CNN has set its upcoming subscription service All Access at $6.99 per month, and it’s scheduled to launch on Oct. 28.
The streaming service will feature a selection of CNN’s live shows across its domestic and international channels, as well as its library of original shows and films. Its annual price is $69.99, though CNN is launching the service with a reduced annual rate of $41.99.
It comes a year after CNN added a paywall to its website, now called its “Basic” tier, to jumpstart its subscription business — and three and a half years to the day after its last streaming service, CNN+, was shut down a month after it launched. CNN sunset its smaller-scale service on HBO Max, CNN Max, earlier this month.
“No one covers the world like CNN. With this new subscription offering, our audience will now have access to the best of CNN across platforms, including multiple live stream channels, our signature video-led journalism and all articles on CNN.com and in the mobile app,” CNN Worldwide EVP of Digital Products and Services Alex MacCallum said in a Thursday statement. “It’s an essential step in CNN’s evolution as we work to give audiences the complete CNN experience in a format that reflects how audiences engage with the news today.”
The subscription service will be available for free to those who pay for CNN as part of their cable package, though those subscribers will still have to pay to access an unlimited number of CNN articles.
Plans for the new service were first unveiled in January after CNN laid off 200 staffers, part of a planned reorientation toward a digital future that CEO Mark Thompson said at the time was intended to reach “the platforms and products where the audience themselves are shifting and, by doing that, to secure CNN’s future as one of the world’s greatest news organizations.”
It has made some hires to boost that coverage, including the additions of Washington Post veteran Philip Rucker, New York magazine editor Choire Sicha as its head of features, Daily Beast alum Andrew Kirell as senior media editor and fashion critic Rachel Tashjian as senior style reporter.
