this is bbc news, the headlines. a ukrainian presidential adviser has warned of heavy losses as fighting with russia intensifies in the east of the country. in the us, the pentagon's spokesman was visibly upset saying it was hard to look at some of the images of what he called president putin's brutality and cruelty. here in the uk, the six time tennis grand slam champion boris becker has been sentenced to two years and six months in prison, after being found guilty lying about three million dollars of assets during bankruptcy proceedings. ajudge in london said he showed no remorse. a british mp for the governing conservative party has been suspended over allegations he watched pornography in the house

of commons chamber. neil parish who represents a constituancy in devon — has referred himself to the parliamentary standards commissioner, and says he'll cooperate fully with any investigation. now on bbc news, the media show. hello and welcome to media show. today we are going to look at three grand plans, the first comes from elon musk. twitter has become kind of de facto town square so it's just really important that people have both their reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law. since elon musk said that, he's had a multi—billion dollar offer for twitter accepted.

we we'll unpack what that means. the next plant we are going to look at is one that's come the next plan we are going to look at is one that's come to a shuddering halt. this was just a few weeks ago. cnn is an icon of the cable and satellite age. but now cable is competing with streaming and there isn't a streaming subscription service for tv news in the united states. so if you were creating a news product from scratch in 2022, how would you build it? that's one of the questions, one of the starting points for cnn plus. it's the biggest bet any company has made in the news streaming world. cnn spent millions of dollars on its new streaming service, cnn plus. but within weeks it had been canned. and as that was stopping, well, rupert murdoch was starting something. he's launched talk tv in the uk with a familiarface at the centre of it. welcome to viewers around the world, on piers morgan and i'm uncensored. as nelson mandella might have said, it's been a long walk to freedom of speech.

and i'm back with a night nightly form of fabulous guests and yes, some fun. talk tv, twitter, cnn plus, in a broadway these are all parts of the same challenge as we try and work out how we are going to consume news and discuss the news in the future. where will we be doing that, which companies will we be paying for their services? let's begin with vivian schiller, executive director at aspen digital. vivian, you've held senior positions at cnn and twitter so you are a perfect person to start with. were you surprised by those two stories? one of them i saw coming a mile away and the other one took me completely off guard, is the summary. the mile away is cnn plus, it was always a dubious proposition. well, notjust to me, many felt that way, that you can take a product that people watch for free that it is had declining viewership and get them to paid monthly to get more

of the thing that they could get for free. of the thing that they it's not surprising to be that it failed although, i was a little startled by how quickly the new ownership of cnn, which was recently purchased along with the rest of time warner media from — warner meteor by discovery. i've got to tell you, musk, i didn't see it coming. even when he made the announcement that he was going to buy twitter i actually didn't believe the day would come when the board would actually say yes, we are selling twitter to you. but that day came on monday and working to talk about that decision in detail. vivian, thanks for being with us. chris williams is also on the media show. chris, you're the business editor of the daily telegraph. and i wonder when you were watching what piers morgan talk tv were doing this week as they launched, whether you felt you were watching the future. in some ways, but in some ways it's a hearken back to rupert murdoch's done in america and it's kinda

back to the future. they're still big questions about the economics of tv news, they whether they make it work, taking two approaches. one is to use assets they've already got in radio, in newspaper to make cheaper content — and then do monetise new investments like piers morgan's around the world. it's a new model, wait and see i think is the current position. all right. were going to talk about talk tv in detail and talk about twitter in detail in a few minutes. let's start though with cnn plus, we could reasonably call it one of the most spectacular media failures in recent years. it was a $300 million experiment. it was over within weeks. claire atkinson is chief media correspondent at insider. claire, help us understand why cnn thought this was a good idea and why it came off the rail so quickly. it's really easy to answer that question, there were two management teams

who wanted different things. warner media had wanted to launch the streaming service, they had conceptualized the idea, they brought in all this talent from other networks, spend millions of dollars bringing these people in, all the while you had the management at discovery say, not being able to say rather, that they didn't want this service they didn't see it as viable, they didn't think it would be profitable and they wanted to wrap news into a larger bundle with news, sports, movies and entertainment and it wasn't their vision at all. help us understand. and what this product was well it existed. i'm sitting in the us, and open up my phone on my tv, what do i get? you would get a couple of different things. it was billed as a little bit more lifestyle. it wasn't necessarily the breaking news that you would see on cnn, although they did have an element of that when there was big a news story about a guy in brooklyn who let off a smoke bomb and shot

at people in the subway, cnn plus covered that. they cnn plus covered that. were also doing panel shows. it was a little bit more lifestyle, the wet news documentaries and so the feeling was that it wasn't you know, if you wanted news and you cut the cord and you didn't want to pay for cable any more that this wasn't really in alternative because it really wasn't that much news on it. and help me be as clear as we can be with the terminology here. we hear analysts talking about linear tv versus streaming products. just unpack those phrases for us a little bit, please. right. so linear tv just means traditional television. the terrestrial tv, broadcast networks like abc, nbc, cbs, these are all services you get free to earth, they don't cost you money. cable cause you money but it comes to a fiber—optic cable into the back of your tv, where streaming is something you can get anywhere, you don't have to have a cable package. lots of folks historically

who lived in new york say couldn't get free to air tv and they paid the cable company to get it. so this is something that is revolutionary, streaming, the whole idea is you can cut the cord, you don't have to pay for television any more and you could buy it a la cart. so you could buy, say, cnn say for 599 a month. clear, you're with us on the media show so are christen vivian. let's also bring in lauren hirsch who is a reporter at the new york ties for a long, can you help me with one question? why is it that news broadcasters are so preoccupied with streaming, why did cnn decide this was worth investing hundreds of dollars in? so for the past couple of years we've seen media companies funnel money into streaming thinking that's the future of content. we've seen subscriptions drop in traditional tv so therefore they are looking where streaming is effectively replace that. but the problem is, there is now so much competition and we don't know what people will pay for,

they don't know how much, how many streaming services people will pay for. so it's really been for the past year throwing spaghetti against the wall in terms of content streaming. and now i think everyone is realising there's a lot of spaghetti on the wall and not a whole lot is sticking, to be honest. plenty of spaghetti on the floor by the sounds of it as well. vivian, let me bring you in here. there is one potentially frightening scenario here for news broadcasters which is the audiences are departing the linear tv networks but they may simply not want a new streaming products. well, that's possible. there are so many paid subscription opportunities now and i think we are now learning, it still early days, learning the limits of how many netflix, who lose, apple pluses, etc people are going to sign onto. and when you look at news, the new york times has done

well with their subscription service put up in fact it's interesting that cnn plus he has pointed to their bosses in making the case said, we think we are more of a new york times model, which i think was a little misguided, but 0k. but it is concerning and it may be that we find the limits beyond which news platforms are just not going to grow when it comes to television. the new head of the company has said that he's not worried about the profitability of cnn, he wants to do good journalism, will see if that sticks. and i wondered perhaps faye, you could help me with this, to what degree want to view has already referenced netflix, to what degree that netflix storyjust before the cnn announcements was relevant, it announced it lost 200,000 global subscribers and perhaps the figure that caught everyone�*s attention. it expects to lose 2 million more subscribers in the next three months. claire, was that relevant to cnn canning cnn plus? i mean, i think it is.

in the bigger picture in that the owners of cnn have to show wall street that they are investing in a profitable business. and what we've seen so far is the likes of netflix and disney plus have been throwing literally billions of dollars content producers in the hopes that people will subscribe. all of a sudden as a pivot wall street is saying, hang out a minute, we want to see profit from this business. in the expectation that this was a limitless, 2 billion people potentially would tune into streaming or pay for streaming, that's now being questions. and that affects cnn's owners. and chris from the telegraph, i'm listening to all of the others talk about cnn plus, of course a product aimed at the us market. i'm wondering if you think a streaming product could work in the uk. some of the challenges to cnn plus face to the us would be i even more steep in the uk.

probably because the bbc is very high quality news i and current affairs product and available point - of delivery in the uk. as for a channel for anyone i try to sell a new subscription has to be distinct and worth paying for in the uk. - i can't see that ever- being tried in the uk, really. perhaps it could be wrapped up in a broader subscription offer where you pay one company to give you notjust spore where you pay one company to give you notjust sports and everything else. that's one of the ironies here, you have this sort| of fracturing of the cable package _ yet hundreds of channels . and now you're seeing it be re—bundled by a handful- of small or very large groups. you've got disney, netflix- and warner discovery who owns cnn is content and kind of people who want - to send you two sell - you a phone or additional... but seeing a kind of- re—coalescing of the package that was cable, that's kind of what's happening - to cnn plus.

it'sjust that cnn is l going into the warner discovery big package. ross, ijust want to say that this is a global business. news is global by its very nature. and these streamers, they may begin in the states but ultimately their goal is to be a power around the globe and have viewers everywhere. nbc news has certainly attempted to chase cnn and that and be a rival to the bbc in the hopes that that brand can have resonance and folks all around the world would seek content that they are producing. in order to make it cost—effective. same with netflix, same with disny plus, the marches on now to see how many global subscribers you can be owned. this is notjust a country by country game. and of course, we can't talk about global media or global news without considering what rupert murdoch thinks about that. he's been a major player for decades.

and this week he made another play with piers morgan in the centre of it, talk tv was launched on monday. here's morgan's show airs at eight p:m.. in the next hour president donald] trump blows the roof off the biggest issues in the world today and indeed he blows my head off too. you think i'm a fool? i do now, yeah. nothing is off—limits. trump tells us what he told putin about invading ukraine. i threatened him like he has i never been threatened before. and the big question, whether he will run again for president in 2024? people can be happy, - you might even be happy. well chris from the telegraph, you are watching, did you enjoy it? you know, it was not bad, it was very slickly made, it was all this american stuff of production. not my cup of tea but i enjoyed it, thought. it was very interesting. and piers morgan has been very keen to share the ratings on both evening so far. how do you assess how

talk tv has performed in its first 48 hours? his first show came in at 317 . thousand viewers which is quite possibly the best in that log. bill be pleased with that. there's something like 100,000 viewers in the second day- so that gives you a sense - of how it's going to be a long road in building an audience particularly well if each - annual menu is somewhere down in the 200s. - you not to get any casual- people bumping into your stuff which is why you're seeing | a very aggressive billboard campaign around the show which they spent a lot - of money on. it's going to be a long road. tv news in the uk is| in structural decline, i think it 2013 80% of people watching tv news are down. 60% and that's with the pump as a result of covid. it structurally difficult. a lot of the success will be l judged on how it does online and you got piers morgan as a guy who sort of- traffics in controversy. and that helps him to cut

through the noise onlinel and he'll be trying to drum up. as much controversy as he can. and some of those controversies just don't play out on tv come of course they're pushing out social media clips that there are also plugged into the sun newspaper and the new york post. so vivian, as we consider whether news broadcasters need to find a route a way from —— do you think this hybrid model that rupert murdoch and piers morgan have come up with could offer a blueprint for others? actually, yes, i think in fact, i wish in behalf of cnm plus they had maybe notjumped in with both feet for this nine figure investment into a full—blown channel but rather experimented a bit with these kinds of streaming shows. i'm not a big fan of piers morgan but i do think in terms of the business strategy, it makes a lot of sense and sort of reflects the idea of, let's test and learn along the way what the business model works.

and one part of the business strategy is to build a tv network and a product around one individual. to what degree do you think that points the direction of travel that increasingly individuals may be as important or even more important than brands? yes, i think we are seeing that. there's all these newsletters, the journalism themselves are becoming conduits of the news they are stars, piers morgan's is very well known in the states. he used to host a show on cnn. he's actually going to be broadcasting on fox nation which is fox news is streaming offering. they actually told me they don't consider fox nation a new streamer, it's a lifestyle network. so i think that's kind of interesting. this weekend there is the white house correspondents dinner in washington where news and the future of news will be discussed by the great and the good. they'll be politicians and joe biden they are kind of sitting with doors

organisations, this is a topic that will be talked about and perhaps donald trump comes back and perhaps those news audiences come back too. i'm interested that fox nation does not consider itself a news streamer, that you emphasise lifestyle. piers morgan is placing a huge amount of emphasis on culture wars. lauren from the new york times, do you think this makes sense in business terms and consumer terms? because the glory days of us cable news was very much based on covering politics. yes. i think that unfortunately, i culture wars has taken over the media as a way that i politics are being covered now and we i think it's. actually fairly consented with the trajectory received. vivian, just before we can want to talk about twitter, presumably all of the strands of our discussion point towards a fact about news and how we consume it is in for

a tumultuous few years. yes. i mean, it's impossible to even address that, respond to what use just said without talking about twitter. i think in many ways twitter is sort of the hub for the many spokes about news, what news takes hold, who pays attention to what and what storylines dominate. let's talk about twitter. of course this jaw—dropping announcement came on monday, it's a major news sources vivian explains, elon musk has had an offer of $41; billion excepted for the whole thing. lauren hirsch from the new york times, you've been reporting on this in detail. while it would been jaw—dropping however long it took but to happen so quickly really took us all by surprise. ho di that happen? it was incredible. i was outside a show texting

with a source just to touch l base and my source goes, a deal could happen - maybe monday, maybe not. i was like, "what are you talking about? . it happened at an - exceptionally fast speed. to take a step back, - elon musk put the offer out there without any financing. there was a lot of scepticism that was real, it wasn't - legitimate and he lined up on wednesday, displayed i on thursday and all of a sudden it became very real. _ and the board was faced i with the decision of looking at it's prospect of standing . alone and what its long—term business trajectory was. and there was this sense that frankly, it was limited. - there's a of challenge right now with social i media companies, the advertising business is under pressure. - they came to the conclusion that perhaps elon musk- was not a desirable buyerj but he was the only buyer and the price he was offering posed a better solution - from a number of- business perspectives. once they arrive to that - conclusion and understanding

they raced to get a deal done. they were up into the night on monday and signed - the documents shortly before it was announced _ monday afternoon. and the deal has been done and the board has accepted the offer. but none of this magics away the tensions between whether twitter is a platform and whether it's a publisher. help us understand how that particular attention placed directly into this emphasis from elon musk on freedom of speech and how he feels like twitter should be doing better on that front. so he even has gone back. and forth on the past couple days, when he was to launch the bid he talked about howl passionately he felt - about freedom of speech european regulators came out yesterday behind elon musk . and says if he poses twitter he will have to abide - by european law, as of next| year it requires social media media companies to crack down on misinformation. i

musk indicated yesterday in a follow—up tweet that he kind of knew that . twitter would have to abide by the laws. i think elon musk started this with a lot of ideals, - a lot of grand ideas - and i think the reality is that governments in europe - and potentially, eventually us begin to regulate these media platforms differently, - ultimately, it will have to abide by that. - so those are the details of how elon musk has ended up in the situation for the vivian, let's bring you in. there will be people listening thinking, ok, looks like he's going to be in charge. how's my experience of twitter going to change? for example he talked about sharing the algorithm so we all understand why twitter is showing a certain tweets more than others. in a practical sense, if me, you or anyone else opens up twitter what do you think the big shift would be? we don't really know. he's made very limited comments so far about what he plans to do about content moderation content moderation is the practice of a platform

deciding what to leave out, what to take down what to take down, what to supress. but based on his limited remarks and based on some of his tweets in the last few days, just as personal behaviour twitter, i think it seems like he is maybe going to open up, make it more open, eliminate some of the decisions that previous twitter management has made which would give rise to a lot of ugliness on twitter. bullying, hate speech, all of those things. i'm very, very concerned. and can i ask you vivian about your time inside twitter? elon musk is talked about it as being the worlds time square with all the responsibilities that come with that. could you feel that responsibility when you were sitting around the top table of twitter thinking, "my goodness, where part of this thing now where it almost goes beyond the company, where it's all almost a public platform that everybody uses. absolutely. i know i've been gone from twitter for a little while now but i know,

i have a lot of friends in there and i think that that kind of faith and the passion about the role that twitter plays is still very much alive in the company. it is tiny compared to facebook and youtube and some of the other platforms but it punches above its weight tremendously in terms of the kind of influence it has. it affects news coverage, it is amplified by all of us journalist on twitter all the time. we amplify them in our stories. world leaders are on there. it has tremendous influence. so it has influence, it matters a great deal for people use it regularly. but lauren, i must ask on behalf of probably the majority of people listening to this programme because the majority of people do not use twitter. why does this story matter to them? i worked for the new york times and what the new york times i the legacy goes, almostl a trickle down to the rest of the country with local news

people put on the cover- of their page would reflect. what the new york times do. on exactly with the new york times chose to do. _ that's kind of what i twitter has become. twitter has become i the a1 for the nation. so even if in individual is not on twitter reading tweets i they are absorbing news in some capacity and that news _ and what journalists think is . important and what journalists are seeing, that issue affects twitter. - so it all trickles down even if you are not i directly on the platform. when you say ai you mean the front page of the new york times. i apologise. the front page of the i new york times, yes. and as we close this addition i am interested to hear the three of you respond to vivian his point, which is really all of our discussions about how we all consume news, where we all find information, where we discussed the world we live in all in some ways can

ways connects to twitter and could connects to social media. chris from the telegraph, would you agree with that, that every consideration of say, tv news is really in that context? yes, i think you've got a series on legacy media who are terrified of losing their audience and believe they have to be on social media in some respects. they are right but at the same time personally i think twitter has been pretty disastrous for political and journalistic culture and it can do better. why, chris? i think that journalists embarrass themselves on there. it's like journalist talking to otherjournalists with an audience of people who have got an unhealthy relationship with the news and everyone would be better off off of it. and i include myself in that. did you deactivate your account, chris? i actually have done that. and hopefully i won't bring it back. and vivian, on that final point, do you think that twitter risks distorting both how we see the world as consumers but also how the news industry makes decisions? yes. although if it becomes too distorted than the news industry is going to abandon twitter as basically the equivalent of new

york times front page. he may end up destroying that golden goose that he thinks he's going to be monetising. we will see. we will have to see if the process goes through, the board is accepted the offer but of course now both sides do their due diligence in a few months at that all goes elon musk will be fully in charge of twitter. well, that is where we will have to leave it. to all of my guests, many thanks. claire atkinson, vivian schiller, chris williams and lauren hirsch, the media show will be back at the usual time next week. for now, thanks for watching. bye— bye. this bank holiday weekend is pretty mixed. yes there is rain in the forecast not that much for england and wales but could see eight to a nuisance on

sunday. it will be quite a bit of sunshine for england and wales on saturday under the area of high low—pressure sleeping into scotland and northern ireland through the day. here will be quite a bit of sunshine for england and wales on saturday under this area of high pressure. low pressure sweeping into scotland and northern ireland through the day. here will be turning wetter and windier. heavy rain for western scotland, may be a rumble of thunder england and wales quite chilly with frost invest in them plenty of a great the last few days was up top temperature 17 or 18 degrees but a bit cooler under the cloud and rain. a reversal of fortune on sunday, the cloud is damp weather will be across a little wales, patchy light rain and drizzle here. further north we will see some breaks in the cloud allowing for sunny spells. we can seek 60 degrees and warm spots, a little bit fresher for england and wales. that area of low pressure clears way for the bank holiday monday looks mainly dry brought the odd show it a few glimmers of sunshine here and there.

this is bbc news. i'm rich preston our top stories: a ukrainian presidential advisor warns of heavy losses as fighting intensifies in the east of the country. i'm sorry, it's difficult. difficult to look at some of the images and think that somebody, any well thinking, serious, but surely that would do that, so i can't talk to his psychology, but i think we can all speak to... the pentagon'sjohn kirby shows the strain describing what he calls president putin's depravity over the invasion of ukraine. a tennis super star begins a new life behind bars. boris becker is jailed for two and a half years for hiding millions of dollars worth

of assets after going bankrupt. a suicide attack on a mosque in the afghan capital,