Warner Bros. Discovery is rolling out “CNN Max” on September 27. This will be a 24/7 live-streamed news service. At first, at least, the channel will focus on breaking news. I am not sure what that even entails these days. Some of the anchors that are already said to have been assigned key roles are Jim Acosta, Rahel Solomon, Amara Walker, Fredricka Whitfield, and Jim Sciutto.
What is prompting this new streaming service? CNN hasn’t been great in terms of ratings, but they have also been a bit late in terms of streaming. They tried to launch CNN+ last year and it was a disaster. NBC News has expanded quite a bit in this arena. NBC News Now is a live-streamed ad-supported service as it is called. They stream some of their most popular shows like “Morning Joe” live and serve as a streaming place for MSNBC. But CNN Max could have an advantage according to Warner Bros. president and CEO JB Perrette. Max subscribers will be able to watch exclusive content while also live-streaming their standard shows like “Anderson Cooper 360” while they are simultaneously airing on the regular CNN channel.
With streaming constantly changing, CNN Max will undoubtedly have to evolve. The company is already looking to try out new things, one of which is airing popup-style alerts. These alerts would tell their viewers of breaking news even if they are currently watching something else totally unrelated, such as Turner Classic Movies. It is like when your phone gets those news alerts, except it can be on the TV now as well. This seems interesting to me personally but I might be in the minority there—a lot of people have reacted negatively to the idea of having news alerts interrupting their escapist binge-watches.
Another feature that Perrette hopes to include is something he calls “dynamic tilling.” Normally when you scroll, you see thumbnail images that show what is airing—static images in the graphic block. With dynamic tilling, this image would be updated to coincide with what anchors like Wolf Blitzer are talking about at that time in space. I think this is actually neat!
It all seems interesting but the way we gather news is so hard to understand. The crossover between streaming and news hasn’t been perfectly figured out yet. Understanding the consumer will be a key aspect. Perrette thinks that the average viewer/subscriber for CNN Max will be around 30 years younger than the average CNN television viewer. I am no expert but that sounds reasonable to assume. These features all sound interesting but will it be worth it to add another cost when CNN is still right there on our televisions already? Will you subscribe?
(via: Variety, featured image: Warner Bros.)
