Fubo TV’s free ad-supported live TV network, Fubo Sports Network, announced a multiyear renewal with Gilbert Arenas and Josiah Johnson, hosts of No Chill with Gilbert Arenas for the weekly basketball-themed talk show, a Fubo original. The series starts its third season Thursday at 3 p.m. EDT on YouTube and on Fubo Sports Network’s linear channel Sunday at 7 p.m. EDT. An audio version is available across podcast platforms, Fubo said.

Vizio tackled streaming TV’s fragmented user experience, announcing My Watchlist, where users can access favorite TV shows and movies from certain streaming services in one location. Users search for a title, actor or hit the “+Watchlist” button on a title's content detail page to add it to the Watchlist, which appears on the SmartCast home screen, Vizio said Tuesday. Users can build a queue of TV shows from premium services including Apple TV+, discovery+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+, Prime Video, Starz and others and launch the show directly from the list. Vizio is also serving users more recommendations based on the apps and genres they use most, it said. If a user views Apple TV+ frequently, she may be served an AppleTV+ row with a list of show and movie recommendations for the service. It also added a genre recommendation feature with a row on the home screen dedicated to the types of genre a viewer watches most.

Vizio announced the Fall Fest programming lineup for its WatchFree+ ad-supported streaming TV channel. Fall Fest includes three exclusive TV series premieres, exclusive on-demand series, an exclusive Space Science Now channel, and curated shows covering several genres. Fall Fest is accessible from the Vizio home screen and WatchFree+ app.

Netflix significantly outperformed its forecast for Q3 global streaming net paid additions, delivering 2.41 million net new accounts, compared with 1 million in its July 19 forecast. But Q3 net adds were markedly lower than the 4.38 million in the same 2021 quarter. It’s forecasting 4.6 million net adds in Q4, compared with 8.28 million in the 2021 quarter. “After a challenging first half, we believe we’re on a path to reaccelerate growth,” said the company’s shareholder letter Tuesday. Netflix will offer one low-priced ad plan -- called Basic with Ads -- at a price that’s 20%-40% below its current starting price (see 2210130058). In the U.S., Netflix will now start at $6.99 per month (compared with $9.99 today). The Basic with Ads plan will have less than five minutes of advertising per hour, plus “frequency capping and strong privacy protections,” it said. “The reaction from advertisers so far has been extremely positive and we believe that more choice, especially for more price conscious consumers, will translate into meaningful incremental revenue and operating profit over time.” Netflix cautioned it’s still in the “very early days” of its ad efforts. “Since we’re keeping our existing plans ad-free, it will take us time to build up our membership base and the associated ad revenue.” Netflix thinks it has a "thoughtful approach" to monetize account sharing, and it will begin rolling it out "more broadly" starting in early 2023, it said. It will offer the ability for "borrowers" to transfer their Netflix profile into their own account, and for "sharers" to manage their devices more easily and to create subaccounts if they want to pay for family or friends, it said.

Amazon will follow its Thursday Night Football airing on Prime Video with a live concert series hosted by rapper 2 Chainz beginning Oct. 27, it said Monday. Amazon Music Live will stream live from Los Angeles, starting with Lil Baby Oct. 27, followed by Megan Thee Stallion Nov. 3 and Kane Brown Nov. 10, it said. Amazon is billing the live concert event as a “massive new stage" that enables artists to share their music with fans after Thursday Night Football, which streams exclusively on Amazon Prime. Each week’s music performance will be filmed in front of a live audience.

Hisense smart TVs will add a Crackle-branded remote control button and streaming services, Crackle parent Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment and Vidaa USA, platform provider for Hisense TVs, announced Thursday. The button will give U.S. Hisense TV users direct access to the Crackle ad-supported VOD service beginning early next year, the companies said. Vidaa will position streaming channels next to broadcast TV networks in Vidaa’s programming guide, said Nick Ruczaj, Vidaa vice president-content.

The Roku Channel launched in Mexico, Roku announced Thursday. Rob Holmes, Roku vice president-programming, said the addition is part of the company’s plans to expand internationally with free content. The Roku Channel is one of the top five channels on the platform in the U.S. in reach and engagement hours, he said. At launch, The Roku Channel in Mexico will have more than 25 live channels, in addition to on-demand content, the company said.

European VOD platform Rakuten TV will carry 100 titles in the Imax Enhanced format in an expansion of the companies’ relationship over the next six months, Xperi said Wednesday. The Imax Enhanced releases will be available via Rakuten TV in the U.K., France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Norway and Poland, the company said.

Pivotal Research Group repeated a “sell” rating on Netflix's stock despite some analyst optimism (see 2210050031) over the streaming company’s upcoming ad-supported tier and anticipated resulting average revenue per user (ARPU) growth. Pivotal's view remains unchanged as "we see the move to offer an ad supported tier by the global streaming incumbent player as defensive not offensive” and “fraught” with risks to ARPU, technology and product perception, analyst Jeffrey Wlodarczak wrote investors Tuesday. An ad-supported tier won’t likely allow Netflix to return to annual subscriber growth, with Netflix nearly fully penetrated at about 80% of the U.S., counting piracy, Wlodarczak said. Pivotal sees a “significant ARPU risk of existing households churning down” to a “less attractive ad supported service” while making Netflix “dramatically more reliant on variable advertising spend." That could put ARPU at risk if advertising is lower than expected due to an “increasingly likely ’23 recession.” That Netflix’s peers are also moving to ad-supported offerings creates the potential for “too much inventory,” he added. An ad-supported version “taints the [Netflix] brand,” Wlodarczak said, saying the technology behind successful advertising delivery is difficult; Netflix’s original programming isn’t optimized for ad breaks, he said. An “underappreciated risk” is that Netflix management believes it can moderate content cost growth “when virtually all of their peers are accelerating investment in content particularly on exclusive sports rights which could ultimately hit NFLX subscriber growth or push the company to reaccelerate content investment spend,” Wlodarczak said. Netflix reports Q3 earnings Oct. 18.

SiriusXM added Grown Folk Jamz, Channel 362, to its Project Amplify initiative aimed at promoting diverse viewpoints across the service’s music and talk channels, it said Friday.The channel is targeted at listeners 25-64 years old and features music hits from R&B, gospel, old school, hip-hop, smooth jazz, funk, classic soul and love ballads, Sirius said. Project Amplify was originally known as a “qualified entity” channel as part of a commitment Sirius made to the FCC in connection with the Sirius buy of XM in 2008. The rebranded Project Amplify will continue the mission of providing “a national platform for historically underserved communities, many of which have been underrepresented in the media,” SiriusXM said.