Media organizations, together with CNN, have struggled to develop their audiences and income and are testing new choices.
CNN is reducing about 100 jobs and plans to launch its first digital subscriptions earlier than the top of the yr because the information community prepares to restructure its enterprise.
In a memo despatched to workers on Wednesday, CNN CEO Mark Thompson mentioned the information group was reducing simply 100 positions out of a complete workers of about 3,500. He mentioned vacant positions have been being stuffed wherever potential to reduce general layoffs.
Media organizations, together with CNN, have struggled to develop their audiences and income and have sought to diversify what they provide to prospects.
Thompson mentioned CNN’s digital technique have to be “bold sufficient to generate the audiences and income we have to keep our distinctive journalistic energy and succeed as a enterprise.”
The manager mentioned CNN will create subscription-ready merchandise that supply information, evaluation and context in new codecs. He confused that an effort will probably be made to maintain customers on the CNN.com web site longer and discover methods to get them to return extra typically.
Whereas CNN’s digital merchandise have largely centered on text-based articles, Thompson mentioned there will probably be a shift to providing extra video content material.
“Going ahead, our digital merchandise might want to higher mirror CNN’s super energy in video and expertise as anchors and reporters,” Thompson mentioned.
The group may even develop extra “information you need to use” for its viewers, with life-style and have content material. Thompson mentioned these merchandise will present the corporate with a number of monetization alternatives, together with sponsorships, new promoting and direct-to-consumer subscriptions.
CNN may even be delving deeper into synthetic intelligence, Thompson mentioned, and can take a look at the way it can safely use the know-how to serve its viewers.
Thompson, a former chief government of the BBC and The New York Occasions, was named CNN chairman in August 2023 and took up the function in October. He changed Chris Licht, who was fired in June of that yr. Thompson is credited with serving to the Occasions transition to a digital group that relied extra on paid subscribers than the collapsing promoting market that has doomed many newspapers.
In January, Thompson outlined a method to his workers that included a “dramatic modernization” of the CNN.com web site.