Sitting in a small Bronx apartment back in early 2018, it would be difficult to picture the world today. As Naomi Burton and Nick Hayes waited to film a campaign ad for an unknown Congressional candidate up against a 10-time incumbent who was considered a rising power broker within the Democratic leadership, they puzzled over how to tell a story that would both personalize a political campaign and galvanize a movement.

Jump to two years later, and that unknown, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is a household name; democratic socialism is both a mainstream topic of conversation and the belief system held by the current frontrunner for the Democratic Party nomination for president; and Burton and Hayes have gone from reinventing political ads to launching a new streaming service for leftist (or “post-capitalist”) news and entertainment called Means TV.

Even just last year, when Burton and Hayes initially started crowdfunding efforts for the new streaming service, it was easy to be skeptical about the appetite and viability of any new political news and entertainment venture that would be entirely audience-funded, rather than backed by some billionaire, venture capitalists, or a media or tech conglomerate—much less one designed to critique those power structures.

But as the 2020 presidential primary season gained steam, almost every event of the last month has served as a de facto ad for Means TV. The Iowa caucus foul-up and the mainstream media going along with Pete Buttigieg declaring himself the winner even though Sanders had received more votes? MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson suggesting that the word oligarch was a slur and then trying to lump Sanders in with billionaires and stating they were all oligarchs? Newspapers reporting Senator Amy Klobuchar’s third-place finish in New Hampshire without mentioning who came in first? Who can forget any of the several meltdowns longtime MSNBC host Chris Matthews has had over the prospect of Sanders becoming president, going so far as to say that he’d be taken to Central Park and killed? Disney blocking a John Oliver segment critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the streaming service it owns and operates in India?

All these events—and more!—happening at the same time that Sanders’s polling and popularity is only rising could not have made Means TV’s debut more auspicious.

“After 2016, in that wave of people still having their eyes opened, we were early adopters of those people after Hillary’s loss and the Bernie campaign, who found something in socialism that grounded us and allowed us to see things a bit more clearly,” says Burton. “Now we’re seeing a lot more people come around to that.”

On the surface, Means TV is a lot like all your other OTT options. It costs $10 per month and features a wide variety of original documentaries, series, news, comedy, and commentary. That’s about where the similarities end. Burton and Hayes have set it up as a worker collective, with creators and staff having ownership of their work and a stake in the platform’s success. Contributors so far include director and comedian Sara June, popular leftist podcasts like Street Fight Radio and Trillbilly Workers Party (colloquially known as The Trillbillies and generally focused on the worldview of real people living in Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia), the socialist magazine Jacobin, and YouTubers like BadEmpanada, The Serfs, and Step Back History. Rather than compete against the emerging leftist media sphere, which is bubbling up in podcasts, YouTube, Twitch, and especially Patreon, Means TV is partnering with them to create another outlet and revenue option for them.