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Greetings!

You'd be forgiven if you had a little bout of déjà vu this morning with CNN unveiling details of its new subscription streaming service, All Access. 

After all, we've seen this story before more than three years ago when CNN+ launched with much fanfare — only to be scrapped just 30 days later. 

In the intervening years, the number of paid services has exploded (not just video streaming, but music, cloud storage, food delivery and more) and consumers are grappling with higher costs and subscription fatigue. 

Fox One just went live in August, but is notably focused on the entertainment and sports side of the bundle, with Fox News just part of the package.

Perfect time to launch a standalone news service, right?

I asked our new media editor, Michael Calderone, about his thoughts on All Access and he shot back a number of questions:

• Can CNN, which thrives during world-shaking, breaking news, maintain a deeply devoted (and paying) audience during relative calm?
• Is CNN’s product too mass for a fragmented media environment in which niche news outlets and voice-y Substackers are nabbing subscription dollars?
• The New York Times is a subscription juggernaut, but it’s also something of a lifestyle brand that its core, longtime readers closely identify with. Can CNN prove the same?

I have another question: Has CNN learned anything in the last few years that will help it convince people to actually pay for something that's largely background programming for a majority of the time? After all, justifying that monthly fee is a constant battle. (Unrelated: Thank you for being a subscriber!)

It's worth remembering that CNN+ was partly a casualty of the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery. With Paramount Skydance on the prowl for Warner Bros. Discovery, could history repeat itself?

Roger Cheng
Managing Editor of Business and PRO
roger.cheng@thewrap.com

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