[HN Gopher] CNN+ streaming service is shutting down a month afte...
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CNN+ streaming service is shutting down a month after launching
Author : cwwc
Score : 256 points
Date : 2022-04-21 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| bin_bash wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Anderson Cooper 360 with no ads is all they needed.
|
| That would be a good way to get a little money from streaming
| and lose a lot of money from cable distribution, not a net win.
| There's a reason none of the news networks whose owners have
| streaming services do that with their big-draw cable news
| programs.
| fullshark wrote:
| Well an entire generation of people aren't watching those
| big-draw cable news programs so status quo thinking =
| eventual death. Not that they can't pivot when it's really
| necessary, seems like Disney made the switch at near the
| optimal time for example, but it's gonna have to happen some
| day.
| bin_bash wrote:
| Their cable ratings are down 70%[0] in a year. That baby
| should be tossed right out with the bathwater if they want a
| future.
|
| 0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2022/02/21/cnns-
| rat...
| afavour wrote:
| That's not a collapse, it's a right-sizing. TV news and CNN
| in particular got a ratings boost during the Trump
| administration and a huge bump during the 2020 election.
| The numbers they have now are around where they were in
| 2015. IMO it doesn't suggest terminal decline. A headline
| like that doesn't get as many clicks, though.
| blakebreeder wrote:
| not sure how hundreds of people and millions of dollars
| spent to produce content that gets the views of a mildly
| popular bedroom YouTuber doesn't suggest "terminal
| decline."
| robonerd wrote:
| The ads on _all_ of the cable news channels indicate that
| their audience is rapidly aging. These channels have
| become background noise for nursing homes.
| karolist wrote:
| how much news do you really need? I ask Google Assistant to
| "play the news" every morning and it covers the bites from many
| different sources in around 15 minutes while I'm still half
| asleep and I'm up to date with everything non-tech for the past
| day.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| It's kind of an addiction that I had to learn to step away
| from. Especially when COVID first broke out and you could
| have dramatic things happen in the span of a few hours.
| However at the end of the day it's just entertainment and had
| little bearing on my life.
| mzs wrote:
| Why would anyone want to endlessly listen to pundits? You can
| watch ad-free news on PBS News Hour instead.
| bin_bash wrote:
| How is 20-30 minutes/day "endless"? Especially whilst I'm
| doing other things? I don't see it much different than
| reality TV or sports.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| > 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".
| moralestapia wrote:
| >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
| diputsmonro wrote:
| Their point is that the average CNN viewer might be
| willing to pay for a _service with different content_.
| CNN+ did not serve the content they were referring to, so
| your flippant footnote does not apply.
| hintymad wrote:
| Sounds a classic case of innovator's dilemma. The "classic"
| CNN simply wouldn't let CNN+ have all the resource they
| needed for that would hurt the cash cow of the "classic"
| CNN.
| [deleted]
| ericmay wrote:
| Well the market has spoken, you're right, Anderson Cooper (as
| far as I know) is a very popular show. It just _also_ spoke
| in this specific context.
|
| I don't really care for CNN much either way, but every once
| in awhile somehow I get the "right" CNN International
| channel/vibe/show and it feels like what I thought
| international journalism should be.
| rayiner wrote:
| Anderson Cooper is 25th in the 8/9pm time slot with 1.25
| million viewers on average. Tucker is 1st with 3.25
| million.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| > Anderson Cooper (as far as I know) is a very popular show
|
| No, it's not a _very popular show_. Anderson Cooper is last
| amongst the three major primetime cable news shows. For
| example, for the week ending March 30th at the 8 PM slot
| you have (Total Viewers in thousands) [0]:
|
| Tucker Carlson Tonight: 3676
|
| All In W/ Chris Hayes: 1445
|
| Anderson Cooper 360: 890
|
| Now keep in mind that >300,000,000 people live in the
| United States. So, not that many people are watching cable
| news to begin with. And definitely not that many young
| people who may subscribe to a streaming service instead of
| cable. I don't think there is any sizable market for a
| streaming service of Anderson Cooper.
|
| 0: https://www.mediaite.com/daily-ratings/cable-news-
| ratings-we...
| ericmay wrote:
| It seems pretty popular to me. You're misconstruing
| "that's popular and people watch it" for "I agree with
| what the person is saying".
|
| Many people watch it. It makes money. Anderson Cooper
| makes money. Ergo the market is speaking quite clearly.
|
| For example, as vile, _absolutely stupid_ , and wrong as
| Tucker Carlson is, the market is clearly speaking and
| he's quite popular.
|
| Now if you want to change your definition or raise your
| bar or something, sure go for it, but without any
| parameters I think anyone on prime time on CNN or any
| major news channel is by definition popular.
| WoodenChair wrote:
| > You're misconstruing "that's popular and people watch
| it" for "I agree with what the person is saying".
|
| Not at all. I just cited some statistics. Making a value
| judgement is actually what you did:
|
| > For example, as vile, absolutely stupid, and wrong as
| Tucker Carlson is, the market is clearly speaking and
| he's quite popular.
|
| The first definition of popular is "regarded with favor,
| approval, or affection by people in general"
|
| The key word being the last one in this case "general."
| Based on the statistics I cited cable news is a niche to
| begin with. And based on his viewership, Anderson Cooper
| is a niche within a niche. Not "generally" popular.
|
| For the record I don't watch any of these shows so I
| don't have a horse in this race. Not sure why you feel
| you need to defend Anderson Cooper's (non) popularity so
| hard? It's certainly not a _very popular show_ as you
| originally stated. But you've since lowered the bar that
| anything on mainstream cable is "popular."
| ericmay wrote:
| I made a value judgement to demonstrate the ability to
| separate preference from fact. Maybe I didn't need to do
| that, but if I can get in a swipe at Tucker Carlson I'll
| take it, because he is despicable and vile.
|
| I'm not defending Anderson Cooper. Don't care about him.
| To say he's unpopular though without defining popularity
| is a mistake you are making, not me. Even if we used your
| definition here, which we weren't, it would still be true
| that he's popular. He's a household name. He's clearly
| popular. We are talking about him right here. What more
| proof do you need?
|
| So back to the original discussion regarding Anderson
| Cooper, the market has spoken. He's popular. To say the
| market hasn't spoken would be incorrect, given he's on
| Prime Time on CNN lol.
|
| So what exact point were you trying to make here? Because
| I think you're just arguing to argue and it's really not
| a good use of time for you or me.
| google234123 wrote:
| You are now confusing the person Anderson cooper with his
| show. Your original comment was about the show which is
| the 22nd highest rated news program. Relative to the
| others that doesn't seem very popular to me.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| Joe Rogan is far more popular and it's free.
| ericmay wrote:
| I'm not following your point
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| Yes, there are a lot of people whose identity is totally
| wrapped around politics. Got to Twitter. There are people who
| would spend hours on Twitter engaging in toxic fights with
| random people on internet.
|
| This is the reason I think reality TV shows have some utility
| for society. At least it lets people engage in something that
| is less harmful and less toxic than the Twitter culture war.
| It's better for society if people spend time on reality TV
| shows than Twitter culture war.
| PKop wrote:
| >an ad-free way to consume the daily news
|
| What is the appeal to pay for TV news, both with your time and
| your money?
|
| Online news, from various sources, with an ad-blocker isn't
| sufficient?
| bin_bash wrote:
| I don't watch CNN in the same way I read WSJ. CNN is mostly
| just entertainment watching people argue with some news and
| information. I don't consider it high-brow at all.
|
| I put it on in the background while I'm doing something else
| for mindless entertainment. In my experience this is how
| _most_ people watch CNN. I don 't think people sit down to
| watch it like they do a film. I certainly don't, neither does
| my family.
|
| I quit subscribing to cable because I was tired of the
| endless repetitive ads for hair loss pills that came on every
| 10 minutes. Get rid of that and I'll happily continue
| consuming their content.
| monetus wrote:
| There is a thriving piracy scene on YouTube and somewhat on
| twitch of CNN, MSNBC, and fox. Tend to have commercials
| edited out. I'm not quite sure why they are being streamed
| because almost none of them are monetized or linked up to
| patreons or anything. Sort by upload date and over twenty
| minutes
| philg_jr wrote:
| So...with everyone blocking out ads (which I do hate and am
| pro-ad-blocker), how do journalists get paid? I'd personally
| rather pay for access to decent journalists (which I do),
| from numerous different sources. CNN being one of those
| sources (mainly for Fareed Zakaria, Anderson Cooper, John
| King, Jake Tapper). I would just personally rather do without
| the opioid constipation and mesothelioma lawsuit ads.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Just put on NPR.
| zendaven wrote:
| I personally just spend max two minutes on newsasfacts per
| day to catch up on news.
| technofiend wrote:
| And when you get bored with the repeats, flip to any college
| radio or Pacifica Station.
| Gortal278 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| If nobody is buying it from the source, how would it have value
| somewhere else?
| Gortal278 wrote:
| CNN+ sign up probably had too much friction, having the
| content available on hulu / Amazon prime etc seems more
| attractive IMO.
| sudden_dystopia wrote:
| Well at least this shows people won't pay for misinformation
| rvz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > This sounds like something is changing somewhere
|
| Well, their parent company (Warner Bros. Discovery) just
| completed a big merger 2 weeks ago.
| bombcar wrote:
| That makes a lot more sense, the parent company gave them
| one chance and then was like "er nope".
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| brentm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| We have that in Australia, AU$8/month.
| https://flashnews.com.au/
|
| The streaming service itself is owned by Streamotion which is
| owned by Foxtel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxtel
|
| Includes many popular news services (Sky, Fox, CNN, CNBC,
| Bloomberg, AlJazeera, NHK etc).
| MrMan wrote:
| It's called YouTube TV and it's awesome
| drivers99 wrote:
| Sling (Sling Blue option, $35/mo) has all of those in Sling
| Blue except CNBC in which case you'd need the News Extra (Blue)
| (+$6/mo).
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| They product has indeed gone way down hill with no pretense of
| neutrality or even civility.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Abyy0
| bspear wrote:
| Can't say I'm surprised
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| 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.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| 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.
| jdrc wrote:
| CNN non plus. didnt even know it was a thing
| mc4ndr3 wrote:
| Paywall.
| kache_ wrote:
| bye bye :) CNN's reputation is severely damaged and they'll never
| recover
| jjeaff wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| number 1 in a pack of losers makes you the biggest loser
| ComradePhil wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It did help--it got Trump elected. Tyvm.
| 99_00 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Their views are too extreme, a bit like Fox, but the opposite.
| zendaven wrote:
| Unfortunate. I was going to use this to watch all of Parts
| Unknown.
| dmosley wrote:
| Is this a record for shortest lived premium service? I feel like
| it may be...
| xeromal wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Was it Quibi?[0]
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quibi
| dmosley wrote:
| Quibi was launched April 6th, 2020 and dissolved December 1,
| 2020. It lasted nearly 8 months.
| xeromal wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The article mentions $300m USD to develop CNN+
| rvz wrote:
| > I want to calculate losses per day.
|
| CNN+ lost $9.3M a day vs Quibi with $5.8M a day. [0]
|
| [0]
| https://twitter.com/trungtphan/status/1517177312424316929
| wincy wrote:
| So I wonder if they're laying off a bunch of people who
| were running CNN+? Where does that money go? Salaries?
| Marketing?
| xeromal wrote:
| That's an incredible amount of money to burn. Thanks for
| looking that up!
| bagels wrote:
| Development time accounts for more than the time between
| launch and shutdown.
| [deleted]
| vincentmarle wrote:
| Yet another Scott Galloway prediction that went sideways:
| https://marker.medium.com/how-cnn-can-save-itself-16a854f4d8...
| fleddr wrote:
| That in itself is worth 300M$. He's wrong about...well,
| everything. And still adored. I want to know his secret.
| xnx wrote:
| Fail fast(?)
| celestialcheese wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| rvz wrote:
| > 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.
| gordon_freeman wrote:
| 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.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| 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.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Opinionated hosts and guests is the only path to profitability
| for cable news. Most people read or listen to their news now;
| TV is for entertainment.
|
| CNN's problem is that their "personalities" are absolute snore-
| fests. Fox's bread and butter are their hosts but they are
| doing fine for now (cable will die eventually). In the current
| post-ironic zeitgeist, audiences are drawn to more
| transgressive discourse. But Don Lemon can't make hot takes
| when his audience is Deloitte managers and urban moms (also
| he's terminally unfunny).
|
| The left leaning media has become too safe and staid. I think
| that's why left sympathetic people are drawn to the new "left"
| podcasts like Chapo Trap House
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Then they can call themselves political commentary,
| entertainment... not news.
|
| And sit in a sofa instead of a news room.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| They do have news segments. Every News org has news
| sections and opinion sections that are de-lineated. I'm not
| really a fan (they do have good investigative reporting
| sometimes) but acting like they are aberration does not
| make sense
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| It is the normalization of bad journalism. It is not more
| acceptable because it is normal.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| That's a good point. On cable the distinction between
| news and opinion is definitely blurred as compared to a
| newspaper with a very clear editorial section
| jiscariot wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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]
| nonameiguess wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| They forgot to say 'Breaking News'.
| jdlyga wrote:
| 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.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| 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
| notatoad wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > Warner Media wants CNN to focus on hard journalism
|
| Wait may we actually see some positive change come out of this
| nonsense?
| tootie wrote:
| 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.
| legitster wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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!
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| the_snooze wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| dawnerd wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| rwc wrote:
| 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-b...
| evanmoran wrote:
| My understanding is the old guard launched as the new guard
| (Discovery-Warner: http://cnn.com/2022/04/08/media/discovery-
| warner-media-merge...) was taking over. Probably should have
| waited to see how the new management wanted to play it, but
| likely the new team didn't have much say before everything
| closed. If I was to guess they are pulling it now because the
| numbers are terrible, but more importantly it needs to be
| rethought to fit into an HBO Max + Discovery + CNN mega service.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It failed as a product _spectacularly_. 18k subscribers after
| your first month and 300M$ is abysmal, below even obscure
| YouTube channels.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| 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.
| bavell wrote:
| > Do you have access to their internal modelling? I
| don't. I have no idea what they were expecting.
|
| This info is already out there [0] and they were
| laughably off the mark. They were expecting 2M subs this
| year and up to 18M in four years, according to McKinsey.
|
| It's funny watching people defending a dying brand. The
| broader context is that CNN and the rest of cable news
| has been self-immolating for awhile now and are circling
| the drain, desperate to remain relevant.
|
| [0] https://www.axios.com/cnn-plus-cuts-warner-brothers-
| discover...
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| > Do you have access to their internal modelling? I
| don't. I have no idea what they were expecting.
|
| That's pretty rich considering you asserted it did _not_
| fail as a product, then demanded this of someone who
| disagreed with you (and is obviously right).
| kansface wrote:
| They brought in less than 50k dollars on a 300 million
| investment with very high, ongoing operating costs.
| captaincaveman wrote:
| I did seem to fail as a product though too!
| krasicki wrote:
| I miss Ted Turner
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Can you say "Quibi"?
|
| So much in common.
| chernevik wrote:
| 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.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Democracy Now is super left wing, though? I don't think they
| cover many points of view.
| [deleted]
| JohnDeHope wrote:
| 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.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Jon Stewart wasn't a fan of this style
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE
| tpmx wrote:
| It's painful to see how sharp he was back then and then see
| his current show. Something happened.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| AS Jon Stewart points out, a debate show could be great. But
| that format is not a debate show.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Turns out people don't actually want a debate show. Hard to
| imagine how any for profit company that tries this ends up
| with anything different.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Has anyone ever tried a debate show, you know before
| claiming it couldn't work.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Many news programs do a great job at having a civilized
| debate between the conservative and progressive views on
| current issues. I'm partial to the PBS newshour.
| Unfortunately, their ratings are in the gutter, even
| without ads.
| nextstep wrote:
| You might be surprised by how little difference there would be!
| scarface74 wrote:
| The entire purpose of opinion news is for people to be fed back
| their own opinions. Every time someone's opinion is challenged
| by "their side" they find another outlet.
| babypuncher wrote:
| It would be funny, but I think this "one foot in a bucket of
| ice, the other in a bucket of lava" approach to neutrality is
| part of why political reporting has become so incredibly
| polarizing. It leads to increasingly extreme outliers being
| given a platform when they probably would have just been
| ignored before.
| cupofpython wrote:
| it parallels the US court room. each side going all-in and
| leaving it to the judge / jury to measure the relevance of
| whats being said.
|
| Only the news channels dont interact directly in front of the
| viewer so it's like a courtroom where you only listen to one
| lawyer talk. You have to go to a different room to hear the
| other lawyer talk, and they are probably talking about the
| topics in a different order and with a different kind of
| focus
| silisili wrote:
| Hannity and Colmes was -supposed- to be that, and it was at
| times interesting.
|
| It was rather obvious though who the star of the show was
| supposed to be, and Colmes was rather moderate. The conspiracy
| theorist in me says they probably handpicked Colmes for that
| role because he was a rather unattractive guy, and anything Fox
| can do to make liberals look bad goes.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Colmes hosted one of the few left-leaning, nationally
| syndicated AM talk radio shows in the 90s. I remember when
| the show launched, the buzz was "big left/right AM talk shows
| now square off on TV."
|
| I don't know how old you are, but it really was quite a
| different world before podcasts, YouTube, etc. The right
| pretty much dominated talk radio, and there wasn't another
| "talk" platform around.
| silisili wrote:
| Grew up in the 80's and 90's. Yeah, I remember a few. Had
| an uncle who always had Limbaugh or Harvey on in the
| background. I guess I didn't know about Colmes as I'd never
| heard him until I saw him on TV I guess a bit later.
|
| As a kid, and even today, I'm bewildered by the fact it was
| and is still popular. Why do folks actively seek to listen
| to things that will make them angry or get them worked up?
| I guess it sells, but not to me.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| You probably doomscroll and fall victim to ragebaiting
| without even realizing it. I know I do.
| silisili wrote:
| Well, I do keep checking on the realestate megathread
| daily, so maybe there's something to that. More of a
| 'misery loves company' thing I guess.
| robonerd wrote:
| Lock them in a cage with folding chairs and make it pay-per-
| view.
| bogomipz wrote:
| 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-
| wall...
| rayiner wrote:
| The Ted Turner years were great just generally.
| https://www.tedsmontanagrill.com/
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The switch came with the W administration and the ramp up of
| conservative rhetoric.
| nabla9 wrote:
| 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-s...
| meatsauce wrote:
| "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.
| csours wrote:
| 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
| iamjake648 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| And this comment is the kind of empty partisan flamebait that
| lowers the discourse around here. Can we _please_ have a
| conversation about this without turning it into a US political
| food fight? Or am I just too old school to think that 's
| possible?
| smm11 wrote:
| I'm not sure even Google has abandoned something so quickly.
| Impressive.
|
| The end of this sort of "news" is near, I believe.
| hajile wrote:
| This is on par with the failed Microsoft Kin phones except that
| the Kin went 2 months and the servers were kept running for 7
| months.
| brimble wrote:
| 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.
| Ourgon wrote:
| 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.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| 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.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| 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.
| mbostleman wrote:
| Seems to me like an epic swan dive in to the mosh pit right at
| the moment the crowd parted.
| Ourgon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| You're right and I worry they will try to bring Trump back.
| s1mon wrote:
| 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.
| daveslash wrote:
| 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.
| zicxor wrote:
| Very interesting. https://inside.com/business/posts/cnn-looks-
| doomed-280568
| vondur wrote:
| I'm not surprised this happened. CNN itself is struggling and
| it's ratings have been dropping.
| meatsauce wrote:
| "The failed service was the brainchild of former CNN president
| Jeff Zucker"
|
| That really says it all.
| subsaharancoder wrote:
| One CNN is bad enough, CNN+ is just traaash on steroids!
| mountainofdeath wrote:
| Grand opening...grand closing.
|
| There was a time when CNN was real news like the BBC and not a
| somewhat-centrist entertainment channel.
| urmish wrote:
| > real news like BBC
| mFixman wrote:
| The BBC is the most biased media channel if you don't count
| all the rest.
| davisonio wrote:
| > somewhat-centrist
| meatsauce wrote:
| That's hilarious. CNN is about as 'somewhat centrist' as Hugo
| Chavez.
| cwkoss wrote:
| CNN is very economically conservative, it's just socially
| (cynically 'performatively') liberal.
|
| Ask your local Bernie bro what coverage was like when he
| was campaigning for social programs that would materially
| benefit the lower and middle classes.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _CNN is very economically conservative, it 's just
| socially (cynically 'performatively') liberal._
|
| 'Corporate values'
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| This is just a baffling comparison.
|
| I realize it's hyperbole, but it's still baffling.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > Capitalists are leftists
| karolist wrote:
| Lately I am enjoying Deutsche Welle in English the most as a
| non politically biased news source, much more so than BBC.
| smcin wrote:
| For European, or international, affairs? Which issues did DW
| cover more neutrally than the BBC?
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| What's centrist entertainment?
| mdoms wrote:
| CNN today is not "somewhat centrist" unless your only bar is
| MSNBC. Over the past half decade CNN has veered into full blown
| left wing activism.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| I know. I can't turn on CNN for more than 30 seconds without
| hearing about seizing the means of production from the
| capitalist ruling class and abolishing commodity production.
| Amezarak wrote:
| There exists more than a "communism to laissez-fairs
| capitalism" axis when people are talking about right vs
| left. I don't think it's productive to point this out when
| I think it's generally understood what they mean in this
| specific context. In "mainstream" American politics (by
| which we can define by what appears on television and
| newspapers") "left" implies mostly advancing the
| progressive front on racial and sexual issues, as
| distinguished from the American right, which would rather
| stop where we are on those social issues and cut taxes or
| something. Both of them sometimes play a little lip service
| to the other issues but not much more, since most other
| things are dictated by long-term service personnel and/or
| large mega corporations.
|
| Even that I don't think should really be thought of as a
| single axis - though they're few enough now, there's
| reactionaries who see capitalism as the source of all
| modern ills beginning with a very old ideological tradition
| that would look down just as much on communism.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| If not an intentional lie, this could only be said by someone
| who has no idea what "left-wing" means.
| nicky0 wrote:
| How would you describe the political leanings of CNN?
| monocasa wrote:
| Broadly neo-liberal, probably closest to Ordoliberalism
| if one branch had to be picked.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Centrist or centre-right if judged by non-US standards.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| My understanding may be wrong but I thought the Koch
| brothers have been heavily bankrolling PBS
| woodruffw wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bin_bash wrote:
| yeah I'm off on many accounts, I think I was misled
| remembering newshour and nova's preroll Koch ads. Thanks
| for setting me straight.
| scrlk wrote:
| >3/4ths of BBC's funding apparently comes from the license
| fee every Brit with a TV is charged
|
| Note that you only have to buy the TV licence if you watch
| live TV or use the BBC iPlayer streaming service.
| bhaney wrote:
| Never heard of CNN+ until just now. Odd way to be introduced.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Abyy0
| circa wrote:
| 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.
| tomohawk wrote:
| They lasted longer than I expected.
| jmyeet wrote:
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That is a massive stretch of the imagination that could only
| ever come from the far left organization known as 'Media
| Matters.'
| jmyeet wrote:
| 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.
| kgermino wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I give them credit for trying and failing quickly.
|
| They didn't fail, they got a new owner with different brand
| vision.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Spending a quarter of a billion dollars to fail this bad so
| quickly is not trying; it is gross incompetence.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| I don't believe you can look at that dollar figure alone
| and decide that.
| bavell wrote:
| Right, you also have to look at the embarrassingly low
| subscribers they got using that dollar figure.
| joegahona wrote:
| 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.
| thefreeman wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >"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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Most all of these streaming setups are white label of a
| handful of existing products.
| memish wrote:
| It's another example of how disconnected the elites are from
| reality.
| [deleted]
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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]
| tsimionescu wrote:
| While I personally agree with you, it's also important to
| note that CNN+ had none of the news content of CNN,
| apparently...
| billllll wrote:
| 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.
| rvz wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| hajile wrote:
| This wasn't a 1M startup venture that failed.
|
| It was 300M in complete losses. That's a crazy amount of money.
| fastball wrote:
| Not sure blowing $300M counts as failing quickly.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| 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/
| ren_engineer wrote:
| Probably similar to Hollywood accounting where even a massive
| loss is just used to avoid paying taxes on profits in other
| places. Big companies really can't lose
| tonguez wrote:
| scarface74 wrote:
| Did this just turn into a QANon board?
| aperson_hello wrote:
| 190M doesn't pass the sniff test for revenue - as 38k/employee
| probably doesn't pay their average salary (much less overhead,
| equipment, travel, etc.). This might be their gross profit
| though?
|
| Here's a source for $1.7B revenue (sounds more reasonable):
| https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/cable-news...
|
| But, your point still stands!
| hajile wrote:
| I wonder if they mean net profit. Their number would be
| around 11% of that 1.7B which seems on point.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Google is like "hold my beer".
|
| https://killedbygoogle.com/
|
| How much money does Google waste on products that are vanity
| projects so engineers can show "impact" and "scope" that get
| killed within a year?
| xnx wrote:
| As a Google enthusiast, I appreciate the comprehensiveness of
| that list, but what it includes is ridiculous. A toy watch
| face app ("Together") doesn't belong in the same list as
| Google Reader.
|
| I don't think I saw anything on that list that cost $300
| million and was killed after a month.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Wouldn't it be better to kill something fast instead of
| letting it linger after people are counting on it?
|
| But then again, CNN didn't abandon a project that ruined
| streets throughout an entire city..
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/16/18381466/google-fiber-
| lou...
| bloodguard wrote:
| Money laundering? Shareholder lawsuit bringing in a forensic
| accountant would be interesting.
| djohnston wrote:
| Because there is no tangible accountability once you reach the
| executive level. The worst you get is a golden parachute wide
| enough to retire 50 normies.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| > Is this some kind of money funneling scheme or an exec's pet
| project?
|
| Nearly every large scale institutional / bureaucratic
| initiative is a money funneling scheme. It doesn't cost 300M to
| get a streaming service off the ground. Execs and middle
| managers all the way down figure out some way to inflate the
| budget and redirect it in ways that will profit them. It's
| worse in government, exorbitant amounts of tax money is
| extracted as profit.
| kristjansson wrote:
| That revenue figure seems wildly inaccurate. Pew (via a third
| party research firm) estimates CNNs 2020 revenue at $1.7B:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/cable-news...
| _fat_santa wrote:
| 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?
| brentm wrote:
| Marketing spend was a big part.
| legitster wrote:
| Of which, a lot was probably spent on their own in-house
| platforms.
| quux wrote:
| really ineffective marketing spend if you ask me. I watched
| a fair amount of CNN during the early phases of the Ukraine
| war and I would be hard pressed to tell you what shows CNN+
| offered that were compelling enough to justify yet another
| streaming subscription. I vaguely know Chris Wallace had a
| show but I think I learned that from a NYTimes profile, not
| any of CNN's marketing.
| bombcar wrote:
| Incredibly ineffective marketing spend - the first time I
| heard of CNN+ was all the "CNN+ is completely dead"
| articles.
| usrn wrote:
| Same here and it launched as I was making a transition
| from hard left to hard right and moving from an urban
| area to a suburban area so I should have been in pretty
| much every group you could possibly target (except maybe
| people who watch CNN?)
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The problem with modern CNN is that it learned the wrong
| lessons from Fox: market personalities and mix opinion
| with news.
|
| CNN was at its best when it had none of that. What was
| interesting was live reports from Baghdad as AA lit up
| the sky, not anyone's opinion or the name attached. You
| know, what used to be called "news".
| wmf wrote:
| I assume much of the money was for original content. There's
| a $100B+ bubble in original streaming content going on right
| now.
| jlmorton wrote:
| That's not a bubble. The film and television business has
| always been huge, and consumers pay to watch it. It's not
| even clear there's been any increase in real terms. There
| might be a shift to streaming, but the industry size has
| remained relatively constant in real terms.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Netflix has spent years borrowing more money than it
| makes to produce and obtain content.
|
| The other major streaming services outside of Apple and
| Amazon can take advantage of the "flywheel" where they
| can make money on the same content multiple ways -
| syndication, video on demand, theatres etc.
| cwkoss wrote:
| The supply of content has exploded by several orders of
| magnitude. Much of it is totally free. Heck, some
| evenings I pause a show and find myself having spent 2
| hours scrolling tiktok.
|
| Video IP is drastically overpriced right now, and its
| never going to return to 1990's levels of cultural
| dominance.
| volkk wrote:
| > The supply of content has exploded by several orders of
| magnitude. Much of it is totally free. Heck, some
| evenings I pause a show and find myself having spent 2
| hours scrolling tiktok.
|
| i'm of the opinion that a big reason for this is while
| quantity has gone up, quality has plummeted. if you were
| watching something interesting/worthwhile, you would have
| been less likely to find tiktok more interesting than the
| crap on netflix.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >i'm of the opinion that a big reason for this is while
| quantity has gone up, quality has plummeted.
|
| Two dudes with a couple middling cameras and a tripod can
| shoot stuff that passes for professional.
|
| Look at the big YouTube channels. They're as good or
| better than reality TV ever was.
| cwkoss wrote:
| My takeaway is that with so many different alternatives,
| its becoming decreasingly economically rational to
| produce series/film. The budget of the series I was
| watching was almost certainly 100x+ the budget of the
| random people on tiktok I was scrolling past,
| collectively.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| IMHO, a little of column A and a little of column B. It's
| happening from both sides.
|
| As quantity goes up, cultural relevance of any particular
| single show goes down.
|
| Thus it becomes harder to run a platform on "one" hit,
| thus everyone turns to the Netflix model of a billion
| micro-targeted shows, thus demand for content becomes a
| series of niche requirements, and anything actually
| creative has to percolate through them (a la _Joker_ 's
| "Sure, I'm a superhero movie" or _La Casa de Papel_ 's
| "Sure, I'm a Spanish Ocean's Eleven" or _Dark_ 's "Sure,
| I'm a German Stranger Things").
|
| That's hard, and so what you actually get for the
| majority of content is the media equivalent of a box of
| Crayola crayons -- 256 different colors, with zero depth
| under the surface.
| tootie wrote:
| Marketing and talent. They probably had to give Chris Wallace
| and Audie Cornish multi-year commitments to spend their
| reputation on a risky venture.
| bogomipz wrote:
| I think there's probably some insight in this quote from the
| article:
|
| >"CNN wooed big-name talent, including Fox News anchor Chris
| Wallace, to join the service."
|
| It's probably less a tech spend and more of on-air talent and
| content spend. I believe they already had a streaming app so
| presumably they would have leveraged that existing work. This
| being said it is still an eye-popping sum for an entry into
| an already overcrowded market.
| gcanyon wrote:
| It's insane to me that companies keep paying ex-Fox-talent
| to go mainstream. That's like paying porn actors to make
| the jump to non-porn media: the skill sets required and
| reputation needed are just different. There are a few
| exceptions on both sides, but (sorry not sorry) Chris
| Wallace is not his father, and can never be his father.
| robonerd wrote:
| I suspect most of these people don't really hate each
| other as much as they pretend on TV. That goes for
| politicians too. There are exceptions I'm sure.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Mike Wallace was sui generis and very much hard
| journalism . There's a actually good documentary on him
| called "Mike Walllace is Here."
|
| https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3821321241
| newman314 wrote:
| Zucker was trying to spend big to get into the streaming
| space. For example, poaching Kasie Hunt...
|
| "CNN is trying to hire dozens of people to help fuel its move
| into the streaming arena, and one person familiar with the
| matter said Hunt was offered an annual salary of between $1
| million and $1.5 million that NBC News felt it simply could
| not match. This person suggested that Hunt could play a
| pivotal role in CNN's streaming efforts, appearing online at
| moments of great national importance, such as during
| presidential elections."
|
| https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/kasie-hunt-departure-nbc-
| ne...
| JackFr wrote:
| Signaling maybe? When Fox was becoming the 4th TV network,
| they massively overpayed for NFL football, but it sent the
| message to affiliates that they were serious and not half-
| assing it.
|
| The signaling theory doesn't necessarily translate to a
| consumer subscribers, but maybe to other industry players.
| ianmf wrote:
| They probably cut market research funding to obtain that
| $300M.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| They retained McKinsey to forecast adoption, bet that
| wasn't cheap.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Inverse to the number of subs
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Advances for talent; that is likely a good chunk of it.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is pretty amazing, when you see it in raw numbers.
|
| You might be onto something. I work in a very different
| industry, but I recently found out I am part of two separate
| projects championed by different executive teams with two
| different vendors working on the same solution. Pet projects
| are a time honored tradition of executives since time
| immemorial.
|
| I do not accept the possibility it is a mistake. It is some
| weird corporate politics that is way above my pay grade.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| > It is some weird corporate politics that is way above my
| pay grade.
|
| If you looked into these things you'd see it's very much
| below your pay grade.
| subsubzero wrote:
| hey this is ATT we are talking about(CNN's parent owner), they
| paid $85B for Warner bros in 2018, and really haven't seen much
| a return on their investment with Game of Thrones winding down,
| the new matrix movie being horrible, and then spun it off for
| half its value ($43B). Lets then look into directv the other
| dud that ATT bought for $67B and spun it off a few years later
| into a $16.25B standalone company. For those who are keeping
| count thats $92B lost in the matter of a few years which is
| astonishing!
|
| CNN itself is a deeply troubled network, its old CEO(Zucker)
| had to step down due to sleeping around with a direct report,
| Chris Cuomo (a cnn exec)was fired for helping out his
| brother(the Gov. of NY) escape sexual assault allegations,
| another top CNN producer(John Griffin) was arrested(and fired)
| on child molestation charges. In addition to all that the
| viewership is sinking like a rock so its not surprising that
| CNN+ was dropped so quickly.
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