CNN’s new chief executive, Sir Mark Thompson, is considering ways to make people pay to watch news clips on their cell phones as people increasingly turn away from cable news.
Sir Mark said he did not think anyone had yet “cracked the code” on how moving to a subscription model “truly translates to a great news experience,” but noted younger consumers generally get their news from their smartphones relatively early in the day.
They should be willing to pay for that, he said, provided his network “can figure out a way of [making] sure it’s a high quality, differentiated product” on offer.
Sir Mark cautioned he was “not even sure that subscription is the right pathway for CNN.” Still, he said he “do[es] think we need to start experimenting and exploring in the broader sense direct-to-consumer relationships and potentially direct-to-consumer paying relationships.”
The British CNN chief is a former President and CEO of The New York Times and, before that, Director-General and CEO of the state-owned BBC and Channel 4 in his home country.
He will be hoping any new subscription model he adopts does not go the way of the CNN+ streaming service, which tanked within a month of being launched in 2022.
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