CNN rolled its first website paywall on Tuesday, Oct. 1, charging some online visitors $3.99 a month for access to CNN.com. While legacy brands like The New York Times and Bloomberg are known for their subscription policies, it’s not very common in the TV news business.
In a memo, CNN’s Executive Vice President of Digital Products Alex MacCallum wrote, “We are asking users in the United States to pay a small recurring fee for unlimited access to CNN.com’s world-class articles.”
MacCallum, a former New York Times executive, said CNN readers will only be prompted about paying the fee if they reach a certain number of free articles a month.
She added the CNN subscription will include access to original documentaries, exclusive election coverage and fewer digital ads.
CNN hopes people will pay for the news they are used to getting for free. In its own news article about the paywall, CNN cited a recent Reuters Institute survey that said only 1 in 5 Americans currently pays for online news.
And CNN is not alone.
Oliver Darcy, formerly with the cable news network and now with his own media-focused news service called Status, reported on Monday, Sept. 30, that Vox Media’s tech website The Verge will also be starting its own paywall system.
Darcy reported that it’s unclear the exact timing, but like CNN’s plans, The Verge subscribers will receive bonus material.
If you want to know from Darcy’s newsletter, you’ll have to subscribe because it too is behind a paywall. However, The Verge and CNN seem to be reversing the recent trend of news sites getting rid of paywalls.
Earlier this year, Axios, which is not behind a paywall, reported on several sites who rid themselves of their subscription plans, including Tech Crunch and Quartz.
And then there was Time magazine, which in conjunction with the company’s 100th anniversary, removed the paywall on its website.
“We believe that getting access to Time.com is critical,” Time CEO Jessica Sibley told CNN, coincidentally, last year. “We believe that being able to reach audiences that are diverse, that are global, that are younger, to have our content available to everyone everywhere globally for free is really important. Not only for the next decade, for the next 100 years. This was not a hard decision for me, as the CEO of Time. This is important in terms of the new cycle that we’re in and making our trusted journalism available.”
But now comes the yet-to-be-answered questions: How many people will pay for CNN’s content? Will it lead to other networks following suit?
A good barometer for the success of the paywall strategy would be to see how Time has been doing since its switch.
Adweek took a close look over the summer and found that Time’s advertising revenue rose since ditching the paywall structure. Adweek went on to report further — but that part is behind a paywall.