San Francisco: The paid news streaming service CNN+ has shut down officially, within one month of its launch as it did not generate enough demand in the news consuming world.
According to a report from Axios, CNN would have burnt $400 million in order to achieve its viewership goal for 2022 alone.
CNN had projected that the paid news streaming service would reach two million subscribers by the end of the year.
But they found there were not many subscribers in the first two weeks, and it managed only 150,000 users.
In comparison, Disney Plus had 10 million subscribers in its first day.
CNN Plus was supposed to make a profit of $800 million per year by 2030.
“Some CNN executives felt Discovery’s leadership was intent on killing the service even before the merger of CNN’s parent company, WarnerMedia, and Discovery was officially complete,” the report claimed.
Most of that was without CNN+ being available on Roku, one of the country’s largest smart TV platforms.
“While CNN executives saw that number as a success, Discovery executives did not,” the report added.
The news streaming service has now been shut completely.
“CNN+, the streaming service that was hyped as one of the most significant developments in the history of CNN, will shut down on April 30, just one month after it launched,” the media outlet said last week.
CNN+ customers “will receive prorated refunds of subscription fees”.
The company planned to spend about $1 billion on CNN+ over a few years, and had spent at least $100 million (and as much as $300 million) into the service.
(IANS)
