What you need to know
- Apple News+ looks set to get some new competition.
- CNN is getting ready to enter the market.
- No information on pricing or availability is available.
A new report by The Information (via Apple Insider)has news network CNN getting ready to go toe-to-toe with Apple News+.
In an interview with the oulet CNN's head of digital Andrew Morse said that team members have been hired for the project with mulltiple engineers and executives already working on making it a reality. Former Spotify engineer Andrew Greene is one of those employed, the report says. He's the engineer responsible for the popular Spotify Stations feature, by the way.
It's expected that CNN's news servce – known as NewsCo currently – will be similar to Apple News+ in its approach. That means aggregated news from a number of sources including those that would normally be behind paywalls. There is currently no information on what NewsCo will be available or what customers will need to spend in order to try it out.
CNN's expansion into a subscription news aggregation model shouldn't come as a surprise. Media companies are always on the lookout for ways to expand and meet new customer needs. And CNN clearly believes this is one way of doing exactly that.
Aggregation services like Apple News+ allow customers to pay one flat monthly fee and get access to unlimited news via digital newspapers and magazines. Everything is read via a custom app, available on tablets, computers, and phones.
Apple News+ continues to tick along, although all of the buzz right now is about the latest Apple service. Apple TV+ goes live next week with November 1 being the big day.
