Beyond the memes, Tubi might be ‘the people’s streaming service’

Analysis

Is Tubi the “people’s streaming service”? It certainly feels more engaged with the viewer than big-name streamers, and I’ve recently found myself spending more time there than Netflix or Hulu. 

The free, ad-supported Tubi debuted in 2014, as sites like Netflix moved to original content. In 2020, Fox acquired the platform. And in the last few years, it’s found a community that’s bonded around Tubi’s wide-ranging selection of weird movies and old TV shows. (Now watching: Farscape, for no other reason than it was on Tubi.) 

In February, it aired one of the more memorable Super Bowlads, as viewers were tricked into believing they’d clicked out of the game and onto the platform. In April, the Onion spoofed its CEO and co-founder, Farhad Massoudi, who recently announced he’s stepping down, causing some concern among fans on social media. 

Tubi boasts more than 50,000 titles and has original content, likeBad Cat, in which an animated cat that looks a lot like Garfield swears and hangs out with other degenerate animals, and Titanic 666, in which people aboard a ship inexplicably called Titanic III meet demonic forces. Tubi is miles away from prestige TV, and that seems to be a draw for many viewers. 

Its horror selection is also pretty stacked, and that might be by design. 

Tubi’s chief marketing officer, Nicole Parlapiano, recently told Vulture that highlighting the fact that the site’s free wasn’t enough; she instead looked at how people on social media were engaging with the platform, and “found communities that were really engaged in horror on Reddit and pockets of TikTokers that were really into Black noir.” To promote Dead Hot, a new Vanessa Hudgens doc about witchcraft, Tubi marketed it to the WitchTok community.    

Black movies and originals are a big focus for Tubi, and its audience; its chief content officer told Vulture that “roughly half of our audience identifies as multicultural,” and that its Black Cinema category is one of the most popular. That’s reflected in a lot of the Tubi memes; Roy Wood Jr. posted a Tubi joke after the White House Correspondents Dinner. One fan called Tubi “boneless Netflix.” 

According to a February report, both Black and LGBTQ audiences grew more than 50 percent on Tubi in 2022. Crucially, a fan community has grown around Tubi that both promotes and roasts its content. Making fun of the quality of Tubi movies is its own subgenre: The #tubimoviesbelike tag has more than 891,000 views on TikTok. 

Why it matters

People are tired of Netflix’s declining quality and ill-advised business decisions; HBO Max, which will become Max on May 23, has shown it would rather cut costs than invest in creators.

Tubi feels more like a discovery tool than a place for appointment viewing, and that might be part of a bigger shift that’s happening right now. 

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