CNN's streaming offering "CNN+" may have be unceremoniously killed off in its infancy by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, but executives are apparently not done with the idea of having CNN personalities and programming available in a streaming format — even if they have to force CNN's presence on customers.
Calling the retread of the CNN+ concept "CNN Max," the 24/7 news content set to launch September 27 as something of an "open beta for news" won't be just a stream of what's on CNN's cable channel, but will reportedly be a mix of some live CNN content and original programming created for CNN Max.
Personalities set to be featured in the launch (or relaunch, depending on how you look at it) include Jim Acosta, Frederika Whitfield, Jim Sciutto and Amara Walker.
CNN Max will be included for free for Max (formerly HBO Max) subscribers, but that's likely due to Warner Bros. Discovery's need to play catch-up to its competitors in the streaming space. After CNN+ crashed and burned, the distance between CNN and other cable or network news outlets only increased.
As Variety noted this week, "CNN has fallen far behind its rivals when it comes to streaming, with Warner scuttling a nascent subscription-based streaming outlet, CNN+, last year. As the company recalibrated CNN’s strategy, however, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, ABC News and CBS News have all had opportunities to establish new programming for the broadband set, and to experiment while refining their brands in the space," the report explained. "CNN is in some ways starting to run after its competitors have done a few laps on the track."
In addition to making CNN Max available for free to [HBO] Max subscribers, the company is also planning to test another way to juice its audience by dragging potentially unwilling viewers into its live streaming offering.
"Among the features the company will try out are ways of alerting Max viewers to breaking news while they are watching something else on the service," Variety reported. "Whether it be an HBO series, a Turner Classic Movies selection or an old episode of Food Network’s 'Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,'" they'll be interrupted by a CNN Max notification pleading with them to click over to watch streaming news.
No thanks.
For news junkies, the choice to tune out the latest mayhem to unwind with a movie or tv series is intentional. To have that rudely interrupted with a push to instead watch Jim Acosta seems like a desperate and ill-advised attempt to boost CNN's streaming game.