American news based company, CNN, will be launching a news service, internally called “Newsco” for now, that will compete against Facebook, Apple News+
According to a report from The Information, CNN digital chief Andrew Morse, says that CNN is discussing paying news organizations to feature their content on the platform, which will likely be a mix of subscription-based and advertising-based content.
CNN is following the footsteps of tech giants who have ventured into the news business. In the last couple of months, Facebook, Apple have each launched news platforms aggregating news from a number of news outlets. Even Snap, the company behind Snapchat, has been talking with media companies about launching its own news section of its app.
CNN believes it has an edge over these tech companies as it is primarily a news business. According to Andrew, “news is one of the many things they do, but it’s not their bread and butter.”
The Information reports that “For CNN, growing digital is key, particularly as competition between the cable news networks has become increasingly fierce. So far this year, CNN’s primetime TV ratings have trailed Fox and MSNBC among 25- to 54-year-olds, according to Nielsen. However, it has consistently beat Fox and MSNBC online, bringing in an average of more than 131 million monthly unique views in August, according to Comscore.”
CNN says it hopes to build a better option for news organizations, which are losing ad revenue and viewers to these tech platforms. “In the same way that entertainment companies don’t want to cede ground to the streaming platforms, why should we cede the ground of journalism to the technology platforms,” Morse said.
No date has been communicated about the launch date.
