When the shutters came down on the epic $300 million failure that was CNN+, it wasn’t just money that was sprayed up against the wall as hundreds of former employees left to find new jobs.
The failed left-wing streaming service, which lasted a grand total of 23 days, was sending welcome packages laden with gifts to those very same jobless people a full week after they were sent home for good, according to reports.
A Wall Street Journal article looked at CNN+ – which launched on March 29 and ceased operations on April 27 – noting several former employees had welcome gifts delivered to their door, which included ink pens, headphones and popcorn makers and other assorted merchandise emblazoned with CNN+ logo.
All the gifts bore the CNN+ logo and some of them contained welcome messages, with one unnamed former employee telling the Journal they received a message reading: “This is an incredible time to be part of CNN.”
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, CNN executives acknowledged they did send out the welcome boxes, but sheepishly called it a “mistake.”
David Zaslav, the new CEO of the Discovery and Time Warner merger, decided to pull the plug when he learned the $5.99 a month service signed up barely 150,000 subscribers in its first few weeks – and was only being streamed by 5,000 to 10,000 people at any given moment.
By April 21, CNN’s new CEO Chris Licht told staff that CNN+ was ending. Originally they were told the shutdown date would be April 30.
Staff members were reportedly left “aghast and furious” at the decision to cease operations after only three weeks, describing it as an “absolute debacle,” with one veteran staffer telling the Washington Post: “We expected them to cut off a few fingers, not the entire arm.”
CNN+ was the brainchild of disgraced former CNN chief Jeff Zucker.
According to its own FAQ, the CNN+ website and all of its content have now vanished forever.
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