Westworld, The Bachelor, Cake Boss, Say Yes to the Dress,The Nevers, The Time Traveler’s Wife, and F-Boy Island will all join The Roku Channel in the spring through Warner Bros-branded channels, while Fox Corp-owned Tubi will launch 14 WB-branded channels and 225 titles on its platform. Westworld, Raised By Wolves and F-Boy Island are among them. This follows the sudden disappearance of many hit shows from HBO and HBO Max this past December.
The deals were made by Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD) CEO David Zaslav as new ways to monetize his catalog. Roku and Tubi are FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) channel providers, and are greatly expanding their offerings with over 2,000 hours of new (and licensed) content each.
WBD and Roku called their deal “groundbreaking.” However, while Roku and Tubi are among the biggest players in FAST, the free-streaming universe is more than 1,000 channels, and the agreements could limit the distribution of the shows. The deals were termed as “co-exclusive.”
Roku Vice President of Programming Rob Holmes said: “As FAST continues to explode in popularity amongst cord-cutters, we’re seeing content players increasingly shift their focus towards capturing this audience, by bringing some of their best stuff to FAST.” Tubi Chief Content Officer Adam Lewinson said the “WB-branded FAST channels and on-demand offering will speak to each of Tubi’s distinct audience communities.”
Tubi announced the content deal with Warner Bros. Discovery will bring 14 WB-branded FAST channels and more than 225 ad-supported VOD titles beginning with 3 channels in February.
On the Roku Channel, WBD’s FAST channels are set to launch in the spring of 2023, featuring titles from across the media company’s portfolio, including HBO, HBO Max, Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Television and more.
The WBD channels will have titles like WB TV Mysteries (eg Mysteries at the Museum, Mysteries at the Monument) and WB TV At the Movies (classic movies). We don’t have launch dates or lists of the titles beyond these few. Also, only some of the titles will be on demand, the rest will be scheduled like broadcast TV. The channels are not available on the sites yet. We’ll keep you posted.
David Raiklen wrote, directed and scored his first film at age 9. He began studying keyboard and composing at age 5. He attended, then taught at UCLA, USC and CalArts. Among his teachers are John Williams and Mel Powel.
He has worked for Fox, Disney and Sprint. David has received numerous awards for his work, including the 2004 American Music Center Award. Dr. Raiklen has composed music and sound design for theater (Death and the Maiden), dance (Russian Ballet), television (Sing Me a Story), cell phone (Spacey Movie), museums (Museum of Tolerance), concert (Violin Sonata ), and film (Appalachian Trail).
His compositions have been performed at the Hollywood Bowl and the first Disney Hall. David Raiken is also host of a successful radio program, Classical Fan Club.
