Your AI Christmas short could air on cable this December. Read the rules first

By Tuesday morning, a day after AFRO TV opened submissions for its new AI film festival, the public gallery already had a dozen Christmas films in it. There was The Camel Who Knelt, Grandpa's Chair, Midnight Choir, Secret Santa Thief and a short called Ham Situation, each with its own key art and each credited to an anonymous alias, plus one music video. We can't tell who made them, because the festival hides every entrant's name by design. What they show is that people are already making work for a cable premiere that is ten weeks away.

The festival is Cue Film Fest, and its first edition, Cue Christmas '26, takes free entries until Friday 20 November. AFRO TV, the Orlando channel that has programmed Black film on Comcast Xfinity since 2019, will air a live awards show on Saturday 12 December at 7pm Eastern from its own theater, with the official selection screened in two blocks and Best Film announced last. Yves Bollanga, the network's CEO, put the pitch this way in Monday's release: "AI video generators are democratizing filmmaking, putting remarkable new tools in the hands of anyone with a story to tell." He said the festival puts filmmakers and "the companies building the technology behind their work" on the same stage "in front of a national audience".

That is a real slot for AI-made work, and a free one. But the release every outlet is carrying is already out of date against the festival's own rules, and the rules are where the useful detail lives.

The release and the rulebook don't match

Monday's Business Wire release, syndicated by Black PR Wire and a string of local TV news sites, asks for Christmas shorts of 90 seconds to three minutes and says a selection committee will pick ten finalists. The terms and conditions on cuefilmfest.com, which we read on Tuesday, say something else. Films run 2:00 to 6:00, there is a second format for AI music videos tied to a Spotify track, and the official selection is 20 works, not ten. The terms are the document you agree to when you enter, so write to those.

• Item: Running time. Press release, Mon 5 Oct: 1:30 to 3:00; Festival terms, read Tue 6 Oct: 2:00 to 6:00, six minutes maximum
• Item: Formats. Press release, Mon 5 Oct: AI short films; Festival terms, read Tue 6 Oct: Short film or AI music video
• Item: Who picks the selection. Press release, Mon 5 Oct: A selection committee; Festival terms, read Tue 6 Oct: 50% committee, 25% public ratings, 20% likes, 5% views
• Item: Size of the selection. Press release, Mon 5 Oct: Ten finalists; Festival terms, read Tue 6 Oct: 20 works across both formats
• Item: Prize amounts. Press release, Mon 5 Oct: Four cash awards, no figures; Festival terms, read Tue 6 Oct: Cash award on each, no figures, presenters to be announced
• Item: Entry fee. Press release, Mon 5 Oct: Not stated; Festival terms, read Tue 6 Oct: Free for this first edition
• Item: License. Press release, Mon 5 Oct: Not stated; Festival terms, read Tue 6 Oct: Non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, two years from submission

One clause in the terms still repeats the old version, saying the committee chooses a ten-film selection, while the section on selection describes the ranked 20-work process. The festival hasn't said which one governs. We've treated the detailed process as current, and it's the first question we would put to the organizers.

Likes count toward getting on air

Here is the part most creators will miss. Once the submission window closes, each format is ranked by four numbers: 50% from the selection committee's ratings, 25% from public ratings, 20% from likes and 5% from views. Audience response is 45% of the shortlist. The top ten short films plus the top music video become the film selection, the top ten music videos become the music selection, and all 20 are announced on Tuesday 1 December.

Winners are then split evenly between the public and a three-member jury, with viewers aged 13 and up scoring each film from zero to five without a subscription. The festival says it fingerprints devices and networks to stop duplicate ballots, and scores stay hidden until the live reveal. Jurors haven't been named. For a maker, the practical reading is simple. Approved entries go live in the gallery straight away, so an entry posted in October has six weeks to collect ratings, and the people who already follow your work are part of the selection.

The cash awards have no amounts yet

The release lists four cash awards: Best Film, Best Image, Best Sound and Best Music Video. No amount appears anywhere, not in the release, on the home page, in the terms or on the partners page. Each award card on the site reads "To be announced" where the presenting company should be. The partners page, meanwhile, offers those same awards to AI companies as sponsorships, including a presenting slot billed as "Cue Xmas '26 presented by [Company]" that comes with handing out Best Film.

So the size of the prizes looks like it depends on who signs up as a sponsor, so until the festival publishes a figure, treat them as amounts not yet announced. The partners page does draw a line on judging. It says partnerships "support the festival experience, not the outcome of any award", and it tells a presenting sponsor plainly that the role comes "without a seat at the judging table". That is a cleaner commitment than some vendor-funded contests make, and it is in writing.

How national is national TV?

AFRO TV sits on Comcast Xfinity channel 1623 and streams on NOW TV, Comcast's streaming bundle, which listed the channel when it launched on Tuesday 23 May 2023. The network also lists Roku, and the show will be carried on its Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok accounts. Comcast launched AFRO on Saturday 19 January 2019 as one of the minority-owned channels it had committed to carry under its NBCUniversal merger conditions, and Multichannel News reported at the time that it would reach about eight million subscribers. That is a national footprint through one cable company, not every pay TV home.

The partners page quotes a "12M potential household reach", and its own footnote says that figure "describes potential distribution, not guaranteed ad views". We found no published viewing figures for the channel, so treat this as a broadcast credit and a promotional run, not a guaranteed audience. It also isn't the first time AI shorts have reached a TV screen. TCL premiered five generative AI shorts on its free streaming service, TCLtv+, in December 2024. What's new is an established linear channel giving open-call AI work a live prime-time ceremony.

What you sign when you hit submit

Filmmakers keep ownership of their films, the terms say. In return, entering grants AFRO TV a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license "for two years from the submission date" to broadcast and stream it, show it on the festival site and use clips and stills to promote the festival. Read as written, that license starts when you submit, not when you are selected, so it covers entries that never make the shortlist. Approved entries are also public immediately under an alias. No broadcast fee is mentioned, and because the license is non-exclusive, you can still take the film elsewhere.

The rules on how the film is made are stricter than the release suggests. A human has to author the concept, script or treatment and complete the final edit, and "a single unedited AI-generated clip is not eligible". Every entry includes a creative brief and a summary of your AI process, which is shown on air as a "Prompt Card" when your film is introduced. False information on that card can get you disqualified. You also confirm that your AI tools' terms allow commercial use of what they produced.

How to make the 20 November deadline

In practice, for anyone making work this week, the terms read like a checklist. Six points will decide whether your film gets through screening.

• Check your plan before you render, because the terms require commercial-use rights from every AI tool you used. They also ban watermarks, the logo some generators stamp into the picture, which rules out the free tiers of several video tools.
• Hit the broadcast spec on the entry master: 16:9, at least 1920 by 1080, H.264 High Profile, at least 4 Mbps, a constant 23.976 or 29.97 frames per second and stereo audio at -24 LKFS. You also need a 16:9 poster.
• Keep a process log while you work. You will need a short summary of your workflow for the Prompt Card, and you may be asked which jobs people did, from writing and editing to voice, music and color.
• Keep it clean for broadcast, which means no real person's face or voice without a signed release, AI copies included, and no copyrighted characters or brand logos. Your Santa has to be your own Santa, and your music has to be original or licensed for broadcast and streaming.
• Enter early and share the gallery link, because 45% of the ranking comes from ratings, likes and views, and an October entry has more time to build that score than a November one.
• Clear your diary for Friday 4 December, when selected films deliver broadcast files, SRT or SCC captions, stills and signed releases by then, and English subtitles are required if your film is in another language.

Friday 20 November is busy. Dubai's $1 million AI film award, which only accepts films made with ByteDance's Seedance and asks for five to seven minutes, closes the same day. A five-to-six-minute film fits both length windows, but read Dubai's own rules before sending one film to both, because Cue makes approved entries public straight away. And if Christmas isn't your genre, Cue says a Valentine's Day edition follows in February, with Easter, Mother's Day and Halloween after it. A cable channel that plans five AI festivals a year is asking for a lot of films. Its first one is open now.

Timeline

• Date: Sat 19 Jan 2019. What happened: AFRO launches on Comcast Xfinity under NBCUniversal merger commitments; Source: Multichannel News
• Date: Tue 23 May 2023. What happened: Comcast launches NOW TV with Afro in the live lineup; Source: Comcast press release
• Date: Thu 12 Dec 2024. What happened: TCL premieres five generative AI shorts on TCLtv+; Source: Ars Technica
• Date: Mon 5 Oct 2026. What happened: Cue Film Fest announced and submissions open; Source: Business Wire release
• Date: Tue 6 Oct 2026. What happened: 12 films and 1 music video already live in the gallery; Source: cuefilmfest.com
• Date: Fri 20 Nov 2026. What happened: Cue submissions close, no late entries; Dubai Seedance award also closes; Source: Cue terms; 1billionsummit.com
• Date: Tue 1 Dec 2026. What happened: 20-work selection announced and public voting opens; Source: Cue terms
• Date: Fri 4 Dec 2026. What happened: Selected films deliver broadcast files, captions and releases; Source: Cue terms
• Date: Sat 12 Dec 2026. What happened: Tool demos 2 to 5pm ET, live show 7pm ET, awards from 8:15pm ET; Source: cuefilmfest.com run of show
• Date: Sun 14 Feb 2027. What happened: Cue Valentine's Day '27, the next edition; Source: cuefilmfest.com

Sources and what is unconfirmed: the Business Wire release of 5 October as relayed by Black PR Wire; cuefilmfest.com home, terms, partners and gallery pages, read on 6 October; afrotainment.us; Multichannel News (2018 and 2019); Comcast's NOW TV launch release; Ars Technica on TCL; the 1 Billion Followers Summit award page. Prize amounts and sponsors haven't been published. We couldn't confirm which selection clause governs, who the jurors are, AFRO TV's actual viewership, which Xfinity package carries channel 1623, or who made the first gallery entries. We did not contact AFRO TV for this draft.