CNN+ we hardly knew ye

Yesterday, I wrote about CNN+ and how it wasn't really necessary to me. I didn't find out until later Thursday that CNN had announced that the platform was shutting down.

I'm not really surprised to learn that. Rumors began almost as soon as it launched that the platform was a bust. I wanted to wait and see how things really shook out, and it turns out that the rumors were right.

As you would expect, CNN is putting a bit of a spin on it. They're not admitting a failure, but rather taking the approach that the new management want's everything under a single brand.

The prior management team's vision for CNN+ runs counter to Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav's plan to house all of the company's brands under one streaming service. Some CNN+ programming may eventually live on through that service. Other programming will shift to CNN's main television network.

And while there will be layoffs, the severance package isn't too bad.

Hundreds of CNN+ staffers may lose their jobs. Licht said in an internal memo that "all CNN+ employees will continue to be paid and receive benefits for the next 90 days to explore opportunities at CNN, CNN Digital and elsewhere in the Warner Bros. Discovery family."

Staffers who aren't absorbed elsewhere in the company will receive a minimum of six months of severance, he added.

So, now what? What do you do if you want to watch TV news?

Well, like I said yesterday, there are a shipload of options, free options, available. If you want to watch news on your streaming device, just look at the menu. Or, in case of a Roku, go to the Roku Channel or the Channel Store. It's easy to have news as a part of your Streaming Life. And the shutdown of CNN+ won't make much of dent.

Streaming the news

I posted recently about CNN+ finally launching, and then arriving on Roku three weeks later. If I came across as not really excited about it, there's a reason. I'm not really excited about it. TV news channels were one of the last things holding me back from cutting cable back in 2011. And after a week of not watching TV news, I came to like not watching TV news. Oh, I still stay up on things, but I don't need the commentary from the talking heads telling me what to think. I can find the facts online. I subscribe to Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, and will rotate around dropping those and picking up New York Times, and so on. That's just the subscription, to get the entire Website content for those. But I also read other news Websites and stay informed from a variety of sources.

But, if I do want to watch TV news, I have options. In addition to CNN+, which is a subscription service, I also have access to a lot of other news sources. Clicking on my Fire TV device just now, I see news apps and streams from ABC News, CBS News, Fox Live Now, Newsmax TV, USA Today, Bloomberg TV, Reuters Now, Cheddar News, Newsy, i24 News, and more.

Switching to Roku, most of those are easy to find, as well as NBC News Now, Sky News, Haystack News, Stirr, Local Now, Real America's Voice, CNBC, OAN, and a bunch of local TV news apps.

I won't go on and on, because what I've listed so far are some news apps and services that I found without even doing any heavy searching. These are the easy to find ones. There are more.

In addition to this, if you have or put up an antenna, you may be able to get local TV news from your local stations. It's really easy to add TV news to your Streaming Life.

IMDB TV no more

Have you ever made a silly decision? A stupid decision? A really bad decision?

Have you ever wanted to take it back?

Have you ever thought of something so clever that you came up with and then told everybody and they just looked at you like you had lobsters crawling out of your ears? (Bonus points if  you get the reference.)

Well, that's what Amazon is going through. Or should be going through. They may be still in the phase where they don't realize what a silly thing they've done.

Amazon has rebranded IMDB TV as Freevee.

IMDb TV will rebrand to Amazon Freevee, beginning April 27, in addition to growing its content lineup to include Original movies and expanding internationally into Germany later this year.

The ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) service has grown immensely in the last two years—tripling monthly active users—driven by rapid distribution across living room devices and mobile, an increasing slate of Originals, an always updating library of highly sought movies and TV shows, and over 60 FAST channels.

Yes, I checked the date on the news release. It was April 13th, not April Fools Day. This is for real.

That's a really silly name. They could have gone with Prime Video Free. Or Prime Video with Special Offers -- to copy the name they gave ad-supported Kindle devices. Or just about anything. Heck, IMDB TV was actually a good name. They bought MGM so MGM TV would have been good.

Freevee is just kinda silly.

I'm not really getting all worked up over it. I'm just pointing and laughing. It's silly. I don't know if it's to the point of taking the app off my devices because the name is just too silly, but that's a possibility. I refused to upgrade my TiVo to the Bolt because of how stupid the device looked. So, yeah, removing the app is something I'd do.

I want to enjoy my Streaming Life, not cringe when I open an app.

Plex Web shows and podcasts bite the dust

I enjoy using my Plex server for watching local content, and am still slowly checking out the new Discover feature, a content aggregator that works with a whole slew of apps and services.

In all of that, I totally missed that Plex did away with Web shows and podcasts.

As part of our ongoing effort to make sure we’re spending our time and energy in ways that best serve our awesome user community, we’ve made the decision to end support for Podcasts and Web Shows within Plex. We recognize this decision will impact several of you greatly, and we apologize for the inconvenience it will cause. You can continue to access these features within Plex until Friday, April 15th, 2022, at which point they will no longer be available.

Honestly, I didn't notice. I never used them. And that's the problem. Most users were like me. Whether or not they removed them from the menu, I don't know. I always did when I set up an app on a device, so they didn't junk up my interface.

They didn't disappear from my interface, because I had removed them already. And if it wasn't for my reading an article on The Streaming Advisor the other day, it would have been quite some time before I noticed.

If you lost a couple of features from Plex that you liked, then I'm to blame for the disruption in your Streaming Life. Well, one of those to blame. There are a lot of us to blame. And while I understand the decision by Plex to drop a seldom used feature, I know what it's like to lose a feature you enjoy. I'm sure there are alternatives, and perhaps even some that Plex will be able to integrate into the Discover feature. We can keep our fingers crossed.