Архив метки: FAST

Dungeons & Dragons gets its very own streaming channel

After the film “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” became a hit, topping $200 million at the worldwide box office, Hasbro wants more. Hasbro-owned production company eOne announced Thursday that it is launching a new free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel dedicated to the widely popular role-playing tabletop game. Variety was the first to cover the announcement.
The Dungeons & Dragons Adventures is a 24-hour FAST channel set to launch this summer. It will feature original programming based on campaigns played by content creators, third-party content from top influencers, as well as older stuff like the 1983 animated Dungeons & Dragons series.
Shows coming to the new channel include:
Encounter Party: Based on the podcast of the same name, the show features six members, including “The Walking Dead” star Khary Payton. The campaign occurs in the Forgotten Realms, a common setting in the game.
Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!: Variety improv show where special guests and celebrities act out as first-level players in battles against high-level monsters and beasts. The series was co-created by actor Matthew Lillard, mainly known for his role as Shaggy in the 2002 live-action “Scooby-Doo” movie.
Heroes’ Feast: cooking competition/talk show based on the recipes of the bestselling cookbook, “Heroes’ Feast.” The show is co-hosted by “Insecure” actress Sujata Day and chef and internet personality Mike Haracz.
Hasbro said the Dungeons & Dragons Adventures FAST channel will live on several platforms, but the company hasn’t established any deals yet for which specifically, reported Variety.

Paramount+ orders a live-action ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ series

Dungeons & Dragons made a massive comeback in recent years and is more mainstream nowadays. This is thanks to the many content creators that host livestreams featuring creative storytelling and impressive dice rolls.
For instance, “Critical Role,” a weekly show featuring a group of voice actors, has gone on to make millions, signing multiyear deals with Amazon to produce TV series based on its two campaigns, Vox Machina and Mighty Nein.
It’s nice to see more content creators — like Encounter Party, which arguably has less recognition than a high-paying show like “Critical Role”– get a platform to showcase their collaborative stories. However, we’re curious whether the shows will draw a large audience.
The FAST market may be booming, but viewers mainly use the services to watch old movies and shows, like episodes of “The Twilight Zone” or “Teen Mom.” Is the FAST space an optimal place for Dungeons & Dragons content? We’re not sure.
Also, it will be interesting to see what other content creators appear on the new channel, given the backlash from fans earlier this year.
In January, Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) received backlash for updating its Open Gaming License, which appeared to threaten creators’ livelihoods.
Shortly after the protests, however, WoTC announced that it is licensing the game’s core mechanics under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, allowing everyone to publish and sell works based on Dungeons & Dragons. (Hooray!)
While the issue has been resolved, content creators may still be wary of partnering with WoTC.
Either way, the Dungeons & Dragons Adventures FAST channel is certainly a fascinating move on WoTC’s part, and it might be a pleasant surprise for fans.
Or it could flop. Who knows?

Dungeons & Dragons’ publisher will put the game under a Creative Commons license

Dungeons & Dragons gets its very own streaming channel by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch
Dungeons & Dragons gets its very own streaming channel

Amazon debuts free, ad-supported streaming channels just for Fire TV

Amazon is doubling down on free, ad-supported content with today’s introduction of Fire TV Channels, its new, free and ad-supported (FAST) video experience coming to Fire TV devices this week. Though Fire TV had previously offered FAST content, Fire TV Channels will now be continuously updated throughout the day and integrated into several areas across the Fire TV interface, including on Home Screen rows, within Fire TV’s “Free” tab, and in category-specific pages devoted to certain genres.
In addition, Fire TV is gaining a set of new FAST channels from NHL, Xbox, and TMZ, as well as a new Travel category featuring content from Tastemade Travel, “Rick Steves’ Europe,” “Travel Hacks,” and soon, Condé Nast Traveler. Later, Fire TV Channels will also include content from the PGA.
The company explained this Fire TV update was informed by customer behavior and the increasing demand for free streaming content.
“We’ve offered some of this [FAST] content for a while for customers — we’ve helped them discover it throughout the [user interface] by having rows of content for example throughout ‘Home’ or other pages,” explains Charlotte Maines, director of Advertising, Monetization, Marketing and Engagement for Fire TV. “We’ve seen that they’ve been engaging with it when we surface it in a topical way…And what we’ve seen in the past six months alone is that the monthly hours streamed of this content have grown by 300%. So we know it’s working for our customers,” she added.
The growth can be attributed to several factors, the exec said. For one, customers have hit a sort of saturation point with streaming video-on-demand offerings and don’t have interest in adding more subscriptions to their monthly bills, nor do they want to try to keep up with any more services. By comparison, FAST channels are easy to use because users don’t have to create an account, sign in, or jump through any other hoops to start watching.
With the update, the Fire TV interface will now pull all the new and existing FAST content together in an updated experience that provides access to a variety of categories like news, sports, food and cooking, music videos, trailers, gaming videos, comedy, and more, Maines notes.
The news category includes access to both national news coverage as well as over 330 local news channels, including as of later this week, new FAST channels from NBC and Telemundo.
These category pages can be accessed with just a click from Fire TV’s “Free” tab, and Amazon says more categories are “coming soon.”

The update was announced as part of Amazon’s broader NewFronts presentation, which also included updates to its free streaming service Freevee — which offers FAST channels of its own. But Freevee is accessible across platforms, including on mobile devices and other non-Amazon media players and TVs, while Fire TV Channels are exclusive to Fire TV.
The company’s pitch to advertisers is that they can now directly target the Fire TV customer base, which tends to include Prime subscribers and younger families, through Amazon’s DSP. This lets Amazon leverage the company’s broader advertising team and capabilities to sell Fire TV’s FAST channel ad space.
Amazon notes it’s sold over 200 million Fire TV devices globally and Amazon’s ad-supported streaming solutions now reach an average of 155 million unduplicated monthly viewers, or 6 out of 10 adults in the U.S.
The company also cited a customer success story where an automotive client ran native ads on Fire TV and Fire tablets that led to an 11% lift in brand awareness and a 14% increase in purchase intent. Plus, citing Nielsen data, Amazon said 72% of its streaming TV viewers are not watching linear TV.
Amazon isn’t the only streamer offering FAST channels these days, however. Competitor Roku has over 350 FAST channels on its platform as of March. Google TV just announced over 800 FAST channels, and YouTube has been experimenting with them, as well. Plex, Warner Bros. Discovery, Tubi, and Sling TV, among others, are also wading into this market, historically led by services like Pluto TV.
The new Fire TV experience will be rolling out to customers this week, Amazon said. Customers will be able to find the new content tiles via the Fire TV Home Screen, as well as within Fire TV’s “Free” tab. Later this summer, Fire TV will bring all the FAST categories together with the launch of an always-on Fire TV Channels destination.

Amazon will juice its Freevee free streaming service with 100+ Amazon Originals in 2023

Amazon debuts free, ad-supported streaming channels just for Fire TV by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch
Amazon debuts free, ad-supported streaming channels just for Fire TV

Free, ad-supported creator content comes to The Roku Channel

Roku struck a deal with creator company Jellysmack to launch new content featuring 17 popular YouTube and TikTok creators like Brad Mondo, Lauren Riihimaki (LaurDIY), Emmy Cho (Emmymade), Karina Garcia and more. The company announced yesterday that it’s launching two free, ad-supported TV (FAST) channels, “Hello Inspo” and “Mysteria,” to The Roku Channel’s Live TV Guide.
“Hello Inspo” will give viewers access to all their favorite lifestyle, beauty and fashion content creators, from room makeovers and recipes to DIYs, style hacks and makeup tutorials. In addition to the names mentioned above, other influencers featured on this channel include Liz Fenwick, HeXtian, Hellthy JunkFood, Smitha Deepak and Josh Elkin.
“Mysteria” is a new true crime channel that will include content from Danelle Hallan, Stephanie Soo, Christina Randall, True Crime Recaps, Killer Bites, Dr. Todd Grande, John Lordan (LordanArts) and Brooke Makenna. Viewers can watch these creators talk about the most haunting crimes as well as bone-chilling unsolved mysteries.
Roku’s partnership with Jellysmack is notable as it brings creator programming — a widely popular form of content — to ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD), which also continues to rise in popularity. In the fourth quarter, the Roku Channel reached U.S. households with approximately 100 million viewers, the company reported.
“We’re delighted to partner with Jellysmack as the company’s first-ever FAST partner. We are thrilled to provide our audience with content featuring some of today’s most popular digital creators,” said Ashley Hovey, head of The Roku Channel, AVOD, in a statement. “The addition of these new channels to our Live TV Guide is the latest example of how we aim to provide our users with access to popular entertainment options for free.”
While Jellysmack has launched other video content series, this will be the first time it has released long-form TV content on a FAST service. In July 2022, the company partnered with Pinterest to launch five short video series on the platform. These weekly episodes on Pinterest feature some of the same creators in Roku’s new FAST channels, such as Cho, Garcia, Riihimaki and Fenwick.
“Our partnership with Roku is about finding big opportunities for creators and their content,” added Stefanie Schwartz, Jellysmack’s head of Platform Partnerships. “The Roku Channel’s linear offering is the #1 FAST service on Roku, America’s No. 1 TV streaming platform, giving our creators the ability to reach a large and growing audience. We’re delighted to bring Roku top creators — at scale.”
Jellysmack’s creator program launched in 2019 and uses AI technology to help boost creators and distribute their content to various platforms like YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook and more. According to the company, the program has helped hundreds of top creators, including MrBeast, Bailey Sarian, The Try Guys and PewDiePie.
The new FAST channels join the Roku Channel’s vast content lineup, including 80,000+ free movies and programs and over 300 free live TV channels. Recently, Roku inked a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery to add hundreds of free titles from HBO, HBO Max, Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network and TLC, among others.
Free, ad-supported creator content comes to The Roku Channel by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch
Free, ad-supported creator content comes to The Roku Channel