Former Walt Disney Co. CEO Michael Eisner’s Tornante Co. is working with a group of other former media and technology execs to launch Struum, a service aimed at helping viewers find content in an increasingly crowded streaming environment.
The group includes Lauren DeVillier, former head of product for Discovery Ventures, Eugene Liew, former VP of product and technology at Disney Plus, Paul Pastor, former executive VP of Strategy, Revenue and Operations at Discovery Networks and Thomas Wadsworth, former lead Advanced Product Development for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Struum also has an advisory board that includes Nancy Tellem, former president of CBS Entertainment and Xbox Entertainment, Ben Pyne, former president of Disney/ABC Television Distribution, and Donald Hicks, who heads global operations at Twitter.
“With so much proliferation in the niche and specialty streaming landscape, there is a clear need for a resource that helps them seamlessly discover and consume content from these services,” said Eisner. “This is truly a first-class team that is leveraging their wide breadth of experiences and relationships to create a solution unmatched by anything else currently available that will benefit both viewers and streaming services.”
Struum said it has already struck deals with nearly three dozen services—amassing more than 20,000 TV series, movies and shorts, that will enable the service to offer consumers a chance to discover and watch a hugely diverse range of programs from feature films, live action TV series, lifestyle and reality shows, programs serving under-served audiences such as the LGBTQ and Latinx communities, and foreign language shows and series.
