I couldn’t help but get an overwhelming feeling of deja vu when I saw this announcement which, among others, VARIETY’s Todd Spengler dropped at the top of this past week:
Pete Distad has a new gig after the shutdown of sports-streaming joint venture Venu Sports. Fox Corp. has hired Distad as CEO of the company’s recently announced direct-to-consumer streaming division. Distad most recently headed Venu Sports, which Fox, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery shuttered in January. Before Venu, he served as an executive at Apple for a decade following six years at Hulu.
Yeah, you’ve seen his name before; heck, we mused about him and Venu on no less than three different occasions over a nine-month span from the announcement of its odd name to its price point to its abrupt shuttering. The saga didn’t quite match the level of woe and misstep that, say, the genuises at Quibi put the world through in 2020, if for no other reason than it didn’t get off the ground to actually prove it was an ill-conceived idea. But I would hope you may have read (or might be inclined to click now if you didn’t) over time it became apparent that the eye of the needle that Venu was attempting to thread was a very narrow one, and not even an executive with the resume and experience as Distad could have made that turkey fly.
What Distad did accomplish during what will now be a footnote in his history was to build out a distribution infrastructure that apparently impressed the folks at FOX. And since both Disney and WBD, for better or worse, already have their own platforms for that purpose they had little need for his handiwork. In effect, FOX is taking over a fully baked and Beta-tested infrastructure, using other people’s money in the process, and giving it a home where their investment can at least be amortized. So at least in that department FOX’s risk is minimal.
And as DEADLINE’s Jill Goldsmith reported later in the week, if one takes Foxy Lachsie at face value, at least his initial expectations aren’t much greater:
Lachlan Murdoch said Fox is targeting a fall football season launch for its new streaming platform run by Pete Distad with modest initial subscriber projections in the “mid-single digit millions.” He announced last month the streamer would launch by year end, saying it would be “holistic” of all the company’s content including Fox Sports and Fox News. In comments at the Morgan Stanley media conference, the Fox CEO was again extremely careful to stress that the goal is not to cannibalize linear television and Fox will not advertise it on linear television but is meant purely to capture those who cut the cord or have never subscribed to cable.
But given what we know about the demography and appeal of those two corporate tentpoles, I’m honestly having a hard time wrapping my head around exactly who Murdoch Fils is referencing.
I, for one, am very interested in having an over-the-top alternative for FOX sports, particularly the NFL, if for no other reason than I’m in a weirdly configured situation where I can’t use a room heater and my big screen at the same time–but I can use my laptop. So assuming the price point is at bare minimum proportionate to what Distad had determined the Venu bundle was to be offered at ($42.99/month), I’m modestly interested. But to be honest, I’m not in the least bit interested in FOX News content–frankly, I’ve got too much access to it already. And although Murdoch touted the fact that the existing FOX NATION, which per Goldsmith was designed to bring longer form content to the Fox News “superfan” (and has) 2 to 2.5 million subscribers, I can’t quite determine how many of them are going to be as interested in streaming Big East basketball or the UFL.
So as someone who has been around for the launch of a previous FOX-branded distribution platform or ten, and has a deep history of the trials and tribulations in getting there, might I offer to Distad some food for thought about emulating what so many others tend to do these days–revisit ideas from the 90s. Specifically, I mean fX.
No, not FX. I mean the version that was launched with modest expectations as a way to bring the company into what was then the burdgeoning world of cable–arguably much later than its competitors had. TNT had been around for six years and Viacom’s networks much longer by the time June 1, 1994 rolled around. The original fX has a checkered history and by the time I came to the company it had already been flaggelated by disgruntled corporate management. The first part of the revamping was to capitalize the F because, in the words of one particularly blunt senior Aussie, to him “it looked like we were a p-ssy network”. Unquote.
But the reasons that reputation had been entrenched had much more to do with how success and failure was determined in that era. fX had distribution challenges from the get-go due to an ongoing and deepening feud between Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner which the launch of FOX News Channel exacerbated considerably. And there were outsized expectations for the original content, most of which eminated from a repurposed loft apartment across from Madison Park in the trendy Flatiron District, to break through in a manner akin to how MTV and Comedy Central talk shows were. Even when coverage area ratings were competitive on a relative basis the distribution gap doomed these shows’ monetization upside. Almost forgotten in the process was FOX’s ability to generate revenue from a portion of the 20th Century FOX library that had essentially been dormant for decades–a script which Viacom took to the bank with such efforts as Nick-at-Nite and TV Land.
That library now belongs to Disney; so that particular playbook can’t be copied now. But FOX does own other underutilized assets that even Tubi isn’t fully taking advantage of. Their owned animation content, for starters. BOB’S BURGERS has the greatest volume and established popularity, but even less successful efforts like GREAT WHITE NORTH and KRAPOPOLIS attract millions of viewers on the mothership. They have passionate fan bases which aren’t dependent upon political orientation or interest in sports. And while the Madison Avenue loft idea might be a tad too pricey in these days of New York real estate, the kinds of shows that allow emerging talents to be discovered on the cheap are already ongoing at some of the FOX-owned stations. Traditional syndication standards to exploit talents such as Minneapolis’ Jason Matheson or Philadelphia’s Kelly Drives haven’t worked, but much like fX before it, it was more to do with the expectation of an audience and an MVPD agreement–not a DTC proposition. And lest it not be forgotten that even the failed shows from the loft launched the national careers of eventual prime time personalities like Tom Bergeron and Jeff Probst. One never knows where the next mothership talent might come from.
And call me crazy, but I’m willing to place a nickel that there may be more of a Venn diagram between those who watch things like that–or stuff that can be developed around these markets with local podcasting talents– and the UFL than those who will watch a Roseanne Barr stand-up special or Kelsey Grammer’s tour of history.
One could contend these aren’t novel and “innovative” ideas. But neither was the hiring of Pete Distad and the repurposing of his most recent efforts. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Kapeesh, Lachsie?
Until next time…