chief executive

CNN is taking another shot at launching a direct-to-consumer streaming service that will make much of the channel’s news programming available without a pay TV subscription.

The unit of Warner Bros. Discovery announced Thursday it will launch an All Access subscription tier for CNN.com available for $6.99 a month starting Oct. 28. The service will provide what the company describes as “a selection” of live programming on CNN and CNN International.

The service will also have exclusive on-demand programming and a library of titles from CNN Films and CNN Original Series.

The All Access subscription will be be offered at $69.99 annually, but will carry an introductory price of $41.99 for the first year for customers signing up by Jan. 5.

The announcement comes two years after Mark Thompson took over as chief executive of the network with a mandate to guide the channel into a digital post-cable future.

CNN launched a direct-to-consumer service in 2022 called CNN+, made up of original programming featuring its current talent line-up and new additions including Audie Cornish, Chris Wallace and Kasie Hunt. But the service was shut down nine days after launch following WBD’s takeover of the network, as new management was focused on reducing debt.

CNN has seen profits decline significantly over the last five years as cord-cutting has driven down revenues received from cable and satellite companies carrying the channel.

The cable channel also saw a significant decline in ratings after WBD took over ownership of the network and executives pushed for the network to appeal more to conservative viewers.

Thompson has made few changes to the CNN program line-up as his team has focused on its digital properties. Thompson and Alex MacCallum, executive vice president of digital products and services, were both at the New York Times when the company transformed into a successful digital subscription-based news business.

In a statement, MacCallum said the All Access launch is “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.”

CNN introduced a paywall on its website last year, giving users unfettered access to articles and video on the site for $3.99 a month. Response to the preliminary phase was encouraging, according to people inside the network who were not authorized to comment publicly.

Cable subscribers will also get the new streaming service for free.

Fox News is currently the only major cable news channel available without a pay TV subscription. The channel is offered on Fox One, the recently launched streaming service that also offers local Fox broadcast affiliates for $19.99 a month.

Artificial intelligence and its invasiveness in our everyday lives might be endlessly discussed among academics, government officials and social media provocateurs, but Los Angeles Comic Con has injected a dose of gamma radiation and showmanship into that debate.

Stan Lee has entered the chat.

L.A. Comic Con is introducing its Stan Lee Experience, a 1,500-square-foot booth in Aisle 200 that features an AI-powered holographic image of the late comic book legend that interacts with attendees. Curious fans can ask questions of “Stan Lee” and probe dozens of years’ worth of comic book and comic book-related data that’s been fed into the AI, which has been drawn from footage, conversations and even Stan Lee’s Soapbox — where Lee would expand on happenings of the day or riff on comic book goings-on in the back pages of Marvel comics from 1967 through 1980.

Chris DeMoulin, chief executive and general manager of L.A. Comic Con parent Comikaze Entertainment Inc., says the Stan Lee AI project took months of planning and years of being connected to the parties involved.

“For me, personally, one of the most thrilling things of my entire life was getting to work with Stan Lee when this was Stan Lee’s Comic Con and Stan Lee’s Comikaze Expo before that. What was such a joy was watching him interact with fans. Old fans and then people that were bringing their 8-year-old kid who had just read their first Spider-Man comic book,” said DeMoulin, who has collected comics from an early age.

“This avatar, to us, is an entry point into the world of storytelling that he created. We wanted to create something which can be part of maintaining and expanding on that legacy so that Stan’s role in creating a lot of this is acknowledged.”

The hologram, at least the one on the show floor, is not really a hologram. With a box built by Proto Inc., the company that also launched an interactive mirror from “The Conjuring,” and Hyperreal, a company whose chief executive Remington Scott helped bring Gollum and Smeagol to life for Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” movies and creates realistic avatars, it is an interactive Stan Lee image that processes questions and formulates responses.

“Hologram is a technology that’s different than this. This is more of an avatar presence, or a telepresence, if you will. Unlike ChatGPT, this is not a web crawler. This is a large language model which has got guardrails on it,” says George Johnson, a member of the Hyperreal technical team.

“It’s specifically Stan’s words. Red carpet interviews, everything he wrote, like Stan’s Soapbox, but with guardrails. Meaning, if you ask him sports questions or politics questions, he’s not going to answer those. But the Stan Lee Universe is feeding us more and more stuff that we can add to the model.”

David Nussbaum, Proto Inc. founder and chairman, knows that Stan Lee is only the first step for this technology.

“Any Proto device can have any piece of content in it, and we also beam people in live. So if you’re interviewing someone in Japan, you could beam there and appear like you are physically among them,” Nussbaum said. “These are great for classrooms, museums, labs, retail.”

Proto technology is also HIPAA-compliant, he said, meaning doctors and patients can use it to have “in-person” consultations without being in a room together.

As it learns, it can — as AI does — go a bit off script. While folks behind the scenes said they didn’t want Stan Lee to be used as an advertising gimmick, its makers had asked it so many questions about Coca-Cola, it had changed its answer from a generic “I don’t deal with that kind of thing” to a thoughtful answer where, at the end, Lee says, “Who wouldn’t want to be in business with the company that been quenching thirsts for a hundred years?”

That was Stan — ever the showman.

The Stan Lee Experience costs $15 plus service fees with tickets available for purchase via the L.A. Comic Con website. The pop culture gathering runs through Sunday at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Warner Bros. Discovery stock jumped more than 25% Thursday morning after a report that the Larry Ellison-backed Paramount was preparing a cash bid to buy the company that owns HBO, CNN and the Warner Bros. studio.

The Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners acquired Paramount a month ago, and has signaled that it would take bold steps as it tries to rebuild Paramount to its former glory. David Ellison, Larry’s 42-year-old son, serves as chairman and chief executive of Paramount.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount’s bid would be for the entire company, including its movie studio, streaming assets and cable networks. Warner Bros. Discovery is in the process of spinning the cable channels into a separate company, a transaction that Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav said would be complete by next April.

Representatives of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery declined to comment.

Warner Bros. Discovery stock closed at $12.54 on Wednesday. It had soared to around $16 a share in Thursday mid-day trading.

Paramount Skydance shares also climbed 7% to around $16.30.

This is a developing story.