40 Tuesday May 17 2022 | the times
Business
Are the credits rolling on the streaming
wars? You might think so if you are
looking squarely at the fortunes of
some of the biggest players — Netflix,
the sector’s pioneer, is in decline;
Disney+, its top challenger, is battling to
meet lofty expansion targets; and
CNN+, the newest deep-pocketed
platform, was shelved weeks after its
launch — but in one corner of the
market, operators claim to be enjoying
“nosebleed growth”.
They also appear to be turning
conventional wisdom on its head. In
contrast with a television future domi-
nated by viewing on demand, based on
subscriptions and without commercial
breaks, some of the biggest names in
American media are jostling to offer an
altogether different — albeit familiar
— proposition: linear content that’s
free to watch, alongside adverts.
Welcome to the world of “Fast”
streaming — free, advertising-sup-
ported telly — where you won’t find the
latest mega-budget shows such as The
Crown but Cruising with Jane McDonald
and the courtroom of Judge
Judy, right. According to
Tom Ryan, a co-founder
of Pluto TV, one of the
leading platforms in
this space: “This is
a hyper-growth
category of
streaming.” In the
United States
alone, Screen-
media, a research
group, estimates
that revenue gener-
ated by such online
linear services is set to
almost double from $2.1 bil-
lion last year to $4.1 billion next.
Pluto was bought by Viacom, the
owner of Channel 5 and MTV that later
merged with CBS and became
Paramount Global, for $340 million in- The service now generates
annual revenue of more than $1 billion,
with nearly 68 million monthly active
users. It is in two dozen markets and is
being launched in Sweden, Denmark
and Norway this week.
Entertainment heavyweights are
racing to grab a slice of the pie. Amazon,
having poured billions of dollars into its
Prime Video subscription platform,
recently rebranded its no-fee IMDb TV
strand to Freevee, with original series
including Bosch: Legacy and Alex Rider.
Two years ago Fox Corporation
acquired Tubi for $440 million. The
service, which is not available in Britain
at present, has 51 million monthly ac-
tive users. Rupert Murdoch, chairman
of Fox, is executive chairman of News
Corporation, ultimate owner of The
Times and The Sunday Times.
“It’s only going to go up from here,”
Ryan Pirozzi, co-head of programming
at Freevee, predicted. “We’re not sur-
prised to see other companies leaning
into this space.”
Connected TV sets have altered
habits, enabling viewers to flick
through apps in much the same way
they once hopped between BBC and
ITV. Alongside digital libraries, Fast
operators boast live, curated streams —
channels, if you will — often catered to
a specific niche. Pluto has one dedi-
cated to the Channel 5 documentary
series GPs: Behind Closed Doors, for
example, while Freevee has another
pinned around Judy Sheindlin, pic-
tured below, the television personality
and former family court judge.
Unlike America, free streaming is
already popular in Britain, where tele-
vision’s established beasts have spent
years building up BBC iPlayer, All 4 and
ITV Hub, set to soon become ITVX as
part of an expensive relaunch. Olivier
Jollet, who leads Pluto’s international
division, recalled how those running
the venture were “not sure whether
there was a market for us” in the UK; in
the event, they had found robust
demand for “well-curated channels”.
Lauren Anderson, Freevee’s co-head
of programming, acknowledged it was
revisiting the “original foundations of
TV”, but asserted that it also offered
convenience with on-demand content.
“We’ve tried to dispel the notion that
ads are, by definition, a bad thing,”
Pirozzi added.
Until recently, this
remained a subject of de-
bate. Now Netflix,
which not long ago
hailed a lack of ads
as central to its
appeal, is pre-
paring to incor-
porate them in
cheaper subscrip-
tions to revive
growth. Disney+
may pip it to the
post.
Tom Harrington,
head of television at
Enders Analysis, said that
Fast channels amounted to a
“pretty sound strategy for content com-
panies to grab some incremental reve-
nue”, without enduring the fees at-
tached to traditional broadcasting.
Though they remained “tiny” in terms
of viewing and engagement, they were
“certainly a buzzy area of the market”.
Efforts to lift free streaming
audiences have breathed new life into
an old debate, too: whether platforms
need new, exclusive titles to attract and
retain viewers. With the caveat “never
say never”, Pluto does not see originals
as a “necessary” to grow; Freevee, in
contrast, intends to enlarge its original
slate by 70 per cent this year.
And these operations serve more
than one purpose. Freevee contributes
to Amazon’s rising ad sales and bolsters
interest in Prime Video. Pluto diversi-
fies Paramount’s offer to advertisers
and acts as a shop window for Para-
mount+, the paid-for platform, which is
being launched in Britain next month;
Ryan, who oversees both, argued that
the combination was as compatible as
“chocolate and peanut butter”.Fast-forward to
new streaming
service that’s an
ad for the past
The familiar formula of
TV content shown with
commercials is back
after a short break,
reports Callum Jones
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“prettysoundstrategyStock markets across the
world remain volatile
following Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine. Oil and gas prices
have been spiralling, while
British companies are
scrambling to cope with the
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