Your Own 24/7 Streaming TV Channel,
Without Building a TV Station.
Free ad-supported streaming TV — FAST, if you’ve heard the acronym — is the fastest-growing corner of television right now. They’re the linear channels people flip through on smart TVs and streaming devices: always on, free to watch, and paid for by ads that play during the breaks.
Most of those channels aren’t run by networks. They’re run by organizations that had a deep library of video sitting in a folder and decided to put it to work. A church with ten years of sermons. A manufacturer with a training and how-to library. A tourism board with destination content. A local outlet with more stories than airtime.
That’s what Sidestreet Streaming Channels is for. We build and run the channel. You bring the library (or we help you make one), and we turn it into a programmed, always-on channel with its own schedule, branding, and ad breaks.
How a Library
Becomes a Channel
It starts with programming, and that’s where our news background earns its keep. A channel isn’t a playlist on shuffle. It needs a schedule that makes sense at 7 a.m. and at 11 p.m., blocks and series, bumpers and branding between shows, and enough variety that someone who lands on it stays a while.
Then the technical build. We prepare your video to broadcast specs, add captions, assemble the schedule, and stand up the channel in the cloud so it streams around the clock without anyone babysitting it. Ad breaks are stitched in on the server side, which means viewers see clean, broadcast-style transitions instead of a buffering wheel, and ad blockers don’t skip them.
From there you choose where it lives. It can run on your own website and apps, and we prepare it to the technical requirements the major FAST platforms ask for, so it’s ready when you pitch distribution.
Then we keep it fed. New content gets folded into the schedule, the lineup gets refreshed, and you get reporting on what people actually watched.
What We Provide
Channel Programming & Scheduling
A real 24/7 schedule with blocks, series, and dayparts, built by people who’ve programmed television, not a random playlist.
Learn moreChannel Branding & Packaging
Logo bug, bumpers, promos, and lower thirds so the channel looks like a channel, plus the brand system to keep it consistent.
Learn moreServer-Side Ad Insertion
Ad breaks stitched into the stream itself for smooth, TV-style transitions, with room for your own sponsors, house promos, or programmatic ads.
Learn moreVideo Prep & Captioning
Your library cleaned up, encoded to broadcast specs, and captioned so it meets accessibility expectations and the requirements distribution platforms ask for.
Learn moreWeb, App & Platform Delivery
Run the channel on your site and apps, and get it technically ready for submission to the FAST platforms when you’re ready to pursue distribution.
Learn moreNew Content & Ongoing Operation
Fresh episodes, seasonal programming, and schedule updates handled monthly, with viewing reports that show what’s working.
Learn moreCommon Questions
Straightforward answers to what we hear most from Sidestreet streaming channels clients.
FAST stands for free ad-supported streaming television. These are always-on linear channels people watch on smart TVs, streaming sticks, and apps, the way they used to flip through cable. They’re free to viewers and paid for with ads. You’ve probably scrolled past dozens of them on your TV without knowing they had a name.
More than a weekend’s worth, less than you think. A schedule can loop a well-programmed library, so a hundred hours of solid content is a workable starting point for many organizations. If you’re short, we can help you fill gaps with new production or by repackaging long content into shorter segments.
We can build the channel to the technical specs those platforms require and help you put together the pitch. Whether a platform carries a channel is their call, and we won’t pretend otherwise. Plenty of organizations run their channel on their own site and apps first, build an audience, and approach the platforms with real numbers.
It can, but we’d be lying if we promised it would. Ad revenue depends on viewership, and viewership depends on the content. For a lot of our clients, the bigger win is reach — a sermon library or a training catalog that’s watched every day instead of sitting in an archive. If revenue is the main goal, we’ll talk honestly about whether your content is likely to get there.
It’s one of the best fits. Most churches with a media ministry have years of services, teaching series, and music sitting in an archive. A channel turns that into something people can find on their TV any hour of the day, and it’s a natural next step after live streaming.
Anywhere. The channel itself runs in the cloud, so your viewers can be anywhere. Our team is based in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and we work with clients throughout the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, Florida, New Orleans, New York, and beyond — the full list of areas we serve is at the bottom of this page.
0
Contract clients who stayed 1+ year and had a negative ROI — zero, ever
400%+
E-commerce revenue growth for a Columbia-area manufacturer
150%
Social media engagement boost for a Carolinas church
15+
Years of senior-level marketing, web, and production work
Let’s Put Your Library
On the Air.
Tell us what video you have and who you want watching it. We’ll tell you honestly whether a channel makes sense, and what it takes to launch one.
Start the conversation