The dumbest new smart TV trend: Exclusive content

Last month, celebrity chef Tom Colicchio debuted a new show with a decidedly more relaxed vibe than Top Chef. While Bravo’s hit cooking series casts Colicchio as an imposing head judge, Tom Colicchio’s The Pantry has him palling around with fellow chefs (and Liev Schreiber, for some reason), mixing drinks while they prepare their favorite recipes.

The most notable thing about The Pantry, though, is that you can’t watch the latest episodes without a Vizio TV. This week, Vizio announced that the second season will be exclusive to its WatchFree+ streaming service, which is only available on its own televisions. (The first five episodes streamed on a site called Spirits Network.)

Should you buy a Vizio TV just to watch this show? Of course not. Vizio may dress up Tom Colicchio’s The Pantry as exclusive content, but it’s really just part of a trend in which TV makers partner with marketers on low-effort reality chum, whose primary purpose is to peddle products or advertise a partnering brand. The hope is not so much that you’d seek out these shows on purpose, but that maybe you’ll stumble into them while aimlessly clicking through your TV’s labyrinthine menu system.

A “non-interruptive opportunity”

Tom Colicchio’s The Pantry isn’t the first instance of Vizio tying marketer-driven content to its televisions.

In 2022, it launched a lifestyle and cooking show with Tori Spelling, touting its “branded content integrations from Mattel, Hilton and Party City.” While the 10-episode run was originally exclusive to Vizio TVs, it eventually made its way to Tubi.

Since then, Vizio has been working directly with brands to produce new content for its smart TVs. Last year, it partnered with BetMGM on a food and entertainment tips series called 3 Pointers, the announcement of which barely discussed the actual show and instead fixated on the marketing potential. (One barely decipherable line from the press release: “Each episode features the BetMGM brand integration organically at the content level, resulting in an authentic, non-interruptive opportunity for BetMGM to connect with audiences holistically.”)

Vizio presumably knows people won’t go looking for this content on their own, which is why the same press release describes how Vizio’s ad targeting system can thrust said content in front of viewers. That includes snooping on users’ viewing habits, then using heavy home screen placement and auto-playing video ads to bring in some eyeballs.

Soon after, Vizio launched an entire studio dedicated to this approach, leading to shows such as Clean Break (produced with a mysteriously-unnamed “top manufacturer of quality household products”). Tom Colicchio’s The Pantry is an extension of those efforts, and the marketing angle is no less overt: A key element of the show is a “Shop While You Watch” system that fills the screen with interactive purchase prompts for the ingredients Colicchio and crew are using.

Other TV makers have started embracing their role as marketers as well. In 2022, LG started producing a series about lesser-known college rivalries as part of a broader marketing partnership with the NCAA, exclusive to its LG Channels streaming service. (To LG’s credit, that show is now on its third season, which at least suggests some commitment to the content.) And this week, Samsung announced a partnership with Mattel on three exclusive channels for its TV Plus service, featuring content “inspired by” Barbie, Hot Wheels, and other Mattel toy lines. So much for the line between advertising and entertainment in children’s programming.

It’s just marketing

All of this TV-exclusive programming would be more upsetting if the content was of high value. No one should have to buy a specific TV or streaming device just to watch a particular movie or show, and most streamers have realized making their content widely available is better for business. (That includes Apple, which brought its Apple TV+ service to all the major streaming platforms despite rumors of hardware exclusivity.)

But free, ad-supported streaming services—particularly those built into smart TVs—operate under a different reality. They have thrived not by virtue of having the best content or slickest interfaces, but through their mere existence as low-effort, default sources of free TV. Samsung said last year its TV Plus app was on 535 million devices worldwide (including Samsung phones), and that viewership was up 60 percent year-over-year. Vizio says WatchFree+ is the second most-watched ad-supported service on its platform, presumably behind only YouTube.

In this system, exclusive programming needn’t win awards or be sought after by viewers. It just has to be in the right place at the right time to extract some incremental marketing value. TV makers have all the necessary mechanisms to make that happen, even if it’s not must-see TV.

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Streaming Devices, Streaming Media