Report: Fewer Than 10k People Are Tuning Into New CNN+ Streaming Service On a Daily Basis

It was reported today that fewer than 10,000 people are tuning into CNN+ on a daily basis two weeks into its existence.

While CNN hasn’t released an exact number of CNN+ subscribers, Disney’s ESPN+, which offers sports news programming in addition to live event broadcasts, recently reported 21.3 million subscribers.

Another streaming service, NBCUniversal’s Peacock, which features news programming, reported 24.5 million monthly active accounts in the U.S., more than 9 million of which were paid members.

While Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav hasn’t commented publicly on CNN+’s long-term future, he told CNBC in February he’d need to see how the application performed before deciding on any next moves.

According to Axios, CNN executives, with help from consulting firm McKinsey, originally expected to bring in around 2 million subscribers in the U.S. in the service’s first year and 15-18 million after four years.

Twitter user “MD” responded to the news, “They expected 2 million. 10k? Wow. Is it to fair to also ask the 10k why would they pay for that service when you can listen to the same people for free?”

In response to “MD,” Twitter user, “FrankieP,” suggested, “Half of them are CNN employees.”

Half of them are CNN employees.

— FrankieP (@F__Peladeau) April 12, 2022

Another Twitter user Eddy Brian opined, “Still scary there are close to 10,000 that actually DO use this app.”

Still scary there are close to 10,000 that actually DO use this app.

— Eddy Brian (@Eddy_Brian11) April 12, 2022

As CNBC noted, CNN sought to make a huge splash with CNN+, luring big-name talent from rival news networks, such as Kasie Hunt from NBC News and Chris Wallace from Fox News.

Clearly, that hasn’t happened, however, thus far, although it was pointed out that it only became available on Roku on Monday and still isn’t on Android TV.