Video On Demand for The Alpha Mom

By: Jennifer Gould Keil
Sleepless new parents will have a new partner when Alpha Mom TV, the first video-on-demand 24- hour parenting channel, launches in April.
The channel is the brain-child of new mom Isabel Kallman, an ex-Wall Street exec, and pal Vicky Germaise, an ex-record label marketing exec—who co-founded the company with an undisclosed amount of their own savings.
So far, the channel has lined up Loews Cineplex Entertainment, which will provide movie content from its "Reel Moms" program, where moms bring crying babies to the movies.
Alpha Mom will host the films at about 25 theatres with presentations that will also air on its channel, said a company spokeswoman.
The channel will be available to an estimated 10-million digital-cable subscribers across the country through a deal expected to be announced in a few weeks.
"Our voice is younger and hipper than anything out there," Germaise said.
"Our logo is red, black and white– the antithesis of pink and blue."
The idea originated when Kallman, as a new mom, discovered the Internet was swamped with parenting material but there was nothing on television.
"Video on demand is the perfect medium because a mom can watch a segment that interests her at 3 p.m. or 3 a.m. instead of waiting through a TV show for her two-minute segment," Germaise said.
Kallman also realized that while there was a support community of new moms in Manhattan lucky enough to be able to meet each other and take innovative mommy-and-me classes, Women in rural areas or one-car families are often stuck at home and isolated from the parenting information and support they need.
Ads will sponsor 15-minute shows on such topics as baby and prenatal nutrition, childbirth education, health, safety– as well as emotional issues related to traveling with infants and baby yoga.