May 16, 2023

Did you know Tubi is a Fox Corp company?

You may or may not know but this week is the prom of TV advertising sales – and we’re watching FOX very closely.

This week marks the start of “upfronts season.” It’s when media execs pitch their shows and channels to advertising execs and try to get them to pledge chunks of their ad budgets “upfront” to lock in their sponsorships.

Normally, FOX leads their event with Fox News. But this year...yeah, they can’t exactly do that. Thanks to multiple lawsuits about the network’s election misinformation, Fox News is having a bit of an image crisis now.

So that’s why they’re heavily promoting Tubi, the popular content streaming service they bought back in 2020. Tubi is a key part of their strategy to keep Fox News funded.

When Fox Corp bought Tubi in 2020, CEO Lachlan Murdoch said:

“Tubi will immediately expand our direct to consumer audience and capabilities and will provide our advertising partners with more opportunities to reach audiences at scale. Importantly, coupled with the combined power of FOX’s existing networks, Tubi provides a substantial base from which we will drive long term growth in the direct to consumer arena.”

Let us translate that for you: Tubi is designed to be the “brand safe” place for FOX Corp to send advertisers to when they flee Fox News.

And that’s exactly what’s happening now.

This year, Fox is putting Tubi front and center at the upfronts. As Lachlan Murdoch said on a recent Fox earnings call, “We’re looking forward to Tubi being a central part of our upfront negotiations.”

There’s one way for us to throw a wrench in that plan: spread the word that Tubi is a Fox company — and post all about how you won’t be watching it.

This week is a critical week to do that.

Advertisers commit enormous amounts of money (we’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars) at the upfronts. If they see controversy coming, they’ll back out.

Let’s drive home the point that Tubi is just a Fox by another name. We can’t let this switcheroo allow Fox to escape accountability for spreading hate and lies.

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Hugs,

Claire and Nandini