CNN gambled when it launched its new streaming service, CNN+.
After all, fewer and fewer people were already watching the free version of CNN, which in the ratings routinely ran behind even the Hallmark Channel and the Food Network.
But CNN’s parent company on Thursday acknowledged it was time to fold ’em, not hold ’em.
Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it was shutting down the premium subscription service as of April 30.
Variety first reported the news, which was later confirmed by CNN media analyst Brian Stelter.
CNN+ had launched just a month ago and garnered just 150,000 subscribers in that time.
But viewership was not even close to that low figure. CNBC reported recently that CNN+ claimed just 10,000 daily viewers.
CNN’s regular cable news channel was already hobbled by a steady, daylong diet of woke and anti-Republican content. The network was perpetually far behind Fox News and MSNBC, regardless of which hour was surveyed for viewership.
CNN+ promised more of the same.
It promised programs anchored by Chris Wallace, whose swaying to the left wore out his welcome at Fox News; former ESPN host and radical race activist Jemele Hill; former NBC reporter Katy Tur, who infamously compared journalists to firefighters and suggested Donald Trump was putting reporters’ lives in danger with his media criticism; and Stelter, who obsesses over Fox News and has suggested it, too, is a threat to the country.
But it was also doomed by timing. Fox News and the news wings of decidedly leftist NBC, ABC, and CBS already offer streaming content.
And Variety noted that it likely premiered too soon, since the new owners wanted it to be part of a larger service built around HBO Max and the Discovery Channel. As Variety put it, “Warner Bros. Discovery’s decision will likely consign CNN+ to the heap of glitzy product launches that never got off the ground, either because of lackluster consumer reaction or shifts in corporate strategy.”
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