Fox News’ 2021 Upfront Focuses on the Network’s Lighter Side—Including Streaming

A year ago, Fox News Media ad sales chief Jeff Collins took a different approach to his upfront presentation after Covid-19 forced the cancellation of the company's in-person event. Instead, the company pivoted to a news talent-led roundtable centered on answering marketers' and agency partners’ questions about the then-emerging pandemic instead of selling advertising inventory. Collins mixed things up yet again this afternoon, when he and his ad sales team presented Fox News’ upfront pitch to agency and advertising clients. The executive didn't linger too much on the cable network's hard news coverage or controversial opinion side that some advertisers steer clear of. Today, when Collins and Fox News executives presented Fox News’s upfront pitch to agency and advertising clients, the ad sales team focused on highlighting the lighter news fare that the network and its burgeoning streaming outcroppings have to offer. “The last four-plus years of the news environment was really dominated by politics, where every single tweet that came out of the White House was being covered by every news organization,” Collins, Fox News Media's evp, advertising sales, told Adweek ahead of the network’s annual pitch to advertisers. “We're moving beyond that with the new administration, and I think it opens up a lot more time throughout the day to be able to cover a lot more diverse topics in news. That's what a lot of our advertisers are looking for: contextually relevant content, like lifestyle content and entertainment and sports content, business content.” Some of that lighter fare can be found on the network’s linear programming, which Collins says can be characterized by more feel-good reporting throughout its daytime news lineup. “It’s not different for news; it’s just that the last four years were kind of an anomaly,” Collins said. “We are kind of going back to what news always did.” The network ad sales team will also be pointing marketers toward the newly debuted late-night show Gutfeld!, which finished April as the most-watched program on cable in the 11 p.m. hour. “A lot of our clients are very excited about moving away from the very serious hard news to something a little bit more lighthearted,” Collins said of advertisers’ interest in the show. Streaming sponsorships Increasingly, though, Collins and the ad sales team are also focused on the network’s expansion into streaming with the subscription video streaming service Fox Nation and the upcoming free ad-supported streamer Fox Weather, which will premiere this summer. Fox Nation, whose initial programming slate in 2018 featured on-air Fox News personalities and extensions of linear franchises, has since shifted to feature documentaries, travel series and other lifestyle programming, which Collins says lends itself both to sponsorships and product integrations. While Fox Nation sponsorships and integrations are on the menu, the company has been mum on the metrics around Fox Nation since its debut; Collins said the company was not yet ready to share audience numbers publicly. But the company is disclosing some information about its momentum: Fox Corp. chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch recently told investors that the service recorded a 40% increase in subscriber growth in the past quarter and saw its highest number of customer acquisitions since launch. Collins is also looking to sell advertisers on Fox Weather, a service helmed by former Fox News evp of news operations Sharri Berg that is planned to debut this summer. That service, Collins says, will open up additional advertising opportunities for local advertisers who may want to reach viewers in certain geographic locations, and offers up space for additional product integration opportunities. “Weather opens up so many opportunities to integrate brands,” Collins said. “We have less restrictions than we would have in a hard news environment. We also have a ton of contextually relevant opportunities within weather as well, everything from the actual jackets and the clothing that people wear to things like cold and flu reports.” The focus on streaming, Collins said, is borne out of shifting consumer habits that have been impossible to ignore. It’s taken on bigger importance across Fox Corp. as well, with free streamer Tubi, which presented to advertisers during last week's NewFronts, featuring heavily into Fox’s upfront conversations. “We continue to invest in areas where we think our audience is,” Collins said. “It’s not just investing about cross-platform and taking Fox News and extending it to digital, it’s also about extending it across genres.” Tubi Branches Into Originals to Build on Record Growth Under New Owner Fox