"We are Off Air. So we built our own."
Nine of Bulgaria's best-known journalists walked away from the country's biggest newsrooms — and built an audience-funded operation on a platform they own.
- veteran journalists in the newsroom
- 9
- veteran journalists in the newsroom
- videos & articles in the first 3 months
- 100+
- videos & articles in the first 3 months
- publications every week
- 8–9
- publications every week
The exit
Off the air, on their own terms
The names were familiar to anyone with a Bulgarian TV remote: morning-show anchors, news directors, investigative reporters from bTV, БНТ, and Nova, plus one of the country's most decorated anti-corruption investigators. In February 2026 they registered a foundation for independent journalism. By mid-March they had announced the project and opened audience funding.
The premise was radical in its simplicity: no advertisers, no political sponsors, no owner with a portfolio to protect. As they put it — journalism with a clear boss: the viewers.
The launch
A newsroom needs a platform, not a channel
A YouTube channel would have been the easy default — and would have put an algorithm between nine journalists and the audience that funds them. Instead, izvanefir.bg launched in April 2026 on OAcast: their domain, their design, their member relationships, with the infrastructure — video, live streaming, chat, payments, email — handled for them.
Twelve weeks later the catalog held more than a hundred videos and articles across four sections — investigations, politics, world affairs, and justice — publishing at a pace of eight to nine pieces a week. Election specials ran for hours, live, with the chat open and moderated.
What they run on
The whole operation, one platform
Video on demand
Interviews, investigations, and panel shows from 3 to 159 minutes, organized in four sections.
Live broadcasts
Multi-hour live specials and a weekly live world-affairs show — with real-time chat, slow mode, and moderation.
Articles
Written journalism as a first-class content type, next to the video.
Memberships via their own Stripe
€10 / €20 / €50 monthly plans plus a pay-what-you-want amount — audience funding, straight to the newsroom's account.
Newsletter
Email capture on the homepage, feeding the list only they control.
A newsroom, not a channel
Team pages, per-author feeds, search, dark and light themes — a full destination under their own domain.
The road ahead
Built with headroom
What izvanefir.bg uses today is one layer of the platform. When they're ready for the next — native mobile apps under their own name, push notifications wired to the publishing flow, pay-per-view for special events — it's a plan change, not a rebuild. That's the point of owning the platform: the newsroom decides the roadmap.
And because their members pay into the newsroom's own Stripe account, every relationship they build is theirs to keep — on OAcast or anywhere else. We'd rather earn the renewal than hold the keys.