the picture on Feb. 1 when he was forced to
resign because of not disclosing a romantic
relationship with a co-worker.
CNN+ launched on March 24, only days before
Discovery executives took over. In a sense, that
was a business provocation: Why start a project
that was the brainchild of a former leadership
team, just before new leaders were coming
with ideas of their own, not to mention a
mandate to cut costs?
Incoming CNN chief executive Chris Licht, in a
meeting with employees, likened it to a new
owner coming in, seeing a beautiful new house,
but declaring he needed an apartment instead.
The Discovery team made it clear in the meeting
that they didn’t think CNN+ was going to work,
based on its own experience with streaming.
“If we’re going in a new direction, we can’t let
it go on one moment more than it needs to,”
said J.B. Perrette, head of streaming for the new
company, in the employee meeting.
Licht repeatedly praised his staff for the quality
of CNN+, and there’s no way of knowing
whether the product itself would have failed if
it had a few years to settle in.
And Rosenbaum said he might have been
enticed to see if it was worth it with an offer
of a few free months.
Time, however, was one thing CNN+ did
not have.
“It’s a big failure,” Adamson said, “but not as
big as it would have been if it kept going
and became a black hole of money.”