Reel TV is launching a Kickstarter campaign for a new channel that would air only videos from the web. Say that two times fast. They need $220,000 to launch the project. CEO Olivier Husser explains:
Most teenagers turn away from watching TV to watch Youtube videos, sometimes on tiny smartphone screens, and more mature people give up live TV for VOD. While traditional TV declines, Youtube acquires 300 hours of new material every minute, often of excellent quality. But 80 percent of those films are not watched and won’t be watched, even if videographers or filmmakers have thousands of friends or followers. Video sharing websites are an archive more than a media…Reel hopes to bridge this gap by making nearly invisible video content become discovered, liked and shared by a large audience.
Videos will be checked for quality and length and then scheduled into Reel programming. The pledges right now are mainly for video creators to jump to the top of the list in the lineup. Is that pay to play? Sort of. But they’re working with a three-month timeline for now. Here’s how they’re spending the dough:
- $100k for satellite broadcasting, powered by Globecast
- $50k for equipment
- $50k to pay employees to filter videos
The Reel app is available for Apple and Android devices.