Flash boosts its live line-up

News Corp Australia’s world-first local and international news streaming service, Flash, is adding a further two heavyweight media brands to its on-air line-up.

Chief executive officer of Flash, Kayo and BINGE, Julian Ogrin. Picture: Foxtel/Brett Costello

News Corp Australia’s world-first local and international news streaming service, Flash, is adding a further two heavyweight media brands to its on-air line-up, as part of a push to satisfy customer demand for more live news sources under the one banner.

Foxtel-owned Flash, which launched in October 2021, already houses some of the world media’s most respected sources on its aggregation platform, including BBC World News, Bloomberg TV, CNN International, FOX News Channel, France 24, Al Jazeera and Sky News Australia.

From March 1, NBC News Now and MSNBC News will feature on Flash, boosting the streaming service’s suite of products to over 25 global and local news sources.

The addition of MSNBC and NBC News Now to Foxtel and Flash forms part of the multi-

year partnership between the Foxtel Group and NBCUniversal (NBCU) announced at the end of 2022.

The investment was prompted by “insights” from subscribers over the past 18 months, with the vast majority of viewers expressing a clear preference for live news channels.

“Our big insight during 2022 was that over 85 per cent of Flash viewing is live channels,” said the chief executive officer of Flash, Kayo and BINGE, Julian Ogrin.

“What that tells us is that we should focus our continuing investment in Flash on channel and source diversity.”

As part of the “re-imagining” of Flash, Mr Ogrin said the service will move to more automated curation, and news source programming supported by the platform’s technology and operations team.

“Like any good start-up, we adjust and evolve,” he said.

Mr Ogrin also announced that Flash executive director Kate de Brito, and James Law, the head of editorial, will be leaving the service.

There will also be a small reduction in the overall staff headcount at Flash, Mr Ogrin said.

News Corp (publisher of The Australian) has a 65 per cent stake in the Foxtel Group; the remaining 35 per cent is owned by Telstra.