Warner Bros. Discovery Strategy
US media businesses have pivoted away from withholding content to support the global rollout of SVOD services and moved into a new era focused on monetising their content portfolios and increasing profitability through whatever means available. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is one of these businesses that are more focused on licensing content, including moving into the FAST space. Whilst they admit that their content windowing strategy is not fully defined and remains evolving they are actively licensing across the entire distribution chain including theatrical, home entertainment, Pay TV, Free TV, SVOD and now AVOD and FAST.
WBD were slow to get involved with FAST, watching the space grow, but are now clearly looking to exploit the opportunity more. “We don’t yet have, we think, a strong enough position yet in that market,” says WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels. Its early initiatives are licensing deals but it is clear they have an eye for greater involvement and that we are watching a strategy evolve in front of us.
Tubi and Roku
The first major initiative from WBD came with their deals with Tubi and ROKU for “over 225 AVOD titles and over 2,000 of hours of on-demand content, alongside branded and other linear channels”. Gunnar Wiedenfels stated that the Roku and Tubi deals were “a toe in the water…a beginning for us” in FAST, with clearly more to come. Although there are no specifics, they have indicated that they could also expand internationally and ultimately as Wiendenfels stated “we do want to have a bigger presence in that space”.
WBD will no doubt remain selective about the content they offer on FAST, holding on to the more important content for their SVOD service, then selling the less important content non-exclusively to others. All of this follows the playbook of the majority of content owners today, especially considering the clear focus on profitability and the leaning away from a “subscribers at all cots model”. What may become more interesting is the statements (albeit vague) about WBD operating their own FAST service. They have been exploring the options open to them, no doubt watching the actions of Paramount (with Pluto), Fox (with Tubi) and NBCU (with Peacock and Xumo). With the major streamers all adjusting their D2C approach to include ad-free and ad-supported subscriptions, the challenge now becomes how to best fit FAST into each of their consumer propositions and what their accompanying content windowing strategy will be.
WBTV FAST Genres
3Vision's FAST Tracker reveals that the majority of WBD FAST channels are unscripted, with only three out of the 14 channels being scripted and 5 of the channels being reality based. All of their channels are single genre but none of them are Single IP with WBD clearly making the decision at this stage to build a suite of WB TV branded FAST channels that they can distribute to platforms and attempt to build a strong branded presence. It is clearly a complicated position that the greater WBD company find themselves in, with years of brand heritage across different target audiences and genres. In a similar way as they face challenges with the merged Max SVOD service (that offers many different types of content including lower-budget documentaries and premium high-end drama) they have to ensure that they signpost their FAST content well enough to drive usage. They have chosen to go with a new WB TV branded approach, which enables them to grow their strategy initially from licensing to potentially having the brand and platform exist in its own environment in the future.
WBTV FAST Content Origins
The WBD FAST channel offer skews heavily towards the Discovery family of content. Although there are some notable high profile scripted shows appearing from the old Warner Bros International TV Distribution business (notably HBO Shows like Raised by Wolves and Westworld). Although the programming varies by FAST channel the primary originating source by original (WBD Owned) US channel skews towards the Discovery family.
Wrap-up
The WB TV FAST Channels are currently available in the US only, having launched initially on Tubi in February followed by a Roku launch in March. The potential for expanding their scripted offer is vast, with no attempts yet to tap into their deep catalogue for Single IP channels and a relatively muted investment in movies. The current offer leans heavily on the Discovery catalogue and in all cases the naming conventions seem to diverge from the current stakeholder narrative - “it does what it says on the tin”. With our FAST Tracker service, we will be following closely as their strategy evolves, watching their channels potentially move to additional platforms and then international markets.
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