Anthony Nerantzis On How His Start-up Stream Targets A Content Programming Gap In Digital Signage

Feeding the content beast is an endless challenge for most companies who have invested in digital signage technology for their venues, particularly when the messaging mission is not data and pricing, but material that informs, educates and generally occupies the time of viewers.

There are a few companies out there with suites of free streaming content channels, curated and sorted by interest areas. But free means ad-supported. So the action channel a bar owner might have up on screens has digital OOH ads, just like linear TV.

A start-up called Stream is coming at this from a different angle, producing custom content that looks like cable TV news channels and is sorted by interest areas, like channels for medical and dental offices. The big differences are no ads and low-cost monthly subscription fees. The service puts people on screens, but AI is also used to what Stream calls augment the videos.

Started just a year ago and just coming out of side hustle/stealth mode, the founders are going after what they say is a gap in the market for this type and style of content. But in meeting with prospective customers, they’ve also uncovered hidden demand for private label TV channels for larger clients.

I chatted recently with co-founder Anthony Nerantzis.

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TRANSCRIPT

Anthony, thank you for joining me. I knew nothing about your company, Stream, until the other day I got an email, I looked at it and I thought, this is interesting, who are these guys? And I asked a couple of questions and concluded that perhaps we should have a chat. Can you give me a rundown of what you do?

Anthony Nerantzis: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thank you so much for having me on your program. A big fan. My name is Anthony Nerantzis, and I’m the CEO and co-founder of Stream. Stream is in a unique space and we think of a new space in the digital signage industry. 

What we’re doing is producing really premium, but low-cost and customized content solutions for CMSs, network operators, and so on to put what is a premium content product and deliver premium content product to their end users. Our whole content model is based around on unique streaming channels. So we have both plug and play, but also these white-label custom channels that we produce for brands and organizations that want to get their messages out in a contextual way to drive engagement with their customers and their viewers and we’re really excited about it. 

So if I’m looking at one of your content channels, what does it look like? 

Anthony Nerantzis: Yeah. So what we did is the founders of Stream come from media and comms backgrounds. So what we’re the best at is telling stories, visual storytelling, narrative storytelling, audience engagement, and what we identified is that a broadcast news look and feel with a host, with that graphic representation of messages, people are drawn to that. People want to engage with that sort of content. It’s a premium, high-level content, think ESPN or CNN. So all of our content is based around that broadcast news style, look and feel. 

What we do is for different, contextual environments, different venues, we create content that’s relevant to those venues. Think of a broadcast news channel for a doctor’s office. Think of a broadcast news channel for the C-Store. It’s really contextually relevant content for those different environments, and it’s delivered in that nice look and feel of a news broadcast. 

So it’s audio-driven?

Anthony Nerantzis: We do offer audio solutions, but what we’ve found for the digital out-of-home environment, typically, there is no audio, and that’s for a few reasons. First, our file sizes, just as far as the handshake and the transfer, with our partners, a smaller file size, easier to transfer, easier to upload. But second of all, a lot of the end users that we’ve worked with, especially on the white-label channel side, don’t want noise pollution in their environments. They’re just looking for that visual component. So that’s where our focus is. 

We obviously do audio, but our bread and butter is, that visual aspect, brilliant visuals, that draw people in.

So if it looks like broadcast news, is there a reporter or a host or whatever you want to call it, on-air talent, talking, but you subtitle it or is it more visuals with supporting, titles or captions? 

Anthony Nerantzis: It’s a great combo of both. So we do have our lineup of Stream hosts that we utilize for our production and our development and then they do appear on the screens, and yes, with a subtitle delivery of those messages, but we have graphics of messages, headlines, subheads.

You wouldn’t turn our broadcast stations on your TV after a long day and sit down on the couch, but if you were to do that, it does appear as if it were a CNN, ESPN, or Fox News sort of broadcast look and feel. 

That sounds expensive. I mean with on-air talent and everything else and the news resources that you need for that, having some experience in that in my old newspaper days and everything else, and there’s a little bit of rxperience with broadcasting. On-air talent and everything else costs real money. How do you get around that?

Anthony Nerantzis: Absolutely. So, as I said, we come from the media and the comms space. So we do have that production value, that know-how of the space. What we’ve done is we’ve integrated some neat, really revolutionary, AI augmentation, to our displays and the content. So not only does that accelerate. our production process but it also helps us keep our costs, you know in check And allows us to provide what is really low-cost content to our end customers. 

Obviously right now we’re priced to scale. it’s not cheap but we’re excited, you know comparatively to a lot of the other options content out there. We’re able to come in comparably, if not in a lot of cases lower, but still delivering a premium product. 

Are these AI avatars, are they generated hosts as opposed to real on-air talent? 

Anthony Nerantzis: So not generated. So we call it augmented because they are our host, they’re on payroll and we work with them for a number of different creative, creative situations and use cases. But yeah, so one of the ways that we’re really able to within our tech stack drive our costs down is  through the rendering process. Again, augmenting our hosts rather than it’s not what we’re doing is not fake or avatar generated in that capacity, but we are using our, real life host talent and then using them as AI generated through and to deliver them across our streaming channels. 

It sounds like there’s two ways to go at this, the standard sorts of channels that you already have, and there are custom channels. If it’s a standard channel that’s going into a doctor’s office, what am I subscribing to? What roughly am I going to pay? I’m sure there’s and it depends on there, but, also just what’s the refresh cycle? Is this something that’s refreshed daily, weekly, monthly? 

Anthony Nerantzis: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. So I think a doctor’s office is a really great example of where we show up in a way that current content options aren’t quite there.

What we’re doing, I would say on the plug and play side, we have several channels. We have Med One, which is a catch all healthcare sort of channel of healthcare infotainment, and then we also have a dentistry channel, and then we also have a dermatology channel and we’re looking at other avenues for other use cases within the medical field.

But what these are doing is they’re showing really interesting infotainment content that’s relevant to those spaces. We like to say contextually relevant. They’re sharing news from around the industry, news from across the health landscape across the US. It’s all G-rated. We use the four year old test. If you’re a mom in a waiting room, what would you be comfortable with your four year old seeing? So it’s not gory.

It’s just health tips and interesting stuff. That’s going on studies hey a new study came out that lifting weights after 60 is good for bone density, things like that, and then our custom channels, if you are a bigger network and you own a network of, several hundred screens across, dentists office, we can really get really custom on that white label space with corporate branding, corporate messaging, and really for those brands, taking the exact messages that they want to deliver to their customers in that really unique five to ten minute waiting room experience, and getting them off their phones and having them focus on the screens, with relevant content.

As far as pricing goes, that’s where we’re really excited and probably most proud. So for our venue channels, that’s our kind of our second tier. Those really environment specific channels such as healthcare, those can MSRP run anywhere from $10 at the high-end and $5 at the low end. So compared to what it would cost for a CNN Health with through a cable subscription, it’s really nice, it’s obviously a fraction of that. But it’s also a step above rotating PowerPoint slides, with messages that say, “Go get your flu shot”, which after the third or fourth flip, people are tuning out. 

From a cost perspective, it’s extremely competitive. And then the white label channels, that’s also really exciting for us because we’re able to deliver those brand specific channels at a really affordable cost. 

I suspect that’s definitely a “it depends” thing on how much they want and everything else. But if you had a typical, private label channel, would that be like a hundred bucks a month a thousand bucks a month?

Anthony Nerantzis: That’s a great question So it depends on the end point and you got me with “it depends.” It does depend but for now, i’ll give you an example. We have a network with a hundred end points and that they ask for a white label channel and you know with regular updates, it’s not daily updates, but with regular updates, we’re able to deliver that at 50 bucks an end point so considering the value that you’re getting, the brand itself is getting their very own broadcast news channel. 

When our CMS partners put us in front of these folks, and they say, hey, this is something new, this is something exciting and you can have your own broadcast news channel. The end users are thrilled. Going from rotating powerpoint slides to something like this is such a value add as far as customer engagement. We’ve really found an enthusiasm for that sort of new age content. 

Are there personalization options out of those private label ones?

In other words, can the dental office in Cincinnati versus the one in Cleveland inject their own kind of messaging like, “Please welcome our new hygienist, Sarah” or whatever?

Anthony Nerantzis: Absolutely, and it’s actually funny you say that because the network that I just mentioned previously, they have a network of doctor’s offices across the state of North Carolina, and each one of those offices has their own little, news, notes, updates, awards that they want to highlight that maybe might not be appropriate to share across. Someone in Winston, Salem might not care about what’s going on in Carova, so we can make it really specific based on the location, obviously at scale, but yeah, we can get really granular as far as how tailored we can make it to each specific location.

This is different from the streaming channels that companies that I see out there like Atmosphere and Loop and that. Those exist for the purposes of having content supported by advertising. You’re not doing advertising at all, are you? 

Anthony Nerantzis: That’s a really great point, and no, you’re right. We are not doing advertising.

We are all about content forward, grabbing that audience’s attention and giving them the content rather than diluting it with ads. I think that we’re different, from that fast TV space in a few ways, very low cost subscription model, not ads. We’re not necessarily a walled garden. We work with CMSs and we work with operators and distributors as a puzzle piece to what they’re doing and really being allies to them so they can go in to their partners and their end users and say, we have this really cool puzzle pieces that we can fit within our system. So we’re trying to be allies in that way. We don’t have a player we’re not a walled garden and then I would just say third of all we are at the end of the day, we’re producing that premium content. We’re not licensing it from other folks so we can control that messaging. 

We can control what’s showing up on the screens, make sure it’s G-rated, make sure what these brands want in their locations and environments and venues is really tailored to them, not a lowest common denominator loop-based sort of system. 

So you’ve got a content team that’s paying attention to the news wires and just the general run of news out there as well as press releases and everything else, industry reports and so on to pull together your stuff?

Anthony Nerantzis: Absolutely, and that’s really our strength. Our team, the founders specifically, we come from some of the biggest media and comms companies in the world. So we understand that space. That’s where we think our biggest value is, yes, tracking the news, but also identifying these brands and organizations.

What are the best messages to connect with your core audiences? How do we drive this forward? Especially infotainment, but also in a retail media space where it’s about conversions, driving action. That’s our specialty and that’s where we’ve been really able to flex our value with our current client book.

You mentioned, you work with CMS companies as opposed to them. How does your stuff plug in?

Anthony Nerantzis: CMSs are our best friends. If there’s a North star for us, it’s really being partners with the CMS is because they’re so powerful in the sense that they have the distribution, they have these relationships and they know what their customers want.

So when we talk about integration, we are coming to them in two ways. First, a simple integration of our plug and play apps within their app store. So when a customer has their interface template up, they can plop us in, and then our content is really seamless. The handshake is very seamless between us, and then our content can show up on their screens.

Is it streamed straight from your servers or the host that you use for streaming or are the CMS getting a file and it’s stored locally on the player? 

Anthony Nerantzis: That’s a great question. How it typically works is that HTML5 is our best friend. We provide the content feeds through that, they plug into the CMSs, and then the CMS from there distributes that URL through their app store.

So when someone selects us out of their app store, it plugs in basically they’re given access to the license through the URL. We can get as simple as we’ve had clients come to us. End users specifically if we’re working right with the end user and they’re like, we just want an mp4 file, so we’ll just drop an mp4 file in there in their Dropbox and they plug it into their CMS template and they’re off and running. We pride ourselves on universal connectivity. We’ll meet you where the customer is 

So if you have an end user who says I don’t want a CMS. I don’t want that additional monthly cost or whatever. Can I work just directly with you? Can they do that? 

Anthony Nerantzis: As I said, our most important ally in the space are these CMSs. So we respect that relationship. So if we’re working with a CMS and there would never be a situation where the client would be like, see you later, CMS, we’re just going to plug in the stream. We value our long term relationships more than any sort of, short term gain of an individual network.

And then beyond that, and this came up the other day, we’re working with the CMS and their client has a few dozen screens and there might be a few hundred other screens on the horizon in the next few months. We make very clear, we were brought onto the project by the CMS. We’re not going to expand past the boundaries of where their players are plugged in. We respect those relationships and I think that’s really the key to our success. 

Yeah, and I think the end user community, if you want to call it that, is also more knowledgeable than they were for a good long time, where they understand that having a proper content management system with device management, monitoring, all those other things, the ability to scale and all that are really important versus just, finding some server player that can call a URL.

Anthony Nerantzis: A hundred percent and I think that’s what we’re recognizing, and we really can only go as far as our CMS partners, media players. We’re not going to give individual URL feeds to a thousand screens. We rely on them for that distribution. 

Maybe my mind blanked or something, but did you talk about the typical frequency of content changes? 

Anthony Nerantzis: That’s a great question. So for our flagships, our news and sports, obviously that’s quick hitting news and that needs to be updated throughout the day, which it is. 

For our venue channels, those are mostly environments, for example, a doctor’s office, you might really only be in a doctor’s office once every six months, and you’d think that we’d say, we just need to update those channels every six months. What we really go for is, perception is everything. So if that venue owner isn’t seeing it updated that often, they’re going to think they’re not connecting those dots. We’re there to connect those dots for them. We’re there to consistently fresh content. So when they’re walking into their place of business, they’re not like, wow, this is the same thing that was playing two weeks ago. So for our venue channels, we do updates at least two or three times a week to keep that content fresh, relevant. 

Our biggest fear is stale content. That’s what we want to get rid of. That’s what we want to move past and we want to show up well for our CMS partners that their end users are happy with the content that’s being displayed. Obviously with white label, it really depends on what the client wants, but again for us it’s all about going above and beyond and being proactive in that sense to provide fresh content so that’s kind of part of our bread and butter. 

When you were developing the business plan for this, were you thinking white label was a big part of the business or is that something that you landed on as you started talking to customers or potential customers?

Anthony Nerantzis: White label was not part of the plan at all whatsoever. That was born out of really, I would say a listening ot users. So pre launch, we were meeting with a lot of folks, and they were thrilled about and saying, hey, these plug and play options are great, compared to our rotating PowerPoint slides. Let’s get this going. 

But what we noticed was there was incredible demand, really desperation for tailored content. Obviously now everything’s going to be tailored, customizable, and contextual. Not only in the infotainment space, but in the retail media space. So we’re ideating, Hey, what if we make these custom channels? What if we can go to a brand and say, Hey, whether you’re just trying to entertain your customers, let’s entertain them with news and updates about the company? And then if you’re trying to sell a customer on something, why don’t we drive action through content and messages, that will achieve those goals.

What we did was, we obviously went through a pretty big development phase on what we did is we put these samples in these productions in front of folks and the reaction that we got was incredible, and it really showed us that this tailored content and this white label content is really where things are moving away from the lowest common denominator and really going towards contextually relevant brand centric content.

I assume that was a pretty happy discovery because you’re able to, in rough terms, 10x the monthly subscription fee from an endpoint. 

Anthony Nerantzis: We were very fortunate to be in a position where we were already tracking towards it. So yes, it was a “whoa” sort of moment, which was cool.

I don’t think we could have imagined the reaction that we’ve received from it, and transparently, we really used InfoComm as our major kind of launch point to get our name out there, and we were expecting to show up, shake hands, get to know people, meet people. 

We brought, obviously, a little tablet. We were showing people what we were doing, and the reaction, specifically for these white labels… We were on our flight home, from Vegas, with huge smiles on our faces, I don’t think we could have imagined how much these white labels, channel offerings, how much interest that would have generated.

So you were at Infocomm and I walked right by, apparently. 

Anthony Nerantzis: I guess so. I’ll have to catch you at the next one. I think it’s in Orlando next year, right?

Yeah. It’s starting to ring a bell now that when I walk around, I take photos of stands thinking, I don’t know anything about them, I don’t have time to stop right now, but I’ll look this up later. 

If I go through my photos, I bet you there’s one in there like that and my apologies for not stopping, but, I get swarmed that week. 

Anthony Nerantzis: I’m going to let you off the hook. We did not have a booth. We were just walking around. Maybe a booth next year. Maybe you can take a picture of a booth next year. But we were just on the ground getting to know folks, trying to make the most of it. 

And you’re able to do that just by having chats with people? 

Anthony Nerantzis: Yeah, we’re really fortunate. Obviously, the founders are from outside the digital signage space and someone who’s been a huge mentor to us is Bob Ratcliffe. I don’t know if you’re familiar, but he runs, really, what we found to be an incredibly consultancy and, he’s really been our mentor and also guided us around the show floor, and introduced us to who we needed to know. So we’re fortunate for Bob and he’s obviously a great partner with us. 

Yeah, subject matter, knowledge and contacts and all that are invaluable. So how long ago did this start?

Anthony Nerantzis: As I said, we usde Infocomm to put our name out there. Transparently though, I would say since June of 2023 is when the idea was first born. 

Oh, so this is like real new? 

Anthony Nerantzis: Yes. I think I mentioned earlier, but we thought we had an idea, we thought we had something, but what we did was we did a lot of listening. We met with partners even before we really put our name out there publicly.

I can’t tell you how many Zoom meetings, in person conversations that we had with people in the space, CMS operators. What are you looking for from a content perspective? What are you missing? What’s your current situation? The production and development process, obviously, of our software stack, took a long time, to optimize it and get it up and running to what we wanted it to be, to show up in a way that we were proud of.

So I’d say, yeah, about a year and a little before our one year anniversary, we came out to the world and timed up perfectly with Infocomm. 

So what’s the state of the company at the moment? Is it like a full time company or is it a side hustle for you guys? 

Anthony Nerantzis: So we are just breaking out of our side hustle, which is amazing. The last month and a half have been an absolute whirlwind. We are in a full growth stage right now. We’re incredibly proud of that. So We’re going full on and we’re fortunate that we were able to get so much excitement right from the jump that we’re able to make this decision.

So we’re definitely in the growth phase. I think the next three, six, twelve months are going to be extremely exciting. We have a lot of really cool stuff coming down the pipeline, not only with product development, but with partnerships. So we’re excited about where we’re at.

Actually, just last week, we were accepted into NVIDIA’s Inception program for early stage startups. So that gives us a whole suite of tools that are going to propel us, even further forward with our capabilities. So we’re really excited about that. 

Yeah, that’s how I got wind of this and I, admittedly, didn’t know a darn thing about NVIDIA’s inception program. What does that do for you? Is it funding or is it just support or connections?

Anthony Nerantzis: I think a lot about the last one. So it really integrates us directly within their partner network of VCs of developer support. So I would say just from apartner in a network standpoint, that’s going to be the biggest value add. The second really huge boon for us is going to be access to some advanced features within their software suite. Obviously we’re always looking for ways to level up and optimize our production processes.

And with Nvidia, with their help, and being part of this network, we’re going to have access to a lot of the really cool things that they’re doing behind the scenes. So we’re really excited about that and hopefully over the next month or two here, we’re going to be able to roll out some things that are a direct result of that, being within that network, so a huge opportunity for us for sure. 

So that gives you access to a whole bunch of computing power, particularly on the graphics side, which I’m sure it is intriguing.

Anthony Nerantzis: Absolutely. That’s the name of the game right now. We need it and just to have a partner like that is pretty awesome.

If people want to know more about your company, where do they find you? 

Anthony Nerantzis: So we’re a few places. I think our channel of choice is for sure LinkedIn. go ahead and follow us on LinkedIn. We’re Stream, and then our website is streammedia.news.

So we kicked .com to the side because we want to really show that we’re news, we’re content forward. We’re not streammedia.ads. We’re focused on that content with the news. With the news portion. So I encourage everyone to check us out. 

I suspect streammedia.com was also gone many years ago.

Anthony Nerantzis: Dave, you’re exposing me. 

As was the stream.com, probably gone in 2003 or something. 

Anthony Nerantzis: I would imagine, yes. 

Or 1993, I don’t know. Alright, Anthony, that was great. Thank you. Happy to learn more about your company and best wishes with all this, and I guess I’ll see you in Orlando next year.

Anthony Nerantzis: Absolutely, Can’t wait. Thank you so much. We really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you to all your listeners and we really had a lot of fun.