Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about CNN's new streaming service, CNN Plus, now I know
some of you will say, David, what are you talking about?
CNN plus I haven't even I haven't even heard of that.
That's exactly the problem.
I don't I don't blame you if you haven't heard of it.
I've only heard of it because I've had conversations about it with with my agent about, do we want
to make a pitch to CNN Plus?
And I'm going to get back to that in a second.
If you did not know CNN Plus launched, it's part of why it's already downsizing.
And this makes me think even more strongly that the future of media is going to be in
sort of narrow casting independent media.
There is a great report.
There's a couple of reports actually that are interesting.
A CNBC reporting CNN Plus struggles to lure viewers in its early days, drawing fewer than
10000 daily users.
Now, for people who don't understand.
How disastrous these numbers are.
Understand that they are now two weeks into their existence, CNN Plus, and they are seeing
fewer than 10000 people a day using the streaming service into which CNN has poured millions
and millions and millions.
There are, I don't know for sure, but there are probably individual CNN plus shows whose
budget is multiple times that of the David Pakman show just one of their shows.
They're getting 10000 total viewers a day.
We are on one hundred and fifty radio and television stations on satellite television.
We get a million YouTube views per day.
We get 50000 podcast downloads per day per day per episode, I guess better said.
And they're getting 10000 viewers on this entire thing each day.
And as CNBC reports, the paltry audience casts doubt on the future of the application.
Following the following the recent completed combination of Discovery and WarnerMedia into
Warner Brothers discovery, a Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zaslav hasn't commented
publicly on CNN, plus his long term future.
He told CNBC in February he'd need to see how it performs before making any other decisions.
People spoke with CNBC on the condition of anonymity.
CNN Plus launched on March 29.
It costs five ninety nine a month.
Those are our prices.
Those are.
That's that's amazing.
Those are our exact prices.
We charge six bucks a month for membership and 60 a year annually.
It only became available on Roku.
It's still not on Android TV, so I guess as it grows, then it might, you know, I don't
know.
I guess, maybe, maybe it'll do better.
And they're already doing some downsizing, there's also an Axios report, big cuts coming
for CNN Plus, after a slow start, investment and projections for CNN Plus are expected
to be cut dramatically in response to a low adoption rate.
Hundreds of millions of dollars hundreds of millions are expected to be cut from the original
investment total of a billion.
To date, $300 million has been spent.
I just to put this in context.
If we got a cash infusion of $5 million.
It's insane what we would be able to do with our show.
I mean, if you get $5 million for a show like ours that has an established, loyal audience
and we have distribution methods and all these things, we just pour the money into YouTube
ads, Facebook ads and Twitter ads.
Make it so on YouTube.
Our videos show up as pre-roll ads whenever you go to CNN or Daily Wire or whatever.
We take proven content and we just dump money into putting it in front of people.
The return on investment would be crazy.
It would be crazy.
And that that's if we got five million in cash infusion.
$300 million has been spent.
For 10000 viewers a day.
OK, so that's enough.
I'm not ragging on them, but what I'm pointing to here.
Is we have a very drastically different media landscape, and in times past the legacy power
of CNN or the legacy power of Fox News or whatever would guarantee success when you
go, Oh well, let's also do streaming, let's go from legacy media to streaming now because
of the increased ubiquity of the internet, the increased ability of the consumer to say,
I don't need CNN packaging ten shows for me.
I'll pick my 10 shows and I'll watch David Pakman and then I'll watch, you know, Anthony
Magna Bosco St. epistemology, and I'll listen to Stephen Novellas podcast, and then I'll
go to know Mickey's show where you can build it yourself.
And it's really no less convenient with all of the tools that are around.
So people just don't seem to care about that curation that was so powerful in legacy media.
You can curate yourself.
What else did I want to say about that?
Oh, I've had I've had conversations recently with my agent about.
We've had inquiries from other streaming networks.
I'm not going to name them because it just doesn't.
It doesn't seem appropriate where they've said, would you guys want to submit a proposal?
And I would go back and forth with with my agent.
And, you know, we would realize they want an original proposal.
So basically what it would mean is I would do this show every day.
But then they would want me doing another show only for them.
And when we looked at the money involved and we looked at the five layers of management
and oversight and editors, I don't want five bosses telling me what to do to double my
work every single day.
So we've we've passed on even making some of these proposals.
And it seems that as unappealing as it was to us as content creators, at least CNN Plus's
appearing to be pretty unappealing to consumers as well.
So I think that this bodes well.
I have no problem with CNN, plus I just think this bodes well for independent media.
That's really what I think it means where people are deciding for themselves.
I'll curate.
I don't need 24 hours of CNN.
Plus let me know your thoughts.
Let me know whether you even pay attention to these types of networks.