TV personality Dr. Oz creates JungoTV OTT service

Turkish-American TV star Dr. Mehmet Oz has created an international OTT service that will offer language-specific video content to expatriates and diaspora communities.

JungoTV has been created along with video technology firm Piksel, and will debut in the US and Canada in the autumn.

Its founders – Oz, George Chung and Sandy Climan – claim it will have more than 30,000 hours of “premium on-demand programming targeting in-language communities of Arabic, Chinese, Filipino, Greek, Iranian, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese speakers”.

Mobile platforms including iOS and Android, the web and connected devices will offer the platform, which has been funded by “private venture and industry leaders”.

Oz is the media personality and doctor known for the syndicated talker The Dr. Oz Show.

“In launching The Dr. Oz Show around the globe, it was apparent to me that the market for international content was growing rapidly,” he said.

“The launch of JungoTV, the first premium service of its kind to serve a global multi-lingual community, will allow us to provide top quality programming from customers’ home countries and reconnect them with their culture and lifestyle.”

For Piksel, an OTT tech specialist, the move marks its latest programming play as the worlds of content and delivery move closer together. Last year, it announced it would help telcos, internet service providers, cable operators and media companies to launch OTT ventures by taking over the task of negotiating content rights for them.

“Our partnership with JungoTV and the future expansion of additional in-language content indicates the start of an exciting journey to help content owners, creators, and aggregators get more value out of their video assets across the world,” said Piksel president Fabrice Hamaide.