Why biz news video service Cheddar will rely on fees

Brian Morrissey of Digiday writes about how the upcoming business news video service Cheddar will rely on licensing fees to generate revenue.

Morrissey writes, ¨By this summer, Cheddar plans to broadcast live, from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, for the full work day. But it won’t be freely available. Cheddar instead is relying on carriage deals with the proliferating array of over-the-top providers to pay it licensing fees in order to make Cheddar available to their audiences. There will be no advertising, which means there’s no need to build gigantic audiences that was Steinberg’s focus at BuzzFeed and Daily Mail.

¨I’m not going to put it out on YouTube for free and hope that $4 CPMs are my path to salvation,´ Steinberg said in this week’s episode of the Digiday Podcast. ´To start a standalone startup now and compete for the same mindshare and big sponsorship packages with the same 100 advertisers who buy these things, it’s too hard. I don’t want to compete against myself from five years ago.´

¨Publishers normally turn to advertising as their business model. But that’s harder than ever as the digital media world matures. Google, Facebook and a second-tier of big publishers makes competing for the attention of brand marketers difficult, especially without a track record, Steinberg said.¨

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