This is what a gold rush looks like: With channels dedicated completely to “Heartland,” “The Rifleman,” and individual “Big Brother” 24/7 camera feeds, there are approximately 1,683 unique, free, ad-supported streaming television channels in the U.S. as of September 15, according to Stream Metrics. According to us, that’s a few too many. But we got here so quickly because ad revenue is more lucrative than subscriptions — and because creating a FAST channel is, well, fast.
Frequency, a company dedicated to the care and feeding of FAST channels, recently launched 50 channels for a customer on a major distributor. CEO Blair Harrison wouldn’t name the companies, citing confidentiality agreements, but told IndieWire that completing all 50 took “about a month,” with most of that time going to the contracts. Barring legal complications, he said, his company can stand up a FAST channel in about a week.
A second source from a major FAST platform who spoke with IndieWire told us that they prefer to spend a month launching a channel to get partners and marketing involved. But in the case of breaking news — say, a beloved celebrity dies — a top FAST platform can launch a new (temporary) tribute channel within hours. Forget fast, that’s light speed.
We asked Harrison to walk us through the process of setting up a FAST channel — say, Tony Maglio TV, a never-ending feed of over-the-top action movies (yes, including “Over the Top”), “Seinfeld” episodes, pro wrestling, docuseries about Ponzi schemes, boat reviews, and the last two Giants Super Bowl wins.
If you have the content ready to go, and a relationship with a platform willing to carry your channel, you too can have a FAST Channel. Ready?
Step 1: Find a platform
This part used to be a lot easier. In the early day of the FAST arms race, emerging players were stockpiling content and greenlighting channels as if the bandwidth was unlimited. (In some cases, it was.) It was get big fast, and figure out the details later — just like its big brother, subscription video-on-demand.
Today some major FAST platforms are setting channel limits, just like cable, Harrison said. (He again declined to name examples, as they are Frequency clients.) To add a new channel, you’ve got to take one away.
At the very least, you have to closely audit tperformance metrics. The majors do this all the time and know when to sunset a channel or repurpose its content elsewhere. It also keeps your electronic program guide (EPG) from overheating.
Step 2: Have the rights
Presuming that I want to populate my channel with more than videos ranking the best family bowriders (I can probably get those on the cheap from Captain Matt), I’ll need content rights. Until recently that would have been impossible; platforms believed unwaveringly in the content monogamy of one show, one platform.
However, Harrison said that as owners recognized that single-platform domination is impossible, they’d make more money licensing some content to others. That’s why HBO’s “Westworld” is on Tubi and Roku, with “Ballers,” “Six Feet Under,” “Band of Brothers,” and “The Pacific” on Netflix. Seven AMC shows are currently on Max.
If you don’t already have the content rights, that gets pricey. Good rights can range anywhere from six figures to several million dollars, our source from a major FAST platform, who spoke with IndieWire on the condition of anonymity, said. The details vary greatly; some content providers want a pure ad-revenue share agreement, others go for minimum guarantees (example: $1 million guaranteed from ads, licensing, or both), and others just want a flat, fixed licensing fee.
Harrison suggests frugal FAST programmers piece together a channel by licensing individual shows from studios, as opposed to licensing a fully formed channel. (In other words, license Food Network shows — not the Food Network.)
“You cut out that middleman and it’s not a trivial cut,” he said.
Step 2: Have the tech
Paying for content doesn’t always mean content is ready to play. Even what Harrison describes as a “small-ish” distributor likely licenses content from at least 20 providers, which introduces variations in video quality and metadata; some may have subtitles and some don’t. Or, as Harrison said, it “might have shit all over the place.”
Companies like Frequency or Amazon Web Services clean up that mess. Frequency just launched Studio 5 software that operates like a computer cleanup program: It automatically detects problems like erroneous black frames, incorrect titles, unprintable characters, and can resolve some issues on its own.
Step 3: The user experience
How much do you want your FAST channel to look like linear television? Motion graphics, bumpers, interstitials? “Now/Next/Later” and “You are watching”? Most channels don’t go to those lengths, Harrison said, but given the increasing FAST competition that could soon change. Viewers are more likely to watch the channels that are easy to navigate and easier on the eyes. No one loves a crappy UX.
Step 4: Scheduling
A FAST channel needs a 24/7 schedule. Or to put it another way, Harrison said: “You’ve got to fill 730 hours a month, every single month.”
Then the Tetris begins: Are you repeating, or not repeating, the right amount of those 730 hours? How much is fresh? Fortunately, operating a channel provides more data over time to help you schedule.
Harrison said Frequency’s Studio 5 can “automate the hell” out of the process that he calls “hugely time-consuming” to do by hand, which can be hugely money-consuming. “The economics of running a FAST channel will probably not be dominated by the technology costs,” he said. “It will be dominated by the human cost.”
Step 5: Distribution
If you have a couple of channels that go to a few places — even one or two channels that go to 3-5 distributors — Harrison said that’s “manageable without a lot of sophistication in the tools and the management process.” Hell, you can handle that workload over email.
When that becomes 30-50 streams going to “more than a handful of places,” the party’s over. “Now you’re managing a large matrix of things and shit’s changing all the time,” he said. It’s “explosively complicated once you get above a certain scale.”
Step 6: Ad bucks
Frequency and others in its space (like Amagi and Wurl) can shoehorn an advertisers’s commercials into the programming. (Studio 5 finds purposeful black frames and identifies those as the commercial breaks.) Content and human resources notwithstanding, Harrison puts the monthly cost of operating a FAST channel as “a few grand, give or take.”
Some of the ad money stays with the platform; the rest returns to the content provider. Harrison’s company doesn’t get involved in the actual money flow. But as he said, it’s “clearly a nontrivial consideration for those who do.”
No, Blair, the money is never trivial.
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