The battle for the future of TV is heating up, and is getting into the ring.

The tech giant on Tuesday said that it was launching an Instagram Reels app for connected TVs, with the app available on Amazon Fire TV devices starting today.

“One of the things that we’ve seen recently is that even without us building anything for TV, we were hearing in research that people were already mirroring their phone onto their TVs in order to watch Reels with their friends,” Tessa Lyons, Instagram’s VP of product, tells The Hollywood Reporter in an interview. “All signs have pointed to this being a thing that people wanted, and so what we’re trying to do with this move on Tuesday is to make it easier for people to enjoy Reels and creators they love in their living room on their big screen, with the people they care about.”

Instagram and Meta, of course, are true titans of the tech sector, and their inaugural TV app will have features meant to drive engagement on TV screens, like support for Blend, a feature that lets users blend your algorithm with friends or family for co-viewing; and support for channels and categories meant to enable search and thematic viewing.

The launch is a major shift in the entertainment ecosystem, especially when factoring in Meta’s power in the digital advertising space. Consider that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Wall Street analysts in October that Reels now has a $50 billion annual run rate. That is more ad revenue than Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, and NBCUniversal combined.

YouTube’s annual advertising run rate is $41 billion, and Reels got there without a dedicated TV app, until now.

And the company developed with the fact that people often have their phones in their hands, even when they are watching TV.

“One of the things that we found, my experience certainly, is that at night with my husband, when we get the kids to bed and we finish our work, we say that we’re going to watch TV together, we put something on, and we’re sitting there scrolling on our phones, watching Reels,” Lyons says. “We know that today, when people are watching TV, they also they often have their phone in hand, and so one of the things we’re interested in is, how can we make it easier to have a really seamless experience when you’re doing that right, whether that means that you’re sitting down with a friend or a family member, and you’re finding things that you want to watch together, how are you able to like quickly do that on your TV?

“So I think there’s a ton that we can do to bridge with mobile and also just help people have these really shared experiences with whoever they’re watching with, and what we’re starting with on Tuesday, we’re really proud of, but it’s also a first step,” she continues. “We know that there’s a lot of work to do to create a really compelling experience on TV, and the best way for us to do that is going to be to learn from how people are using it in the feedback that they give us.”

Channels and categories, both those algorithmically created and those that people search for, will spin up personalized programming around interests.

“For example, for me, I am really into the show Pluribus right now, so that’s something like my algorithm picked up and figured I was interested in. Another emerging interest for me right now has been Star Wars, because my kid is really into Star Wars, and so my algorithm didn’t didn’t pick up, but I was able to say, hey, I’m interested in Star Wars. So now, when I open Instagram on TV, there’s a Pluribus channel, there can be a Star Wars fan channel, ” Lyons says. “The creators behind these shows and the stars of these shows produce amazing content. When the episode is over and you’re like, I want more, how fun is it to open up the Instagram channel and see what [Pluribus creator] Vince Gilligan is saying about it.”

Lyons also notes that they believe the TV app could also help the burgeoning microdrama format boom.

“There’s a lot of amazing content that’s in the one to three minute zone,” she says. “And so we’re excited to see how we can use things like channels to gather up that content, whether it’s around a creator or around an interest, whatever it might be for people, so that they can see it on their TV.”

The launch is also likely to become a hot topic among media executives as the industry faces growing consolidation, with Netflix cutting a deal to acquire Warner Bros.

Netflix has made the argument that it competes for TV time with the likes of YouTube and TikTok, and noted YouTube’s growing domination of watch time on TV screens. The launch of Instagram on TV sets is likely to apply further pressure on linear TV and premium streaming, and may become another piece of evidence in Netflix’s case for why it wants to do the Warners deal.