Skip to main content

CNN+ will cost $3 a month ‘for life’ for early adopters

CNN+ will launch during the last week of March, according to a March 2 interview in the L.A. Times with Chief Digital Offer Andrew Morse. And early adopters will get a lower rate “for life” — or as long as they keep that initial account active.

Initial subscriptions to CNN+ will cost $3 a month, and that rate will stay true so long as the account stays active. That plan will also launch without advertising. The $6-a-month/$60-a-year plan — which is the price listed on the CNN+ website — will kick in if that initial subscription is canceled.

CNN app on a television.
Phil Nickinson/Digital Trends

“We’re thrilled to offer CNN+’s world-class journalism, premium storytelling, and Interview Club platform at this attractive price,” Morse said in a press release. “Nothing like CNN+ exists. There is no news and nonfiction streaming subscription offering available today, and only CNN can create and deliver a global news product with this kind of value to consumers.”

CNN+ will be integrated into the main CNN app, just like how ESPN+ is available within the ESPN app. The main CNN app — which will lose the “CNN Go” branding — will include linear feeds of CNN, CNN International, HLN, and CNN en Español, but those will require a separate pay TV subscription. CNN+ is separate — a “completely distinct experience.” It’ll have new live shows, originals series, and interactive features that don’t necessarily lend themselves to traditional TV.

While CNN+ hasn’t listed which platforms it’ll be available on, CNN says it’ll be found “through a variety of subscription options, and downloadable on a multitude of devices including smartphones, tablets and a wide range of smart entertainment platforms.” Barring any weirdness, that almost certainly means you’ll be able to watch CNN+ on Roku and Amazon Fire TV, which are the two biggest streaming platforms in the world. There’s also Android TV, Google TV, and Apple TV, as well as web browsers. But we’ll have to wait for a definitive list, as it’s not unknown for even popular systems to be left out.

Sign-ups aren’t yet available, but you can give CNN your email for updates at CNNPlus.com.

Phil Nickinson
Phil spent the 2000s making newspapers with the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal, the 2010s with Android Central and then the…
CNN+ is shutting down two days earlier than it first said
CNN Plus as seen on the CNN website.

You know things are broken on the corporate side of things when even the execution gets moved up. CNN+ will cease streaming on April 28, according to an email sent do subscribers. That's two days sooner than was previously announced.

This, of course, is the definition of a moot point. Whether CNN+ dies on April 28 or April 30 doesn't matter at all — it'll be just as dead. But it just goes to show the dysfunction behind the scenes following the merger of WarnerMedia, which owned CNN, with Discovery, and the executive shake-up that followed.

Read more
CNN+ will shut down April 30 after just one month
CNN app on a television.

Nuclear weapons experts have a phrase: "Bouncing the rubble." It's what happens when you use more firepower than what's needed to actually kill a thing. At some point, you're just blowing up things that already have been blown up. And that's where we're at just minutes after Variety broke the news that already was pretty likely — CNN+ is being killed after about a month of life. The New York Times reported that the end date is set for April 30.

CNN's Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy confirmed the news in a story ... on CNN.

Read more
CNN+ lands on Roku today
CNN Plus logo.

A week after it soft-launched in web browsers and six days after it was officially available to nearly everyone else, CNN+ is now coming to the largest streaming platform in the United States — Roku.

It'll require an update to the existing CNN Go app, which will be home to both live CNN content (which still requires some sort of live TV subscription), as well as all the new CNN+ content, which includes up to a dozen live daily shows, a handful of new original series, and more than 1,000 hours of programming. If the CNN Go app doesn't update on its own, you can force Roku to check by going to the System Update section of the Settings menu.

Read more