The market for free streaming financed by advertising is seeing the “FAST” channels take off and France Télévisions wants to take advantage of this.
Free video streaming continues to grow. The France Télévisions group, which is on the lookout for opportunities around connected TV, has announced that it has reached an agreement with SoFast, the content aggregator, which will help it create several so-called “FAST” channels, free for the public, but with advertising.
The FAST television opportunity
You may have recently heard of FAST channels, an acronym for Free Advertising Supported Streaming Television. Beyond this term, which may seem obscure, there are free but ad-supported streaming television services. Among the best known are Pluto TV, Molotov, Rakuten TV, IMDbTV or Samsung TV+.
These channels operate on the same principle as linear channels but are created from catalogs of on-demand content, to better meet the needs of the public and thus create programming schedules and thematic channels.
France Télévisions, as we said, sees it as an opportunity, hence the agreement concluded with SoFast, which will take care of the creation of the channels, of which we do not know everything for the moment: and the number, and the themes. In any case, SoFast also saw an opportunity there: “ their success will be our success, as we work exclusively on a revenue sharing basis “, explains the boss and co-founder of the company, Yanaï Arfi.
FAST chains, alternatives to traditional linear chains
Generally, FAST channels offer necessarily inexpensive content (difficult to do otherwise with such a model), but there are often quite popular shows, films and series. Randomly writing our article, we went for a ride on Pluto TV. South Park, MacGyver where the Digimon were for example on the menu. We’ve seen worse.
While some operators offer Internet offers without a TV decoder, the FAST channels, which broadcast programs at specific times like linear channels, serve as a real alternative to a model which, excluding major events, has lost its power over the past ten last years.
France TV’s FAST channels will be available on connected TVs and OTT platforms.
Source : Full screen
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