FAST Channels Delivering More Than ‘Leave It To Beaver,’ Gracenote Reports
Image courtesy of Gracenote
The number of free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels is exploding and these days they offer more modern programming than the vintage shows like Leave it to Beaver.
According to a new report from Nielsen’s Gracenote unit, the number of active FAST channels in the U.S. has grown more than 13% to 1,189 in February from 1,052 in May 2024. The report also says there are 153 FAST channels in the U.K., 108 in Germany and 85 in Canada. (Across the four markets, the number of channels is up 42% since mid 2023).
As the number of channels has grown, and the number of people viewing them, has grown, program owners have been making more recent series and movies available for FAST distribution.
Whereas once FAST was the province of classic black-and-white shows like Leave It to Beaver and Gunsmoke, the new Gracenote report (entitled Beyond Nostalgia) found that only 13.4% of the programs on FAST channels were made before 1990.
Among FAST channels the most popular genre is Entertainment with more than 300 channels. Gracenote says the entertainment category features networks like Always Funny Videos, The Preview Channel and the Just Fishing Channel, featuring shows such as Mukbo Brothers, You, Me and Joe, Pet Boulevard House and The Grio Awards Red Carpet.
Other popular genres include sports, with 220 channels and reality programming with 138 channels. Drama is the fifth most common fast channel (37) and comedy ranks sixth (90).
Reality is the fastest growing channel genre, growing from just 19 in July 2024. The number of sports channels is also increasing rapidly, more than doubling in the past year.
The most prevalent programming in the FAST world are sports, reality and news/commentary.
Gracenote notes that at this point, the sports programming on FAST channels is rarely live (with a big exception being the Super Bowl, which streamed on Fox’s Tubi.)
“Live sports is the next wave of content in the FAST space, and content owners will likely approach the distribution of live sports programming much more narrowly than they do with game replays and highlights,” the Gracenote report predicts. “Unlike in SVOD, however, the programming will be free, and we’re already starting to see this take shape.”
Gracenote points out that the programming on free streaming contrasts what whats streaming on the subscription services. Looking at Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, Netflix and Paramount+, sports programming accounted from only 1.3% of the content available, with 1.9% in the entertainment genre and 1.9% in reality. On the SVOD service, drama i the most popular genre with 23.4% of the available content in February.
Another big difference between free streaming and subscription streaming services is that very few FAST channels have exclusive content. Across the five subscription services tracked, 93% of the content is exclusive.
Gracenote said tha the key trends fueling the growth of FAST channels are rising CTV access and smart TV ownership; rising SVOD costs amd free, anonymous access to a growing supply of content
As more FAST Channels come on-line and with 178,000 programs available, search and discovery become more crucial for both distributors and viewers.
”FAST is in many ways a unique service, but its lifeblood is still content,” said Tim Cutting, Chief Revenue Officer at Gracenote. “So, program-level metadata providing understanding of FAST content is more important than ever to audience engagement and advertising initiatives.”
A mid-2024 Gracenote analysis found that a significant portion of programs included in FAST channels lack key information audiences need to determine if they’re interested in it. For example,31% of the TV programs submitted to Gracenote’s FAST database for metadata enrichment lacked genre information. Many were also missing other metadata elements that facilitate content discovery, such as imagery, parental rating and production year.
In addition to making it more difficult for viewers to find what they want to watch on FAST channels, the lack of meta data also discourages programmatic ad sales.
The report cites an estimate from Grand View Research that global FAST channel as spending was $9.4 billion in 2024. But because of issues including measurement challenges, only 53% of respondents in the 2024 Annual Marketing from Nielsen said they plan to increase spending on CTV and just 57% believe the channel is effective.
“The importance of content notwithstanding, user experience has become critical across every sector of the increasingly crowded TV landscape. In the growing FAST realm, where content exclusivity has yet to materialize across channels and platforms, user experience becomes the primary value proposition to drive both differentiation and long-term business success,” the report concludes.