CNN+ cost $6 a month.
It launched on March 29th.
It hit 150,000 total subscribers post launch.

CNN+ was just announced that after not even 30 days, it will be shutting down, being the biggest failure since Quibi for streaming.

Why did it flop?

First up, just to get a concept of what they asked for at $6 a month.

Apple TV+ is $5 a month.
Disney+ is $8 a month.
Paramount+ is $10 a month.
Netflix minimum is $10 a month.
Amazon Prime is $15 a month.

CNN+ launched with an investment of 300 million dollars produce both content and the app itself, where they planned to charge $6 for it.

Comparing that, Apple TV+ which is both cheaper and free for a year to anyone buying an iPhone, ipad or MacBook.

Apple TV+ on initial launch had 1 billion dollars invested into it and after two months, Tim Cook announced they’d invest another 6 billion into it, over just a period of two years.

That number is expected to stay the norm, where Apple will invest 3-5 billion yearly into Apple TV+ for shows.

Just comparing CNN+ to Apple TV+, Apple TV+ is a dollar cheaper, but also has over 23x as much money invested into. Not to mention, an extremely good hook to getting new subscribers, by offering it free for a year to Apple customers.

There was also the infamous flop of Quibi, which raised over 2 billion dollars for short form streaming, had a reported 900,000 users sign up for a 90 day free trial period and only 72,000 stayed on after.

This shows how competitive streaming is, where it takes literal tens of billions to compete, where even brands like Peacock and Paramount are still struggling to get ahead there.

CNN+ being released with 300 million, just wasn’t enough.

The second thing to look at would be the market for subscription journalism as a whole.

Comparing CNN+ to something like Netflix is a little unfair, so it’d make sense to try another subscriptions news business.

The New York Times being the biggest at 7.6 million subscribers is a good comparison.

The NY Times in 2021 reported 2.1 billion dollars in revenue, with a profit of 220 million dollars, holding about a 10% margin.

This looks like a path for CNN+, where it could have worked, but the issue is that’s a fairly small market and something The NY Times has been working on since 2006. They also have had rough years in that model, where revenue adjusted for inflation for The NY Times is still down versus what it was a decade ago.

This makes a case that subscription journalism isn’t a very strong business, where even the best company doing it is down on revenue over the last decade.

Final thoughts

A lot of people have tried making CNN+ political, where it seems like both sides want to create a reason it happened, which would fit their bias.

I’m sure political opinion had some factor here, but wasn’t the only thing or the biggest thing.

Truth is streaming is just extremely competitive and streaming for a journalism product doesn’t interest people.