All McKinsey media consultants should quietly remove that experience from your CV.

How the fuck do you morons produce such a dogshit report that believed CNN+ would get 2M subscribers in the 1st year and up to 15 - 18M over all.  For fucks sake a network that does 600k peak in primetime.  You all should be fired and banned from ever working as a consultant again.  

 
Controversial

why are you so angry? why does this matter in the slightest to you and your life LOL

 

gleeful? dogshit? youve got big feelings about cnn+ huh

why the emotional investment in the success or failure of this product?

 

Consulting is a lot more liberal than finance. While finance is mostly middle of the road establishment democrats, in consulting you’ll find plenty of Bernie types. I still don’t get why this is the case because consultants help corporations a lot too.

Array
 

While the numbers seem like a stretch on face, it's really not possible to confidently criticize from outside-in without understanding what assumptions and thinking went into it. In particular, I'd be interested in learning what benchmarks / comps were used and what investments or actions were assumed (i.e. it's possible that the CNN+ viewership forecasts were modeled for a business that looks materially different from what CNN actually ended up creating)

Also keep in mind that we don't know which parts of the work were put together by McK vs perspectives from clients -- without seeing the SOW and knowing how the project work actually went it's hard to say if blame should be put on McK or CNN for any unreasonable assumptions made (i.e. sometimes there are assumptions you're given by the client that you're supposed to use and not revisit, as your project is focused on something else like a capabilities roadmap)

 

Sure, but a $5 super chat to any streamer could have provided a better result than this.  If I was a McK Partner I would have burned this dogshit project if this is what I was forced to do.  This is an inescapable stain on their reputation.  I for one will never consider hiring a group who would create somehting like this. 

 

Again, I do not believe you can actually reach this conclusion with the limited information that is public-facing. I feel like I provided some pretty good reasons to support that

Also, this is not going to be a massive stain on their reputation. I don't know why this has you in particular so bothered, but almost nobody will care in the grand scheme of things, especially when you remember that projects are sold with a subset of the firm (i.e. if you were a consulting buyer at a TMT client and said you knew about and disliked this work, they'd just put a different group of partners on the work). Finally, keep in mind that market sizing (the part you have an issue with) was likely a small portion of the overall project -- it's like saying you would never go to a Michelin starred restaurant ever again because the croutons on one salad were gross

If you want to point to work that has reputational risk, McK has a ton that is way worse than a potentially unreasonable market sizing (see: all of the NYT articles from the last year or two), but they've been fine so far. I don't think this will cause them any big issues

 

While the numbers seem like a stretch on face, it's really not possible to confidently criticize from outside-in without understanding what assumptions and thinking went into it. In particular, I'd be interested in learning what benchmarks / comps were used and what investments or actions were assumed (i.e. it's possible that the CNN+ viewership forecasts were modeled for a business that looks materially different from what CNN actually ended up creating)

Also keep in mind that we don't know which parts of the work were put together by McK vs perspectives from clients -- without seeing the SOW and knowing how the project work actually went it's hard to say if blame should be put on McK or CNN for any unreasonable assumptions made (i.e. sometimes there are assumptions you're given by the client that you're supposed to use and not revisit, as your project is focused on something else like a capabilities roadmap)

Classic Consultant speak: Sure we were wrong in the literal sense, but only in the literal sense. In Theory it could have happened. 

 
Most Helpful

I agree with your sentiment 100% and I'm also enjoying watching CNN+ crash and burn dragging McKinsey's credibility through the mud. However it is during moments like this when I like to think about what may have happened.

Imagine ourselves as McKinsey consultants and CNN comes to us for a business case on this new CNN+ thing. You and I both look ourselves in the eyes. We telepathically communicate that we both know that CNN's ratings have been dogshit for a year now. In fact, we know that CNN's performance is even worse than Fox News and we know that if Fox wanted to come up with some FoxNews+ bullshit it would crash and burn so there was no fucking way in hell this CNN+ idea was not the most retarded idea some empty suit had ever dreamed up. But we are McKinsey. We don't get paid in equity, we get paid in fees. And when a retard comes with a bag of money we know that the consultant's way is to make sure that you take as much from that money as you can. We look at CNN's history and even though their ratings are crap we come up with the one assumption that could make this sound like a good idea: find some statistical method to turn those dogshit viewership numbers into 'unique' viewers. After all, it is not that our ratings are bad! It must be that different viewers are interested in our content in different times/different issues/different political climates. But if instead of having us on TV they needed to pay for a subscription a la Netflix, we'd get all of them to pay a little bit every month. Boom, a 20M subscribers number pulled straight out of our asses. And we get paid our fees. And those retards at CNN won't even hear from us again.

And now that I see it that way... it was genius. Because if CNN came knocking on my door looking to pay for my consulting services... I would sure as hell give them any number they needed to hear to sign my check. For fucks sake, 'consultant' is not a regulated profession. I'll make up any number I god damn please. At least in my job I actually get measured by my estimates so I wouldn't pull that kind of shit but what do consultants get measured on? Fees. McKinsey did what they had to do. 

 

Sounds like you have no problem selling your soul for some incremental coin.

Consultants are supposed to give reasonable rational estimates and that’s what doing your job well and ethically means. Not making up some metrics to look smart and deceive the customer.

Array
 

I am pretty sure the poster is talking about me.   Also not sure what DWAC has to do with a botched launch of a insanely ill advised streaming platform that the marketing and development costs will never be recovered.  This was a simple analysis made insanely complicated for zero reason other than to blow smoke up everyones ass from the inside of another persons ass. 

As for "qualificatons" to post an opinion on an anonomous forum I have been in the industry for over a decade and I run a fund that spans both the RE and PE space as well as founded a high tech company.  But yes, hot takes are only made by people who dont suck on the dick of prestige.   For fucks sake take a look at pretty much any thread in the off topic segment of this website to know that your comment is an idiotic take. 

 

You folks are really passionate about this topic. Was a tongue in cheek joke that CNN+ was planned during the last administration CNN had probably its highest gains in viewership and probably was not a bad to try to see if a CNN+ product worked. In fact if you have read up on the "Fox News" growth to being so popular during the Obama years, CNN+ could have been totally marketed differently and built different if the last election went another way. Main thing is the current guy in the white house does not give the content and CNN probably cannot grow viewership from here since they have gone too far the other way during the last four years hence this thread. 

Likewise DWAC was probably 6 months late and if it was around 1 year prior to the day Trump was banned, could possibly be bigger than Twitter today. 

 

"

January 2021 was CNN’s most-watched month on record, eclipsing Nov. 2020 among total viewers in total and dayside (9 a.m.-4 p.m.) and was the 2nd-highest-rated (behind only Nov. 2020).

The network beat its main competition, Fox News and MSNBC, in all of the key measurements in January, and its prime time slate beat Fox News’ vaunted prime time slate in average total viewers for the first time ever.

"

 

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