In what may be a chilling vision of HBO Max’s future, CNN is now a channel on Discovery Plus

Someday, we'll all just be a dedicated hub on someone else's streaming service

By Sam Barsanti  |  August 4, 2022 | 4:43pm
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In what may be a chilling vision of HBO Max’s future, CNN is now a channel on Discovery Plus
A billboard for CNN+ Photo: Spencer Platt

Warner Bros. Discovery seems to be in the process of slowly bleeding HBO Max to death, killing high-profile superhero movies as a tax write-off and canceling TV shows left and right, but perhaps the most terrifying thing for HBO Max to remember in all of this is that… Warner Bros. Discover has killed before, and there’s no reason to think it won’t kill again. We’re referring to CNN+, the news-oriented streaming service that existed for less than a month and may or may not have been killed purely out of spite by new Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav (the rumor was that Zaslav was “annoyed” that old WarnerMedia boss Jason Kilar launched the service right before the Discovery merger, since it was sort of a conceptual competitor with Discovery’s own Discovery+ platform).

Well, in what seems like a spooky glimpse into one possible future for HBO Max, WBD announced today that a huge collection of CNN content will soon be available in a new CNN Originals hub on Discovery+. The new(?) content, all of which is the kind of stuff that would’ve been on CNN+, includes Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy (it’s the one shaped like a boot, Stanley), Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, and United Shades Of America With K. Kamau Bell, plus HLN shows like The Hunt With John Walsh, Death Row Stories, and How It Really Happened, and they’ll be available on Discovery+ on August 19.

If HBO Max is on the chopping block like CNN+, though, it might not happen for a bit: A press release announcing this change does mention that, while “select titles” from the CNN Films library will exclusively be on Discovery+, “additional programming” is on HBO Max and the debut of CNN’s Who’s Talking To Chris Wallace? will still happen on HBO Max “this fall.” So unless HBO Max becomes another Discover+ hub and they’re explicitly fudging the truth in this press release, we can at least look forward to holding onto the internet’s purplest streaming service a little longer—even if it does transition into a platform full of reality shows.

 
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