Keynote: Curiosity’s Clint Stinchcomb

Clint Stinchcomb, the president and CEO of Curiosity, joined the TV Real Festival today to share how the company is driving gains across its SVOD, FAST and content licensing operations and weighed in on the opportunities presented by AI.

Curiosity, which was founded by Discovery veteran John Hendricks, has evolved its revenue model over the years, with the business now driving income from subscriptions, content licensing and advertising and sponsorships. You can watch the keynote session with TV Real’s Mansha Daswani here.

The Q&A opened with a discussion about the company’s flagship SVOD service, Curiosity Stream. In a crowded streaming landscape, the key has been “taking advantage of every opportunity available to you,” particularly bundling.

The platform is part of a superbundle in the Philippines with Cignal alongside HBO Max, Lionsgate Play and Hallmark+. “We see exciting potential there for meaningful distribution. In the history of American commerce and much of international commerce, there was perhaps no better business model than bundled cable TV network distribution. We believe the Cignal model makes a lot of sense, and we’re engaged in a number of conversations around this type of packaging around the world.”

The company is pursuing those bundling opportunities in multiple markets, Stinchcomb said. “We have a proposition for people in 180 different countries. Our top markets are English-speaking and Germany. We’re prioritizing those, but we’re open to doing it anywhere and everywhere. As much as we love having a direct relationship with people, we understand that if you want meaningful growth, it’s going to come from bundling, unless you are Amazon or Netflix.”

AVOD and FAST are also growth opportunities, with the company landing a slate of channels on Samsung TV Plus and licensing content to third-party platforms. “It’s one of our three key pillars of growth.”

Stinchcomb continued: “If you are a company that does not have billions of dollars worth of assets from which you can promote to your direct service, FAST and AVOD provide an opportunity beyond just monetization to promote our subscription services. Otherwise, you’re just spending with the Googles, the Metas, all the usual suspects. It’s hard to find a way around that for 99 percent of the direct consumer subscription companies who want to grow in a meaningful way.”

Stinchcomb also highlighted how the company is positioning Curiosity University, rebranding the acquired One Day University. “It’s not traditional documentaries and films, but if you want to go deep on topics, you can. We’ve incorporated that into what we call our premium tier or smart bundle that includes services like SOMM TV, Kidstream, Tastemade, Curiosity Stream and Curiosity University. Also, channel store partners really like it. As translation costs come down further, driven by AI and other solutions, it would be great to language all of that. It’s also helpful in reactivations; someone cancels their subscription, instead of discounting to the ground like lots of people do, we’ll say, Re-up now and we’ll give you a free subscription to Curiosity University.”

The conversation then shifted to the role of co-pros and acquisitions in the company’s programming strategy. “You need brand-definitional content, but then at the same time, you need breadth and depth. Acquisitions and co-productions are critical. There’s no substantive business without them. We’ve created a lot of high-dollar originals. We know what works for our various platforms. We’re doubling and tripling down on acquisitions in the areas we need them.”

The company is exploring AI tools to make processes more efficient and cost-effective, including in customer service, editing and annotations and dubbing. “There will be lots of productivity opportunities and enhancement, but where we see a semi-transformational opportunity for the company is on the licensing side.”

The company has been licensing its content for AI training. “The large language models need lots and lots of video content to train them. As they get more sophisticated, they’ll likely need more video. We want to be very thoughtful about how we embrace AI on both sides.”

On the road ahead for the company, Stinchcomb noted, “We try to be a performance-focused company. When we first started Curiosity Stream, like a lot of companies at that time, our strategy was all gas, no brakes. Grow top-line revenue, grow subscribers. If you need to raise more money, go back to the public markets and do that, which is OK until you can’t do that. We saw a lot of carnage there, and thankfully, we didn’t do that. In 2023, we course corrected and said we’re going to continue to grow, it’s going to come from different areas, but we’re going to create a company that’s durable, has a diversity of revenue and is built for the long term. We’re in a good spot now. Our KPIs at the top are revenue and cash flow. Underneath those, and to maximize those, we do focus heavily on a content volume that meets a certain standard, the lifetime value of our subscribers, CPA, engagement and new partner development. One of the most exciting things about the time that we’re living in is that there are more potential partners than ever. There have been transformational points in time, but I have never personally been this close to the range of transformational opportunities available to us.”