Free TV is Back, and it's Better than you Think
When most people think about free streaming TV apps, they think: Steven Seagal direct-to-video movies; reality shows that didn't make the cut anywhere else; generally, the kind of content that ends up on free TV because it had nowhere better to go.
But much like Steven Seagal, that picture is out of date. Free Ad-supported Streaming TV, known in the industry as FAST, has in recent years achieved quite the glow-up, but most viewers haven’t caught up yet.
I've spent most of my career on the distribution side of this industry, which means I've had a front-row seat to the shift. What's happening now in FAST should be more widely known, because it completely rethinks what free TV can be.
Growing FAST
US viewers streamed 1.8 billion hours of FAST content through August 2025, up 43% year-on-year. By 2026, FAST is projected to reach 131.4 million viewers in the US, about 54% of all connected TV users. Two thirds of viewers say they would rather watch ads than pay more to avoid them.
So, what’s behind these numbers?
For years now, since cable and then the subscription boom, legacy media brands have been wary of FAST content. The fear was cannibalization, that putting content on a free platform would eat into the cable revenues they still depended on.
Recently that thinking has changed. Major studios and broadcasters have looked at their libraries, identified the content that has exhausted its cable value, and started giving it a proper home on FAST. More importantly, some are now producing original content specifically for these platforms. America's Test Kitchen is one example, commissioning new programming for their FAST channels rather than leaning solely on older library content.
The reason more studios are going in for this approach is pretty simple: the economics can work. Production costs get covered, audiences grow, and revenue keeps coming in from catalogues that might otherwise sit idle.
There are many small examples of this that build towards the picture of a trend. The broader signal came when the Super Bowl streamed for free, ad-supported, on Tubi. One of the most-watched sporting events on the planet, available to anyone with a connection, paid for by advertising rather than a subscription. That shifts what audiences expect free streaming to deliver, and it raises the ceiling for what FAST can become. Sports channels on FAST platforms are up 105% year-on-year, as rights holders realize that free, ad-supported distribution can reach audiences that paywalls necessarily keep out. Most of that growth today is in niche sports rather than the marquee leagues, but it’s a meaningful foothold in a category that, not long ago, was considered untouchable for free streaming.
Local News viewership has also exploded in recent years, as more and more local broadcasters have leveraged their ownership of their local newscast to provide a complimentary, live viewing experience to match what was previously only available over the air or through cable retransmission.
Free TV is back, but it’s not coming for subscriptions
It's worth understanding why audiences are moving toward free streaming in such numbers. The past decade handed consumers an embarrassment of content riches, as subscription platforms proliferated. But that made an abundance of choice become a world of decision fatigue.
89% of US internet households already pay for at least one streaming service. That means penetration is nearly at its ceiling, and the next phase of streaming isn't about signing more people up, but about giving them more ways to watch alongside the services they already pay for. FAST sits comfortably next to a Netflix or a Disney+ subscription. It’s where viewers go when they want the lean-back experience of channel surfing, when they don’t want to commit to a two-hour film, or when the content they want to watch happens to be free. The growth in FAST viewing isn’t coming at the expense of SVOD; it’s filling the hours that SVOD was never designed for.
The content arriving on these platforms is therefore shifting from filler to a genuine offering, and as the quality improves, the stigma fades.
The next frontier: making it easy to find
The story of FAST’s growth isn’t finished yet. To capitalize on the shift, there’s more work to be done.
More content and more channels create the same problem that's plagued streaming for years now: too much choice, not enough guidance. The viewers who are coming to FAST for the first time, by a recommendation or simply by the appeal of not paying anything, need to be able to find what they're looking for without fighting through a maze of apps, menus, and carousels to get there.
This is where the smart TV operating system (OS) matters more than most people realize. The OS is the layer between the viewer and everything they want to watch. When it works well, it's invisible. These are the platforms on which content surfaces naturally, the right things appear at the right time, and the experience of watching free TV feels effortless rather than compromised. But when it works badly, even the best content in the world goes unwatched because nobody can find it.
The growth of FAST has been remarkable. The next chapter is about making sure viewers can actually get to it. Free TV is back. Now it needs to be discoverable, and the smart TV operating system is one of the most important surfaces shaping how viewers get there.
[Editor's note: This is a contributed article from TiVo Streaming Media accepts vendor bylines based solely on their value to our readers.]
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