Ring Digital’s Brian Ring Talks Understanding TV Viewership and the Future of FAST at Streaming Media 2025
In this interview from Streaming Media 2025, Ring Digital LLC’s founder Brian Ring and Streaming Media contributing editor Timothy Fore-Siglin discuss gathering viewer survey data in the streaming industry, and how leveraging large language models (LLMs) in recent FutureOfTV.Live surveys has helped Ring decode open-ended survey responses and gain new insights into user experiences and preferences and what’s working and what isn’t with FAST, DTC streaming apps, and more.
Open-Ended Questions
Fore-Siglin notes that he’s known Ring for a long time. He asks him to clarify his company name, and Ring says Ring Digital can be found at RingDigital.TV. “So what does RingDigital.TV do these days?” Fore-Siglin asks.
“Primarily go-to-market and product marketing services,” Ring replies. “And one of the things that I do that’s special, I do a quarterly research report. It’s proprietary research. I research things that I want to find out about, and it’s called FutureOfTV.Live.” He continues, “I try to dive into the TV user experience and what consumers want.”
Ring describes a recent survey that featured an open-ended question for Roku users asking about their favorite show. “I got an incredibly interesting result out of it. I got a word cloud that taught me several things. Number one, not everybody has a favorite show. Some people do just dive in. They want to browse genres, for example. Of course people do have favorite shows, but also people confuse platforms. … And so this is a beautiful visual that teaches us to step back and think about the different clusters of people and how they sit down and watch TV.” He’s excited that his next survey has five open-ended responses as part of his 10 questions. “And I’m confident that we’re going to have a different view of TV viewership out of these.”
Studying FAST
Ring wants to learn more about the behavior around FAST channels. “One of the things that I think everybody in our industry is puzzled by is that none of us really know people that watch Samsung TV Plus. We know they’re very high numbers. We know these services are generating a lot of viewership. And so in this next research report, I asked people that specifically selected Pluto, for example, what is your favorite channel on Pluto?” LLMs make this process easier, he says. “So we’re going to see where that leads us, but I think it’s going to generate additional insights. And for FAST channel providers, they want to be able to distribute their content. And so the idea of opening up a new research path and new insights I think is really important for the industry. Everybody complains about not having data. And the truth is, with some effort, we can actually capture some really interesting data that can help drive business.”
Fore-Siglin replies, “One of the things that’s intrigued me about FAST is, it came out of nowhere a couple years ago and then it seemed we had a massive glut of FAST. Are we on the cusp of right-sizing that or are we going to have a lot more niche FAST channels that are viewed by smaller and smaller groups of people?”
Ring ponders, “I definitely think the lower end of the FAST channel curve is not as healthy as the very top providers. If you have a massive catalog and you just put out 20 channels with all your great stuff on it, you’re going to make some money. So I do think there’s a lot of content out there and there will be somewhat of a shakeup, but I don’t think FAST is going away.” He compares media history developments with the transition from radio to TV—TV was “additive” to radio. “But there are certainly a lot of people that would argue—particularly some of the broadcasters that aren’t all-in on FAST—that this is an unhealthy behavior that we’ve seen again and again where people rush to get some cash and then in a few years hence figure out that, wow, that other model was actually more profitable. But it’s here to stay and we’ve got to figure out how to use it and how to use it in conjunction with paid media,” he believes.
Terms Beyond FAST
Fore-Siglin wonders what to call the era we’re in now, where “you could pay for a subscription and have no ads to now you’re paying for a subscription and you still have ads. What do we call that? Because it’s not free ad-supported, it’s subscriber ad-supported.”
Ring says there’s no set term: “Even [with] FAST, some people think AVOD is included. Other people think, no, we’re just talking about the linear streams. And you’re a hundred percent right. It probably will become a little bit of a dated term over time as we all realize that you’ve got no ads, some ads, [and] full ads stacks.”
“The example for me is Freevee,” Fore-Siglin explains. “Freevee was completely independent. The idea was, you watched it and there were ads in it. Then Amazon with Prime started putting ads in. Now they’re rolling Freevee into Prime. Where’s the differentiation there?”
Ring adds, “Roku actually launched a service called Howdy, which is $2.99 a month, no ads. So [they’re] zigging where everyone’s zagging. And I think it’s to your point that the term FAST might be dated, but I think if you ask folks in the FAST business, they will sort of speak to the fact that no, it’s part of our business model and it’s holistic.” He continues, “And some people also will talk about apps that they have where they’re running linear channels inside those apps, but you can’t access them without paying. So you’re right, we’ve got a million different models. It’s very fragmented.” Fore-Siglin builds on that by mentioning the experience his children have had—they’re used to on-demand viewing, but they do watch some content on linear channels.
Predicting the Future
Fore-Siglin asks Ring to imagine two years into the future, when he’s done more research. “Where do you think we’re going to land in the industry at that point?”
Ring muses that there may be a top tier of 30–40 channels. “I think on a lot of platforms you’ll have hundreds of channels, but I do see a little bit of a shakeout, I would say.”
Fore-Siglin wonders if there will be aggregation models for the disparate channels, similar to cable, and Ring is noncommittal, noting that it’s all up in the air due to consolidations and financial changes. “I think the general consensus in the industry is that the big tech platforms are really, they’re at scale, and if you’re anything smaller, you’re not at scale,” he notes. “But at the same time, if you look at the internet, for example, everybody has a website. It certainly does make sense if you’re publishing content to have something of your own app, something where you can have your own data and then also feed experiences to users.” He does think “a better bundle” needs to exist. “And so maybe we’re headed towards that. … But right now, yeah, I have to admit there’s a few too many choices. I think that’ll narrow down a little.”
Fore-Siglin brings up the example of the NFL, whose content is split across different platforms; he’s noticed that during a game, he’ll see ads for other platforms besides the one he’s watching. He wonders if the NFL is doing that to remind viewers to seek out games in different places. Ring isn’t sure if that will be the norm. “The crystal ball is pretty hazy on how it all shakes out,” he says.
Fore-Siglin brings the conversation full-circle: “And that’s why you do research, right?”
“Absolutely,” Ring says. Channels can use it to find out about their audience. Research complements the data they’re already getting. He believes there will be increased usage of LLMs to do the research analysis—“it’s a matter of cleaning it and making it apples to apples.”
Gathering the Data
Fore-Siglin shares that he’s been speaking to people about how to “massage the data to get it into a standardized form.” He says, “Somebody brought up a really interesting point. We’ve had so many dashboards that were sort of dashboard overload. What you really need the machine learning system to do is take all that data and then build a custom dashboard on the fly that gives you what you actually want to see so that you’re not having to compare five dashboards to each other to make a real-time decision.”
Ring has some words of caution: “The media business has always been winner-take-all.” There’s a “natural hits-driven dynamic that’s going to happen in the business. And so it’s one of those things, [that] the lesser-tier content providers are going to have to work harder to get big brands associated with it. You’re going to have to work a little harder, provide a little more evidence, maybe take some risks,” he notes. “Programmatic is great, but if the fill rates are too low, there must be better things we can do with that inventory.”
Fore-Siglin calls back to the original question they discussed: “Samsung TV: How many people actually watch it? We see the numbers, but do we know somebody who watches it?”
“I’m really looking forward to this next report to see exactly who these people are,” Ring says.
Solving Consumer Confusion
“There’s a lot of confusion in this business from the consumer perspective. Another thing I found on this is, just [as] an example, FS1, Fox Sports 1, they do not have a FAST channel, and yet, they have Fox Sports, or there’s some brand of Fox Sports that has a FAST channel, and they syndicate FS1. And then so people think they’re watching FS1.”
Fore-Siglin shares, “There was a book years ago called Interface Culture by Steven Johnson. He was a Brown professor, and he posited that as medias get replaced by other medias, that the legacy media starts to reflect and mimic the newer media. And he gave examples of radio plays with sponsors and how that moved into television with sponsors in the beginning.” He goes into other examples seen on the early internet, regarding niche sports, and with the Peacock takeover of the Olympics. “It’s that tease to get you to go pay for their OTT platform when the over-the-air is essentially mimicking what the OTT is doing to a much bigger extent.”
Ring and Fore-Siglin continue to offer examples of content that starts on linear and moves to streaming or an app. “The key is to do it quickly and efficiently and get them watching. They’ll still be pretty PO’d, but if they get into the content and start watching it, then it fades away pretty quickly,” Ring says. “I think some of that is not intentional. It’s because they’re having game times that overrun. They have too many games on the schedule.” He believes the services that make it the easiest for consumers to use them as their home base will be most successful.
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