ALVIN Challenges the Closed Future of Streaming Television

NEW YORK - EntSun -- NEW YORK, NY — Streaming television was supposed to give viewers more freedom. Instead, technology companies gained control over which publishers, businesses and ideas were permitted to reach the largest screen in the home.

Phil Autelitano watched that transformation firsthand. For ten years, he developed Roku channels for major brands and public figures, including Paula Deen and Oscar de la Hoya. Roku initially offered independent developers an open path to television through private and non-certified channels, allowing smaller publishers to reach viewers without a traditional network or app-store gatekeeper.

That changed in 2022, when Roku eliminated its private and non-certified channel system. The decision instantly removed an avenue of independent distribution and erased categories of lawful programming that no longer fit the platform's policies.

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Among the casualties was SCREW TV, a project Autelitano originally developed with his friend Al Goldstein, co-founder of SCREW Magazine and a prominent First Amendment advocate. Before Goldstein's death in 2013, the two worked to bring SCREW's commentary, satire and adult programming to streaming television. Autelitano continued building the channel afterward, until Roku's policy change brought it to an end.

Rather than ask another corporate platform for permission, Autelitano began building an alternative.

ALVIN is a purpose-built television browser that connects viewers directly with lawful websites, publishers and online services. It replaces the closed app-store model with a television-friendly gateway to the web, allowing participating businesses to reach the screen without first winning corporate approval.

The platform offers hundreds of hours of free programming, premium services, interactive entertainment, shopping, news, games and other web-based experiences. Viewers control it with Type&Swipe, a phone-based remote that handles navigation, searches and private text entry while the television handles the viewing.

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ALVIN began in a market that mainstream platforms chose to exclude, but the principle is much broader. When one company can remove an entire category of lawful speech through a change to its terms of service, access to television is no longer determined only by consumers or the law. It is determined by corporate permission.

The name ALVIN honors Goldstein, whose full first name was Alvin. Goldstein spent decades challenging restrictions on lawful expression in print. Autelitano is now confronting the digital version of the same problem: private platforms exercising enormous control over what adults may publish, distribute and watch.

ALVIN's argument is simple: lawful content should not disappear from television because a gatekeeper changes its mind. Viewers should decide what they watch, and publishers should have a way to reach them without surrendering their voice.

For more information, visit www.alvintv.com.