Out of all the chaos and headlines that streaming has brought us over the past ten years, the buildup, launch, and immediate slaughter of CNN+ might reign as its most interesting episode.
Sure, early reports were showing that daily active user and subscriber counts weren't exactly staggering, but killing it off less than a month after launch? There's still far too many unanswered questions to draw many definitive conclusions about what exactly went down. The only thing clear is that Discovery was celebrating the completion of its merger with WarnerMedia, and CNN+ was the rotisserie pig roast.
But the more interesting question to me is, "Would CNN+ have survived anyways?"
And obviously we'll never know for sure. First-month subscriber counts were dismal, but if we were judging the longterm viability of all streaming companies off first-month subscriber counts, there wouldn't be a streaming industry in the first place. Sure, you expect a brand name like CNN to have a bit more magnetism when it comes to acquiring customers early, but I don't at all buy into this notion of, "CNN+ was clearly failing." You can't make that judgement call after 30 days. You need to give these platforms time to grow the buzz around their content and let word-of-mouth actually spread. There isn't any time for this when the plug is pulled on the service before most people could even finish binge watching their first show.
But I have to believe there's a reason televised news and opinion shows have always been the ugly step-sister of streaming categories, and I think that reason is because people are pretty satisfied with the existing product. I saw a tweet the other day citing Nielson data that showed political news and opinion shows made up over 80% of the 5,000 most watched cable programs in 2021, up from 57% in 2016. You don't see growth numbers like that when people aren't enjoying the content they're consuming. CNN+ was an interesting concept, and I'm not saying there won't be a major name in news that cracks the streaming riddle soon. But it's certainly an uphill battle when satisfaction rates for current political news and opinion shows appear to be very strong, and you certainly won't win that battle in 30 days.
The saddest part is I don't even think we really got much closer to understanding whether or not there is demand for a news-oriented streaming network through this whole incident. It was just too short to analyze. It came and it went. Poof.
But congrats to Chris Wallace and all the other anchors who are cashing out fat checks for doing almost no work. Who said the American Dream is dead?
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