The only thing dying faster than cable television is CNN, a far-left propaganda cable channel that spreads misinformation and violence against Jews. This week, CNNLOL’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), pretty much gave up on the basement-rated “news” outlet, which has become a national punchline.
In the most recent ratings, CNN was only able to attract a humiliating 374,000 average primetime viewers. If you think that’s due to cable TV’s decline in the age of streaming or an overall lack of interest in news, or cable news specifically — well, during that same week, Fox News attracted 2.3 million average primetime viewers — six times as many as CNNLOL. Six. Times.
And so, this week, what was long expected to happen finally happened. WBD announced it would split into two separate publicly traded companies. One will be known as “Streaming and Studios” and consist of Warner Bros. TV, Warner Bros. Studios, DC Studios, HBO, HBO Max, and the studio’s legendary library of television and films.
That’s what you call the “good stuff.”
The second company, Global Networks, will consist of “CNN, TNT Sports in the U.S., and Discovery, top free-to-air channels across Europe, and digital products such as the profitable Discovery+ streaming service and Bleacher Report (B/R).”
That’s what you call the dead weight.
Each company will have its own president. David Zaslav, the current CEO of WBD, will grab the good stuff. WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels will take over the dead weight.
The reason for the split is obvious. The dead weight is a huge drag on the WBD stock price. With the split, investors can purchase stock in the good stuff, in the future, in streaming and content production (the TV and studio units), without worrying about the dying and discredited CNN’s cratering ratings or TNT losing its license to broadcast the NBA.
So, what will Wiedenfels do to boost the stock price of his dead weight corporation?
This is where things get deeee-licious.
Cable TV is not a growth business. CNN is a dying brand. This gives Wiedenfels only one option to boost the stock price — tee hee — and that’s cost cutting, which means gutting CNN’s worldwide infrastructure and axing jobs.
In 2018, 90.3 million households subscribed to pay TV (or cable and satellite TV), where you are forced into expensive packages. By next year, that number is expected to collapse to just 54 million, and cable TV subscribers will continue to decrease as older consumers die off and younger consumers want nothing to do with cable TV.
This collapse is death for basement-rated outlets like CNN. The only way CNN could survive with such low ratings was through the monthly carriage fees generated by cable subscribers. These carriage fees forced subscribers (you and I) to fund numerous leftist cable networks we never watched — ESPN, MTV, Comedy Central, MSNBC, etc.
Carriage fees were and are a form of left-wing affirmative-action subsidizing left-wing programming no one watches.
Streaming is merit-based. If you like what’s offered, you pay for it. Cable TV is corporatism, where subscribing to what you like means you’re forced to pay for a package of a bunch of crap you never watch.
CNN is doom-doom-doomed, and this corporate split will only hasten that. Serial liars like Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper will either not have their lucrative contracts renewed or be forced to take massive pay cuts as the world passes them by and New Media marches on without them. By the 2032 presidential election, CNN will likely be reduced to a free HBOMax add-on no one watches.
CNN cannot survive in an ecosystem that is not rigged but is based on merit. And if the government outlaws pharmaceutical ads, that could be the silver bullet that kills CNN even sooner.
All we can do is hope.
John Nolte’ s first and last novel Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
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