CNN+ Insider Brian Stelter not sure if streaming service was success,

Warner Bros. Discovery decided to pull the plug on CNN+ less than a month after the costly streaming service was launched, sparking widespread ridicule and confusion among critics and insiders, but one CNN+ host insisted it may have been a success. 

“I defy you to find any reasonable person who ever believed that viewers would pay extra money for the dregs of CNN when it was competing for their wallets with Netflix and Disney Plus,” a former CNN producer told Fox News Digital. “Do you want to watch ‘The Mandalorian’ or extra Brian Stelter?”

Most onlookers consider Warner Bros. Discovery shutting down CNN+ less than a month after launching the service that reportedly cost roughly $300 million to be a disaster, but CNN’s media correspondent Brian Stelter isn’t so sure. 

“It’s too early to know if this product, if this service, was a success or a failure,” Stelter said on Friday’s edition of “Reliable Sources Daily” on the soon-to-be shuttered platform. 

“You’ve got all the haters today saying this thing was a failure. I don’t know if we can even ever assess that because it just simply didn’t have enough time because of the management’s change in direction,” he said.

Stelter, one of several CNN hosts who also hosted a show on the short-lived platform, has dismissed CNN+ failing due to a “crazy clash of strategies,” as CNN president Jeff Zucker and former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar clearly had a different vision from the post-merger regime of Warner Bros. Discovery executives, who want the company’s streaming assets to be housed in one place. 

CNN+ was largely the brainchild of Zucker, who was forced to resign earlier this year, prior to CNN parent company WarnerMedia’s long-planned merger with Discovery. The failed service included liberal-leaning content long embraced by Zucker, as well as culture and hard news shows. Kilar, who is believed to be the person responsible for pushing Zucker out in February, also left the company following the completion of the merger. 

Zucker and Kilar were known to butt heads but appeared aligned on the need for CNN+, which quickly struggled to attract viewers.

CNBC reported that only 10,000 people were using the service on a daily basis through two weeks, and Axios reported earlier this week that only 150,000 people signed up overall. However, Stelter, considered a Zucker loyalist, penned a piece headlined, “Clashing strategies doomed CNN+ amid corporate merger,” which made no mention of the service’s shockingly low reported subscriber totals.

“From the POV of the leadership team that launched CNN+, one of the world’s top news brands had to…