Netflix just branded a set top box

France’s Free teams up with Stranger Things to turn telco hardware into fan merch.

Black Friday is coming and the Streaming Made Easy deal isn’t just a discount. It’s a way to turn the newsletter you read into the strategy resource you need. More on that next week 👀

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Streaming Made Easy is 3 years old 🥳

292 editions later, the mission’s still the same. You don’t need 5000-word essays, vague insights or endless debates about what’s going on in European Media & Entertainment. You need clarity. You need context. You need actionable insights built on 20+ years of operational and strategic experience in this industry. And you deserve to read about agents of change to inform and inspire your own strategy.

Did I do everything perfectly? Probably not. Did I give it everything? Absolutely.

Going from one edition a week to three has been intense but you made it worth it. To everyone who upgraded, subscribed and shared: you’ve been my compass this year.
Now, I’d love your input.

Take a few minutes to share your ideas (by replying to this email) about how you would like to see me grow SME.

Thank you for showing up every week ❤️ Year 4, here we go ✌️

🍥 M6+ turns free TV into anime HQ

Naruto, One Piece, Dragon Ball, Hunter x Hunter… M6+ just opened a dedicated Anime corner (over 2,500 episodes, 1,000 hours, and 50 iconic series) all free to stream, in partnership with French streamer, Animation Digital Network (ADN).

This fits perfectly the super aggregation plays made by French broadcasters this past year.

Naruto and friends now sit next to French entertainment hits, sports and news. For M6+, this move pulls in younger viewers who’ve grown up on digital, not on linear TV. It’s a smart way to stretch the brand beyond replay TV. For ADN, it’s an opportunity to upsell to the average 2.9M daily streamers on M6+.

🍟 Prime Video x FAST

Why the fries emoji? Amazon just launched FAST in FRITES which stands for FR, IT, ES in Amazon lingo (my husband used to be an Amazonian 😊). Between 6 and 8 channels per country, powered by Sony and more partners to follow by year’s end (including my friends at Tennis Channel).

I’ve been waiting for this launch for years. Why? Each European market needs more Free streaming players in the mix. So far, channel owners have been cautious about launching channels in these markets (heavy localisation needed, less mature ad market vs UK & DE). A new entrant like Amazon should entice both local and global players to invest more in these countries.

🌐 Growth isn’t always where you think it’ll be

One of Wild Vision’s creators gained 10K new followers in a single month on … MSN of all places.

How? By syndicating their YouTube content: no extra uploads, no new shoots. Here’s the exact playbook.

🔎 Super Search

Meet Liberty Global’s AI-powered content discovery feature which has officially launched with VodafoneZiggo in the Netherlands, following its debut at Sunrise Switzerland earlier this year.

Developed in collaboration with Infosys and WongDoody, the feature brings conversational, cross-platform search to set-top boxes, pulling results from linear, on-demand and streaming catalogues. Built on Google’s Gemini, SuperSearch doesn’t just answer voice commands. It interprets intent, surfaces context-rich results and suggests follow-up prompts. It’s a rare case where AI serves a tangible, daily use case rather than a PR headline.

📖 Read the full blog by Chris van der Linden, Director Entertainment Platforms at Liberty Global, to learn how SuperSearch went from concept to reality.

🎤 For the SME community based in Amsterdam, you’ll get to hear from Chris directly about LG’s AI use cases in tandem with Martin Prins from Media Distillery who’s been embracing AI long before it was even a thing.

🎟️ Grab your ticket here (if you haven’t done so already).

💷 Comcast × ITV

Comcast, which owns Sky, is reportedly preparing a £1.6 billion bid for ITV’s broadcast assets. ITV has confirmed preliminary talks with Sky.

If approved, a Sky-ITV combo would control over 70 % of the UK TV ad market, an unthinkable concentration under usual competition rules. Yet in today’s economic & media climate, Comcast’s pitch to the government could be: “If you want to salvage UK television, you’ll have to let us consolidate it.”

My take? This isn’t just about ITV. It’s about redefining “national champions” in an era where domestic scale alone struggle to compete with global platforms. The UK could end up choosing between protecting competition or preserving local players by looking beyond the TV ad market and comparing these players with their true competitors: digital platforms from Netflix/Disney+ to TikTok & YouTube.

A choice every European market may face soon like France with 2028 opening up a new opportunity for the RTL Group to find a seller for M6 (after the failed merger with TF1 back in 2022 which was blocked for anti-competitive reasons).

Now let’s assume the deal goes through, what does that fix for TV? My biggest concern is that consolidation doesn’t often mean innovation. It feels more like a defensive move, one that will create a bigger local player but one still unable to transform and grab those digital ad dollars the same way YouTube and others do.

Thoughts? The comment section is yours.

🇵🇹 StreamTV Europe 2026 - Lisbon calling

Registration is open for StreamTV Europe 2026. Use my code for a 10% discount (you’ll get to spend on some Portuguese delicacies instead!).

We’ll be there with a SME Live - Lisbon Edition taking place on April 13th (morning).

If you want to share your experience on how to own the living room in 2026 and beyond, ping me. I’m looking for streamers, CTV platforms and telcos to showcase how they navigate this highly demanded but fragmented ecosystem.

📈 Les Echos breaks its YouTube record

Big month for Les Echos: 3.9 million views in October, up 164 % YoY, with viewers staying an average of 5 min 34 s on 10-minute videos. That’s serious engagement for a legacy news brand.

The growth proves that audiences still crave explanatory journalism when it’s visual, smartly paced and relevant. The team’s mix of graphics, original reporting and data storytelling is paying off.

Les Echos is building the blueprint for how European publishers can scale on YouTube without chasing trends. Could depth be the new clickbait?

📺 Free × Netflix: a Stranger Freebox

Free just launched a Stranger Things–themed Freebox Ultra, the first time Netflix has ever put its name on an operator’s hardware. The box borrows the show’s design codes and is rolling out across Free’s 266 stores across France.

It’s a clever move. Instead of another marketing tie-in, this feels like a real collaboration, one that turns a piece of telco equipment into something fans actually want to see and touch.

This is bundling taken to the next level. This is Telco’s edge over CTV.

Discover the full execution here.

💬 Question time:

Telcos are getting creative from KPN’s Stranger Things screenings to Free’s Stranger Freebox.

Who else turns fandom into strategy best? Share in the comment section or hit reply.

That’s it for today. Enjoy your weekend and see you on Tuesday for a Deep Dive edition of Streaming Made Easy Premium.