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The exploding popularity of streaming services including Netflix has significantly changed how the public consumes television shows. TV is in a golden age when it comes to the quality of content and the ease of accessibility, but changing viewing habits has meant the ability to discover new shows by chance is waning — in the past, viewers of live television often stumble across new shows they come to love, but this phenomenon is much rarer in the world of on-demand television. Now, Molotov is seeking to bring back the serendipity to TV watching in an on-demand world.

We have already seen a number of firms attempt to reinvigorate live TV habits. Sky and EE record hours of live TV to allow viewers to scroll back through it, while premium service Sky-Q aims to make it easier for viewers to find live, recorded and on-demand TV on one platform. Molotov has been founded specifically to combine the best of live TV with on-demand viewing.

Molotov’s TV platform lists the available channels, and enables viewers to personalize their program guides with the channels they want to watch. In order to bring back discoverability to television, the interface highlights which shows have performed unexpectedly well on social media, and which are particularly popular among a user’s Facebook friends.

Viewers can also bookmark shows and search for new programs by inputting data ranging from the names of actors to politicians. Molotov is the brainchild of Jean-David Blanc and is set to launch in France next year, having signed up about 80 channels to the service. It rebroadcasts free channels and will take a cut of subscriptions on pay-TV. The next step is to roll it out internationally.

Could other new forms of media consumption take learnings from more traditional models?