The week of April 18 was eventful for streaming video providers as their business model came into question. Netflix announced an ad supported tier and CNN’s new parent company pulled the plug CNN+.
streaming
‘I’ve been a victim’: Chris Wallace goes public after CNN+ crashes and burns
With the fast collapse of CNN+, the streaming service that launched at the end of March, CNN anchor Chris Wallace has finally broken his silence on the issue.
Wallace left his longtime position at Fox News for a new job with CNN and a slot hosting on CNN+. But now that the streaming service has folded, Wallace said doesn’t know where his career is headed, The Hill reported.
However, Wallace did say that he is in “good shape whether it’s at CNN or someplace else,” Mediaite reported.
Wallace was speaking Sunday at a live-streamed meeting of a New York City-area group called the Common Ground Committee, which aims to promote “public discourse.” Joining Wallace on the panel was Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent of ABC News.
The event was moderated by former CBS News correspondent Jacqueline Adams, with the topic “Media, Politics, and Polarization.” About 20 minutes into the forum, she put the question of the future of news streaming services directly to Wallace.
“Chris, the proverbial elephant in the room is the surprising announcement that CNN+ is shutting down at the end of this week. How should news consumers react,” she asked.
“Are there already enough choices for news sources out there and are the days of streaming already over?”
“Wow that was quick,” Wallace answered. “It’s an interesting thing and I’ve been a victim of all of this in the last week.”
CNN+ launched on March 29, but after just a month, CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, announced last week it will be shut down on April 30.
“When I came over to CNN+, there were some very smart people … who were saying that the future of cable news was in great jeopardy because of that fact that you’re seeing people unbundle. They’re not getting these bid, getting these big, expensive 50-channel cable deals anymore …
“This was just a wave of the future and the idea was you’ve got to get a foothold in the streaming world because that’s where the future of news off the mainstream networks is going to be.
“Now you have some equally smart people that have come in with a diametrically opposed view. These are the new bosses at CNN+ — Warner Bros. Discovery — who’ve come to the conclusion that to have a narrow, niche product like a news streaming service doesn’t work.
“I have absolutely no idea which is right and wrong, but the Discovery people are in charge and so they made the decision,” Wallace said.
The relaxed view Wallace presented Sunday was in contrast to reports of how he handled the collapse of CNN+ while it was still going on.
As the daily news about CNN+ kept getting worse, Wallace reportedly indulged in “daily breakdowns” and had his staff monitor how often promotions for his show were played.
At Sunday’s event, Wallace also noted how quickly the media landscape had changed, especially in light of the Netflix announcement last week that it had lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year, leading its stock to plummet by 35 percent, as CNBC reported.
“Two weeks ago, streaming was king,” he said. “Now, we’ve had the decision on CNN+. The bad forecast about subscribers at Netflix. And suddenly, streaming is in ICU on life support.”
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Wallace was anchoring the interview show “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?” on the streaming service.
Wallace told Adams he wasn’t worried about himself, but said he was concerned about all the employees of CNN+ who have found themselves out of a job thanks to the streaming service’s inability to prove it could be successful in a competitive media market.
“I am going to be fine. I’m in good shape, whether it’s at CNN or someplace else. Frankly, what I’m mostly concerned about right now – and very – is my team and hundreds of other people,” Wallace said.
“There were 300 people, I think, that had jobs at CNN+. Some of them had left CNN to go to streaming. Some of them had left other places, moved across the country. And so I think you’re seeing a lot of the anchors at CNN+ doing everything they can to protect the people that were working on their team,” he added.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post ‘I’ve been a victim’: Chris Wallace goes public after CNN+ crashes and burns appeared first on WND.
The Best New Movies To Stream On Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Amazon, Disney+, Paramount+, Peacock And Apple TV+ This Week
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BritBox International to Launch in Scandinavia on April 28
BritBox, the ITV and the BBC’s streaming service, is set to roll out across the Nordics with a raft of original programming on April 28. BritBox International will launch in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland, and will include BritBox Originals, exclusive new series, as well as TV classics. The slate will boast true crime dramas […]
Report: CNN axes senior executive as ‘doomed’ streaming service unravels
As CNN’s streaming service known as CNN+ flounders, changes are being made at the network’s top levels.
Warner Bros. Discovery has laid off CNN chief financial officer Brad Ferrer, replacing him with Neil Chugani, Discovery’s CFO for streaming and international, according to an Axios report ominously entitled “CNN+ looks doomed.”
The outlet said more high-level layoffs are in store as WarnerMedia reshapes its empire.
Based on five sources it did not name, Axios reported that CNN’s corporate parent has also pulled the plug on marketing CNN+, which has about 150,000 subscribers. Executives had hoped for 2 million subscribers in the service’s first year.
CNN+ reportedly draws fewer than 10,000 daily viewers https://t.co/TlHtY9Fci6 pic.twitter.com/qEUsFCcpFJ
— New York Post (@nypost) April 12, 2022
But the network is also looking at something new: a live news show to fill the 9 p.m. slot once held by disgraced host Chris Cuomo.
Internal data indicates that programming that looks like live TV — Axios specifically mentioned “5 Things with Kate Bolduan” and “Reliable Sources Daily” with Brian Stelter — is what has connected with viewers on CNN+.
Axios reported that within CNN, “executives are frustrated that new leadership is moving quickly to dismantle what they see as an eventual lifeline for the cable network.”
CNN’s true believers think the pause in marketing CNN+ means it will never achieve what was planned in the days when CNN wanted to invest $1 billion in a four-year plan to make the service profitable.
Although CNN+ recently launched on Roku, which is expected to bring in subscribers, insiders fear that growth will be a blip and not a boom.
Axios reported that Discovery wants one big streaming service, not niche ones, and would have been happier had CNN+ never launched.
The outlet noted that there is a philosophical change as well as a programming one taking place.
“Discovery executives are focused mostly on returning CNN to its journalistic core, a point Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav reiterated in a town hall last week,” Axios reported.
“That includes less of a focus on primetime perspective programming, and more of a focus on hard, breaking news. CNN+ features an array of soft news content, which doesn’t align with Discovery’s broader vision for CNN.”
CNN head Jeff Zucker’s resignation in February, a month before the launch of CNN+, likely did not help matters. New head honcho Chris Licht does not take over until May, according to Axios.
The outlet reported that some CNN+ content could endure on CNN’s app, even if the streaming service does not.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
The post Report: CNN axes senior executive as ‘doomed’ streaming service unravels appeared first on WND.
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UK Households Cancel Streaming Subscriptions In Record Numbers As Inflation Forces Cutbacks
UK Households Cancel Streaming Subscriptions In Record Numbers As Inflation Forces Cutbacks
Here’s some more bad news for Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and the various and sundry streaming competitors (including the already struggling CNN+): in the face of a worsening inflation crunch, consumers are canceling their streaming subscriptions at a “record” pace.
At least, that’s the takeaway from the latest streaming data out of the UK.
According to the FT, which cited figures from analytics organization Kantar, British households walked away from about 1.5 million video on-demand accounts during the first three months of the year, an unprecedented number suggesting that consumers are becoming more “discerning”.
To be sure, 58% of households retain at least one streaming service, a decline of only 1.3% from the end of 2021. But the terminations suggest that viewers have become more discerning about subscribing to multiple platforms.
Most of those canceling their subscriptions cited a desire to save money as the most important reason for canceling their subscriptions, and young adults have become particularly wary of paying for television on top of an annual £159 licensing fee.
The global insight director from Kantar described the streaming-cancellation figures as “sobering”.
The findings were “sobering” for streaming providers, said Dominic Sunnebo, global insight director at Kantar. He said streaming services had to prove their worth to consumers “in what has become a heavily competitive market”.
As we noted earlier this month, living standards in the UK are declining at the fastest rate in 8 years due to a ‘death spiral’ spurred by soaring energy costs.
As a result, high inflation has pushed the UK Misery Index, an economic indicator to gauge how the average person is doing, to three-decade highs.
Of course, for investors, fears about ‘oversaturation’ in the hyper-competitive streaming space have caused shares of the once-dominant Netflix to shed more than 40% of their valuation since the start of the year after reporting its worst quarter in half a decade.
Netflix, which recently implemented its second round of UK price increases within 18 months, raising standard monthly subscriptions from £10 ($13) to £11 ($14.3).
Circling back to the UK, Kantar’s data showed Britbox, Apple TV Plus and Discovery Plus had the highest churn rate, meaning they lost the most users on a gross basis. Disney Plus had the biggest increase in its churn rate, Kantar said. Its quarterly churn tripled from the previous quarter to 12%. Meanwhile, Netflix and Amazon Prime enjoyed the lowest churn rates, suggesting that users would cut them last during a period of belt-tightening.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/19/2022 – 04:15