The most-visited news website in the United States is trying out a paywall.
In early October, CNN will begin experimenting with charging some readers for digital access as part of a bid to shore up its business as cable television erodes industrywide, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.
The company is planning a so-called metered model, which will require the site’s habitual users to pay after reading a certain number of articles, the people said. Many other publishers, including The New York Times and The New Yorker, have used metered paywalls to generate subscriptions over the past decade.
The starting price of a subscription is unclear. But the two people said that CNN would start with an inexpensive offering to gauge customer demand.
A CNN spokeswoman declined to comment.
The subscription wall is one of the first major business initiatives from Mark Thompson, CNN’s chairman and chief executive, who joined the network nearly a year ago. Mr. Thompson said in a memo to employees this year that technology would allow CNN to deliver journalism that readers “will pay for” and later said that the company would try out a paywall.
Mr. Thompson is the former chief executive of The Times, where he championed a digital subscription business that now powers the company. Since joining CNN, he has hired executives to help lay the groundwork for the network’s paywall push, including Alex MacCallum, a veteran of The Times who is now CNN’s executive vice president of digital products and services.
CNN.com, which draws hundreds of millions of visitors every month, is a potential life raft for the network amid declining cable viewership. But those users are not accustomed to paying for news on CNN’s website, necessitating a delicate approach. The people briefed on the plan said that CNN would be monitoring its audience to see how readers react to the paywall, adjusting if necessary.
This isn’t the network’s first foray into digital subscriptions in recent years. Under Jeff Zucker, CNN’s former top executive, the network started CNN+, an expansive streaming service with exclusive content from boldface anchors like Jake Tapper, Chris Wallace and Anderson Cooper. The service was ultimately shut down after leaders of CNN’s new parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, decided it was too expensive.
In contrast to CNN+, the network’s new subscription program does not involve producing scads of new exclusive shows, the people familiar with the plans said. This will keep costs down and avoid alienating CNN’s cable distribution partners, which pay hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the right to air the channel.
There have been signs that CNN was planning for a subscription business. Earlier this year, CNN began testing a “registration wall” that required regular users of the website to provide their email addresses in exchange for reading an article. That data collection helped to lay the groundwork for CNN’s digital subscription program by giving the network user data to target ads and market its paid product.
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