ZDF Studios and Samsung TV Plus are expanding their partnership and want to jointly set up 20 European FAST Channels.
The first two new channels launch in Germany on October 11, 2023: “Bares für Rares” (“Cash or Trash”) and “ZDF kocht!” (“ZDF Cooks!”) can now be received on the streaming platform offered by Samsung on its smart TVs from model year 2016. With the existing documentary channel Terra X, ZDF Studios and Samsung TV Plus are now offering a total of three FAST Channels.
For ZDF Studios, the cooperation with Samsung TV Plus represents the expansion of a distribution strategy which sees the commercial subsidiary of German public broadcaster ZDF newly curating selected programmes from the ZDF Studios catalogue for linear TV consumption. Samsung TV Plus is pre-installed on around 10 million Samsung Smart TVs in Germany.
The “Bares für Rares” channel shows the popular ZDF programme about art and curiosities with host Horst Lichter (pictured) 24 hours per day while “ZDF kocht!” offers highlights from cookery shows Küchenschlacht (“Kitchen Battle”), Topfgeldjäger (“Money Meals”), Stadt, Land, Lecker and Kerners Köche.
“It has been our goal from the beginning to establish Samsung TV Plus as a premium provider for FAST programmes. The cooperation with ZDF Studios is a milestone in our programming history. Content is king in the highly fragmented FAST environment, and the cooperation with ZDF Studios allows us to offer our TV viewers new premium content in the entertainment and documentary genres,” said Alex Hole, VP at Samsung Europe.
Dr Markus Schäfer, President and CEO of ZDF Studios, added: “For ZDF Studios, FAST Channels represent an attractive business area with a wide range of growth prospects. In August 2022, for example, the Terra X channel on Samsung TV Plus was launched extremely successfully. We are now looking forward to launching equally successively 20 more FAST Channels across Europe together with our partner Samsung, thus accelerating our FAST growth.”
