CNN’s streaming service, aptly dubbed CNN+, is reportedly giving Quibi a run for its cash within the competitors to develop into the most important disaster of the streaming period.

According to CNBC, it’s been two weeks, and solely 10,000 persons are watching CNN+ every day. The service launched on March 29 for $6/month, or $60/yr if paid upfront. While official subscriber numbers aren’t public but, CNN’s cable channel averages 773,000 whole viewers a day leaving plenty of room for enchancment.

“We continue to be happy with the launch and its progress after only two weeks,” a CNN spokesperson informed CNBC.

The numbers aren’t precisely encouraging, contemplating CNN introduced on unique hosts to attempt to reel in watchers, together with Chris Wallace from Fox News (as a result of nothing sells higher than each sides-ism) and Kasie Hunt from NBC News. Despite the library of unique documentaries and rights to reveals just like the late Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, there’s little incentive for an individual to subscribe to CNN+ when most all the pieces is already accessible via cable. CNN nonetheless enables you to stream on-demand content material via cable-over-internet apps like YouTube TV, although it’s extra restricted.

Part of the gradual consumer progress could be as a result of the app isn’t yet available on all TV platforms. (It actually can’t be as a result of CNN+ isn’t marketed as a result of I’ve been hit with advertisements concerning the app’s existence throughout all social media.) Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV customers can discover it within the respective app shops, however Google TV and Android TV customers haven’t been capable of entry it.

Of course, you possibly can entry CNN+ from any smartphone or pill and thru the net browser. But a fast journey to the touchdown web page for CNN+ would possibly supply a bit anecdote into why this streaming service isn’t catching on. Immediately, I’m hit with information about at the moment’s tragedy in New York City, adopted by a row of particular experiences going deeper into what occurred, with photographs emblazoned throughout even because the information continues to be creating. People are in information in overload sufficient as it’s, including one other subscription payment simply to hunt via CNN’s extra docu-style content material isn’t a very compelling pitch.

The numbers might change if CNN modified instructions as soon as the WarnerMedia and Discovery merger is found out. It would make extra sense to consolidate its content material into what’s more likely to develop into a behemoth streaming app like Disney+ and its companions. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO, David Zaslav, hasn’t publicly commented on CNN+’s future, although there was point out of ready to see how the app performs.

It’s additionally fascinating to notice that Ex-WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar went forward with the launch of CNN+ regardless of the upcoming merger with Discovery. Kilar left the corporate final week, however not earlier than telling CNBC that the app was “ahead of my expectations in terms of where the subscribers are, the engagement, the receptiveness that we’re getting.”

Even when you fancy your self a cable information fiend, you would possibly assume twice earlier than paying the annual payment for a yr’s price of the CNN app. The merger is more likely to shift some issues round, and if CNN+’s numbers stay low, it is sensible all that unique content material would discover itself wrapped up in no matter Warner Bros. Discovery app comes via.