Industrialising synthetic television
The Verge on Fairground, the first FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) channel dedicated entirely to AI-generated content:
Watching Roku's AI channel is like eating from a trough.Startup Fairground wants to win people over with a never-ending stream of slop.
A savage, snobbish review that misses the point. The important thing is not whether AI can make good television yet.
Until now, slop has been a phenomenon of the feed. TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and X absorbed almost infinite quantities because their atomic unit is the individual piece of content.
FAST is a rediscovery machine. Synthetic television now sits inside the carousel.
YouTube industrialised amateur video. Roblox industrialised amateur game-making. TikTok industrialised short-form performance.
Fairground is testing whether generative AI can industrialise synthetic television.
Slop no longer has to win the feed one clip at a time.
It has a schedule.