9 ms·

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

by 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.
    - vikingerik 5y ago
      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.
      - cupofpython 5y ago
        which is why there should not have been a cnn+ to begin with. they couldnt offer the only service of theirs that people are paying for
        bombcar 5y ago
        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).
        cupofpython 5y ago
        >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
        ehvatum 5y ago
        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.
  - the_snooze 5y ago
    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.
    - fotta 5y ago
      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.
    - nwsm 5y ago
      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.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dawnerd 5y ago
  Exactly. I signed up since they said "live" a few times but what they mean by live is, a few pre-recorded live shows that you can watch VOD.
- TheCondor 5y ago
  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.
  - boppo1 5y ago
    >real hard news streaming service 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.
rwc 5y ago
That’s exactly what happened: “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-bros-discovery-1235237913/ https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/cnn-plus-shut-down-warner-b...
matthewdgreen 5y ago
What I want to know is: are they ever going to release any of the original content? E.g., Land of the Giants: https://plus.cnn.com/plus/title-2244411 https://plus.cnn.com/plus/title-2244411
- notatoad 5y ago
  Warner/Discovery already has at least two streaming platforms, so it's a pretty good bet that all the CNN+ content will show up somewhere.
babypuncher 5y ago
> Warner Media wants CNN to focus on hard journalism Wait may we actually see some positive change come out of this nonsense?
- tootie 5y ago
  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.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > 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.
    - tootie 5y ago
      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.
      - wolverine876 5y ago
        > That's your opinion but it's not the majority opinion. 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.
wolverine876 5y ago
> 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.
- Marsymars 5y ago
  I dunno, by that metric you might expect “not using social media” to be enormously popular.

by jdlyga 5y ago

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.
  - vikingerik 5y ago
    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.
    - cupofpython 5y ago
      which is why there should not have been a cnn+ to begin with. they couldnt offer the only service of theirs that people are paying for
      - bombcar 5y ago
        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).
        cupofpython 5y ago
        >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
      - ehvatum 5y ago
        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.
- the_snooze 5y ago
  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.
  - fotta 5y ago
    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.
  - nwsm 5y ago
    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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dawnerd 5y ago
Exactly. I signed up since they said "live" a few times but what they mean by live is, a few pre-recorded live shows that you can watch VOD.
TheCondor 5y ago
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.
- boppo1 5y ago
  >real hard news streaming service 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.

rwc 5y ago

That’s exactly what happened: “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-bros-discovery-1235237913/ https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/cnn-plus-shut-down-warner-b...

matthewdgreen 5y ago

What I want to know is: are they ever going to release any of the original content? E.g., Land of the Giants: https://plus.cnn.com/plus/title-2244411 https://plus.cnn.com/plus/title-2244411

notatoad 5y ago
Warner/Discovery already has at least two streaming platforms, so it's a pretty good bet that all the CNN+ content will show up somewhere.

babypuncher 5y ago

> Warner Media wants CNN to focus on hard journalism Wait may we actually see some positive change come out of this nonsense?

tootie 5y ago
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.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > 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.
  - tootie 5y ago
    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.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > That's your opinion but it's not the majority opinion. 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.

wolverine876 5y ago

> 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.

Marsymars 5y ago
I dunno, by that metric you might expect “not using social media” to be enormously popular.