Since announcing its Fox One streaming service last year, Fox executives have been modest with expectations for the platform. After all, Fox One is designed almost purely as an option for those outside the pay-TV bundle to access the company’s linear television networks; exclusive original programming is not on the menu.
So it is no surprise that Fox One leaned heavily on sports programming to drive subscriptions, timing its launch to coincide with football season, when viewers are most inclined to sample the network’s programming. After football season, however, Fox executives figured its nascent streamer would experience significant churn. But according to a recent report by Brian Steinberg in Variety, Fox’s news content is doing a surprisingly good job at keeping subscribers around during football’s offseason.
Per Steinberg, “Fox executives have been surprised to see football fans stick around for a chance to check out Fox News Channel programs like Jesse Watters Primetime and The Five.”
The report comes shortly after Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch told investors on a recent earnings call that “over half of the viewership on Fox One” came from news consumption. “We’re really not seeing a tremendous amount of churn within Fox One to date, so we’re very pleased with that,” Murdoch said.
So far, Fox One has not publicly released any subscriber data or provided any firm figures on churn rate. Three months into its launch, third-party data research firm Antenna estimated that Fox One had attracted around 2.3 million subscribers for its $19.99 per month offering.
“We’ve clearly captured some of these customers that were either sports fans and now starting to watch news or news fans who were watching sports,” Pete Distad, CEO of Fox’s streaming operations, told Variety.
The company hopes to replicate its conversion of sports fans into news consumers for this summer’s World Cup, an event which should attract another spike in subscriptions. It’s a formula Fox hopes will work in reverse for major news events, like the upcoming midterm elections.
“You can imagine that some of that technology that we’re building around the World Cup will allow you, for example, in a single view, to see information and scores and data about what’s going on for your particular team or for the match,” Distad tells Variety. “We intend to take that and apply it to other big events from the news perspective. You can imagine midterms will be a very big moment for us.”
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.