Cable’s 5 a.m. slot handed to a FAST program… 2,172 global FAST channels as of July, with news channels up 52.9% to 211.
CNN Headlines, the free ad-supported streaming (FAST) channel operated by CNN, recorded 179% growth in watch time and 58% growth in unique viewers in the year since its July 2025 launch. In the most recently completed quarter, reported on August 13, 2026, watch time rose 192% and unique viewers 51% against the same period a year earlier. The figures come from a channel that was not a rerun of the cable feed, but a separate operation with a dedicated anchor and purpose-built live programming.
Jung Han
In Nielsen’s June 2026 edition of The Gauge, streaming took 48.5% of total U.S. viewing while cable fell to 19.5%. Gracenote’s Q3 2026 Data Hub, released August 21, counted 2,172 global FAST channels as of July, up 17.5% year over year, with news and commentary the fastest-growing genre: 211 channels, up 52.9%. On the other side of the ledger, Kagan estimated in October 2025 that CNN would shed 7.6% of its pay-TV subscriber base by the end of 2026. Cable news operators began running their free channels as separate business units under those conditions.
The CNN Headline Express studio, with anchor Brad Smith (left) and executive producer Melody Taylor. Photo: CNN
Quarterly watch time up 192%… audience roughly doubled since January
CNN Headlines soft-launched on July 4, 2025 with two hours of a new live program, CNN Headline Express, at 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. ET. The 5 p.m. newscast added in August 2025 marked the full launch.
According to TVNewser, the media trade title published by Adweek, in an August 13, 2026 interview, the channel has nearly doubled its audience since January. Growth in the latest quarter was 192% year over year, and 51% on unique viewers. Melody Taylor, senior director of U.S. programming at CNN and executive producer of CNN Headlines, said watch time is up 179% and unique viewers up 58% measured from launch.
The numbers combine Amagi Analytics data covering Anoki, LG, Plex, Scripps, TCL IDEO and Vizio with partner-supplied figures from Amazon Prime, Local Now, Pluto TV, Roku and Xumo. Monthly uniques for Amazon Prime and Xumo include estimates, and uniques are not reported at all for Roku or Local Now. Counting methods differ by platform, which makes a single comparable metric difficult.
Cable’s 5 a.m. hour reassigned… a FAST program in the Early Start slot
CNN Headline Express also airs at 5 a.m. ET on the linear CNN channel, in the slot previously held by Early Start. A program built for the free channel now runs inside the cable schedule, and linear viewers see the same program.
Taylor said anchor Brad Smith has been getting responses from international viewers since that placement began. Smith joined CNN in July 2025 from Yahoo! Finance and Cheddar, and is based in Atlanta.
The anchor’s framing… “SportsCenter of general news”
In an interview with Forbes, Smith described CNN Headlines as the “SportsCenter of general news” — borrowing the grammar of a sports highlights show for a run of breaking news, business, politics, entertainment, culture and international items moved at speed. He said the standard is returning real value for whatever time a viewer gives the channel, and that the production process itself yields something different from what most outlets put on air.
CNN Headlines programs reporting from the network’s international correspondent corps and its domestic staff covering Washington, Wall Street and Hollywood, recut on a daily cycle. Smith likened the result to scanning the full scope of what is surfacing in a viewer’s feed.
Smith said the investment in CNN Headlines is aimed at viewers who do not sit down at night for cable news, and called streaming the industry’s next growth phase. A drummer since the age of three, he says the habit of looking for small improvements carries over to the anchor desk; a 2016 interview with Larry King, he added, was part of what led him to CNN.
Three months from green light to air… from clip playlists to live production
The concept circulated for about a year and a half before hiring began. Taylor said the team was assembled and on air within three months of approval. Before that, CNN Headlines was a curated service running clips that had already aired on cable through an automated playlist.
At full launch, CNN paired CNN Headline Express with ICYMI (In Case You Missed It), built from the network’s U.S. programming, and American Pulse, drawn from affiliate reporting across the country. Eric Sherling, executive vice president of U.S. programming for CNN Worldwide, framed the schedule at the time as using the affiliate network to serve a growing market alongside existing cable programming.
“Not the digital HLN”… a schedule without linear boundaries
Taylor previously worked on Robin Meade’s Morning Express at HLN. The volume-and-pace instinct carried over, she said, but the time slots and fan bases that defined a linear channel work differently on FAST, where viewers choose the channel in another way — a difference she treats as part of the growth story.
Coverage highlights she cited include the channel’s own live programming when Charlie Kirk was killed, its own take on the State of the Union, and live coverage of the New York Knicks ticker-tape parade. Taylor was explicit that the channel does not attempt the same all-in coverage posture as cable CNN.
The constraint of owning a cable channel… a different starting line from CBS and ABC
Taylor noted that organizations without a cable channel, such as CBS News or ABC News, can shape a FAST channel into many things, while CNN started from a different position. Finding the space that does not overlap with cable CNN took time, and the casual, fast-moving tone came before the audience numbers followed.
On expanding live hours, she said the team is ready if the company asks for another hour, and that the viewers are already there. Taylor joined CNN in 2012 and has held programming roles across CNN, HLN and CNN International. The channel added Roku, Amazon and Vizio as distribution partners this year, with more expected; at launch, distribution was limited to CNN.com, the CNN app and a handful of connected TV apps.
How one scoop travels… from cable’s The Source to web video, shorts and the FAST channel
On August 20, 2026, CNN reported exclusively that the Navy is working to rename the aircraft carrier CVN-81, which had been designated to honor Doris Miller, the Black sailor who manned an anti-aircraft gun during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Reporters Haley Britzky and Pamela Brown, citing three sources familiar with internal discussions, wrote that the renaming effort has been under way since earlier this year. Two of the sources said there had been internal conversations about naming the ship for President Donald Trump. No aircraft carrier has been named for a sitting president.
The name was announced in January 2020, during Trump’s first term, by then-acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day ceremony. According to the report, the Navy has effectively stopped using the ship’s name internally and refers to it by hull number, CVN-81; a recent White House executive order on shipbuilding also used only the hull number. The office of acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao has been reviewing guidance on how ships are named and who they may be named after, including presidents. The Navy referred CNN’s questions to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, whose spokesperson said there was nothing to announce. The Navy is separately looking at naming another warship for Miller and recommending him for the Medal of Honor, with final authorization resting with Congress and the president. Thomas Bledsoe, Miller’s great-nephew, said the family had not been informed of the change.
A panel segment on CNN’s cable program The Source. Source: CNN
The story moved through several CNN outlets within a day. On cable, The Source ran a panel including former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, another program featured Rep. Jason Crow, and the interview with Miller’s great-nephew aired as a separate exclusive. CNN.com carried a one-minute video clip and an entry in the automated CNN Shorts playlist. NBC News and other outlets followed, crediting CNN. On the FAST side, ICYMI is the CNN Headlines program assembled from items that originate in the network’s U.S. programming, which is how cable reporting reaches the free channel.
How FAST works… free viewing, revenue share, and a linear schedule
FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) channels carry no subscription or sign-up and are funded by advertising. Viewers open a channel list on an internet-connected smart TV, streaming stick or mobile app and start watching. Unlike on-demand services, a schedule exists, and the experience of flipping channels is preserved. Content owners program a channel, supply it to a platform, and split advertising revenue with that platform. Some inventory is sold by the platform, some by the channel operator, and the split varies by contract.
Platforms fall into three groups: U.S. services run by media groups and device companies, such as Pluto TV, Tubi and The Roku Channel; manufacturer platforms built into TV operating systems, such as Samsung TV Plus (삼성 TV 플러스) and LG Channels (LG채널); and single-brand channels launched by individual broadcasters. CNN Headlines belongs to the third category while being carried across the first two.
As of July 2026, Gracenote counted 2,172 global FAST channels, up 17.5% year over year, with total video distribution up 18.6% and TV program titles up 19.4%; channel counts have grown 76% since 2023. EMARKETER forecast in April 2026 that the U.S. would have 131.4 million FAST users this year, or 54% of all connected TV users. Wurl, in a May 2026 study, found monthly FAST households up 12%, average daily viewing hours per household up 16% and channel session length up 25%. Omdia projects the global FAST market growing from $6.3 billion in 2023 to $12 billion in 2027.
As of July, 51.7% of programming on global FAST channels was produced in 2020 or later, against 47% a year earlier. News is the freshest genre, with roughly 88% of its programming produced in 2020 or later. The comparable figure across the six subscription services Gracenote tracks is 36.3%.
77 MLB games and 30 F1 races on FAST in July… titles growing twice as fast as channels
Gracenote Q3 data compiled by StreamTV Insider on August 21, 2026 counted 264 FAST channels classified as sports in July, up 13.8% year over year. Over the same period, unique sports program titles rose 31.2% and individual games and events rose 37.5% — title growth at more than twice the channel growth rate, and game-and-event growth at nearly three times. Both outpaced the 17.5% growth in FAST channels overall.
In July alone, FAST carried 77 MLB games, 8 WNBA games, 30 Formula 1 races and 22 World Cup soccer matches. Unlike exclusives on premium subscription services, these were additive distribution running alongside other windows. Sports programming also appeared on 20 FAST channels outside the sports category, including documentary, entertainment, lifestyle, news and commentary, and reality channels. Gracenote read the pattern as FAST moving closer to traditional network television, where sports functions both as a destination on dedicated channels and as tentpole content inside a mixed lineup.
Sports content is also getting newer. A year ago, 51.6% of sports program titles on FAST had been produced within the previous six years; as of Q3 2026 the figure is 72%. Gracenote has been tracking FAST in its Data Hub for one year.
Streaming 48.5%, cable 19.5%… Roku Channel and Tubi ahead of Peacock and Paramount
Nielsen, The Gauge, June 2026, total day. Source: Nielsen
In Nielsen’s June 2026 Gauge, streaming took 48.5%, broadcast 19.8%, cable 19.5% and other 12.3%. By individual service, YouTube led at 13.8%, followed by Netflix at 7.9%, Disney at 4.6% and Prime Video at 4.2%.
Among free services, The Roku Channel took 3.0%, ahead of both Peacock and Paramount at 2.3%, and Tubi (투비) took 2.2%, ahead of Warner Bros. Discovery at 1.4%. Combined, The Roku Channel and Tubi reach 5.2%, more than the entire Disney group at 4.6%. Because Pluto TV viewing sits inside the Paramount figure, the real share held by free services is higher still.
Fox buys Roku for $22 billion… ownership of the distribution path changes hands
On June 15, 2026, Fox Corporation announced a definitive agreement to acquire Roku at $160.00 per share, valuing it at roughly $22 billion in enterprise value. Each Roku share converts to $96.00 in cash plus 0.9693 shares of Fox Class A common stock. Fox shareholders are expected to hold about 73% of the combined company and Roku shareholders 27%. Fox secured a $12 billion loan for the cash portion, and the deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027 subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood will keep a role at the combined company and join the Fox board.
Fox already owns Tubi, acquired for $440 million in 2020. With The Roku Channel and Tubi under one owner, the 5.2% of viewing they held in Nielsen’s June figures sits with a single company. Roku has a direct relationship with more than 100 million streaming households globally, and Fox said the combined company would rank third in U.S. television by share of viewing. Both companies said Roku will continue to operate as an open, partner-friendly platform. Roku is one of the distribution partners CNN Headlines added this year.
Publishers enter FAST… the New York Post opens with 150 hours
New York Post Media Group disclosed plans for its first FAST channel on June 16, 2026. Warren Cohen, head of video and audio, told Axios the channel will carry 150 hours of programming drawn from the New York Post, the California Post, Page Six, Page Six Hollywood and Decider. Three daily shows — “Post Presents,” “Page Six Radio” and “Schein Time” — anchor the lineup, and roughly 20% of the programming will refresh each month.
Cohen said the Post had explored a channel before but lacked the volume and consistency of programming to sustain one. It now produces 51 video series, many of which have passed a million views on YouTube; YouTube views are up 66% over the past year and revenue from the platform has nearly quadrupled. Rather than build the operation internally, the Post handed scheduling, distribution and monetization to VideoElephant’s FAST managed service.
Preeya Naul, senior vice president of streaming partnerships and supply at VideoElephant, said FAST audiences are a separate set of viewers that does not appear to cannibalize dot-com or social usage. Crooked Media, USA Today and Billboard have also entered recently, and the growth of video podcasts has supplied a steady programming stream. The Post’s channel has not yet secured distribution agreements and is pitching major streaming aggregators and smart TV manufacturers.
News takes 8.6% of U.S. FAST watch time… 6.4% of devices generate 80% of it
Wurl’s CTV Trends Report put news at an average 8.6% of U.S. FAST viewing hours, exceeding 10% during major events. Devices spending more than 90% of their time on news generated 7.4% of viewing hours across all FAST genres. In market research summarized by NewscastStudio, heavy news viewers accounted for just 6.4% of streaming devices but produced more than 80% of total news viewing hours.
The same report classified 35.7% of analyzed news scenes as fully brand safe under IAB-aligned categories, arguing that genre-level exclusions cut advertisers off from premium inventory that scene-level contextual analysis could unlock. News and sports have long carried the highest advertising rates on linear television; as both migrate to FAST, the location of premium inventory moves with them. FAST news channels numbered 211 as of July.
Free, subscription, single-purpose app… and All Access lands on Prime Video
CNN launched its paid All Access tier on October 28, 2025 at $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year, with an introductory annual price of $41.99. It bundles U.S. and international live channels, CNN Headlines, CNN Originals and a library of more than 1,000 hours of original series and films. On June 18, 2026, All Access became available through Amazon Prime Video.
Alex MacCallum, chief operating officer of CNN Worldwide, framed the Prime Video listing as making CNN’s journalism and original programming available wherever audiences prefer to engage. CNN launched the CNN Originals FAST channel in 2024 and folded its international CNN Fast channel into the CNN Headlines brand; a CNN Weather app followed in May 2026. A free FAST channel, a paid subscription and a single-purpose app each work as a separate entry point.
Korean news on FAST… Samsung TV Plus passes 100 million monthly users
In Korea, news and business channels entered FAST first and terrestrial broadcasters followed. Samsung TV Plus (삼성 TV 플러스) already carries JTBC, MBN, YTN, Yonhap News TV (연합뉴스TV), Maeil Business TV (매일경제TV) and Korea Economic TV (한국경제TV). In January 2026 it added KBS News 24 (KBS 뉴스 24) and SBS No.1 News Live (SBS No.1 뉴스라이브), the first 24-hour terrestrial news channels on a domestic FAST platform. KBS News 24 carries KBS News 9 and News 12 live alongside current-affairs content selected from KBS 1TV and 2TV; SBS No.1 News Live is built around SBS 8 News, 10 News and Nightline. Outside live hours, both run repeats and clips from the previous 24 hours.
Samsung TV Plus has passed 100 million monthly active users across 30 countries, offering roughly 4,300 channels and some 66,000 VOD titles; its channel count rose from about 3,300 a year earlier. As of July 2026, LG Channels (LG채널) has expanded to about 4,500 channels across 37 countries, including 17 in Europe. Domestic FAST usage remains low because IPTV and cable penetration is high, and both platforms have been used first as an export route.
That export route began with Korean-language news for the diaspora. In June 2023, YTN became the first Korean news organization to supply a live feed to LG Channels in Europe, South America and Australia, under a contract with NEW ID (뉴아이디) — channel 900 in Europe, 850 in South America and 300 in Australia. A smart TV platform was added to an overseas distribution path that had run on satellite and IP transport. CNN launched its own FAST channel in the U.K. and other European markets in the same period, but chose purpose-built short-form programming rather than a live simulcast.
What this means for Korean players
Four variables drove the CNN result: how the channel was programmed, whether a dedicated team existed, how it was positioned against the linear channel, and whether free and paid products were connected. Set against the Korean terrestrial entry into FAST, the differences are visible.
CNN built original live programming for the free channel to capture data on viewing habits and engagement. A channel that reschedules existing broadcasts does not generate usage data distinguishable from the linear feed it mirrors.
At CNN Headlines the anchor states the programming grammar outright — the “SportsCenter of general news” — and names viewers who do not watch cable at night as the target. Korean terrestrial FAST news channels carry no positioning beyond the “24-hour news” format. That difference operates at the point where a viewer picks a channel from the platform list.
CNN uses CNN Headlines as an entry point and routes viewers toward a $6.99 subscription. Korean broadcasters run FAST channels and paid services such as Wavve (웨이브) in parallel, with no designed path between them.
Adding Roku, Amazon and Vizio worked alongside programming in CNN Headlines’ first-year growth. For Korean operators placing channels on overseas FAST platforms, timing and shelf position determine watch time. With news and commentary the fastest-growing genre among the 2,172 global FAST channels counted in July, terms for Korean-language news channels are more favorable now than before.
Whether to build the operation or outsource it is now a real choice. The New York Post opened its first channel by handing scheduling, distribution and monetization to VideoElephant, and the condition it named for entry was a standing production volume of 51 series. Korean publishers and broadcasters that have accumulated video series for YouTube can open a channel the same way once that volume is in place.
The path a single scoop travels is worth reading alongside the numbers: a cable panel, a web video clip, an automated short-form playlist, then a slot on the free channel. Korean broadcasters recycle news mainly into YouTube clips, and their FAST channels carry a simulcast of the broadcast feed. The number of windows a piece of reporting passes through is the number of ad inventories it creates.
There is now a basis for revisiting genre-level avoidance of news in ad buying. Wurl’s scene-level analysis found more than a third of news inventory meeting brand safety standards. In Korea the harder problem is demand: the Korea Digital Advertising Association has argued that with global ad budgets moving to YouTube and Meta, a coordinated effort is needed to bring advertisers to domestic FAST channels (Media Today, 미디어오늘).
For overseas distribution, simulcasting the domestic schedule and programming for local time zones and local interests are two different products. LG Uplus (LG유플러스) put KBO league coverage on LG Channels with real-time English and Spanish dubbing, and Samsung runs an SM TOWN channel built from SM Entertainment (SM엔터테인먼트) artist content. The same localization approach has not yet been applied to news and current affairs.
Sources
· Mark Mwachiro, “CNN’s Free, Ad-Supported Channel Is Finding Success in Its First Year,” TVNewser/Adweek, August 13, 2026
· Mark Joyella, “CNN Beefs Up Its CNN Headlines FAST Channel With Anchor Brad Smith,” Forbes, November 5, 2025
· Haley Britzky and Pamela Brown, “Exclusive: Navy weighs renaming carrier slated to honor Black war hero, potentially switching it to Trump,” CNN, August 20, 2026, with related video segments on The Source and the family interview
· NBC News, “Navy discusses renaming aircraft carrier after Trump instead of heroic Black sailor,” August 20, 2026
· Nielsen, The Gauge — Total TV and Streaming Snapshot, June 2026 (nielsen.com/thegauge)
· Gracenote (Nielsen), Q3 2026 Data Hub Analysis, August 20, 2026 — 2,172 global FAST channels, news and commentary +52.9%, 264 sports channels; as summarized by NewscastStudio and TV Tech
· Kerry Flynn, “Exclusive: New York Post to launch its first FAST channel,” Axios, June 16, 2026
· Fox Corporation and Roku joint release, “Fox Corporation to Acquire Roku, Inc.,” June 15, 2026; Variety and CNBC, June 15, 2026 (deal terms, financing)
· Bevin Fletcher, “FAST sports programming swells, outpaces sports channel growth,” StreamTV Insider, August 21, 2026
· CNN Press Room, “CNN’s Domestic FAST Channel, CNN Headlines, Debuts New Programming Schedule,” August 18, 2025
· CNN Press Room, “CNN’s All Access Subscription Tier Launches Today,” October 28, 2025; “CNN’s All Access Subscription Launches on Prime Video in the U.S.,” June 18, 2026
· Brian Steinberg, “CNN’s New ‘All Access’ Subscription Streamer Puts Bigger Spotlight on Mobile Viewers,” Variety, October 28, 2025 (Kagan pay-TV estimate)
· EMARKETER, “FAQ on FAST: How free streaming TV is reshaping the ad market in 2026,” April 22, 2026
· Wurl, “CTV Trends Report: Rethinking Brand Safety and Audience Behavior on News Channels,” May 2026; NewscastStudio, May 20 and July 24, 2026
· Digital Daily (디지털데일리), “Samsung TV Plus carries 24-hour terrestrial news channels in a domestic FAST first,” January 29, 2026
· YTN, “First Korean news organization to launch a live channel on LG Channels overseas,” June 2023 (NEW ID agreement)
· ZDNet Korea, “Samsung and LG expand global FAST footprint,” July 2026 (channel counts, country coverage, Omdia forecast)
· Yoon Su-hyun (윤수현), “Overseas, the age of FAST TV,” Media Today (미디어오늘) — domestic FAST ad demand, LG Channels KBO and SM TOWN cases