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CNN's Streaming Sequel

CNN is rebooting its streaming ambitions with a new standalone service—a high-stakes bid to turn its massive digital reach into a sustainable business and outrun the ghost of CNN+.

Author

Oliver Darcy
May 13, 2025

CNN boss Mark Thompson. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for WBD)

On Tuesday afternoon, Mark Thompson strode into Studio 19Y in CNN's Hudson Yards offices ready to make an important announcement to the thousands of employees who make up the global news organization. After months of work behind the scenes, the CNN chief was ready to reveal some—though not many—details about the network's forthcoming streaming service to his anxious troops, many of whom have been patiently waiting for him to chart a path to the digital promised lands in more granular detail.

Sporting a brown jacket and yellowish plaid shirt, Thompson, along with digital chief Alex MacCallum, addressed the in-person audience and the rest of the network’s global workforce by video from the studio, laying out the contours of what will soon be CNN’s second foray at a standalone streamer. The new product will debut this fall, they announced, and will be offered free to those who already get CNN through a cable provider—an effort seemingly designed to placate legacy television distributors. It will also be folded into CNN’s slowly evolving digital subscription product, which launched quietly late last year with little minimal fanfare.

Crucially, the forthcoming streaming service will carry most of the network’s existing linear feed, distinguishing it from the ill-fated CNN+ at launch. In other words, consumers will be able to get most of CNN's core offering outside the cable bundle. Notably, the platform will simply be called CNN.

But what Thompson and MacCallum didn’t say was also notable…

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Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper. (Courtesy of Elliott O’Donovan/Penguin Random House)

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