Can CNN’s hiring spree get people to pay for streaming news?
ANDREW MANGUM/THE NEW YORK TIMES / JAN. 20
Chris Wallace, the former Fox News anchor, in rehearsals at CNN’s Washington studio. CNN+ will mix hard news with a heavy dose of lifestyle coverage.
MICHAEL GRAYDON & NIKOLE HERRIOTT/THE NEW YORK TIMES / 2019
The Instagram star Alison Roman in her kitchen in Brooklyn. Roman will host a cooking show on CNN+. Prop Stylist: Amy Elise Wilson.
ROZETTE RAGO/THE NEW YORK TIMES / 2019
The actor Eva Longoria in Beverly Hills, Calif. Longoria is developing a culinary travelogue documentary series for CNN’s streaming service.
A couple of months ago, CNN’s forthcoming streaming channel was perceived as little more than a curiosity in the television news business: just another cable dinosaur trying to make the uneasy transition into the digital future.
In fact, the plan to start CNN+, which is expected to go live by late March, amounted to a late arrival to the subscription-based streaming party, more than three years after Fox News launched Fox Nation.
Then the hirings began.
In December, Chris Wallace, Fox News’ most decorated news anchor, said he was leaving his network home of 18 years for CNN+. Next came Audie Cornish, the popular co-host of “All Things Considered” on NPR, who said in January that she was leaving public radio to host a weekly streaming show.
Alison Roman, the Instagram star and author of a popular cooking newsletter, will get her own cooking show. Eva Longoria will head to Mexico for a culinary travelogue documentary series. Rex Chapman, the sports podcaster and former basketball player with more than 1 million Twitter followers, signed on, too.
The prominent names represent a tier of talent that had previously been hesitant to commit to a news channel’s streaming service, especially an untested one. Agents and producers have taken notice — as much for the big salaries on offer as for the prospect of a news-based streamer with a range of nonfiction programming, relying on more than the usual political talking heads.
“We do want a service that has a wider aperture and is broader than just today’s bleak news,” CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, said.
He is gambling that CNN+ can entice new viewers — and bring back some old ones. CNN’s traditional broadcast viewership has dropped significantly from a year ago, thanks to a post-Trump slump and waning audience interest, and the network recently fired its top-rated anchor, Chris Cuomo, amid an ethics scandal.
It remains an open question if CNN+ can actually draw the interest — and monthly payments — of viewers already overwhelmed with streaming options. Heavyweight services like Netflix and Hulu have struggled to find success with shows that riff on current events. One Netflix executive conceded in 2019 that topical programming was “a challenge” when it came to on-demand, watch-at-your-own-pace streamers.
CNN and Fox News are the two major news networks betting that viewers will pay an extra monthly fee for their digital content.
