Closing a month after launch

US broadcaster CNN has announced that 30 April will be the last day of operation of its own streaming service CNN+. This was reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The decision to close the streaming platform comes less than two weeks after CNN was taken over from telecoms giant AT&T by Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), the result of a merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery Channel.

It is worth noting that according to WBD CEO David Zaslav, the best option would be to host all of the company's content on one platform, rather than launch separate services for each channel.

Also, CNN+ was launched on March 29 and attracted less than 100,000 users. The subscription price was $5.99 a month and was not justified, according to Discovery executives, because the arrangements with pay-TV distributors limited the amount of news products that could be hosted on CNN+.

In addition, the new platform competed with Fox News, which has over a million subscribers on its streaming service.

Former CNN+ chief executive Chris Licht said some of the news content created for the new service will move to other WBD platforms, including CNN and HBO.

"The decision to close CNN+ is essential to CNN's long-term success...", The Wall Street Journal quoted Licht as saying in a memo.