Cloudflare Turns Its Streaming Platform Into a Product

When Cloudflare TV launched in June 2020, it was an experiment: a 24/7 streaming video channel built to capture the serendipity of in-person events in a world where those had disappeared. Eighteen months and more than 1,000 live shows later, the company is now packaging the technology that runs that network into something other businesses can use to launch their own always-on channels.

The effort has been substantial. Cloudflare TV has hosted over 650 Cloudflare employees and interns, plus more than 500 external guests, including Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, Gradient Ventures board partner Bonita Stewart, Broadcom CTO Andy Nallappan, and Zendesk SVP Christina Liu. Content has ranged from product announcements with the engineers who wrote the code, to employee resource group sessions, game shows, and DJ sets. A new Discover page catalogs popular on-demand shows like Latest from Product and Engineering and Silicon Valley Squares.

Homegrown Infrastructure

Cloudflare built its TV platform from scratch, largely because existing tools weren't designed for 24/7 linear streaming or for management by a distributed team. The stack combines open-source components with Cloudflare's own services:

  • Brave (BBC) — An open-source project (Basic Real-Time Audio Video Editor) that serves as the switching board, automatically moving between live segments, pre-recorded content, and bumpers according to the broadcast schedule. Cloudflare acknowledges the code is untouched since 2018.
  • Zoom — The guest experience was a priority, so presenters join sessions as if they were attending any meeting, thanks to Zoom's RTMP broadcast feature.
  • Cloudflare Workers — The connective tissue across the platform, handling authentication, application logic, backend-to-frontend data relay, and SEO optimizations.
  • Cloudflare Stream — Manages over 1,000 episodes in the content library. Uploads are transcoded automatically, and its API delivers recordings to the backend for rebroadcasting.
  • Cloudflare for Teams — Secures internal dashboards and admin interfaces with custom rulesets, avoiding VPNs.

Running on Autopilot

Given how much live content the channel produces — over 250 segments per week — automation was essential. A program on Cloudflare Workers syncs with the backend every minute to queue up upcoming recordings and inputs, so the schedule runs unattended. An auto-scheduler lets one person populate an entire week by selecting a time window and filling slots from the content library, with intelligent rotation ensuring every episode gets airtime.

Presenters get a Broadcasting Center that loads automatically before each session, complete with a countdown timer and a viewer-question section that records phoned-in questions and auto-transcribes them. Producers use an admin view to verify stream quality, troubleshoot, and moderate questions.

Cloudflare TV 2.0

The next iteration of the platform will incorporate technologies Cloudflare announced this week. The new Real Time Communications Platform, powered by WebRTC, will eventually handle many live sessions, complementing existing support for Zoom and OBS. Stream Live will offload video encoding to Cloudflare's network and enable multiple bitrate renditions for dynamic quality adjustment. Stream Connect becomes the endpoint for the backend mixer, allowing simultaneous broadcast to YouTube and other platforms. A rewired switchboard, designed to be more reliable, scalable, and customizable, will anchor the new architecture.

For Enterprises Only

The technology behind Cloudflare TV is now available to other companies — but this is not a self-serve product. Running a 24/7 network is resource-intensive, and Cloudflare is positioning the offering as something for businesses willing to commit the same level of effort the company has. Interested organizations can submit an application, as Cloudflare plans to work with those selected to build their own streaming networks. In the meantime, the underlying components are available: Stream Live and the Real Time Communications Platform are both public products.