FASTMaster's October Update
Channel counts by service + revised available channels in the US + more
Hello everyone and welcome to October’s edition of the FASTMaster, in just before the month ends. A couple of reasons for it being a little late:
Traveling to San Francisco for TV of Tomorrow and moderating panels on advanced advertising and FAST.
Traveling to Cannes for MIPCOM, hosting two panels/interview series on FAST and spending the rest of my time meeting with folks from the FAST world.
Taking on a task designed to make my life easier in the future re FASTMaster but ended up eating all of my free time since I’ve been back from Cannes, which was to remove some minor services from my monthly counts and then clean and recalculate the data. Sorry DistroTV, HaystackNews and Very Local, but research suggests very low audiences and with the number of channels/services in this space, anything that can give me some time back—unlike FAST, this service is free but not ad-supported—is something I have to do.
Also: I mentioned this in the last FASTMaster, but if you haven’t seen this report from the research team at Maru about the state of the U.S. FAST market which I designed and worked on, then please download today.
Couple of pieces I wrote on FAST in the last month:
FAST Programming Data Reveals Two Top Trends (paywalled at Variety Intelligence Platform)
FAST Evolution Accelerates at MIPCOM 2022 (paywalled at Variety Intelligence Platform)
Breaking the news about MotorTrend launching a FAST channel on Samsung TV Plus, free on Variety
On to the good stuff!
I’m sure you are as shocked as me to see that the number of channels per service continues (mostly) to go up. Note that Local Now also includes 100+ hyperlocal channels (you can choose which one you get to see in the “Local Now” channel slot) whilst Plex includes slots for the 6 closest Local Now hyperlocal feeds.
What catches my eye the most here is how Peacock is slowly trending its channel count down whereas several other operators have ramped up their channel counts in the last 2 months. While channel count ≠ quality per se, just like Yazz sang, the only way is up. Plex is the fifth major service to join the 300 club, Xumo is close, with Samsung TV Plus and Vizio WatchFree+ now post 250 each.
I thought focusing in on 2022 might make it a little easier, as the full chart can look like madness even if I have cleaned several services out.
*You’ll have to forgive me on the chart below, it autocorrected “Tubi” to “Tubings” and now the service won’t let me export the fixed chart! I guess ping me on LinkedIn if you need the data for a presentation or sales deck (and if you are from Statista, definitely ping me, omg I am fed up with my data being incorrectly cited or sourced there).
I went deep into the data with the removal of the services noted earlier from the database, but the quick clip of growth in total channels available is real. It’s apparent to me that if you’re looking to get into FAST, you really ought to have plans to do it sometime in 2023 (which means start planning now). Launching a channel in 2024… not as effective as doing it in 2023.
Oh also, a news alert! My good friend Jill Goldstein from JGoldsteinPR is a fantastic publicist for folks in the FAST space, so if you need someone in that area, give her a shout.
I will end this by saying you may have heard how much I loved the desk at MIPCOM. It was fantastic and I would love to do every panel or interview like this from now until eternity.
Until next time,
Gavin