Imagine that a longtime free, advertising-heavy premium streaming service would now ask users for subscription fees. That could raise eyebrows.

This is what CNN is essentially doing with its news website -- testing a subscriber paywall, according to The New York Times.

This would be somewhat of a reverse model of what has been going on in the premium streaming video industry.

CNN has been in the advertising space for some time -- as a longtime cable TV network, and through multiple iterations on digital media.

Moving over to a paywall -- akin to a subscription streaming model -- can be a tough job, with the possibility that loyal users might depart. That, in turn, could hurt advertising revenue.

Many print-first publications -- including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times --  started paywalls when transitioning to web-based content from print.

But making a change for a news website -- which earns its main business revenue from its sister TV-focused news network operations -- is a different animal.

The broader picture is that CNN, as a multiplatform media news service, needed to generate more revenue overall -- as a result of massive legacy TV cord-cutting, where both advertising and distribution revenue have been cut.

CNN is looking at a “metered” model, according to The New York Times. That means having more loyal readers paying for a certain number of articles.
CNN has been positioning this as a test, to an extent -- to gauge user interest.

In a company memo earlier this year, Chairman and CEO of CNN Mark Thompson, who joined the company from The New York Times, hinted that a new business model for CNN’s news website would be one that readers “will pay for.”

One can only imagine that CNN might believe certain in-depth, investigative journalism stories might be more valuable than other content -- so much so that readers might identify such content and place a higher value on it.

That would seem like a stretch -- perhaps making it more complicated for consumers in a world based on monthly subscriptions for major types of media and entertainment and other services. 

Not to go unnoticed, but this move comes after the CNN TV network attempted to launch a expensive streaming service in 2022 under former CEO Jeff Zucker -- CNN+. It was pulled soon after Chris Licht took over as CEO.

Licht had a brief one-year stint at the job.

There is some tough history here for CNN for consider.