Why Cheddar is betting on multiple revenue streams

Jon Steinberg

Cheddar CEO Jon Steinberg talked to Aditi Sangal of Digiday about its strategy of putting itself on a variety of noncable outlets.

Here is an excerpt:

Having multiple revenue streams is important
“I had to sell ads again. I didn’t want to do it again. We don’t do small deals; we have long-term clients who work with us for six to 12 months. We don’t have to get direct payments from the OTT platforms, but we have a smaller business if we don’t. [The dream of being an ad-only business] was never a thing. ESPN realized in the ’80s or something that you need to be a dual revenue stream. Most people will get broadband, they will get Netflix and Amazon, and they will have some permutation of live content, with some news, sports, HGTV content. And we’ll be in all of these OTT bundles.”
The value of OTT networks is in exclusive content
“We make three hours available for free. To get all eight hours of either network, you need to be a paid subscriber. We do that to preserve value for our distribution partners, so they would want to have us on their systems. We’re distribution-hungry to get the free product out there, which serves as marketing.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.