Frndly TV, the low-priced, family-oriented streaming service, said it was adding Bounce to its lineup.

At the same time, it said factual programming service CuriosityStream would no longer be available on the platform.

Frndly TV said it was “refining our channel lineup.”

Bounce is part of the E.W. Scripps Co. Frndly TV already carries Scripps channels including Ion, Ion Mystery, Grit, Laff and Court TV.

CuriosityStream Inc. saw its Nasdaq price crater to an all-time low Monday, despite a 140% Q4 revenue increase to $27.3 million, as well as the addition of 3 million subscribers to a base that has reached 23 million. 

The company said it will soon raise prices, but didn't say when or by how much. 

"We think we have a lot of pricing power in light of our low churn rates," CuriosityStream CEO Clint Stinchcomb told equity analysts during the company's Q4 call last week. 

CuriosityStream offers an HD-only version of its documentary, science and nature-focused SVOD service for $2.99 a month, or $19.99 for a full year. A 4K iteration is priced at $9.99 a month and $69.99 for a full year. That version bundles in Tastemade+, SommTV, Topic, One Day University and Nebula.

“We believe we are nearing the right time to better align the value we bring to our subscribers with the price of our subscription plan,’ Stinchcomb added. “Even if our most popular annual plan pricing were to increase to $30 per year, it would still represent tremendous value.”

In addition to maximizing profits for its core SVOD offering, CuriosityStream has made inroads into ad-supported streaming of late. Last week, it announced the launch of its first FAST channel, positioning it on LG smart TVs. 

"With the content that we have, it's not a difficult business to get into," Stinchcomb said. "There's are hundreds of FAST channels today and some are heavily consumed and some are not. But it was not a hard lift for us."

CuriosityStream said its title selection has now surpassed 10,000. 

CuriosityStream continues to look for ways to broaden its reach beyond its core SVOD offering.

On Monday, the company announced a new free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel just for LG smart TVs. 

Curiosity Now will run on LG TV 4.0 and newer model smart TV models. The FAST runs on channel 277 on the LG Channels guide.

“We are excited to introduce the Curiosity Now streaming channel to the LG Channel platform and bring a sampling of our family-friendly, factual entertainment programming to LG’s highly engaged user base,” said Brandon Fong, senior VP of partnerships and distribution for Curiosity. “LG customers will have more ways to interact with Curiosity’s deep library of content and discover some of the best programming across nature, history, science, and travel.”

CuriosityStream, which reports Q4/full-2021 earnings on Thursday, has seen its subscription video-on-demand platform stagnate in recent quarters at around 20 million users. ■

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. ■

CuriosityStream reported what appeared to be stalled subscriber growth for the third quarter, describing the same 20 million customer count it touted back in August for Q2. 

But the "factual" streaming company beat analysts' consensus forecasts for Q3 revenue, reporting a 114% year-over-year uptick to $18.7 million. Revenue was also up sequentially more than 22% over Q2. 

Also read: CuriosityStream Adds Whopping 4 Million Subscribers in Q2 Following Deal with Germany's Spiegel TV

"The sequential improvement in [average revenue per user] was driven by a lower percentage of subscribers on promotional pricing plans," said CuriosityStream CEO Clint Stinchcomb during Tuesday's Q3 earnings call with equity analysts. 

Stinchcomb also said that CuriosityStream expects to meet or surpass full-year revenue guidance of $71 million. 

CuriosityStream's overall operating expenses were about $17.4 million compared with $12.1 million in the third quarter of 2020. Its Q3 EBITDA loss of $8 million compared to an EBITDA loss of $6.7 million last year.

Meanwhile, despite the stagnant customer growth in the third quarter, CuriosityStream's subscriber base is still 43% larger than it was a year ago. 

Redbox, making the transition to streaming from its kiosk-based DVD rental business, said it reached an agreement to distribute Curiosity Inc factual content on Redbox’s ad supported VOD and free ad supported streaming services.

Redbox said it also agreed to promote Curiosity’s subscription streaming service, Curiosity Stream, and that Curiosity Stream will be offered when Redbox launches SVOD channels in its streaming app in 2022. 

Also Read: Redbox Using FreeWheel Technology To Build Streaming Ad Business

“Our customers will appreciate the high-quality content delivered by Curiosity Stream and we’re excited to work with them to grow their viewership through distribution of their service on the Redbox app,” said Jason Kwong, chief strategy and digital officer, Redbox.

Also Read: Curiosity Strikes Carriage Deal With FuboTV

“We are thrilled to partner with Redbox as they continue to expand their video streaming offerings,” said Brandon Fong, senior VP of partnerships and distribution for Curiosity. “As the leading factual entertainment service, Curiosity is ideally positioned to deliver affordable, high value entertainment to Redbox customers who want to know more about the world around them.”

Curiosity Inc,, the fact-based streaming service pioneered by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks, said Monday that it has reached a multi-year carriage agreement with fuboTV for its linear Curiosity Channel and its Curiosity Stream VOD service in the U.S. and Canada.

The linear channel will be available to U.S. subscribers of fuboTV’s Extra package, which includes about 40 channels. The Curiosity Channel offers an extensive range of titles, including many in 4K, that focus on nature, science and history topics as well as technology, adventure, travel and space exploration.

“We are delighted to be part of the fuboTV family and contribute to their customer-centric OTT streaming service,” Curiosity’s SVP of partnerships and distribution  Brandon Fong said in a press release. “As the leading factual entertainment service, Curiosity is well positioned to amplify fuboTV's value proposition to cord cutters and consumers who want to know more about the world around them."

The fuboTV deal comes shortly after Curiosity said it reached about 20 million customers in Q2, an increase of 4 million subscribers.  In July, the company said it reached a broad pact with German production company Spiegel TV, which is expected to expand its reach in German-speaking Europe. 

“The addition of Curiosity’s programming, which is renowned for its incredible quality and superior production, will appeal to fuboTV subscribers of all ages,” fuboTV SVP content, strategy and acquisition Ben Grad said in a press release.“Delivering an unsurpassed content experience has been a focus for fuboTV since we first launched 4K streams three years ago. Curiosity’s content portfolio, which includes thousands of premium non-fiction titles, is a perfect fit.”

Hendricks launched CuriosityStream about six years ago as a streaming service focused on fact-based programming.  Earlier this month Curiosity rebranded as Curiosity Inc. Curiosity Stream is still the flagship global SVOD service, available in 175 countries (but now two words instead of one); while Curiosity Channel is a linear service available via select services in the US, India, Sweden, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and others. Curiosity Studios oversees the original films, shows and series, including the Emmy-nominated series Secrets of the Solar System, as well as Doug to the Rescue; Rescued Chimpanzees of the Congo with Jane Goodall; and Engineering the Future. In May the company made its first acquisition, purchasing One Day University, https://www.onedayu.com/ a service that provides lectures and talks from top professors.

CuriosityStream now has more digital reach than the legacy business of founder John Hendricks, Discovery Inc. 

The niche subscription video service focused on nature documentaries and other "factual" programming reached 20 million subscribers in the second quarter, adding a whopping 4 million customers during the three month period alone. 

During its own Q2 earnings report in July, Discovery said it has 18 million direct-to-consumer customers worldwide. 

The steep CuriosityStream growth followed a broad-reaching agreement with Germany's Spiegel TV, which was announced last month. 

"The majority [of the new subscribers] are from the Spiegel agreement that we entered into," confirmed CuriosityStream CEO Clint Stinchcomb.

Beyond the customer additions, also notable is CuriosityStream's low churn, which Stinchcomb said is in the single digits. 

"As of the end of May, we had retained 72% of subscribers who joined our service during the height of the pandemic in April 2020. You have Netflix 71%, Disney 55%, Hulu 52%, HBO Max 41% and Apple TV Plus 17%," he told investors. 

CuriosityStream’s Q2 revenue grew 27% to $15.3 million. The company's stock price has increased more than 20% since Tuesday. 

CuriosityStream said it has struck a deal with German production company Spiegel TV that will boost its footprint in that country, adding hundreds of hours of German-dubbed programming to the SVOD service, as well as creating a rebranded linear channel in German-speaking Europe. 

CuriosityStream already has a presence in Germany. As part of the deal, Spiegel TV will rebrand its Spiegel TV Wissen, which offers content focused on society, culture, technology, nature and the environment, under the Curiosity name for viewers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. CuriosityStream, Spiegel TV and its subsidiary Autentic will contribute content to the new Curiosity Channel, which will continue to be operated by the current management team, led by Patrick Hoerl from Autentic and Michael Kloft from Spiegel TV.

“This is a milestone moment for CuriosityStream, demonstrating our commitment to expanding globally through strategic distribution partnerships,” CuriosityStream CEO Clint Stinchcomb said in a press release. “Germany is already our top non-English-speaking market, and we’re delighted to join Spiegel TV and Autentic in introducing the Curiosity brand to millions more viewers and subscribers. I am confident our shared commitment to quality, factual content will create even stronger growth in German-speaking territories and throughout the world.”

Spiegel TV is a subsidiary of the German news magazine Der Spiegel and was formed in 1988. Headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, Spiegel TV has more than 140 employees and produces the most successful political news magazine show on German private TV.

“This partnership is all about delivering the best possible local and international factual content to the German speaking market. Spiegel TV, Autentic, and Curiosity are teaming up to serve the proven appetite for original and unique factual shows in the German speaking market, featuring one of the most discerning audiences in the world,” Kloft said in a press release

CuriosityStream said it finished the year with 15 million subscribers, up 50% from 2019, as full year revenue at the factual streaming service more than doubled to $39.6 million. 

Fourth quarter revenue at CuriosityStream was $11.4 million, compared to $6.7 million in the prior year. Net loss was slightly higher at $15.7 million in the period, compared to a loss of $14.6 million in the prior year. 

CuriosityStream went public in October after being purchased by special purpose acquisitions company (SPAC) Software Acquisition Corp. in a deal that valued the streaming service at about $331 million. Its stock, traded under the symbol “CURI,” closed at $16.47 each on March 23, down 60 cents each or 3.5%. Shares were up by 11 cents each in after-hours trading to $16.58.

Also Read: CuriosityStream Looks Ahead 

Full year revenue more than doubled from $18 million to $39.6 million, while the net loss for the year improved to $38.6 million, compared to a loss of $42.5 million in 2019. The company said it expects 2021 revenue to rise by about 80% to at least $71 million. 

“We had a strong 2020, ending the year with more than double our 2019 revenue with approximately 15 million subscribers,” CEO Clint Stinchcomb said in a press release. “More recently, we raised approximately $100 million in a follow-on offering completed in February of this year. We enter 2021 with a strong balance sheet, one of the largest libraries of factual content in the world and a world-class team of experienced media executives executing strongly against our plans. I couldn’t be prouder of what we accomplished in 2020, and I look forward to 2021.”

CuriosityStream said it has named industry veteran Brandon Fong as SVP and head of North American distribution, where he will focus on driving expansion of its factual entertainment brand and streaming service across markets. 

Fong joins CuriosityStream after stints at several top streaming and entertainment brands. Most recently he was SVP of digital business development at STX Entertainment, responsible for distribution and monetization efforts as well as the launch of new STX-branded franchises on social networks, OTT platforms and MVPDs. Prior to that, Fong was vice president, video business development, for Time, Inc., and held similar roles at the Game Show Network and Starz Entertainment.

“Brandon is a strategic leader with deep experience and relationships in the television and streaming ecosystem as well as a solid track record of building new revenue streams in subscription and partnership environments,” CuriosityStream chief revenue officer and EVP of strategy, business development and partnerships Bill Goodwyn said in a press release. “Brandon will be instrumental in helping to identify valuable new opportunities to build upon CuriosityStream’s fast-growing audience base as well as delivering and enhancing value for our partners’ customers and stakeholders.”

At CuriosityStream, Fong will secure and negotiate new distribution deals and develop strategic business relationships as well as strengthen existing partnerships.

“As an independent, pure-play factual streaming brand, CuriosityStream is perfectly positioned to accelerate its trademark business based on audience demand and partners’ needs,” Fong said in the press release. “I’m honored to join the stellar CuriosityStream team during such a pivotal time for the company and help to drive continued growth, by leveraging CuriosityStream’s unrivaled library of documentary films and series to deliver the best entertainment experience to current and new viewers across North America.” 

At its investor day Wednesday, Discovery claimed its new direct-to-consumer service Discovery Plus would be the only SVOD service focus on non-fiction programming, but analyst Todd Juenger of Sanford C. Bernstein noted that the programmer may have overlooked something--and someone--quite significant.

“They are forgetting CuriosityStream,” Juenger said in a research note.

CuriosityStream was started by someone Discovery and its CEO David Zaslav ought to be familiar with: Discovery founder John Hendricks. 

Related: Discovery Plus to Explore Challenging SVOD Biz with Lofty 70 Million Subscriber Goal

“Listening to Discovery be completely dismissive of CuriosityStream, by omission, we couldn't help but remember the infamous words of the CEO of Time Warner Inc., who once likened Netflix to the Albanian Army ('Is the Albanian Army going to take over the world?')," Juenger said.

In a research note late Wednesday, Juenger noted that many current streaming services provide plenty of non-fiction programming. He ticked off Netflix with Tiger King. Disney Plus with its National Geographic brand. Apple Plus has “a relatively sizable amount of factual programming,” he said, adding “and last but not least there is YouTube, the #1 video service in the world.” 

With that much non-scripted content already available, “how many consumers care so much about unscripted/factual that they will sign up to an additional, incremental SVOD service specifically for that purpose,” Juenger asked.

In its presentation, Discovery, unlike many other media companies that have held investor days to roll out their streaming plans, didn’t venture an estimate of how many subscribers Discovery Plus would have even as part of a five-year plan. Or when it might break even.

When Disney provided those numbers, it’s stock jumped. 

“Having not provided such guidance, we don't expect the market will capitalize Discovery's DTC similarly,” Juenger said. “If management doesn't have enough confidence to provide a guidance range, then why should the public markets choose their own subs/arpu/revenue expectation and price it into the stock, today? “

Discovery shares did in fact rise 2.51% on Wednesday.

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 said it has reached a distribution deal with Tata Sky, India’s largest content distribution and pay TV platform.

CuriosityStream will be available via Tata Sky Binge, which can be accessed on the Tata Sky Binge+ Smart set top box and on the Amazon Fire TV Stick-Tata Sky Edition. Tata Sky Binge aggregates the premium OTT and catch-up TV content under a single interface and subscription.

Curiosity Stream will also be available as a linear service on television to Tata Sky DTH subscribers with an option to view live and catch-up content on-the-go via the Tata Sky Mobile app, beginning Nov. 17.

“CuriosityStream shares Tata Sky’s commitment to bringing viewers the highest quality content wherever and whenever they want to experience new adventures and discover the world’s most fascinating events, people, and places,” said Bakori Davis, managing director and head of International Distribution for CuriosityStream in a press release. “We look forward to partnering with Tata Sky to introduce CuriosityStream to new viewers throughout India and to grow our company’s reach in this dynamic media market.”

The partnership will enable Tata Sky subscribers to enjoy  exclusive originals, series and features like Deep Ocean Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, Dragons & Damsels Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places, Mumbai Railway, Amazing Dinoworld and Age of Big Cats among others.

“CuriosityStream has thousands of informative and thought-provoking documentaries covering the realms of science, history, space, technology and many such subjects that have an enviable fan following in India,” said Tata Sky chief commercial and content officer Pallavi Puri in a press release. “This kind of a coveted library adds another dimension to our content catalogue and we are very proud of this association.”

CuriosityStream’s first day as a public company had its ups and downs, with the stock fluctuating between $10.50 and $12.01 during the trading day, before closing at $11.20 each, a gain of about $1 per share. 

CuriosityStream agreed to merge with special purpose acquisition company Software Acquisition Group in August in a deal that valued the fact-based programmer at about $331 million. SAG was already trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol “SAQN,” peaking at $10.44 per share. The CuriosityStream deal closed on Oct. 12 and the stock began trading under its new symbol (CURI) on Oct. 15.

With about 13 million customers in 175 countries, CuriosityStream will be the only pure-play publicly traded factual content company, and it has said it would use its new currency to fund growth initiatives. Those include increased marketing efforts and possibly future M&A.

The service also plans to expand its programming library, currently consisting of more than 3,000 titles, including over 900 original shows. The company has said it plans to grow its streaming library to more than 11,000 premium factual titles within five years. 

The company continues to be led by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks, its chairman and largest shareholder, and CEO Clint Stinchcomb.  

At its Oct.15 closing price, CuriosityStream has a market capitalization of about $425 million, according to the NASDAQ website. Share volume on its first day of trading was 450,528 shares.

“Investors will have the unique opportunity to capitalize on a ‘pure-play’ streaming media service that is not burdened with legacy linear TV assets in cable and broadcasting,” Hendricks said in a statement. “With our public debut, CuriosityStream will continue to offer compelling direct-to-consumer offers and innovative distribution models that provide curious viewers around the world with content that informs, enchants and inspires.” 

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

Media companies looking to raise money over the past several years had a few options: banks, private equity or going public. The latter, often the most lucrative, also came with the headaches of road shows, high fees from underwriters and the risk that their stock could be priced well below its owners’ idea of value. In the past year, though, media companies have begun to look toward an old financing vehicle, special purpose acquisition companies [SPACs], which offer a faster path to the public markets and, more importantly, the cash they need.

SPACs came on the scene in the 1990s and were thought of as a last resort for companies that couldn’t raise money any other way. With more than 100 SPACs created so far in 2020, raising nearly $44 billion, they’re becoming a preferred way to raise money quickly. 

In the content space, the most prominent SPAC target is CuriosityStream, the documentary streaming service started by Discovery Inc. founder John Hendricks. CuriosityStream agreed in August to a deal with SPAC Software Acquisition Group (SAG), giving the programmer an enterprise value of about $331 million and an equity value of $512 million. 

Other content companies are taking a look at the financing vehicle. DAZN, the streaming sports service headed by former ESPN chief John Skipper, said in August it would try to raise $1 billion, partly through a SPAC. Quibi, headed by former DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, also has been said to be investigating its strategic options, including possibly going public through a SPAC. Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that movie studio Lionsgate Entertainment was looking at potentially spinning off Starz to a SPAC, although no deal has been made yet.

What’s a SPAC Anyway?

On the surface, SPACs appear to be a no-brainer for investors. Essentially, a SPAC assembles a management team and sells stock — usually at about $10 per share — to raise money for future acquisitions. Once the money is raised, about 10% goes to the underwriter and the remaining amount is put in escrow. Once an acquisition is made — for at least 80% of the money raised — SPAC management receives 20% of the profits and investors get ownership in the acquired company.

Investors are betting that a strong management team will not only find a compelling property, but will manage it well and grow the stock price. SPAC management has a fixed time frame to seal a deal, usually 18 to 24 months, or it must return the money raised to investors. So, as long as an investor gets in early — and doesn’t pay more than the initial public offering price for the stock — they recoup all or most of their investment.

For the companies that are acquired, SPACs are an attractive way to go public without having to go through the hassles of an IPO. Often they can raise more money than they would through a traditional IPO, although companies that raise money through SPACs could be considered to be riskier.

So why are SPACs suddenly becoming so popular? According to those who have formed them, it’s a combination of simplicity — there is no need for the face-to-face road shows required in an IPO, a big plus in the COVID-19 era — and more accurate valuations.

Curious About SPACs

CuriosityStream’s decision to essentially be acquired by a SPAC was a bit of a surprise in August, but president and CEO Clint Stinchcomb said the company carefully evaluated its options when looking to take the next step. “What we liked about it compared to an IPO, it’s a faster process,” Stinchcomb said, adding that while there is due diligence, it’s less stringent than an IPO and puts less strain on the management team. “Next is more certainty around pricing as you go to market than there is with an IPO.

“Another big component is with a SPAC, you can use forward-looking documents,” Stinchcomb added. “For a company like ours that is high-growth, early-stage, it’s helpful to share with investors what the future looks like.” 

Companies looking to go the SPAC route have to do their homework, too, Stinchcomb said. “You have to sift through how big they are, how much money they raised, what they think they can bring to the deal,” he said. “In working with SAG, they had $150 million, which we thought was the right size for us. It enabled us to pump a lot into programming and marketing and get to cash-flow positivity in the not-too-distant future.”

The deal appealed to the company on a personal level as well, Stinchcomb added. SAG chairman Jonathan Huberman has a strong background in technology, and as former CEO of Ooyala, a video workflow company that has worked with several streaming companies, Huberman was familiar with CuriosityStream and its business. 

“He knew of us, we knew of him, we had people in common that we knew, both professionally and secondarily and even personally,” Stinchcomb said. “We talked to a lot of SPACs and we really liked Jon and his partner, Mike Nikzad, and their shared vision for what we all thought was possible for CuriosityStream.” 

The proceeds from the SAG deal will be mostly used for programming and marketing. CuriosityStream has said it wants to grow its content library from about 3,000 tiles to 12,000 in the next five-plus years. 

The transaction also creates a deal currency in the SAG stock — which will trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol “CURI” after the deal closes, expected in Q4 — for both future M&A and to give early CuriosityStream investors a way to monetize their stakes. 

“The influx of capital provides us with the opportunity to be flexible as it relates to M&A, and we will be,” Stinchcomb added. “We’re heavily focused on building the business organically and we’re quite confident in considerable organic growth. We’re monetizing content right now across five business lines, streaming at our core. Obviously, we have a growing and robust bundled distribution business with cable, direct-to-home and wireless providers around the world, we have a corporate association partnership business, an advertising and sponsorship business and we have a program-sales business.

“We’ll grow aggressively organically,” Stinchcomb added. “Where there are inorganic opportunities we’ll take advantage of those as well.”

But There’s a Risk

While they represent a quicker way to raise cash for companies, SPACs are not risk-free. Although the odds for a SPAC finding a target company have risen over the years — last year about 89% of SPACs found a company to invest in — the shares can fluctuate wildly even after a deal is made. And sometimes making a deal isn’t enough.

For example, in 2016, media investor Haim Saban raised about $200 million through a SPAC, Saban Capital Acquisition, and agreed to merge with camera maker Panavision and Canadian production house Sim International in September 2018 in a deal valued at $622 million. But they scrapped the deal in February 2019 because of delays caused by a government shutdown and a volatile stock market. Saban Capital Acquisition was shut down soon thereafter.

Others have launched successful SPACs. Eagle Investment Partners has launched six since 2011, raising $3 billion for targets as diverse as an Indian satellite-TV company to sports-betting behemoth DraftKings. Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson raised about $125 million through RLJ Acquisitions in 2011, merging with Image Entertainment and Acorn Media Group, forming RLJ Entertainment a year later. RLJ Entertainment was sold to AMC Networks in 2018.

In August, Trine Acquisition, a SPAC created by cable legend Leo J. Hindery Jr. in 2019, agreed to purchase 3D printer technology company Desktop Metal in a deal that values the company at $2.5 billion. Trine had raised about $260 million through its IPO.

But those can be the exception. According to Renaissance Capital, since 2015, only 89 of the 223 SPAC IPOs completed mergers and had taken a company public. During that period, SPAC shares have lost an average of 18.8% and had a median return of -36.1%, compared to the average aftermarket return of 37.2% for traditional IPOs since 2015.

The numbers appear to have gotten better in the past two years, especially after a company finds a target. According to SPACInsider, the average return on investment for SPACs that announced an acquisition between 2018 and 2020 was 47.6%.

According to SPAC Analytics, about 136 SPACs are currently looking for deals, with gross proceeds of $47 billion, and 228 have completed an acquisition, with gross proceeds of about $40 billion.  

On Sept. 24 Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Jay Clayton told CNBC the agency will take a closer look at SPACs. “In some ways, it's very healthy; it actually creates competition around the way we distribute shares widely to the public market,” Clayton said. “And competition to the IPO process is probably a good thing. But for good competition and good decision-making, you need good information,” he said, adding that the agency would particularly focus on “incentives and compensation to SPAC sponsors.”

Clayton’s comments came weeks after electric truck maker Nikola, which went public through a SPAC deal earlier this year, fell under scrutiny after allegations that it has misled investors. 

Behind Every Dark Cloud … 

Despite that added scrutiny — and it should be noted that none of the companies currently involved in SPAC media deals are accused of wrongdoing — SPACs continue to flourish, and for some, could be the vehicle of choice for content companies seeking funding. 

Accurate valuations are a key component of the popularity of SPACs, said former MGM chairman Harry Sloan, who with ex-CBS Entertainment chief Jeff Sagansky has launched six through Eagle Investment Partners. Sloan and Sagansky’s latest SPAC — Flying Eagle Acquisitions — purchased mobile gaming company Skillz in September in a deal that values the company at $3.5 billion. In 2019, its Double Eagle Acquisitions SPAC raised $425 million, purchasing sports gaming giant DraftKings and SBTech in a deal that valued both companies at $3.3 billion.

Sloan doesn’t believe that SPACs are better than IPOs, but in certain situations they make a lot of sense. “If you have a company with no comps that’s a new business and you don't know how to value it, the SPAC process gives you an opportunity to have several meetings with the investors,” Sloan said. “They figure out what the valuation should be and they can figure out whether they want to be involved.”

Do they ever want to be involved: According to Eagle Investments, when Diamond
Eagle Acquisitions finished its merger with DraftKings, it had 27,000 retail investors.

Not for Everyone

SPACs haven’t always enjoyed the greatest of reputations. In the past, SPACs, also known as “blank check”  companies, had a reputation for not doing deals, and only making money for the people who formed them, not investors. Companies targeted by SPACs were often dismissed as operations that couldn’t muster funding in any other way.

But changes in the structure over the past few years — primarily the requirement that the money raised be held in escrow, where it can gain interest while the principals look for acquisition targets — has changed the way people look at SPACs. In addition, SPACs began attracting more executives with actual experience in the industries they targeted.

At the same time, name-brand investment banks began investing in SPACs, like UBS, Barclays, Credit Suisse and others, with some even starting their own. In the past, SPAC investors were mainly boutique bankers.

Around the same time, the quality of the companies that merged with SPACs began to improve as well. Virgin Galactic, billionaire Richard Branson’s space-tourism venture, merged with a SPAC in 2019, raising about $800 million. Hedge-fund legend Bill Ackman put his imprimatur on the structure in July, launching Pershing Square Tontine and raising $4 billion, the most ever for a SPAC, which helped further spur interest.   

In August, Oakland A’s VP of baseball operations Billy Beane (of Moneyball
fame) teamed up with former Goldman Sachs investment banker and YES Network architect Gerry Cardinale. They raised $575 million in a
SPAC called RedBall Acquisition and are reportedly looking to purchase an English Premier League soccer team. 

“These were never SPAC targets in the past,” said Gavin Cuneo, who with his father, corporate turnaround specialist Peter Cuneo, formed CIIG Merger Corp., a SPAC that raised about $260 million in December. “We’re able to consider all different types of opportunities here, and it’s also an attractive solution for targets now, whereas in the past it was looked upon as a second-tier option for them. Now, there’s plenty of tremendous companies out there looking for SPAC partners, so the opportunity of the deal set and the quality of the companies is very high.”

The quality level of executives running the SPACs is also improving. In addition to Sloan and Sagansky, who have well-respected track records in the media business, the Cuneos have equally strong reputations. Gavin Cuneo is a former investment banker and was chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Valiant Entertainment, which was sold to DMG Entertainment in 2018. Peter Cuneo has a long reputation for righting troubled companies throughout his career, including divisions of Black & Decker, Clairol and Remington Products. But he is best known for his work with Marvel Entertainment.  

Peter Cuneo became CEO of Marvel in 1999, just after the comic book icon had emerged from bankruptcy and when, according to reports at the time, the company had about $3 million in the bank and could barely make payroll. After implementing a three-year turnaround plan in which the company switched its focus to licensing its characters for movies, television, video games and consumer products, Marvel got back on its feet and in 2005, launched its own movie studio. In 2009, when Cuneo was vice chairman, Marvel Entertainment was sold to The Walt Disney Co. in 2009 for $4.5 billion.   

He said forming CIIG with his son in late 2019 seemed like a logical next step. “This started for me three to four years ago, when I looked back at the success we had at Marvel and the strategies that I put in place as CEO,” Peter Cuneo said. “I was very surprised at looking around in the industry, media and entertainment, and other than Disney nobody has picked up on those strategies. I thought this would  be a great opportunity to get into this again and use a lot of those strategies that we used back then.”

CIIG still has about 16 months left to find a target and, according to Peter Cuneo, is looking at dozens of companies throughout the Technology, Media and Telecom space. “The entertainment-at home-businesses are particularly attractive right now, location-based entertainment is not,” Peter Cuneo said.

And as the media business moves toward a streaming model, that also presents opportunities for investors, Gavin Cuneo said. “Streaming — we love that theme, it’s one thing we consider in all the deals we are looking at,” he said. “It’s a major trend in the industry. The demand for content is higher than it's ever been and there are more and more streaming players.”

Gavin Cuneo used CuriosityStream as an example, adding that he and his father have known John Hendricks for years and that its deal with Software Acquisition Group is “emblematic of the demand for streaming content today and the attractiveness of it as an investment opportunity.” 

“Everything we’re looking at in the media space, we’re looking to capitalize on this astronomical demand for content,” Cuneo continued. That includes the video space, music (which he said is ripe for a SPAC deal), gaming and sports.

Although many SPACs say they are looking for targets in the technology, media and telecom sectors, actual media deals are hard to find. Outside of CuriosityStream, recent SPAC media deals have been in the sports and gaming industries. While speculation was high that Lionsgate was looking at SPACs to spin off Starz last year — which hasn’t materialized — finding appropriate merger targets within the content arena is for some SPACs, like searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

“Almost all the SPACs are listed as TMT [Technology, Media and Telecom]. Content is something that most of them don’t want,” said FBN Securities media analyst Robert Routh, adding that while investors are interested in broadband distribution assets, available deals are scarce. 

“What is out there that isn’t already owned by the big guys — AT&T,  Verizon, Comcast, Charter or Altice?” Routh said. “What else is there that you could do that is going to make a difference so you can compete against any of those? The answer is not much and very little of that.”

One SPAC executive who asked not to be named agreed that finding media companies to invest in is hard because of the intense consolidation over the past decade. That consolidation wiped out many of the entrepreneurial companies that are often targets of SPAC investors. “Clearly, TMT is the answer,” said the SPAC executive that asked not to be named. “But you’re going to find more tech than ‘M,’ and more ‘M' than ‘T.’”

Adding to the problem is that traditional media doesn’t seem to fit the mold for current SPAC investors. “When you say there have been no media deals, partially that’s because when there are 20 SPACs, there are 20 people to do a deal,” said Enrique Abeyta, a former investment banker, hedge-fund manager and media and SPAC investor who is launching a SPAC-focused newsletter at Empire Financial Research. “I don’t know if we’re going to get to 200, but we very well might. The market is just a lot bigger. The other element is I think the SPAC investors in this latest generation are very focused on growth investments. And as a lifelong media investor, there’s not been a lot of growth in media.” 

Rolling Up Content

Still, with that much money eager to find a home, SPACs could find their way deeper into the media space through more creative means, Routh said. One way would be to roll up content libraries from various studios, production houses or even specific rights for certain content. 

Those rights, especially remake rights, are where the real value lies, according to Aquarius Content CEO Gary Pearl. Pearl bought the remake rights to Venezuelan telenovela Juana la Virgen in 2014 and remade it in America as Jane the Virgin, which ran for six seasons on The CW. Pearl said there is a lot of hidden value in libraries of dead studio labels that could be brought back to life with the right management and an ample cash infusion. 

“I’ve been saying for the last two years that all of this old content is going to be worth more, not less,” Pearl said. “The convention says it’s worth less, and a lot of really smart people are invested in saying it’s worth less. Then, all of a sudden you see Friends and The Office sell for close to half a billion dollars.” 

But why would a studio even consider selling its library when in the current streaming environment, libraries are only growing in value? Access to capital, according to one former programming executive. “It's hard to raise funds right now,” said Denise Denson, former Viacom programming chief and current chief operating officer of Molten, a tech firm that specializes in helping content owners track digital rights. “So people are looking at creative ways. And if it’s making some Sophie’s Choices and giving up some IP, they would probably do it in this market.”

Denson said she has already fielded calls from venture-capital firms looking for introductions to programmers to see what IP they had laying on the shelf, collecting dust. “I didn’t end up doing the intro, but I understood the idea,” Denson said. “They were trying to scrape up any major IP that people were, in this market, willing to let go, probably inexpensively. It’s really buy low and ultimately sell high. These are opportunistic moments.”

By selling remake rights, content creators could be sacrificing the future for short-term gains. But some producers, especially smaller houses, might not have a choice. “I don't think content owners have the leverage right now,” Denson said. “There is a lot of content and it’s a soft market and people are in need. If you're in need, that doesn’t put you in the best position.”

Sometimes, selling remake rights to one show can end up boosting the value of the rest of the library. “You can add value by recreating,” Pearl said. “When it comes to content, some people know that and some don’t. … My show, Jane the Virgin, was actually a Venezuelan title. At the time it was worth $50 million from the library. Because we remade that one show, the library went up to $250 million, 5 times. I don’t participate in that."

A SPAC also could be beneficial to programmers because they may see value in a content creator that others don’t. Though some have criticized the structure as paying too much for some companies in order to satisfy SPAC conditions, a content-focused entity could better exploit those assets.

Pearl remembered The Walt Disney Co.’s purchase of 20th Century Fox programming assets in 2018 for $72.3 billion — won after a hard battle with Comcast — and the entertainment giant’s 2006 buy of Pixar ($7.4 billion) and Marvel ($4.5 billion). 

“They overpaid, in people’s opinions, for things like Marvel and Pixar. But did they?” Pearl asked. “They had a different use for it that other people didn’t have.” 

According to Abeyta, most traditional media deals are more value investments, which SPACs are showing little interest in. But that could evolve, especially as more SPACs get created, because their structure allows companies to do more complex deals than through an IPO. As an example, he said a SPAC could technically roll up libraries from several different studios.

“There’s no way you could IPO that,” Abeyta said. “A SPAC sponsor could say, ‘We love this business plan, let’s do it.’ It’s just really pretty far afield from the mindset of where SPAC sponsors are now.”

Timing also is an issue, Abeyta said, adding that SPAC sponsors have about two years or less to get a deal done. Tying themselves up trying to assemble several different components into a viable transaction could mean missing that deadline. “I think they are just looking for cleaner deals,” Abeyta said. “And most of the opportunity in traditional media is getting your hands dirty.” 

Sloan said there could be some opportunities in what he called “orphaned assets,” smaller parts of bigger media companies that could be combined with a SPAC to help the parent pay down debt. A SPAC, he said, would make more sense for a ViacomCBS or an AT&T than spinning off assets, because the company would get cash from a SPAC deal. But he cautioned that the driving force behind any investment is how good the business truly is. 

 “You can do anything, but you have to go back to the basic premise: It all comes back to the story,” Sloan said. “It can’t be the tail wagging the dog. You have to have a viable story for a viable, interesting new stock. You have to be able pass the who-gives-a-shit test.” 

CuriosityStream, the documentary-focused subscription streaming service created by Discovery Inc. founder John Hendricks, said it has named former Showtime chairman and CEO Matt Blank to its board of directors.

CuriosityStream is set to go public in the fourth quarter, after its deal to merge with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Software Acquisition Group, closes. The SAG deal is valued at about $331 million. 

Blank was chairman and CEO of Showtime for 20 years, stepping down in 2017. During his run the premium network launched such iconic series as Dexter, Ray Donovan, Homeland and Weeds. 

“Matt Blank brings an extraordinary wealth of stunningly successful media experience to the CuriosityStream board of directors,” Hendricks said in a press release. “When Matt took the helm at Showtime, I watched in admiration as he built the pay service over two decades into a leading world force in premium programming with an incredible roster of valuable mega-hits and brand-defining series. All of us at CuriosityStream welcome Matt’s role on our board of directors, where he’ll provide skillful guidance and wise advice in our mission to deliver the absolute best in premium factual entertainment.”

In addition to Blank, the CuriosityStream board consists of Hendricks; Elizabeth Hendricks; president and CEO Clint Stinchcomb; Stifel, Nicolaus vice chairman investment banking Patrick Keeley; Software Acquisition Group chairman and CEO Jonathan Huberman; and Software Acquisition Group VP of acquisitions and director Mike Nikzad.

“Matt was an early champion of the rich global opportunity in streaming blue-chip content to consumers both directly and with distribution partners of scale,” Stinchcomb said in a press release. “I couldn’t be more delighted that Matt has agreed to join our board. As we grow organically and through opportunistic acquisition, Matt’s strategic guidance will be invaluable.”

In addition to his 20 years as Showtime’s chairman, Blank also served as president, chief operating officer and EVP of marketing at the premium network. Before that, he worked at HBO for 12 years in several roles, including SVP of consumer marketing.

"I’ve known John Hendricks for over 30 years and he is truly one of the great media entrepreneurs of our time,” Blank said in a press release. “There is such incredible opportunity for growth in the industry right now and I’m thrilled to join with John and his top-notch team at CuriosityStream to deliver on his core vision to share the best factual entertainment with viewers around the globe.”

Blank currently sits on the board of Cumulus Media, as well as Madison Square Garden Entertainment, and The Cable Center. He also served on the board of the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) for nearly 25 years. He has been inducted into the Cable Television and the Broadcasting and Cable Halls of Fame.

Documentary-focused subscription streaming service CuriosityStream is set to go public.

The SVOD company, created in 2015 by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks and now boasting about 13 million subscribers across 175 countries, is set to merge with “special purpose acquisition company” Software Acquisition Group, which already raised about $150 million with an IPO on the Nasdaq in November.

Visit Next TV to read more stories like this one. 

Hendricks is a virtuoso builder of media businesses, and he has showcased it once again, elegantly, with this deal.

A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) is a company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an initial public offering (IPO) for the purpose of acquiring an existing company, per Investopedia.

Also read: CuriosityStream’s Stinchcomb: ‘Netflix Has Escape Velocity and Will Continue to Grow

So, in practical effect, CuriosityStream is being acquired for $331 million by a company that’s already public, and which makes nothing. The merged company, which will be branded as CuriosityStream, will have an equity value of around $512 million. It’ll have $180 million in cash on hand, and no debt, according to a statement released by the two parties.

CuriosityStream’s existing investors, Hendricks, Blum Capital Ventures and TimesSquare Capital Management, will contribute all of their equity into the combined company

Hendricks will remain chairman of the board. Clint Stinchcomb will remain president and CEO. The company will trade as “CURI” on the Nasdaq.

The deal is detailed in the statement.

“CuriosityStream has the unique advantage of being a ‘pure play’ streaming media service that is not burdened with legacy linear TV assets in cable and broadcasting,” said Hendricks, founder and chairman of CuriosityStream. “We are excited to now have access to the public capital markets to support our growth plans and to over-deliver on our mission to provide content that informs, enchants and inspires.”

Documentary-focused subscription streaming service CuriosityStream is set to go public.

The SVOD company, created in 2015 by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks and now boasting about 13 million subscribers across 175 countries, is set to merge with “special purpose acquisition company” Software Acquisition Group, which already raised about $150 million with an IPO on the Nasdaq in November. 

Hendricks is a virtuoso builder of media businesses. And he has showcased it once again, elegantly, with this deal. 

A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) is a company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an initial public offering (IPO) for the purpose of acquiring an existing company, per Investopedia.

Also read: CuriosityStream’s Stinchcomb: ‘Netflix Has Escape Velocity and Will Continue to Grow

So, in practical effect, CuriosityStream is being acquired for $331 million by a company that’s already public, and which makes nothing. The merged company, which will be branded as CuriosityStream, will have an equity value of around $512 million. It’ll have $180 million in cash on hand, and no debt, according to a statement released by the two parties. 

CuriosityStream’s existing investors, Hendricks, Blum Capital Ventures and TimesSquare Capital Management, will contribute all of their equity into the combined company

Hendricks will remain chairman of the board. Clint Stinchcomb will remain president and CEO. The company will trade as “CURI” on the Nasdaq. 

The deal is detailed in the statement. 

“CuriosityStream has the unique advantage of being a ‘pure play’ streaming media service that is not burdened with legacy linear TV assets in cable and broadcasting,” said Hendricks, founder and chairman of CuriosityStream. “We are excited to now have access to the public capital markets to support our growth plans and to over-deliver on our mission to provide content that informs, enchants and inspires.”

Science-focused streaming service CuriosityStream is adding Litton Entertainment’s Mission Unstoppable to its programming line-up, the two companies said Wednesday. 

Mission Unstoppable is hosted by Miranda Cosgrove, and is produced in partnership with Lyda Hill Philanthropies’ IF/THEN Initiative. The series spotlights women who are role models in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) with the objective of inspiring the next generation.

This agreement is the latest in a building partnership between CuriosityStream and Litton after the service in March 2019 acquired four popular teen-focused series from Litton, including Ocean Mysteries with Jeff Corwin and Rock The Park.

RELATED: CuriosityStream Adds Four Litton Shows

“For many years, John Hendricks, CuriosityStream and Litton have embarked on similar missions to entertain and simultaneously educate worldwide audiences,” Dave Morgan, president and CEO of Litton Entertainment, said in a statement. “CuriosityStream is an excellent partner in our effort to expand our programming to additional platforms, as well as in our commitment to continue shining a light on STEM superstars.”

CuriosityStream is available worldwide with additional linear channels in a growing number of markets including India, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Russia, Mexico and Latin America, among others. Mission Unstoppable premieres on CuriosityStream this summer. 

In April 2020 Litton announced the launch of The Daily Splash, an online hub designed to give kids and families free access to hundreds of half-hours of Litton’s Emmy-award winning content that can be enjoyed by the entire household.

Science streaming service, CuriosityStream announced Monday (April 20) that it will premiere its first original docu-series 4th and Forever: Muck City on May 14 worldwide. The series will have eight episodes. 

Set in Florida's Everglades, towns Pahokee and Belle Glade are known as "Muck City" where high school rivals Pahokee and Glade Central High School are the most well known football rivals. Both schools have produced NFL players such as Anquan Boldin and Santonio Holmes, who will make an appearance, as well as Andre Waters, Rickey Jackson, Fred Taylor, Jimmy Spencer and Jessie Hester.

The series looks to tell the story of communities coming together and helping everyone in Muck City achieve a better life, CuriosityStream said in a release. Filmed at both schools during summer and fall of 2019, the series shows the ups and downs of high school football. 

"The drama portrayed in 4th and Forever: Muck City is compelling and raw, and you will fall in love and root for these special young men, their coaches, families, and the community," said Clint Stinchcomb, president and CEO, CuriosityStream. "4th and Forever: Muck City is the story of their dreams, hopes, and challenges and it highlights universal themes of opportunity and class, and even trust and betrayal. It's great premium content to introduce viewers to CuriosityStream."

4th and Forever: Muck City is produced by Jupiter Entertainment. Executive producers are Todd Moss, Patrick Reardon and David Madison. 

Subscription-based streaming service CuriosityStream says it is standing tall amid growing competition on the digital SVOD platform. With its programming lineup of “factual entertainment”-based programming encompassing science, technology, and history, the John Hendricks-founded service has more than 13 million subscribers as it continues to build its appeal both domestically and internationally.

CuriosityStream president and CEO Clint Stinchcomb talks about the streaming service’s position in the evolving digital streaming marketplace in  a new OTT Spotlight.

Subscription-based streaming service CuriosityStream says it is standing tall amid growing competition on the digital SVOD platform. With its programming lineup of “factual entertainment”-based programming encompassing science, technology, and history, the John Hendricks-founded service has more than 13 million subscribers as it continues to build its appeal both domestically and internationally.

CuriosityStream president and CEO Clint Stinchcomb talks about the streaming service’s position in the evolving digital streaming marketplace in  a new OTT Spotlight.

CuriosityStream, a science streaming service, said their "Stay in, Stay Curious" campaign is giving kids access to documentary films and shows as part of their enhanced "Kids Mode" while schools are closed and children are learning from home. They will also be reducing their price for a full year’s subscription to $12.

"Kids Mode" filters out explicit, violent or disturbing images from all of its programming once enabled and is available across all subscriptions and devices, said CuriosityStream. Some of the programming featured are on the topics of science, nature, geography and history, and include series Quarx, Prehistoric Worlds, and American Icons.

Quarx features three teens doing science that have superpowers. There are 26 short episodes. Prehistoric Worlds is a 60 minute documentary on dinosaurs. American Icons tells the stories of Eleanor Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and Babe Ruth in seven episodes and more.

"As our world has entered uncharted waters over the past weeks, we have pushed ourselves to accelerate projects like 'Kids' Mode' that we hope will make it a bit easier for parents to keep their kids entertained and learning while providing the peace of mind that they are in a wholesome and safe content environment," said Devin Emery, head of growth for CuriosityStream. "We want to do what we can to support families and to help kids continue to engage their curiosity while spending more time at home."

CuriosityStream, a science-centered streaming service, has named Devin Emery head of growth. He will report to Clint Stinchcomb, president and CEO.

Emery will focus on marketing, audience intelligence, product and content while providing a 360-degree view of the business. He will be based in Silver Spring, Md. and New York.

"Devin is an elite talent and a proven agent of growth with a keen eye for developing and optimizing processes that advance businesses like ours," said Stinchcomb. "Devin has a clear passion for the business of storytelling and is eager to help our team build CuriosityStream into the world's leading independent factual media company."

Before CuriosityStream, Emery was VP of growth at Cheddar, where he oversaw the $200 million acquisition by Altice USA. He also served at companies such as Endeavor, Google, Tribune Broadcasting and Bedrocket Media Ventures.

"I'm excited to join Clint and the rest of the CuriosityStream team in exponentially increasing the impact of our brand and programming," said Emery. "It's a special opportunity to take part in developing and cultivating a strong brand that brings a unique and powerful choice to the industry and to our viewers." 

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. 

CuriosityStream, the SVOD service focused on nature and science documentary films started by Discovery founder John Hendricks, announced this week that it now has 13 million users.

That represents accelerated growth, considering the subscription streaming service just announced hitting a benchmark of 10.5 million customers on Dec. 10.

CuriosityStream attributes the growth to a partnership with Luxembourg-based telecom Millicom, which has expanded global distribution of the streaming platform into nine additional countries.

The uptake also probably has something to do with a recently expired steep promotional discount. The lower-end HD version of the service, normally priced at $19.99 a year, was going for $11.99. (An Ultra HD version of the service goes for $60.99 a year.

It also has to do with stepped up advertising for the service, which launched nearly five years ago and includes nearly 2,400 original documentaries, as well as many exclusive to the platform. 

CuriosityStream is currently running TV and digital ads featuring originals such as Ant Mountain and Light on Earth. 

Notably, CuriosityStream made it’s presence known at the just-wrapped Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif., where it also plugged numerous original shows. 

“Consumers are demanding the largest, most comprehensive bundles of streaming content at the most affordable prices,” said Clint Stinchcomb, president and CEO of CuriosityStream, in a statement. “We are pleased that we consistently deliver the world’s best and most complete menu of on-demand factual content that spans all of the valuable factual genres and individual niches including nature, science, history, people, cuisine, travel and learning.”

A decade ago, over-the-top distribution was a start-up’s game, dominated by the Slingboxes and Aereos of the world, not to mention the wave of YouTube multichannel networks like AwesomenessTV.

Heck, it wasn’t that long ago that Roku, which went public as recently as 2017 and will be a billion-dollar revenue company this year, was considered a start-up. In fact, Netflix was once a start-up, too, although it went public in 2002, long before it began streaming video.

These days, of course, OTT video is dominated by Silicon Valley giants, which have—somewhat ironically—put the major media conglomerates and telecoms in the role of insurgents, with Disney, AT&T/WarnerMedia and Comcast/NBCUniversal about to launch new streaming services to try to disrupt the strongholds of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube. Even Apple is playing the role of disruptor with Apple TV+.

Indeed, streaming is now a big company's game, with the next wave of disruption driven by some of the biggest corporations in the world. But there are a few scrappy streaming start-ups still out there, waiting to get bought.

Of course, they very infrequently say outright they want to get purchased. But it’s so obviously the plan! With that in mind, here are five notable independent OTT companies, which seem to be seeking a lot of attention these days. Note that we’re focusing on streaming start-ups here, and not ad-tech companies.

TUBI TV

Viacom had M&A talks with San Francisco-based Tubi TV in January, just before it announced its $340 million purchase of another AVOD platform, Pluto TV.

Speaking with MCN just after that Pluto TV deal was announced, Farhad Massoudi, co-founder and CEO of Tubi TV, said, “I can’t comment on M&A, but we are very confident in our path of staying independent.”

Certainly, the start-up—which was founded in 2011 as an ad tech company called AdRise, and has been privately funded to the tune of $26 million, according to its Crunchbase profile—has done everything it can to keep up its public profile.

Shortly after that conversation, Tubi TV closed on a $25 million loan with Silicon Valley Bank that it said would be used on a “nine-figure” content acquisition budget in 2019.

Indeed, Tubi TV has stayed steadily in the news, announcing myriad content deals, integrating its app natively into major pay TV platforms including Cox’s licensed version of X1, and expanding into Australia.

XUMO

It was reported back in February that Sinclair was “kicking the tires” on this Irvine, California-based AVOD company, which supplies an app that runs natively on smart TVs manufactured by Panasonic, LG, Sharp and Hisense.

Xumo is actually a joint venture between Panasonic and Viant, a Meredith-owned company that now owns MySpace. Speaking to MCN late last year, CEO Colin Petrie-Norris said his marching orders are to “grow the business rapidly.” The focus recently has been adding niche sports programming channels to its live-streamed, pay TV-like programming grid.

And like Tubi TV, Xumo’s name has been active in the headlines over the last six months, hiring new executives, expanding its channel lineup, and natively embedding its app into Comcast’s X1 and Android TV set-tops.

PHILO

The San Francisco-based virtual MVPD operator launched in 2010 and has been privately funded with $83.2 million through seven rounds, according to the company’s Crunchbase profile. Investors include Discovery Networks, Scripps Ventures, Viacom, A+E Networks, AMC Networks and HBO.

In April, Philo became the latest vMVPD to adjust its business model and raise rates, consolidating its service tiers into one $20-a-month offering with 58 channels, no broadcast networks or sports channels.

Led by CEO Andrew McCollum, who was part of Facebook when it was considered a startup, Philo kept it close to the vest when MCN pinged it about possible M&A opportunities. A company rep sent us the announcement from last year that Philo went live on Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV. She said that was the last time the company talked finances publicly. It was the equivalent of saying, “no comment.”

As far as we can tell, Philo hasn’t released a subscriber figure. But the company does seem to give off a decided “for sale” vibe at industry events.

Speaking at MCN’s OTT Summit conference in Santa Monica, California earlier this month, Mike Keyserling, COO and head of content acquisition for Philo, managed to boast about huge growth without giving away subscriber figures.

“We grew by 30% in the last eight weeks, and we’re really at the most accelerated growth in our company’s history,” Keyserling boasted.

FUBOTV

The New York-based virtual MVPD startup has raised more than $151 million in private funding from investors including Scripps, Sky and AMC.

Slogging it out against huge rivals backed by publicly traded telecom and tech giants, including Sling TV, DirecTV Now, Hulu with Live TV and YouTube TV, in the low-margin vMVPD business, not having to endure quarterly earnings reports has been an advantage for FuboTV early on, CEO David Gandler told MCN in an interview conducted late last year, as the company was expanding operations to Spain.

Like the aforementioned streaming startups, FuboTV has kept its name steadily in the news this year. And it doesn’t want us to call it a pivot away from the vMVPD business, but FuboTV’s latest news all centers around Fubo Sports Network, a soccer and niche-sports themed 24-hour news channel that FuboTV itself has compared to Cheddar, the 24-hour digital channel that was recently purchased by Altice USA for $200 million. The channel is available on FuboTV, but also via the Roku Channel and Samsung smart TVs.

Speaking to Business Insider recently, Gandler admitted it'll be tough for FuboTV to stay independent. "It's tough in a sector that's skewed by M&A to take that off the table,” he said.

CURIOSITYSTREAM

Founded in 2015 by John Hendricks, the former Discovery Channel architect who once pioneered the basic cable universe, nature-documentary-themed SVOD service CuriosityStream has been privately funded with $254.7 million to date.

Announcing a $140 million funding round in February, CEO Clint Stinchcomb said 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 expected its viewers will be able to choose from more than 3,000 titles including more exclusive originals available in 4K.

Stinchcomb said in May that CuriosityStream expects to have “several million" subscribers by the end of 2019, which would be a substantial increase over the 1 million it finished 2018 with. 

Cable networks and streaming services will launch several specials and documentaries over the next few weeks highlighting the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, which industry executives say is still as relevant -- and debated -- as it was in 1969.

“Considering that after 50 years we’ve never been back to the moon is significant and deserves further questioning and exploration,” said Lucilla D’Agostino, chief creative officer for production company Big Fish Entertainment, which produced Science Channel’s limited documentary series Truth Behind the Moon Landing. “No one can argue that this was an amazing time in American history, but the considerable hurdles NASA needed to overcome to get man there by Kennedy’s deadline have fueled lunar conspiracies for decades.”

The six-part Truth Behind the Moon Landing series, which debuted this past Sunday (June 2), tackles the most popular conspiracy claims surrounding the iconic moon landing. The series seeks to apply scientific reasoning to the most popular conspiracies with commentary from former NASA Astronaut Leland Melvin, Iraq War veteran and former FBI agent Chad Jenkins and best-selling author, Mike Bara, according to network officials.

Other special programming commemorating the event include streaming service CuriosityStream’s June 13 premiere of Return to the Moon, an original documentary film which chronicles today’s global sprint to take man back to the moon and the innovative technology needed to colonize and explore beyond it, according to network officials.

On June 17, Curiosity Stream will also launch a summer block of moon landing-themed specials and documentaries on Monday nights, including Hack the Moon:Unsung Heroes of Apollo, which debuts June 24.

CNN on June 23 will debut director/producer Todd Douglas Miller‘s documentary Apollo 11, which captures the days and hours of the moon landing from newly-discovered 70mm footage and more than 11,000 hours of audio recordings, according to the network.

Smithsonian Channel will explore the moon landing through unique and rare access to Apollo artifacts from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum as part of a six-part series, Apollo’s Moon Shot, premiering June 16.

In addition on July 7, the network will air a one-hour documentary The Day We Walked On The Moon, which relieves the 24 hours surrounding the mission through revelations of the men and women who witnessed the historical event, said the network. 

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.

Dish Network said it has expanded its on-demand offerings by more than 7,000 titles after adding 11 new packages that customers can subscribe to on a monthly basis. The new packages, starting at $2.99 per month include original series and documentaries from UP Faith & Family, Dove Channel, CuriosityStream and others.

“Whether bingeing seasons of your favorite TV series on-demand or purchasing a digital copy of a new release movie, there are many avenues for customers to access the content they want, when they want it,” said Dish senior vice president of programming Andy LeCuyer in a statement. “Dish offers the ability to choose between watching on-demand content that’s included in a channel package, renting or buying titles outright, and now adding and subtracting entire catalogs on a monthly basis.”

The new packages beef up Dish’s total on-demand offerings to more than 70,000 titles that can be viewed at home on a Hopper family set-top box and on-the-go with the Dish Anywhere app. The Dish Anywhere app gives all customers the ability to watch the on-demand titles associated with their programming package from virtually any location. The app is available on internet-connected mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets and computers, as well as televisions via Amazon Fire TV and Android TV.

Customers can watch a free preview of new offerings Feb. 4-10. In addition to CuriosityStream and UP Faith & Family, customers can watch: Dove Channel; Docurama; Outside TV Features; Comedy Dynamics; Grokker; Here TV; Hopster; HiYAH!; and CineFest.

On-demand subscriptions are available for Dish customers with a qualifying programming package and an internet-connected Hopper DVR (all generations), Hopper Duo, Joey (all models) or Wally. 

Programming legend John Hendricks’ CuriosityStream has landed its second major sponsor with Toyota signing on as the exclusive automotive partner for the global streaming service.

Toyota joins Sprint as CuriosityStream’s first two premier sponsors, category-exclusive relationships that span creative, co-promotion and distribution collaborations to engage consumers with the service.

The Toyota Theater will launch on CuriosityStream in September with CuriosityStream’s Dream the Future narrated by Sigourney Weaver as the lead title.

“We have been so delighted to work with Toyota and its talented agencies, Saatchi and Saatchi and Zenith Media, in crafting a partnership plan that will enable Toyota to effectively communicate with today’s most sought-after viewers who are eager to learn more about breakthrough advancements in science and technology that will positively impact our future,” said CuriosityStream chief advisor for sponsor partnerships Joe Abruzzese in a statement.

The announcements of four more exclusive sponsors in categories such as insurance, banking and finance, aerospace, and pharmaceuticals are expected before the end of the year.   Each of those six sponsors will have a branded theater on CuriosityStream, offering original documentaries as well as branded sponsor programming. All 1,800-plus titles are streamed without commercial interruption and begin with a pre-roll sponsor message before each show. 

Toyota, the largest producer of electrified vehicles with nearly 11.5 million hybrids sold worldwide, will leverage the Toyota Theater on CuriosityStream to feature technology and science series programming, while also highlighting its portfolio of advanced-technology vehicles like the Prius, Mirai, and Prius Prime.

“Through our partnership with CuriosityStream and the Toyota Theater, we’re excited to engage with an audience of science and technology enthusiasts,” said Toyota Motor North America vice president, integrated marketing Vinay Shahani in a statement. “As Toyota shifts from a traditional automotive manufacturer to a mobility company, our culture of innovation has never been more critical, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence, robotics, sustainability, and safety. CuriosityStream gives us a vital platform for sharing some of the most cutting-edge innovations coming from Toyota today.”

Curiosity Stream launched the new sponsor-supported platform on Aug. 2, with the Sprint Theater as the first of six anticipated brand theaters. CuriosityStream also announced distribution agreements with over 30 cable and MVPDs which collectively serve over 100 million global customers.

Related: Hendricks Sets Launch of Multi-Screen SVOD Service 

“We could not be more pleased that Toyota has joined us as our exclusive automotive partner. Given Toyota’s global leadership in technology innovation, we think they are the perfect ally in presenting incredible science, engineering, and technology content within the new Toyota Theater that will go live within 60 days on CuriosityStream,” Hendricks said in a statement.

After revolutionizing the linear pay TV space decades ago, Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks is finding inspiration in the Golden Age of Television, when shows were regularly sponsored by big conglomerates like Texaco, to help support the next stage in TV’s development: streaming video.

Hendricks’s latest venture — streaming video service CuriosityStream — is lining up major sponsors to back its lineup of fact-based programming, much the way television shows did in the early days of the medium, sort of a new twist on the old Texaco Star Theater.

“The big news for us is this other model, bringing sponsors who are desperate to get at the missing viewers who are abandoning linear,” Hendricks said. “When [consumers] are watching Netflix or Amazon Prime, they’re outside the advertising universe [and advertisers] can’t reach them. What we’ve tried to do is develop a way that the advertisers can work through us to get to those missing viewers, who are some of the most valuable viewers on television.”

Reaching Young Non-Linear Viewers

Subscription video-on-demand services are gaining with consumers because most young, affluent viewers just don’t watch linear TV any more.

“If you’re a [car maker], you’ve got to get to them,” Hendricks, who founded Discovery Channel in 1982, said. “And your spots just aren’t reaching them on cable.”

CuriosityStream, advised by former CBS and Discovery Communications ad-sales chief Joe Abbruzzese, is securing six major sponsors for its factual documentary/science/nature/innovation programming service. Sprint is first out of the blocks with Sprint Theater, which debuted Aug. 2.

Other advertisers in the automotive, banking and financial services, insurance, energy, aerospace and pharmaceuticals industries are expected to follow before the end of the year.

Each show will be preceded by a “non-skippable” 15-second pre-roll featuring sponsor messages, but the core content will be without commercial interruption.

“What we’ve been working hard on for the last six to eight months is, how would you integrate sponsored revenue in the world of streaming on demand, where the consumer doesn’t want to watch commercials?” Hendricks said in an interview.

“Joe [Abbruzzese] and I made the rounds, at the top levels of agencies, and also going to clients. They’re all just ready for it, because they know they missed the wagon on Netflix. You can’t buy a sponsorship on Netflix.”

With about 120 million subscribers worldwide and 56 million in the U.S., Netflix has drawn the attention of the entire pay TV business. Hendricks has done his homework, too. In a new white paper titled “Undeniable and Unstoppable,” Hendricks estimates Netflix could have as many as 600 million subscribers worldwide in the next 20 years. Globally, he estimates that 1 billion households capable of streaming video will triple to 3 billion by 2038. Global SVOD households will balloon from 250 million in 2018 to 1.5 billion by 2038. “It’s like the old days of cable,” Hendricks told Multichannel News.

“The pipe dream, of course, is that at some point, which I don’t think will happen, is that Netflix may say why can’t there be a presenting sponsor at the next season of The Crown, and AT&T writes a huge check,” Hendricks said, adding that his plan would work best with high-quality, scripted and unscripted fare. Sponsors, he said, are eager to associate with high-quality fact-based programming.

CuriosityStream is now offering a free version on the web — Curiosity Showcase — that Hendricks hopes will whet viewers’ appetites, with 18 program titles and sponsored content.

CuriosityStream plans an ad blitz to promote the service. It is using the same ad agency as its exclusive sponsors to get the word out through broadcast, cable and digital media.

This new relationship also will allow Hendricks and CuriosityStream to lower consumer prices. The SVOD service is currently available for $5.99 per month but Hendricks said the plan is to reduce the cost to the consumer to $19.99 for a yearly subscription or $2.99 per month.

Hendricks’s streaming service is already available as an SVOD product on several traditional pay TV offerings from Comcast, Cox Communications and Dish Network, and less traditional outlets like Sling TV, StarHub in Singapore, Amazon’s Prime Video Channels, Sprint Mobile TV, Apple TV, Samsung, Roku, LG, Sony, Vizio, VRV, YouTube TV and others. The service said more than 9 million unique visitors have sampled its online platform and in excess of 900,000 global consumers are now paying subscribers either directly or through bundled packages offered by distributors.

That’s short of the 2 million to 3 million paying subscribers Hendricks had hoped for when he launched CuriosityStream in 2015. But the new sponsorship plan is two-pronged: in addition to representing a steady ad revenue stream, sponsors are also expected to promote the service as well.

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CuriosityStream founder John Hendricks believes he has cracked the code for OTT services, adding a new twist to a practice established during the first Golden Age of Television – sponsored programming – but using those sponsors to help promote the service and drive viewers and subscribers through traditional pay TV and online media.

Hendricks, who founded Discovery Communications in the 1980s, is no stranger to innovation. But with CuriosityStream, the educational OTT service he founded three years ago  – he believes he finally has the one-two punch that will help usher in a new era of streaming content.

“The big news for us is this other model, bringing sponsors who are desperate to get at the missing users who are abandoning linear,” Hendricks said. “When [consumers] are watching Netflix or Amazon Prime, they’re outside the advertising universe, they [advertisers] can’t reach them. What we’ve tried to do is develop a way that the advertisers can work through us to get to those missing viewers, who are some of the most valuable viewers on television.”

SVOD is attractive to advertisers because most young, affluent viewers are watching less and less linear TV.

“If you’re a [car maker], you’ve got to get to them,” Hendricks said. “And your spots just aren’t reaching them on cable.”

CuriosityStream under the impetus of former CBS and Discovery ad sales chief Joe Abbruzzese, who signed on as a special adviser to the service in April, is securing six major sponsors for its programming – Sprint is first out of the blocks – for its factual documentary/science/nature/innovation programming service. 

Other advertisers in the automotive, banking and financial services, insurance, energy, aerospace and pharmaceuticals are expected to follow before the end of the year. 

According to Hendricks, each advertiser will be the exclusive advertiser for their respective genre channel. Aside from 15-second spots before each program, these advertisers also will promote CuriosityStream through their own advertising on their own websites.

Sprint Theater will debut on Aug.2 and will feature the original CuriosityStream series DIGITS.

“What we’ve been working hard on for the last six to eight months, is how would you integrate sponsored revenue in the world of streaming on demand, where the consumer doesn’t want to watch commercials?” Hendricks said in an interview. “Joe [Abbruzzese] and I made the rounds, at the top levels of agencies, and also going to clients. They’re all just ready for it, because they know they missed the wagon on Netflix – you can’t buy a sponsorship on Netflix. They know they missed the wagon on Netflix.”

To help drive interest in the channel, CuriosityStream is offering a free version of the service on the web – Curiosity Showcase – that hopefully will whet viewers’ appetites with 18 CuriosityStream titles and sponsored content.

Hendricks’ streaming service is already available as an SVOD product on several traditional pay TV offerings from Comcast, Cox Communications, Dish Network and less traditional outlets like Sling TV, StarHub in Singapore, Amazon’s Prime Video Channels, Sprint Mobile TV, Apple TV, Samsung, Roku, LG, Sony, VIZIO, VRV, YouTube TV and others. The service claims that more than 9 million unique visitors have sampled its online platform and over 900,000 global consumers are now paying subscribers either directly or through bundled packages offered by distributors.

Streaming TV, in Hendricks’ view, is the third revolution of television – first was broadcast in the 1940s and 1950s, followed by cable television in the 70s and 80s. The third wave, according to a white paper (Undeniable and Unstoppable) Hendricks wrote on the subject, began in 2007, when Netflix introduced true streaming SVOD. Now Netflix has 120 million global subscribers – 56 million in the U.S. – and according to some analysts could reach 300 million global customers in the next eight years.

Hendricks sees CuriosityStream’s new sponsor plan as the future of streaming TV, and with his track record, it would be wise to listen. Each show will be preceded by a “non-skippable” 15-second pre-roll featuring sponsor messages, but the core content will be without commercial interruption.

CuriosityStream plans an ad blitz to promote the service – it is using the same ad agency as its exclusive sponsors to get the word out through broadcast, cable and digital media.

“Cable news networks work very well for us,” Hendricks said of potential advertising outlets. “We’re using the promotional power of or sponsors.”

This new relationship also will allow Hendricks and CuriosityStream to lower consumer prices. The SVOD service is currently available for $5.99 per month but Hendricks said the plan is to reduce the cost to the consumer to $19.99 for a yearly subscription or for $2.99 per month.

“Our streaming service which offers premium programs across the entire category of factual entertainment is riding the unstoppable wave of Internet-delivered SVOD television that is sweeping the planet,” said CuriosityStream president Clint Stinchcomb in a statement. “Driven by the undeniable, widespread, and accelerated consumer demand for high-quality content that can be enjoyed at any time and without commercial interruptions, CuriosityStream is taking new steps today that are designed to take full advantage of this third revolution of television that offers control to consumers far beyond what was available in the previous broadcast and cable television eras.”

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.”

Adding another MVPD partner to its list, CuriosityStream has completed an integration with Dish Network that makes the SVOD service available on internet-connected Hopper devices, including the 4K-capable Hopper 3, as well as the Dish Anywhere mobile app.

Dish customers can subscribe to CuriosityStream and its library of about 1,400 documentary features and series via the pay TV provider’s platform for $5.99 per month, the same price as the “Standard” tier for CuriosityStream’s standalone service, which supports HD.

CuriosityStream’s 4K library will be available via Dish by this summer. It was not immediately clear if Dish subs will need to pay extra to access that 4K content (CuriosityStream’s Premium tier, when bought as a standalone, runs $11.99 per month and includes access to 4K content).

Update: What pricing difference, if any, that will be applied for access to CuriosityStream's 4K library via Dish has not been announced.  

CuriosityStream, a service created by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks, has been busy striking distribution deals with MVPDs that complements its own standalone, OTT-delivered service.

In February, CuriosityStream notched a deal with the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC), giving the SVOD service exposure to more than 850 independent cable operators and the potential for many more set-top box integrations. 

RELATED: Operators Should Embrace SVOD to Attract Next Generation

CuriosityStream, a service launched in March 2015, has not announced subscriber numbers. However, the NCTC agreement builds on its strategy to work with various types of distributors.

Other CuriosityStream distribution partners include Comcast, Layer3 TV (now part of T-Mobile), Sling TV (Dish’s OTT TV service), Amazon Channels and VRV, the Ellation-owned SVOD aggregation/bundling service. 

CuriosityStream, the subscription VOD service founded by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks, will be seeking distribution deals with hundreds of tier 2/3 cable opera taros after forging a deal with the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC).

Read More: Additional Coverage of the NCTC Winter Educational Conference

The agreement, focused on NCTC’s membership of 850-plus indie operators that serve nearly 9 million subs, will enable those operators to offer CuriosityStream’s offering of more than 1,500 documentaries, via their VOD service and through a streaming app that supports a wide range of mobile and TV-connected platforms.

RELATED: CuriosityStream Connects With Vizio’s Smart TVs

Plans are also underway to integrate CuriosityStream’s app on certain operator-supplied set-top box platforms later this year, they said. 

Pricing of the SVOD service through the NCTC deal wasn’t announced, but CuriosityStream’s stand-alone, retail OTT offering starts at $2.99 per month for a “Basic” standard-def tier, while Standard (which supports HD) runs $5.99, and its Premium tier, with access to the service’s 4K library, runs $11.99 per month.

CuriosityStream, a service launched in March 2015, has not announced subscriber numbers. However, the NCTC agreement builds on its strategy to work with various types of distributors. Those partners include Comcast, Layer3 TV (now part of T-Mobile), Sling TV, Amazon Channels and VRV, the Ellation-owned SVOD aggregation/bundling service.   

The CuriosityStream deal also expands on the NCTC’s focus on helping its members work with or integrate new services from the OTT world. As part of an effort to help those members have a video option for broadband-only customers, the NCTC has recently signed deals with two virtual MVPDs – fuboTV and PlayStation Vue.

The NCTC-CuriosityStream agreement was announced in concert with this week’s NCTC Winter Educational Conference in San Antonio. At a session today, panelists urged operators to tighten their ties to SVOD services that can enhance or complement their pay TV offerings.

RELATED: Operators Should Embrace SVOD to Attract Next Generation

"CuriosityStream is proud to partner with NCTC to give its members and their enormous customer base easy access to the world's greatest collection of non-fiction programming that empowers viewers to satisfy their curiosity about their favorite subjects," Clint Stinchcomb, chief distribution officer for CuriosityStream, said in a statement.

CuriosityStream, the fact-based subscription VOD service created by Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks, said it has broadened its reach to certain Vizio SmartCast-branded smart TV models. 

CuriosityStream is initially rolling out its app to 2017 and 2017 Vizio SmartCast P-, M-, and E-Series Ultra HD models, which also support Chromecast built-in technology that enables users to cast content from the smartphone to the TV screen.  

CuriosityStream’s stand-alone OTT offering starts at $2.99 per month for a “Basic” standard-def tier, while Standard (which supports HD) runs $5.99, and its Premium tier, with access to the service’s 4K library, runs $11.99 per month.

The SVOD service, launched in March 2015, hasn’t disclosed any subscriber figures.

RELATED: Curious Behavior

The launch on Vizio continues CuriosityStream’s expansion onto various streaming platforms. Others include Roku, Apple TV, Xbox One consoles, Fire TV boxes, Chromecast, iOS and Android mobile devices, and smart TVs from Sony, LG Electronics and Samsung.

RELATED: Sling TV Pitches CuriosityStream as Premium Add-On

CuriosityStream has been complementing its own direct-to-consumer offering with distribution deals with MVPDs and other partners that include Comcast, Layer3 TV (now part of T-Mobile), Sling TV, Amazon Channels and VRV.  

Layer3 TV has expanded its slate of integrated OTT content at the set-top level following an integration agreement with CuriosityStream, the fact-based SVOD service from Discovery Communications founder John Hendricks.

Layer3 TV’s app integration of CuriosityStream covers all pricing tiers of the SVOD service – Basic (Standard-definition only, for $2.99 per month), Standard (HD, for $5.99 per month), and Premium (includes service’s 4K and UltraHD fare, for $11.99 per month). Financial terms were not announced, but deals such as these are typically forged under a revenue-sharing model.

Every Layer3 TV set-top box is capable of delivering 4K video, and 4K support for CuriosityStream on those devices will be supported in the “coming weeks.”

“Our subscribers have demonstrated a voracious appetite for compelling documentaries and are seeking more 4K programs,” Layer3 TV CEO Jeff Binder, said in a statement. “Our addition of CuriosityStream – especially with its illuminating original 4K content – satisfies both of these subscriber demands.”

RELATED: Curious Behavior

Launched in March 2015, CuriosityStream presently offers more than 1,500 titles, including David Attenborough’s Light On Earth, Deep Time History, and Emmy-winning Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places.

The integration of CuriosityStream expands the amount of OTT content and services supported by Layer3 TV set-top box platform. Other examples include Xumo, Pandora, iHeartRadio, Facebook and YouTube.

RELATED: Layer3 TV Expands OTT Slate With Xumo

The Layer3 TV agreement also extends CuriosityStream’s distribution strategy and gives it another avenue to obtain subscribers. Layer3 TV has not announced subscriber numbers, but the service is currently available in Los Angeles; Chicago; Washington D.C.; Dallas/Ft. Worth; and Longmont, Colo., with New York on deck.

In addition to offering its service on a direct-to-consumer basis, CuriosityStream is also distributed through Amazon Channels and VRV. Comcast also offers access to CuriosityStream on its set-top VOD system.

RELATED: Comcast Adds CuriosityStream to SVOD Lineup

CuriosityStream has deals done with about 15 different distributors, though not all have been announced, Clint Stinchcomb, CuriosityStream’s chief distribution officer, said in a recent interview for an upcoming SVOD-focused story that will be featured in an upcoming issue of Multichannel News.

“We want to make it as easy as possible” to get CuriosityStream, Stinchcomb said. “I’m in the friction-minimization business.”

CuriosityStream, the subscription VOD service from Discovery Communications founder John Hendricks focused on documentaries and other fact-based programming, is now available on Comcast’s set-top box VOD platform and via the MSO's Xfinity Stream app/portal for an additional $5.99 per month.

RELATED: Curious Behavior

The deal marks CuriosityStream’s first distribution deal with an MVPD. The service launched in March 2015 as a stand-alone OTT-delivered offering, and has since expanded distribution to Amazon Channels and VRV, an offering from Ellation that aggregates and bundles SVOD services.

RELATED: VRV to Add CuriosityStream to SVOD Mix, Launch Offline Viewing

CuriosityStream confirmed that it initially is offering its content via VOD platform in HD, but added that “anything is possible in 2018” with respect to the portion of its library that’s available in 4K resolution.

CuriosityStream also confirmed that its SVOD service is not being delivered via OTT to the subscriber’s home under its distribution agreement with Comcast. That means that CuriosityStream content delivered into the home via Comcast’s managed VOD platform is not subject to the cable operator’s internet usage policies.

RELATED: Comcast Deploys 1-Terabyte Data Plan

CuriosityStream has not released subscriber numbers, but the company noted that those figures are rising amid its new, recent deals with VRV and Comcast.

Under its direct-to-consumer OTT subscription plans, CuriosityStream’s Premium tier, which includes its HD and 4K, sells for $11.99 per month, while Standard (HD) sells for $5.99 per month, and its Basic (standard-def) tier fetches $2.99 per month.

Comcast pay TV subs can locate the CuriosityStream service by saying “CuriosityStream” into the X1 voice remote or via the Xfinity Stream app/portal. Comcast is offering access to CuriosityStream on its legacy and newer X1 set-top boxes. 

CuriosityStream said its service will feature more than 1,700 films and series in 2018. Current offerings include Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places, David Attenborough’s Light On Earth, Deep Time History and Prescription: Nutrition.

“Joining Xfinity On Demand’s strong lineup marks an exciting day for CuriosityStream.  We’ve designed our service to make it as easy as possible for subscribers to find the content they most like, on the interests they are the most passionate,” Clint Stinchcomb, chief distribution officer for CuriosityStream, said in statement.  “That’s what this collaboration is all about.  The innovative X1 platform harnesses technology to seamlessly deliver what viewers want, when they want it, changing the way people experience TV.”

Other relatively new services added to Comcast’s SVOD slate include FitFusion ($6.99 per month) and TumbleBooksTV ($4.99 per month).

On the OTT side of the house, Comcast has also integrated Netflix, YouTube and Pandora on its X1 set-top box platform.

Nearly two years after its beta debut, CuriosityStream is gearing up to hit the accelerator with a multi-faceted, global ad campaign that will aim to scale up subscribers to an SVOD service that’s focused on fact-based programming spanning areas such as science, tech, history and nature.

Following its launch in March 2015, CuriosityStream, has been conducting some “modest” digital advertising and relying on word of mouth, but is now ready to take its promotional activities to that next level as the service is now armed with a growing library of licensed and original programming and an OTT platform to underpin it, John Hendricks, cable programming pioneer and CuriosityStream’s founder, said.  

RELATED: SVOD Surge (subscription required)

CuriosityStream recently launched its first print ad campaign in publications such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, with the theme that the SVOD service is “the antidote to ‘reality’ TV.” It’s also testing some TV ads on CNN, Fox News, and Bloomberg TV around the theme, "Long Live the Curious."

Watch a 60-second version of it below:

“Television [advertising] will be the real way we’ll scale up,” he said, referring to some initial ads that use the tagline, “Long Live The Curious.” He said the ads being shown on those networks have gotten a good response early on, as CuriosityStream’s programming tends to appeal to “news junkies.”

CuriosityStream will do more testing before it shifts to a larger, global ad campaign.

CuriosityStream has not announced current subscriber figures (notably, 34% of them are millennials), but Hendricks said the goal is to finish 2017 with “close to 1 million” subs.  

And given the global reach that CuriosityStream has and the service’s expected growth rate, Hendricks, who founded Discovery Communications, believes it will have somewhere between 10 million to 20 million subscribers, and possibly more, within about ten years.

Hendricks likewise is confident that consumers are thirsting for an ad-free SVOD service full of documentaries and other factual content that they can’t get from traditional cable channels that claim to be focused on those genres, but have increasingly steered the bulk of their programming toward reality TV shows and series.

“It’s saturating the dial,” he said of reality TV, noting that “there’s a real void in the marketplace” for the fact-based content that his service provides.

Paired with the greater emphasis on promotion and advertising, CuriosityStream will also use a growing library of exclusive content (almost 250 titles so far) and its broad reach (almost 200 countries) to boost its subscriber base, borrowing from a game plan that has proved successful for Netflix and Amazon Prime.

RELATED: CuriosityStream Broadens Its Horizons

More detail on CuriosityStream’s subscriber strategy, an update on its distribution discussions with cable operators and other MVPDs, and an update on its pursuit of new platforms, such as virtual reality, will be featured in the Next TV section of the Feb. 20 edition of Broadcasting & Cable.

Original series have become key drivers for general entertainment SVOD services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon as well as a subset of genre-focused services that tailor their content for millennials.

They are also becoming a bigger piece of the programing puzzle for CuriosityStream, the OTT-VOD non-fiction service started up by Discovery Communications founder John Hendricks and launched in March 2015.

RELATED: CuriosityStream Goes Online

CuriosityStream is starting to offer a group of original series, including Deep Time History, a three-parter  that takes a look at the deeper implications of different phases of human history, and DIGITS, which takes a deep dive on the history and future of the Internet.

While originals give CuriosityStream a way to differentiate, it also provides the OTT service with rights to content it can distribute on a global basis, Elizabeth Hendricks North, CuriosityStream’s CEO, said.

RELATED: Curious Behavior

The service, which today offers more than 1,500 titles, remains heavily focused on licensed content, since it’s less expensive to obtain, but “having exclusive worldwide rights to content and being able to share that with our community is really important,” she said. “In the long term, they [original programs] are cost-effective."

Hendricks North said the service aims to invest in more “signature pieces” that distinguish CuriosityStream from other offerings that are trying to promote non-fiction programming.  She estimates that CuriosityStream has about a dozen originals slated for next year.

More details about that strategy, as well as an update on subscriber trends at CuriosityStream will be featured in the Next TV section of the November 7 issue of Multichannel News.

In the meantime, here’s a trailer from the new original series, DIGITS:

[embed]https://vimeo.com/182433166[/embed]

Digits Series Trailer from CuriosityStream on Vimeo.

In advance of the Juno orbiter’s rendezvous with Jupiter, CuriosityStream is debuting Destination: Jupiter, a short-form documentary series that profiles NASA’s latest mission to the largest planet in our solar system. 

CuriosityStream said the series, offered in 4K resolution, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the story behind the five-year, 1.75 billion-mile mission ahead of Juno’s expected arrival on or around July 4.

The series features archive footage along with CGI produced by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio that illustrate the role of the mission while also offering a sneak peek into some of the state-of-the-art technology on board the spacecraft that will help the vessel survive Jupiter’s high-radiation environment.

The original series, produced by the UK's Arrow Media, follows CuriosityStream’s Destination: Pluto and Destination Mars series. Destination: Jupiter is executive produced by Arrow Media’s Howard Swartz and CuriosityStream’s Arrow Media.

“Juno’s arrival promises to be a spectacular event, offering a first-ever look into the secrets of this massive planet,” Elizabeth Hendricks North, president and CEO of CuriosityStream, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to provide this exclusive sneak peek into what scientists hope to find as they prepare for arrival.”

CuriosityStream, the over-the-top subscription video-on-demand service from Discovery Communications founder John Hendricks,  added 4K to the mix earlier this year (subscription required). CuriosityStream’s standard definition SVOD service runs $2.99 per month, $5.99 for HD, and $11.99 for 4K.  The OTT-SVOD service features more than 1,400 documentaries and  nonfiction series.

The OTT service supports several platforms, including browsers, Roku players and Roku TVs, the Google Chromecast streaming adapter, Amazon’s Fire TV, Apple TV, and iOS and Android mobile devices. CS is also considering expansions on PlayStation and Xbox gaming consoles. 

RELATED:CuriosityStream Joins the 4K Brigade [subscription required]

CuriosityStream, the over-the-top subscription VOD service from Discovery Communications founder John Hendricks that launched in March 2015, has introduced a native app for the new Apple TV.

CuriosityStream continues to support previous-generation Apple TV boxes via  AirPlay, which lets users stream content from an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch wirelessly to the Apple TV.

The expansion puts the SVOD service on another key platform, and follows a recent launch on the Amazon Fire TV. It also supports Roku players and Roku TVs, Web browsers, iOS and Android mobile devices, Android TV devices (version 4.1 and up), and the Google Chromecast (for its Android apps).

CuriosityStream also has apps for smart TV platforms on the roadmap, and is exploring expansions on Xbox and PlayStation consoles.

Look for a deeper update on CuriosityStream and its recent launch of 4K content and annual subscription plans in the April 11 edition of Next TV, the weekly section that runs in Multichannel News and Broadcasting & Cable. 

CuriosityStream, the over-the-top subscription VOD service from Discovery Communications founder John Hendricks, has launched a channel on the Amazon Fire TV platform. 

CuriosityStream launched in the U.S. in March 2015 with a “Basic” standard-definition tier for $2.99 per month, and a “Standard” offering in HD that runs $5.99 per month.  CuriosityStream recently introduced an international offering at $3.99 for SD and for $6.99/month for HD.

Update: CuriosityStream tells us that its pricing is now uniform on a global basis: $2.99/month for SD and $5.99/month for HD.

CuriosityStream plans to launch a 4K offering in 2016.

“Having CuriosityStream available on Amazon Fire TV is a significant milestone for the service, which has not even been in market for a full year,” said CuriosityStream president Elizabeth Hendricks North, in a statement. “Consumers can now access the service in their living rooms, along with Netflix and Hulu, to watch and share with their family and friends.”

Following a recent launch on the Roku platform, the service also supports Web browsers, iOS and Android smartphones and tablets,  the Google Chromecast adapter (for its Android apps), and the Apple TV (via AirPlay).  CuriosityStream also plans to bring its service to smart TVs platforms as well as Xbox and PlayStation consoles.

CuriosityStream hasn’t released subscriber figures, but the service currently offers a library of more than 1,000 originals and first-run documentaries on topics ranging from science and nature to history and the arts.

CuriosityStream, the over-the-top subscription VOD service from Discovery Communications founder John Hendricks, said it now selling the ad-free offering around the globe. 

CuriosityStream launched in the U.S. in March 2015 with a “Basic” standard-definition tier for $2.99 per month, and a “Standard” offering in HD that runs $5.99 per month. On the international side, the service starts at $3.99 for SD and sells for $6.99/month for HD. CuriosityStream plans to launch a 4K offering in 2016.

Following its recent launch on Roku, the service also supports Web browsers, iOS and Android smartphones and tablets,  the Google Chromecast adapter (for its Android apps), and the Apple TV (via AirPlay).  CuriosityStream s is also looking to bring its service to smart TVs and Xbox and PlayStation consoles.

CuriosityStream hasn’t disclosed subscriber numbers, but the service is seeing 20% sub growth week-over-week, an official said recently.

Its content partners include BBC, NHK, ZED, Terranoa, ZDFE, Terra Mater and Flame, and titles from various producers around the world include Innovation Nation (USA); Tales of Nature (France);  Destination Pluto (USA); and Next World and Cosmic Front (Japan). Its library currently consists of more than 1,000 programs.

“Unlocking all of this incredible content for worldwide viewers to easily access and enjoy is our ultimate goal,” said Elizabeth North, president of CuriosityStream, in a statement. "We saw an opportunity in the marketplace to offer high quality programs that are mobile-friendly and appeal to a wide audience hungry for science, nature and history programming.”

CuriosityStream, the over-the-top subscription VOD service from Discovery Communications founder John Hendricks, has expanded on the device front with the launch of a channel for Roku players and integrated Roku TVs.

CuriosityStream launched on March 18 and currently offers a “Basic” standard-definition tier for $2.99 per month, and a “Standard” offering in HD that runs $5.99 per month. When plans for the CuriosityStream first came to light in January, it also announced that it would eventually offer tiers that deliver content in the 4K format.

Support on the Roku broadens the service’s access to TV-connected platforms, as Roku has shipped more than 10 million players in the U.S., and was the top seller in the category in 2014, according to Parks Associates.

CuriosityStream, which also supports Web browsers, iOS and Android smartphones and tablets,  the Google Chromecast adapter (for its Android apps), and the Apple TV (via AirPlay).  Per the CuriosityStream site, the service is also considering expansions on smart TVs and Xbox and PlayStation consoles.

Earlier this month, CuriosityStream announced to subs that it had launched a new video player that uses HLS streaming and features shortcuts users can tap into when hovering over the player (for example, the space bar can play/pause video, and the “m” button mutes the stream’s audio). 

CuriosityStream has not released subscriber numbers, but the service seeing 20% sub growth week-over-week, according to a spokesperson, noting that the service has also doubled its library since launch.

CuriosityStream came online in March with a library of more than 800 titles in categories spanning science, technology, civilization and the human spirit. Titles offered include A Curious World, Destination Pluto, Age of Robots, Mars: The Journey, and Dark Secrets of the Cosmos.

“Making CuriosityStream available on the Roku platform is an exciting next step in our evolution as a service, captivating curious minds with quality nonfiction programs,” said CuriosityStream president Elizabeth Hendricks North, in a statement. “Since launching just a few short months ago, our growing media library continues to enchant our subscribers with meaningful documentaries on the topics that matter. We look forward to an equally engaging relationship with millions of Roku customers.”

For more about John Hendricks’s vision and expectations for the service, please see this Multichannel Newscover story (subscription required) 

John Hendricks, founder of the Discovery Channel and former chairman of Discovery Communications, “retired” last May. The cable programming vet didn’t stay on the sidelines for long.

Hendricks, now the head of a venture called Curiosity Project LLC, on Wednesday introduced CuriosityStream, a multiscreen subscription video-on-demand service that will be sold at various pricing levels based on video quality  – from standard-def and HD, all the way to 4K/Ultra HD.

Billed as the “world’s first on-demand, ad-free content streaming service delivering premium factual content in the areas of science, technology, civilization, and the human spirit,” CuriousityStream will start at $2.99 per month for SD streaming, $3.99 per month for 720p, $5.99 per month for 1080 HD, and $9.99 per month for 4K.

It’s set to launch on March 18 with a library of more than 800 video titles, including fare that will be available in 4K out of the chute. Interested consumers can go to the site now to preview the service and sign up ahead of the official debut.

CuriosityStream said it will feature original commissions, documentaries and series from the BBC, NHK, ZED, Terra Noa, and Flame Distribution, and offer expert interviews and original short form programming.

On the tech end, Limelight Networks, a content delivery network company, will provide the cloud hosting for CuriosityStream, and will support a variety of formats for deliver to connected devices such as PCs and laptops, tablets and smartphones. The service will also be offered on the Apple TV, Roku platform and will be optimized for the Google Chromecast (up to HD resolution).

Hendricks said the SVOD offering fulfills a vision.

"As many in the industry know, I have long dreamed of a content-on-demand service that uses advanced media to empower the enduring human desire to understand the Universe and the world around us,” he said in a statement. “The advent of online streaming technology utilized by Netflix and other successful video streaming services has created a video transmission infrastructure that finally allows viewers to watch what they want to watch, when they want to watch it.”

Steve Burns, an Emmy Award-winning documentary producer who is late of National Geographic Channels,  WNET, Discovery Networks, and Science Channel, is heading CuriosityStream’s programming team.

The SVOD service, to be offered initially in North America, has already commissioned the production of series such as Big Picture Earth, a 20-part 4K series to be produced by David Conover, the filmmaker behind Sunrise Earth, that will feature sites such as Stonehenge, Icelandic caves, “the curiosities of Central Park,” and the canals of Venice.

Other titles include Digits (history of computers and the Internet, and Deep Time History (a series on great people and events), and Life 2000 Meters Under the Sea (ZED), Madagascar: The Lost Makay (Terra Noa), The Twilight of Civilizations (Terra Noa), and Men and Machines That Beat Hitler (BBC Worldwide).

Hendricks has served as chairman and founder of Discovery Communications, before and including the launch of the Discovery Channel on June 17, 1985. He stepped down as CEO in 2004 and remained chairman of the board through his retirement last year.