CNN Is Making Big Changes: All the Developments Underway at the Network

If at first your streaming product doesn’t succeed, try, try again? CNN suffered a humiliating defeat with CNN+, which went offline after four weeks in operation, but the news organization is taking another stab at streaming with a new product coming this fall.

After 45 years of on-air journalism and off-air drama, CNN is making a big, $70 million push toward digital services — funded by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery — while cutting jobs and costs in its linear-television operations.

In an interview with The New York Times, CNN chief executive Mark Thompson said he’s following founder Ted Turner’s advice to give people news when and where they want it. “This is a moment where the digital story feels like an existential question,” Thompson explained. “If we do not follow the audiences to the new platforms with real conviction and scale, our future prospects will not be good.”

And in a memo to staff this January, the CEO expressed optimism about the future. “Our objective is a simple one: to shift CNN’s gravity towards the platforms and products where the audience themselves are shifting and, by doing that, to secure CNN’s future as one of the world’s greatest news organizations,” he wrote, per Business Insider. “America and the world need high quality, fair-minded, trustworthy sources of news more than ever. This difficult and sometimes painful process of change is the only way to make sure we can still provide it.”

Here’s a breakdown of CNN’s recent and upcoming changes.

CNN recently cut hundreds of jobs

Last summer, CNN cut 100 jobs, and this January, the organization announced it would cut another 200 as it pursued a new digital strategy. The latter reduction represented 6% of CNN’s workforce at the time, but Thompson told staffers that Warner Bros. Discovery’s $70 million investment would pay for many more jobs, including 100 new posts that would be added in the span of months.

“The changes we’re announcing today are part of an ongoing response by this great news organization to profound and irreversible shifts in the way audiences in America and around the world consume news,” CNN chief executive Thompson wrote in his January memo.

CNN.com now has a paywall

In October, CNN put a paywall on its website, CNN.com, one that would prompt frequent visitors to subscribe to the online content.

“Starting today, we are asking users in the United States to pay a small recurring fee for unlimited access to CNN.com’s world-class articles,” Alex MacCallum, CNN’s executive vice president of digital products and services, wrote in an internal memo at the time, per CNN Business. “In addition to unlimited access to CNN.com’s articles, subscribers will receive benefits like exclusive election features, original documentaries, a curated daily selection of our most distinctive journalism, and fewer digital ads.”

CNN.com’s subscription landing page says the organization offers a $3.99/month plan and a $29.99/year plan, and subscribers get unlimited article views, full app access, subscriber-only content, and fewer ads. “By subscribing, you also help support the trusted journalism you rely on daily,” CNN says on that webpage, noting that individuals who already pay to watch CNN on their TV sets and mobile devices are not comped to a CNN subscription.

The network also gave its schedule an overhaul

This January, CNN shook up its weekday schedule, introducing a 5 a.m. Eastern show called 5 Things With Rahel Solomon, debuting a new iteration of 6 a.m.’s CNN This Morning with new host Audie Cornish, moving Wolf Blitzer’s The Situation Room to 10 a.m. and adding Pamela Brown as a cohost, giving former CNN This Morning host Kasie Hunt her own hour at 4 p.m. called The Arena, and moving The Lead With Jake Tapper to 5 p.m.

Thompson wrote in his memo to staffers that the revamped schedule would bring “energy and competitive edge” to CNN while also putting “production costs on sustainable footing to match the changing economics” of linear television.

As part of that shakeup, veteran CNN correspondent Jim Acosta lost his 10 a.m. hour of CNN Newsroom, and though CNN reportedly wanted him to anchor a midnight show, Acosta opted to leave the network four days later.

A new streaming product is coming…

On Wednesday, May 14, CNN officially announced that a new streaming product would launch in the United States this fall. The organization said the product would allow subscribers to watch a selection of live channels and on-demand programming on the CNN mobile app, connected TV apps, and CNN.com.

The streaming product will be a part of CNN’s new All Access subscription service tier, building on the existing digital subscription product detailed above. (Consumers can sign up for updates for CNN’s All Access subscription tier through CNN.com.)

Additionally, the company said, customers who currently subscribe to CNN through pay television will be able to access the new streaming product at no additional cost.

“CNN has been leading and innovating in video-led journalism since its inception, and the expansion of our subscription offering to include streaming embodies that pioneering spirit,” MacCallum said in a press release. “We’re giving audiences an even more convenient way to access CNN’s trusted reporting and original programming—brought together in one intuitive, easy-to-use experience.”

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…as is a CNN Weather app

Meanwhile, CNN also has lifestyle-oriented products in the works, including a CNN Weather app that will launch by the end of the year. The app will be free at first and paywalled later, and it will provide local weather forecasts and round-the-clock coverage of major regional and national weather events, per Axios.

“As we build out a subscription portfolio and offering for our users, we are looking to launch a series of lifestyle-oriented products that become essential to people’s everyday lives,” MacCallum said in a statement to Axios. “Weather is a natural fit for our audience and for the CNN portfolio.”

Amid a shifting media landscape, Thompson, MacCallum, and the rest of CNN’s workforce are undoubtedly hoping for a sunny forecast for the company.