Warner Bros Discovery’s cable network CNN is developing a new mobile app that will allow weather fans to watch forecasts from the channel and follow significant climate events in real-time, according to a report published on Tuesday.
The report, from Axios, said CNN is expected to reveal its plans for a weather-focused mobile app at an advertiser event later this week. News about the app was first delivered to CNN employees at an internal, town hall-style event on Tuesday. The Axios reporter that broke the story, Sara Fischer, is a paid contributor to CNN.
The app is expected to debut by the end of the year, and will initially be free to access, though CNN plans to start charging at some point down the road. It isn’t clear how much the app will cost when CNN converts it from a free into a premium offering. The cable network will be the second to back a weather app; Fox Weather launched more than three years ago, and includes free access to live weather reports and forecasts across different platforms.
CNN Weather is part of a broader digital strategy led by CEO Mark Thompson, whose recent career has been spent figuring out how to transform legacy media brands into online powerhouses.
Fischer offered that CNN Weather will likely be the first of many niche and lifestyle apps that CNN launches as it experiments with ways to broaden its business beyond cable news, at a time when many of CNN’s viewers are tuning out. The network routinely ranks as the third most-watched cable news channel in the U.S., according to Nielsen ratings, with the politically-oriented Fox News and MSNBC capturing first and second place, respectively.
CNN has also been challenged by newer participants in the cable news space — notably, Newsmax and Nexstar-backed NewsNation, who have poached some former on-air contributors and political commentators from the main three cable news channels in recent years.
But CNN has something in the secret sauce that few others in the news space can claim: A broad, global presence. In addition to its own news bureaus in key parts of the world, CNN participates in joint ventures or otherwise licenses its brand to other broadcasters in countries like Brazil, Romania, Armenia, Turkey, Indonesia and Chile, with those newsrooms providing on-the-ground reports that benefit CNN’s domestic and international channels.
While Fox News and other weather-focused networks like The Weather Channel and AccuWeather mainly concentrate their efforts on the U.S., the global editorial reach of CNN may allow it to cover climate-related disasters and other weather-involved events around the world, with reports that are timely and more in-depth than any of its cable news competitors. In some respects, the network has already received accolades for some of its past climate-involved journalism, to include an Emmy Award for its coverage of Hurricane Milton last year and notoriety within the industry for being the first to cover flooding in Libya and the Syria-Turkey border earthquake two years ago.
CNN hopes to tap into its vast editorial presence in the U.S. and other parts of the world by broadening out its digital initiatives, and it hopes that news enthusiasts will pay for the privilege. That could be a hard ask at a time when other weather channels and apps are totally free to access, but the network figures it has nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying.
“As we build out a subscription portfolio and offering for our users, we are looking to launch a series of lifestyle-oriented products that become essential to people’s everyday lives,” a spokesperson for CNN said. “Weather is a natural fit for our audience and for the CNN portfolio.”
