CNN anchor Chris Wallace said he is not sure what his future holds at the network following the shuttering of CNN+, the streaming service he left a longtime gig at Fox News to help launch as a host, saying he is focused on helping others get roles.
“I’m in good shape, whether it’s CNN or someplace else. Frankly, what I’m mostly concerned about right now, and very, is my team and hundreds of other people … that had jobs at CNN+,” Wallace said Sunday evening during an event hosted by the group Common Ground Committee.
“Some of them had left CNN to go to streaming. Some of them had left other places, moved across the country. And so I think you’re seeing a lot of the anchors at CNN+ doing everything they can to protect the people that were working on their team and to make sure they either get a safe landing at CNN or someplace else.”
In a dramatic move last week, executives at CNN and its parent company. Warner Bros. Discovery, announced the network’s much-anticipated streaming service CNN+ would be shut down at the end of the month after reports that it struggled to catch on with subscribers.
The network had spent the previous months promoting a new,additive feature to its news content on cable and in the digital space, hiring top journalistic talents such as Wallace from Fox, Kasie Hunt from NBC and Audie Cornish from NPR as it aimed to drum up buzz about its new venture.
But the shuttering of the streaming service after less than a month has been widely viewed as one of the largest media failures in recent memory and may give pause to other news providers as they weigh how to break into the streaming realm.
“Two weeks ago, streaming was king,” Wallace said on Sunday, referencing the CNN+ shutdown and recent headlines surrounding Netflix’s financial future. “Now suddenly streaming is in an ICU on life support.”