propably planned this with the expectation that Trump would win the second term.
Jesus fucking Christ. What would the opposition have to do for you to believe they are the bad guys? Like a coup or something?
This attitude didn't help Hillary either when she put half of the country in her "basket of deplorables".
Edit: Quibi
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quibi
Quibli burned through 1.75 billion USD. I wonder how much CNN+ lost.
CNN+ lost $9.3M a day vs Quibi with $5.8M a day. [0]
[0] https://twitter.com/trungtphan/status/1517177312424316929
Journalism is about reporting events, not interpreting them. Tell me what happened, not what you think about it.
> Journalism is about reporting events, not interpreting them.
This is a description of an idyllic fantasy world that's never existed.
One can (I think reasonably) argue that the current generation of for-profit news is far more likely to spin the facts according to a predetermined agenda in their never-ending pursuit of viewership and associated profits.
But journalism has never, ever, involved simply "reporting events". Just the decision as to which events to report on is an editorial decision.
Your service as a journalist is to serve as a witness for people that was not there.
Not to take advantage of that situation to persuade people into believing your perspectives.
Sports journalism is the only objective journalism.
CNN’s problem is that their “personalities” are absolute snore-fests. Fox’s bread and butter are their hosts but they are doing fine for now (cable will die eventually). In the current post-ironic zeitgeist, audiences are drawn to more transgressive discourse. But Don Lemon can’t make hot takes when his audience is Deloitte managers and urban moms (also he’s terminally unfunny).
The left leaning media has become too safe and staid. I think that’s why left sympathetic people are drawn to the new “left” podcasts like Chapo Trap House
And sit in a sofa instead of a news room.
They really changed their identity from an unbiased news source during Trump era, and I think Trump back in the fold could actually help their rating.
Edit: Wow, didn't expect the down votes, but okay. Grape Juice Plus is a reference to Planet of the Apes - specifically, the 3rd movie in the sequence - the 1971 movie "Escape from the Planet of the Apes". When Zira tries wine for the first time and asks "what is this?", instead of saying "wine", they say "that's, uh, grape juice plus". For whatever silly reason, that scene always stuck with me.
There was a time when CNN was real news like the BBC and not a somewhat-centrist entertainment channel.
The Koch brothers were involved in the Meredith Corporation's purchase of Time back in 2017, but I think that's the most direct involvement they've had with media institutions themselves. They're much bigger fans of the "independent institute that writes policy briefings for conservative politicians" model.
Note that you only have to buy the TV licence if you watch live TV or use the BBC iPlayer streaming service.
I realize it’s hyperbole, but it’s still baffling.
Ask your local Bernie bro what coverage was like when he was campaigning for social programs that would materially benefit the lower and middle classes.
'Corporate values'
Debatable, but even if true, its corporate capitalist economic stance would have it somewhere between the center and center-right, definitely no further left, the economic axis being the main determinant of left-right position.
Even that I don’t think should really be thought of as a single axis - though they’re few enough now, there’s reactionaries who see capitalism as the source of all modern ills beginning with a very old ideological tradition that would look down just as much on communism.
I'd imagine all of CNN and WarnerMedia programming moving onto Discovery+ shortly and that killing this division was part of "synergies".
Doesn't mean CNN+ was a roaring success, but it's just not enough time to tell if it was a flop.
The service CNN+ shutdown quicker than Quibi did and lost even more money per day than them. That is enough time and money to call it a flop. They gave up and called it a month.
It is one of the worst product launches in history since Quibi.
I thought the consistent messaging was that the branding of the consolidated streaming service would be HBO Max, not Discovery+.
> Doesn't mean CNN+ was a roaring success, but it's just not enough time to tell if it was a flop.
Yeah, they planned a four year period to profitability with a $1 billion investment over that period, 1 month doesn't tell much of that story (though launching it while the merger was going on and when it was in clear conflict with the incoming brand strategy was an odd choice.)
If they were doing ok-but-not-great after 1 month, I would agree. But their numbers were through the floor, they basically didn't get anybody to join. And it's important that for any media product, the first month is your biggest period of growth, after your biggest launch and marketing push, and before any kind of attrition has set in. If you can't grow your media streaming service in your first month, you're never growing.
It's inevitable that more events like this will happen. Remember when CBS hilariously "re-merged" with Viacom and CBS All Access rebranded as Paramount+ and swallowed up PlutoTV and Nickelodeon? There wasn't much reason to keep the others around.
Peacock and AMC+ stand out right now as having no reason to exist on their own and seem ripe to merge with at least each other and probably with something else, too.
> CNN’s just-launched direct-to-consumer streaming service CNN+ is shutting down, a person with knowledge of the matter said. An announcement is expected as early as Thursday, the person said. Incoming CNN Chairman and Chief Executive Chris Licht, who hasn’t even officially assumed his role yet, told staffers of the decision on Thursday morning, the person said. Andrew Morse, the executive in charge of the service, is leaving the company, the person said.
> The move to shutter the service on April 30, merely a month after it launched, comes only a week after CNN’s parent company WarnerMedia was taken over by Discovery Communications. Discovery’s executives were dubious about the strategy of the service even before its deal to acquire the company closed, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking.
> CNN’s previous regime, with backing from former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, spent $300 million on developing CNN+, people familiar with the operation said. CNN wooed big-name talent, including Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, to join the service.
Specifically, it doesn't fit the CNN brand vision. Discovery already has lots of brands (with various niches) tied to non-news documentary and infotainment content.
This is the full stop. Leave it to a bunch of suits to come up with a dairy subscription that doesn't come with milk.
interesting point. maybe there was some benefit to building the cnn+ infrastructure prior to their merger, and they did it because they figure they'll need it eventually
Not only is there no alternative for this content, it was unavailable entirely before ESPN+ launched. Of course I'm not defending the lack of cable ESPN content on ESPN+; I would love to have that as well.
The irony of all of this is that I think a lot of people would pay a few bucks a month for a real hard news streaming service. I could even imagine some sort of a package deal where like the NYT or some other top shelf paper worked with such a new service and you could get both as a package. Ironically, or maybe not, the pay per household model of how carriers pay for the content has really driven the lowest common denominator and as more people pull out of cable, it's actually strengthening the Fox like market share. During lunch here at home, I'd love a 15 minute quick hit of news and the market as I make a sandwich and eat it.
patreon for Channel 5 and a handful of super-independent instagram war photographers like Finn Depacier. Hasn't congealed into a product yet, but it will.
“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.”
https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/cnn-plus-shut-down-warner-b...
Wait may we actually see some positive change come out of this nonsense?
I'm not sure that's true. When everything we consume all day is from rage machines, some hard journalism would be very, very welcome. Just a display of sensibleness would be rejuvenating, no matter what they were reporting.
Rage machines were once the new, exciting thing. Now, I think many if not most are worn out.
In business, the majority opinion doesn't matter. In fact, if the majority agrees with you, you are too late to the market.
> We could have been elevating NPR or the New Yorker this whole time but it hasn't happened.
The New Yorker has an intellectual hurdle and mostly isn't hard journalism. NPR has its own limitations, including lack of a cable news channel.
Where can I read more about that? It would be fantastic! Imagine a Walter Cronkite in this day and age; my completey amateur guess is that it would be enormously popular. Just imagine watching news without the stressors of constant emotional assaults (try PBS's News Hour for an idea of that alternate reality). But very possibly I'm projecting my fantasy of 'hard journalism' onto Warner Media's concept.
I think we can expect a lot more of this kind of trimming as the combined organization continues to remove redundant services and programming, etc.
I agree, that seems like a slow start, but that's a single month in a very challenging quarter. Given Netflix, one of the biggest participants in the space, missed their subscriber projections by 2.7M in the first quarter, and are forecasting a further 2.5M contraction, I see a very crowded field where a niche offering should be expected to find a small audience and grow slow.
Regardless, I stand by my claim that commenters are missing the forest for the trees, here, and using this as an opportunity to bash the CNN brand rather than stepping back and looking at the broader context.
That's pretty rich considering you asserted it did not fail as a product, then demanded this of someone who disagreed with you (and is obviously right).
This info is already out there [0] and they were laughably off the mark. They were expecting 2M subs this year and up to 18M in four years, according to McKinsey.
It's funny watching people defending a dying brand. The broader context is that CNN and the rest of cable news has been self-immolating for awhile now and are circling the drain, desperate to remain relevant.
[0] https://www.axios.com/cnn-plus-cuts-warner-brothers-discover...