Great Big Story, the digital storytelling platform that CNN shut down in 2020, is coming back.
whynow, a UK-based media company, announced a three year partnership with CNN International Commercial on Monday to relaunch the video storytelling brand with new and existing content.
whynow, its new owner, was founded in 2019 by Gabriel Jagger and started as a digital magazine publisher, creating a news and reviews site for the arts, with a focus on the U.K. It has since grown into a podcast and TV production company, and has invested in five brands in the last 12 months. The Great Big Story deal makes this the sixth brand to join the fold, and is the largest to date.
Recent whynow TV productions include the BBC Three documentary Virgil Abloh: How To Be Both, and the BBC Four Alan Yentob In Conversation with documentaries, featuring Stephen Fry and Bob Geldof, that were produced as part of the BBC’s 100th anniversary celebrations. The team also produced four series of The Sunday Times Culture Show, and currently has TV and film projects in various stages of development.
The Great Big Story brand identity and social channels will remain the same as under its previous ownership at CNN.
“I’m delighted that we have been able to reach an agreement with CNN to take on Great Big Story,” whynow founder Gabriel Jagger said in a statement. “I’ve been a fan for many years, and was shocked to see it go. I wanted whynow to take on the brand because the optimistic look at the world and remarkable feats of storytelling are what whynow champion, so who better to take on the challenge of telling the best Great Big Stories from around the world.”
Between 2015 and 2020, Great Big Story created mini-docs, series and films “about the people, places and things that change the way we see the world – and each of our individual roles within it.” Launched by CNN digital execs Chris Berend and Andrew Morse (who have both since moved on from the company), Great Big Story was a CNN-backed but independently-operated platform which told thousands of stories from over 100 countries.
The brand endeavored to compete with millennial media brands like BuzzFeed, Vice and Vox—an audience interested in news but not traditional TV news.
Great Big Story got off to a hot start on CNN: Just six months after launch, it was seeing 40 million views per month. On YouTube, the GBS audience collectively spent more than 345 years watching its videos over those first six months.
The stories that come out of Great Big Story were “fundamentally optimistic, but not naive or sunshine-y,” Berend told Adweek in January 2017, adding that in a world in which a three-second play counts as a view on Facebook, GBS accepts its role of creating things that “make people stop.”
Berend continued, “We’re an antidote to the news. There’s a noise and an ADD in news feeds, and we’re the counterprogramming to that. We’re not chasing Facebook views, but we’re chasing engagement.”
Later in 2017, Great Big Story received a big influx of cash from its parent company CNN Worldwide: $40 million over the next two years. Part of the injection was meant to transform the social video startup into a 24/7 streaming network.
Adweek honored Morse and Berend in June 2017 as digital innovators, and the duo were included in Adweek’s 2017 Creative 100 issue.
However, despite those early successes, GBS, like many other digital media companies, has had to significantly revamp its initial business strategies and CNN decided to shut down the platform during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.