The new subscription-based CNN Pipeline offers four Web-only content channels and video-on-demand.CNN today launched a subscription-based streaming news service that offers four channels of commercial free, Web-only news feeds. The service, CNN Pipeline, is the cable news channel's first extensive use of live video on the Internet.
"With CNN Pipeline, CNN.com stakes out entirely new territory for online news, placing the broadband consumer in the ultimate driver's seat," said Susan Grant, executive vice president of CNN News Services.
Pipeline offers one anchored newscast and has its own staff and studio at the CNN Center in Atlanta, according to the network.
The service is available in 25 countries. Besides live video feeds, users have access to a searchable on-demand video archive.
While CNN Pipeline is a standalone application, it also offers some of the same videos available though CNN.com's free video service. CNN previously charged for that service via subscriptions but abandoned that model after three years in June 2005, citing a drop in the cost of supporting broadband video content.
Videos on cnn.com are accompanied by 15- and 30-second ads. Pipeline video is commercial free.
In addition, "free video doesn't carry live news events as they are happening like CNN Pipeline does," said David Payne, senior vice president of CNN News Services and general manager of CNN.com.
Pipeline costs for $2.95 per month, or $24.95 annually. One-day passes may be purchased for 99 cents. Windows users can access Pipeline via a downloadable application. Macintosh users must use a browser.
Original content for Pipeline is filmed in HD, with the use of Sony HDV and HDCAM gear in the field and Sony HDC-930 cameras in the studio, according to a CNN spokesperson.
More information and subscription options are available on CNN's Web site.
With Pipeline, CNN leapfrogs other major news networks which recently began to offer video online.
In November, both NBC and CBS began to offer select news programs on their Web sites. ABC offers its own 24-hour Web-only news channel, ABC News Now.
CNN, however, is the only channel to offer a separate viewing application and four unique, live streaming feeds.
"Anytime you add more opportunities for viewers to get news, it's overall a good thing," said David Mindich, journalism chair at St. Michael's College, in Colchester, Vt.
Other media critics see Pipeline as a step forward for video over IP, but not as a revolutionary service.
"Streaming video has never been very user-friendly, it's always been taking the traditional broadcast model of one-to-many and just putting it on the Internet," said JD Lasica, a prominent blogger and founder of ourmedia.org. "What would be revolutionary is if they allowed you to download their video, remix and add your own commentary, and then upload it to CNN's site. I think they're about 10 years away from allowing you to do that."
For now, CNN will be concentrating on enticing viewers to sign up for the service. Few media companies have had large-scale success with paid news content, and there is little precedent for offering high-quality video content in Pipeline's format.
"More than anything else, CNN.com wanted to achieve scale early on for CNN Pipeline," said Payne. "[The cost to subscribe to Pipeline] makes scale a very real possibility."
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Pipeline needs "several hundred thousand" subscribers to recoup its costs.
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