This bonus episode of Ankler Agenda is presented by Roku.
Charlie Collier, president of Roku Media, looks forward to working with Fox again.
Collier, who served as Fox Entertainment CEO before joining Roku Media in 2022, made his first public comments on Fox Corp.’s $22 billion planned acquisition of Roku during a conversation with Ankler Media CEO and editor-in-chief Janice Min at Brand Innovators’ Showcase Stage at Armani Caffè at Cannes Lions on Monday.
“I’m excited the two companies have complementary strengths,” Collier said. “It will propel us to our long-term vision faster. We will operate as an independent company til close, so we are focused on making sure Roku keeps flying.”
The deal announcement marked an instant reordering of the streaming wars — round one: everyone chasing Netflix — toward a potential new phase: distribution wars. CEO and founder Anthony Wood‘s massive connected-TV layer sits between Hollywood’s apps and the viewers they’re trying to reach; Roku has more than 100 million streaming households — through which virtually every traditional streamer additionally distributes. As a result, Roku accounts for roughly half of all streaming in the U.S. today.
Collier compares Roku’s scale to the old-school value of sports in terms of driving audience. “The way you can tell what a broadcast executive is most confident about, or most excited about, is they’ll put it behind the NFL. Fast-forward to our home screen, and you’ve got 125 million people coming through our front door every day. We really do have almost Super Bowl-size audiences every day on Roku.”
A media conglomerate without a major streaming presence and saddled with ongoing linear assets, Fox now will have a platform to supercharge its own content, a widening stable that also includes Tubi, a creator division and hundreds of projects from vertical video player Holywater, which Fox invested in late last year.
Collier also answers some of the industry’s most existential questions today: how hits aren’t just found but discovered; why studios and streamers need their content and apps on Roku; and how Roku will stay competitive without being swallowed by Meta, Google and Amazon in the ad-dollar race.
“What’s happened in search and social is it’s gotten expensive, and incrementality is hard to find,” Collier said. “Well, they’re looking for alternatives, and they’re looking for incremental reach. And obviously, what we do on the big screen in the home, what we do with our reach, the fact that you can use the targeting, outcomes, and performance of search and social now on television, it’s a massive boost.”
Listen to Janice’s conversation with Collier in full above, or on our Ankler Agenda podcast feed.
