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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

This whole thing just makes no sense from a business perspective. Who would want this? Who would pay money for this? It just seems like it's an idea that some executive got, and no one was willing to tell them that it sounds like a horrible idea until it went too far and it collapsed. Did they do any marketing research or even a gut check? This seems pretty normal for the type of companies that just hire McKinssey for strategy and neglect and sanity checks.

The average age of CNN watchers is over 60 years old, not exactly a prime streaming demographic. But who would want to pay for the news monthly for a streaming service? Newspapers have enough trouble getting people to pay a bit for text. CNN needs to compete with other streaming services, and all of the free streams out there and podcasts (which are typically higher quality than CNN ).

It's all baffling.

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> Who would want this? Who would pay money for this?

Who?! Why, all those countless streaming service customers, of course! I mean, have you seen how much Netflix and all these others are bringing in?! Surely if we launch some sort of streaming service they'll throw that money at us too! Right? Right?

There was someone I saw on Twitter (which I can't find now) who kept a tally of all the sites that asked them to subscribe when they visited them. The total amount they'd need to spend to subscribe to everything they saw was something crazy like $350/mo.

I would guess that was the narrative: that a streaming service with a new tone would appeal outside their existing demographic.

Not that I buy it, but that had to be the idea: not to reach CNN viewers, but new viewers.

> The average age of CNN watchers is over 60 years old, not exactly a prime streaming demographic. But who would want to pay for the news monthly for a streaming service? Newspapers have enough trouble getting people to pay a bit for text. CNN needs to compete with other streaming services, and all of the free streams out there and podcasts (which are typically higher quality than CNN ).

> It's all baffling.

Not really. If they thought cable is in long-term (perhaps terminal) decline, they've really only have two choices: let the business wind down or try to pivot into something that's perceived as not dying. Starting a streaming service seems like an attempt at the latter. A lot of newspapers (especially ones owned by private equity) are doing the former.

I paid for it.

I figured I would get CNN light for $3 a month vs Sling for $30 (which I only use for CNN now).

>The average age of CNN watchers is over 60 years old, not exactly a prime streaming demographic.

Isnt it? Every 60 year old I know has some kind of streaming device and social media accounts.

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