There is no growth opportunities so increasing prices to increase revenue at the expense of market share makes sense.
CNN in my opinion has no special content. It's just one of tens of national news sites, full of weird ad spam below the fold. I don't see this working well for them, but I've been wrong before.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40826253>
That is: what occurred to the newspaper industry since the dot-com and Global Financial Crisis recessions as advertising dried up seems to now be hitting broadcast/streaming services. As with newspapers, I suspect that this will play out over a decade or more, with outlets being snapped up by vulture capitalists stripping carrion for any remaining meat.
CNN's paywall is a sign of the times. It also suggests that other mainstream broadcast and cable news providers (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, NewsMax, Sinclair) may also be following suit. In the latter three cases, one would hope....
It'll be interesting to see both what happens to major sources of highly-biased and disinformational content (see those which have lost or settled major lawsuits in recent months) as their advertising feed-hose dries up.
Meantime, I'll be looking to see what happens to CNN's "lite" feed: <https://lite.cnn.com/>.
Update/edit: The Verge too: <https://www.status.news/p/the-verge-paywall-vox-media>.
>lite.cnn.com
Thanks for this, I lost the bookmark several browsers ago..
"A List Of Text-Only & Minimalist News Sites"
In other news, Times Radio UK (watchable on YT) has been delivering some top-tier Russo-Ukraine conflict analysis by having on legitimate experts to explain what's going on and where it's headed.
But I would never pay for CNN. Their programs are high production quality, but the content is not high quality. It's mostly the same pool of center-left talking heads saying not very smart things about the random political happenings of the day.
If I want to know what happened in Israel today, I can just google news it, and maybe click through on BBC or AJ to read some details beyond the headline.
And if I want thoughtful long-from commentary, I will look for 30-60 minute YT podcasts with historians, retired politicians, etc. For example, recently The Rest is Politics has been great, and there are many others.
Let them increase their revenue while decreasing their influence - good for them, good for the world.
At least browsers made it nice and easy to click a couple icons and dump all of my CNN cookies to refresh the page and bypass it anyways.
Or, y'know.