AT&T is a lot of things as a company but cool is not one of them. Back in 2014 they founded a joint venture with the Chernin Group to try and develop sexier content under a new name: Otter Media. This slightly cooler named service then went and developed content in funky areas like anime, gaming comedy, offbeat sports and so forth. This of course provided the opportunity for far cooler names once more, anime channel Crunchyroll and comedy stalwart Rooster Teeth among them.
All this hip posturing sees Otter sitting on close to 1m subscribers and now AT&T feels it’s time to start trying to milk the cash cow a little more aggressively. To that end, they are looking to create a custom bundle service where you pick and choose what content you want. They wanted to label this new service Project X (which would have been hilarious – really, who calls a service that?) but have had to settle for, it seems, Vrv (no seriously, who calls a service that?).
Crunchyroll had been planning this for some years, according to Variety, pre-dating their buyout by Otter and their desire to offer a la carte viewing seems to be the driving force behind this initiative. As is often the case with announcements of this nature, the exact content areas that one could pick and choose from are as yet undefined. Given the focus on young male anime and extreme sports fans, though, the general thrust of the offering seems pretty clear: more of the same.
Apparently pushing forward with a pick-and-choose model wasn’t Otter’s first choice. They had previously tried to replicate Crunchyroll’s success with its anime market in other niche areas like Korean dramas (one presumes South Korean, though I would have signed up for a North Korean one) but discovered the market wasn’t there. This new way allows them to experiment with content niches and then go long on the ones that attract the numbers and drop those that don’t.
AT&T have a conference going on right now that will hopefully shed some more light on this offering.