David Payne, CNN.com SVP and GM, was a true Pipeline believer. His dismay at the premium service’s pending June 30 demise comes through clearly in a message to Pipeline subs posted on the CNN.com blog, just as he has to admit that even at 7 cents a day—the way he likes to break down the subscription cost—Pipeline had too few subs to ever achieve full scale. His two reasons for the change to free, flash-based video: “First, as popular as the service was, it became clear to us that reaching true scale was going to be impossible if the product remained a pay service. Remember that our entire mission is about getting more news to more people on more platforms… and too few people actually subscribed for us to meet that goal.” (This really cannot have come as much of a shock; the act of charging automatically limits the potential audience.) The second reason
—His second reason: the new flash player created for CNN.com’s Integrated Story “was a better experience than even the Pipeline player for videos. There are no load times, no pop-up players, no changing software environment to worry about, and you can get more context for the story in an integrated way.” (via LostRemote)

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Will the new site be the “game changer” Payne promises? We’ll see when the newest iteration launches July 1. For now, the beta site has gone offline so changes can be incorporated. From Mitch Gelman’s post: “We’re making some changes based on the thoughts you sent us — adding more news headlines to the home page, improving the speed with which video renders, darkening the link color and sharpening the distinction between the content elements.”