3. Scoop: Yahoo Finance launching live streaming network
Yahoo Finance is launching a full-day, live video streaming network by the end of the year, three sources familiar with the plans tell Axios.
Why it matters: It’s the latest example of a digital-native news outlet getting into streaming news to capture more audience attention on mobile and to compete for television dollars.
The network will include 8-hours of live market and global financial news updates, which would make it a rival to the new digital streaming business network Cheddar and, to an extent, CNBC, Fox Business and Bloomberg.
- Sources say the company is in active discussion with OTT providers and bundles about getting the content on platforms other than its O&O channels.
- Beginning in August, Yahoo Finance will begin to increase its roughly 1.5 hours - 2 hours of live programming a day to reach 8 hours of live, bell-to-bell coverage by the end of the year.
- The coverage will include Yahoo's Finance's three daily live shows — Market Movers, Midday Movers and The Final Round — as well as other content it's been testing on social media, like Morning Meeting, its morning show that airs on Facebook.
Oath CEO Tim Armstrong and Joanna Lambert, GM of Finance & Tech, are the driving forces behind the expansion, which has been in the works for a long time. Andy Serwer, Editor in Chief of Yahoo Finance, will continue to oversee editorial direction and content.
- The company is already staffing up big for the push, according to one source, and is going after editors, producers, and on-air reporters across the industry. Yahoo Finance has already begun posting jobs for on-air reporters “to communicate ON AIR to a broad consumer audience.”
There is a possibility that the content could eventually be accessed through a linear distribution deal with Verizon Fios, which has has roughly 5 million customers in the U.S.
- Market Movers is already available on FiOS1.
The move is not totally surprising given Yahoo's existing investment in live digital programming, but a Fios partnership would be notable, given Verizon CEO Lowell C. McAdam’s rejection of rumors about Verizon moving into linear TV programming.
More in the Axios stream.