I've just read that live CNN wasn't even available on CNN+. That's idiotic. I can't get CNN without a full fledged cable subscription, but if this was cheap and offered a CNN livestream I'd think about it, but not even offering the live feed is just absurd.

The only reason CNN still exists is because it's bundled with cable and everyone gets (and pays for) CNN on a basic cable tier. The brutal truth? Almost nobody watches CNN unless something very significant happens. On the flip side, almost everybody with cable pays for CNN.

To be fair, if I need to test dns I always nslookup cnn.com … just muscle memory for 35 years …

… and I am in a much more desirable demo …

I do the same. I used to load cnn.com because it was easy to tell if I was getting a cached page. The current time was displayed and rendered by the server.

I thought cnn was already free to stream on networks such as plutotv. (https://pluto.tv/en/live-tv/cnn). I don’t know if it is a full stream or highlights though, since I never actually watched it. I use Pluto mostly for Bloomberg.

Of course nobody used it; it was marketed poorly, and funding for marketing was cut early on, as indicated in the article.

I have no idea if the service would have succeeded under different circumstances, but as OP stated, this was the rushed pet project of outgoing executives during a merger. Any outcome other than DOA was highly unlikely.