CNN host Brian Stelter insisted on air Sunday that the collapse of his network’s brand-new streaming service, CNN Plus, in full public view could turn out to be a success.
THE QUOTE
Stelter, speaking on “Reliable Sources,” his weekly talk show about the media, proposed: “It’s too early to know if this product, if this service was a success or a failure.”
“You know, you’ve got all the haters today saying this thing was a failure. I don’t know if we can even ever assess that, because it just simply didn’t have enough time because of the management’s change in direction,” Stelter said.
- “And at the end of the day, if you buy something, if you buy a giant media company you get to do whatever you want with it. But it does mean there’s a lot of suffering for employees, and frankly, disappointment among subscribers as a result.”
- “This is a worthy venture. This was an outstanding experiment,” Stelter added later in the segment.
- Warner Bros. Discovery announced Thursday it was scrapping CNN Plus after the network’s previous management reportedly spent $300 million on the service and failed to attract more than 10,000 daily users.
SAME ENERGY
In March 2019, moments after prosecutors dropped all charges against actor Jussie Smollett for staging a hate crime against himself, Stelter said on air: “We may never really know what happened in the street that night in Chicago.”
- “But for his fans, for his friends, this is a triumphant moment that he can now get back to what he wants to do, which is work,” Stelter continued.
- Smollett has not returned to acting and was convicted in December of falsely reporting that he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack.
