Latest in AVOD

With time ticking down toward the planned rollout of an ad-supported tier of HBO Max during the second quarter, key details like pricing, viewer experience and which programming will carry ads still remain under wraps. Even so, it is increasingly clear that kids and family programming is likely to be a key element in…

Fox Corp. streaming service Tubi is expanding the live news offering it debuted last fall, adding nearly 80 stations owned by Cox, Hearst, Scripps and Tegna. The 24-hour live feeds will join those of 17 Fox-owned stations and Altice USA’s News 12 New York in a section of the streaming app called News on Tubi. National…

Fox-owned streaming service Tubi said total viewing hit 2.5 billion hours in 2020, up 58% from 2019. Half of all viewers of the free, ad-supported platform were younger than 35 years old, the company added in its year-end audience report. Black, Hispanic and Asian audiences made up 39% of Tubi’s total base of 33…

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment CEO Bill Rouhana teased a potent role for Sony in the company’s streaming plans, a “surprise” development given its decision in 2019 to surrender operational control of Crackle. The Japan-based electronics and media giant opted in December to exercise its right to trade a 49%…

Redbox has launched Free On Demand, an ad-supported streaming destination promising hundreds of titles arriving weekly that are “curated to the tastes of Redbox audiences.” Some of the initial titles are films like Trespass, Lord of War, The Illusionist, Haywire and Maggie. Redbox said the mix will cover “fan…

Tubi reached 33 million monthly active users in August, up 65% over the same period in 2019 and a new high-water mark for the Fox Corp. streaming service. The company also announced the launch of Tubi en Español, a Spanish-language offering within the Tubi app, on Roku devices in the U.S. Metro by T-Mobile is the…

AMC and Amazon’s ad-supported streaming service IMDb TV have entered into a partnership for six linear AMC-derived channels, one of the first of which will be The Walking Dead Universe Experience. The curated channel targets fans of The Walking Dead with select full episodes of the original series, which just…

EXCLUSIVE: Following through on news Deadline broke in May, Pluto TV and Verizon have activated their game-changing distribution partnership and revealed new programming details. Starting today, 100,000-plus hours of free, ad-supported programming on ViacomCBS-owned Pluto are available to Verizon customers. The…

Fox Entertainment’s AVOD service Tubi has named Carolyn Forrest as Senior Vice President, General Counsel, reporting to Tubi CEO Farhad Massoudi and based in San Francisco. Forrest, most recently Vice President, Legal Affairs, for Fox Television Stations, will serve as the service’s chief legal officer, overseeing its…

Advertising is headed for its roughest year in more than a decade due to COVID-19, but major media agency GroupM says the decline in ad spending won’t be as bad as it could have been. In its mid-year forecast, released Tuesday, the company predicts total advertising spending without political ads will reach $207.9…

Roku has added a live, on-screen program guide to its free, ad-supported Roku Channel, enabling it to more closely emulate the experience of watching linear TV. In addition to the guide, Roku is adding more than 30 new channels to the existing lineup of 100-plus viewing options that can be accessed via the Roku…

EXCLUSIVE: Endemol Shine Group and top TV maker Vizio have reached a deal to bring four channels dedicated to Endemol unscripted programming to Vizio’s ad-supported smart-TV platform. Two of the 24-hour channels, streaming on Vizio’s SmartCast platform, center on individual shows: Deal or No Deal and Wipeout. The DIY…