Fox Goes All-In on Ad-Supported Streamer Tubi in Upfront

After the pandemic upended 2020’s upfronts week, almost all of the regular presenters are returning to their familiar positions on the calendar, holding virtual upfront presentations. That includes Fox, which will present its entertainment upfront event on May 17. (The company’s news and sports divisions held their own presentations last week.) Fox will repeat as the No. 1 broadcast network this season in the adults 18-49 demo most coveted by advertisers thanks to shows like The Masked Singer and 9-1-1, but it has weathered the same steep ratings drops its linear peers have. That’s where free, ad-supported streamer Tubi—acquired in April 2020 by Fox and now fully integrated into the company—will come in, allowing Fox to capitalize on the audience shift to streaming and giving it a major tool in its upfront arsenal, since many of Fox's rivals have SVOD offerings that leave marketers on the outside looking in. Adweek sat down with Fox Entertainment CEO Charlie Collier, Fox Corp. president of advertising sales Marianne Gambelli and Tubi founder and CEO Farhad Massoudi ahead of the presentation to talk about the company’s upfront strategy, whether audiences will return post-pandemic and their top priorities this year. Here are edited highlights from that discussion. Adweek: Last year, Fox chose not to do a virtual upfront event, when many others did. Why not?Marianne Gambelli: We were so out ahead of it, with Charlie, with [Fox Sports CEO Eric] Shanks, with our creative teams, that we had met with advertisers literally every week from March through May. So we just didn't feel like we had anything to add. We have a great story to tell, and I believe there'll be a bit of return to normalcy.Charlie Collier, Fox Entertainment CEO What was the thinking behind returning to your usual upfronts week time slot this year?Charlie Collier: We have a great story to tell, and I believe there'll be a bit of return to normalcy. Kids should be back in school in September. Our office opens Sept. 7. There will be human patterns that look a lot more like two years ago and before, and will get us, we're quite optimistic, back to some viewership patterns as well. Because of the return to normalcy, we decided to do an upfront in a more traditional way. What should marketers expect from your event that day?Collier: Fox has always approached the market differently. We're the only 100% ad-supported network, core business and streamer. We're going to talk to advertisers about how we can help them in a world that is complex and where so many people are taking their best content and putting it places where advertisers can't access it. We'll talk about a lineup that is reflective of our belief in the upfront and the advertising planning cycles, and we'll introduce them to new programming. Farhad, we just saw Tubi two weeks ago at the NewFronts. How will your upfront presence be different?Farhad Massoudi: It’s a similar message. A lot of it has to do with, how do we fit into the larger Fox Corporation? What you'll see is that thanks to our partnership in the past year, we've elevated our game in a significant way. Marianne and Charlie are really helping us in the areas that we were just so far behind on—in ad sales and understanding of media in general—and you see us supercharging ourselves with the [upcoming Tubi] originals. Collier: The NewFronts took us deep into Tubi. At the upfront, we're really going deep on broadcast [because] we still believe in broadcast, and we think Fox is the No. 1 network for a reason. And we plan to be competitive for the next year and many years ahead of that. We see the shift of budgets to AVOD, and I think that’s going to be the center of everybody’s negotiation.Marianne Gambelli, Fox Corp. president of advertising sales Gambelli: We think [Tubi] is TV on steroids. It's premium content at scale, bringing in a younger, more diverse audience, one that doesn’t necessarily watch broadcast or cable at all. So getting Tubi in front of that constituency but also showing the power of Fox—Tubi makes Fox more powerful. You’ve announced that Tubi will expand into originals, with 140 hours of original programming this year. How do you determine what’s a Tubi original and what’s a Fox original?Collier: It's a very complementary development process, but very different. By definition, a broadcaster is looking for broad hits. We love our 9-1-1s and The Masked Singer. You’ll see, as we announce our fall schedule, we’ll use our hits to launch new, broad hits for those who know the power and the scale of broadcast. For Tubi, what's remarkable, because it's driven on this proprietary content intelligence platform, we get so much information about not just what people like, but where they really want to go deep, these pockets of passion. Massoudi: Imagine that we walked into a movie theater right now with 100 people and said, “How many people want to watch Star Wars?” You'd be lucky if 20 people raised their hand. Now, for one-hundredth of the budget for Star Wars, I go license 100 movies, and now I can easily superserve 60 people in that room. And so not only do I reach a larger audience, but it's also a far better business. So we're moving away from a world where the schedule was limited, and therefore you have to appeal to the broadest audience, to a world of narrow casting, which is a both far better business and appeals to a larger audience. Collier: It's a very different development process because it is not about, can we spend the most money to get the biggest and broadest hit? That's still happening on broadcast, and it's working. But we can do something very complementary on Tubi. Fox’s New Slate For Fox’s 2021-22 schedule, Collier has selected a lineup of new series that he says reflects the country’s mindset and mood after more than a year in lockdown. “Think about all the people who are coming out of the pandemic, and they just feel like they need a second chance,” says Collier. To that end, his new slate includes: The Big Leap (drama), which Collier says “is literally about second chances,” focuses on a group of people down on their luck who try to change their lives by participating in a reality dance show.Pivoting (comedy) spotlights three women (Maggie Q, Eliza Coupe and Ginnifer Goodwin) who make major changes to their lives after the death of their childhood best friend.The Cleaning Lady (drama) is about a Cambodian doctor (Elodie Yung) who comes to the U.S. for a medical treatment to save her ailing son, but ends up in hiding, working as a cleaning lady for the mob. “The whole theme of, what would you do for your family? How far would you go?” says Collier.“These themes are all informing our development [post-Covid],” Collier says of the new shows. “Under the surface, they’re what a lot of people are feeling.” Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch told investors that he sees Tubi becoming a billion-dollar business over the next few years. What work do you have to do to get to that point?Gambelli: A year ago, we knew we could open up doors for Tubi. There were so many clients that they weren't doing business with. What we didn't expect was the massive viewership explosion of AVOD. It actually made Tubi the focus point of most of our sales calls, because that's where the interest lies. Advertisers now have been using the platform all year, have gotten very comfortable with it and they're seeing great results. So it's setting us up for the future really well. Fox will win in 18-49 again this season, but ratings were down sharply across the board, for everyone. How are you adjusting to the viewing shifts, and what do you think next season will look like? Gambelli: I think sports returning to a more normal [schedule], filling the stands with people again, will bring more excitement back. Not having an election that sucked the life out of the country will bring people back to more normal patterns. So yes, we are expecting more normal viewership going forward and as we can promote our own brands within our properties. It helps drive more circulation to Fox in general. Collier: This broadcast year has been a unique year in all of our lives in every way. And we're not sampling off of it as being "the new normal." I think you'll find people who, because they have commutes again, will want to be served in ways that are more familiar than if you're home all day and you might have time to binge a series. Broadcast should look a lot more like a few years back than it looked like last year. Marianne, what are you seeing in your early upfront talks? What topics are clients most passionate about?Gambelli: Clients are looking for scale, a cross-platform portfolio approach. So that's going to be the challenge, how that is framed. We see the shift of budgets to AVOD, and I think that's going to be the center of everybody's negotiation. I think digital is going to take over the linear upfront, because that's going to be the focus of the conversation. And there's going to be a lot of competition in that space, a lot of growth there. I think flexibility is going to be a challenge, as we come back to this normalized world: how much flexibility remains and how much can go back to what it was. It's hard to always pull that stuff back, especially as clients have gotten used to using data and real-time buying as a natural part of their marketing plans. But I also think clients are concerned about getting the inventory that they want, the big-ticket items that they need, because of scarcity in that space. So I think there's lots of challenges, and then everybody's bringing data to the table. And then there's measurement issues. We're gonna have to work through all of those. As you look to the upfront and the next season, what are your biggest priorities?Collier: For me, it's to bring Tubi into original programming, to continue to launch new, innovative shows that pierce popular culture, and then to really show people that the combination of broadcast for breadth and streaming for depth can help them meet their advertising needs. That's what the company was built to do, and that's what we're doing. I think most streaming services out there are not sustainable businesses, and that’s not true for Tubi.Farhad Massoudi, Tubi CEO Massoudi: I think most streaming services out there are not sustainable businesses, and that's not true for Tubi. While others can't double down on their crazy spending, we absolutely can because we built this sensible, sustainable business that's growing based on true viewership and data. So that's exactly what we're going to do in the next 12 months. Gambelli: My priority is to package our portfolio to drive the biggest scale that we possibly can, to be as flexible as we possibly can in this new world and approach advertisers in a much more customized way. I think it got too broad based, and a lot got lost there. Data is making us smarter, so how do we use that to unlock value, maybe in places that we didn't necessarily see? How do we marry that technology and content, and bring the best offering to our clients? There’s a lot going on.

TV Upfronts

With Broadcast's Breadth and Tubi's Depth, Fox Goes All-In on Ad-Supported in Upfront

Execs talk strategy—and why they think TV viewers will return post-pandemic

Jason Lynch

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Jason Lynch