CNN All Access subscription promo image, with Anderson Cooper in centre screen
CNN is “focused on building a more durable direct-to-consumer business” as its first paid subscriptions launch outside the US.
CNN’s All Access subscription will launch in the UK and Canada on Tuesday (20 October), a year after going live in the US. More countries are expected to follow within the next year.
The £4.99 per month fee includes access to live US and international streaming channels, on-demand video, CNN Original Series and CNN Films, and unlimited access to all website and app content.
CNN senior vice president and head of growth Amanda Rottier told Press Gazette the UK and Canada were “natural early markets because CNN already has meaningful audience relationships, brand awareness, and longstanding distribution history in both places; we are building from an existing foundation, not starting from scratch”.
She added that CNN’s “distinct strength” would be “connecting the US political story, its global implications, and the wider international news agenda at a moment when those connections matter more than ever”.
Since launching the US subscription last year, CNN is no longer focusing on growing its pure online reach.
In September, global monthly visits to CNN.com were down 44% compared to three years earlier, and they dropped 49% in the past two years, according to Similarweb, to 289 million.
Rottier said CNN did not attribute changes in traffic to “any single factor” such as the launch of Google’s AI Overviews in 2024.
“The digital news environment is changing quickly, and audience behaviour is being shaped by a mix of forces including search and platform changes, artificial intelligence summaries, and the fact that CNN has intentionally moved from being a fully free website toward a more balanced free-and-paid model,” she said.
“For many years, CNN.com was built to maximise broad reach, and that remains an important part of our mission. But with our move to a subscription-based platform, we are also focused on building a more durable direct-to-consumer business, with deeper engagement from paying subscribers.
“That means we are looking beyond total reach and paying close attention to metrics like time spent, video viewing, subscriber engagement, and retention.
“In a world where discovery is increasingly disintermediated by search, social platforms and artificial intelligence, direct audience relationships matter more than ever. Subscription is one part of that strategy, alongside our continued investment in the free audience experience, apps, alerts, newsletters, video, platform partnerships and other ways people connect directly with CNN.”
UK consumers will pay £4.99 per month or £49.99 per year (with an introductory annual price of £37.99) while the Canadian prices are $7.99 CAD and $79.99 CAD (initially $59.99 CAD). Existing subscribers to the CNN Live livestream in the UK (which costs £1.99 per month or £19.90 per year) will be upgraded to All Access.
The UK and Canada are both getting the CNN.com paywall for the first time to coincide with the launch. In the US a website paywall was launched a year before the full All Access subscription.
Rottier said: “We will continue to be thoughtful about the balance between free and paid access in each market, and our approach may evolve as we learn more about how audiences engage with the product internationally.
“Our goal is to make CNN’s journalism widely accessible while also offering a deeper, more complete experience for subscribers.”
CNN allows website visitors to view a certain number of articles for free each month before being asked to pay. Some content including the homepage, breaking news live blogs and some sponsored and video content remain free.
CNN leadership have been “very encouraged” by the first year of the All Access subscription in the US, Rottier said, although she did not share the number of subscribers it has attracted.
“The launch has met and exceeded our expectations in the ways that matter most at this stage: consistent month-over-month growth and a deep understanding of what audiences value, how they engage with a more complete CNN subscription experience, and where we can keep improving the product.”
CNN senior vice president and head of growth Amanda Rottier. Picture: CNN
Rottier added that the majority of subscribers in the US have paid for an annual subscription, and that spikes in new subscribers can be clearly seen during major breaking news moments.
She also said that “any of our subscribers are engaging on connected TVs in particular with the live stream of our TV programming”.
Set-piece live events like the Artemis II launch at the Kennedy Space Center in April and New Year’s Eve hosted by Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen also drove an increase in subscribers, Rottier said.
“One of the clearest learnings is the value of combining immediacy and depth — live coverage and major events are central to the experience, while CNN Originals, Films, and on-demand programming give subscribers more ways to spend time with the stories they care about.”
In June, CNN All Access was added to Prime Video, making it easier for all US Amazon customers to sign up for the subscription alongside more than 100 other streaming services. There are estimated to be more than 200 million Amazon Prime members in the US.
Rottier said this had proved “an important distribution partner in the US because it makes CNN All Access available in a place where many consumers already discover and manage streaming subscriptions. We’ve been encouraged by how deeply Amazon cares about the news customer experience.”
CNN’s first paid streaming service launch was in March 2022 with CNN+, which was closed after just a month and had a separate roster of daily and weekly programming away from the core CNN output.
Rottier said that the difference with the new offering “is that All Access is more directly connected to the CNN ecosystem audiences already use every day, including our 24/7 live coverage, digital reporting, and on-demand video.”
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