{"id":3055,"date":"2022-03-30T07:15:56","date_gmt":"2022-03-30T07:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linksus.net\/cnn-takes-a-100-million-step-into-streaming-today-the-washington-post\/"},"modified":"2022-03-30T07:15:56","modified_gmt":"2022-03-30T07:15:56","slug":"cnn-takes-a-100-million-step-into-streaming-today-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/30\/cnn-takes-a-100-million-step-into-streaming-today-the-washington-post\/","title":{"rendered":"CNN takes a $100 million step into streaming today – The Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you need more CNN in your life?
If the answer is \u201cyes,\u201d then the network would like you to fork over $5.99 per month for a new streaming service called CNN Plus that represents the network\u2019s biggest investment in new programming and formats since CNN was founded in 1980.
Set to launch Tuesday, the new digital channel isn\u2019t supposed to be a challenger to Netflix, although the two apps might sit side-by-side on a streaming TV menu. But CNN says its new service isn\u2019t just an online version of its four-decade-old news brand, either.
CNN Plus will stream as many as a dozen brand-new live shows each day and archive them for re-watching on demand. It also has a starting library of more than a thousand hours of CNN shows and original films, including travel-food shows hosted by Stanley Tucci and the late Anthony Bourdain. And subscribers will get perks such as the ability to ask experts questions.
The network has been working on the launch since the summer of 2021 and has invested nearly $100 million in the venture, which will compete with Fox\u2019s four-year-old streaming service, Fox Nation. A CNN spokesperson said the network hired several hundred employees to build and launch the streaming service. It also lured a few big names from rival networks \u2014 most notably Chris Wallace, who abruptly quit Fox News after 18 years in December and will be airing \u201cWho\u2019s Talking to Chris Wallace?\u201d four times a week on CNN Plus.
CNN has also snagged Kasie Hunt from MSNBC, the chef and author Alison Roman, and actress Eva Longoria, who will host a travel show dedicated to Mexican cuisine. And for lovers of public radio, former \u201cAll Things Considered\u201d co-host Audie Cornish will host a weekly interview show.
\u201cMy parents don\u2019t even pay for cable,\u201d Hunt told The Post. \u201cI just think that this way of watching television is the future, and that\u2019s why it felt like kind of a no-brainer to do this.\u201d
The shows are meant to be thought-provoking and enjoyable, but the stakes are serious for a network that \u2014 like its rivals Fox News and MSNBC \u2014 is concerned about the waning number of cable subscribers and corporate advertisers that prop up the cable-news business model.
Most cable-news superfans are in their 60s, according to Nielsen data, which is not an especially valuable age bracket to advertisers. As of May 2021, the median age of a CNN viewer was 64. (It was even higher, 68, at both Fox and MSNBC.) CNN has experienced particularly concerning declines in viewership recently, though its ratings have rebounded somewhat because of its broad coverage of Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine.
The head of CNN Plus, Andrew Morse, told The Post that the launch \u201cwasn\u2019t a defensive play by any stretch of the imagination.\u201d
CNN may already be behind its competition in the streaming game. MSNBC runs live political commentary shows on Peacock \u2014 the streaming app of its parent network, NBC. And Fox News launched its Fox Nation streaming service in 2018, offering a mix of conservative-themed news, culture and entertainment shows for the same monthly price as CNN Plus.
Some streaming shows almost overlap between the rival networks: Fox Nation has \u201cDana Perino\u2019s Book Club,\u201d hosted by the anchor and former White House press secretary, while CNN Plus will have \u201cJake Tapper\u2019s Book Club.\u201d
The launch comes at a particularly tricky time for CNN. The project was conceived under former network president Jeff Zucker, who was forced to resign last month over a relationship with a longtime colleague. CNN staffers are also still reeling from the sudden termination of prime-time host Chris Cuomo in December. An interim team has run CNN until new president Chris Licht can take over this spring.
CNN is also about to change owners, once its parent company WarnerMedia is folded into Discovery Inc. in a pending deal valued at $43 billion. Discovery is already planning to consolidate its streaming services<\/a> and merge the HBO Max app with Discovery Plus, which offers lifestyle and reality television. That plan raises questions about whether CNN Plus will remain a stand-alone service or eventually be rolled into a catchall app with its new corporate family.
The project seems to have enthusiastic backing inside the network, regardless.
\u201cI liked the idea that they were trying to make something that I hadn\u2019t seen before,\u201d said Cornish, whose show will debut in May. \u201cThe company is going through a great moment of transition. In those moments of transition and upheaval, interesting things can happen.\u201d
Morse, who also serves as chief digital officer for CNN, puts it this way: \u201cThere are always going to be challenges when you\u2019re building something new. This journey has been long and windy.\u201d
But he was careful to temper expectations. \u201cIt would be really foolish of us to take on Netflix,\u201d Morse said, drawing a contrast between the arguable king of streaming entertainment and CNN Plus, which he described as a news and \u201cnonfiction\u201d streaming subscription service. \u201cIt\u2019s going to take a while,\u201d he added.
Jonathan Klein, a former president of CNN U.S. who runs the sports streaming platform Hang, said CNN is making a smart \u201cplay for the future\u201d as audiences shift from traditional television-watching to streaming. According to a Pew Research Center survey, the percentage of Americans who said they received cable or satellite television programming at home declined from 76 percent in 2015 to 56 percent last year.
\u201cThey\u2019re building a foundation for a house that has not been designed yet,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that is the only smart thing that a media company could do today, because you know the profound change is coming.\u201d
While CNN executives and hosts insist that CNN Plus will not be merely CNN TV on the Internet, there will be some programming overlap. For instance, anchor (and network institution) Wolf Blitzer will host a streaming show described as a \u201ctraditional evening newscast with a sleek, modern twist\u201d at 7:30 p.m. \u2014 just after his daily TV show. And star anchor Anderson Cooper, who announced the birth of his second child<\/a> last month, will host two shows, including one about parenting.
\u201cWe made a very purposeful decision to create something distinct,\u201d Morse said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to re-create cable news because we didn\u2019t think that would serve the consumer, and we already have CNN.\u201d
\u201cI\u2019m really excited about the fact that I don\u2019t have to stick to the cable news formula,\u201d said Hunt, who hosted several shows for MSNBC before CNN Plus hired her to host an informal talk show about politics \u2014 something like a streaming version of her old network\u2019s morning talk show, \u201cMorning Joe.\u201d Her first guest will be Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah).
After spending millions to hire talent like Cornish, Wallace and core staff<\/a>, CNN has a lot riding on the success of its streaming venture \u2014 although the industry is so new that success may be hard to define. Fox News Media has never revealed how many subscribers Fox Nation has. NBC says Peacock had 9 million paying stand-alone subscribers as of January \u2014 a figure dwarfed by streaming entertainment giants such as Disney Plus and Netflix, which counts more than 200 million subscribers.<\/a>
Chris Balfe, a veteran of both cable news and streaming media, said that if CNN Plus is successful, he would expect it to get between 500,000 and 1 million subscribers in its first year. \u201cCNN Plus might be a little late to the game, but the playing field is so unsettled and changing so quickly that I don\u2019t think it will be a major detriment,\u201d he said. \u201cI think audiences are still in a phase of actively evaluating all of the various options.\u201d
Morse declined to say how many subscribers CNN Plus hopes to attain. But he predicted that the service will \u201cbecome profitable in relatively short order.\u201d
\u201cI do think that this is something that will fill a need,\u201d Cornish said. \u201cWe will all find out in a couple of months.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you need more CNN in your life?If the answer is \u201cyes,\u201d then the network would like you to fork over $5.99 per month for a new streaming service called CNN Plus that represents the network\u2019s biggest investment in new programming and formats since CNN was founded in 1980.Set to launch Tuesday, the new digital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":869,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}