Reuters TV plans to expand

Sahil Patel of Digiday writes about the expansion plans for Reuters TV.

Patel writes, “Reuters TV is going to start showing up in a lot more places. When the service launched in February, it was only available on the iPhone and iPad. Last week, it arrived on Apple TV. A Web-app version will come out next week and will expand to Android by early next year, and to Chromecast, Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Xbox by the middle of 2016. Initially accessible only in the U.S. and U.K., Reuters TV will also be available worldwide by the end of the month — as long as those markets have access to the platforms it supports.

“Reuters TV started as a subscription-plus-advertising video service, charging users $2 per month and serving them a limited number of ads. The global news service quickly discovered it is hard to build a large audience when you’re charging for content.

“‘It created an extra barrier [to customer adoption],’ said Reuters TV managing director Isaac Showman, who declined to say how many paying subscribers Reuters TV has picked up. ‘We were best served by loosening that barrier, particularly at an early stage.'”

Read more here.