CASE STUDY

A new public streaming business, live on the spin date: 12 brands and 50+ digital properties

A telecom and media company spun off its cable networks and complementary digital assets into a new public company. The work involved building the new company's entire digital business from scratch — a new ad-supported, MVPD-authenticated streaming platform across web, mobile, and connected TV; the migration of 12 brands and 50+ digital properties; and the standardized workflows to operate them — all in time for the public spin date. Tristellium ran the program from audit through go live.

What Tristellium delivered

Audited the future-state digital platform against contractual obligations and identified the architectural gaps that mattered for spin

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Selected vendor solutions and stood up the new ad-supported, MVPD-authenticated streaming platform across web, mobile, and connected TV

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Ran program management for the migration of 12 brands and 50+ digital properties on a regulatory deadline

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Aligned business, legal, and technology stakeholders end-to-end and made sure delivery got accepted, not just shipped

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Defined and rolled out post-launch support: incident management, customer care, operating workflows

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Coordinated RemainCo technology deprecation and a one-year roadmap to restore deferred functionality

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THE SITUATION

A new public company with no infrastructure

The new company launched with the shape of an established media business and almost none of its infrastructure. RemainCo retained the technology, workflows, and operating systems. The spinoff got the brands and the content rights.

The job: deliver on existing MVPD deals, meet contractual obligations to consumers, and launch a public-grade D2C product on day one — without any of the tech it had been running on the day before.

The deadline wasn't negotiable. Spin dates don’t move. The audience and advertiser expectations for a public streaming business start the moment the company is independent.

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THE CHALLENGE

Building everything from scratch on a regulatory deadline

Building, not consolidating: Most separation work in media involves combining two operations into one. This was the opposite. The new company needed a full digital stack stood up in parallel to its cable business, with TSAs and MSAs holding the seams together until the new systems were live.

Twelve brands, 50-plus digital properties, one cutover: Each brand had its own audience, deal terms, and product expectations. The migration plan had to treat them as a portfolio while respecting how each one behaved — what could share a backend, what needed bespoke front-door experiences, and what had to ship on day one versus what could come later.

Compliance pressure on the streaming product: The MVPD relationships carried specific authentication and ad-supported requirements that the new platform had to meet to keep the deals and the revenue in place. VOD, Digital Linear, and Live all had to run on web, mobile, and connected TV from go-live.

Two clocks running at once: While the new company was being built, RemainCo was deprecating the technology that had supported those brands and reassigning its people back to core BAU. Anything the spinoff didn't pick up cleanly fell through the gap.

The pivot was triaging what had to be live for spin from what could come later without breaking deals or the consumer experience. That meant a structured audit before any building began: assessing the future-state digital platform against contractual obligations, identifying architectural gaps that would block launch, and selecting vendor solutions where the build-versus-buy math wouldn't hold up under the timeline.

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HOW TRISTELLIUM HELPED

Building the program: Audit, build, cut over, operate

A consolidated backend with cloned front-door applications became one of the spine decisions — a way to stand up bespoke brand experiences without rebuilding 12 full product stacks. Modular MSPs covered the pieces where speed mattered more than ownership, with a one-year roadmap to bring functions in-house once the company was operating independently.

Audit and architecture

The first phase mapped the current-state platform and supply chain workflows against the post-spin target. Tristellium identified gaps, evaluated vendor options, and separated the must-have list for the spin date from the year-one roadmap.

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Delivery against the spin clock

A detailed plan tracked product launches, platform builds, and integration dependencies, with milestones reverse-engineered from the spin date. Tristellium ran program management — requirements analysis, vendor coordination, business sign-off — and ensured the business accepted delivery.

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Streaming platform implementation

The new ad-supported, MVPD-authenticated platform launched with VOD, Digital Linear, and Live across web, mobile, and connected TV. D2C enterprise services were standardized across the brands, with the front-end applications cloned to preserve niche audience experiences.

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Operating workflows and post-launch support

Standardized workflows for running the digital products went in alongside the platform. Incident management and customer care were defined and rolled out so the business could operate the products on day one. On the other side, the technology RemainCo had used to support the spun-off brands was wound down on a schedule that didn't strand the new company. RemainCo employees got repositioned into BAU without operational gaps.

The Results

A public streaming business live on the spin date

The new company went public with its digital business running. The streaming platform was validated to meet MVPD deal terms before go-live. Twelve brands and 50+ digital properties cut over to spinoff-owned technology under a single program management framework with clear ownership and delivery transparency. RemainCo’s supporting technology was cleanly deprecated, and its people were put back to work on their own priorities.

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12 brands and 50+ digital properties cut over to spinoff-owned technology

New ad-supported, MVPD-authenticated streaming platform live across web, mobile, and connected TV with VOD, Digital Linear, and Live

Compliance with existing MVPD deal terms maintained through cutover

RemainCo technology deprecated on schedule, with people repositioned to BAU

One-year post-spin roadmap in place to restore deprioritized functionality

From standing up to running well

The new company operates as an independent public business. The one-year roadmap is the path back to functionality that the team chose to defer through spin, and the point at which managed services are re-evaluated against in-house capability, now that the deadline is in the rearview.

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Standing up the company was the first project. Running it well is the next.

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