Work · Case study
The Hill FAST channel
Supporting The Hill's FAST channel inside the Nexstar digital video portfolio. Politics-focused programming, delivered as a 24/7 free, ad-supported channel across the major FAST aggregators.
Overview
The Hill is one of the most-read political news brands in the US. The FAST channel translates that into a 24/7 linear streaming format that lives on the same FAST aggregators where viewers watch sports, news, and entertainment. My role on this is the digital-video product partnership: how the channel gets built, distributed, and improved as a streaming product.
What the work covers
- Programming structure that suits a 24/7 linear politics channel without becoming repetitive on quiet news days
- Metadata and EPG behavior so the channel appears correctly in every FAST partner's grid
- Operational support for stream availability, schedule changes, and breaking news inserts
- Coordination across Nexstar's digital video infrastructure, the editorial side of The Hill, and the FAST distribution partners
Product decisions and trade-offs
- Politics as a 24/7 format is hard. The channel has to sustain in slow news cycles, not just thrive in fast ones. That shapes the programming model.
- Metadata as the front of the funnel. Viewers find the channel by browsing a grid. Whether they tap in is decided by program-level metadata long before anything plays.
- Operational reliability beats fancy features. A FAST channel that drops feed even briefly trains viewers not to come back. The work prioritized stability and clear support paths.
Outcomes
The Hill's FAST channel is part of the Nexstar digital video footprint, delivering politics programming alongside the local station apps and NewsNation. The infrastructure work means new brand-specific channels can plug into the same operating model when the company wants to launch them.
What I learned
Brand-specific FAST channels need their own programming logic. The defaults that work for general news don't always work for politics, sports, or culture verticals. The channel design has to start from the audience expectation.
Behind every FAST channel is a small ops team. The viewer sees a linear stream. The behind-the-scenes work to make that stream reliable is most of what makes it a viable product.