LOL: CNN+ is Already Failing Miserably

CNN+ was supposed to be CNN’s next big thing, the project that would thrust it back into the center of the news market and capitalize on the general success of streaming services. CNN invested about $300 million in it, brought people like Chris Wallace on board, and hyped the streaming service relentlessly.

Well, it’s been a month and the service is already a disaster area, bringing in only about 10,000 daily viewers despite the massive expense of creating it and all the endless hype CNN uses to try to make the service popular.

In fact, the service is performing so poorly that two insiders told Axios that CNN’s level of investment into it will be cut dramatically, with the future of the service already unclear after only a month of service. Reporting on that, Axios said:

By the numbers: The news giant was initially planning to invest around $1 billion in the service over the next four years.

• Hundreds of millions of dollars are expected to be cut from that original investment total.
• To date, around $300 million has been spent on the subscription service, which includes a sizable marketing investment.
• The new company’s leadership team still has yet to decide the ultimate fate of CNN+. CNN’s new boss, Chris Licht, will start May 1.

$300 million for 10,000 daily streamers. Unless each streamer is paying a small fortune (even a dime would seem like a fortune in comparison to the value received from CNN), that seems like a very, very bad investment. The Daily Mail reports the cost as being $5.99 a month, so it sure doesn’t look like the investment is paying off.

Yet worse, the number of daily viewers is so far below what CNN executives expected that it’s almost not even funny.

Again according to Axios “CNN executives, with help from consulting firm McKinsey, originally expected to bring in around 2 million subscribers in the U.S. in the service’s first year and 15-18 million after four years.”

Now maybe it can build on the 10,000 and pull in 990,000 new streamers in the next few months to meet that year-end expected total. But, given that there currently seems to be far more interest in mocking CNN+ for failing than actually watching anything on it, that seems unlikely.

This Axios report effectively corroborates the recent rumors that CNN+ was failing miserably, as Charles Gasparino noted on Twitter, saying:

Breaking: @CNNplus employees bracing for layoffs possibly as soon as May amid projections of lackluster sales of new streaming channel; CNN employees say new streaming channel could be merged into larger @discoveryplus as early as May unless subscriptions pick up 130 @FoxBusiness

Breaking: @CNNplus employees bracing for layoffs possibly as soon as May amid projections of lackluster sales of new streaming channel; CNN employees say new streaming channel could be merged into larger @discoveryplus as early as May unless subscriptions pick up 130 @FoxBusiness

— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) March 30, 2022

Though a CNN toadie said that the network was very happy with the release of the service, it now looks like that was, at best, sugarcoating of the situation.

For the record, we are VERY happy with the launch of CNN+ and are only bracing for a long run of success.

— Matt Dornic (@mdornic) March 30, 2022

In fact, far from being “VERY happy” with how CNN+ is doing, it sure looks like CNN’s new executives are horrified by the financial situation created by a $300 million investment that’s led to nearly no daily viewers. But, then again, perhaps they’re still hoping that millions more will stop mocking the network and sign up for its streaming service.

By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.