Nieman Foundation at Harvard
WeWork locations, gas stations, local broadcast stations, and now local airwaves — Cheddar, the “CNBC for millennials” by Jon Steinberg, is blaring business news at local viewers in multiple ways.
On Thursday Cheddar announced that its programming will air for half an hour every weeknight on CUNY TV, the independent station by the City University of New York, starting with Cheddar’s regular national news and eventually zeroing in on local New York news like the looming L train shutdown, according to Steinberg.
That comes on top of its Cheddar Local initiative launched last summer, featuring one- to two-minute market updates from Cheddar on stations like New York’s News 12 Networks and Tegna’s ABC station in Sacramento. Last November, Cheddar also began a partnership with the coworking space network WeWork to bring in on-air guests via remote studios.“We supply business news to local stations via Cheddar Local. Now we’re moving into local airwaves and cable. Soon we’ll unify the threads,” Steinberg told me.
Cheddar’s game plan is to be everywhere viewers are, which is why it also plays in 20-second segments on those gas station screens that you can’t avoid listening to while fueling up. It’s also available on Sling TV, Hulu, YouTube TV, Snapchat, fuboTV, Philo, Amazon, Twitch, Twitter, some smart TVs, and Facebook. The network also has plans for an international expansion.
After raising $22 million earlier this year, Cheddar is now valued at $160 million and has about 130 employees, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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