A 2.51-million-subscriber YouTube network supplies the programming — and a template Korea, holding both news archives and the Samsung/LG FAST platforms, is positioned to use
New York Post Media Group is launching its first free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel, the company's head of video and audio Warren Cohen told Axios.
The timing tracks the audience: global FAST viewing grew 55% year over year, and news sits alongside entertainment as one of the two largest genres by both hours of viewing and ad impressions, according to Amagi's June 2026 AIRTIME Report.
Jung Han
The structural drivers behind FAST's expansion are familiar by now. Subscription-weary viewers are shifting to programming that carries no monthly fee, advertisers keep moving budgets into connected TV, and the video libraries publishers built on YouTube and through video podcasts can be repackaged into 24-hour channel schedules.
After years of prioritizing owned-and-operated platforms, publishers are moving back into third-party distribution. For Korea — home to deep broadcast news archives and to the manufacturers behind two of the world's largest FAST platforms — this is not a distant story.
150 hours of programming, refreshed 20% a month
The channel draws 150 hours of programming from across the group's portfolio, which spans the New York Post, the California Post, Page Six, Page Six Hollywood and Decider. Daily shows anchor the schedule — Post Presents, Page Six Radio and Schein Time among them — and roughly a fifth of the lineup will rotate each month.
Rather than build a streaming operation in-house, the Post is running the channel through VideoElephant's FAST managed service, which handles scheduling, distribution and monetization. Cohen pointed to the arrangement as a way to avoid over-investing in technology and operations. The channel has not yet locked in distribution and is pitching major streaming aggregators and smart TV manufacturers.
The programming pipeline is a YouTube network
The volume that will fill the channel comes from YouTube. The New York Post Digital Network is organized around a 2.51-million-subscriber flagship channel, flanked by vertical channels: Page Six (287K subscribers), New York Post Sports (144K), Decider (42.5K) and the podcast channel NY POSTcast (10.6K). The company produces 51 video series, many of which have crossed one million views. YouTube viewership rose 66% over the past year while revenue from the platform nearly quadrupled.
[Figure 1] The New York Post Digital Network on YouTube: a 2.51M-subscriber flagship surrounded by vertical channels (Source: YouTube)
The California Post, established in Los Angeles in 2025, is building its video operation the same way. Its sports channel counts only around 2,000 subscribers so far, but the outlet is stacking up West Coast programming with studio-produced original series that push against local conventional wisdom — one recent episode argues that everything people say about L.A.'s perfect weather is wrong.
The Post had looked at a FAST channel before and held off, judging that it lacked the volume and consistency of programming to sustain one. “We have the programming now,” Cohen said. The channel launch came only after YouTube had validated both the audience and the revenue.
[Figure 2] A California Post original studio production on YouTube — L.A.-focused series building West Coast programming volume (Source: California Post YouTube)
The Post joins a lengthening line of publishers entering FAST, following recent launches from Crooked Media, USA Today and Billboard. VideoElephant's Preeya Naul, senior vice president of streaming partnerships and supply, described the FAST audience as “a new set of eyeballs” that does not cannibalize traffic on publishers' websites or social accounts.
A launch that lands beside the Fox-Roku deal
The announcement arrives weeks after Fox Corporation agreed to acquire Roku in a cash-and-stock deal valued at roughly $22 billion. New York Post Media Group is a subsidiary of News Corp, chaired by Lachlan Murdoch, who also serves as CEO and executive chair of Fox. With one of the largest FAST platforms in the U.S. set to sit inside the same family of companies, the distribution conversation for the Post's channel starts from a different place than most publisher launches.
News: 27% of FAST viewing, 33% of ad impressions
Amagi's June AIRTIME Report, which aggregates roughly 6,500 FAST channel deliveries distributed through its THUNDERSTORM server-side ad insertion platform, puts numbers behind the genre. In Q2 2026 (April 1 to June 15), global hours of viewing rose 55% year over year and ad impressions rose 53%. Entertainment led with 41% of classified viewing hours; news followed at 27%. Measured by ad impressions, the news share climbs to 33% — a genre whose advertising weight exceeds its viewing weight.
[Figure 3] Top FAST genres by HOV and ad impressions, Q2 2026 (Source: Amagi AIRTIME Report, June 2026)
The U.S. and Canada accounted for 54% of global viewing hours and 74% of global ad impressions. News is the region's second-largest genre at 31% of viewing hours, behind entertainment at 43%, with local news contributing 23% of regional news viewing. Over the past year, news viewing hours in the region grew 21% while news ad impressions grew 50%.
[Figure 4] U.S. & Canada FAST genre profile: news at 31% of regional HOV, with ad impressions up 50% (Source: Amagi AIRTIME Report, June 2026)
The pattern extends beyond North America. In APAC, news is the largest genre outright, at 44% of regional viewing hours and 45% of ad impressions. News viewing grew 85% in EMEA and 350% in Latin America, where overall regional viewing rose 190% — the fastest growth of any market.
[Figure 5] Regional contribution to global HOV and ad impressions (Source: Amagi AIRTIME Report, June 2026)
[Figure 6] FAST growth by region, Q2 2026 vs. Q2 2025 (Source: Amagi AIRTIME Report, June 2026)
Korea: news archives and a platform lever no one else holds
Map the Post's launch conditions onto Korea and nothing is missing. Advertising revenue at terrestrial broadcasters and general programming channels keeps falling, while the news clips and daily programs their newsrooms have accumulated for years are already generating verifiable audience data on YouTube. The Post confirmed its programming volume through YouTube views and revenue, then launched through a managed service; Korean broadcasters and news publishers can take the same route into North American and Asian FAST markets without building streaming infrastructure of their own.
On distribution, Korea holds a lever no other content market has. A substantial share of global FAST viewing happens on smart TV platforms operated by Korean manufacturers — Samsung TV Plus and LG Channels. Where the Post must now open negotiations with aggregators and TV makers from scratch, Korean content companies start with a negotiating channel into their own manufacturers' global platforms.
The demand side is in the Amagi data. News accounts for 44% of FAST viewing across APAC, and in the U.S. and Canada, local news contributes 23% of news viewing — a basis for sizing demand for Korean-language local and national news channels, including the Korean diaspora market.
Initiatives such as K-Channel 82, which is preparing Korean and Korean-language news channels for the U.S. broadcast market, are aimed at exactly this gap. While the Murdoch companies buy Roku to bind content to a distribution pipe, Korea's open question is how to connect the platforms it already owns to the news assets it already has.
Key figures
Sources: Axios (Kerry Flynn); Amagi AIRTIME Report, June 2026; YouTube (as of July 2026). Amagi data covers channels delivered via THUNDERSTORM and is not a universal measure of the FAST market.