It’s said that to launch a successful niche subscription service, you have to know your audience – and be confident it will pay for what you have to offer.

Based on that, you can’t say that Oakville-based SVOD service AeroCinema hasn’t done its homework. The service, set to officially launch this March, is kicking off with the acquisition of a rare library of footage targeting aviation buffs.

AeroCinema has locked down the rights for the film archives of one of the world’s oldest aircraft manufacturers, the Vought Aircraft Heritage Foundation (VAHC). The archive contains approximately 150 hours of material and includes footage from training exercises and presentations from the earliest days of aviation.

AeroCinema has been beta-launched on Roku and Aerocinema.com since 2009, and on Samsung and Panasonic smart devices since last year. The niche OTT service includes around 200 titles, of which more than 50% have never been made available before, according to AeroCinema’s SVP, business development, Peter McKelvy. The service costs USD $4.95 per month ($49.95 a year) and will be promoted through a combination of co-marketing ventures with aviation publications, as well as a direct mail operation.

AeroCinema CEO Phil Osborn is the creator of aviation doc-series Wings, which aired throughout the late-’80s and ’90s on Discovery Channel in the U.S. For the past two years Osborn has been acquiring a number of titles in anticipation of the launch of the SVOD service. AeroCinema’s titles are produced through its parent company Eureka Media, which is also based in Toronto.

AeroCinema was test launched in 2009 (with a catalogue of between 30 and 40 titles) as a means to gather feedback on how the platform should be rolled out in its official capacity. It has been in development since then and the company now feels AeroCinema has sufficient content to satisfy a paying subscriber base.

The deal for the VAHC archive came about when the foundation expressed to AeroCinema that it wanted its archive to be digitized. Once the archive has been digitized in AeroCinema’s Oakville studio, the footage will also be donated to the University of Texas at Dallas and the San Diego Aircraft Museum, under the terms of the agreement.

Though no exact number can be placed on the size of AeroCinema’s potential audience, the service will appeal to millions of aviation workers, enthusiasts, hobbyists and historians worldwide, McKelvy told Playback Daily. Featuring documentaries and profiles, AeroCinema charts the evolution of aviation from WWI through to the present day.