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"Postmodernism is a change-or-be-changed world. The word is out: Reinvent
yourself for the 21st century or die! Some would rather die than change."
Leonard Sweet, cultural historian.

04/07/2005 Entry: "CNN leaves the walled garden"

There will be forthcoming reports of icebergs in hell after this one.

Staci Kramer reports at PaidContent that CNN is abandoning their premium video service in favor of an ad-supported model. This is a bold move for a company that insisted a few years ago that paid was the only way to meet the bandwidth costs associated with video streaming. Nonsense. Will they be too late? Not likely.

Good job, Staci. Good move, CNN.

Replies: 4 comments

This is fabulous news, and a very good move, business-wise. I am a non-consumer of television news (as in, I do not own a television set, period). If the video on their website becomes free, even I will watch some of it from time to time.

Posted by Holly @ 04/07/2005 12:33 PM CST

Kudos, Holly! I cancelled my cable 4 years ago but I still have a TV (mostly as an output for my DVD and my XBox). I watch the broadcast channels I get, but never the local news broadcasts, for all the reasons we know too well: they just plain suck.

I don't care to see a reporter standing where an accident/fire/shooting happened hours ago, telling me about it hours after it happened. I do care to get the headlines from my local paper's website in close to realtime. What does video add?

But I do miss CNN, because national and global news events are typically of the import that having a video feed is a real help. We all know it was the footage of the tsunami that did much more than any text could. I'm glad to see they're making this move.

Posted by Matt C. Wilson @ 04/07/2005 01:23 PM CST

Do you suppose this is in some way linked to the recent ABC News Now announcement this week of video on demand and massive content streaming?

Posted by Miasma @ 04/07/2005 03:08 PM CST

Miasma,

I think this has been long coming. I think ABC.com will soon leave the RealPlayer nonsense too. (At least I hope so).

Terry

Posted by Terry @ 04/07/2005 11:07 PM CST


"The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create."
Leonard Sweet