CNN on Tuesday morning will take its second swing at trying to boost revenue from streaming video and digital content.
Most users of CNN.com will likely see no change in the experience they have each time they visit CNN.com, one of the biggest news sites in digital media. Heavy users, however, will be asked to consider starting a subscription to the site, which will begin to offer more content behind a paywall that executives at the Warner Bros. Discovery outlet hope will entice them to pay a little extra: $2.99 a month, or $29.99 a year. The company unveiled its subscription hopes in July.
“The hope is that these are our first, very early steps to building a direct-to-consumer business,” says Alex MacCallum, executive vice president of digital products and services for CNN Worldwide, during an interview. “We want this to be a very robust business line that complements the affiliate revenue we have and our advertising revenue.”
CNN is charting a return to subscription products after parent company Warner Bros. Discovery scrapped CNN+ in 2022 mere weeks after its launch. That venture, which cost subscribers $5.99 per month, offered access to a library of original CNN series as well as new shows featuring anchors such as Kate Bolduan, Wolf Blitzer, Chris Wallace and Kasie Hunt.
CNN’s MacCallum knows the project well. She helped to build and launch it during a previous stint. She returned to CNN in January of this year, part of a new focus by CNN’s chairman, Mark Thompson, to build out new lines of digital revenue as legions of one-time cable subscribers migrate to streaming video and social media for news, information and entertainment. CNN+, MacCallum says, sought to create a new media entity from scratch. CNN.com, she says, already has a robust user base that executives hope can be converted over time.
“We have this massive audience, over 150 million every month, and millions and millions of people come to us through CNN.com many times a week, if not many times a day,” she says. “The idea here is to take a product that already exists and add some more bottom to it.”
The company declined to reveal the number of free articles one might have to read to trigger the paywall. The rate of adoption of the subscription offer could help CNN understand how many free articles to offer. Subscribers to CNN.com will see fewer digital ads.
They will have access to exclusive features, MacCallum says, including a library of “flash” documentary programs on recent topics and stories and an interactive feature that allows users to examine the two presidential candidates various paths to getting 270 electoral votes. Over time, the executive notes, subscribers will see more video products and a greater reliance on recognizable CNN anchors and correspondents from around the world.
Text articles make up the basis of CNN.com now, she says, and “will remain very important,” but “over time, we do want to learn into” video and giving subscribers access to experts in particular topics and correspondents from around the world. CNN also plans to augment the offering with lifestyle content that might include projects in the vein of what Anthony Bourdain did in his revered CNN cooking-and-travel series “Parts Unknown,” or that feature popular CNN personnel like Dr. Sanjay Gupta focusing on health.
“We have all of these assets that are outside of hard news, and over time, we want to invest more in them,” MacCallum says.
CNN may feel new pressure to succeed in streaming as many of its rivals have already started to gain traction in it. CBS News, NBC News and ABC News already run multiple hours of streaming newscasts each weekday in ad-supported venues, while Fox News Channel operates a subscription-based streaming outlet, Fox Nation, that seeks to court fans of its conservative programming with documentaries, stand-up comedy and even faith-based programming.
CNN believes building up the subscription base of CNN.com will “take a couple of years,” says MacCallum. Some of CNN’s journalists “will have a really critical part” though video products, she adds, and executives stand ready to “learn as we go.”
Unlike CNN Max, a CNN product tailed for users of the Max streaming service, a CNN.com subscription will not grant access to the live programming of the company’s linear cable network, says MacCallum. Even so, people who do subscribe to that outlet will be able to sign in separately on CNN.com so they can watch Jake Tapper, Abby Phillip, Jon Berman and others lead their regularly scheduled programs.
Source Agencies
