Why Fox Buying Roku Is Much Bigger Than Streaming
A global news organization that shapes narratives across the UK, the US, and Australia is about to buy a recommendation engine that will allow it to now shape what content Roku users see in their feeds, observe the viewing habits of its user base (which skews young), and gather behavioral intelligence on one-third of American households. Flip the alert status to orange, please.
For all the chatter about Fox News being the place where conservatives can feel at home, Fox has never been morally conservative. But it has become exceptionally good at finding and leveraging attention, across age groups.
Who Fox Is As a Player in Media
The first place I went when I really began thinking through the implications of the acquisition was Google to get an idea of who and what Fox actually is today. When I think of Fox, I think of TV in the early 1990s, I think of Nat Geo and 21st Century Fox. But is that even who Fox is today?
The answer’s no.
Fox is a News Organization
Today, Fox is a global news organization that has deep roots in Westernized markets like Australia, the UK, and the US. In each of those regions, Fox has doubled down on owning the flow of information – particularly with TV news and newspaper publications. Not haphazardly – intentionally.
We’re talking about fast-moving, high-impact stories that can be brought directly to their target audience and delivered in a way that bakes in urgency, leads with the stakes – whether real or imagined – and gets an immediate response.
Fox Sports – High Emotion, High Conversion
And then there’s Fox Sports. Sports are the only remaining frontier where people will make an appointment with themselves to watch the event live. I wouldn’t call myself a sports fan, but part of me LIVES for UFC fight nights – weigh-in, pre-show, the whole nine. I’m not unusual there. The Comcast report open in the last tab on my screen says 84% of Americans watch the Big Four sports (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL), and 90% of Americans watch sports outside the Big Four.
Nothing wrong there. But live sports is another category where things are happening in real time, the urgency and emotion are baked in, stakes are front and center, and they get an immediate response.
That’s evident in the ads, too. Live sports are becoming a blue ocean for CTV advertisers because the audience is not just watching; they are emotionally activated, watching in real time, and often engaging on a second screen while the event is happening. 64% of CTV viewers say they pay attention to ads during live sports, and 74% want more relevant messaging. (theTrade Desk)
An LG report found that 87% of live sports viewers multitask during events, while 71% prefer ads that include live scores and updates.
That matters because sports ads are not seen as interruptions. In the right context, they become part of the live-event experience. The psychology here is pretty straightforward: emotion helps encode memory. When people are already in a heightened state — waiting for the next play, reacting to a momentum shift, texting friends, checking stats, or watching betting lines — the ad environment becomes more valuable. Hello, $5M Super Bowl ads.
Genius Sports and MediaScience found that ads shown after emotionally heightened live sports moments can double unaided brand recall. So sports do not just give Fox live attention. They give Fox a real-time lab for understanding which messages, brands, products, identities, and calls to action move people while they are already activated.
How that will eventually impact the price of ads, I guess we’ll find out. Won’t we?
Fox Currently Owns Tubi
In 2020, Fox acquired Tubi. Tubi is the largest ad-supported free streaming platform in the world with a catalog of more than 300,000 titles (including 400 Tubi originals) and about 100 million users, most of whom are millennials and Gen Z from multicultural backgrounds. This cohort is made up of folks who do not subscribe to traditional cable TV (about 6 in 10), and skews slightly male (59% vs 40% female). Tubi users stream a billion hours of content per month, spending 95% of their viewing time watching on-demand content. (Tubi)
Right now, streaming accounts for 47.5% of TV viewership (Nielsen). And Tubi’s getting 2% of that action. Adding Roku would push Fox to grabbing 5% of the total streaming viewership.
But what happens when Fox takes ownership of the streaming ecosystem?
Well, you’d still be able to check out all your favorite streaming services. Fox isn’t going to hide the apps and make them undiscoverable in Roku – that’d turn people off and make them abandon Roku.
But owning the ecosystem isn’t my main thing.
The Problem With a News Organization Owning Roku’s Intelligence Engine
Roku is not just a streaming platform where you can watch movies for free. A Roku TV is also an operating system undergirded by a recommendation engine that learns from its users.
That means we’re talking about a news organization that’s been sued a handful of times for reporting lies would essentially own the behavioral intelligence of 100 million households – Roku’s user base.
That’s in addition to the intel of the 100 million Tubi users it already owns.
And yeah – there’s overlap between the Tubi audience and the Roku audience, but Roku currently accounts for about a third of the smart TVs sold in the US, while the Tubi app can be downloaded onto any smart TV.
So, we’re looking at a news organization that currently is the most-watched cable news network in the US – and a hands-down favorite of those over the age of 45 (47% of Americans ages 65 and older and 45% of those ages 50 to 64 say they regularly get news from Fox News)…
…. acquiring a recommendation engine that will allow them to watch the behaviors of this younger cohort – what they watch, which platforms they visit, how long they stay in there, what they search – and then being able to tailor content to their behaviors.
Okay – the data part of the evening is over.
Fox is a Content Company That Will Control the Discovery Ecosystem That 28% of Americans Use
I am curious about the endgame of a media company that has basically earned its living by controlling the news, controlling broadcast news and newspaper publications, and then building a large catalog of entertainment IP.
Why would that company now double down on a discovery engine that essentially controls the flow of entertainment?
To be clear, this isn’t about not wanting to be influenced by conservative or right-leaning news. Right-leaning, left-leaning — I’m not watching Fox News, and I’m not watching NBC News. Present me with the facts. I’ll make my own decision.
AND…
While people are out here saying Fox News is so conservative, I don’t want to glaze over the fact that Fox is also responsible for giving us Peter Griffin’s sodomy song, introducing us to Herbert the Pervert, letting Bart Simpson raise hell for the last 40 years, and fundamentally reshaping the narrative and archetype around American families.
So…
It brings me back to my original thought, which is: I don’t like this.
From a discovery perspective, having a content company essentially control the gate — control the doors through which content gets discovered — feels significant.
If you’re feeding older Americans a narrative in the form of “news” and then shaping what younger people see by prioritizing what kinds of movies show up for free on the most popular free streaming platform, that’s unmatched influence – the kind of influence that would allow you to architect new culture from scratch. I would not be surprised if the next investment leans toward a social media platform.
It all feels very free market, but not necessarily productive or protective for the American people, or for the future of American culture, psychology, and well-being.
That’s where I am with Fox’s acquisition of Roku right now.
Feels precarious. It’s weird that the government would allow such a thing. And there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the business move. But there’s everything wrong with one company being able to so completely control the flow of information across three continents. Everything.
