CNN+ Streaming Service Will Shut Down Weeks After it Launched

In the end, CNN+ lasted less than a month.

In a remarkable turnabout for one of the world’s premier television news outlets, Warner Bros. Discovery has decided to shut down CNN+, the ballyhooed streaming service that had been presented as CNN’s bid for a bold digital future.

CNN+ will cease operations on April 30, the company said on Thursday.

“While today’s decision is incredibly difficult, it is the right one for the long-term success of CNN,” Chris Licht, the incoming president of CNN, wrote in a memo. “It allows us to refocus resources on the core products that drive our singular focus: further enhancing CNN’s journalism and its reputation as a global news leader.”

The shutdown is a stunning and ignominious end to an operation into which CNN had sunk tens of millions of dollars, from an aggressive nationwide marketing campaign to hiring hundreds of new employees to recruiting big, high-priced media stars, including the former “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace and the former NPR co-host Audie Cornish.

Andrew Morse, CNN’s chief digital officer and a key architect of its streaming strategy, will also step down.

Key players at CNN+ were told of the decision only hours before Mr. Licht announced the news at a noon town hall, and many rank-and-file employees learned of the platform’s end via news reports on social media.

But the seeds behind its demise were planted weeks ago.

CNN developed the platform under the auspices of its former corporate parent, WarnerMedia — owner of the prestige TV powerhouse HBO and the storied Warner Bros. film studio — before its merger with Discovery, home to reality TV hits like “90 Day Fiancé” and the home-improvement gurus Chip and Joanna Gaines.

The Discovery leadership team, including its chief executive, David Zaslav, were long skeptical of the huge investment in CNN+ and the network’s broader strategy with the service. CNN+ made its debut just days before the merger was completed last month, to the frustration of some Discovery executives.

For the newly hired team at CNN+, it did not help that the biggest champion of the service, the former CNN president Jeff Zucker, had been forced to resign under pressure in February after admitting to an undisclosed romantic relationship with a close colleague.

Mr. Licht and JB Perrette, the head of global streaming at Warner Bros. Discovery, convened several meetings over the past several weeks to figure out what to do with the service.

In his meeting on Thursday afternoon with CNN staff, Mr. Licht compared CNN’s efforts to launch CNN+ to a builder constructing a house without being allowed to speak to the intended owner, according to a recording reviewed by The New York Times.

“Then the new owner came in and said, ‘What a beautiful house! But I need an apartment,’” Mr. Licht said, according to the recording. “And that doesn’t take anything away from this beautiful house you built. I am proud of it,…