FASTMaster: September 2023 Update

Plus bombshell news...

Hello everyone! I hope that September is going well, and those of you at IBC are enjoying it. I had a great time at Content Canada in Toronto this week, moderating a panel on FAST with industry leaders from Pluto TV, Roku, Samsung, Tastemade and Blue Ant Media. Always love Content Canada and Prime Time conferences for their vibe and interest in FAST.

The next stop for me will be MIPCOM! See you on the stage ;)

Let’s let the cat out of the bag: I’ve resigned my position at Variety, with next week the last. It has been a fantastic adventure and one that has totally altered my career for good. But it’s time to move onto bigger things. More on that shortly. FASTMaster isn’t going anywhere though so don’t worry, those facts and figures (like, actually accurate figures unlike some recent reports on FAST) won’t vanish. If anything, there will be more FAST stuff going on here, not less.

Before I leave VIP+, I’m hosting a final FAST webinar as my swansong.

It’s on LinkedIn Tuesday 9/19 at 3pm Eastern and we’re going to be covering the innovations that FAST is seeing and what to expect in the near future. And I promise that any stats cited will be accurate (as you can tell, the bad data floating around in FAST is quite distressing).

Now, let’s FASTMaster. Some observations for this month:

• Freevee has added what could be argued to be its first kids channels (classic Transformers and Power Rangers), but isn’t classifying them as such.

• A+E Networks launched five exclusive single-IP channels on Samsung TV Plus. This was part of Samsung’s newfronts presentation but it is worth noting. Especially as it’s not been picked up anywhere else yet.

• Inside Edition launched a single-IP channel, it’s on Local Now, and I’d expect it to see more pick-ups very soon. A good catch for Local Now

• PBS launched PBS Food as they continue to delve deeper into FAST. It wouldn’t be a shock to see 15+ PBS-branded channels soon.

• Both Vix and Local Now altered their genre order in the EPG. Vix put news then sports at the top of their channels, while Local Now pushed their extensive local news offering down to the bottom of the EPG, after leading with it for years.

The biggest news is that we now have a FAST service in touching distance of offering 500 channels in the U.S.

Plex is just three shy of that landmark, perhaps they’ll break that barrier in time for us to talk about it at MIPCOM. Plex also shared some interesting figures with me around their FAST growth. On a yearly comparison basis, Plex saw a 54% growth in FAST viewers, and a 135% increase in FAST minutes watched, and on a quarterly level, saw minutes watched increase by 17% between Q1 and Q2. FAST keeps growing! Also worth noting that their most popular channels tend to be branded ones (ION is number one), which makes me feel good about the Brandification piece I wrote last month!

Here’s that classic chart I’d do, updated to show the incredible growth of channels carried on services we still see increasing in the U.S. A lot of fun can be had from staring at this, especially when tracing where services where in 2019 and early 2020 versus now.

I saw recently someone publishing contextless data around channel attrition/growth. I’ll take that challenge. Here’s the addition/removal figures for the major U.S. services between August and September. Freevee, Local Now, Plex and Samsung TV Plus saw big additions. Vix actually cut a lot of channels, which was part of a trend seeing channels carried by one or two services being cut.

As noted A+E Networks launched five new channels. Universal continues to mine the archives, with both single-IP and curated genre launches. Single-IP was a real trend for additions in September, with music channels contributing strongly to removal figures for STIRR and Local Now in particular.

This lead to a shocking finding! The total number of available FAST channels dropped in September. Okay, only by one channel. Don’t worry, the FAST boom isn’t over. It means that smaller channels that were distributed on one or two smaller platforms are now being removed, as the brandification continues. 1,835 total channels is still an immense figure, up from the 1,464 seen last September.

That’s the overview of September. There’ll be much more coming in the lead-in to MIP, so keep an eye out. And comments, questions and musings on FAST are always welcomed!