Streamer Zeam has acquired the NewsOn local broadcast streaming platform from Sinclair Broadcast Group. The deal comes as Zeam is looking to expand its offerings and broaden the reach of its public-facing offerings.
Zeam is a pioneering streaming tech firm launched in 2009 as a service designed to support local broadcasters as they first began to tip-toe into the streaming realm. Today, Zeam handles the backend technology to support the live streams of all CBS-owned stations and the live streams of CBS affiliates that are carried on the Paramount+ platform.
News of the NewsOn sale comes a day after Sinclair announced that it is exploring strategic alternatives for its sizable station group and possibly other assets.
In recent years, Zeam has starting promoted its platform as a central hub for local TV news from TV stations around the around the country. It’s also expanding as a consumer-focused entertainment platform albeit still with an emphasis on live local content. To demonstrate the power of Zeam’s highly portable live stream tech, Zeam enlisted comedian podcasters Mike Young and Bret Ernst for the “Destination Comedy” event that featured the two and their antics while on the road for five straight days from July 29-Aug. 2.
“We are pushing the boundaries of our technology to show the industry that we can go so granular as to capture live video in a van going down the road with two comedians,” says Jack Perry, CEO of Zeam, which is based in Marion, Iowa and New York. “We’re doing that to help inspire our broadcasters to invest in hyper-local content.”
For local TV stations, Zeam offers a simple way to generate more advertising revenue out of live streams. The platform allows for dynamic ad insertion on a local level — giving stations much greater ability to target specific consumers — and it also allows the station to cume the streaming audience with its linear signal to sell the largest possible audience to advertisers.
Zeam made a splash in 2024 two years ago with its first Super Bowl advertisement to generate interest in the company. (It also took a spot in this year’s telecast.) Since then, Zeam has served up more than 4 billion dynamically inserted ads for partners.
The acquisition of NewsOn will greatly expand Zeam’s local TV footprint to include the entire country — all 201 designated market areas as defined by Nielsen. Sinclair had also invested in this area and recruited other stations to use the NewsOn platform.
“NewsOn has been an important resource for connecting viewers with trusted local news from across the country. We’re confident that under Zeam’s leadership, the platform will continue to support stations and strengthen the value of local journalism,” said Kevin Cotlove, Sinclair executive VP and chief digital officer.
Zeam has two central poles of its business. Its B-to-B division supports live streams for a host of clients. On the consumer front, Zeam offers revenue-sharing deals with partners, with Zeam typically handling all of the streaming ad inventory sales. Perry pitches Zeam to prospective partners as an outlet that can generate incremental revenue from the moment a user downloads the app or clicks on a given channel’s feed on the Zeam.com site.
“We are the infrastruture for all these local stations to drive digital revenue without having to do a lot of work,” Perry says.
The Zeam team is also at work on cutting deals with Samsung, LG and other connected TV manufacturers to enhance the standing of the Zeam platform on the home-page hub of smart TVs. That device-based distribution is becoming a bigger factor for the distribution and revenue-generating potential of FAST channels.
In Perry’s view, the biggest benefit that Zeam can offer station partners is the ability to create original local content with moderate incremental costs. The live stream tech supports a range of live and on-demand production options. This kind of flexibility is becoming more important to broadcasters as the volume of syndicated programs offered for sale on a market-by-market basis — think talk shows, game shows, variety shows produced out of Los Angeles, Chicago and New York — has slowed significantly in recent years.
“Today stations are not thinking just about the network-affiliate model. They’re also saying ‘Hey wait a minute, we’d like to create our own content independent of what our network may be providing,’ ” Perry says.
