RIP CNN+, March 2022-April 2022

CNN+, the streaming-only fork of CNN with a mix of exclusive content and the news network's Video on Demand archives, will shut down at the end of the month.

The service launched on March 29 as a $5.99 stand alone service, despite being from the same corporate family that is pushing HBO Max and also controls Discovery+. Warner Bros. Discovery President and CEO J.B. Perrette acknowledged the market reality of one-too-many streaming options in a Wednesday statement.

CNN+ started life as part of the old AT&T Time Warner corporate structure, even though it met internal expectations with a subscriber count as high as 150,000. In the wake of Discovery's acquisition of all things Time Warner from AT&T, Perrette and new CNN CEO and Chairman Chris Licht have repeatedly gone on the record expressing their interest in creating a single megaton streaming option for its combined media properties.

The leadership at Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed that it was starting the process of combining the two streaming services into a single app.

“Some of this was avoidable”

According to CNN, a Wednesday town hall meeting hosted by Licht included allegations that the new Discovery leadership team was unable to coordinate a streaming-only CNN service with the outgoing CNN leadership. He told CNN's staff that he couldn't legally communicate with CNN executives before the deal was official, and that some of this was avoidable.

According to statements made by Licht, the company's existing and future-planned CNN+ content may very well be rolled into a digital-only project not yet revealed, though leadership wasn't ready to announce plans for, say, a special CNN hub on HBO Max.

Hopefully, whatever future plan comes to pass will include a smarter combination of CNN+'s streaming content and CNN's live cable news feeds. Only select cable providers are compatible with the sign-in process for CNN+, which requires anyone paying a $5.99/mo fee to add cable subscription credentials in order to watch live content.

CNN+'s emergence wasn't helped by AT&T Time Warner's financial troubles in the telecom space, as well as the loud distraction of a merger and lead executives coming and going. AT&T Time Warner decided to spin off its satellite-TV provider, DirecTV, in August of 2021.

The previous speedrun record was held by Quibi, which lasted close to eight months. After launching as a streaming-video service, Quibi burned through over $1 billion in talent acquisition and promotions before shutting down. It was picked up by Roku for pennies on the dollar.