FAST channels’ discoverability challenge

The elephant in the FAST channel room

There’s a lot of industry excitement around FAST (Free Ad-Supported TV) channels at the moment.

In just the last month, new FAST channels have been announced by Warner Bros. Discovery, Fremantle, Vice Media, Narrative Entertainment, Mainstream Media, Echelon Studios, Fuse Media, to name but a few.

Most of these producers/distributors are partnering with one (or more) of the main FAST channel platforms I covered in my May round-up, (either directly or via an intermediary like Fast Channels TV), whilst some have headed to YouTube.

All of these platforms have, to a greater or lesser extent, an existing audience and the technical chops to deliver the channels to viewers.

However, they all also present discoverability challenges and those challenges are set to get bigger.

Samsung, one of the obvious partners for producers/distributors due to its large share of the global TV set market and relatively mature FAST channels proposition in the form of TV Plus, now offers over 200 FAST channels - more than double the number of channels on the UK’s digital terrestrial television platform, Freeview.

This number of channels makes for one hell of an EPG and decreases the likelihood viewers will stumble upon your shiny new FAST channel.

Of course, there are some tried-and-tested ways of trying to make an overwhelming EPG more navigable (e.g. filter by genre) and active and passive personalisation can make it easier for viewers to return to a channel once they’ve discovered it (i.e. by adding it to favourite/recent channels in a prominent area of the UI). However, they’ll be a strong temptation for platform operators to monetise the most prominent areas of their FAST channels UI, just as they have with streaming services on their platform home screens and remote controls.

An additional challenge is getting users into the FAST channels UI in the first place. Whilst it’s increasingly under threat from smart TVs automatically opening the last used app when switched on, many TVs still default to the broadcast EPG, which is governed in the UK by Ofcom’s code of practice and its “appropriate prominence to the Designated Channels”.

Consequently, manufacturers have increasingly attempted to integrate their FAST channel offering into the main EPG, which has evolved from a list into a giant vertical carousel, where pressing up from BBC ONE in the UK takes you into one of their flagship FAST channels (in Samsung’s case ‘Action Moves - Rakuten TV’ - channel 4999).

Some scale producers/distributors are in a position to try going D2C with their FAST channels. Having put a toe in the water with Samsung at the beginning of the year, ITV is promising an “an ever-changing host of exclusive themed channels” on its new streaming service, ITVX, which is now due to launch in a few weeks time.

It will be interesting to see how ITV presents these channels (of which they’ll be 20 at launch) in the UI and whether they are as ‘ever-changing’ as the press release promises (it goes on to say that “ITV intends to offer viewers a new themed channel, every week of the year on ITVX”), when part of the success of broadcast TV channels has been their permanence and predictability.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of being able to quickly spin up and spin down channels and instantly measure their impact - a far cry from the pain of launching and measuring a broadcast channel - although ITV will need to take advertisers and audiences on a journey here as neither is currently used to channels which come and go on a weekly basis.

Pop-up channels (sans ads) is something the BBC has experimented with on BBC iPlayer for live events like Glastonbury and the FA Cup and Network 10 recently launched its first ever FAST channel on 10 Play, themed around the Melbourne Cup.

Of course, the value of watching sport and music events live is self-evident and wrapping a pop-up channel around them can make sense as a way of amplifying the event and increasing viewing time.

FAST channels which are purely playing out on-demand assets are a different kettle of fish, with the selling point (vs on demand) typically being the ease of access / reduction in decision-making; no need to actively choose a show and/or episode - someone’s already done that for you.

However, as the number of FAST channels grows, the physical and cognitive work involved in picking a channel starts to look a lot like the effort involved in choosing an on-demand programme, especially for platforms which (unlike Samsung & LG) don’t have control of the physical channel up/down buttons on the remote (the precursor to TikTok’s swipe up).

So, are FAST channels worth investing in?

Whilst the initial discoverability and friction of decision may not ultimately be much better than on-demand, if you *can* get viewers to them, the linear presentation of FAST channels may prove more effective in getting viewers to stay and watch another episode (and therefore more addressable ads) and in forging habits which transcend a single show.

Just don’t build them thinking viewers will magically come. You’ll have to hustle for FAST channel viewers in much the same way as you do for on-demand.