More pay TV users than cord-cutters watching FAST in US

Source: Alamy.com

A third of American adults regularly watch FAST channels, with a higher proportion of pay TV customers watching the ad-supported streaming channels than cord-cutters or cord-nevers, according to a report from Comcast-owned FAST provider Xumo and FASTMaster Consulting.

According to the 2024 FAST Market Update, 47% of Amercian consumers that subscribe to pay TV services watch FAST, compared with 46% of cord-cutter sand 35% of cord-nevers.

The report also found that FAST viewers trend towards being younger more diverse than the average.

Some 58% of FAST viewers fall within that 18-44 age range, compared with 46% of the US adult population. Black viewers represent 20% of FAST’s audience, compared to 14% of the US population, while 23% of FAST viewers have Latino origins, compared to 19% nationally, according to the report.

The report also found that 72% of FAST viewers also watch cable or broadcast TV, and 86% subscriber to at least one SVOD service. However, FAST appears to some extent to be a substitute for AVOD, with 43% of FAST viewers reporting that they don’t watch AVOD on free streaming services.

FAST viewers typically watch more news, movies and crime TV than the average viewer. The three programming genres account for 58% of viewing hours on Xumo Play, but only 11% of total channels.

Crime TV was the most popular genre on Xumo Play, accounting for 22% of viewing hours, followed by movies at 21%, news at 15% and action and drama at 7%.

However, Crime TV accounts for 5% of the channels on the platform, while movies accounts for 6% and news for 5%.

The biggest genres in terms of channel numbers are local news (treated as a separate category) with 11% of channels, followed by sports with 7% and comedy with 6%.

The report found that FAST accounts on average for 1 hour and 31 minutes of evening viewing time per viewer, compared with 2 hours and 2 minutes for SVOD and 1 hour and 58 minutes for cable TV.

FASTMaster Consulting collected esponses from 4,000 U.S. adults among varied age, gender and ethnicity groups between the third quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of 2024.