The Former CBS News Boss Bootstrapping a Women’s Sports Start-Up.

Christy Tanner is ready for a FAST fight to get more data from the platforms and put women's sport on the map. Plus streaming is almost half of all viewing now.

Image courtesy Nielsen.

This weekend, I plugged in a new Roku device and fell into a Cambrian sea of streaming channels, all 1,600 of them. These free ad-supported streaming TV channels, dubbed FAST, feel like a throwback to early 2000s when internet-delivered TV was getting its start.

FAST channels are scheduled, there’s no login, no phone pairing, no hoping that the algorithm opens on the last episode of The Bear that you watched. But you have to pay attention in the moment or its gone.

According to Nielsen, FAST platforms carry over 220 sports channels, only three are focused on women’s sports. Until now, I’d largely ignored them but this weekend I watched In Search of Speed, a behind-the-scenes documentary on U.S. alpine skiers Mikaela Shiffrin and Lindsey Vonn and a documentary on a women’s cycling competition. Both shows aired on a newly launched channel: Swerve Sports. Behind the venture is Christy Tanner, former EVP/GM at CBS News Digital who is chair of the parent company Swerve TV, alongside CEO Steve Shannon. The duo previously worked together at TV Guide then a billion dollar business sitting on some valuable patents. When the cross-platform company was acquired by CBS in 2013, Tanner went on to oversee the CBS News Digital helping launch the company’s streaming network, and key mobile apps including 60 Minutes. A $30 million business for CBS became a $200 million business in five years, said Tanner.

Shannon, one of the earliest executives in streaming TV became GM and SVP of Content at Roku before launching Swerve Combat in 2021, a channel focused on combat sports from MMA to Sumo. Their latest move, Swerve Sports, got off the starting blocks last month. “Women’s sports and combat have very strong social fan bases,” Tanner notes. The company isn’t chasing major sports rights, it is experimenting with fast-paced formats like Intennse, a new women’s tennis league with simplified rules and faster on court action. It will also stream women’s boxing, MMA, basketball and gymnastics.

FAST channels, long associated with endless reruns of Matlock or Gilligan’s Island, are undergoing a serious glow-up. Platforms like Pluto, Tubi, and Roku Channel saw a 41% year-over-year rise in viewing, per Nielsen. Even the Super Bowl streamed on Tubi this year, drawing 15.5 million concurrent viewers. Nielsen says FAST channels now carry more programming made post 2020 than the global SVOD services. It’s unclear how much of that includes live news and sports coverage. The measurement firm’s July report out Tuesday, August 19, shows streaming taking almost half the entire TV viewing pie at 47.3 percent. Roku Channel one of the main platforms of FAST services grew its share by 7 percent versus last month (June.) YouTube is still the giant here.

Still, the FAST ecosystem has its issues: opaque data and underwhelming programming. “Sometimes when you see a FAST channel that you think could be a lot better, you find out who’s overseeing it, it’s usually not someone with a programming background. It could be someone from distribution, often nobody is really running it,” said Tanner.

“There’s a lot more opportunity in programming these channels for excellence if programmers had the same depth of data that you have in broadcast and cable. The platforms are holding back programmers by not sharing data and I think they’re holding back themselves by not having better data available for the programming.” The company has been told they’re the number one FAST channel in the combat niche but there are few ways to verify what little information is shared by their distribution partners. There are other issues, FAST channels are in need of their own TV Guide. “Discovery is too difficult,” she adds. “Some of the programming is lame. We can do better.”

Tanner, who began her career captioning photographs at AP’s international desk in New York made her way up the ladder by working in local TV before deciding to go to business school to get into management. She brings a journalists’ laser focus to her work and an eye for what’s going to get engagement. The network list of content partners runs from softball and volleyball leagues, but I’ll be looking for the bare knuckle fighting championship.

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