19 ms·

CNN+ streaming service is shutting down a month after launching

298 points by cwwc 5y ago

kgermino 5y ago
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.
- joegahona 5y ago
  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.
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    >"How on earth did user/market research not show them this would be the result?" 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".
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    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.
    - jjeaff 5y ago
      Most all of these streaming setups are white label of a handful of existing products.
  - memish 5y ago
    It's another example of how disconnected the elites are from reality.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
      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.
      - meatsauce 5y ago
        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. This is another sign that CNN is on life support.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        tsimionescu 5y ago
        While I personally agree with you, it's also important to note that CNN+ had none of the news content of CNN, apparently...
      - billllll 5y ago
        I like your level-headed take. 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.
  - thefreeman 5y ago
    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.
    - tsimionescu 5y ago
      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.
- lkxijlewlf 5y ago
  Exactly. The worst thing you can usually do is stay still. Try and fail, try and succeed, those are good things. Not trying is not good.
  - meatsauce 5y ago
    Spending a quarter of a billion dollars to fail this bad so quickly is not trying; it is gross incompetence.
    - lkxijlewlf 5y ago
      I don't believe you can look at that dollar figure alone and decide that.
      - bavell 5y ago
        Right, you also have to look at the embarrassingly low subscribers they got using that dollar figure.
- rvz 5y ago
  > 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.
  - robonerd 5y ago
    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.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > I give them credit for trying and failing quickly. They didn't fail, they got a new owner with different brand vision.
- fastball 5y ago
  Not sure blowing $300M counts as failing quickly.
- hajile 5y ago
  This wasn't a 1M startup venture that failed. It was 300M in complete losses. That's a crazy amount of money.
bin_bash 5y ago
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.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  >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 ...
  - bin_bash 5y ago
    > 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".
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - moralestapia 5y ago
      >the average CNN viewer does and I think might willing to pay $3/month for it No, that didn't happen, see [1] 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31111276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31111276
      - diputsmonro 5y ago
Gortal278 5y ago
They should settle for licensing out their content to other streaming services. I have no idea why they insisted on wasting so much money launching a service 5 years after everyone else.
- meatsauce 5y ago
  If nobody is buying it from the source, how would it have value somewhere else?
  - Gortal278 5y ago
    CNN+ sign up probably had too much friction, having the content available on hulu / Amazon prime etc seems more attractive IMO.
rvz 5y ago
A complete and stunning failure. Less than a month after launch, another mainstream media product has struggled to take off and has been shut down. One of the biggest launch failures since Quibi, but again very unsurprising that it was shut down so quickly.
- bombcar 5y ago
  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.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    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.
  - dave5104 5y ago
    > This sounds like something is changing somewhere Well, their parent company (Warner Bros. Discovery) just completed a big merger 2 weeks ago.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      That makes a lot more sense, the parent company gave them one chance and then was like "er nope".
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  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
wmichelin 5y ago
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.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  I disagree to an extent. 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.
- wincy 5y ago
  All sorts of people pay for news media and punditry like The Blaze or The Daily Wire. Glenn Beck and Ben Shapiro are doing very well for themselves.
- bavell 5y ago
  I don't know, what about substack? People are seeking out journalism and paying for it.
mc4ndr3 5y ago
Paywall.
kache_ 5y ago
bye bye :) CNN's reputation is severely damaged and they'll never recover
- jjeaff 5y ago
  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.
  - kache_ 5y ago
    number 1 in a pack of losers makes you the biggest loser
ComradePhil 5y ago
They chose terrible timing to launch it. 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.
- casralad 5y ago
  >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. Jesus fucking Christ. What would the opposition have to do for you to believe they are the bad guys? Like a coup or something?
  - ars 5y ago
    Yes, a couple people storming the capital means that the other 150 million people in the US are also "bad guys". This attitude didn't help Hillary either when she put half of the country in her "basket of deplorables".
    - rayiner 5y ago
      It did help—it got Trump elected. Tyvm.
dmosley 5y ago
Is this a record for shortest lived premium service? I feel like it may be...
- xeromal 5y ago
  What was that service that only worked on phones with in-house made 10 minute TV shows? That one was incredibly expensive. Edit: Quibi
  - filoleg 5y ago
    Was it Quibi?[0] 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quibi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quibi
  - dmosley 5y ago
    Quibi was launched April 6th, 2020 and dissolved December 1, 2020. It lasted nearly 8 months.
    - xeromal 5y ago
      You're right but now I want to calculate losses per day. haha Quibli burned through 1.75 billion USD. I wonder how much CNN+ lost.
      - celestialcheese 5y ago
        The article mentions $300m USD to develop CNN+
      - rvz 5y ago
        > I want to calculate losses per day. CNN+ lost $9.3M a day vs Quibi with $5.8M a day. [0] [0] https://twitter.com/trungtphan/status/1517177312424316929 https://twitter.com/trungtphan/status/1517177312424316929
        xeromal 5y ago
29athrowaway 5y ago
CNN is not about news, it is about opinionated hosts and guests, i.e.: not journalism. Journalism is about reporting events, not interpreting them. Tell me what happened, not what you think about it.
- jiscariot 5y ago
  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.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    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.
- BaseballPhysics 5y ago
  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.
  - 29athrowaway 5y ago
    It is called journalistic integrity. They do not have it. 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.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
unethical_ban 5y ago
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.
Ourgon 5y ago
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.
donsupreme 5y ago
Feels like existential crisis for CNN. Ironically their shrinking rating could be rescued if Trump is seriously making a run for 2nd term. 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.
- memish 5y ago
  You're right and I worry they will try to bring Trump back.
daveslash 5y ago
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.
vondur 5y ago
I'm not surprised this happened. CNN itself is struggling and it's ratings have been dropping.
mountainofdeath 5y ago
Grand opening...grand closing. There was a time when CNN was real news like the BBC and not a somewhat-centrist entertainment channel.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  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.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    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).
    - bin_bash 5y ago
      My understanding may be wrong but I thought the Koch brothers have been heavily bankrolling PBS
      - woodruffw 5y ago
        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.
      - colinmhayes 5y ago
        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.
bhaney 5y ago
Never heard of CNN+ until just now. Odd way to be introduced.
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.ph/Abyy0 https://archive.ph/Abyy0
jdrc 5y ago
CNN non plus. didnt even know it was a thing
celestialcheese 5y ago
This seems more like cost-cutting; the new WarnerMedia/CNN/Discovery entity doesn't want competing streaming services. 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.
- rvz 5y ago
  > 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.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > 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.)
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    > 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.
nonameiguess 5y ago
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.
- samizdis 5y ago
  It's rather short, so: > 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 $300 million on developing CNN+, people familiar with the operation said. CNN wooed big-name talent, including Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, to join the service.
  - smcin 5y ago
    They forgot to say 'Breaking News'.
jdlyga 5y ago
This got caught up in the Warner Media merger and CNN's executive leaving the company. Warner Media wants CNN to focus on hard journalism, and the CNN+ content of soft shows doesn't really fit with that. Plus, CNN+ never included the CNN cable channel since it would put at risk their main cash cow: distribution agreements to carry CNN. Warner Media wants to have HBO Max to be their big all encompassing streaming service, so I doubt they see a need for a separate CNN+ service anymore. The timing is interesting though, since was launched right before the merger closed. I wonder if the CNN folks just wanted to get this out the door before the new leadership took over. I do give credit to Warner Media execs for killing this early as soon as they decided on long term plans for the combined company.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Warner Media wants CNN to focus on hard journalism, and the CNN+ content of soft shows doesn't really fit with that. Specifically, it doesn't fit the CNN brand vision. Discovery already has lots of brands (with various niches) tied to non-news documentary and infotainment content.
- legitster 5y ago
  > CNN+ never included the CNN cable channel This is the full stop. Leave it to a bunch of suits to come up with a dairy subscription that doesn't come with milk.
  - jquery 5y ago
    This is kind of hilarious. who was cnn+ even supposed to be for? I personally like CNN, and would probably pay <$x/month or something to get it unbundled. But no way would I ever pay for "cnn+" that doesn't even have cnn!
    - bombcar 5y ago
      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.
evanmoran 5y ago
My understanding is the old guard launched as the new guard (Discovery-Warner: http://cnn.com/2022/04/08/media/discovery-warner-media-merger-close 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.
- BaseballPhysics 5y ago
  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.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    It failed as a product spectacularly. 18k subscribers after your first month and 300M$ is abysmal, below even obscure YouTube channels.
    - BaseballPhysics 5y ago
      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.
deleted 5y ago
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meatsauce 5y ago
"This is not a decision about quality; we appreciate all of the work, ambition and creativity that went into building CNN+, an organization with terrific talent and compelling programming" That is pure comedy. The reason why consumers said 'no thanks' is because CNN's propaganda is known partisan trash and not journalism, nor is it even remotely compelling for anyone short of those who sit to the left of Chairman Mao.
- iamjake648 5y ago
  > sit to the left of Chairman Mao. What world do you live in? Your caricature would be laughable if wasn't so disconnected with reality.
- dmead 5y ago
  Is it? Or is it because their best show features a guy who killed himself years ago? I honestly don't understand the charges that CNN is left leaning. The way people talk about it you'd think it was mother Jones or the young Turks or something.
- csours 5y ago
  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA The only news that sells IS partisan trash. We can all call out the "other side" for their trash politics, that's very easy [0]. At the same time, there is no reason to believe that a "both sides" debate is going to be fruitful. CNN is "team sports" politics. They want people to root for their own team and they want to cover politics like teams scoring points. I think it's very easy to say that American Politics are very broken, and seem to only become more so. Saying outrageous things is a winning strategy right now. I see two counters to this: 1. Deep Conversations. Sound bytes and social media memes can be very motivating, but cannot help people understand real human experience. Only deep conversations in small groups can really do that. Some long form media can also do this. Unfortunately deep conversations don't sell well and they don't scale well. 2. Acknowledging the real human experiences that inform people's outlook. Every controversy has preset entrenched talking points. I'm not going to bring up an example here, because then the replies would only be about the example. But you can imagine any of the identity politics lightning rods, and you can think of the main talking points. The surface level of these arguments is so well worn and smoothed over that it's hard to remember that people have real experiences related to their point of view, and it's very easy to vilify people who don't agree. Again, it takes real effort to understand where someone else comes from and to disagree with them without invalidating their experiences and feelings. This doesn't sell, and this doesn't scale. No political party rewards this kind of work. But yes, Fuck the Communist News Network. That's an easy meme to spread. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
smm11 5y ago
I'm not sure even Google has abandoned something so quickly. Impressive. The end of this sort of "news" is near, I believe.
- brimble 5y ago
  The end of CNN, maybe. Fox News seems to be doing fine. It's wall-to-wall alternate-reality stuff that turns out to be false or deliberately misrepresented, when I give it even a cursory check, but it's doing fine.
  - tempnow987 5y ago
    I was curious about their hunter biden coverage. I don't watch it by heard they did a lot about stuff with China and other countries supposedly in their alternate reality doing deals with him that he may not have reported / paid taxes on etc. I know WaPo called the claims there was a laptop with dirt a russian misinformation campaign. I think facebook downranked stories about stuff with Hunter Biden as misinformation. I think twitter cancelled the NY Post's twitter account because of this. So the misinformation got shot down. My problem was (as a max dem donor) I worry that the claims that anything negative about dems is misinformation or an alternate reality means folks might miss some actual problems. Again, glad to see Hunter was cleared - but eventually someone on the left will do something dicey that will be true, and then you start to lose trust if you call things you don't like misinformation. Fox is doing something right that is getting folks to watch them.
  - Ourgon 5y ago
    You're implying that Fox is special in producing wall-to-wall alternate-reality stuff that turns out to be false or deliberately misrepresented. The reality is that CNN is going down because they have been producing, to use your term, wall-to-wall alternate-reality stuff that turns out to be false or deliberately misrepresented. From Russian Collusion to Hunter Biden's laptop, from uncritically parroting COVID-related panic porn to similarly uncritically parroting race and gender baiting activists and everything in between, CNN is going down because their specific flavour of alternate reality is rapidly going out of vogue. Fox is on the ascendant because they have been railing against whatever CNN (and MSNBC and ABC and CBS and PBS and NPR and the NYT and WaPo and...) pushed forward. If all those latter actors were to disappear Fox would suffer since their brand gains its popularity in part from opposing them.
jmyeet 5y ago
- TheAceOfHearts 5y ago
  Why would I pay for their service when I can get equivalent levels of political hot takes on YouTube for free? They should've just made a YouTube channel and allowed subscriptions. A couple politically involved YouTubers seem to be doing just fine. I haven't verified this, but I've heard that some of them even get more views than regular CNN.
  - jmyeet 5y ago
    I'm not saying you should. It was an observation not an accusation. I honestly don't know what they should do. I was just convinced CNN+ was never going anywhere.
- meatsauce 5y ago
  That is a massive stretch of the imagination that could only ever come from the far left organization known as 'Media Matters.'
  - jmyeet 5y ago
    Media Matters didn't doctor Carlson's audio. Are you saying it's fake? His own words plus the agreed facts of the case are pretty damning on their own.
TheAceOfHearts 5y ago
Everyone should get a $300m fuck-up as a treat. It's actually rather mind-blowing that so much money was invested in such a system. How does that possibly make sense? According to this service [0], CNN has an annual revenue of $190m. Is this some kind of money funneling scheme or an exec's pet project? How do these execs remain so rich after wasting massive amounts of money on projects that seem doomed to fail right from the start? Seeing this makes me wish you could somehow directly short projects of this nature from large companies. [0] https://www.zippia.com/cnn-careers-17754/revenue/ https://www.zippia.com/cnn-careers-17754/revenue/
- tonguez 5y ago
  - scarface74 5y ago
    Did this just turn into a QANon board?
- _fat_santa 5y ago
  I have a hard time understanding how it can cost $300M to stand-up a platform like that. Like where are they spending their money? Can someone in this space enlighten me about how this kind of stuff is so expensive. It it just all about contracts and broadcast rights?
  - ianmf 5y ago
    They probably cut market research funding to obtain that $300M.
    - creaghpatr 5y ago
      They retained McKinsey to forecast adoption, bet that wasn't cheap.
      - chiefalchemist 5y ago
ThePowerOfFuet 5y ago
https://archive.ph/Abyy0 https://archive.ph/Abyy0
gordon_freeman 5y ago
I am a bit sad to see this as I was excited about CNN's library of excellent documentaries and past shows such as Parts Unknown and The Wonder List etc being available on CNN+. I also liked Chris Wallace's interviews with various personalities. I just hope that CNN+ content can be available when WB+Discovery(+CNN?) service launches.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
krasicki 5y ago
I miss Ted Turner
meatsauce 5y ago
"The failed service was the brainchild of former CNN president Jeff Zucker" That really says it all.
sudden_dystopia 5y ago
Well at least this shows people won’t pay for misinformation
xyzzy21 5y ago
Can you say "Quibi"? So much in common.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
CNN+ was a stupid endeavor knowing that the ultimate goal was always going to have to be consolidation of streaming services. People don't want to have to subscribe to Discovery+ AND HBOMax AND CNN+. Raise the price by a few bucks and throw it all under one umbrella so that people are less likely to cancel from month to month. These are people with business degrees and they can't figure this out.
mbostleman 5y ago
Seems to me like an epic swan dive in to the mosh pit right at the moment the crowd parted.
brentm 5y ago
If there was a news bundle app: CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CNBC, Bloomberg, etc. I think that would do fairly well in the long run. I know it would send me over the edge and make me feel better about getting rid of cable. I think almost no one with cable is looking for more talking heads. Since the back catalog has a value of effectively zero their main audience has to be cord cutters. I do think that would work for CNN+ eventually but it would probably take years to get to scale. In general though: Single network news subscriptions like this encourage behavior that is a net negative for society. Right now it's hard enough to convince people to change the channel and step out of their bubble to form their own opinions. The last thing society needs is for everyone to only have access to one news channel. Especially one where the viewer is a direct customer as it's only going to encourage these stations to give the viewers more and more of the opinions they already agree with. This will just make people even more opinionated which then drives our politicians to continue down this path of zero compromise and zero legislative productivity.
- mikeryan 5y ago
  That’s not going to happen. They’re all competing entities with different corporate ownerships. I’ve done some work with a few NBCUniversal brands (Syfy, Bravo, E) and while they’ve gotten more aligned in recent years the individual brands are still competing with each other for eyeballs and these are folks that are under a single corporate umbrella and mostly in the same building (30 Rock). In theory you could create a YouTube TV for news, or sports only those efforts are non starters. If a provider wants MSNBC they have to negotiate for a whole package of NBCU brands.
- mastazi 5y ago
  We have that in Australia, AU$8/month. https://flashnews.com.au/ https://flashnews.com.au/ The streaming service itself is owned by Streamotion which is owned by Foxtel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxtel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxtel Includes many popular news services (Sky, Fox, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, AlJazeera, NHK etc).
- MrMan 5y ago
  It's called YouTube TV and it's awesome
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Good riddance. CNN has declined precipitously in general quality, in the last couple of years, and CNN+ was really only a "Get your pure and refined poo, here." Def not worth it. BTW: This has nothing to do with perceived (or actual) political bent. I just feel like they threw all pretense of restraint to the wind, and I couldn't trust them; even a little bit.
- gsibble 5y ago
  They product has indeed gone way down hill with no pretense of neutrality or even civility.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > CNN has declined precipitously in general quality, in the last couple of years Remember the 2016 campaign, when they covered Zucker's friend Trump 24/7?
99_00 5y ago
Their top show gets around 700,000 viewers per day. That's around the same as The Deadliest Catch: Bloodlines, a spin-off of the original The Deadliest Catch, which has more viewers.
- Vladimof 5y ago
  Their views are too extreme, a bit like Fox, but the opposite.
vincentmarle 5y ago
Yet another Scott Galloway prediction that went sideways: https://marker.medium.com/how-cnn-can-save-itself-16a854f4d865 https://marker.medium.com/how-cnn-can-save-itself-16a854f4d8...
- fleddr 5y ago
  That in itself is worth 300M$. He's wrong about...well, everything. And still adored. I want to know his secret.
- Traster 5y ago
  I'm not sure what in that article you're arguing he got wrong. He seems to suggest a number of options for CNN, he dismisses the paywall option, and mentions consolidation - which is basically what has happened with WB Disco. The failure of CNN+ doesn't really tell us much about the future of CNN given where WB Disco is right now.
JohnDeHope 5y ago
A joint venture with Fox News where every 15min they switch between liberal and conservative pundits would have been interesting. Imagine the drama when folks get up for a drink, come back, and sit down to somebody saying the polar opposite of what the person before had been saying. I'd pay to watch people watch that, just to see their heads explode.
- bogomipz 5y ago
  This made me laugh out loud. Thanks for that. Perhaps Mike Judge could produce it? Something in the article seems to support just how fungible the CNN and Fox cable news-tainment duopoly is. They increasingly appear to be just two sides of the same news-tainment coin: >"CNN wooed big-name talent, including Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, to join the service." In a NYTimes profile from last year Chis Wallace stated: >"I just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox."[1]. It's worth noting that he was at Fox for 18 years. It's amusing to think that his move to the CNN streaming service just happened to coincide with his breaking point after almost two decades. I believe CNN also made an offer to Megan Fox after she exited Fox News. My impression of CNN the last few years was that they seemed to be they spending an inordinate amount of time talking about whatever outrageous thing a Fox host just said on air. It's all rather dystopian and meta. The article hints that Discovery would like them to focus on hard-jouralism but I can't recall the last time CNN was hard-journalism. The Ted Turner years, the first Gulf war? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/business/media/chris-wallace-cnn-fox-news.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/business/media/chris-wall...
  - prasadjoglekar 5y ago
    It's not a dupoloy at all. Fox cable handily beats CNN and MSNBC in daily ratings. Only thing beating Fox is the mainline broadcast networks' evening news.
    - bogomipz 5y ago
      I didn't mean an actual economic duopoly, that was sarcasm. I meant a duopoly in the sense of two poles of the political spectrum that each seems to cater to exclusively.
subsaharancoder 5y ago
One CNN is bad enough, CNN+ is just traaash on steroids!
circa 5y ago
I really can't believe a group of people sat around and gave the green light to this thing from the start. It seems like such a bad idea from and before the start.
TrevorJ 5y ago
The first I heard of CNN+ was in the context of how badly it was failing. I'm pretty immersed in the internet and our household collectively has 3 or so streaming services. It seems to me as if there advertising about the service did not effectively target the key demographics.
johndfsgdgdfg 5y ago
CNN is the one the last few bastions of democracy. CNN has played crucial role against racist xenophobic republicans. CNN thwarted the propaganda effort by the racist republicans that COVID came from China. WHO investigation has found that COVID most likely came from outside China. I hope CNN cable would still go on strongly in its effort to shutdown conspuracy peddling republicans.
chernevik 5y ago
I don't know why anyone watches tv news of any kind in the first place, it's uniformly shallow, reactive and ignorant. And biased. Even with "breaking" events I'd rather wait for the papers, though most of those are also terrible. Of course, these channels and papers find audiences, so clearly the market doesn't agree with me. Sigh.
zicxor 5y ago
Very interesting. https://inside.com/business/posts/cnn-looks-doomed-280568 https://inside.com/business/posts/cnn-looks-doomed-280568
zendaven 5y ago
Unfortunate. I was going to use this to watch all of Parts Unknown.
xnx 5y ago
Fail fast(?)
jonathanlydall 5y ago
I don’t live in the US and when I saw this article I told my wife that CNN tried streaming and asked her to guess what they called it, she got it right first guess. I find the choice of the + suffix on almost all streaming services both highly bizarre and mildly amusing.
s1mon 5y ago
It’s fascinating how many big failures like this happen before I’ve heard of the product. I spend a lot of time reading the news (NYTimes, SFChronicle, Twitter, HN, etc.), so I don’t think I’m somehow clueless. The first I heard of CNN+ was after the shutdown decision. Perhaps they didn’t bother to market and advertise this properly. I couldn’t get away from Disney+ or Apple TV+ ads before and after they launched.
nabla9 5y ago
Warner Bros Discovery will merge HBO Max, Discovery+ and CNN+ (CNN+ was created before WB Discovery merger) https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/warner-bros-shutting-down-cnn-variety-2022-04-21/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/warner-bros-s...
mark_l_watson 5y ago
I heard that CNN+ had fewer viewers than small Indy news people on YouTube. Except for Democracy Now and (sort of) PBS, I am so disappointed by the main news corporations. I remember when the news covered multiple points of view and was generally interesting. I am also tired of most of the small independent news bloggers, YouTubers, etc. because they suffer from the same illness: talking to their own bubble.
- google234123 5y ago
  Democracy Now is super left wing, though? I don’t think they cover many points of view.
  - mark_l_watson 5y ago
    You are correct about that. PBS tends to have more material with wider diversity. Still, I donate to both, feel good about supporting them.
tomohawk 5y ago
They lasted longer than I expected.
bspear 5y ago
Can't say I'm surprised
vonwoodson 5y ago
WSJ is owned by Fox News. I could give give less of a damn about what they have to say.
cat_plus_plus 5y ago
I would love a high quality subscriber news services not pressured to pander to advertisers or lowest common denominator mass tastes. But CNN (or Fox, not picking sides here) are utterly unqualified to provide such a service. I would gladly pay for full BBC content to be available in US without any shenanigans. Even though being funded by the government is normally not great news, maybe still better than being funded by rabid base of a single political party plus pharma companies selling drugs to old people?
rubyist5eva 5y ago
CNN+ required you to sign in with a cable provider to get the “real” CNN stuff that people were interested in (pundits). When will the corporate fat cats learn that this makes your service DOA? People that sign up for streaming services generally hate cable and despise the industry so blocking your main market from your own service is boneheaded beyond belief.

298 points by cwwc 5y ago

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.

joegahona 5y ago
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.
- moralestapia 5y ago
  >"How on earth did user/market research not show them this would be the result?" 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".
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  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.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    Most all of these streaming setups are white label of a handful of existing products.
- memish 5y ago
  It's another example of how disconnected the elites are from reality.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    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.
    - meatsauce 5y ago
      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. This is another sign that CNN is on life support.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - tsimionescu 5y ago
        While I personally agree with you, it's also important to note that CNN+ had none of the news content of CNN, apparently...
    - billllll 5y ago
      I like your level-headed take. 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.
- thefreeman 5y ago
  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.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    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.
lkxijlewlf 5y ago
Exactly. The worst thing you can usually do is stay still. Try and fail, try and succeed, those are good things. Not trying is not good.
- meatsauce 5y ago
  Spending a quarter of a billion dollars to fail this bad so quickly is not trying; it is gross incompetence.
  - lkxijlewlf 5y ago
    I don't believe you can look at that dollar figure alone and decide that.
    - bavell 5y ago
      Right, you also have to look at the embarrassingly low subscribers they got using that dollar figure.
rvz 5y ago
> 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.
- robonerd 5y ago
  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.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> I give them credit for trying and failing quickly. They didn't fail, they got a new owner with different brand vision.
fastball 5y ago
Not sure blowing $300M counts as failing quickly.
hajile 5y ago
This wasn't a 1M startup venture that failed. It was 300M in complete losses. That's a crazy amount of money.

bin_bash 5y ago

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.

moralestapia 5y ago
>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 ...
- bin_bash 5y ago
  > 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".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    >the average CNN viewer does and I think might willing to pay $3/month for it No, that didn't happen, see [1] 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31111276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31111276
    - diputsmonro 5y ago

Gortal278 5y ago

They should settle for licensing out their content to other streaming services. I have no idea why they insisted on wasting so much money launching a service 5 years after everyone else.

meatsauce 5y ago
If nobody is buying it from the source, how would it have value somewhere else?
- Gortal278 5y ago
  CNN+ sign up probably had too much friction, having the content available on hulu / Amazon prime etc seems more attractive IMO.

rvz 5y ago

A complete and stunning failure. Less than a month after launch, another mainstream media product has struggled to take off and has been shut down. One of the biggest launch failures since Quibi, but again very unsurprising that it was shut down so quickly.

bombcar 5y ago
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.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  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.
- dave5104 5y ago
  > This sounds like something is changing somewhere Well, their parent company (Warner Bros. Discovery) just completed a big merger 2 weeks ago.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    That makes a lot more sense, the parent company gave them one chance and then was like "er nope".
mardifoufs 5y ago
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

wmichelin 5y ago

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.

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I disagree to an extent. 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.
wincy 5y ago
All sorts of people pay for news media and punditry like The Blaze or The Daily Wire. Glenn Beck and Ben Shapiro are doing very well for themselves.
bavell 5y ago
I don't know, what about substack? People are seeking out journalism and paying for it.

mc4ndr3 5y ago

Paywall.

kache_ 5y ago

bye bye :) CNN's reputation is severely damaged and they'll never recover

jjeaff 5y ago
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.
- kache_ 5y ago
  number 1 in a pack of losers makes you the biggest loser

ComradePhil 5y ago

They chose terrible timing to launch it. 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.

casralad 5y ago
>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. Jesus fucking Christ. What would the opposition have to do for you to believe they are the bad guys? Like a coup or something?
- ars 5y ago
  Yes, a couple people storming the capital means that the other 150 million people in the US are also "bad guys". This attitude didn't help Hillary either when she put half of the country in her "basket of deplorables".
  - rayiner 5y ago
    It did help—it got Trump elected. Tyvm.

dmosley 5y ago

Is this a record for shortest lived premium service? I feel like it may be...

xeromal 5y ago
What was that service that only worked on phones with in-house made 10 minute TV shows? That one was incredibly expensive. Edit: Quibi
- filoleg 5y ago
  Was it Quibi?[0] 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quibi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quibi
- dmosley 5y ago
  Quibi was launched April 6th, 2020 and dissolved December 1, 2020. It lasted nearly 8 months.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    You're right but now I want to calculate losses per day. haha Quibli burned through 1.75 billion USD. I wonder how much CNN+ lost.
    - celestialcheese 5y ago
      The article mentions $300m USD to develop CNN+
    - rvz 5y ago
      > I want to calculate losses per day. CNN+ lost $9.3M a day vs Quibi with $5.8M a day. [0] [0] https://twitter.com/trungtphan/status/1517177312424316929 https://twitter.com/trungtphan/status/1517177312424316929
      - xeromal 5y ago

29athrowaway 5y ago

CNN is not about news, it is about opinionated hosts and guests, i.e.: not journalism. Journalism is about reporting events, not interpreting them. Tell me what happened, not what you think about it.

jiscariot 5y ago
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.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  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.
BaseballPhysics 5y ago
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.
- 29athrowaway 5y ago
  It is called journalistic integrity. They do not have it. 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.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

unethical_ban 5y ago

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.

Ourgon 5y ago

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.

donsupreme 5y ago

Feels like existential crisis for CNN. Ironically their shrinking rating could be rescued if Trump is seriously making a run for 2nd term. 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.

memish 5y ago
You're right and I worry they will try to bring Trump back.

daveslash 5y ago

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.

vondur 5y ago

I'm not surprised this happened. CNN itself is struggling and it's ratings have been dropping.

mountainofdeath 5y ago

Grand opening...grand closing. There was a time when CNN was real news like the BBC and not a somewhat-centrist entertainment channel.

shadowgovt 5y ago
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.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  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).
  - bin_bash 5y ago
    My understanding may be wrong but I thought the Koch brothers have been heavily bankrolling PBS
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      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.
    - colinmhayes 5y ago
      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.

bhaney 5y ago

Never heard of CNN+ until just now. Odd way to be introduced.

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.ph/Abyy0 https://archive.ph/Abyy0

jdrc 5y ago

CNN non plus. didnt even know it was a thing

celestialcheese 5y ago

This seems more like cost-cutting; the new WarnerMedia/CNN/Discovery entity doesn't want competing streaming services. 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.

rvz 5y ago
> 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.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> 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.)
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > 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.

nonameiguess 5y ago

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.

samizdis 5y ago
It's rather short, so: > 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.
- smcin 5y ago
  They forgot to say 'Breaking News'.

jdlyga 5y ago

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.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> 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.
legitster 5y ago
> CNN+ never included the CNN cable channel 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.
- jquery 5y ago
  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!
  - bombcar 5y ago
    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.

evanmoran 5y ago

My understanding is the old guard launched as the new guard (Discovery-Warner: http://cnn.com/2022/04/08/media/discovery-warner-media-merger-close 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.

BaseballPhysics 5y ago
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.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  It failed as a product spectacularly. 18k subscribers after your first month and 300M$ is abysmal, below even obscure YouTube channels.
  - BaseballPhysics 5y ago
    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.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

meatsauce 5y ago

"This is not a decision about quality; we appreciate all of the work, ambition and creativity that went into building CNN+, an organization with terrific talent and compelling programming" That is pure comedy. The reason why consumers said 'no thanks' is because CNN's propaganda is known partisan trash and not journalism, nor is it even remotely compelling for anyone short of those who sit to the left of Chairman Mao.

iamjake648 5y ago
> sit to the left of Chairman Mao. What world do you live in? Your caricature would be laughable if wasn't so disconnected with reality.
dmead 5y ago
Is it? Or is it because their best show features a guy who killed himself years ago? I honestly don't understand the charges that CNN is left leaning. The way people talk about it you'd think it was mother Jones or the young Turks or something.
csours 5y ago
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA The only news that sells IS partisan trash. We can all call out the "other side" for their trash politics, that's very easy [0]. At the same time, there is no reason to believe that a "both sides" debate is going to be fruitful. CNN is "team sports" politics. They want people to root for their own team and they want to cover politics like teams scoring points. I think it's very easy to say that American Politics are very broken, and seem to only become more so. Saying outrageous things is a winning strategy right now. I see two counters to this: 1. Deep Conversations. Sound bytes and social media memes can be very motivating, but cannot help people understand real human experience. Only deep conversations in small groups can really do that. Some long form media can also do this. Unfortunately deep conversations don't sell well and they don't scale well. 2. Acknowledging the real human experiences that inform people's outlook. Every controversy has preset entrenched talking points. I'm not going to bring up an example here, because then the replies would only be about the example. But you can imagine any of the identity politics lightning rods, and you can think of the main talking points. The surface level of these arguments is so well worn and smoothed over that it's hard to remember that people have real experiences related to their point of view, and it's very easy to vilify people who don't agree. Again, it takes real effort to understand where someone else comes from and to disagree with them without invalidating their experiences and feelings. This doesn't sell, and this doesn't scale. No political party rewards this kind of work. But yes, Fuck the Communist News Network. That's an easy meme to spread. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

smm11 5y ago

I'm not sure even Google has abandoned something so quickly. Impressive. The end of this sort of "news" is near, I believe.

brimble 5y ago
The end of CNN, maybe. Fox News seems to be doing fine. It's wall-to-wall alternate-reality stuff that turns out to be false or deliberately misrepresented, when I give it even a cursory check, but it's doing fine.
- tempnow987 5y ago
  I was curious about their hunter biden coverage. I don't watch it by heard they did a lot about stuff with China and other countries supposedly in their alternate reality doing deals with him that he may not have reported / paid taxes on etc. I know WaPo called the claims there was a laptop with dirt a russian misinformation campaign. I think facebook downranked stories about stuff with Hunter Biden as misinformation. I think twitter cancelled the NY Post's twitter account because of this. So the misinformation got shot down. My problem was (as a max dem donor) I worry that the claims that anything negative about dems is misinformation or an alternate reality means folks might miss some actual problems. Again, glad to see Hunter was cleared - but eventually someone on the left will do something dicey that will be true, and then you start to lose trust if you call things you don't like misinformation. Fox is doing something right that is getting folks to watch them.
- Ourgon 5y ago
  You're implying that Fox is special in producing wall-to-wall alternate-reality stuff that turns out to be false or deliberately misrepresented. The reality is that CNN is going down because they have been producing, to use your term, wall-to-wall alternate-reality stuff that turns out to be false or deliberately misrepresented. From Russian Collusion to Hunter Biden's laptop, from uncritically parroting COVID-related panic porn to similarly uncritically parroting race and gender baiting activists and everything in between, CNN is going down because their specific flavour of alternate reality is rapidly going out of vogue. Fox is on the ascendant because they have been railing against whatever CNN (and MSNBC and ABC and CBS and PBS and NPR and the NYT and WaPo and...) pushed forward. If all those latter actors were to disappear Fox would suffer since their brand gains its popularity in part from opposing them.

jmyeet 5y ago

TheAceOfHearts 5y ago
Why would I pay for their service when I can get equivalent levels of political hot takes on YouTube for free? They should've just made a YouTube channel and allowed subscriptions. A couple politically involved YouTubers seem to be doing just fine. I haven't verified this, but I've heard that some of them even get more views than regular CNN.
- jmyeet 5y ago
  I'm not saying you should. It was an observation not an accusation. I honestly don't know what they should do. I was just convinced CNN+ was never going anywhere.
meatsauce 5y ago
That is a massive stretch of the imagination that could only ever come from the far left organization known as 'Media Matters.'
- jmyeet 5y ago
  Media Matters didn't doctor Carlson's audio. Are you saying it's fake? His own words plus the agreed facts of the case are pretty damning on their own.

TheAceOfHearts 5y ago

Everyone should get a $300m fuck-up as a treat. It's actually rather mind-blowing that so much money was invested in such a system. How does that possibly make sense? According to this service [0], CNN has an annual revenue of $190m. Is this some kind of money funneling scheme or an exec's pet project? How do these execs remain so rich after wasting massive amounts of money on projects that seem doomed to fail right from the start? Seeing this makes me wish you could somehow directly short projects of this nature from large companies. [0] https://www.zippia.com/cnn-careers-17754/revenue/ https://www.zippia.com/cnn-careers-17754/revenue/

tonguez 5y ago
- scarface74 5y ago
  Did this just turn into a QANon board?
_fat_santa 5y ago
I have a hard time understanding how it can cost $300M to stand-up a platform like that. Like where are they spending their money? Can someone in this space enlighten me about how this kind of stuff is so expensive. It it just all about contracts and broadcast rights?
- ianmf 5y ago
  They probably cut market research funding to obtain that $300M.
  - creaghpatr 5y ago
    They retained McKinsey to forecast adoption, bet that wasn't cheap.
    - chiefalchemist 5y ago

ThePowerOfFuet 5y ago

https://archive.ph/Abyy0 https://archive.ph/Abyy0

gordon_freeman 5y ago

I am a bit sad to see this as I was excited about CNN's library of excellent documentaries and past shows such as Parts Unknown and The Wonder List etc being available on CNN+. I also liked Chris Wallace's interviews with various personalities. I just hope that CNN+ content can be available when WB+Discovery(+CNN?) service launches.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

krasicki 5y ago

I miss Ted Turner

meatsauce 5y ago

"The failed service was the brainchild of former CNN president Jeff Zucker" That really says it all.

sudden_dystopia 5y ago

Well at least this shows people won’t pay for misinformation

xyzzy21 5y ago

Can you say "Quibi"? So much in common.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

CNN+ was a stupid endeavor knowing that the ultimate goal was always going to have to be consolidation of streaming services. People don't want to have to subscribe to Discovery+ AND HBOMax AND CNN+. Raise the price by a few bucks and throw it all under one umbrella so that people are less likely to cancel from month to month. These are people with business degrees and they can't figure this out.

mbostleman 5y ago

Seems to me like an epic swan dive in to the mosh pit right at the moment the crowd parted.

brentm 5y ago

If there was a news bundle app: CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CNBC, Bloomberg, etc. I think that would do fairly well in the long run. I know it would send me over the edge and make me feel better about getting rid of cable. I think almost no one with cable is looking for more talking heads. Since the back catalog has a value of effectively zero their main audience has to be cord cutters. I do think that would work for CNN+ eventually but it would probably take years to get to scale. In general though: Single network news subscriptions like this encourage behavior that is a net negative for society. Right now it's hard enough to convince people to change the channel and step out of their bubble to form their own opinions. The last thing society needs is for everyone to only have access to one news channel. Especially one where the viewer is a direct customer as it's only going to encourage these stations to give the viewers more and more of the opinions they already agree with. This will just make people even more opinionated which then drives our politicians to continue down this path of zero compromise and zero legislative productivity.

mikeryan 5y ago
That’s not going to happen. They’re all competing entities with different corporate ownerships. I’ve done some work with a few NBCUniversal brands (Syfy, Bravo, E) and while they’ve gotten more aligned in recent years the individual brands are still competing with each other for eyeballs and these are folks that are under a single corporate umbrella and mostly in the same building (30 Rock). In theory you could create a YouTube TV for news, or sports only those efforts are non starters. If a provider wants MSNBC they have to negotiate for a whole package of NBCU brands.
mastazi 5y ago
We have that in Australia, AU$8/month. https://flashnews.com.au/ https://flashnews.com.au/ The streaming service itself is owned by Streamotion which is owned by Foxtel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxtel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxtel Includes many popular news services (Sky, Fox, CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, AlJazeera, NHK etc).
MrMan 5y ago
It's called YouTube TV and it's awesome

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Good riddance. CNN has declined precipitously in general quality, in the last couple of years, and CNN+ was really only a "Get your pure and refined poo, here." Def not worth it. BTW: This has nothing to do with perceived (or actual) political bent. I just feel like they threw all pretense of restraint to the wind, and I couldn't trust them; even a little bit.

gsibble 5y ago
They product has indeed gone way down hill with no pretense of neutrality or even civility.
wolverine876 5y ago
> CNN has declined precipitously in general quality, in the last couple of years Remember the 2016 campaign, when they covered Zucker's friend Trump 24/7?

99_00 5y ago

Their top show gets around 700,000 viewers per day. That's around the same as The Deadliest Catch: Bloodlines, a spin-off of the original The Deadliest Catch, which has more viewers.

Vladimof 5y ago
Their views are too extreme, a bit like Fox, but the opposite.

vincentmarle 5y ago

Yet another Scott Galloway prediction that went sideways: https://marker.medium.com/how-cnn-can-save-itself-16a854f4d865 https://marker.medium.com/how-cnn-can-save-itself-16a854f4d8...

fleddr 5y ago
That in itself is worth 300M$. He's wrong about...well, everything. And still adored. I want to know his secret.
Traster 5y ago
I'm not sure what in that article you're arguing he got wrong. He seems to suggest a number of options for CNN, he dismisses the paywall option, and mentions consolidation - which is basically what has happened with WB Disco. The failure of CNN+ doesn't really tell us much about the future of CNN given where WB Disco is right now.

JohnDeHope 5y ago

A joint venture with Fox News where every 15min they switch between liberal and conservative pundits would have been interesting. Imagine the drama when folks get up for a drink, come back, and sit down to somebody saying the polar opposite of what the person before had been saying. I'd pay to watch people watch that, just to see their heads explode.

bogomipz 5y ago
This made me laugh out loud. Thanks for that. Perhaps Mike Judge could produce it? Something in the article seems to support just how fungible the CNN and Fox cable news-tainment duopoly is. They increasingly appear to be just two sides of the same news-tainment coin: >"CNN wooed big-name talent, including Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, to join the service." In a NYTimes profile from last year Chis Wallace stated: >"I just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox."[1]. It's worth noting that he was at Fox for 18 years. It's amusing to think that his move to the CNN streaming service just happened to coincide with his breaking point after almost two decades. I believe CNN also made an offer to Megan Fox after she exited Fox News. My impression of CNN the last few years was that they seemed to be they spending an inordinate amount of time talking about whatever outrageous thing a Fox host just said on air. It's all rather dystopian and meta. The article hints that Discovery would like them to focus on hard-jouralism but I can't recall the last time CNN was hard-journalism. The Ted Turner years, the first Gulf war? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/business/media/chris-wallace-cnn-fox-news.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/business/media/chris-wall...
- prasadjoglekar 5y ago
  It's not a dupoloy at all. Fox cable handily beats CNN and MSNBC in daily ratings. Only thing beating Fox is the mainline broadcast networks' evening news.
  - bogomipz 5y ago
    I didn't mean an actual economic duopoly, that was sarcasm. I meant a duopoly in the sense of two poles of the political spectrum that each seems to cater to exclusively.

subsaharancoder 5y ago

One CNN is bad enough, CNN+ is just traaash on steroids!

circa 5y ago

I really can't believe a group of people sat around and gave the green light to this thing from the start. It seems like such a bad idea from and before the start.

TrevorJ 5y ago

The first I heard of CNN+ was in the context of how badly it was failing. I'm pretty immersed in the internet and our household collectively has 3 or so streaming services. It seems to me as if there advertising about the service did not effectively target the key demographics.

johndfsgdgdfg 5y ago

CNN is the one the last few bastions of democracy. CNN has played crucial role against racist xenophobic republicans. CNN thwarted the propaganda effort by the racist republicans that COVID came from China. WHO investigation has found that COVID most likely came from outside China. I hope CNN cable would still go on strongly in its effort to shutdown conspuracy peddling republicans.

chernevik 5y ago

I don't know why anyone watches tv news of any kind in the first place, it's uniformly shallow, reactive and ignorant. And biased. Even with "breaking" events I'd rather wait for the papers, though most of those are also terrible. Of course, these channels and papers find audiences, so clearly the market doesn't agree with me. Sigh.

zicxor 5y ago

Very interesting. https://inside.com/business/posts/cnn-looks-doomed-280568 https://inside.com/business/posts/cnn-looks-doomed-280568

zendaven 5y ago

Unfortunate. I was going to use this to watch all of Parts Unknown.

xnx 5y ago

Fail fast(?)

jonathanlydall 5y ago

I don’t live in the US and when I saw this article I told my wife that CNN tried streaming and asked her to guess what they called it, she got it right first guess. I find the choice of the + suffix on almost all streaming services both highly bizarre and mildly amusing.

s1mon 5y ago

It’s fascinating how many big failures like this happen before I’ve heard of the product. I spend a lot of time reading the news (NYTimes, SFChronicle, Twitter, HN, etc.), so I don’t think I’m somehow clueless. The first I heard of CNN+ was after the shutdown decision. Perhaps they didn’t bother to market and advertise this properly. I couldn’t get away from Disney+ or Apple TV+ ads before and after they launched.

nabla9 5y ago

Warner Bros Discovery will merge HBO Max, Discovery+ and CNN+ (CNN+ was created before WB Discovery merger) https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/warner-bros-shutting-down-cnn-variety-2022-04-21/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/warner-bros-s...

mark_l_watson 5y ago

I heard that CNN+ had fewer viewers than small Indy news people on YouTube. Except for Democracy Now and (sort of) PBS, I am so disappointed by the main news corporations. I remember when the news covered multiple points of view and was generally interesting. I am also tired of most of the small independent news bloggers, YouTubers, etc. because they suffer from the same illness: talking to their own bubble.

google234123 5y ago
Democracy Now is super left wing, though? I don’t think they cover many points of view.
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  You are correct about that. PBS tends to have more material with wider diversity. Still, I donate to both, feel good about supporting them.

tomohawk 5y ago

They lasted longer than I expected.

bspear 5y ago

Can't say I'm surprised

vonwoodson 5y ago

WSJ is owned by Fox News. I could give give less of a damn about what they have to say.

cat_plus_plus 5y ago

I would love a high quality subscriber news services not pressured to pander to advertisers or lowest common denominator mass tastes. But CNN (or Fox, not picking sides here) are utterly unqualified to provide such a service. I would gladly pay for full BBC content to be available in US without any shenanigans. Even though being funded by the government is normally not great news, maybe still better than being funded by rabid base of a single political party plus pharma companies selling drugs to old people?

rubyist5eva 5y ago

CNN+ required you to sign in with a cable provider to get the “real” CNN stuff that people were interested in (pundits). When will the corporate fat cats learn that this makes your service DOA? People that sign up for streaming services generally hate cable and despise the industry so blocking your main market from your own service is boneheaded beyond belief.