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In my view, “The Crown” is the best TV show in history. The final season of “Succession” drove entire news cycles. “Severance” is phenomenal on every level. And Yellowstone virtually reinvented the western genre for a whole new generation of viewers. “The Bear,” “Cunk on Earth,” “The Boys,” “Fleabag,” “Tiger King,” “Squid Game”: All of these series, and so many others just as grabby, are among television’s top tier.

And they’re destroying TV as we know it.

Rivers of ink have been spilled about the industry’s many ailments: Linear TV seems to be dying of “Ali MacGraw’s Syndrome” (a term coined by late critic Roger Ebert, owing to the 1970 film “Love Story,” meaning when a character is dying but only grows more attractive and photogenic as the end draws near), while an onslaught of acronyms (SVOD, AVOD, OTT, PVOD) has left us bewildered and cranky.

And yet somehow studios and streamers are losing money — but not to TV’s actors and writers, who went on strike because they’re making less than ever despite the seeming boom.

So what’s the fix? Do we want bloated cable bundles again? Of course not, but neither do we want more of the apps, tiers and subscriptions required to watch all this amazing TV, now balkanized into a maze of providers too confusing to comprehend.

What viewers want is simply to sit down after work, flip on their TV and watch a show they like with as little fuss as possible. That solution may lie in free ad-supported streaming TV, which could deliver us from whatever level of hell is reserved for expired trial subscriptions. And you probably already have it on your TV.

FAST delivers a slate of content that looks and acts like an old-school cable bundle — but with a few desirable differences. Viewers get a “guide” of familiar channels, each with scheduled programming, along with DVR functionality. Some FAST providers, like Tubi and Pluto, have hundreds of channels, ranging from broadcast news to basic cable staples like HGTV and Animal Planet to niche channels for genre (sci-fi, western, true crime) or even for individual long-running shows.

What FAST doesn’t have are unbreakable monthly subscriptions. In fact, most don’t require a subscription at all — viewers just flip on the TV, select the channel and choose what to watch.

And recent studies show they’re increasingly doing exactly that: According to Samba TV’s 2023 “State of Viewership” report, one in three Americans regularly watch a FAST provider, even as Nielsen reports that viewership of linear TV in 2023 dropped below 50% of American households for the first time ever.

That shift to FAST is growing because subscription platforms have become too fragmented and too expensive, and the vast majority of content is unoriginal and homogenous. According to a Financial Times study, it now costs more to have access to the top streaming services ($87 per month) than cable ($83), dispelling the idea that streaming is more cost-effective.

FAST wants to be the format that capitalizes on subscription-based streaming’s shortcomings — and it looks to be working. Three FAST services — the Roku Channel, Pluto TV and Tubi — have collectively surpassed the monthly viewership figures for all but two of the top cable networks in the U.S., per Nielsen data.

Some platforms are beginning to catch on and making moves toward FAST. Amazon is one of them, having recently announced its Fire TV channels app, which will give its customers access to over 400 FAST channels. In 2019, it also founded its own FAST channel, Freevee, to exist alongside its subscription-based Amazon Prime Video.

Plus, Netflix is confident viewers no longer have an aversion to ads, as demonstrated by its new ad-supported subscription model. So, it’s clear media executives are aware of the rise of FAST, and that whoever acts the quickest will be first to cash in on the growing number of consumers who prefer the format.

But even on its current trajectory, FAST is likely to replace subscription-based models as the preferred viewing option by 2030.

The “great unsubscribe“ rush of 2022 was a sign of things to come. While industry experts debated what the root causes could be, it was clear viewers would rather spend their $87 elsewhere.

From the execs’ perspective, a strong FAST offering would help capture the growing market seeking out free content, and the additional income through ads could help mitigate pay disputes in the post-strike industry landscape.

Ultimately, I think the future of TV will be a combination of on-demand and scheduled programming provided through FAST services. And this future isn’t decades down the track — it's more likely to come to fruition in the next 5 to 10 years.

Now it’s time for TV masterminds to embrace that change and maximize their chance at making FAST better than ever.

Paul Epstein exec produced Peacock’s 2022 true-crime series “Who Killed Robert Wone?” and has worked with Discovery, MSNBC and the History Channel. His landmark work is the Old West docudrama series “Into the Wild Frontier,” currently airing on INSP, and he is behind such titles as “The Men Who Built America” and “The Apprentice USA.”

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