Cheddar Expands to College Campuses With Launch of CheddarU
News network Cheddar is once again expanding and this time it's going to school. After buying MTV Networks on Campus (a distribution network on college and university campuses), Cheddar is debuting a new news service called CheddarU. This live news network will stream to 1,600 screens on over 600 campuses, representing a total possible reach of 9 million students.
CheddarU will feature non-partisan breaking news 24/7, the company says. It will also offer education and professional development content from Chegg and music news and playlists from Pandora.
Screens showing CheddarU are located in cafeterias, gyms, and other public spaces on campuses. Qualifying colleges and universities can get the service and the hardware needed to show it free of charge.
“We’ve now combined our live news offering with our own distribution," says Jon Steinberg, Cheddar's founder and CEO. "We own our content; we own our pipes. In live news, no one will have a larger college audience, and we will invest in our content every minute of every day to inform, entertain, and inspire this audience.
CheddarU is part of ChedNet, the company's new location-based video division. MTVU, which used to stream on Viacom's campus network, is still available but only through linear distribution.
This is Cheddar's second major expansion. In March, it launched Cheddar Big News at the same time it announced $22 million in funding. Cheddar became one of the four live news feeds available on the Roku Channel in April.
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