Internet TV platform Philo launched across the U.S. Tuesday, providing an entertainment-focused streaming service, without sports or broadcast channels, starting at $16 a month. And Cheddar is the only news service included in the bundle! CEO Andrew McCollum was one of the founding members of Facebook, and he's bringing everything he learned about social media to his new business. “We kinda have this belief at Philo that TV is the most social form of media that’s out there,” he told Cheddar in an interview. “People talk about TV ten or a hundred times as much as they talk about other types of media.” Philo was first launched at Harvard in 2009, two years after McCollum graduated, in an effort to create a better television experience. The company wants to change the lack of sociability that currently exists in the television industry. McCollum told Cheddar that, as the platform grows, his company will include a built-in social feature to make it easier to share and discover content with friends. After all, McCollum had one big takeaway from his time at Facebook: the power of a friendship network. “Your friend network is sort of like the best recommendation that is in existence,” McCollum said. Philo offers 37 channels in its base package and a premium level for $4 more. The service, currently available on iOS and Roku, secured an early $25 million investment from the likes of AMC, A&E, and Discovery. While programmers and distributors often have challenges striking deals of this magnitude, Philo took a different tone, McCollum said. The CEO says that all of the parties focused on “how can we together build something that is going to benefit everybody.”
