Left wing US broadcaster CNN whose network is available on Foxtel and Fetch TV is shutting down their CNN+ operations less than a month after it launched, the move will cost the network over A$500M.
According to the New York Post the move has left out-of-work staffers “aghast and furious” over the company’s handling of what sources inside the network call “an absolute debacle.”
“This is f–king crazy, it is nuts,” a CNN insider told The Post.
The network who hired Chis Wallace from Fox News on a massive salary is believed to have spent over A$400M launching the network that only managed to attract 150,000 subscribers of which many were free subscriptions.
The network that is an open supporter of Joe Biden and the Democrat party in the USA also spent over $150 million advertising the streaming network.
Chris Licht, CNN’s newly installed CEO, who replaced the disgraced Jeff Zucker, broke the news to staffers at a noon meeting Thursday in New York.
The 300 staffers were offered six months’ severance as well as first dibs on job opportunities within CNN, according to sources.
The Post claims that staffers were angry that junior employees were let go while big-ticket acquisitions
including former Fox News star Chris Wallace and ex-MSNBC reporter Kasie Hunt — are expected to be reassigned to the cable news mothership or to other platforms within the Warner Bros. Discovery media empire.
Sources told The Post that CNN “overspent on talent” by giving Wallace A$11 million per year while Hunt was lured away from MSNBC with an annual paycheck of A$1.3 million.
