USA TODAY FAST Channel carries Fox First Run’s “Battleground Midterms” live daily at 1 p.m. ET from Aug. 31 — CTV takes $1.14bn of the $6.1bn in political ad spend booked so far
The USA TODAY FAST Channel begins streaming Fox First Run’s new political program “Battleground Midterms” on Aug. 31.
The show runs one hour daily at 1 p.m. ET. VideoElephant, which programs and operates the channel, said in an Aug. 28 release that USA TODAY is the only channel outside the Fox group scheduling the show live. It is a case of Fox handing the fixed live slot of an election program to a newspaper-brand FAST channel outside its own station group.
Fox chose the USA TODAY channel on reach and on operating structure. The channel is carried on Fire TV, Samsung, Vizio, Plex, HP, TiVo, STIRR, OrkaTV, LG, TCL tv+, FreeCast and Altice — 12 platforms in all.
Since January 2025 its programming, distribution and monetization have been run by VideoElephant rather than Gannett. USA TODAY supplies the content and the brand; scheduling, multi-platform distribution and ad operations sit with a specialist operator.
Advertising conditions line up as well. Of the $6.1bn in political advertising booked through Aug. 24 in the U.S. election cycle, ad-tracking firm AdImpact counted $1.14bn on CTV and streaming, ahead of $770m on cable (MediaPost, Aug. 25). In an election period, a one-hour live political show scheduled at the same time every day gives a FAST operator predictable appointment viewing and political ad inventory at once.