1. Peacock Drops FAST

In a move that pretty much no one saw coming, NBCU’s Peacock announced that it would be dropping its free tier for new subscribers.

I will admit to being quite surprised as well, given that Peacock in general seemed to be on the upswing, but the more I thought about it, the more it actually made sense.

Hear me out.

To begin with, Peacock was never supposed to be NBCU’s FAST play. That was Xumo’s gig. 

And Xumo, which, as we shall examine shortly, had been in purgatory for a while, was recently reborn as the foundation of a combined Comcast/Charter smart TV and connected device play.

So it seems that NBCU and Comcast are planning to double down on Xumo.

[LIGHTBULB ON.]

Why It Matters

A bit of history: Xumo was one of the three big original FAST aggregator apps along with Pluto TV and Tubi. All three were bought out by broadcast networks, starting with Paramount (then known as ViacomCBS) and Pluto TV.

It was widely assumed that Xumo would become NBCU and Comcast’s FAST service, serving as a home for the vast library of much loved programming from the NBC family of networks and Universal pictures.

Peacock, OTOH, was going to be the company's SVOD service. The plan was to launch Peacock around the 2020 Olympics where millions of people would subscribe to see their favorite events.

But, in the immortal words of Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. 

In this case, that punch was delivered by the pandemic, which caused the Olympics to be canceled. 

It also shut down TV production and so NBCU was faced with the dilemma of delaying the launch of Peacock or launching it with precious little in the way of original programming.

So they made what was generally considered to be a wise move at the time and launched Peacock as a free service, collecting emails from everyone who signed up. (There was a paid option, which got you access to English Premier League Soccer, but it was not marketed heavily outside of the Hardcore British Soccer Fan cohort.)

This, of course, left Xumo in major limbo, as no one quite knew what the ultimate plan for it was. 

Given that, at the time, no one knew what the ultimate path of the pandemic would be and how long it would affect the television industry, that was not as random as it might seem. 

But then NBCU launched pay Peacock for real and free Peacock was still part of the package. Leading to further murkiness as to the ultimate fate of Xumo.

Then in early November 2022, it was revealed that Xumo would be the underlying interface for a joint venture between Comcast and Charter that would manufacture smart TVs and connected devices under the Xumo name, and at CES 2023, the product was actually introduced. 

So it would seem that NBCU is going back to Plan A, making Peacock their subscription service and Xumo their FAST.

There are a number of compelling arguments for the wisdom of taking this path.

One is that having three different flavors of subscription (free-with-ads, subscription-with-ads and subscription-without-ads) is confusing and in many ways undercuts the value of paid Peacock. 

It’s a funny thing though—when all this started, the conventional wisdom was that having all three options on a single app made the most sense to the point that there was an expectation that Paramount would fold Pluto TV into Paramount+.

Good thing for them they didn’t, as Pluto TV has become a thing on its own, breaking into Nielsen’s list of Top TV services while still serving up flywheel realness for Paramount+.

 Xumo, like Pluto, is a brand unto itself and I’m guessing that NBCU is looking to pump that up, making it their own version of Pluto with its own personality, something the free version of Peacock is never going to have.

So there’s that and then there’s the TV OS Wars thing.

As noted here multiple times, the battle over the TV OS is going to be the big story to watch over the coming years as whoever owns the OS becomes, in essence, the gatekeeper, with the ability to promote or demote various services at will. (Or, more likely, upon receipt of large sums of money.)

One key to owning the OS is to have a FAST service that serves as the centerpiece to the OS, something Amazon, LG, Samsung and VIZIO have discovered to their benefits. The FAST-as-core-of-the-OS allows the OEM to both promote the FAST itself and to sell advertising slots to other streaming services.

So while Peacock would have been confusing AF as the fulcrum of a TV OS, Xumo which has no subscription tiers to hold it back, makes perfect sense.

Comcast, if you remember, is a force outside the US too, thanks to its purchase of Sky, and so giving themselves a strong entry into said OS wars, which wil mostly be waged outside the US, is a smart move too.

What You Need To Do About It

If you are NBCU and Comcast, well done. Now you just need to remember to follow through and really promote Xumo, give people a reason to watch it, curate some interesting channels, make sure that it’s easy to go from linear to on-demand if someone wants to deep dive on a particular series and all that.

You also need to make the Xumo TVOS stand out and give people a reason to buy the TV sets—we think the quality of the OS interface will become a major differentiator for consumers as the actual sets themselves become parity products. Definitely something to focus on.

If you are David Satin at The Streamable, take a bow, as you are the one who first broke this story, and credit where it is due.

If you want to know more about FASTs in general and advertising on FASTs in particular, check out TVREV’s new Special Report, FASTs Are The New Cable, Part 2: Advertising. (It’s free for a limited time.)

2. WBD Gives FAST Channels To Roku And Tubi

Warner Brothers Discovery has been talking about launching its own FAST service for a while now, but in a move that also surprised many people, WBD struck a deal to send a number of linear channels along with 225 titles on on demand content to both The Roku Channel and Tubi, potentially rival FAST services.

From where I sit though, it was a win for all three.

It seems that the linear channels will have WBD branding (e.g. “WB TV Watchlist”) which is pretty much free advertising for Max or whatever the new combo HBO Max-Discovery+ app is called. Both from the name and from the implied premise that “if you like this, there’s a lot more where that came from.”

The series, which range from Westworld to Cake Boss right on down to FBOY Island cover a range of audience bases and give both Tubi and Roku (who are getting different slates of programming) a way to further differentiate themselves from their rivals.

Having viewers find something they want to watch is the key to retention on FASTs, as it keeps them coming back rather than moving on to the next FAST. (People tend to be creatures of habit.)

Why It Matters

FASTs are pretty low-friction propositions. They don’t collect emails (yet) and they’re free. So it’s easy to jump from one to another. Consumers are going to settle on a handful of services they regard as their favorites. And they’re going to do that based on those FASTs having a good selection of shows and movies they want to watch.

For WBD, having some of their shows on Tubi and Roku is not that big a deal. It’s just a handful of shows. Most of the massive library that WBD has is going to be on their own future FAST. It’s an incredibly evergreen library too, especially the Discovery and HGTV parts—a House Hunters International or Cake Boss episode from 2013 is not going to look all that different from one from 2023. 

So yeah, they may lose a couple of hardcore FBOY Island fans to Tubi. But the dollars they are getting from those deals will more than make up for it.

For Roku, which doesn’t have its own legacy library to draw from the way Pluto TV does, and for Tubi which can only draw from Fox’s shows, having the WDB content is a way to set themselves apart and to establish they’re listening to their viewers by giving them more choices. It also gives them something to highlight in their promotions. (“Now on Tubi!” “Now on The Roku Channel!”)

Promotion is going to be key to the success of the FASTs too, because now that the market is settling, they need to be able attract the second wave of streaming viewers while retaining the first. That’s going to require old school TV marketing, touting the shows and movies they have on demand while promoting their more popular linear channels. 

And news. Because the FASTs have rapidly begun acquiring a whole passel of local and national news options.

What You Need To Do About It

If you are one of the networks and you have a huge library of content, giving small pieces of it away is a smart move. It’s cash in your pocket, it’s free advertising and if 98 percent of your library is still living exclusively on your own FAST service, then no harm done. 

If you are one of the FASTs not affiliated with a major media company, then you should definitely look into buying some shows from those companies. It’s unique content, it’s something to promote and it’s a much more effective (and cost-effective) retention tool than trying to create your own originals. 

If you’re a consumer, this is good news all around. More of your favorite shows in more places. All for free.

If you’re an entrepreneur, a guide to what’s on all the FASTs (or at least a way to figure out which FASTs a particular show or movie is on) would be well-received. And if you already have such a thing (and I suspect there are several out there) then please let us know.