CNN+ is off to a rocky start, which is why it could see significant cuts to its production despite the streaming service eclipsing 100,000 subscribers in its first week.
Nonetheless, it’s no stopping it from being the butt of jokes from some in the news media. Mediate founder and NewsNation host Dan Abrams and Mediaite founding editor Colby Hall tore into CNN+ during a segment on “Dan Abrams Live.”
“Again, the idea that there’s this mass audience of like hardcore CNN fans and again, I really don’t mean this as an attack on any of the particular hosts, because it’s not about them. It’s about the way that they created this business,” Abrams said.
“But it’s not really just like, ‘Oh, let’s hire a bunch of CNN-like anchors and have them do longer-form interviews’ or whatever the case may be. So it just blows my mind that someone thought that this was a good, you know, sort of business strategy.”
Hall credited Chris Wallace for providing an interesting show with his slate of recent interviews since CNN+ launched late last month. Furthermore, he states that the streaming service isn’t going away but does expect changes.
“I mean, I think Chris Wallace has done made some news with a few of his interviews. And you know, things are going to change, I think. I don’t think CNN+ is going to go away. I think there’s going to be a lot of cuts simply because of redundancies,”
“If you have like Discovery streaming, you know, you don’t need two sets of server farms, you don’t need two sets of studios. There are redundancies that will cut costs. I think their content offerings, my reporting suggests, is going to go way down.”