The Cable Center said Tuesday that it has elected four new members to its board of directors -- National Cable Television Cooperative CEO Lou Borrelli, NCTA -- The Internet & Television Association chief of staff Nilda Gumbs; Curiosity president and CEO Clint Stinchcomb and Comcast Central Division president Christine Whitaker. Each of the new board members will serve a two-year term. 

“The opportunity to collaborate with such distinguished leaders on our Cable Center Board is an honor and a privilege," The Cable Center board chair and CEO of Penthera Partners Michael Willner said in a press release. "Their inspiring leadership, business acumen, and unmatched industry expertise will support The Cable Center as we advance innovation and intrapreneurship to help grow our thriving and expanding connectivity industry.”

Borrelli was named CEO of the NCTC in May, and has spent more than four decades as a media executive, entrepreneur, investor and advisor. As CEO of the NCTC, Borrelli represents more than 700 broadband and cable operators operating in all 50 states and the U.S. territories, serving 40 million video and broadband connections.

A seasoned government affairs and communications professional with more than 25 years experience, Gumbs joined the NCTA in 1994, and before being named chief of staff, most recently served as VP of external affairs where she was an integral part of the state government relations team responsible for working with state and local legislators and various intergovernmental groups on policy issues.

Another 25-year-plus industry veteran, Stinchcomb joined Curiosity in 2017 as chief distribution officer, becoming CEO in 2018. A long-time Discovery Inc. executive, where he worked closely with Discovery and Curiosity founder John Hendricks, Stinchcomb oversees Curiosity’s flagship CuriosityStream streaming service, its linear Curiosity Channel, Curiosity Studios original programming, and One Day University. 

As  president of Comcast’s Central Division, Whitaker manages about 27,000 Comcast employees with more than 12.7 million customer relationships throughout 15 states. She most recently served as senior VP of finance and administration for Comcast's Northeast Division, where she was responsible for overseeing all customer experience and financial aspects of the business for the division, which served about 10.1 million customers.

“The Cable Center Board of Directors and I are honored to welcome our four newest Board Members,” said The Cable Center president and CEO Jana Henthorn in a press release. "Our board members’ incredible collective industry wisdom, experience, insight, and knowledge are instrumental to The Cable Center’s success. We look forward to continuing our work to create an inspiring and innovative future through The Cable Center’s mission and programs.” Henthorn, who is retiring at the end of 2021 after 17 years leading the nonprofit, will remain on the board of directors as the immediate past president. ■

With its first quarterly period as a public company behind it, CuriosityStream expects to nearly double its revenue in 2021, fueled by continued strong subscriber growth.

CuriosityStream went public on Oct. 15, shortly after closing a merger with Special Purpose Acquisitions Company (SPAC) Software Acquisitions Group that valued the fact-based streamer at about $331 million. 

Q3 revenue nearly doubled to $8.7 million from $4.8 million in the prior year and total subscribers more than doubled to 13 million, from about 6 million in the same period last year. EBITDA losses also improved, from a loss of $10 million in Q3 2019 to a loss of $6.7 million. The company expects the momentum to continue through 2021, predicting that full year 2020 revenue will double to $39.1 million and nearly double again to at least $71 million in 2021. Fueling that growth will be continued subscriber gains, particularly in the international markets, CuriosityStream CEO Clint Stinchcomb said in an interview. 

Related: Just the Facts at CuriosityStream

Stinchcomb said that CuriosityStream is growing on both the direct-to-consumer and third party distribution side. And he was encouraged by streaming rival Disney Plus’s strong fiscal Q4 additions (about 16 million new subscribers in the quarter, many of them from Indian distributor Hotstar), a sign that international markets continue to have growth potential.  

“Look at the number of subscribers they [Disney Plus] has with Hotstar, with Verizon,” Stinchcomb said. “Thoughtful bundling is really a big key to success. It’s one strategy we see helping us get, over time, to hundreds of millions of global paying subscribers.” 

Earlier this month CuriosityStream landed a deal with Tata Sky, where its service will be bundled with India’s largest pay TV distributor’s on demand and linear offerings. 

Also helping to boost overall subscriber rolls will be a concerted marketing push, funded in large part by the money raised through the SAG merger. Stinchcomb said fourth quarter marketing initiatives will be focused on the U.S., expanding internationally next year.  

Domestic efforts will utilize traditional avenues as well as social media like Facebook and YouTube. Stinchomb added that CuriosityStream already markets through a number of YouTube influencers in the broader education enrichment space.

“You’ll see us do more of that,” he said. “We’ll also do more awareness promotion. We are doing TV, you’ll hear our spots on radio, audio streaming. We’ll be everywhere.”

The marketing message will hone in on the low cost of the service -- at $2.99 per month or $19.99 for a full year, it is one of the lowest priced streaming offerings available -- and content. CuriosityStream’s current library has about 3,000 titles and it continues to add more, like My Wild Backyard, the third season of 4th and Forever, Doug to the Rescue and Nature Through Her Eyes. On Nov. 19 it is scheduled to air the world premier of another original series, Beyond the Spotlight from executive producer Leonardo DiCaprio and Appian Way Productions and Stephen David Entertainment.

Most customers are recognizing that value -- Stinchcomb said between 70% and 80% of its customers opt for the full year package -- which helps reduce churn.  

“That [the annual price] is what we used to pay for a DVD, and you get 3,000-plus titles,” Stinchcomb said. “Unlike many other streaming services, we eliminated our free trial at the beginning of the year. At 20 bucks a year, we’re not a risky decision.”

CuriosityStream, the fact-based streamer started by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks, makes its debut on the NASDAQ stock market Oct. 15, under the symbol CURI, the result of its merger with Software Acquisition Group, which valued the company at about $331 million. CuriosityStream CEO Clint Stinchomb and chief product officer and executive VP of content strategy Devin Emery spoke with Multichannel News about the future for CuriousityStream. An edited transcript follows.

MCN: Now that you’re going to be public, does that take the pressure of having to raise money off of you and let you focus on growing the business?

Clint Stinchcomb: Any time you’re in a startup media company, there are a lot of long days and long nights. Certainly in the early days — I joined in mid-2017 — I slept more than a few nights on the couch. At the same time, we were all the beneficiaries of John Hendricks’ underwriting of the company, his strong belief and commitment.

It’s important to have someone with the grand vision. When you can combine that vision and belief with a strong, bottom-up, focused management team, then you’ve really got something. Then, when you inject resources into the company as well, then you’ve really got something that’s special. Some of this will be a function of the redemptions, but we don’t anticipate having to raise money beyond this transaction. And frankly we’re quite excited. We don’t have any big M&A in our growth plan, but we do believe that there’ll be a bit of carnage over the next couple of years with smaller companies. And we’ll be opportunistic as it relates to that as well.

We’re optimistic as more people hear the story and we deliver results, it will be a massive growth opportunity for CuriosityStream. We’re the only pure-play factual streaming service today, and we have a global focus. A lot of people talk about going global; it’s not a simple proposition. A lot of times, you can’t control content rights across the world. The nice thing is when John started CuriosityStream, he started off global from day one. We’re in 175 countries with our direct service. We’ve got a distributed service in 83 countries and five languages.

MCN: Where do you see the biggest opportunity?

CS: We see lots of upside with our direct service, especially now that we will be able to allocate more marketing dollars toward that [and] that we have greater general awareness of the service. Additional awareness will come just as a function of being a public company. At the top, we see a great opportunity with our direct service — minimal competition and we’re global. And we’ve not marketed the service aggressively internationally, even though we have a lot of subscribers internationally. Now that we have our content in multiple languages, that’s something you will see us start to do a bit more next year. 

After that, we see a lot of opportunities with global wireless providers. Wireless providers don’t want to be left out of the streaming revolution, that’s why you’re seeing bundling constructs like Disney Plus and ESPN Plus with Verizon; T-Mobile with Netflix. We see some mutually fruitful partnerships there. And beyond the wireless providers, with traditional distributors like cable operators and direct-to-home providers. They don’t want to be left out of the streaming revolution either. We see increased bundling relationships there. That’s a path that gets you to hundreds of millions of subscribers. I think that’s a strategy that the most successful streaming services will all leverage. At the same time you have to be mindful of the impact that has on your other businesses. But I think if you have a service that the big distributors would like to bundle, that’s a big opportunity for them and for us. 

You’ll read about some interesting
things later that we’re doing with associations, big memberships groups, most located in the [Washington] D.C. area. We also see considerable growth on the brand partnership side. 

The last piece is program sales. That takes two forms, either offering up to a company some collection of CuriosityStream titles, and/or presales of content to big media partners for parts of the world we’re not able to fully monetize yet. 

MCN: Are you in active talks with wireless companies?

CS: Yes.

MCN: Are you confident you’ll have
a bundling relationship with one of them soon?

CS: We have almost 20 different bundled agreements with distributors around the world, mostly cable and satellite. If you look over the world, there are so many wireless providers. That would be a yes, you’ll see CuriosityStream and wireless partnerships. 

MCN: Wireless partnerships were a big boost for domestic streamers like Disney Plus, with Verizon. It seems that the biggest benefit is that they give consumers a chance to see what a service does without having to put up any upfront money. 

CS: I couldn’t agree more. And interestingly enough, we have a guy like Linsday Gardner helping us with that. He was head of distribution at Fox and most recently was chief content officer at T-Mobile. He’s working with us on an advisory basis with a focus on [wireless]. We’ve been approached by a number of wireless distributors, and we’re trying to be thoughtful about the right construct going forward. 

MCN: You mentioned international.
Do you see that as being the bigger market for you?

CS: Absolutely. We have more subscribers today outside the U.S. than we have inside. And we have more revenue coming from North America. I think over time, the majority of our subscribers will come from outside the U.S. and the majority of our revenue will come from outside the U.S. It’s just a much bigger world and factual content travels well. An atom is an atom wherever you are. Saturn is Saturn and an alligator is the same to a 12-year-old girl in India as it is to a 55-year-old ironworker in Indiana. That’s the magic of it. 

MCN: In the past, streamers were adamant about being commercial free. But recently you’ve had Peacock come out with an ad-supported model, and analysts seem to believe that may be the better way to address the market, especially since younger viewers seem more open to ads if it will keep prices down. What’s your take on that? 

CS: It’s much harder to build a subscription business. That’s what we’ve been focused on, building a great subscription business with premium factual content. However, we never want to trade dollars for dimes — there are a lot of people going to AVOD because there is no barrier to entry, it’s a lot easier to jump into that than it is to create a compelling proposition that people will pay you for. The answer is, yes, you’ll see us move into that in a very thoughtful way. In some cases even with other partners. 

Devin Emery: We are going to look at how we build our brands so that the core of what we are is the streaming service CuriosityStream, but we are also a media company that is going to have a lot of different relationships. So there is absolutely a path forward for us to have relationships with audiences that exist on platforms that are ad-supported as well as our subscription service. There are a lot of different ways we can play with that together. Obviously we are not going to do anything to cannibalize the subscription service. Working within the sphere of part audience development, part marketing, there is a lot we can do that is going to be able to grow our ability to monetize through those platforms while continuing to grow the direct subscription service. 

MCN: CuriosityStream was a pioneer in taking the idea of brand sponsorships to another level. Can you tell me what you’re doing on that front? 

DE: When we are thinking about brand partnerships, we are investing a lot of money into really high-quality programming. There’s a lot of content we’re creating to integrate systemic brands into that content. We’re going to be covering technology that companies are creating, so there’s a lot of opportunities to integrate partners into that content and then create a crossplatform branded partnership plan that has that integration. But then we can create more specific content that focuses in on their individual technology and then promote that across a lot of different platforms. We have hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and all of these other platforms where we are growing this audience, where we can create content specifically meant to be focused on a brand partnership as well as the media we’re running across TV, radio, audio. We’re not going to push a ton of ads into our service — that’s not something we’re interested in doing and the audience isn’t interested in doing. But we can have light-touch brand partnerships within our service and then create wide-reaching plans that are going to allow us to integrate them into something that is bigger. 

MCN: LightShed Partners did a study that 83% of streaming viewership is tied up in five services — Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, Hulu and Disney Plus — and everybody else has to fight for the remainder. How do you differentiate yourself? 

CS: We don’t look at the world like that, as a zero-sum game. If we are able to continue to build the most reliable destination for pure factual content and a brand that communicates that, then we’re going to have a great business. There are lots and lots and lots of different metrics that people will throw out in this business. We’re focused on the true North Star metrics of revenue and subscribers.  

DE: What it shows is that people are looking to be able to easily browse for content. The two that make up the most of share are the two services that people generally default to if they’re looking for something. One of the things that we’re really focused on is that we are that for factual. There is not another service, Netflix included, YouTube included, any of the services included that you can just go to and find the factual content that you want. Factual is a massive category. What it says to me is that the general entertainment programmers are battling for the specific content. They all have strong IP, but the smaller ones are not getting nearly as much of the ‘I-want-to-find-something’ traffic that the defaults are getting right now. That is going to change. 

What we’re building is the default for factual. If you’re looking for a documentary or a factual piece of content that is history, science, technology, you name it, we are the default that you’re going to go into. We are going to take that general behavior that is taking up so much share, and create it for a category that is massive but not currently served. λ

Just like in one of its nature films, when some majestic animal has adapted to a change in its environment, CuriosityStream seems to successfully evolved to match the great flood of competition hitting subscription streaming land.  

With its programming lineup of “factual entertainment”-based programming encompassing science, technology and history, the streaming service started by Discovery Communications founder John Hendricks five years ago recently surpassed the 13 million-subscriber mark, continuing to build its appeal both domestically and internationally. 

Related: CuriosityStream Touts 13M Subscribers

CuriosityStream president and CEO Clint Stinchcomb recently spoke to Next TV about the streaming service’s position in the evolving digital streaming marketplace, as well as his thoughts on the fallout over the streaming wars. An edited version of the interview appears below. 

NEXT TV: How does CuriosityStream differentiate itself from the other streaming services? 

CLINT STINCHCOMB: CuriosityStream is a pure, factual brand. What we mean by that is its science, technology, history, food, travel, lifestyle--it’s a full offering of factual entertainment, which, just like sports and news, is a full category. We’re committed to taking CuriosityStream around the globe  because the content travels well. An alligator is an alligator, a planet is a planet, and we control the global rights to most of our content.

What’s the appeal of factual entertainment when compared the scripted content that is helping drive subscriptions for Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime?

I think there’s so much general entertainment and so much scripted programming out there, but there’s no one-stop shopping for pure factual programming. So we take great pains to not be anything that we’re not, and with the growth that we’ve had over the past two years we really see a way to take CuriosityStream to hundreds of millions of subscribers around the globe.  

How much growth has CuriosityStream experienced over the past year? 

In 2017, CuriosityStream had about 1,000 titles and 100,000 subscribers. Fast forward to 2018 and we had 1 million subscribers. Fast forward again to December 2019 and we announced over 10 million subscribers. Today, I’m delighted to share that we just passed the 13 million mark -- we have more subscribers outside the U.S. than inside the U.S.--but right now we’re in a great growth trajectory.

How do you see the platform evolving in 2020?

In regard to the streaming wars, we see that Netflix has escape velocity and will continue to grow. We think that they are going to have over the next decade over 400 million subscribers. Disney, with all of the advantages that they have, will have 200 million to 300 million subscribers over the next eight to 10 years. Peacock’s presentation was pretty fantastic -- obviously they have a lot of inherent promotional advantages and will do well. I don’t think it's completely a zero-sum game as it relates to this…all of those services will do well. We think CuriosityStream has the opportunity to capture a significant percentage of the pay cable, wireless and direct market. We see a real path to hundreds of millions of homes over the next five to seven years. 

Your background is in the traditional linear cable business. Do you see that segment surviving the continued loss of subscribers to the streaming platform? 

Outside the US, pay TV continues to grow about two to three percent. Interestingly enough they don’t have retransmission consent like we have in the US, and they don’t have as much of their money tied up in sports rights, so there’s considerable opportunity for a pure factual service like CuriosityStream to grow outside the US. At the same time we believe that there’s growth beyond what we have today in the US. Altice did a groundbreaking deal recently where they made CuriosityStream available to all of their customers, so we’re in the business of trying to make it as friction-free as possible to subscribe to CuriosityStream. 

PASADENA, Calif. — CuriosityStream chairman and founder John Hendricks made waves at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour with his prediction of the coming “streaming wars” that will eventually winnow the field of subscription video-on-demand services competing for consumer dollars.

Hendricks said CuriosityStream, his factual content subscription service, will be one of the players left standing when the shakeout ends. The $2.99-per-month offering, which reached 1 million subscribers last year, comprises more than 2,000 technology, nature and science-themed titles.

CuriosityStream has secured $140 million in new private funding from such investors as Blum Capital Ventures and TimesSquare Capital Management to fuel its next growth phase in terms of original programming and global marketing, president and CEO Clint Stinchcomb said.

Stinchcomb spoke with Multichannel News about the service’s continued evolution, his thoughts about the future of content distribution, and the big “washout” ahead for in the sector. The interview was edited for space and style reasons.

MCN: John Hendricks talked about the beginning of the streaming wars on the emerging digital platforms. How do you see that oncoming battle affecting the traditional cable business in terms of its future viability?
Clint Stinchcomb: John Malone says your advantage today and potentially forever is connectivity. If [cable operators] embrace connectivity and offer every service of consequence, but not too many services, then they will be well-positioned. What they have to figure out is, how do they leverage connectivity better than they are today? I think over time, we’ll see these mature network groups either get dropped in their entirety or lose carriage for some of their lesser channels. We’re already seeing that outside the U.S., and we’ve been the beneficiary of that in places. All the guys are looking to reduce their fixed costs on the content side and over time, I think, they will look to embrace the new technologies like 4K. It’ll be managing a business that’s declining, but at the same time there are some real opportunities.

MCN: Where does CuriosityStream fit in today’s distribution environment?
CS: What we have today is a pure factual service, and we say that we’re programming to the full factual category — science, history, technology, lifestyle — with over 2,000 titles and growing. So many networks that started with factual programming tended to move away from that and embrace reality programming, so that created a big opening for something that was purely factual. We think through this combination of quality and quantity we’ll be in pretty good shape if we continue to stick to our knitting.

MCN: How do you break through the clutter of a very crowded content distribution marketplace?
CS: There are a lot of networks in the space, but [factual programming] is all we do — it’s not something we do on the side. If we can create programming that is breakthrough quality, we’ll be in pretty good shape. Again, there are a lot of people in the space, but at the same time we don’t feel it’s a zero-sum game. A lot of networks are going to wash out, and I really feel that if you’re not one of the four, five, six big streamers and you have a service that’s $5 or more, you’re probably not going to grow. We have a very digestible price point which enables us to sell CuriosityStream to consumers, to MVPDs and to educational institutions, so we’re pushing aggressively on the distribution side.

MCN: More than half of CuriosityStream’s audience is made up of hard-to-reach millennials. What are the keys to appealing to that vital audience segment?
CS: For one, it’s easy to sign up — just go to CuriosityStream.com and sign up. Also, of our more than 2,000 titles, about a third of them are short-form titles of 15 minutes or less. Those are digestible bits that millennials are consuming. We’ll launch soon a modern newsmagazine series that will feature nine-minute segments on the topics of the day, like “what is blockchain?” Most people don’t know exactly what that is. I think things like that attract millennials.

CuriosityStream, the factual streaming service launched by Discovery founder John Hendricks, has raised about $140 million in a private placement offering to fund its next stage of growth.

Hendricks launched CuriosityStream in 2015. The service offers fact-based programming, documentaries and series for a monthly fee and is available on most devices and platforms worldwide, available to watch anytime, anywhere, without commercial interruption.

“This is an important step in a significant effort to connect CuriosityStream with viewers around the world,” said CuriosityStream CEO Clint Stinchcomb in a press release. “Hundreds of millions of people globally are migrating to on demand television and entertainment. We are in the middle of a seismic shift in consumer behavior, and this funding will accelerate the dynamic growth we achieved in the last 12 months.”

Related: TCA2019: John Hendricks Predicts SVOD Streaming Wars This Year 

Stifel Investment Banking acted as sole placement agent. New investors include Blum Capital Ventures and TimesSquare Capital Management.

CuriosityStream said it will use the proceeds of the offering, in addition to its other revenue sources, to boost spending on factual programming, drive technological advancement in content discovery, and to market the service globally.

Related: CuriosityStream Goes Back to the Future 

The service reached 1 million paying subscribers at the end of 2018, and now has library content with more than 2,000 titles. By the end of this year, CuriosityStream expects its viewers will be able to choose from more than 3,000 titles including more exclusive originals available in 4K.

High-level exec shifts are underway at CuriosityStream, the subscription VOD service focused on documentaries and other fact-based content launched in March 2015 by Discovery Communications founder and industry legend John Hendricks.

RELATED: Curious Behavior

Among the moves, Clint Stinchcomb has been appointed president and CEO of CuriosityStream, tasked with leading the service’s next phase of growth. 

Former president and CEO Elizabeth Hendricks North, and daughter of CuriosityStream founder and executive chairman John Hendricks, will now serve as president of Curiosity Studios, a unit focus on original programming that has already developed series such as Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places, David Attenborough’s Light On Earth, Deep Time History, DIGITS, Bronze Age, Prescription: Nutrition and Space Probes.

Stinchcomb, an industry vet late of Discovery and a founder and former CEO of PokerCentral, joined CuriosityStream in 2017 as chief distribution officer, and now reports to John Hendricks.

CuriosityStream has not announced subscriber numbers. In addition to selling the service as a standalone subscription offering, CuriosityStream has also signed on several distribution partners, including Dish Network, the National Cable Television Cooperative, Comcast, Cox Communications, Layer3 TV (now part of T-Mobile), Sling TV, Amazon Channels, and VRV, the Ellation-owned SVOD aggregation and bundling service.

RELATED: CuriosityStream Connects With Dish

With the service now launched with a solid slate of original and licensed programming, Stinchcomb said his top priority in the new role is to drive subscriber acquisition both in the U.S. and abroad.

“We’re playing a global game,” he said. “The appetite for factual programing is strong everywhere”

Though CuriosityStream’s subscriber base is currently weighted to the U.S., Stinchcomb hinted that it could shift more heavily to the international side in the coming months as the service refines that part of its sales and distribution strategy.

“I think you’ll see us play more offense in this next phase – more partnerships, more talent, aligned both on the screen and the business side,” Stinchcomb said, adding that what’s being done in the short term will build toward John Hendricks’s long-term vision for the service.

The intention, he added, is to get to a point where CuriosityStream is spending more than $100 million a year on programming and more than $100 million on marketing. “To get to that point, we’ll need tremendous subscription growth,” Stinchcomb explained.

He also stressed that CuriosityStream will continue to focus on the subscription model, but allowed that the service might also explore “light sponsorship” opportunities whereby a finite number of blue-chip sponsors help to introduce certain programming.

“We’ll look to diversify our revenue stack over time,” he said, but stressed that the commitment to viewers and partners is that CuriosityStream’s programs will continue to run commercial-free.

Stinchcomb’s exec team includes Tia Cudahy, COO; Peter North, chief digital advisor; Steve Burns, chief content officer; Colleen Slear, CFO; Adeline Cassin, chief marketing officer; Andre Silva, chief technology officer; and Carrie Hurlburt, chief creative officer.

“As CuriosityStream accelerates its growth through direct-to-consumer streaming and through our expanding group of domestic and international distributors, I can think of no one more experienced and talented to lead the organization as CEO than Clint Stinchcomb,” John Hendricks said in a statement. “Clint fully embraces the brand content mission, and with a vast skill set, he is uniquely positioned to build a top-tier next-generation media powerhouse in factual entertainment.”

“Elizabeth was exactly the right person to join her father in taking his vision of the next revolution in television and building it, from the ground up, into what the company is today,” Stinchcomb added in a statement. “Her deep, personal commitment to CuriosityStream’s core mission to ignite curiosity and wonder about the world and beyond shows in every decision made about the development and growth of the platform. Her passion for producing the blue-chip programming that sets CuriosityStream apart is going to propel Curiosity Studios into its next phase of content creation.”

Poker Central is making a big bet on social media as the startup linear TV channel seeks out new ways to connect with card players and enthusiasts who tend to skew into that hard-to-reach millennials crowd.

One big card it’s playing is a channel on Twitch, the popular over-the-top live streaming service now owned by Amazon, and a new interactive show starring professional player Maria Ho, who has accumulated about $2.6 million in poker tournament earnings. The live show, called Poker Central Live With Maria Ho, is being offered three times a week, with each show running about five hours in length. Poker Central is announcing specific airdates on its website and the Twitch channel itself.

The Twitch offering is viewed as an OTT complement to the 24/7 Poker Central channel, which debuted on Oct. 1. (Distribution partners had not been announced at press time.)

The Twitch channel is also one component of Poker Central’s broader social-media strategy, which also includes a presence on Facebook, which had 274,976 “likes” as of last week. Its Twitter account (@PokerCentral_) has more than 16,700 followers.

MAKING A ‘POKER FACE’

In concert with this week’s network launch, Poker Central is also holding a “Poker Faces” contest on social media whereby viewers can upload their poker face for a chance to win one of three trips to the Aria in Las Vegas and for a private lesson with one of the pros.

Each month, one of the network’s three professional poker player partners — Daniel Negreanu, Antonio Esfandiari or Phil Hellmuth — will act as judge and provide the winner with his or her lesson.

That’s all part and parcel of a plan to connect with younger viewers in places they frequent. “We know there’s a strong millennial audience interest in poker,” Clint Stinchcomb, CEO of Poker Central (and a former Discovery Networks executive), said.

He said Poker Central knew it was onto something with Twitch following a summer trial on the platform of the Super High Roller Cash Game ($250,000 buy-in).

“Millennials came to Twitch and participated aggressively,” Stinchcomb said, noting that the event generated 1.5 million unique in a bare-bones offering that didn’t include elements such as onscreen graphics and a view of the players’ hole cards.

“Twitch, for us, is about promotion,” Stinchcomb said, noting that Poker Central will also use the platform to pump in clips from the primary network, which will start off with about 2,000 hours of content, spanning categories such as tournament programming; instructional programming, news and highlights; player bios and documentaries; and poker-themed films. Poker Central’s primetime slate will include shows and series such as Super High Roller Cash Game, Heads Up Grand Slam, Poker After Dark, Doubles Poker Championship, Face the Ace and 100 Greatest Poker Moments, among others.

SOCIAL PROMO POWER

Stinchcomb is also a fan of using mobile live streaming platforms such as Periscope and Meerkat to provide an additional social-media vehicle for Poker Central. For instance, poker pros, many of whom have huge followings on social media, can use those platforms to promote upcoming telecasts.

Don’t expect to see Poker Central follow in the footsteps of CBS, HBO and Showtime and sell its primary service over-the-top, though.

“We’re not in the business of going direct to the consumer,” Stinchcomb said. “I’m not a huge fan of the direct-to-consumer business, personally … We’re focused on providing what meets the need of today’s distributor.”

Former Discovery Communications executive Clint Stinchcomb is looking to deal operators a strong multiplatform hand with Poker Central.

Launching Oct. 1, the poker-themed independent network is looking to capitalize on the popular game played by more than 50 million consumers in the U.S. and more than 100 million people around the world.

With the continued growth of casinos around the U.S., the explosion of online gaming and poker’s global popularity Stinchcomb said the network’s timing is perfect.

“It’s become more mainstream than it’s been in the past,” he said.

Poker Central, which will launch as a linear channel and a Web-based service simultaneously, will offer 2,000 hours of programming split into five categories: tournament programming; instructional programming, news and highlights; entertainment, including biographies, documentaries and poker-themed films targeted to men 18-34, according to Stinchcomb, the network’s CEO.

But neither the linear channel nor the website will offer any poker gaming or betting content, adding the service is “purely for entertainment.”

While a number of sports networks carry poker programming, including ESPN (World Series of Poker) and Fox Sports Net (World Poker Tour), Stichcomb said no outlet provides poker coverage around the clock.

“If you look at those networks, poker is less than 2% of the content they offer,” Stinchcomb said. “Actually having World Series of Poker on ESPN is good for the category, but there’s plenty of space for a 24-hour network on poker.”

Stinchcomb said Poker Central is talking to distributors about basic carriage and not sports-tier distribution. He expects the network to be in front of 50 million global households within six months of launch.

“There’s a reset going on in the traditional MVPD business, and if you can provide distributors with a proposition that checks several boxes with a broad scope of [distribution] rights, then I think we can provide value to distributors,” he said. “People still consume linear, so for the OTT providers we can offer our linear service.”

The network has already lined up several key advertisers, he added, although he would not reveal specific figures.

Katz Television Media Group vice president and director of content strategy Bill Carroll said a poker-themed channel with a well-defined brand targeting young male viewers has an opportunity to break through the clutter.

“Poker shows have continued to be an integral part of many of the sports cable networks,” Carroll said. “I have to believe that since they haven’t disappeared that they indeed have an audience. Whether that audience can be extrapolated to a 24-hour channel remains to be seen.”