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Shop NowCNN+ is shutting down after only a single month in a humiliating fashion for its parent network and a disaster for the individuals who had signed on to work for the streaming service. The decision to pull the plug was made after reports emerged that fewer than 10,000 people were watching per day. With effectively no base of viewers and no reason to believe that more would be coming, Warner Bros. Discovery has decided to cut its losses.
CNN+ finds no audience
CNN has been struggling to entice people to watch its content for free, so the idea that viewers could be convinced to pay for more CNN looked absurd from the moment CNN+ was announced.
To many Americans it would seem strange to think that a network usually ignored in airports and waiting rooms could suddenly create an expansion worthy of a monthly payment.
CNN invested hundreds of millions of dollars into the streaming service and reportedly expected to attract millions of subscribers in the first year alone.
It was to be the future of CNN, and the anticipation was such that Chris Wallace left his longtime job at Fox News to serve as the face of the streaming service.
In the end, viewers were not interested enough in Chris Wallace to pay for another stand-alone streaming service and the former Fox anchor will be out of work at the end of April.
He won’t be alone; CNN+ has hundreds of employees who are now losing their jobs, with nothing more to show for it all than a chance to apply for another job with CNN.
Hundreds of millions lost
When reports of the flailing project first emerged and it became clear that the end was coming, some speculated about the possibility of bundling it together with other streaming services as a way to rescue some of what had been invested.
Someone must have decided that this would still be a waste. With effectively no public interest in CNN+ there would be little to gain in tethering it to a more popular streaming service.
All of this begs the question of how they could have gotten it so spectacularly wrong. How could so many highly-paid executives and consultants fail to realize that there was no interest in the product before they invested hundreds of millions to launch it?
Superfluous streaming services seem to be everywhere these days, but with even Netflix declining there should be no reason to add another one with such dubious value to the milieu of paid content.
CNN+ promised to give consumers a paid version of something that most of the country already chooses to go out of its way to avoid.
There was simply no interest in the project from anyone outside of the mainstream media bubble. The death of CNN+ was inevitable from the moment it was announced.
