New Season of ‘Owl House’ Draws Nearly 1 Million Views on YouTube, Demonstrating Potential of Disney FAST Channels
Free ad-supported TV (FAST) is widely available nowadays. More and more streamers are adopting free live TV channels in order to keep customers engaged with their service until their next prestige title is released. Some operating systems, like Google TV will aggregate hundreds of FAST channels from different providers on a single platform, so they’re easy to browse and start watching.
For all of the success streamers are having in the FAST marketplace, one company has been reticent to dive into that space too quickly. That’s Disney, who does not offer any FAST channels of its own on Disney+ or Hulu currently, and who has just started to think about licensing content to other platforms that could potentially be used on their FAST hubs.
Related: Ten FAST Channels Disney Should Consider Launching in 2023
But perhaps that pattern is on the way to changing. That speculation comes on the heels of Disney shifting a full season of its kids and young adult series “The Owl House” to YouTube, where users can watch it free now. The season has racked up 978,000 views since being posted last Friday, and that could be a big harbinger of things to come for the House of Mouse.
If a show like “The Owl House” — which was critically acclaimed but never received a huge audience on Disney Channel or Disney+ — can pile on so many views in such a short space of time, it’s a good indication other Disney content would bring in a big audience if it were available to stream for free. Free ad-supported content helps companies retain users for their streaming platforms, while still monetizing them with ad sales.
Watch Season 3 of ‘The Owl House’ on YouTube:
It’s not as if Disney doesn’t have a large catalog of titles to pull from for potential FAST channels. Between Hulu and Disney+, there is more than enough content for the company to launch an entire FAST platform of its own, as Warner Bros. Discovery plans to do. That would certainly keep users entertained, and could even draw more subscribers to the Disney Bundle to access paywalled content after enjoying the hypothetical Disney FAST service.
If Disney does want to join the ranks of media outlets with FAST hubs, it may want to get going soon. One executive from another media company thinks FAST will become bigger than broadcast and cable combined within the next two years, and while that prediction is fair to question, it’s safe to say that FAST isn’t going away. Three-quarters of Americans already think of FAST as a viable alternative to cable and satellite, and 30% to 40% of domestic households engage with FAST content every month.
The success of the first season of “The Owl House” on YouTube does not mean Disney will rush out and start building a FAST service overnight. But it’s highly unlikely the company is not watching its success closely, and given the potential monetary benefits of a FAST platform — benefits Disney sorely needs as it loses billions of dollars per quarter on streaming— Disney would be wise to consider getting rolling on such a service soon.
Disney+
Disney+ is a video streaming service with over 13,000 series and films from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, The Muppets, and more. It is available in 61 countries and 21 languages. It is notable for its popular original series like “The Mandalorian,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Loki,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Andor.”