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Today Substack announced it’s launching a Substack TV app for Apple TV and Google TV, the latest step in its yearslong quest to become a social app. It will support both video posts and livestreams, and it’ll have a “For You” section for recommendations. Eventually, the app will also support things like audio posts and multiple shows per publication. It sounds, essentially, like the YouTube app, though Substack is sure going to do its damndest to make you think this is something groundbreaking.
“I’m excited to report the Substack revolution will be televised,” Jim Acosta, who now hosts a daily news show on Substack after leaving CNN a year ago, said in the company’s announcement. “This is a game-changing moment for the rise of independent media. Substack has proven that legacy media consumers are not only searching for fresh alternatives; they are finding them.”
Grandstanding aside, newsletters continue to be big business. Earlier this week, Tyler Denk, CEO of Substack competitor Beehiiv — which has become the preferred alternative for writers who don’t like Substack’s 10% cut of earnings or its openness to Nazis — told Reuters his company expects annual revenue to double to $50 million this year. The platform now has “more than 40,000 monthly active users, including nearly 15,000 paying subscribers, with roughly one in seven new writers arriving from Substack,” though those numbers pale in comparison to Substack’s 50 million active users, of which 5 million pay for subscriptions.
Oh wow we’re pivoting to video!!! Imagine that!!!!
— Jaya Saxena (@jayasaxena.com) January 22, 2026 at 12:36 PM
[sounding the battle-worn “pivot to video” media-worker doom klaxon] SUBSTACK PIVOT TO VIDEO
— Dave Infante (@dinfontay.com) January 22, 2026 at 12:23 PM
Booting up Substack TV to watch a six-hour documentary on race science
— Casey Newton (@caseynewton.bsky.social) January 22, 2026 at 12:37 PM
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