What's new about what you're making? How is it different?

There are many video streaming apps but none truly revolutionize the television industry, which is why cable and satellite providers still dominate today.

The problem as we see it is that most of these app makers focus too much on neat features and not enough on creating a platform that truly improves upon the traditional television business model.

The app produced by Martell Broadcasting Systems, the Zenither app, will succeed because it makes the traditional business norms easier and more profitable for content owners of all sizes (YouTube creator, indie studio or major Hollywood studio).

What the market wants desperately is a multichannel video programming distributor that brings the full traditional TV business model to the internet and makes it accessible to indie content creators. That's what we're doing.

Why is the app called Zenither?

Zenith means "the time at which something is most powerful or successful".

Zenither is intended to become the best video streaming platform that empowers indie creators with all the strategies and tools that a traditional TV station would so they may fully inherent the future of the television industry.

Can videos only be watched by the "channel guide" feature? Is video on demand available in Zenither?

The channel guide is only one means of content curation and discovery that Station owners have at their disposal.

Viewers can still search for Shows and watch videos on demand from the Station page, similar to the experience of searching for videos and watching them on a YouTube channel. In fact Zenither will have a few search features YouTube does not have such as local results (finding Shows produced by local Stations near the viewer, such as local news programs or even live music shows from the bar down the street). These additional search features are specifically designed to allow niche interest programming to thrive on the platform.

Think of Zenither as combining the best aspects of a traditional TV experience with the on demand benefits of internet video sites like YouTube.

How will you make money?

The Zenither app will generate revenue primarily through commissions on ads served during commercial breaks on Station streams, as well as through commissions on premium a la carte subscription bundles and content licensing aggregation fees. Please see our presentation for the full details on these revenue streams.

How big is the market?

At its core the business of television is advertising. The North American television advertising market alone (both traditional and video streaming) is over $200 Billion US annually.

With the Zenither app, third-party Station owners can sell their own ad inventory and keep 100% of that revenue, but they also have the option to sell some of their ad inventory through the display network owned by MBS Inc (which will operate similarly to AdWords for Video). From these latter transactions MBS Inc. will take a 45% - 25% commission on ad revenue from any ads served through our ad display system.

Furthermore MBS Inc. will operate several Stations and sell ads against the content on these stations the same way that cable providers like Time Warner and Comcast operate their own TV stations on their services. So there is an enormous opportunity here to tap into the television advertising market as it transitions from traditional broadcasting into digital video.

The Zenither app will also support premium a la carte channel bundles for subscribers at a price similar to Netflix, which generates $1.18 Billion US in revenue annually.

Lastly the Zenither app will also have a built in content licensing library that will make it easy for Station owners to license bundles of video content for streaming on their Stations and MBS Inc. will take a 5% commission on each licensing transaction. Traditionally content bundles can sell for $25,000 to $250,000 but the system will also support small license purchases from content produced by indies such as YouTube creators. There is a great opportunity here fulfilling a need that no other video streaming app is providing.

Will Station owners be charged a fee for bandwidth / storage costs?

No they will not. That is not our business model.

Nor will users who upload videos into our licensing library be charged for such things either.

Why build an app with a day-parting schedule as a feature? Isn't on-demand video better?

Video on-demand (VOD) is great for obvious reasons, but there is something special about the broadcast watching experience. There is something different about knowing you are watching the same video that thousands, or even millions of other people are also watching at the same time. It allows for real-time conversations about content, which technology is now supporting so that these dialogues can be had at a global scale.

We know a cable TV broadcasting experience is something people want on the internet. Apps like Aereo, Pluto TV and Sling TV have proven there is a market for this. Before it was taken down by copyright infringement lawsuits Aereo had 77,596 subscribers spread out among 10 cities. Pluto TV claims to have 5 million users who are watching nothing but YouTube videos using the app, and Sling TV has 1 million subscribers paying $20 per month to access a handful of channels. We know the experience is in demand because these apps have been successful in the market. What we are doing different is in our business model.

Does the Zenither app support time-shift releases of content?

Yes. Zenither's program channel guide already supports time-shift releases of video content based on the time zone of the viewer. So this is already a feature.

Will Zenither be a free app for viewers?

Zenither is a freemium app -- the vast majority of stations will be free to watch, with revenue supported by advertising (either sold by MBS for the Station owner at their discretion, or sold directly by the Station owner like a TV network does).

In addition to the "free-to-watch" stations there will be premium stations that require a subscription membership to watch. These won't be individual subscriptions -- users will subscribe to a content bundle that the station is a member of. Station bundles will be largely determined by content genre -- the gaming sports package, the kids channel packages, the movie station packages, etc. similar to what cable providers already offer as part of premium packages, but at a much more affordable rate. Each bundle will cost anywhere between $5 to $10 to add to the subscription, and unlocks these premium stations for watching. Stations that are part of these bundles receive carriage fees, just like they would if part of a traditional cable TV subscription service.

Keep in mind some of these stations will be region exclusive, so there might be ( as an example) the Italian movie channel bundle or the Canadian kids station bundle. We place large emphasis on the promotion of local niche interest content and intend to operate our service globally. The platform is designed to accommodate this while ensuring a quality search and watch experience for users no matter what territory of the world they live in.

From a viewer's point of the view the app will seem very similar to YouTube in that they can watch lots of free content and still do a paid subscription to watch premium shows, but for content owners the business model is VERY DIFFERENT and can potentially be much more lucrative for them.

As a viewer why would I want to watch videos on Zenither instead of YouTube?

Firstly is curation. The station hourly schedule broadcast feed is content curated by the station owner themselves like a traditional TV station does, and all the same strategies (like day-parting) that helps audiences discover content of interest.

Secondly Zenither also has search options to find local stations near your location, which may carry programming of interest to you such as local news programs or local streams of events like sports, music concerts, etc. When you subscribe to a station it appears in your channel guide, which is customizable and allows you to see release of new content horizontally rather than vertically like on YouTube, which maximizes screen space and is why TV channel guides always use this format. It's real peculiar that YouTube doesn't and an indicator that they really don't get the TV experience.

So as compared to YouTube if you follow hundreds of channels you can quickly look through the Zenither channel guide to see what is new as 'new' will be among the tags for those programming blocks in the schedule.

Thirdly searching for content will be much easier because instead of needing to dig through hundreds of individual videos you can search by stations that specialize in certain genres of content or shows that match those content related keywords. You can search through keywords of individual episodes too, but you'll end up with the same problem you get with YouTube where (as an example) if you search "horror" you'll get a bunch of people in their bedroom talking about horror or top lists of horror, and not see shows. YT does have filters you can apply to show just what it regards as "shows" but shows has been depreciated as a tag and so only old stuff is labeled a show, and if you do the filter for movies you actually end up with a lot of possible results never appearing because the uploader didn't go into advanced settings and label it as a movie or use horror related keywords in the title and description. The user experience for labeling content is pretty complex and time consuming on YouTube and ours is a lot simpler so content in Zenither will generally have better meta data than YouTube videos do because people (content owners) will actually fill out the key stuff in Zenither.

We'll actively be monitoring if station owners are filling out their metadata properly and ensure it gets done because they will need to keep quality standards.

How will video creators make money on Zenither?

There's three main revenue streams for video creators on Zenither.

The first is by operating a Station. This allows the Station owner to monetize their videos with inserted advertising into the streams as well as having pre-rolls, mid-rolls and end-rolls like you see on YouTube, Hulu and other video streaming platforms.

The second revenue stream is for Premium Stations, who will also receive carriage fees from the paid subscription bundle their Stations are listed under.

The third revenue stream is by uploading your video content to the Zenither video library which allows Station owners to license your videos for streaming on their Stations. There will be very flexible licensing agreement structure which can support single video licensing or bundle licensing, as well as charging an upfront payment for the license. Creators can also choose to receive a % of the ad revenue their videos earn from the Station licensee. This is how traditional TV works; content owners license their shows to networks as first, second or third runs, and can license these shows to multiple Stations in different territories at the same time thus maximizing their revenue opportunity. You can do absolutely none of this on YouTube because it was designed as a video blog platform instead of as a television delivery system. We at Zenither realize we need to bring the model of TV to the indie digital content creators and make it super easy for them to operate their businesses the same way the major studios and networks do. That's what Zenither is all about.

How can you be sure people will watch videos in your app?

We're confident people will use the app because they already watch content on other similar apps.

As many channels in Zenither will be free to watch (such as those operated by MBS, Inc. ourselves) we don't think it'll be a hard sell to get people to sign up as users to the app.

Some folks might not be convinced of this though and that's fine. It's actually unnecessary for you to be convinced people will download our app. This is because all Station owners can embed their Station streams into their own websites. If the Station owner already has an audience they can simply share their own website as a destination for people to watch their stream. Even playing on a website external to our app, ads will still play and any necessary paid subscriptions will still be required but this gives content owners more control over the way their content is displayed and allows them to continue to focus on promoting their own websites.

How will small YouTube creators best create a Station in Zenither?

Stations in the Zenither app will be just like TV stations you see on cable and satellite services. Although the Station owners will have the ability to offer video-on demand libraries, the Stations will require 24/7 scheduling of content into their feed at all times or we won't show their feeds in the channel guides in order to ensure a quality experience for the viewers. I mean, could you imagine if MTV just stopped airing content? That would obviously make for a poor experience for the viewers, wouldn't it? This is the kind of thing we must avoid occurring in Zenither.

So, Station creators will need to have access to at least 100 hours of video content before we'll allow their Stations to be watchable by the public. This is basic quality assurance. Although this is a digital platform, the BUSINESS of television still applies. This service is not meant for just anyone to make a Station; it is specifically meant for serious business minded folks who want to run a TV station using the internet for distribution.

So having said this, it is important that small YouTube creators understand that a Station full of their own 5 minute video blogs would be a tough sell to audiences and advertisers. The smart thing to do if you are a small YouTube creator is to band together with a bunch of other creators with content to form a company, and then use that company to start a Station. You can then broadcast all of your content 24/7 and stream shows from several creators on the Station, not just your own. The tools of a Zenither Station make this process very easy to do.

Who do you expect to create Stations in Zenither?

We expect multi-channel networks and popular YouTube creators to be some of the first publishers, as they have a huge library of content and problems with optimizing revenue for it. One of the toughest things about YouTube is it's impossible to utilize traditional broadcast strategies for promoting content since everything is on demand. These strategies might be old but they work extremely well, which is why YouTube and Netflix have never fully replaced traditional broadcast television. We believe once we give digital creators the ability to use the same techniques as TV networks and possess full control over the value of their ad inventory, then we'll see a dramatic shift in the situation.

The second type of Station creator is likely to be a company with access to tons of old TV shows and movies, who will create Stations so they can schedule this content and generate additional revenue from it. These can be anywhere from major Hollywood studios to indie film-makers who have found it difficult to thrive in today's market due to the shriveling of the home video market (DVD / Blu-Ray sales aren't what they used to be). Their content can find a second life in the Zenither app.

The third type of Station creator is probably going to be local public access and college stations who want to reach wider audiences on the internet with the content they already have and continue to produce.

Why do you think MCNs will want to run Stations in Zenither?

The YouTube multi-channel network model is dependent upon the way YouTube's platform works. Currently, the only way MCNs can be profitable is by getting a cut of ad revenue from thousands upon thousands of channels.

So, what do you think is going to happen when the biggest YouTubers abandon Google's platform for Zenither, where they get to keep more of their revenue, charge significantly higher rates for ads, can get paid carriage fees and have the ability to effortlessly license their content out for easy money? The current MCN model will obviously not survive this paradigm shift. MCNs will need to become more like traditional TV networks in order to carry on.

To be blunt, we aim to disrupt the market to such an extent that the MCNs will simply not be able to operate if they don't join Zenither because all the biggest YouTube creators will be removing their content from YouTube and choosing to make it exclusively available on Zenither, which will be the absolute best place for them to make money with their content.

The other thing to consider is that several MCNs have tried and failed to build their own independent video streaming platforms. These efforts have failed primarily because the size of the audiences these MCNs attract are not larger enough to support the operation of a video streaming platform and justify the cost of paid subscriptions or even support advertising revenue. We think the MCNs should instead operate as part of a package bundle deal like cable stations do. This is why we're using the cable TV carriage fee model for Zenither premium subscriptions. We believe this model has demonstrated itself to work in the traditional TV industry and there is no reason it cannot work if a platform is developed specifically to bring this kind of model to the internet. As services like Sling TV and YouTube TV have demonstrated, the model can work but the majority of MCNs are locked out of operating stations on these services because they are deals meant to attract traditional media companies and their audiences. They are not aimed at servicing the needs of indie content creators like YouTube stars and the MCNs that work with them.

Why should I care if YouTube creators can make more money in Zenither?

We realize the average person is unfamiliar with the operations of the entertainment industry but you should try to be more open minded. Helping any large group of business owner has a positive impact on the economy.

It is possible that the way you think the TV industry works is not accurate. We've met people who think actors and directors get all the money, when in fact this simply isn't true. According to the MPAA the American motion picture and TV industry contributes approximately $40 billion per year in payments to more than 330,000 local businesses across the country. In fact, a major motion picture shooting on location contributes $225,000 every day to the local economy. The traditional TV industry is based predominantly out of New York where it supports nearly 95,000 jobs and pays over $9.8 billion in wages.

But when folks like YouTube creators don't generate fair earnings for their content they cannot add their own contributions to this equation very well, as with fewer profits they have difficulty funding the production of high quality content. The core reason many YouTube creators primarily make video blogs in their bedrooms and don't make serial scripted content despite having hundreds of thousands of subscribers is because they just don't make enough money to do so using AdWords monetization. Consequently they cannot regularly hire production crews, catering services, rent hotel rooms, costume designers, prop makers, make up artists and so on which are essential for producing scripted serial content. The production of movies and TV shows is a manufacturing process involving a lot of different occupational specialties, which is why the creation of these shows is so expensive. When YouTube creators do not produce much revenue they simply cannot hire these people to help them manufacture content.

We believe Zenither's model will make it easier for the next generation of content creators to produce serial scripted content and consequently contribute to their local economies.

So the best way to think of Martell Broadcasting Systems Inc. is that we're helping a special class of business owner who has needs not being met by anyone else and that the large amounts of ad revenue the Station owners make aren't going to flow into a big swimming pool of coins, but instead flow back into the economy by creating jobs and purchasing services needed for Station owners to produce tons of new TV shows and movies for their Stations. It will be a very great thing!

What is the submission process for people who want to make a Station?

Users interested in making a Station will be able to apply through a form on our website. Approval will be based on which applicants can demonstrate they have a library of 100+ hours of content. This proof can be a catalog list or a link to their existing YouTube channel.

Although it's a manual review process, don't think we're going to be trying to make a super exclusive platform. We're not. We expect there to be tens of thousands of Stations within the first year of launch. The barrier of entry is slightly higher than on YouTube for running a channel but that's only because our business model is different. As we said before, ANYONE can upload their videos to our platform for Station owners to license and then stream on their Stations. We believe this will be a more effective model for most content creators than asking them to produce videos AND manage the marketing of those videos. That isn't what traditional content production companies usually do; they make content and license the content out.

We also think many creators will make more money this way, too. And Creators who are very successful with licensing their shows can always apply to run their own Stations.

What is Martell Broadcasting Systems, Inc. ?

MBS Inc. is a company founded by Carey Martell in November 2013 for the purpose of developing a video streaming app, which was originally called 'Martell TV' and is now the Zenither app. The company had difficulties raising funding from traditional investor groups but last year used Regulation Crowdfunding to accomplish its goals by directly reaching out to the people who can see its potential -- online video creators and their audiences.

After over a year of continuous software development the Zenither platform is now available.

What kind of data will you monitor about users?

The business of television is primarily advertising. This means the better your data about the audience, the better the monetization opportunity for your content as advertisers want to laser-target onto audiences that match their customer profiles. We understand this.

At launch our analytical tools will allow Station owners to have detailed information about the audiences watching their content. For all users that subscribe to their Station, the Station owner will gain the email address of the user so that the Station owners can generate mailing lists of their followers. This is something no other video streaming platform offers to content owners because those developers want to trap content owners to their platforms, but we at MBS, Inc. understand the business of television demands direct interaction with your audience and that this information will result in better tailored ads for the audiences which ultimately will result in a better overall user experience.

If we raise the full $1 million this round we will build an exceptionally detailed analytical system that is on par with Facebook Audience Insights, matching user information to consumer agencies so that station owners can provide high quality audience data to advertisers. We believe this will make it much easier for our Station owners to earn the same amounts of ad revenue that traditional broadcast TV stations earn from Nielsen reports (which are not nearly as accurate as our system will be).

Can a Station owner bring a livestream feed into their Station, such as from Twitch?

Yes. You will be able to schedule livestream feeds with the Zenither app to stream in timeslots on a Station.

Best of all using our ad system you can take a commercial break and insert an ad container that allows you to show a different ad based on the location of the viewer. This means that, as an example, using the same 30 second ad unit you can sell an ad for the North American market, and then a different one for Russian, Europe, Asia, and so on. This allows greater monetization opportunities for livestreamed content.

How does Zenither compare to YouTube TV, Sling TV, etc. ?

Sling TV and YouTube TV work similarly to the defunct Aereo app. These services allow subscribers to view live and time-shifted streams of over-the-air television on Internet-connected devices. So in order for someone to operate a station feed for these services you need to at the bare minimum have your own ability to schedule and broadcast content 24/7 -- which usually requires equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Zenither app has built in software and allows Station owners to use its servers to schedule and broadcast video content 24/7. Unlike Sling TV, YouTube TV and any of these other Aereo copy-cats, a Station owner in Zenither can make their station using nothing more than a laptop running Windows, Mac, or Chrome. It doesn't matter because the Stations are managed in a website browser window. So long as you have a laptop that can open a web browser and access the internet, you can manage a Station in Zenither and build a cable-TV style station. We handle ALL of the heavy lifting and significantly reduce the upfront investment cost of having to purchase expensive broadcast / streaming equipment as you would need to use with these other services, as they do little more than re-broadcast a feed originating from somewhere else.

Bear in mind, live content feeds can still be inserted into any Zenither Station feed so if you have your own equipment you can do this but it's not necessary.

How will the Zenither app help small niche Stations grow audiences?

The Zenither search feature will be vastly better than what you see on YouTube, which is based entirely around keyword search queries.

Firstly, for Stations that make locally focused content such as news or public access, Zenither will be able to detect the GPS location of a user and recommend to them Stations whose owners are based within 200 miles of them. If the app cannot locate Stations based within 200 miles, it will search for Stations based within 500 miles, and so on, up to 1,000 miles. We believe this will greatly help small niche Stations grow huge audiences in a way a platform like YouTube never can. Users can still search for all the Stations in the app, but we will recommend Stations close to them which have locally focused programming.

Secondly for Stations that make scripted serial content, the search feature will allow users to easily find your shows and films, whereas on YouTube this is not easy at all. For example if you search "fantasy" or "horror" on YouTube you will find thousands of video blogs that often just discuss these things, and it is very difficult to find fantasy or horror TV shows and films. High quality scripted serial content on YouTube is nearly always buried under a sea of talking head video blogs made by teens in their bedrooms, making it nigh-impossible to find.

By making Zenither a more exclusive platform that only allows serious business minded folk with high quality content to own Stations, you will not find our search results flooded with low quality video blogs of people in their apartments chatting about random things. That content is better watched and monetized in the video blog format that YouTube uses. Quality serial scripted content is best watched and monetized in a programmatic channel guide experience like Zenither uses.

Much like Netflix, our search page will list Shows and Movies, rather than individual videos like on YouTube. This will make it easier for Stations to be discovered that are playing these Shows and Movies in their lineup, or in their on-demand libraries.

Will your ad display system allow third party auditors check the numbers?

We understand it is a major concern for advertisers to ensure the metrics provided to them are accurate. We intend to cooperate with third party auditors so that advertisers can be confident in the data we provide.

Will I be able to watch Stations that broadcast content in other regions?

Yes, you will be able to watch Stations that broadcast from different regions but this access will need to comply with licensing restrictions as determined by the Station owners and their licensing deals. For example, Netflix recently got into some trouble by refusing to allow people who are registered in one territory to watch content while traveling in different territories (ex. if you live in the USA and were traveling in Europe you had difficulty watching programs on Netflix).

We do not wish to make this same mistake and will develop our system to ensure a quality watch experience for the audiences while still satisfying the licensing restrictions that apply to content in the business of television. We know that "region locking" can be tough for viewers who are traveling in different countries, and will be keeping this in mind as we develop the licensing system.

What will Zenither's censorship policies be?

MBS Inc. believes in the value of free speech and distribution of ideas. We know there are many news programs on YouTube currently being censored and demonetized because the hosts share ideologies that YouTube's admins do not agree with. So we know our censorship policies will be something many current YouTubers are interested in hearing abut.

(for those unfamiliar with this topic, please read http://www.tubefilter.com/2017/06/06/philip-defranco-next-show-off-youtube/ and the resulting user comments to the article)

Historically television has been a public utility and broadcasting protected as free speech. The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that the public expression of ideas should not be prohibited merely because the ideas themselves may be offensive to some of the hearers. However with internet television becoming something that is operated entirely by private companies like YouTube, they are free to enact whatever content policies they like. This means the corporations can and frequently do reject the principles of free speech. Therefore the only way that free speech can exist for television in the future is if a company operating a video streaming platform allows free speech to thrive. MBS Inc. seeks to be one of these companies and fulfill this social contract with the public.

Unlike YouTube, MBS does not intend to monetize every user's Station in our app with ads we place ourselves, so we won't be as heavy handed in our acceptable content policies as YouTube is. YouTube de-monetizes videos under the guise of saying they are not "advertiser friendly" and because Zenither's business model is not focused on MBS selling ads on all third party owned videos we don't have the same need to censor content like YouTube does. It is one of the key differences in our business model. Unlike YouTube our entire revenue model is not based in acting as a middle man between advertisers and content owners. Instead we provide the tools for content owners to easily sell their own ads at the price they specify and with the advertisers they wish to work with.

Also unlike YouTube our app will have significantly better parental controls options for parents to employ on accounts for their kids to use, and these parental controls will be similar to what you find on cable TV services. Furthermore because advertisers can directly make deals with Station owners the "ad market" within the Zenither eco-system becomes self-policing the same way it is for traditional media buys. The biggest flaw with YouTube is advertisers generally can't control what specific videos their ads appear on and with Zenither they can.

So compared to YouTube we think you'll find we're not as interested in censoring videos and Stations for having content our employees might personally disagree with nor will be removing content because it is deemed "advertiser unfriendly". As a business we don't think it will be all that necessary for us to intervene in content such as political news programs, because with our business model the users will determine what is acceptable and not acceptable for them to watch, and advertisers will determine what content they want to place their ads on. Furthermore we won't need to concern ourselves with FCC broadcast regulations either; we won't be pulling Stations just because someone uses language we might disagree with, for example.

A station owner would need to do something that is undoubtedly morally reprehensible in order to be contacted by us about their content. This means they would need to be violating a law in a country their content is available in. MBS Inc does not make laws but do abide by them. So for example if someone had a Station where they broadcast videos that encourage people to commit crimes, depending on the laws of the country we would be forced to contact the Station owner and have a discussion with them about these laws they are breaking (probably unintentionally) and how this can be avoided in the future.

We expect Station owners will want to sell their own advertising in order to sustain Station operations and if they can find advertisers and audiences for their content then who are we to interfere with this? By providing a platform that allows the free exchange of ideas we feel viewers can decide for themselves who they want to watch and this will create a better medium of creative expression for content owners and audiences than is currently available.

Can affiliate stations be created in Zenither using geofencing?

Yes we will support that feature.

We understand that some entertainment company broadcasting models might want to utilize affiliate stations which have exclusive broadcasting rights in specific territories. The Zenither app will support this; station owners can determine the territories the station can be watched in, and anyone who is outside of the specified range will not be able to watch content on that station. This, again, is a feature not supported by platforms like YouTube which only allows blocking by country location and ignores that territories within a country can actually be licensed out (an example being the United States affiliate broadcasting station model).