Plex Acquires Streaming News Service to Bolster Media Platform

January 31, 2017

Plex, which organizers media content and streams it across devices, has acquired Watchup, a streaming news service.

Calling the acquisition “an important milestone,” Plex says Watchup is reinventing the way people consume news with a personalized and trusted user experience that aggregates hundreds of reputable news sources.

“As a former journalist turned Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University, I started Watchup to bring the power of video journalism to over-the-top streaming devices so citizens can become better informed,” said Adriano Farano, founder and CEO of Watchup. “Together with the unparalleled streaming device footprint of Plex, we can reinvent the video news experience for today’s news viewers.”

Watchup’s publisher partners include CBS, Vox, and Hearst Television, as well as publishers that have invested directly in the company, such as McClatchy.

“At McClatchy we have always prided ourselves on being an independent, trustworthy news provider that is not afraid to innovate and change with the times,” said Andy Pergam, Vice President, Video and New Ventures for McClatchy. “We see Plex as the way forward for delivering on the promise of serving trusted, reliable news and content through a platform that makes it easy to access by the consumer.”

Plex helps 10 million people organize their video, photo, and music content and stream it to devices.

“People have to navigate a ridiculous number of interfaces and apps to get to their favorite content,” said Keith Valory, CEO of Plex. “Adding a trusted and reliable news experience into Plex, so that people can choose and organize the news they care about along with the other content they care about, is a natural next step for us.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“The industry has a lot of work to do to deliver on the promise of enjoying content anytime, anywhere, on any device,” added Valory. “We believe the only way to solve these problems is to put our users back in control of their content with a simple, personalized user experience and to provide a transparent content platform that puts content providers back in control of their brand, their viewer data, and engaging with their viewers.”

Plex was founded in 2009 in California.