Meet Revry: the streaming platform aimed at the LGBTQ+ audience

revry is the first streaming platform to have fully LGBTQ +. They are films, series, documentaries and reality shows that seek to promote representation for an audience that has been neglected for a long time. It may seem like very targeted content, but the search for this type of content only grows.

iridescent trend

Although the big star of the last Emmy (the American television Oscar) has been Game of Thrones, one of the great moments of the night, truth be told, was when Ru Charles, or rather Ru Paul, won the award for best reality TV presenter for the second time in a row for his show Ru Paul's Drag Race, in addition to four more statuettes. In its tenth season, the show is a global success for putting in the spotlight a profile that we are used to always seeing as secondary.

Earlier this year, it was Netflix's turn (which has Drag Race in its catalogue) to invest in the glittery reality show segment. With Queer Eye, the Fab Five promise to promote reinvention for people who seem to have their lives a little off the rails. Between haircuts and laughter, the reality show's greatest asset is to promote LGBTQ+ culture to the general public.

The structure of Revry

the environment of revry it could easily pass as a fraternity building, starting with its main “office” in Glendale, California, with purposeful quotes, because there's nothing of an office. With a fireplace that looks like it hasn't been used in decades, a battered sofa decorated with Wonder Woman, Star Wars and Steve Jobs pillows, with a poster of the Getting Into Face above, and a book on club-kid makeup, which doubles as a coffee table. On television, it is not Netflix that is being streamed. Rather, it is an uninterrupted cycle of unprecedented programming and necessary.

And even though the building is not close to any university campus, the contents of the revry it does have its educational bias. Being guided by the motto: “Stream.Out.Loud” (or “FaçaStream.Em.VozAlta”, in literal translation), the service offers nothing more, nothing less, than LGBTQ + to more than 116 countries – including China, something its competitors haven't been able to do yet. "We haven't been censored yet”, comments Christopher Rodriguez, the platform's business director, in an informal chat on the steps of the mansion.

The CEO of revry, Damian Pelliccione, comments that the streaming service contains a multitude of content LGBTQ + in Mandarin; “It's something we're truly proud of,” he says. "And it's something that's super important to us."

And that's right: the revry has reach in countries like Iraq and Saudi Arabia, places where sexuality is still seen as taboo, and LGBTQ+ programming is often prohibited by law, giving its audience the opportunity to access content they would not otherwise have.

Even if it is altruistic content, that was not the main objective of the revry In a first moment. Pelliccione and Rodriguez started the company in their own home in Los Angeles back in 2015. One fine day, the duo, who have been a couple for over a decade, went to a store Apple to fix a screen iPhone broken and ended up walking out of there with an Apple TV. The idea for the streaming service came out of outrage: they were not able to find it on the service. no app with content aimed at the LGBTQ+ audience.

Pelliccione, who worked as an instructor at the Youtube Space LA, decided to change that. To that end, he recruited his partner, Rodriguez, who worked as a lawyer specializing in entertainment, for an informal meeting, and two more friends – Alia Daniels, also a lawyer, and LaShawn McGhee, a film and television editor – all crammed into his living room. apartment.

“It was an opportunity that we saw gaining space in the media”, says Pelliccione. “We are a cause-oriented company. It wasn’t just a market opportunity, it was an opportunity to reach audiences that have never seen themselves on television.”

After that meeting, Daniels quit his job at a small startup; Rodriguez, who was part of the program's legal counsel Shark Tank, asked for the accounts; and McGhee gave up a job he was editing and has never looked back. “There was nothing else I wanted to do after that,” says McGhee.

They hired a developer to work on the app and started thinking about marketing ideas and solutions. Less than six months later, in March 2016, they already had a beta version of the app that was officially released on Saint Francis Pride, the San Francisco gay parade. Each of the co-founders wore a pink company shirt, and they all handed out flyers telling people to check out the new streaming service.

LGBTQ+: Representation matters

Authentic representation of LGBTQ+ people is and has never been a concern of the entertainment world. Images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are scarce in movies and TV shows, as is their access to content. Revry comes to fill this need and provides this access.

Like Netflix or Amazon, the service is available for laptops, phones, and streaming devices like Roku. In addition to subscription plans, the service also supports ads. An alternative for those who cannot pay or simply fear having their name and/or credit card information associated with an openly LGBTQ+ streaming service.

“They are committed to the idea of ​​inclusion and are creating a space for all voices in the community to be seen and heard,” says Jeremy Blacklow, director of entertainment media at GLAAD. "They've got off to a great start and we're excited to see what they can achieve."

From the beginning, Revry wanted to create a service that provided a truly diverse catalog for both creators and their stars to provide perspectives beyond the white, cisgender, male pattern. Representations of LGBTQ+ people in the media are limited, as are blacks and other ethnicities. And black and homosexual representations are even more scarce.

A recent study by USC's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which compiled 1.100 popular films between 2007 and 2017, revealed that only 31 of the 4.403 characters in the scene were lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and of those, nearly 68% were white. There was only one transgender character in the 400 films released between 2014 and 2017. And on TV, the numbers are even worse.

Last year, a report by GLAAD found that out of 901 regular characters on prime-time shows, only 58 – 6,4% – identified as LGBTQ+. In total, there were 329 regular characters, and while this is an increase from the year before, the number of black and LGBTQ+ people on TV has dropped.

Shortly after its launch, Revry received thousands of downloads in over 50 countries in a matter of weeks. The company's founders attribute much of this to word-of-mouth, but also to offering content for everyone. Just take his main series as an example: The 'Other' Love Story, a lesbian web series from India; Before We Got Famous, a Revry original about a 21-year-old who moved to Hollywood from China to become an actor; or FML, a comic web series about five black friends just trying to live their lives. There are also shows like Queens of Kings, a documentary series about drag queens in Brooklyn that includes Aquaria, winner of Season 10 of Drag Race.

Revry has also expanded into projects on other platforms such as the Trevor Project's TrevorLive event and launched a series of podcasts, including a talk show by YouTuber Foxy (aka Jade) called Do Not Disturb. Another highlight is the podcast by Daniel Franzese, also known as Damian from Mean Girls. The company's Glendale lot includes a studio where podcasters can record their shows.

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The result of Revry's work are thank you letters and messages from around the world. A user from Saudi Arabia found Pelliccione on LinkedIn to thank him for the app. “I didn't know gay movies existed. I didn't know there were other people like me in the world,” he commented. Another message from a 22-year-old in Iraq makes clear his financial difficulties, adding that “I cannot live, I am persecuted and every day I think about suicide”.

It was these cases and many others that led Revry's co-founders to switch from a subscription model to an ad-supported one. Previously, viewers could only watch the channel by spending $6,99 a month for a subscription ($4,99 a month for those who opted for the annual package). Now, if they are willing to watch some commercials, they can access the service for free, no login required. (Of course, the ad-free version is also an option for those who can sign up, of course.) The point, essentially, is not only to host a variety of stories, but also to deliver them to as many people as possible.

“I take it for granted that, most of the time, I live in a culture and place where I can be who I am, regardless of my gender, or the color of my skin,” says McGhee. “But this is not a reality for everyone… We have to say: We are here, we are LGBTQ+, but more than that, we are everywhere”.

Have you ever watched Revry? Leave a comment!