Following WarnerMedia’s and Discovery’s merger changes are already coming in, one of them being the end CNN+. The service costed CNN $300m to launch, providing a sizeable loss.
The decision came after it was reported that the service wasn’t meeting the projected viewership figures and would end up costing the company $400m by the end of the year. CNN estimated that the service would hit 2m subscribers by the end of the year, and 30m by 2030 which they projected would earn $800m. Within its first month CNN+ peaked at 150,000 subscribers with 10,000 daily users, which may seem reasonable, but services such as Quibi, which was shut down rather quickly, hit 910,000 subscribers in its first few days.
With how fast the service died it is hard to tell how big it could’ve grown. As the service was launched during the merge of WarnerMedia and Discovery, reportedly the executives were disappointed that the service happened at all, as the plan for Warner Bros. Discovery was to develop one large streaming platform that combines HBO Max and Discovery Plus, in which CNN would be offered too.
In the end it all comes down to a mix of unfortunate timing with the merger happening, and potentially over ambitious estimates.
Sources:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/21/23035703/cnn-plus-shutting-down
https://www.theverge.com/23043232/cnn-plus-axios-chat-shut-down-streaming-news
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/21/media/cnn-shutting-down/index.html