Comedy-on-demand streaming service NextUp has announced that it has partnered with EXTREME to be available as a FAST channel on Virgin Media in the U.K.
The linear ad-supported channel NextUp Live Comedy features stand-up comedy content, including livestreams, from the Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Festival throughout August, offering Virgin Media TV customers with TV 360, Stream or a V6 box access to hours of entertainment at no extra cost. NextUp is also working with EXTREME to launch its FAST channels on additional platforms later this month. Mark Watson, Shaparak Khorsandi, Hal Cruttenden (pictured) and Nick Helm are among the comedians featured in NextUp’s lineup for the Fringe livestreams.
Having received the government’s Innovate Grant, NextUp is using this to scale the business through technology that enables transparency on minutes watched and revenue collected. It is also using the grant to improve accessibility to comedy by providing comedy venues with the technology to instantly stream their shows on to the platform and it is integrating real time AI captioning to help ensure a wider audience can enjoy the shows. The technology being developed will soon be licensable to third parties.
Leave A Comment