Streaming business news network Cheddar is making a massive play for college viewers.
The company has acquired MTV Networks On Campus — the Viacom-owned network that formerly distributed MTV‘s college-targeted channel, MTVU, to nine million students across 1,600 screens on 600 college campuses around the nation. Accordingly, Cheddar will launch its third streaming news brand — following business-based Cheddar and general news destination Cheddar Big News: CheddarU, launching in August as students return to school, will stream non-partisan news, technology coverage, and startup stories around the clock in place of MTVU, according to a release.
While CheddarU will replace MTVU across universities, MTVU will continue to be broadcast on linear TV. Online textbook rental company Chegg and music streamer Pandora will serve as CheddarU’s launch sponsors.
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And given that Cheddar is already distributed in other public spaces beyond universities — including airports, hotels, gyms stadiums, and restaurants — the company has formed a new location-based division dubbed ChedNet to oversee these efforts.
“We’ve now combined our live news offering with our own distribution,” Cheddar founder and CEO Jon Steinberg said in a statement. “We own our content; we own our pipes…From our studios, through our control rooms, to our encoders, through our satellite uplink and downlink, right to the TV screens, now, no one sits between Cheddar and our viewers.”
