IBC 2026 proved local is winning on FAST. Here's how to get in without a broadcaster's budget

Amsterdam's biggest broadcast show wrapped on 14 September. The official agenda was about AI, sports and the creator economy. But the FAST channel data published in the weeks around it says something the agenda didn't: the fastest-growing genre on free television right now is news, which is a local and regional business almost by definition, at exactly the moment viewers are quitting paid streaming over price. Here's the evidence, what it means, and what it costs to act on if you don't have a broadcaster behind you.

Published 17 September 2026 · My TV Channel

IBC 2026, in three numbers

IBC, the International Broadcasting Convention, is the industry's largest annual trade show. This year it filled the RAI in Amsterdam from 11 to 14 September 2026, with more than 1,300 exhibitors and roughly 43,000 trade visitors on the floor.

The show's own preview coverage framed 2026 around four themes: AI in production, live sports, the creator economy, and trust in media, the newest addition to that list. Local television wasn't one of the headline topics. But read the trade press published in the weeks either side of the show, and a different story sits underneath the official agenda. On free, ad-supported television, one genre grew faster than every other, and it's a genre that's local by nature.

The fastest-growing thing on FAST is news

FAST stands for Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television: a linear, scheduled channel delivered over an app instead of an antenna, paid for by ads instead of a subscription. Samsung TV Plus, LG Channels, the Roku Channel, Amazon Fire TV Channels and Pluto TV are the biggest FAST platforms, and each one hosts hundreds of individual channels.

Gracenote, the data company behind most programme guides, tracks every FAST channel it can find, sorted by genre, every quarter. Its most recent read, published 20 August 2026 with data through July, has one standout: news and commentary channels grew 52.9% year-over-year, reaching 211 channels. Sports, the genre most people assume is FAST's growth engine, grew 13.8% by the same channel-count measure over the same period. News outgrew it by better than 3 to 1.

Audiences noticed. Viewers had 26.6% more news programmes to choose from than a year earlier, per the same Gracenote data, against 37.5% more sports programmes on a much smaller sports catalogue expansion.

A word on the numbers

Gracenote publishes more than one report a year, and two of its 2026 releases produce almost identical-looking percentages about different things. In February 2026 it reported that SVOD sports catalogues (subscription services, not FAST) grew 52% year-over-year. The 52.9% figure in this article is a different metric entirely: FAST news and commentary channel count, from the August report. It's easy to find the wrong "52%" repeated elsewhere. Worth checking which one you're looking at.

Scale, for context: Gracenote counted 2,060 FAST channels worldwide as of its February 2026 release. Independent tracking from adwave puts the total above 2,000 as well, with roughly 17 to 21% overall year-over-year growth in channel count. News is growing well ahead of the category average.

Why that's really a local and regional story

Gracenote's report doesn't use the word "local." It says "news." The distinction matters, but not in the direction you'd expect.

A sitcom or a movie plays identically whether the viewer is in Lyon or Lisbon. News doesn't. It's tied to a place: a city, a region, a country, in a way almost no other TV genre is. When a data provider reports that news is the fastest-growing thing on FAST, it's reporting growth in the one genre made mostly of local and regional operations rather than global entertainment brands.

IBC's own trade publication has been telling its readers this for the better part of a year. In a November 2025 piece titled "FAST channels: building on the opportunity of local markets," Shaun Keeble, VP of Digital at Banijay Rights, put it plainly: "With thousands of FAST channels competing for audience attention and limited EPG slots, the challenge now isn't whether to join the space, it's how to stand out." Entry isn't the obstacle. The generic slots (general entertainment, movies, reruns) are the crowded ones. Local and regional content is where the room still exists, because it's the one thing a national or global entertainment brand can't produce.

There's a second lesson in how even an established broadcaster gets onto FAST today. In July 2026, ABC Commercial, the commercial arm of Australia's national public broadcaster, launched four FAST channels on LG Channels across the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, the Nordics and Singapore. Brian Lee, ABC Commercial's sales manager, said the launch let the broadcaster introduce international viewers to its programming "completely free." What matters for a smaller operator isn't the reach; it's how ABC got there. It didn't build its own distribution stack. It ran on Amagi's channel-in-a-box platform, the same category of third-party tooling any broadcaster now rents rather than builds. If a national public broadcaster doesn't build its own FAST infrastructure, nobody running a single regional channel needs to either.

The bigger picture: paid streaming is stalling, free isn't

The FAST-versus-local data sits inside a larger shift, and this part isn't hard to source: paid streaming's subscriber growth has slowed sharply while ad-supported viewing keeps accelerating.

Antenna's Q1 2026 report found SVOD subscriber growth at 7% in 2025, down from 12% the year before; premium SVOD specifically decelerated from 11% to 6%. Revenue still climbed 14% to $77.7 billion, but that's price increases doing the work, not new subscribers walking in the door.

Ad-supported streaming moved the opposite way. Adwave's tracking shows AVOD (ad-supported video-on-demand, the wider category FAST sits inside) growing roughly four times faster than SVOD, with AVOD revenue up 39% in 2024 and projected to add another 17% in 2025. Across the last nine quarters, 71% of new streaming subscribers picked an ad-supported tier rather than paying for an ad-free one.

Consumers are telling researchers why directly. A Deloitte survey from late 2025 found 41 to 47% of people had cancelled at least one paid streaming service in the previous six to twelve months, and price was the reason most of them gave. Put together: people aren't giving up on television. They're giving up on the bill. Free, ad-supported channels, the exact category where Gracenote's news data shows local content growing fastest, are where that displaced attention is landing.

What this costs, sold the way IBC's vendors sell it

None of this is a secret on an IBC show floor. It's the pitch behind a lot of the channel-in-a-box, ad-insertion and EPG-distribution stands. It's also priced for organisations that already have a broadcaster's budget and a sales team to fill the inventory.

By one vendor's own published comparison, aimed at undercutting the rest of the market, launching a FAST channel the conventional way runs $45,000 to $120,000 to set up, plus $250 to $50,000 a month to operate, depending on scale. That's a number a vendor published to make its own cheaper tier look good, so treat it as directional rather than exact. It's still the range you'll hear repeated across an IBC hall, and it's consistent with why "how do we differentiate" is the question IBC365 says local operators are actually asking, not "how do we get in."

You don't need an IBC-sized budget to be part of this

My TV Channel exists for the gap between that price tag and the opportunity the data above describes.

Building a 24/7 channel inside the My TV Channel app is free, whether it's location-based (a city or regional feed) or thematic. Free-to-air channels can carry advertising, and the platform takes 0% commission: ad revenue goes entirely to whoever runs the channel.

If a channel inside a shared app isn't enough and you want your own branded app on the App Store (your name, your icon, your account), the white-label build is a €3,000 one-time cost, not $45,000 to $120,000. It ships as a native iOS, iPadOS, tvOS and macOS app, you keep 100% of subscription and in-app revenue, and there's an optional €500-a-year maintenance plan after the first year rather than a $250-to-$50,000 monthly bill. Extra platforms (Roku, Fire TV, Android) run €1,500 each, added when you need them rather than bundled up front.

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FAQ

What is a FAST channel?

FAST stands for Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television. It's a linear, scheduled channel delivered over an app instead of an antenna or a cable box, paid for by advertising rather than a subscription. Samsung TV Plus, LG Channels, the Roku Channel, Amazon Fire TV Channels and Pluto TV are all FAST platforms, and each hosts hundreds of individual channels.

What happened at IBC 2026?

IBC ran 11 to 14 September 2026 at the RAI in Amsterdam, with more than 1,300 exhibitors and around 43,000 trade visitors. The official themes were AI in production, live sports, the creator economy and trust in media. No session was billed specifically around local television, but the FAST channel data published around the show tells a local story anyway.

Is local news really the fastest-growing thing on FAST TV?

The precise claim is narrower: Gracenote found news and commentary is the fastest-growing FAST genre by channel count, up 52.9% year-over-year to 211 channels as of July 2026, ahead of sports at 13.8%. Gracenote doesn't break this out by local versus national. News is inherently tied to a place in a way entertainment content isn't, which is why the genre-level number is relevant to a regional broadcaster even though the word "local" doesn't appear in the data. Full context above.

Is paid streaming actually shrinking?

Not shrinking. Slowing. SVOD subscriber growth was 7% in 2025, down from 12% the year before, per Antenna. Revenue still rose, mostly from price increases rather than new subscribers. A Deloitte survey separately found 41 to 47% of consumers had cancelled a paid streaming service in the prior 6 to 12 months, mainly over price.

How much does it cost to launch a FAST channel?

By one vendor's own published figures, the conventional route runs $45,000 to $120,000 to set up and $250 to $50,000 a month to operate, depending on scale. That's the channel-in-a-box and ad-tech stack built for broadcasters, not the only way to get a channel in front of viewers.

Can I launch a local or regional channel without a broadcaster's budget?

Yes. Building a 24/7 channel on My TV Channel is free, with 0% commission on ad revenue for free-to-air channels. A fully branded app under your own name on the App Store is a €3,000 one-time white-label build, with 100% of subscription and in-app revenue kept by the publisher.

Sources

If a figure here is wrong or has been updated, tell us and we will fix it.