CNN and NBC Set to Battle for Future of Streaming News
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Who’s doing it better — Kristen Welker or Jake Tapper?
The two journalists, one the new moderator of NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” the other the anchor of the weekday “The Lead” and a co-anchor of “State of the Union” at CNN, aren’t typically pitted against one another. But there they were on a recent Thursday afternoon around 4:30 p.m., duking it out for the future of their medium.
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Welker was holding forth on “Meet the Press Now,” a show earmarked for streaming users on the broadband outlet NBC News Now. Tapper was anchoring his regular Thursday broadcast of “The Lead,” a program that is now also streamed to subscribers of Max, the main broadband hub of Warner Bros. Discovery. Both were grilling Republican congressmen about the recent ouster of former U.S. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, and, while not necessarily realizing it, hoping to appeal to younger consumers who no longer get their entertainment and information via traditional television.
Figuring out what’s going to happen to leadership at the U.S. Capitol might be easier than determining whether NBC’s news division or CNN is backing the right strategy when it comes to streaming, a critical endeavor at a time when more consumers are giving up access to traditional media venues.
Digital consumers “have young, contemporary and in some cases authoritative voices they seek out, who don’t live in any traditional place. When they have a choice, the people they look for have personality, attitude, they’re funny or snarky, or they lead in very niche interests like mountain climbing or butterfly collecting,” says Frank Sesno, a former CNN executive who is director of strategic initiatives at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. “Trying to do something like this around news and information is a very challenging thing and it’s going to require a level of creativity that doesn’t typically exist in a newsroom.”
Still, many are trying.
More than a year after scuttling CNN+, a subscription-based streaming extension of the popular linear cable network, Warner Bros. Discovery is putting CNN back into the broadband mix. CNN Max is a new 24-hour streaming outlet that offers a significant chunk of linear CNN, along with a handful of programs from its international service and a few originals. A new “News” hub on Max offers access to CNN documentaries as well as shows like Bill Maher’s “Real Time” and John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” that use comedy to process recent headlines. Mark Thompson (above, pictured, right), who joins CNN Monday as its new chief executive, will have to build upon the strategy — and not without some potential roadblocks. Last week, satellite distributor DirecTV signaled its dismay over so much of CNN’s cable schedule being made available elsewhere.
In a video message delivered today to CNN staffers, Thompson said TV is “too dominant at CNN and digital, too marginal,” according to a person familiar with the matter. He added: “Despite some recent encouraging developments like the launch of CNN Max, this company is still nowhere near ready for the future.” CNN declined to make senior executives available for comment.
Meanwhile, NBCUniversal News Group, under the aegis of its chairman, Cesar Conde (above, pictured, left), has spent the past few years building a broad portfolio of new streaming products, and appears to be reworking the structure of its news operations to accommodate them. In addition to NBC News Now, the company has streaming outlets devoted to the venerable “Today” franchise; MSNBC; and “Dateline.” There is “Stay Tuned,” a news show for audiences on Snap, and even a subscription-based investing club built around CNBC stock prognosticator Jim Cramer. News aficionados can access someof these offerings through NBCU’s Peacock streaming outlet — where NBC News offers live-as-they-happen streams of NBC’s “Today,” MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and CNBC’s “Squawk Box” — but also via Apple TV, Roku, YouTube or Amazon’s Fire TV. The hope is that consumers will realize they can gain access to an NBC News source quickly when needed, without necessarily having to subscribe to a particular outlet. NBC News has said its NBC News Now offering is already profitable.
“Each one of those pieces does something slightly different, and when you look at our entire portfolio, that’s the magic,” says Rashida Jones, president of MSNBC, during a recent interview. NBCUniversal declined to make Conde available for comment
All these efforts are crucial if traditional news TV outlets are to keep new generations tethered to their programming. About 82% of U.S. adults indicated in a 2022 survey that they often or sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet, according to Pew Research, including 49% who say they do so often. The portion that gets news from digital devices continues to outpace those who get news from television, according to Pew. Streaming news is seen as a help to reach those users. NBC News Now, for example, tends to reach people between 35 and 45 — a demographic dramatically younger than the crowd that tunes in for news on TV.
The two rivals aren’t working in a vacuum. Fox News sports a subscription hub, Fox Nation, that features contributions from its opinion hosts as well as an increasing amount of lifestyle and entertainment content, like a stand-up concert led by Roseanne Barr or a new series about the history of alcohol led by alumni of “Saturday Night Live.” CBS has built a wide array of streaming hubs that offer both national news programming from anchors like John Dickerson and Tony Dokoupil as well as local news from CBS-owned stations. ABC News offers a live-stream as well, but has a growing focus on creating documentary programming for Hulu and other Disney-backed streaming outlets.
But CNN and NBCUniversal, one can argue, may have greatest influence on what sorts of streaming models emerge, simply by dint of the size of their operations. CNN’s global newsgathering staff is hard to match, while NBC boasts an array of platforms, including connections to Comcast sibling Sky News, that give it a heft that is hard to outmaneuver.
Warner Bros. Discovery clearly wants CNN to help boost the fortunes of Max. There are no repeats on CNN Max, even in the wee hours of the morning, and the product’s debut comes along with a new sports tier on the service. Many of the NBC News streaming products, on the other hand, are nearly ubiquitous in the digital sphere, in the belief, perhaps, that ad-supported concepts need the widest possible audience (and that news needs to be available, not behind a paywall, to grab its most likely crowd).
The different business patterns also reflect differences of mission at the news organizations’ parent companies. “These companies don’t share the same motives,” says David Craig, a professor at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism who studies the media industry. “Max is run by a company interested in owning content and Comcast is a telecommunications company using media to drive their services.”
Even so, the two news divisions have appeared to be in a heated rivalry for many months. When CNN started hiring staff for CNN+, one of the first places it poached from was NBC News. Kasie Hunt, an up-and-coming Washington correspondent, left to take on a role as a national affairs reporter at CNN and was soon followed by Jennifer Suozzo, then the executive producer of “NBC Nightly News.” Since that time, NBC News has taken some delight in luring CNN personnel to its ranks. Rebecca Kutler, a CNN senior producer, is now overseeing streaming content for MSNBC. David Gelles, formerly a top producer at CNN+, moved to take the executive producer reins at NBC’s “Meet The Press.” Ana Cabrera, Laura Jarrett and Ryan Nobles are among the CNN journalists who have moved to NBC, and Christine Romans, a veteran business correspondent, is expected to join them in weeks to come.
Some of the new NBC staffers believe the company’s portfolio of news products lends the company an edge. “When an opportunity came up to cover legal news for the network in New York, across all the platforms — ‘Today,’ ‘Nightly,’ streaming, write for digital — that’s an opportunity that only comes up once,” says Jarrett, who left CNN for NBC News earlier this year, in a recent interview. As the media industry fragments, NBC’s news offering “provides a wide range of opportunities to reach a vast audience,” says Cabrera, who now anchors a late-morning weekday slot on MSNBC, during a recent interview.
Both companies’ top news executives hew from similar cloth. Conde and Thompson both have experience managing international media operations and have demonstrated a talent for launching digital extensions of core brands. At NBC, those have included everything from podcasts led by Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes to a book club led by Jenna Bush Hager. At Thompson’s previous employer, New York Times Co., he supervised efforts to launch a food vertical and to acquire Wirecutter, a recommendations site.
But the future may bring changes even savvy executives cannot envision. Live-streamed news may soon simply be table stakes for any organization that wants to enter the space. Audiences who can call up whatever they want on demand are likely to want bigger, more colorful projects, including outspoken hosts and high-quality documentary series. “Who is going to be the Larry King of CNN’s streaming service?” asks Sesno. “Who is going to be the Rachel Maddow of NBC streaming?” He thinks digital news audiences are going to crave more Anthony Bourdain-like figures who can “make information an adventure.” Chris Halsne, who oversees a master’s degree program in journalism and digital storytelling at American University, has been telling journalists to rethink the types of projects they conceive. “People are willing to pay for entertainment, and I’m always encouraging investigative reporters to think of their production’s news value and entertainment value at the same time,” he says.
Streaming news has been around for years. CBS News was early to enter the market, launching CBSN in 2014. Now the entire sector has caught up, with dozens of permutations. More are probably in the offing. “The velocity of change in these streaming strategies keeps accelerating,” says Craig, the USC professor. Decisions made by CNN, NBC News and the rest “are almost as ephemeral as the news they deliver every night.”
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