waterloo
Member
LG has put out a release saying LG Channels is past 5,000 channels globally and into a 37th country after the Poland rollout. Two of the ones that pushed it over the line in the US are called All Chewed Up and World Pup, which tells you roughly what the 5,000th channel looks like.
Channel count is a vanity number. Nobody scrolls 5,000 of anything. The figures in the same release that actually mean something are engagement up 30% in 2025 against 2024, and total viewing time up 45%. That is not a rounding error, that is people genuinely leaving it running. It also explains why every manufacturer is pushing this. Samsung and TCL run the same kind of service, and the reason isn't that any of them want to be broadcasters.
A FAST service on your own platform is the only place the set maker keeps the whole ad take and the whole viewing record. Every hour on LG Channels is an hour that isn't on Netflix, where LG earns nothing past the original sale of the panel. That is the strategy, and 45% growth says it is working.
Where it gets awkward is the interface. It sits in the launcher whether you want it or not, feeds rows onto the home screen, and on some sets the channel list mixes into the same guide as your real inputs. The service growing is fine. The service growing while being unremovable is a different conversation.
Does anyone here actually choose it, or is most of that growth TVs left on in the background?
Channel count is a vanity number. Nobody scrolls 5,000 of anything. The figures in the same release that actually mean something are engagement up 30% in 2025 against 2024, and total viewing time up 45%. That is not a rounding error, that is people genuinely leaving it running. It also explains why every manufacturer is pushing this. Samsung and TCL run the same kind of service, and the reason isn't that any of them want to be broadcasters.
A FAST service on your own platform is the only place the set maker keeps the whole ad take and the whole viewing record. Every hour on LG Channels is an hour that isn't on Netflix, where LG earns nothing past the original sale of the panel. That is the strategy, and 45% growth says it is working.
Where it gets awkward is the interface. It sits in the launcher whether you want it or not, feeds rows onto the home screen, and on some sets the channel list mixes into the same guide as your real inputs. The service growing is fine. The service growing while being unremovable is a different conversation.
Does anyone here actually choose it, or is most of that growth TVs left on in the background?
