(New York) The news channel CNN, lacking identity and audience, wants to bet on a new paid digital offer generating more than a billion dollars and will lay off a hundred people, its CEO Mark Thompson announced to his teams on Wednesday.
The search for a new strategy to face the competition of streaming on cable television, of which CNN is emblematic, has become a sea serpent in recent years for the network, known for having revolutionized continuous information.
CNN had launched a paid streaming service in 2022, CNN+, but it was closed with a bang after a month, because it no longer fit into the merger plans between WarnerMedia (CNN, HBO Max) and Discovery. A year later, CNN CEO Chris Licht, contested internally, resigned, replaced by the Briton Mark Thompson, a former BBC and New York Times.
In a lengthy memo to all employees, Mark Thompson announced “a billion-dollar digital future plan” that includes paid subscriptions to exclusive “news” and “analysis” products, in addition to its content already available on cable and the Internet.
He notably mentioned “a range of paid “à la carte” offers, anchored in journalism on lifestyles (or lifestyle) on which CNN is particularly well placed”.
This plan should start “before the end of 2024” with the launch of a first subscription to “CNN.com”.
CNN CEO also announced a merger of its three separate newsrooms (for the United States, international and digital) into one. As part of this overhaul, about a hundred jobs out of CNN’s 3,500 will be eliminated, Mark Thompson said.
The announcement of the project comes at a time when CNN is hoping to regain audiences thanks to the American presidential election. The channel was able to once again assert itself over its competitors Fox News and MSNBC, which are overtaking it in audience, by organizing the first debate on June 27 between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.