Cable TV news channel trying again to make streaming service work

CNN’s second attempt at devising a streaming product that can court younger viewers will make its debut this fall, after a lot of corporate foreshadowing and a growing sense that its linear service will continue to face challenges rebuilding a larger audience.

Executives from the Warner Bros. Discovery-backed outlet tipped their plans Tuesday during a town hall meeting, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The new service will be decidedly less flashy than CNN+, an attempt to win younger viewers that launched in March of 2022 and was shut down a month later, after Discovery Communications took control of the media assets once known as Time Warner. CNN has been teasing its digital plans repeatedly in recent months.

The conversations from the town hall meeting were previously reported by The New York Times.

More details are expected to be announced Wednesday, when Warner Bros. Discovery makes a presentation to advertisers as part of the TV industry’s annual “upfront” ad-sales market.

CNN CEO Mark Thompson has articulated a plan to win new adherents to CNN with a series of topic-based products that might lure fans of such things as wellness, or travel. The new product will dovetails with a recent paywall put in place at CNN.com that gives those who subscribe to it access to ad-free news and certain extra pieces of content.

CNN will be the third major TV business to unveil plans for a new streaming product this week. Fox Corp. said it intends to launch Fox One in the fall, a subscription service that will put Fox News, Fox Sports and Fox broadcast series under the same entity.

Disney’s ESPN plans to unveil a new stand-alone service that gives sports fans access to all of its offerings within a single outlet. All three companies have taken pains to position these products as services that will not compete with their mainstay cable and broadcast outlets.

ESPN, for example, will make the personalization features that form a big part of its new streamer available to cable subscribers via its mobile app.