After murmurs lasting well over a year, CNN CEO Mark Thompson pulled the trigger Tuesday on his plan to supposed reinvigorate the annoyingly smug, dying, and far-left network (aside from greats Scott Jennings and David Urban) by charging frequent fliers of CNN.com — which in of itself is comical — a rate of $3.99 a month.

CNN and Thompson believe this will ensure the network’s survival, but those with even a short-term memory will recall the network launched on June 1, 1980 had already tried this with CNN+.

Liberal media hall monitor Brian Stelter announced it in a story Tuesday, nearly a month after he was rehired at the network to continue doing the mouthpiece work he had spent nine years doing from November 2013 to August 2022.

He wrote that, for now, “[t]he average visitor to CNN’s website, CNN’s website, who may only read a few articles a month, will not be prompted to pay at this time.”

Stelter shared the hope is paywall subscribers will ensure “CNN’s journalism around the world” could continue and it could expand to include “new formats and experiences” (what the industry calls verticals) (click “expand”):

On Tuesday, the news organization is laying the first bricks in a so-called paywall that should, over time, help foot the bill for CNN’s journalism around the world.

“Starting today, we are asking users in the United States to pay a small recurring fee for unlimited access to CNN.com’s world-class articles,” Alex MacCallum, CNN’s executive vice president of digital products and services, wrote in an internal memo outlining the plan.

The average visitor to CNN’s website, who may only read a few articles a month, will not be prompted to pay at this time. “Only after users consume a certain number of free articles will they be prompted to subscribe,” MacCallum explained. “In addition to unlimited access to CNN.com’s articles, subscribers will receive benefits like exclusive election features, original documentaries, a curated daily selection of our most distinctive journalism, and fewer digital ads.”

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In a memo over the summer, Thompson said CNN would “create best-in-class, subscription-ready products that will provide need-to-know news, analysis and context in compelling new formats and experiences, starting with CNN.com’s first subscription product launching before the end of 2024.”

That paid offering is what’s launching on Tuesday – in a preliminary form that will expand in the months ahead. “Over time, we will invest in ways to better meet our users’ needs and expand our aperture to engage and serve new audiences,” MacCallum wrote Tuesday, hinting at “new products and businesses” in the future.

To Stelter’s credit, he acknowledged CNN+ baring some resemblance and that it didn’t exactly pan out too well. He also pointed out “[d]igital subscriptions have been a promising but challenging business for other news organizations” and one challenge to convincing Americans to pay for news has been pointing out the reality of producing news costs money.

Perhaps CNN would be in a better place financially if they hadn’t blown $300 million on a streaming platform hoping 29 million people would tune in for all sorts of pointless shows. 

That only lasted 30 days from March 29 to April 28, 2022. NewsBusters readers will recall we had an incredible time lampooning it as having lasted less time than New Coke and the marriage of Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock and that things such as World of Warcraft subscribers and a Kickstarter campaign for potato salad were more popular.