启动α:创建一个新的OTT服务

本周，L传奇数字网络 (LDN)推出 α, a new OTT service targeting the modern comic 和 tech geek. The site distinguishes itself from other OTT services by emphasizing live video 和 online community. To find out what goes into launching an OTT service, we spoke to LDN president Adam Rymer.

Legendary's story started back in 2000 when Thomas Tull founded 传奇娱乐作为一家电影融资和制作公司. 在华纳兄弟成立.，它联合制作了《…… 蝙蝠侠:黑暗骑士，宿醉, 和 300. 凭借这一成功，它不断发展壮大，变得多样化. 2012年，它进行了收购天才呆子行业, a geek-focused production company created by Chris Hardwick. 不久之后，它收购了Felicia Day's 极客和杂物和艾米·波勒的《聪明女孩. Combining those three properties, the company started Legendary Digital Network (LDN). 而LDN最初是YouTube的发行商, it's followed the times 和 created content for Facebook, YouTube, 船, Go90, 推特, 以及任何其他能找到观众的平台.

In January 2016, The W和a Group, a Chinese multinational conglomerate, purchased Legendary. W和a also owns the AMC movie theater chain 和 is currently making a push into Hollywood.

LDN总部设在伯班克, 哪里有40,000-foot sound stage 和 production center near the airport. 工作人员包括编辑, 销售人员, 财务的人, 生产商, 董事, 和 post-production wizards—everything it needs to create, 分发, 在网上销售内容. Other Legendary divisions create TV shows, movies, 和 comic books.

流媒体 spoke to Rymer a few weeks before the launch of α. 虽然它没有很多被证实的热门作品, it's focus on live video 和 community offers something more than just another VOD service.

流媒体: α was supposed to launch in early November, but that was pushed back. 这是为什么??

亚当·赖默:最初的计划是在11月3日发布, but as we got into the testing period we found a couple of things that needed to be fixed before we went public with it. 这把它推迟了几个星期.

What we're trying to do in α is something that has never been done on a mass scale before. α is built around live streaming—it's a live streaming video experience with interactivity features. 当你在阿尔法的时候, 你会发现不仅仅是传统的东西, 像视频点播, but there's also chat rooms—multiple different chat rooms that exist separate from the video. 会有论坛供人们参与. Then there's a live streaming player that allows for chat along with the video, 类似于Twitch的风格, but some other levels of interactivity that allow the audience to become part of the shows.

This is the first time that we opened it up to testing with a larger public audience. Underst和ing how that technology works across different platforms 和 players is a bit of an effort. Everybody has different setups, different updates to their browsers. Microsoft threw us for a little bit of a loop with launching new versions of Windows that we had to make sure we caught up with. 火狐推出了新版本的浏览器. These are just the things that we have to make sure that we have all cleaned up before we open it up to the public.

It looks like you have a couple of dozen shows that are either in production now or soon will be.

这是正确的. 我们有了新的节目安排. There's a couple of prior shows that we've had on the channels in the past, 像桌面, 哪些会在α版本中提供. Then we're launching a whole new series of new programming, because historically there hasn't been a place to put real live streaming longer-form content. At least not one that you can monetize in a way that makes it reasonable to produce those shows.

Do all of those shows come from your three main properties [Nerdist, 极客和杂物, 和聪明女孩]?

它们都来自Nerdist, Geek和Sundry. 这就是我们的起点, 最后, we'll exp和 to potentially other channels or other types of content that aren't driven entirely by Nerdist 和极客和杂物. Once people underst和 what the platform can do 和 the technology, we're looking forward to working with some outside 生产商, 创意人员外, 他们可能知道如何使用它. Until people can see it 和 underst和 some of the technology 和 features that are there, 很难让创意人员的大脑在这上面流动起来.

How does that work with Nerdist 和极客和杂物: Do they have their own development office, 与LDN分离?

是的, Nerdist 和极客和杂物 each have a development team, 和 then we have a head of development for α who's working with third partied as well as working with Nerdist 和极客和杂物 to develop content for the platform.

The goal is not to take anything away from what we already do. It's not trying to take Nerdist 和极客和杂物和 stick it behind any sort of paywall. 这是为了提供额外的体验. To the fans 和 the community that's made us very successful on YouTube 和 Facebook 和 things like that, 我们将继续提供我们一直在做的事情, 比如文章，网络视频等等.

你给阿尔法带来的YouTube大热, 桌面, will it continue to offer free episodes online or is it completely moving?

阿尔法会有一个窗口, so we put the first two shows on YouTube simultaneously with α, 和 then the remaining shows for 桌面 will be behind the paywall in α. They'll be inside the membership service for about two or three months. They start getting released to other platforms in January.

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