Bad news, CNN+ turns off forever

With this phrase, the Todonoticias channel ended its broadcast tonight at 00:00, giving way on DTT to the Gran Hermano 24 Horas channel and on the rest of the operators to a sign informing of the cessation of broadcasts. CNN+, after almost twelve years of uninterrupted information, thus closed its broadcast coinciding with the expiration date of the agreement signed, and not renewed, between PRISA and Turner Broadcasting for the exploitation of the brand in the Spanish market.

"CNN+ has reached this point. In a few seconds, this 24-hour news channel will stop broadcasting forever. A simple phrase that hides behind 11 years of work and dreams also of hundreds of people who have passed through here during all this time, and who on many occasions have done much more than what their contract required of them for this house that we have all also considered as ours. We are probably all now paying for the mistakes of others, but the truth is that a business decision that does not understand neither dreams nor illusions but of pure and simple figures puts an end to our journey. Thanks to everyone who has tuned in at some point during these years. We owe it to you and we thank you for your loyalty. So we, also being faithful to our slogan, 'It's happening, you're seeing it', we say goodbye with one last piece of news, bad news, CNN+ is turning off forever.

With this message read by one of the journalists in the company of numerous colleagues from the network, today at 00:00 hours almost twelve years of uninterrupted 24-hour information came to an end. CNN+ thus closed its broadcast coinciding with the expiration date of the agreement signed, and not renewed, between PRISA and Turner Broadcasting for the exploitation of the brand in the Spanish market.

Since 1999, this pioneering project in the world, since it was the first time that Turner licensed its CNN brand, had been broadcasting through different platforms and free DTT.

Antonio San José, one of the news channel's most popular journalists, commented that the closure of CNN+ "is a forced goodbye, not because we have done it wrong, but because the business project has not worked."

The decision to close CNN+ is part of the restructuring process of the PRISA group, whose finances were burdened by a debt of close to 5,000 million euros, which was paid off in part with the proceeds from the sale of assets, highlighting the sale of Cuatro and 22% of Digital+ to Telecinco. Along these lines, last November the company authorized the entry of the American fund Liberty Acquisition Holdings, which capitalized the company with 650 million euros. Sogecable, now under the name PRISA TV, would be considering the possibility of launching a new current affairs channel aimed at strengthening its informative presence in the global Spanish-speaking and Portuguese market.

Telecinco, which after the operation with Sogecable-PRISA, manages the multiplex in which until yesterday the CNN+ programming was included, just a few seconds after the all-news channel turned off its broadcast, began broadcasting Big Brother 24 Hours on DTT.
The Television Academy has deeply regretted in a statement the disappearance of the news channel CNN+, expressing its solidarity with colleagues in all television professions who, after the closure of the network, may lose their jobs or are in a situation of professional uncertainty. For the president of the Television Academy, Manuel Campo Vidal, the disappearance of CNN+ represents "a loss for the audiovisual industry, for the information ecosystem and for journalistic plurality. Today television in Spain is poorer than yesterday and together with the desire for general economic recovery we must express our desire to recover more channels with journalistic programming, analysis and commitment to the reality we live in."

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