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Not enough people wanted to pay for CNN Pipeline, the news network's video service. Instead of killing it off, Pipeline will be integrated into CNN. Fears at Resource Shelf regarding Pipeline can be put to rest. CNN has chosen to eliminate the subscription aspect of Pipeline, not the content.

CNN's David Payne wrote at the CNN Behind The Scenes blog that Pipeline would change:

So, why are we changing to a new model and a new service? Couple of reasons. 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. Second, once we built our new flash video experience in the Integrated Story presentation on CNN.com, we realized that that was a better experience than even the Pipeline player for videos.

Some confusion apparently ensued after this announcement, as Payne returned a few days later to update the post and respond to reader comments:

First, the stories of Pipeline’s death are greatly exaggerated. All we’re basically doing is taking it from a pay downloadbale player/service and integrating it into CNN.com overall to make it accessible to the millions of people who use our site everyday.

You’ll still get all the great content from around the world including CNNI; you just won’t have to pay. Bottom line, we’re just making it easier (and cheaper) for everyone to access and we’re changing the name… it’s just rolled into our new and improved CNN.com Video offering.

And see if this helps: when we launch, there will be NO COMMERCIALS, much less the type of repetitive ones you’ve apparently come to expect from us.

Ad units will return eventually, but making that video content freely available through a Flash player should offer a better experience for CNN's fans.