Companion Worksheet
A channel that wakes up when you go live is a show. A channel that is always on is a network. This works out the difference in numbers — how much content a 24/7 schedule actually needs, how often a real viewer meets a repeat, and the scheduling mistake that makes a full catalogue feel empty.
Four numbers decide the shape of a continuous channel. Estimates are fine — the relationships between them matter more than precision.
Everything you could legally put in rotation today, not everything you have ever made.
How long before the schedule starts over. Six is a common starting point.
Music videos run 3–5. Talk and performance segments run 20–45.
What you realistically add to rotation each month, not what you hope to.
Each block is one pass of the loop. The line marks a viewer who tunes in at 8 PM every night. If the same block sits under that line on both days, that viewer sees the same programming every single night — no matter how large your catalogue is.
Day 1
Day 2
A 6-hour loop tiles exactly 4 times into a day, so it never moves. A viewer who watches at 8 PM sees the same block every night, forever. With 40 hours in your catalogue, that viewer is only ever seeing 6 of them — about 15% of what you own. Change the loop to an odd length such as 5, 7 or 11 hours and the problem disappears at zero cost.
Three tiers coexist on one operation. They are not competing products — each one exists to feed the next.
The loop
Always on, no signup, no barrier. Its job is not revenue. Its job is proving the channel is real and worth returning to, which is what makes the other two tiers sellable.
The library
On-demand access, early windows, and the archive on request instead of on schedule. Sold to the people the free loop has already convinced.
The events
Live, dated, and unrepeatable. The highest revenue per viewer and the only tier with real urgency — funded by an audience the first two tiers already built.
It runs while you sleep, or it is still a show.
The programming math is the easy half. The hard half is that a continuous channel has to keep running on your worst week — the week you are travelling, sick, or shooting something else. That is why the four sessions before this one come first: automation buys the hours, capability lets you build it, ownership means nobody can switch it off, and production standards mean it is worth leaving on.
A channel is something you do. A network is something you own.