This leading global media conglomerate produces and delivers one of the industry’s most diverse and comprehensive portfolios of brands and content across television, film, and streaming platforms. It also operates multiple FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) channels across genres.

The challenge

The media company faced significant operational challenges in managing and maintaining channel scheduling. With a small, multitasking team overseeing every aspect of programming, ingest, and metadata management, handling schedules of dozens of FAST channels created a bottleneck. The team needed to:

• Manage 24/7 channel schedules with at least 150–200 hours of refreshed content every quarter.
• Resolve metadata inconsistencies, missing assets, and expired rights.
• Balance limited resources and low monetization economics, as most FAST operations teams also managed linear or VOD workflows.

The team needed a solution to drastically cut down manual scheduling time while enhancing consistency, scalability, and efficiency across multiple channels.

Working with Brian Briskman, a veteran FAST strategist and consultant, and Co-founder of Likewise Media Consultants, the company has implemented an automated scheduling workflow powered by Amagi Smart Scheduler.

“A FAST channel scheduler wears many hats. Every impurity in the upstream workflow — metadata errors, missing assets — flows down into scheduling. It’s the last lock before the ship sails.” – Brian Briskman, Co-Founder, Likewise Media Consultants.

The solution: Amagi Smart Scheduler

Amagi Smart Scheduler is an AI-driven channel programming solution that automates and optimizes 24/7 schedules using metadata, viewership patterns, and social signals. Purpose-built for content owners, broadcasters, and FAST channel operators, it streamlines channel management, minimizes manual effort, and reduces operational overhead.

Available as an advanced add-on for Amagi NOW — Amagi’s unified, cloud-native “industry cloud” platform that enables media organizations to modernize, expand, and monetize their content, including through the deployment of artificial intelligence-enabled solutions — Smart Scheduler empowers end-to-end efficiency and scalability.

Smart Scheduler’s intuitive calendar-based interface allowed the team to define programming blocks (e.g., “Pet Marathons” on Saturdays, “Action Movies” on Sundays) and apply metadata-driven filters to select relevant content.

Results

The implementation of Amagi Smart Scheduler delivered tangible results within two quarters:

• 75% reduction in scheduling time
• Potential for further optimization to 15 minutes per channel with a refined configuration.
• Consistent, error-free outputs, even with complex daypart requirements and asset limitations.

Beyond efficiency, the team is looking to track potential engagement and monetization improvements, as Smart Scheduler leverages social and audience data to determine optimal content sequencing.