Streaming saturation
Streaming promised a golden age of consuming media, and on some level it has delivered. But as competition has intensified, the days when you could find everything you wanted to watch on just one service are, unfortunately, long gone.
Data from Nielsen shows that in 2019, only 11% of those surveyed reported that they paid for four or more streaming services. This year, 35% of people said they paid for four or more, and a whopping 7% revealed they paid for six or more services, which was almost completely unheard of just a few years ago.
Build it, and hope they come?
CNN is one company that is starting to understand just how competitive streaming is.
The news giant has been building hype for its CNN+ product for months. The service is focused on a combination of live programming (mostly news or factual shows), coupled with longer travel pieces, documentaries and typical CNN programming and was hoping to attract 2 million American subscribers in its first year.
But yesterday news broke that it's off to a really slow start in its first two weeks, like Quibi slow. So far CNN+ is reportedly tracking at just around 10,000 daily active users, a pretty small user base for a project that has already had $300 million pumped into it. Senior execs are now planning cuts on the project, which was initially expected to see around $1 billion invested in it over 4 years.
