CNN and Fox take on their own legacies with new streaming services
Two of the world’s biggest media companies are hoping their planned streaming services will augment, rather than bite into, their existing cable subscription businesses.
Fox Corp revealed this week it would launch a streaming service into the US in the third quarter of 2025, named Fox One. As CEO Lachlan Murdoch explained at the company’s quarterly earnings call, the name is intended to reflect both the company’s unity, and the depth of its content slate.
“Whether it’s the Super Bowl, the election cycle, or the upfront, our company is at its best when we work together as one,” Murdoch told investors.
Similarly, CNN is planning to launch a news streaming service, which will package live and on-demand news content.
Lachlan Murdoch
Fox already operates two streaming services in the US: free ad-supported service Tubi, which deals in general entertainment, and Fox Nation, a right-wing news channel featuring Fox personalities hosting “unapologetically patriotic content”. Tubi is now being pushed hard in Australia by News Corp, which signed a local ad-repping deal with the FAST (free, ad-supported TV) service in March.
CNN’s parent company Warner Bros Discovery also runs the successful Max streaming service, which features a CNN news hub among its vast offering.
This will be take two for CNN’s streaming hopes, after the spectacular failure of CNN+, a similar news streamer which launched in 2022 and was shut down within 30 days. The company spent some US$300 million on the platform.
This time, CNN has the backing of new-ish CEO Mark Thompson, who joined the company in October 2023, after helming the New York Times’ digital resurrection.
Under Thompson’s leadership, the New York Times transitioned from a legacy newspaper with a dwindling readership, to an online-first platform, becoming the first publication in the world to achieve 1 million digital-only paid subscribers. By 2012, the company was making more from digital subscriptions than advertising.
Mark Thompson
With similar hopes, CNN’s streaming service will be bundled with the company’s recently launched cnn.com subscription offering, which includes unlimited website content, a CNN weather app – and soon, a TV streaming service.
Alex MacCallum, CNN’s executive vice president of digital products and services, said in a statement this bundling approach would allow “audiences to get the most out of CNN in one seamless and simple way.”
Both companies are adamant their streaming service won’t cut into its lucrative cable customer base.
CNN is hoping to keep cable customers happy by giving them access to the streaming service as part of their existing package, while Murdoch told investors Fox One was aimed at the “cordless” market, and that the pricing would not undercut Fox’s exisiting cable service.
Similarly, existing Fox cable subscribers will receive Fox One for free.
“It would be a failure if we attract more connected subscribers,” Murdoch said.
“We do not want to lose a traditional cable subscriber to Fox One.”
Murdoch need only look at Foxtel’s Australian operations to see how to make a successful transition from cable to subscription while balancing both customer bases.
Foxtel’s churn rate — the amount of people leaving the traditional broadcast service — sat at what News Corp CEO Robert Thomson called a “pleasingly low” 11.7% for the final quarter of 2024, after hovering at 13.3% during the prior quarter.
Average revenue per customer was bumped up by 6%, while the company’s overall subscriber revenue across streaming and broadcast was up 2%, as Foxtel’s “streaming strength more than offset broadcast declines”, which Thompson noted at the time.
Technology is advancing, but for many cable users, old habits die hard. The passive yet simple nature of linear TV isn’t something that will be easy to replicate with the endless options of streaming.
As Julian Ogrin, CEO of streaming and advertising at Foxtel Group told Mumbrella last year, Foxtel has users have been using their black Foxtel boxes for over a quarter of a century.
“That audience is rock solid,” he said, of the linear diehards.
“They love their Foxtel. It is still the ultimate aggregator, with a very loyal base.”
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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Oh good, yet another streaming service to further segment the industry…
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