Is FAST Dying? Not So, FAST

There’s been a lot of chatter here on LinkedIn and elsewhere suggesting that #FAST channels are dead. The great (r)evolution of (or the stepchild of) the package formerly known as Analog Basic Cable – minus the price tag, is now sooooo over.

I humbly disagree and not simply because I make a living in the #Streaming space and much of my time has been spent working with FAST brands seeking to grow their reach and generate cashflow from libraries of content that have not been played into the ground.

So where is FAST?

FAST channels essentially began as independent brands who managed to gain a following after getting onto some of the early streaming platforms. Among my favorites was The TITANIC Channel (TTC). If you’ve followed the most famous shipwreck in history, TTC was full of facts and interviews that gave more insight on the ship, the passengers and the history without the massive budget, Kate Winslet or Leonardo di Caprio. I could leave that on for days thanks to Distro. More platforms cropped up and Roku built a familiar bridge from the set top box to its own device which featured an abundance of new(ish) content and some familiar content that enabled viewers seeking more options to find them easily.

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Independent content or deeper catalog titles that didn’t quite fit the Netflix shopping list suddenly were becoming accessible in a true television format. As channels gained an audience, they began seeking out ways to retain their viewers and even attract more by producing or licensing content. Many internet favorites also made the leap and suddenly you had channels of pranks and people falling down 24/7. What was once merely an amusing compilation reel to watch on Instagram during a bus ride was now a 24/7 channel on smart TV platforms.

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So where is the Ad Revenue?

Much like many conversations with managers during my professional career, filling these channels with ads “is quite simple”. But it isn’t. Programmatic and targeting of ads was supposed to eliminate the need to buy based on Nielsen numbers. It hasn’t. Fill rates for SOLD ads is well below 60% in many cases. Then again, the experience itself is messy. Ads repeating over and over and over and over… you get the idea. If I see that Charles Barkley Capital One ad ONE MORE TIME!!

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Why are we here?

Streaming became the edgy kid in junior high school. This is the first kid to show up with long hair, a leather jacket and torn up jeans. At first, everyone looks at the kid like they’re a pariah. Soon, the fashion spreads and becomes commonplace.

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Flashback to the late 1980s. The music business was in amazing shape (maybe not the artists but the business was). The bombastic and controversial heavy metal, glam and hip-hop scenes were the scourge of the moral majority. There was more hairspray, spandex and eyeliner sold to metal bands than in the gift shop during fashion week.

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Enter Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains and many more hard rock, alt rock or the whole of the #grunge scene. Suddenly even Metallica had short haircuts. Rock was dead. Grunge was the new kid in the cafeteria who everyone was giving the side eye.

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The comparison comes down to this – rock music didn’t die. Someone simply decided to go another direction or maybe just call it by a new name. Soon, flannel shirts and skinny black jeans were all you could find at Hot Topic or American Eagle or The Gap. The industry and the perception of what it believed would sell dictated what it stopped selling.

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Haven’t we been here before?

Twenty years ago I was working on a AVOD agreement with Comcast. I had a colleague shouting at me, “Mike you don’t even know if VOD is a good idea or not.” What I DID know was that there was a new shelf in town that was going to hold a ton of content and I wanted to be on that shelf. It took some effort but we did get some content up. BTW, that former colleague is no longer in the industry.

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VOD was supposed to kill linear (it didn’t). What it offered viewers was a different way to consume content. We’ve all since cleared precious space on our credenza's previously occupied by VCRs or DVD players. Much like VOD did, the advent of streaming has resulted in more viewership than it has less. Imagine 20-30 years ago bragging to your friends, “I never left my sofa this weekend. I binged this documentary series about a nut in Florida who owns tigers. I watched the entire series in one day.” That never happened. Irony is many of the people I have those conversations are quick to point out, “Kids today never look up from their smart phones. They should live in the moment.” Tell that to the Tiger King.

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Luckily there are many people smarter than me who serve as the David Hasselhoff’s (read that as "lifeguards") on the beach of television. I always tip my hat to Rick Howe since he was Advanced Television before anyone knew that’s what “TV” was abbreviating. Likewise, Tracy Swedlow who has never failed to look more than a year out to stimulate the conversations we should be having now. Colin Dixon also writes coherent and logic about a business that often needs a sherpa to find either. Evan Shapīro calls himself a “cartographer”. I see him more as a pathfinder who uses history and contemporary analysis to redirect conversations and companies to things that will make a meaningful difference to their brand and bottom line.

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I’ve been told I’m somewhat famous for my food analogies so I will add one here.

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If you own a pizzeria – sell your product by the pie, by the slice, with OR without toppings, and in any variation your customers ask. If you don’t someone else will.

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VOD only makes no sense. I don’t want to navigate through JPEGs every 30-60 minutes to find the next thing to watch. Sometimes, I just want to lean back and fall asleep watching whatever comes on. I’m a true crime guy so on my #Samsung is the “Cold Case” channel from A&E anytime I grab a quick lunch in my home office. It works for me. Quick stories I get sucked into and then I’m back to work. They’re also easy to fall asleep to later in the evening.

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If FAST disappears it won’t be because the audience has lost interest. No one wants to pay a $100+ cable bill anymore. Let’s ignore that broadband-only is basically there NOW. Add in 1 – 3 streamers and your video bill is basically back to the $150+ p/mo that John McCain once suggested would disappear if everything was available a la carte.

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Which problems have we yet to fix?

Fill rates aside, there are no uniform measurement standards that apply across ALL platforms. We can’t even agree on what a “view” is let alone what is the length of a “session”. That must get fixed if we’re serious about having advertisers focus on Streaming.

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Navigation and discovery is a mess. One of my students mentioned that she only watches content on YouTube’s free platform. “I can find whatever it is that I am looking for and be watching it in less than three to six minutes,” was her reasoning. I couldn’t argue with her. When I power on my smart TV I have to watch that little red light blinking before the screen lights up. Once the TV comes on I now have to see if the Dock with my apps is going to come up without me hitting the button to summon it. Certain apps I can’t even download anymore because my TV is at capacity for storage.

Marketing and promotion – unless you have a sizable budget and an aggressive #marketing team, you’re not going to get a lot of promotion from partners. How do you drive tune in? What are your tent poles? If you’re a news channel how do you compete with “The Bachelor” or “American Idol”? If you’re a sports channel what do you bring to the table in the off season aside from replaying old games?

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There is still a need for some basic business practices – account management, relationship and partnership management, legal, marketing and advertising, operations… and there are many experienced and capable people of all ages, colors, genders, locations and levels of expertise available to assist publishers (big or small) with harvesting their crop of content, selecting the right title art and metadata to display and making sure it reaches the screen.

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In every organization I have worked at, the majority of the problems have been the simplest ones to solve. Ads aren’t running. Metadata isn’t accurate or effective. Shelving is off. We didn’t provide creative to support the premiere of a new title. Keyword selection isn’t well thought out. The daily schedule wasn’t constructed for the type of audience we’re attracting. There’s also the challenging ones including ad sales doesn’t know what Streaming is. “What’s a FAST channel?” is a sad way to start a conversation when you were hired to improve workflow for Streaming.

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So you CAN stop reading anything that suggests #FAST is dead.? Nobody talks about Analog Basic anymore. It is still around. So is broadcast. As for those with subscription packages, I can make a bold prediction. You will NEVER achieve 100% penetration of the marketplace. No one before you has. Enjoy ad supported content. It is FAST money after all.