FAST

If nothing else, the recent NewFronts presentations established one thing: everyone’s going FAST … and fast. Media companies are multiplying their free ad-supported TV channels, services and original programming like rodents in rut, with lots more coming soon.

NBC and Telemundo local FAST channels are now available on Amazon Fire TV and Echo Show devices.

The storied journalism destination enters a new genre with debut of Washington Post Television on May 6.

Samsung Electronics America and Conan O’Brien announced a partnership that will bring highlights of his original Emmy Award-winning show “Conan” exclusively to Samsung TV Plus, the consumer electronics giant’s free, ad-supported TV service, starting next month. Conan O’Brien TV — the comedian and host’s first FAST channel — is a free, 24-hour linear streaming channel delivering programming curated as 30-minute compilations of clips featuring the best of his latenight archives, including sketch comedy and celebrity guest appearances.

NAB attendees with their curiosity peaked by ChatGPT had loads of AI-related questions for vendors and the cloud, virtual production and FAST channels dominated other conversations in the annual Las Vegas convocation. Pictured: Brainstorm combined camera feeds from talent in front of a green screen and an LED wall into one screen (upper right) at its NAB booth.

FTS to distribute its local news content across Amazon devices.

Black viewers are viewing free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) and subscription video-on-demand services in numbers well above the overall consumer average, according to a new Horowitz Research study.

Ensuring the flow of local and on-brand content is only one of the challenges FAST channels present — innovation to aid in discoverability remains critical, experts advise.

Free ad-supported television channels offer media companies a new potential source of revenue, a streaming destination for reclaimed library content and a relatively frictionless pathway to execution.

Blake Sabatinelli, CEO of Atmosphere TV, explains how to make good TV deliberately for background consumption, and how his company has turned its network of FAST channels into a lucrative business at bars, restaurants and other venues. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

TV stations are still putting most of their dollars into on-prem hardware for master control functions, with their cloud investments aimed at OTT and disaster recovery. Pictured: Imagine recently partnered with Vizrt to integrate its cloud playout software with Vizrt’s live production tools.

Tony Katsur, CEO of the IAB Tech Lab, shares how he’s trying to solve for universal reconciliation, universal audit, audience interoperability and creating strong anti-fraud mechanisms in CTV among an ambitious list of other priorities in 2023. A full transcript of the conversation is included.

Fox’s free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service Tubi has reached 64 million monthly active users. Tubi disclosed the figure alongside a research report on streaming and the FAST and AVOD landscape. In 2022 Tubi’s total viewing time (TVT) was up 44% year-over-year compared to 2021, with users streaming more than 5 billion hours last year.

Fox Corp. has turned down unsolicited offers of more than $2 billion for its Tubi streaming service, over four times what the company paid for the business, according to people familiar with the overtures. Lachlan Murdoch, who runs Fox, wants to keep the fast-growing business, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations. Fox bought Tubi for $440 million in 2020.

Sling TV, the live streamer owned by Dish, today is launching a free ad-supported streaming service similar to Pluto TV and Tubi that will offer more than 210 channels and 41,000 on-demand titles.

Disney+’s and Netflix’s ad-supported tiers are opening up new inventory and audiences to marketers in 2023.

Vizio is integrating interactive advertising capabilities in its WatchFree+ free, ad-supported streaming (FAST) service, via a partnership with Brightline. Vizio is using Brightline’s Accelerator program, which is already used to enable dynamic and shoppable ads on Hulu, Peacock, Discovery+ and other platforms. The new deal marks the first smart TV integration for Accelerator and makes Vizio the first smart-TV manufacturer to enable advertisers to make their ads interactive and shoppable, according to the companies.

The streaming giant’s ad-backed plan accounted for only 9% of new signups in the U.S. in November, according to subscription-analytics firm Antenna.

TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp talks with Marco Di Giacomo, CMO of Amagi, about why he believes all broadcasters need to be on FAST channels post haste, the growing revenue opportunities there and where artificial intelligence will play a role in improving their UX and popularity.

Warner Bros.Discovery said that some of the shows that it has been moving off of HBO and HBO Max in order to save money will be licensed to third-party free, ad-supported streaming TV services. The company has ditched the “everything streaming” strategy that WarnerMedia executives have been following before WarnerMedia was acquired by Discovery. Instead, the company will make decisions about how to monetize shows on a case-by-case basis.

Amazon’s Fire TV has added thousands of hours of free ad-supported video and live content to its platform in the U.S., including sports highlights from MLB, NBC Sports and Fox sports. New free content is accessible from dedicated rows on the Fire TV Home and Free screens and spans three categories of sports news and highlights, trending trailers, and food and cooking. Amazon is touting live, on-demand, and short-form content. Users can access without any sign-ups, downloads or fees to get the instant video playback.

In Amsterdam this week, there was plenty of talk about broadcasters’ ongoing transition to IP and the cloud, along with the supply chain issues and labor shortages hampering it, but most people were too grateful to see old friends, colleagues and clients to complain.

Barclays’ Kannan Venkateshwar says as free ad-supported TV proliferates, even old content will compete with newer SVOD titles.