In two months, nearly a million new subscribers joined ABS-CBN’s aggressively expanding digital realm on YouTube as it also made its streaming app, iWantTFC free for all.
A new milestone showed up on ABS-CBN’s record books as its main entertainment channel on YouTube, ABS-CBN Entertainment finally breaches the 35-million mark.
The network’s entertainment division’s official YouTube channel previously hit 34-million subscribers in May. Such a recent feat marked a gigantic leap from the channel’s ‘major’ milestone in September, the previous year when its subscribers grew to 30 million.
The channel has since then become the number one official account by a TV network in Southeast Asia.
Lifetime views of the channel’s uploaded videos have also skyrocketed to nearly 43 billion, adding almost five billion views since September 2020.
Similar growth is evident in the Network’s various YouTube channels, including Star Cinema, whose subscriber and lifetime views grew from 3.3 million to 4.56 million and 1.27 billion to 1.36 billion lifetime views, respectively.
During those time, Star Music, on the other hand, gained more than a million subscribers and 400 million more views. Nearly 700,000 new users subscribed to The Squad Plus’s official channel, while lifetime views exploded from 200 million to almost 300 million.
Interestingly, these accomplishments reflect ABS-CBN’s ongoing efforts to solidify its presence on streaming platforms like YouTube.
It has recently made its streaming service, iWantTFC, free for all. The move allows users to access the contents even without a subscription.
ABS-CBN’s tremendous subscriber-base growth can point to the growing online viewership of some of its programs. FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano, for instance, recently experienced a surge of its concurrent viewership on Kapamilya Online Live.
There is a strong indication that this surge in subscribers and views will ensue in the coming months and years as ABS-CBN shifts its focus on establishing itself as a dominant entity in the digital world. Thus, it could only strengthen the Network’s bid to turn its digital platforms more profitable as it tries to create new revenue streams.
These efforts will eclipse the network’s attempt to maximize iWantTFC’s profitability in making free the service for all; in the hopes of inviting more advertisers. However, it remains debatable if such a move will open a more profitable revenue stream for the Network.
ABS-CBN lost its license to free TV broadcast last year, following its 1995 franchise expiration and Congress’s denial of its new franchise application. The Network has since shifted its focus on expanding its online and digital reach.
