Fast is no longer just an instruction for you to limit your food intake or a boastful description of your latest Strava running time. Rather it is a term for a new method of offering content that has begun to arrive on the broadcast and streaming landscape this side of the Atlantic. FAST is the acronym for Free Ad-supported Streaming Television.

Still in its infancy within the global broadcast and content sector, this type of curation has fast (ahem) become an established service in the USA and now these channels are beginning to take hold in the UK, with the first major commercial free-to-air broadcaster having implemented FAST at the end of 2022.

What exactly is a Fast Channel?

Quite simply, FAST Channels are a category of streaming television services funded solely by advertising and thus made available to consumers free of charge (unlike subscription-based video on demand services such as Netflix). Content on such channels is delivered as IPTV (content delivered over the internet), rather than broadcast as per a traditional linear TV channel.

A FAST channel could still be regarded as linear in form as it is scheduled as a separate and self-contained channel as part of a streamer’s content offering. The beauty is that as the name suggests, they are free and as they are delivered over the internet, they can be accessed via all your usual connected devices.

Specific content for specific audiences 

To the viewer, the key difference with FAST channels is that they can deliver mindfully curated quality content to a specific demographic, fanbase, community or niche group. FAST services can also consist of one particular programme brand only. A brand that is both known to be very popular and with multiple series under its belt. Think of a Game of Thrones FAST channel, a Top Gear FAST channel or a Real Housewives FAST channel.

Some would love and others would recoil at these examples; but that’s inherent when it comes to catering for specific audience groups. With targeted audiences in mind, herein lies the all-important value for both the broadcast-streamer and their commercial clients and partners. Making a play for specific audiences or fan-bases is extremely appealing to advertisers, as it is possible to target products and services more effectively and thus extract more potential value out of an ad campaign which, in turn, increases revenue. Add to this, the commercial benefit of the evolving complex tech intelligence behind more sophisiticated digital ad insertion within such content, technology which can allow for commercial inserts to be highly individually personalised and even interacted with at a transactional level.

“Popup” TV Channels for brands and events

A FAST channel can either be purposely short-lived to become part of a specific national event or anniversary or exist for much longer, depending on the content’s appeal and volume. Being part of the cultural zeitgeist of the time is a way to be part of society’s chatter and gives the streamer relevance. A royal themed FAST channel at the time of a significant royal event would be an example of this. Not only might this serve an increased thirst for content from royal fans and the wider society but importantly, it provides a very specific outlet for advertisers to leverage products and services that would greatly appeal to these viewers.

FAST’s ability to target a niche or group of viewers, can prove to be far more appealing to advertisers seeking to market to a specific demographic and/or hoping for a higher return on their investment.

Better value for broadcasters

The other advantage of FAST channels for the broadcast-streamer is not only that they can create as many as they wish to in theory but moreover, that they are able to make good use of content that might otherwise be sitting on their metaphorical shelves.

In plain terms, broadcasters pay to licence content from its original owner and that content is mostly acquired for a finite period and which may only be used a certain number of times and made available for a fixed period as catch up or box set. Should a streamer have produced and own the content in question (often referred to as originals), then a licence period may not be an issue.  Thus, the streamer can extract even more value out of their own series which may have been sitting on that digital shelf.

An antidote to content overload

You could argue that all of this content could be made available in perpetuity boxset style but in part, the behavioural challenge that FAST seeks to aide, is when faced with a gargantuan volume of content that’s always available for us to find at our free will, us viewers can spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to find something to watch and can resign ourselves to simply giving up. FAST does some of that thinking for the viewer and presents content coherently, curated content which can either already be well known and successful with a brand pull or content which ‘should’ be watched for fear of missing out for example, then packaged in an appealing way. No more endless scrolling needed.

As the advent of FAST becomes more ingrained into the psyche of content buyers and distributors alike, there would likely be implications for new specific series licensing agreements to become more widespread (if the current agreement doesn’t already cover this method). In the interim, this means a broadcast-streamer looking to launch FAST channels sooner rather than later would likely make use of content that it already owns.

Once broadcast-streamers successfully normalise the internal business processes required by FAST, we will no doubt see the roll-out of these channels significantly increase and viewers will quickly learn to adopt them as another convenient way of viewing content, just as we always have done in the past.

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