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This is what a gold rush looks like: With channels dedicated completely to “Heartland,” “The Rifleman,” and individual “Big Brother” 24/7 camera feeds, there are approximately 1,683 unique, free, ad-supported streaming television channels in the U.S. as of September 15, according to Stream Metrics. According to us, that’s a few too many. But we got here so quickly because ad revenue is more lucrative than subscriptions — and because creating a Fast channel is, well, fast.

Frequency, a company dedicated to the care and feeding of Fast channels, recently launched 50 channels for a customer on a major distributor. CEO Blair Harrison wouldn’t name the companies, citing confidentiality agreements, but told IndieWire that completing all 50 took “about a month,” with most of that time going to the contracts. Barring legal complications, he said, his company can stand up a Fast channel in about a week.

A second source from a major Fast...

If you thought there was a part of our lives that Amazon does not (yet) control, let’s talk about the company’s stranglehold on streaming. We don’t mean Prime Video — and we certainly don’t mean FreeVee.

For more than a decade, the blandly named Amazon Web Services (Aws) has been a crucial component for almost every media company. Aws does nothing exciting, yet it controls — well, almost everything. Cloud computing, storage, general computing, content delivery networks, ad tech, and more for a total of 190 services that serve as the underpinnings for life as we know it. And as the streaming business moves toward an ad-supported future, Amazon’s web services are poised to become much, much bigger than Amazon.com itself.

Need to transcode a large movie, something that used to cost thousands of dollars a pop? Aws does that for a buck and change. Ensure that Netflix...

Want to get people’s attention? Suggest, as a Business Insider report did this week, that Giant Tech Company might buy Another Really Big Tech Company. It might be a stretch to say that Netflix (221.6 million subscribers) and Roku (61.3 million users) are beloved, but household names tend to vest the public in the narrative of multi-billion-dollar deals.

Wall Street is less inclined to flights of fancy. Sure, it would be exciting if Giant Tech Company with Giant Problem (that’s Netflix) could resolve some issues by purchasing Another Really Big Tech Company With Smaller Problems — but in a Wednesday newsletter note, Wells Fargo analysts called a potential Roku acquisition by Netflix “highly unlikely at this point.”

Our stable of Wall Street media analysts only got more sour from there. Michael Nathanson of MoffettNathanson told IndieWire he gives Netflix zero chance of buying Roku. Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners was more...