I suspect that this will not increase their long-term viewership or revenue.
That might be a positive.
I think paywalls have generally increased revenue when tried in the past although I don’t have a citation.
There is no growth opportunities so increasing prices to increase revenue at the expense of market share makes sense.
Current CNN has lost their special standing as the honest news broker. What appeal do they have over the masses of news content providers/commentariat at this stage?
Hard to believe but I honestly don't know. There is nothing special or unique about CNNs news that will make me pay for it. I will just get it somewhere else.
Paywalls work when you offer content not easily available everywhere else. NY Times or WSJ come to mind.
CNN in my opinion has no special content. It's just one of tens of national news sites, full of weird ad spam below the fold. I don't see this working well for them, but I've been wrong before.
Don't forget about their massive trash site "Underscore" or whatever that is purely designed to get people to click affiliate links. No fucking integrity.
I watch CNN clips on Youtube with some regularity because sometimes it's stupid guilty fun to listen to a bunch of very well groomed "Senior Political Analysts" put on a show of moral outrage over something batshit crazy that Trump said that week.
But I would never pay for CNN. Their programs are high production quality, but the content is not high quality. It's mostly the same pool of center-left talking heads saying not very smart things about the random political happenings of the day.
If I want to know what happened in Israel today, I can just google news it, and maybe click through on BBC or AJ to read some details beyond the headline.
And if I want thoughtful long-from commentary, I will look for 30-60 minute YT podcasts with historians, retired politicians, etc. For example, recently The Rest is Politics has been great, and there are many others.
I'm not a follower of CNN, but I've heard that CNN USA and CNN International are pretty different. In Korea, CNN seems to have a large following because it allows people to get the news while practicing their English.
I only watch CNN on the 'CNN' Youtube channel, I think that's CNN USA.
So they expect people to pay for the privilege of sifting through sea of chumboxes to find bits of content. Nice work, CNN. That's some hot, double-barrel footgun action minus all toes.
In other news, Times Radio UK (watchable on YT) has been delivering some top-tier Russo-Ukraine conflict analysis by having on legitimate experts to explain what's going on and where it's headed.
They've been testing this garbage for a while. After 2-3 stories you'd get a "you've reached your daily article limit" and a prompt to sign into a (free) CNN account. Guess it's now going to paywall mode.
At least browsers made it nice and easy to click a couple icons and dump all of my CNN cookies to refresh the page and bypass it anyways.
Or, y'know.
As someone who doesn't think highly of CNN, I am quite happy about this.
Let them increase their revenue while decreasing their influence - good for them, good for the world.
As I said three months ago: television (OTA broadcast, networks, and cable) are about to get, or are in the process of getting, newspapered:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40826253>
That is: what occurred to the newspaper industry since the dot-com and Global Financial Crisis recessions as advertising dried up seems to now be hitting broadcast/streaming services. As with newspapers, I suspect that this will play out over a decade or more, with outlets being snapped up by vulture capitalists stripping carrion for any remaining meat.
CNN's paywall is a sign of the times. It also suggests that other mainstream broadcast and cable news providers (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, NewsMax, Sinclair) may also be following suit. In the latter three cases, one would hope....
It'll be interesting to see both what happens to major sources of highly-biased and disinformational content (see those which have lost or settled major lawsuits in recent months) as their advertising feed-hose dries up.
Meantime, I'll be looking to see what happens to CNN's "lite" feed: <https://lite.cnn.com/>.
Update/edit: The Verge too: <https://www.status.news/p/the-verge-paywall-vox-media>.
>CNN's paywall is a sign of the times.
>lite.cnn.com
Thanks for this, I lost the bookmark several browsers ago..
FYI, more of same:
"A List Of Text-Only & Minimalist News Sites"