Philo
(formerly Tivli) is an American
internet television
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air a ...
company currently based in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
, that was first founded at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
in 2010 by Tuan Ho and Nicholas Krasney. Investors in the company include
HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
,
Andrew McCollum
Andrew McCollum (born September 4, 1983) is an American angel investor and businessman. McCollum is a co-founder of Facebook and current CEO of Philo.
Education
He attended Harvard University with co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and others on the f ...
, and
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American billionaire entrepreneur, television personality, and media proprietor whose net worth is an estimated $4.8 billion, according to ''Forbes'', and ranked No. 177 on the 2020 ''Forbes'' 400 list ...
. The company and its service is named in honor of one of the pioneering engineers of television,
Philo T. Farnsworth
Philo Taylor Farnsworth (August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971) was an American inventor and television pioneer. He made many crucial contributions to the early development of all-electronic television. He is best known for his 1927 invention of t ...
.
As of 2021, their
OTT streaming television
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air aer ...
service has over 800,000 subscribers.
History
Early history
Philo was originally founded in 2010 as Tivli by Tuan Ho and Nicholas Krasney at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
. It began as an experimental dorm-room streaming project using
aluminium foil
Aluminium foil (or aluminum foil in North American English; often informally called tin foil) is aluminium prepared in thin metal leaves with a thickness less than ; thinner gauges down to are also commonly used. Standard household foil is typ ...
as a makeshift receiving antenna to "pick up (
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
area) TV signals and deliver them wirelessly to their laptops via a jerry-rigged server". At its launch, the project was intended to be a way to provide a streaming TV service to Harvard University students living on campus. When the service first launched in 2011, a quarter of the Harvard resident population registered for it within the first few weeks of the service.
In 2011, Tivli joined the
Harvard Innovation Lab
Harvard Innovation Labs (i-Lab) is an institution which aims to promote team-based and entrepreneurial activities among Harvard students, faculty, entrepreneurs, and members of the Allston and Greater Boston communities. The i-Lab's mission is to ...
(iLab) as the first company in residence, before finally moving into their own office in
Harvard Square in 2013. In 2012, Christopher Thorpe joined as CEO to build out Philo's original university IPTV service. From the earliest days, Philo had aspirations to launch a nationwide streaming TV service, starting in universities. After launching services at Harvard, Philo quickly added additional universities such as
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
,
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
,
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...
and
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
.
In 2013, Philo announced a strategic partnership with
HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
to provide the HBO GO service to universities. By September 2015, the service was available in 42 universities.
In July 2013, the venture raised a $6.3 million round led by Patrick Chung at
venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
firm
New Enterprise Associates
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With ~$25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of the w ...
. Among the
Series A
A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exc ...
investors, were
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958) is an American billionaire entrepreneur, television personality, and media proprietor whose net worth is an estimated $4.8 billion, according to ''Forbes'', and ranked No. 177 on the 2020 ''Forbes'' 400 list ...
from Radical Investments LP,
HBO
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...
,
Ari Emanuel
Ariel Zev Emanuel (born 1961) is an American businessman and the CEO of Endeavor, an entertainment and media agency that owns the UFC. He was a founding partner of the Endeavor Talent Agency and was instrumental in shaping its June 2009 merger ...
from
Endeavor, and
Rho Capital Partners
Rho Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that actively invests in companies related to technology, new media, cleaning technology and healthcare.
Rho Fund Investors, a division of Rho Capital Partners, is a fund of funds (FoF), or fund t ...
. The same year the company was rebranded as Philo, from its former name, Tivli.
In 2014,
Andrew McCollum
Andrew McCollum (born September 4, 1983) is an American angel investor and businessman. McCollum is a co-founder of Facebook and current CEO of Philo.
Education
He attended Harvard University with co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and others on the f ...
, a founding member of
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
, succeeded Christopher Thorpe as CEO to further expand Philo beyond providing university IPTV services and launch a direct-to-consumer over-the-top streaming service called Philo. After securing their Series B round in 2015, Philo relocated to
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
.
In June 2015, Philo raised $10 million in a
Series B
A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the ...
round led by
New Enterprise Associates
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With ~$25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of the w ...
, with joint investment from HBO, Rho Ventures,
Xfund
Xfund is an American venture capital firm with offices in Palo Alto, California and Cambridge, Massachusetts. It provides early-stage venture capital to entrepreneurs across multiple disciplines. Xfund was founded as the Experiment Fund in 2012 a ...
,
CBC New Media Group, as well as Andrew McCollum.
Recent history (2017-present)
Philo launched its
OTT streaming television service in the United States on November 14, 2017. The service is available via TVs,
digital media players, computers, tablets, and phones.
The service includes channels from
A&E Networks
A&E Networks (stylized as A+E NETWORKS) is an American multinational broadcasting company that is a 50–50 joint venture between Hearst Communications and The Walt Disney Company through its General Entertainment Content division. The company o ...
,
AMC Networks
AMC Networks Inc. is an American entertainment company headquartered in 11 Penn Plaza, New York.
AMC Networks owns and operates the eponymous cable channel and its siblings, IFC, We TV, and Sundance TV; the art house movie theater IFC Cen ...
,
Discovery, Inc.
Discovery, Inc. was an American multinational mass media factual television conglomerate (company), conglomerate based in New York City. Established in 1985, the company operated a group of factual television, factual and lifestyle television bra ...
(prior to its 2022 merger with
WarnerMedia
Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States.
It was originally established in 1972 by ...
to form
Warner Bros. Discovery
Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD) is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at 230 Park Avenue South in New York City. It was formed after the spin-off of WarnerMedia by AT&T, and its merger with Di ...
), and
Viacom Viacom, an abbreviation of Video and Audio Communications, may refer to:
* Viacom (1952–2006), a former American media conglomerate
* Viacom (2005–2019), a former company spun off from the original Viacom
* Viacom18, a joint venture between Par ...
(prior to its
2019 reunion with
CBS Corporation
The second incarnation of CBS Corporation (the first being a short-lived rename of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation) was an American multinational media conglomerate with interests primarily in commercial broadcasting, publishing, and t ...
to form ViacomCBS, now known as
Paramount Global
Paramount Global (doing business as Paramount) is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned and operated by National Amusements (79.4%) and headquartered at One Astor Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York. I ...
), all of which also became joint owners of the service with a combined $25 million investment before this launch.
[
The service has no local television stations or sports networks, though it does offer news services through ]BBC World News
BBC World News is an international English-language pay television network, operated under the ''BBC Global News Limited'' division of the BBC, which is a public corporation of the UK government's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and S ...
(which is distributed by AMC) and financial news channel Cheddar
Cheddar most often refers to either:
*Cheddar cheese
*Cheddar, Somerset, the village after which Cheddar cheese is named
Cheddar may also refer to:
Places
* Cheddar, Ontario, Canada
* Cheddar Yeo, a river which flows through Cheddar Gorge and t ...
, along with the national feed of the AccuWeather Network
The AccuWeather Network is an American cable and satellite television network launched, operated and owned by AccuWeather. The network broadcasts live and pre-recorded national and regional weather forecasts, analysis of ongoing weather events, ...
.
In October 2018, Philo added Hallmark Channel
The Hallmark Channel is an American television channel owned by Crown Media Holdings, Inc., which in turn is owned by Hallmark Cards, Inc. The channel's programming is primarily targeted at families, and features a mix of television movies and ...
and its sister channels, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries
Hallmark Movies & Mysteries (formerly known as Hallmark Movie Channel, and also known as HMM) is an American digital cable and satellite television channel owned by Crown Media Holdings. The channel was spun off from sister network Hallmark Chan ...
and Hallmark Drama
Hallmark Drama is an American cable television channel owned by Hallmark Cards' Crown Media Holdings. It is the sister channel to Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, and focuses on family-friendly dramatic storytelling.
History ...
.
In February 2020, Google Fiber announced it would no longer offer television packages to new subscribers. It backed YouTube TV
YouTube TV is an American streaming television service operated by YouTube, a wholly owned subsidiary of Google. Announced on February 28, 2017, the virtual multichannel video programming distributor offers a selection of live linear channel f ...
and fuboTV
FuboTV Inc. (stylized as fuboTV) is an American streaming television service serving customers in the United States, Canada, and Spain that focuses primarily on channels that distribute live sports. Depending on country, channels offered by Fubo ...
at the time and added the $20 package of Philo's 61 channels as an option. Adding Philo to the list of Google Fiber was described as a way to help the virtual MVPD "keep its growth streak going" without the burden of retransmission consent
Retransmission consent is a provision of the 1992 United States Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act that requires cable operators and other multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to obtain permission from commer ...
negotiations and fees needed to run a pay television service. At the time, Philo had 750,000 subscribers and the service said that over the year it had grown by 300%. Philo then added Epix
Epix (pronounced ''epics'' and stylized as P) is an American premium cable and satellite television network owned by the Epix Entertainment LLC subsidiary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), a subsidiary of Amazon's MGM Holdings, Inc. The channel's pr ...
and Starz
Starz (stylized as STARZ since 2016; pronounced "stars") is an American premium cable and satellite television network owned by Lions Gate Entertainment, and is the flagship property of parent subsidiary Starz Inc. Programming on Starz consist ...
as premium add-ons in June of the same year, along with TV Everywhere
TV Everywhere (also known as authenticated streaming or authenticated video on-demand) refers to a type of subscription business model wherein access to streaming video content from a television channel requires users to "authenticate" themselv ...
credentials to their websites and access to their video-on-demand libraries.
On March 29, 2021, T-Mobile
T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic (T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland (T-Mobile Polska), the United States (T-Mobile ...
announced a partnership with Philo to offer a discount on the service when bundled with its wireless plans. September 8 saw the debut of a "Movies & More" add-on package, which includes Sony Movies, Reelz
Reelz (formerly known as Reelz Channel) is an American digital cable and satellite television network owned by Hubbard Broadcasting. The network's programming was formerly devoted to entertainment-oriented programming focusing on the Hollywood ...
, HDNet Movies
HDNet Movies is an American digital cable and satellite television network owned and operated by HDNet LLC, operating as a subsidiary of AXS TV LLC. Launched by founder Mark Cuban in January 2003 as a spin-off of HDNet (now AXS TV), the network fe ...
, MGM HD
MGM HD was an all high-definition television cable network owned by the MGM HD Productions subsidiary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), a division of Amazon's MGM Holdings, Inc. It featured movies from the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer library of 1,200 movie ...
and Cinémoi. Philo would be a launch partner of Comcast's revival of G4, launching the network on November 16. GAC Media channels, GAC Living
Great American Living (formerly Ride TV and GAC Living) is an American cable television network. Owned by Great American Media, it primarily broadcasts programming devoted to the lifestyles of the American South.
Established in 2014, the networ ...
and GAC Family
Great American Family is an American cable television network. Owned by Great American Media, it broadcasts family-oriented general entertainment programming, including television series and made-for-TV movies.
It was originally established in ...
, were added to the service at the start of December 2021.
In February 2022, Philo reached an agreement with entertainment company, Kin, to bring over 65 hours of programming to its platforms along with producing Philo's first original series, Boss Moves with Rasheeda. Later in the year, Philo added around a half-dozen channels operated by Weigel Broadcasting, including MeTV
MeTV, an acronym for Memorable Entertainment Television, is an American broadcast television network owned by Weigel Broadcasting. Marketed as "The Definitive Destination for Classic TV", the network airs a variety of classic television program ...
, Decades and Story Television. In October 2022, Philo added FETV
FETV (abbreviation for Family Entertainment Television) is an American cable and satellite television network owned by the Family Broadcasting Corporation
Family Broadcasting Corporation, formerly known as LeSEA Broadcasting, is an American ...
to its base subscription package and Family Movie Classics
Family Movie Classics (FMC) is an American cable and satellite television network owned by the Family Broadcasting Corporation. The network features classic movies and marketed as "to entertain audiences with quality films featuring the biggest ...
to the "Movies & More" add-on package.
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
*
{{CATV USA
Companies based in San Francisco
Internet television streaming services
American companies established in 2009
Internet properties established in 2009
2009 establishments in Massachusetts
Paramount Streaming
Warner Bros. Discovery subsidiaries
AMC Networks
A&E Networks