Cheddar is expanding beyond its business news origins to tackle national and international issues with a forthcoming channel appropriately dubbed Cheddar Big News.
The brand will be modeled after CNN Headline News, focusing on the day’s biggest political stories as well as noteworthy local events — including weather phenomena and animals on the loose, Cheddar founder and CEO Jon Steinberg tells Digiday of the venture. “We’re going to tell you what Trump did, but we’re not going to have a panel debate about it for five hours,” he said. “We want to do news that tells you all of the stuff that you need to know, but then also offers a bit of a relief from the news.”
Cheddar Big News is expected to launch next year in the first quarter, per Steinberg, who is in current conversations with distribution partners. The channel will broadcast daily between 6 am and 10 pm, with reruns and other prepackaged programming filling the overnight hours, according to Digiday.
Subscribe to get the latest creator news
At the same time, Cheddar — which officially launched last year — announced that it expects to rake in $11 million in revenues this year. Steinberg told Digiday he hopes to grow annual revenues to $100 million “in a few years,” and that the company is planning to aggressively expand distribution to “every OTT bundle available in the U.S.” by the middle of next year.
Cheddar currently clocks 200 million monthly views across all distribution platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Sling TV, and Pluto TV.
Check out a sizzle reel for Cheddar’s latest venture below:
