Earlier this month, the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery was made official, becoming Warner Bros. Discovery. And the new company is wasting little time in making changes. As it has decided to halt all marketing for the app and has also let go the longtime network CFO Brad Ferrer. While Discovery’s CFO of streaming and international, Neil Chugani will take over the reigns for now.
There have been reports of how lackluster the service has been since it launched. Averaging only 10,000 viewers per day. Which is pretty low, but then again, this is a cable news streaming service, that is also brand new. Many weren’t expecting it to do very well.
Post-merger, restructuring and streamlining operations have been a priority
The CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslov, has positioned restructuring and streamlining operations as a priority for the combined company. So we are expecting to see more executive-level changes on the horizon.
Zaslov and his team also wants to return CNN to its journalistic roots, to take it away from the personality-driven primetime programming that most of cable news is doing now. Warner Bros. Discovery is apparently comfortable with sacrificing short-term advertising gains in an effort to reestablish the network as the preeminent voice in news.
Which is interesting since the streaming service does now have a live news component. That means that we could see some major restructuring within CNN+ itself.
To launch CNN+, WarnerMedia spent an estimated $300 million. That included some lump sums to lure over personalities like Chris Wallace, Audie Cornish, Kasie Hunt, and many others. Now one has to wonder if Warner Bros. Discovery thinks that is wasted money, or if they can make that money back with CNN+.
But it is quite obvious that Warner Bros. Discovery would have preferred that CNN+ not launch a mere 11 days ahead of the merger completing.
2022-04-20 15:04:42