As someone who’s written histories of TV distribution, I see the FASTs as a return to a model that values old TV shows as audience-delivery systems for advertisers. And so far that seems to be working out pretty well for distributors, platforms, advertisers, and even viewers. While I agree with you that a “narrowcast” approach centered on genre (a la the expansion of 1980s-90s cable channels) could be useful for all, I have to wonder if the startup, marketing, and maintenance costs would be worth it enough to launch more bespoke platforms and apps. Is there enough more user data worth extracting in having a dedicated, say, sci-fi platform, vs a few channels on a larger platform, to make it worthwhile? Maybe? 🤷♂️ But do brand-specific publishers matter that much anymore in the programmatic ad ecosystem?
I think Pluto TV is probably furthest down this path in how they label and organize their FAST channels. They’ve got to have a lot of data already about whether or not it would be worthwhile to splinter them into their own standalone satellites. My guess is that it’s not quite worth going that way, at least not yet.
As someone who’s written histories of TV distribution, I see the FASTs as a return to a model that values old TV shows as audience-delivery systems for advertisers. And so far that seems to be working out pretty well for distributors, platforms, advertisers, and even viewers. While I agree with you that a “narrowcast” approach centered on genre (a la the expansion of 1980s-90s cable channels) could be useful for all, I have to wonder if the startup, marketing, and maintenance costs would be worth it enough to launch more bespoke platforms and apps. Is there enough more user data worth extracting in having a dedicated, say, sci-fi platform, vs a few channels on a larger platform, to make it worthwhile? Maybe? 🤷♂️ But do brand-specific publishers matter that much anymore in the programmatic ad ecosystem?
I think Pluto TV is probably furthest down this path in how they label and organize their FAST channels. They’ve got to have a lot of data already about whether or not it would be worthwhile to splinter them into their own standalone satellites. My guess is that it’s not quite worth going that way, at least not yet.