BitTorrent plans ‘live news channel’

Peer-to-peer video sharing platform BitTorrent is looking to launch a “tent-pole live news channel” to run on its recently launched live video streaming platform.

The plans, which were reported first by Variety, were detailed in a job ad for a San Francisco-based news director – the “first dedicated member” of the BitTorrent news channel team.

“You’ll decide what we choose to cover. You will define how we cover it. You will make sure our journalistic integrity and standards remain unquestionable. You’ll hire a team of San Francisco based journalists and presenters, and create and maintain a worldwide network of stringers,” said the job ad.

BitTorrent launched a multichannel app for live and linear programming at the INTX event in the US in May. It claimed that BitTorrent Live solves the problems associated with provisioning and latency of live online broadcasting.

The platform is designed to offer a mix of content – spanning news, sports, music, technology and youth culture – and will use BitTorrent’s proprietary peer-to-peer live streaming protocol. BitTorrent claims this will enable live video delivery with a sub-10 second latency and without the need for expensive CDN distribution and pre-provisioning.