When WarnerMedia and Discovery merged earlier this month, the incoming management team faced an immediate question: what to do with CNN+. So at 8 a.m. on April 11, the first morning of Warner Bros. Discovery’s corporate life, before the stock even began trading on Wall Street, the company’s new streaming boss J.B. Perrette and incoming CNN CEO Chris Licht held a critical meeting about the two week old subscription service. (CNN Business)
Three days later, shortly after Warner Bros. Discovery Zaslav appeared with Oprah Winfrey for a rah-rah company town hall, he gathered his deputies inside a low-slung stucco building in Burbank, Calif., on the Warner Bros. studio lot and said he agreed with their conclusion: shut it down. (NYT)
CNN executives first mulled a subscription service in early 2020, before streaming veteran Jason Kilar was hired by AT&T to oversee CNN parent WarnerMedia. (Axios)
WarnerMedia executives had a plan to meet their goal: They would use HBO Max, CNN.com and CNN’s linear channel as a constant marketing presence—a “funnel”—to push subscribers. The strategy was to launch CNN+ in the beginning of this year and then bundle it with HBO Max in September. (CNBC)
Brian Stelter and Kasie Hunt, both of whom host daily shows on the subscription streaming service, announced Friday’s episode (April 22) would be the final one for each of them. (TVNewser)