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Instagram Brings Long-Form Video, Episodic Series, and Live TV to Its Living-Room App

Instagram for TV expands to Samsung sets and starts testing longer videos, multi-episode series, and live creator broadcasts on the big screen.

2026-06-25 · by Moe Ameen

What happened

On June 22, 2026, Instagram said it is expanding Instagram for TV and beginning to test content formats well beyond the short Reels the app launched with. According to TechCrunch and reporting from The Hollywood Reporter and TheWrap, the company will experiment with longer-form video, multi-episode series, and live creator broadcasts on the television — the first time Instagram has put Live on the big screen. The framing is explicit: Instagram wants to be something people watch on the couch, putting it in competition with streaming services and with YouTube for living-room attention.

The app itself reached more screens the same day. Instagram for TV, which first launched on Amazon Fire TV in December 2025 and expanded to Google TV in February 2026, is now available on Samsung Smart TVs from the 2020 model year and newer. The TV experience is organized around interest-based channels — curated feeds for topics like comedy, sports, music, and specific creators — so a group can find something to watch together rather than scrolling a personal feed.

The episodic push leans on a separate feature Instagram began rolling out earlier in June: "Series," which lets select creators on Instagram and Facebook group Reels into sequential episodes with a dedicated hub on their profile that viewers can tap through, save, or follow for updates. Instagram has not detailed monetization options for longer and episodic content. Casting also got attention: you can send Reels and items from your Saved tab from your phone to the TV, and the app now supports watching Stories on the larger screen. Treat the long-form, episodic, and Live formats as tests Instagram is starting, not finished products with confirmed availability.

Why it matters for creators

  • The big screen rewards longer watch sessions. If Instagram succeeds in moving viewing to the TV, the creators who already have longer and episodic content will have something to put there — and an early-mover advantage on a surface with thin competition.
  • Episodic "Series" changes how you plan content: a recurring, numbered show with a profile hub builds a returning audience in a way a one-off Reel never does. That is a format decision, not just a posting decision.
  • Live on TV makes a creator broadcast feel like appointment viewing in the living room, which raises the stakes (and the production value) for going live versus a quick phone stream.
  • Interest-based channels mean discovery on TV is topic-first, so staying in a clear, consistent niche matters more for getting surfaced to a couch audience than it does in a personalized phone feed.
  • This is Instagram directly contesting the screen YouTube has owned for years. More distribution surface for the same content is upside for creators — if they can produce enough of it in the right formats.

How to act on this with Kompozy

The catch in every "make long-form and episodic content" story is production: a numbered series demands a new, on-brand episode on a schedule, and most creators cannot hand-produce that on top of their feed. Kompozy is built for exactly that cadence. Persona HeyGen generates longer-form avatar-led video with auto-scenes and a consistent voice and face from your influencer persona pool, so you can stand up a recurring episodic show — episode after episode that actually looks and sounds like the same host — without filming each one. For the short surface that feeds discovery, Persona Shorts and Clipped Shorts turn the same source into vertical, captioned cuts.

Because the same content needs to live in more than one place, Kompozy then schedules and publishes the batch across all nine platforms in one pass — your Series episodes and their short-form trailers land on Instagram, plus YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and the rest where living-room and phone audiences both look. The result is one persona, one brief, one production run, fanned into a long-form episode for the TV test and the short clips that pull viewers toward it. You decide the show; the engine produces and ships the episodes.

Quick takeaways

  • Instagram (June 22, 2026) is testing long-form video, episodic series, and Live TV on its living-room app, expanding to Samsung TVs (2020+) alongside Fire TV and Google TV.
  • The "Series" feature, rolling out to select creators, groups Reels into sequential episodes with a profile hub viewers can follow.
  • Discovery on TV is organized around interest-based channels; you can cast Reels and Saved items from your phone and now watch Stories on the TV.
  • It is an explicit bid for the living room against YouTube and streaming services — treat the new formats as tests, not finished products.
  • Kompozy produces the recurring episodic and short-form video the move rewards, with one persona and brief, then publishes across nine platforms.

Frequently asked questions

What is Instagram for TV?

It is Instagram's living-room app, launched on Amazon Fire TV in December 2025 and now on Google TV and Samsung Smart TVs (2020 model year and newer). It organizes video into interest-based channels — comedy, sports, music, creators — and lets you cast Reels and Saved items from your phone and watch Stories on the big screen.

Is Instagram adding long-form and episodic video?

Instagram said on June 22, 2026 that it is beginning to test longer-form video, multi-episode series, and live creator broadcasts on its TV app. These are early experiments, not finished, broadly available features. The episodic push builds on the "Series" feature that lets select creators group Reels into sequential episodes with a profile hub.

Does this compete with YouTube?

Yes. Putting longer-form, episodic, and Live video on the television is an explicit bid for living-room viewing, the screen YouTube has dominated for years. Instagram is also positioning the app against streaming services for couch attention.

How can creators produce episodic content at this cadence?

A recurring series needs a new on-brand episode on a schedule, which is hard to film by hand. Kompozy generates longer-form avatar-led video (Persona HeyGen) with a consistent persona, plus short captioned cuts (Persona Shorts, Clipped Shorts), then schedules and publishes across nine platforms — so one production run yields the episode and its short-form trailers.

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