Amid the continuous wave of changes in the streaming industry, Zeam, a pioneering company that has been deeply involved in local broadcasting technology for many years, recently announced a major acquisition: acquired its local news streaming platform from Sinclair Broadcast Grouphref="https://variety.com/t/newson/" id="auto-tag_newson" data-tag="newson">NewsOn.This move not only marks a major expansion of Zeam's business territory, but also indicates that it is steadily moving towards its goal of becoming a national local content aggregation platform.
Since its establishment in 2009, Zeam has always been committed to providing stable and efficient streaming technical support to local TV stations.Initially, it was a bridge to help traditional broadcasters tentatively enter the digital age; now, it has become the core technology engine supporting live streaming of CBS-affiliated channels on CBS-owned channels across the United States and Paramount.The acquisition of NewsOn undoubtedly pushes this mission to a whole new level.
It is worth noting that just the day before Zeam announced the acquisition, Sinclair Broadcasting Group just revealed that it is conducting a strategic assessment of its huge TV asset base, including the possible sale of some core assets.This may also provide an opportunity for Zeam's acquisition.
In recent years, Zeam has gradually positioned itself as the "center of national local TV news" and has continuously expanded the boundaries of consumer-grade entertainment content, but it still insists on real-time, vivid and close to the community as its core competitiveness.To demonstrate the flexibility of its streaming technology, Zeam even joined hands with comedy podcasters Mike Young and Bret Ernst to plan a special event called Destination Comedy—a live streaming of street fun stories from two hosts on the road for five consecutive days, spanning from July 29 to August 2.
"We hope to prove to the industry through this experiment that we can capture high-quality live images even in a moving car," said Jack Perry, CEO of Zeam."Our goal is to inspire broadcasters everywhere to try original content that is closer to the community," he added.
For local TV stations, Zeam provides not only technical support, but also a mature commercial monetization path.The platform supports dynamic advertising insertion at the local level, making advertising delivery more accurate and efficient; it can also merge streaming audience data with traditional linear signal viewing data to present a more complete audience portrait for advertisers.
Looking back on 2024, Zeam made his debut on the Super Bowl advertising stage, successfully attracting widespread attention from the industry and made his debut this year.Since then, Zeam has posted more than 4 billion dynamic ads for its partners, with remarkable results.
The acquisition of NewsOn means that Zeam's service network will cover all 210 Nielsen-defined market areas (DMAs) in the United States, truly realizing national local news integration capabilities.Sinclair has also actively deployed this field before and has promoted many local TV stations to join the NewsOn platform.
"NewsOn has always been an important bridge connecting audiences with trustworthy local news. We believe that under Zeam, this platform will continue to serve broadcasters and further strengthen the value of local news." Kevin Cotlove, senior vice president and chief digital officer of Sinclair, commented.
Zeam's business model is clear and pragmatic: on the one hand, it maintains live streaming technology for multiple customers through B2B services; on the other hand, it cooperates with content parties through revenue sharing, and Zeam is usually responsible for all streaming advertising sales.As Perry emphasized: "As long as the user clicks into Zeam's App or official channel page, he will immediately bring in additional revenue."
"We are the infrastructure for local TV stations to get digital revenue without them investing a lot of energy," Perry said confidently.
At present, the Zeam team is actively negotiating and cooperating with smart TV manufacturers such as Samsung and LG, striving to make the Zeam platform appear on the home page interface of more home living rooms.This device-side distribution strategy is crucial to the content dissemination and profit potential of the FAST channel.
In Perry's view, Zeam's ability to give partners the most core value is the ability to produce original local content at a relatively low cost.Its streaming technology supports live streaming and is compatible with on-demand, providing unprecedented flexibility for content production.In the current environment where outsourced program resources from Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and other places are increasingly scarce, this ability is particularly critical.
"Today's TV stations no longer rely solely on the traditional hookup model. They began to think: 'If we don't rely entirely on the content provided by the superior network, can we create our own special columns?' And Zeam is the technology partner to realize this vision,'" Perry concluded.
