Philo exec explains why adding Bravo is such a big deal for the streamer
Philo exec explains why adding Bravo is such a big deal for the streamer
For years, Philo has been a low-cost entertainment option for budget-conscious consumers, but it always had a rather conspicuous piece missing from its offerings… until now.
For years, Philo has occupied a somewhat unusual position in the live TV streaming landscape. By deliberately avoiding expensive sports and news programming, the service has been able to offer cord-cutters a comparatively affordable way to watch many of their favorite entertainment and lifestyle channels that have been cable bedrocks for decades. Despite building a lineup particularly attractive to reality TV fans, Philo was missing one of the genre’s biggest players. That changed on Thursday, Nov. 5, when Philo added Bravo to its channel lineup in a move that could fundamentally change the streamer’s position in the increasingly competitive live TV market.
Talking to The Streamable ahead of Thursday’s announcement, Philo’s head of content acquisition and business development, Adam Salmons, discussed why the company believes Bravo is such an important addition and how the platform plans on maintaining its signature affordability while adding highly sought-after content.
According to Philo, nearly 85% of its active subscribers already watch reality programming, and roughly half consider it their primary entertainment genre. With Bravo joining a lineup that includes TLC, HGTV, A&E, MTV, Lifetime, and more, Philo is now considerably closer to becoming a one-stop destination for fans of unscripted television.
“This is something that our subscribers have been requesting highly over the years,” Salmons said. “It’s been in the works for not quite as long as people have been requesting, just given the industry makeup, but I would say this is the right time. We’ve always been interested in bringing Bravo on as soon as we could; sometimes it takes a while for a deal to come together with both parties aligning. We were able to, with NBCUniversal, strike a deal at this time to bring Bravo to Philo … So we’re really excited to be bringing them in, and especially at this time of the year.”
One of the primary ways that Philo is able to keep its prices low, with plans ranging from $25 to $33 per month, is by not including access to major sports and news channels that are amongst the largest drivers of carriage fees for streamers. Despite that fact, Salmons explained that the passionate audiences of reality programming are not that different from your average traditional sports fans, meaning that it is incumbent on providers to super-serve them the content they crave.
“We’ve been an entertainment-focused service, and we will continue to be. We don’t have sports,” Salmons said. “We know that for many people, sports is that big driver: you’re gonna wanna watch it live, you wanna find out what’s happening as soon as possible. In a lot of ways, these bigger reality brands and series are very much a sport for a certain audience. So I think for us, Bravo is kind of like the gold standard of reality for many people.”
That distinction is particularly important for Philo. While the service has always been a solid, if somewhat niche, alternative to comprehensive live TV packages, adding Bravo makes it a legitimate difference-maker for customers whose favorite parts of the cable experience have little to do with football or cable news.
For those viewers, access to “The Real Housewives,” “Below Deck,” and other Bravo franchises alongside Philo’s existing channels creates a far more complete entertainment package without requiring a subscription costing substantially more.
Of course, adding a highly desirable network inevitably raises questions about subscription costs. Philo currently offers its Essential package for $25 per month after a seven-day free trial and its Bundle+ plan, which also includes premium streaming content from AMC+, HBO Max, and discovery+, for $33 monthly.
Salmons acknowledged that maintaining those relatively low prices requires difficult decisions, including occasionally passing on programming agreements the company would otherwise like to make, but being a relatively low-cost alternative for budget-conscious consumers is essential to Philo’s identity.
“Affordability and providing great value is always going to be our North Star,” he said. “Some of these programming decisions, things that we’ve wanted to do in the past, we’ve just needed to walk away from because it wouldn’t allow us to keep that kind of affordable product for our subscribers.”
While Bravo’s addition is not accompanied by an immediate price increase, Salmons stopped short of promising that subscription costs would remain unchanged indefinitely, as the economics of the industry will undoubtedly eventually require a rate increase.
“We’re keeping the price where it is for right now,” he said. “In the past, where we’ve needed to increase price, we’ve tried to do that in a way that is still consumer-friendly, either with new content or new features. So we try to take a really consumer-centric mindset through the way that we run the business and the way that we price the product.”
Previous Philo price increases have been accompanied by additions like AMC+, HBO Max, and discovery+, so it wouldn’t have been out of the realm of possibility for the company to tack on an extra dollar or two to every bill in exchange for being able to watch Bravo.
Despite the company’s focus on keeping its streamer affordable, Salmons emphasized that Philo’s lower price doesn’t mean subscribers are getting a stripped-down streaming experience, pointing to features like unlimited DVR recordings stored for one year, three simultaneous streams, and an extensive on-demand library.
“I think sometimes, people may see a price point and think that, oh, it’s a bare-bones product, and really, at Philo you’re getting the content but a really great product experience as well,” he said.
Salmons also said that, despite the company reorganizing its subscription options to offer two different plans back in March, Philo currently has no plans to introduce additional subscription tiers, emphasizing the value of offering both a lower-cost live TV package and an expanded bundle with premium streaming services.
To that end, Bravo might not be the last major addition as Philo continues leaning into its reality TV audience. Salmons said that the company will evaluate how subscribers respond to the network and use that information to help shape future programming decisions, potentially further strengthening its position as a destination for unscripted entertainment.
Philo is also looking beyond its paid channel lineup as it expands its partnership with NBCUniversal. Philo Free Channels is the company’s free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service that works in conjunction with the main Philo offering to provide cord-cutters with entertainment content, regardless of their budget. As part of Thursday’s announcement, the company announced that it would eventually be adding FAST channels from NBCUniversal to the service, but Salmons could not confirm which channels would be included or when they would launch.
Nonetheless, he did say that they would provide an effective on-ramp from the free service to the paid one.
“We’ve seen nice engagement with our free product as a funnel into our paid product,” Salmons said. “And so with bringing Bravo into our paid packages, we’re excited to also have some complementary content, some of their library content on their FAST channels that we think will drive engagement on our free product, but also be a good channel for us to tap into, highlighting to users who watch that content that we now have Bravo in the paid package.”
Ultimately, Bravo’s arrival feels like an important turning point for Philo. The streamer has never tried to be everything to everyone, but until now, it was missing a major piece of the programming puzzle for precisely the audience it was best positioned to serve. With that gap finally closed, Philo has a much stronger argument that cord-cutters who don’t care about sports or cable news no longer need to pay for either just to get the traditional television experience they actually want.
Philo
Philo is a live TV streaming service designed for entertainment lovers, offering flexible ways to watch without the high price of traditional TV bundles. The service now features two paid plans — Essential and Bundle+ — alongside its existing free streaming offering, giving customers a range of options depending on how much live and premium content they want.