AUSTIN, Texas—After raising $25 million in Series B funding in the past year, the streaming for businesses platform, Atmosphere, is launching Atmosphere News, which offers short-form news content to the out-of-home TV market.
The new channel is designed to provide a TV news experience optimized for out-of-home locations, incorporating a short-form, audio-optional narrative format that avoids talking heads, subtitles and voiceover narration to inform viewers, the company said.
It will be available for out-of-home audiences across Atmosphere’s installed footprint of more than 14,000 retail locations including restaurants, bars, gyms, hotels and doctor’s offices where it will be part of a 50+ channel lineup.
The Atmosphere News team is led by digital and TV news veteran Micah Grimes, who joined the company in June from NBC News. The launch of Atmosphere News represents the company’s largest, single-channel investment to date, offering hourly updates and coverage of 40 to 50 stories each day at launch.
The former head of Scripps’ Newsy, Blake Sabatinelli is the COO of Atmosphere.
“The out-of-home TV news market represents a huge untapped opportunity that isn’t really being served by existing options,” said Leo Resig, co-founder and CEO of Atmosphere. “With Atmosphere News we’re introducing a presentation format that, unlike traditional news, is optimized for viewing in public spaces and that venue owners can screen without creating division among their clientele. Once business owners see just how effective Atmosphere News is at delivering today’s stories without any larger agenda, they won’t be returning to cable.”
The launch of Atmosphere News builds on the company’s momentum over the past year, which includes a $25 million Series B funding round led by Valor Equity Partners that valued the company at $275 million dollars.
The streaming for businesses platform was spun out of Chive Media Group a couple years ago. Atmosphere currently streams an aggregate of more than 250,000 hours of programming per day across 53 channels of both owned and partner content, reaching over 25 million unique visits every month.
