JIM TREACHER: Libs Vow to Never Leave You Alone – Ever.
Remember CNN+? You know, the streaming service that made Quibi look like Netflix. It lasted for 30 glorious days in the spring of 2022, and it was only the first time within the next three months that Brian Stelter would lose a job.
No terrible idea ever really goes away, which is why now this is happening. Brian Steinberg, Variety:
Warner Bros. Discovery plans to unveil a 24/7 live-streamed news service called “CNN Max” on September 27, and indicated the outlet would focus initially on breaking news. Anchors including Jim Acosta, Rahel Solomon, Amara Walker, Fredricka Whitfield and Jim Sciutto have been given assignments, with Sciutto set to lead breaking news in the afternoons…
CNN Max is likely to evolve over time. Among the features the company will try out are ways of alerting Max viewers to breaking news while they are watching something else on the service, whether it be an HBO series, a Turner Classic Movies selection or an old episode of Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.”
This is great news if you’re one of the approximately 600,000 people who ever, ever watch CNN anymore. For the rest of us, it sounds like being told to eat our vegetables. Except the vegetables are actually dog turds.
It isn’t 1965 anymore. A TV network can break into programming to tell you about some current event they think is important, but a streaming service can’t. The whole point of a streaming service is that you don’t have to watch anything you don’t want to. That’s the agreement they make with you. And if they break that agreement, you can cancel your subscription before they can say, “And now, let’s go to Anderson Cooper.”
These people aren’t our gatekeepers anymore, and it really pisses them off. The audience now has the one thing these creeps wish we didn’t: a choice.
CNN Max’s programmers apparently don’t realize that everybody watching streaming media has their iPhone and/or iPad on the couch next to them when watching streaming media. If the Space Shuttle explodes or someone flies a plane into the World Trade Center, we’ll all know in real time – or at worst, we’ll find out one or two hours later when whatever streaming show we’re watching concludes. Or as Noah Rothman writes, “If Max’s executives think that you do not deserve uninterrupted access to escapist entertainment such that you can shut yourself off to the world, Max’s executives don’t think highly of you at all.” And like Bud Light’s executives, they really don’t.