A35
Public Record
§ Excerpt From article.

The Frē Market: The economics of Frē.

Frē was founded by Gilvina Krotch, Barren Koobly, and Sturge Tiller. These three were working for a small marketing firm when they developed a breakthrough idea for a new marketing strategy; they set out to create a market where consumers actually wanted to watch commercials. In doing so, they would inadvertently create an entirely new market for entertainment delivery. […] While competitors laughed in their faces, Tiller, Koobly, and Krotch laughed their way to the bank! (Watch the company’s dramatic history unfold in “The Frē Market: A love story,” available June 26th for frē). […]

Frē is currently the largest content-delivery channel, and was the first of its kind in multiple markets. Prior to Frē, the foremost content-delivery channel was called Couch, a service in which customers paid a monthly subscription for a limited selection of video content. […] Tiller, Krotch, and Koobly approached Couch executives with the details of the innovative idea to offer their services at no cost to the customer. The fundamental aspect of their corporate road map was to create a virtual currency called frē which people would earn from voluntarily interacting with advertisements. Customers could then use the currency they’ve earned on the content they want to enjoy. The Couch team declined, however, stating that offering content at no cost wasn’t a profitable model. […]

The small team was rejected by four companies before they finally arrived at a content channel called Banal Content Unlimited. BCU’s most popular series at the time was called You Asked, We Listened, a long-running sitcom in which the writers of the show attempt to fix everything that viewers disliked about the previous episode. Compared to other channels, BCU had a very low share of the entertainment market. Koobly, Krotch, and Tiller created a proposal in which customers would pay for their BCU content with frē money, and Frē would, in turn, pay for the customers’ content with standard currency. […] The three of them guaranteed to double BCU’s total customer base within six months. If the model proved profitable to both parties, BCU would acquire Frē and making their content available only with frē currency.

In these first in which users would watch advertisements for a few minutes each week in order to access BCU without a paid subscription. Banal Content’s subscriber total doubled in less than two months. […]

A year later, Frē Entertainment Inc. became the most profitable content channel in history, and Couch was sold for less than 5% of its previous years’ estimated worth. Their buyer? Frē. […]

Dillhole Smith