Amazon Prime Video Floods TV Ad Market, Stealing Dollars From FAST Channels

Until recently, it seemed video streaming had a channel for every taste. Fans of the 1970s Western drama “Little House on the Prairie,” for instance, could spend time on the channel by the same name watching old episodes. The same is true for the 1980s crime drama “Murder She Wrote” and the 1950s Western “Gunsmoke”—each of these shows have free streaming channels dedicated to them.

Things are changing. After a boom in the past five years in the number of these channels, known in the industry as free ad-supported television or FAST channels, the reverse is happening. The sector is losing ad dollars, with some FAST channels suffering a falloff in ad revenue of as much as 50% so far this year, according to ad industry executives. As a result, companies such as Samsung and Comcast’s Xumo have taken weak FAST channels off their program lineups, said people familiar with the matter.