The Warner Bros. CNN+ was shut down by Discovery last week, just three weeks after it launched. CNN+ was said to be attracting only 10,000 daily viewers despite the network spending an estimated $300 million to launch the service and another $100 to $200 million to promote the doomed venture. Many reactions to CNN+’s demise mocked the network’s disastrous streaming service.
One disgruntled former CNN+ employee told Fox News the venture was always ill-conceived.
‘I defy you to find any reasonable person who ever believed that viewers would pay extra money for the dregs of CNN when it was competing for their wallets with Netflix and Disney Plus,’ a former CNN producer told Fox News Digital.
‘Do you want to watch ‘The Mandalorian’ or extra Brian Stelter?’
A CNN insider informed the New York Post:
“I didn’t get this whole thing from day one. I’m not commenting on the content here. I mean – the basic product itself. I didn’t get why the massive money was spent after a merger had been announced. It was like, ‘Wheee! AT&T gave us the money, let’s burn it!’ I don’t understand it.”
Another CNN insider told the outlet that the “big people will likely be saved,” but the producers and showrunners face six months in severance or nothing at all.
Meghan McCain wrote in the Daily Mail, “Keep in mind, these are also the same people who told coal miners who lost their jobs to go back to college and ‘learn to code.”
McCain pointed out that CNN’s cable TV network lost 70% of its total audience between February 2021 and February 2022.
McCain asked:
“Why would anyone at CNN believe that the American public would pay extra for content from a brand that is already struggling to bring in audiences?”
“If someone pitched this idea to me, I would have said that they had been spending too much time in the Hamptons with Chris Cuomo and not enough time in the real world where Tik Tok stars, Joe Rogan, and Fox News primetime are the dominating media forces,” McCain added,
Joe Rogan, the premiere podcast host also mocked the failed streaming service during a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
Rogan gleefully razzed CNN+:
“They spent $300 million. They got 10,000 subscribers. Imagine the hubris of thinking that something that people don’t want for free? That you’re going to charge money for it.”
Rogan parodied a possible CNN+ executive meeting about programming:
“‘We’re gonna have a Jake Tapper book club.'”
Rogan added:
“Jake Tapper seems like a great guy. But I mean, I feel like I don’t have to pay for his book club. I feel like you should put that on Twitter.”
During the podcast, British author and political commentator Douglas Murray jokingly disparaged the streaming service as “CNN Minus” instead of “CNN Plus.”
CNN’s media correspondent, Brian Stelter, used his CNN+ show on Friday to insist that the streaming service, which was started by Zaslav’s predecessor, Jeff Zucker, with whom Stelter was known to be close, was viable.
Stelter said:
‘It’s too early to know if this product, if this service, was a success or a failure.’
‘You’ve got all the haters today saying this thing was a failure.
‘I don’t know if we can even ever assess that because it just simply didn’t have enough time because of the management’s change in direction.’
CNN’s new CEO, Chris Licht, announced the end of CNN+ on Thursday, despite the fact that he does not officially take over until May 2.
“It’s too early to know if this product, if this service was a success or a failure,” Stelter desperately tried to rationalize the implosion of CNN+. And he chided the “haters.” pic.twitter.com/vCFR3Q7dT4
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) April 22, 2022
Watch it here: Banned/The American Journal
Sources: Conservativebrief, Nypost, Dailymail