Well, if The New York Times is correct, the number of people seeing CNN content will get asymptotically close to zero soon. 

The ailing network is struggling, and in an attempt to shore up its revenues, it will experiment with putting its content behind a paywall, making people kick in real money to access its content. 

It's a move I understand on an intellectual level. The revenue streams in media these days are few, with the vast majority going to social media which scoops up the content and feeds it to people while grabbing the dollars for the eyeballs. And as much as we hate the fact that content costs money to produce, the fact is that content costs money to produce. 

CNN To Lock Content Behind Paywall ‘As Cable Television Erodes Industrywide’: Report https://t.co/ZFF6TtvLkt

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) September 27, 2024

Facebook generates enough ad revenue to use the money as a fuel source for a mid-sized city. To put it in perspective, since 2020 Facebook has lost $50 billion trying to make its augmented reality products attractive to consumers and Zuckerberg can sleep easy at night knowing that he is still worth $200 billion. 

Townhall Media properties like Hot Air have to put out begging bowls to keep going. By the way, have you joined VIP yet? Use code 2024 to get 50% off!

So CNN, which pulls in a ton more revenue than we do, has to find a way to actually make money, and a paywall in principle makes sense.

Unfortunately, with the exception of a couple of personalities, nobody wants what they are selling. 90% of the content they put out is dreck.

In early October, CNN will begin experimenting with charging some readers for digital access as part of a bid to shore up its business as cable television erodes industrywide, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.

The company is planning a so-called metered model, which will require the site’s habitual users to pay after reading a certain number of articles, the people said. Many other publishers, including The New York Times and The New Yorker, have used metered paywalls to generate subscriptions over the past decade.

The starting price of a subscription is unclear. But the two people said that CNN would start with an inexpensive offering to gauge customer demand.

A CNN spokeswoman declined to comment.

The subscription wall is one of the first major business initiatives from Mark Thompson, CNN’s chairman and chief executive, who joined the network nearly a year ago. Mr. Thompson said in a memo to employees this year that technology would allow CNN to deliver journalism that readers “will pay for” and later said that the company would try out a paywall.

I did feel for CNN a bit until I remembered that Google and Microsoft have arranged their algorithms to feed stories from the "news" organization as credible while downgrading alternative viewpoints. They have all the advantages and still have a hard time making a go of it. 

The media landscape has fragmented, revenue that once went to a few big players has been divided into much smaller slices of the pie, and social media sites often suck up huge fractions of the revenue that would have gone to the content producers themselves. 

Perhaps CNN will have to up their game to get people to subscribe, but I fear that they will just double down on narrowcasting their content to a small slice of people who are liberal but not MSNBC-watcher insane.