Media Maneuvers: CNN Gets Into Streaming

CNN is getting into the streaming game. The network says it is hiring hundreds of people and developing dozens of programs for a subscription streaming service, CNN+, that is set for an early 2022 launch. The service will exist alongside CNN's television networks and will feature eight to twelve hours of live programming a day. In addition to that live programming, CNN+ plans to air original series and will initiate what CNN chief digital officer Andrew Morse calls an "interactive community," which is intended to give subscribers the ability "to engage directly with our talent and experts about the issues that matter most to them." Morse will also serve as the executive in charge of CNN+. CNN is prevented from using its current live programming on the streaming channel because of deals with cable distributors, which it says bring in more than a billion dollars in profit annually.

Noah Shachtman

Rolling Stone brings on Noah Shachtman, who has helmed the Daily Beast website since 2018, as the publication’s editor-in-chief. Shachtman will start his new position in September. He succeeds Jason Fine, who stepped down earlier this year, and now oversees Rolling Stone’s podcasts, video series and other digital journalism initiatives. Shachtman was hired by Rolling Stone president and chief operating officer Gus Jenner, whose father, Jann Wenner, sold a majority stake in the magazine to Penske Media in 2017. Shachtman told the New York Times that he plans to bring the hard-hitting style he employed at The Daily Beast to Rolling Stone. “It’s got to be faster, louder, harder,” he told the Times. “We’ve got to be getting scoops, taking people backstage, showing them parts of the world they don’t get to see every day,” Wenner says that the publication is currently profitable, with the print magazine boasting a circulation of about 500,000.

Bozoma Saint John

Netflix has axed three senior marketing executives after it was discovered that they had been complaining on Slack about other employees, including management, according to a report in The Hollywood Reporter. Two targets of the complaints were allegedly chief marketing officer Bozoma Saint John and vp original films marketing Jonathan Helfgot. However, a Netflix spokesperson told the Reporter the “depiction of the slack messages in question being critical of marketing is untrue.” While Helfgot was initially reluctant to fire the offending exec, the report says that he did so in response to pressure from higher-ups in the company. The firings illustrate the “radical transparency” that is said to be a pivotal part of the Netflix culture under co-CEO Ted Sarandos. “Ted told me it’s a firing offense because it’s destructive to the fabric of the company,” a source told the Reporter.