CNN Plus Review: CNN+ Is A Less Shouty, Ad-Free CNN

With a war threatening Eastern Europe and midterm elections gearing up at home, this week’s launch of CNN+ comes at an ideal time for consumers looking for an inexpensive, ad-free news outlet with global reporting and analysis that doesn’t require a monthly cable subscription.

For fans of media mergers, corporate intrigue, and new technology, the launch comes at an absolutely wild time. CNN parent company WarnerMedia is just weeks away from merging with Discovery, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert executive producer Chris Licht will become chairman and CEO of CNN shortly after the deal is finalized.

Here’s the basics:

CNN+ launches on Tuesday.
The service is available to cable subscribers and non-cable subscribers.
It will be It costs $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year, and signing up for the monthly plan during the first four weeks after launch will get you 50% off of the monthly plan for as long as you remain a subscriber.
CNN+ will be available at launch on Amazon Fire TV, Android phones and tablets, and Apple’s iPhone, iPad and Apple TV devices.

The CNN+ interface impressed me as intuitive and easy to navigate during a half-hour demonstration last week with CNN executives. CNN+ opens directly within the CNN app and distinguishes itself visually from the rest of the app with a darker background, a cleaner interface, and no display advertising. The user experience feels elegant; it feels — intentionally, I suspect — like Netflix.

What to Expect from CNN+

“CNN+ is a unique streaming service dedicated up and built from the ground up for news,” Peterson said during the demo. “Our goal is to catch you up on what’s happening in the world quickly and efficiently, and it’s also let you dive into topics more deeply through video on demand and with interactive features.”

The new service does not include a live CNN feed — you’ll still have to subscribe to cable for that — but there is so much overlap between CNN and CNN+ hosts that you may not notice or care. CNN+ will have live, weekday news shows hosted by familiar CNN anchors including Kate Bolduan (7 a.m. ET), Brian Stelter (11 a.m. ET), Kasie Hunt (4 p.m. ET), Chris Wallace (6 p.m. ET), and Wolf Blitzer (7:30 p.m. ET).

Other familiar CNN anchors will will have weekly or limited-series shows like Jake Tapper’s Book Club, Parental Guidance with Anderson Cooper, and Boss Files with Poppy Harlow. There will be lifestyle shows from Rex Chapman (interviews), Scott Galloway (business), and Eva Longoria (travel). CNN+ will also be the exclusive streaming home for more than 1,000 hours of CNN documentary films and series.

Many shows that appear first on cable CNN will stream later on CNN+. The first season of Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy will stream on CNN+ at launch, and the second season will window to CNN+ after it airs on cable CNN.

CNN+ Definitely Isn’t CNN

CNN+ has an interactive feature called Interview Club for subscribers to submit questions to hosts and experts, but the service will otherwise be largely free of comments, tweets, and assorted other social-media noise. The CNN executives looked happiest during the demo when we talked about CNN+’s deemphasis on social media.

“We didn’t want this to be like comments on Facebook,” Peterson said. “We want this to have a premium feel to it.”

I get the impression from the absence of partisan noisemakers in the announced series lineup that CNN+ will focus more on hard news, analysis, and lifestyle programming and less on Democratic and Republican operatives shouting their talking points at each other.

A less shouty, less partisan CNN+ would be in line with incoming Warner Bros. Discovery board member John Malone’s oft-quoted comment that he “would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing.”

What Happens After the Merger?

Until a few weeks ago, I wasn’t convinced CNN+ would actually launch. Jeff Zucker, who drove the development of CNN+, resigned as CEO of CNN in February after failing to disclose a relationship with a subordinate, and the Discovery-heavy exec team that will run Warner Bros. Discovery was not involved at all in the development of CNN+.

Discovery CEO David Zaslav has spoken highly of CNN and there’s little doubt that CNN’s future is on streaming, so it’s doubtful that Zaslav would have outright killed CNN+ if he’d had the chance. What remains to be seen is whether Warner Bros. Discovery will fold CNN+ into a unified, global streamer along with HBO Max and Discovery+.

Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, and HBO Max spend tens of billions of dollars a year on original content, streaming technology, and subscriber marketing. Apple TV+ has Ted Lasso, Oscar Best Picture winner CODA, and hundreds of billions of dollars. Those global streamers are separating themselves from smaller late-comers like Paramount+ and Peacock. Sony Pictures Entertainment has foregone streaming altogether and sell its movies and TV shows to everyone else.

Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said in mid-March that the Warner Bros. Discovery would offer Discovery+ and HBO Max as a bundle soon after the merger and eventually combine them into one service. MSNBC is integrating further into Peacock, CBS News is fully integrated into Paramount+, and I wouldn’t be too surprised for Warner Bros Discovery to do the same with CNN+ in the next few years.

Scott Porch writes about the TV business for Decider. He is a contributing writer for The Daily Beast and a podcast producer. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.