Ros Atkins, Back From the Brink: Reimagining the Future of Television | Edinburgh TV Festival 2024
Words Spoken by Ros Atkins at the Edinburgh TV Festival 2024
Spoken at the Opening Session, Back From the Brink: Reimagining The Future of Television. Thank you to session partner, Broadcast. This is an edited version of Ros Atkins’ explainer examining the true state of the TV industry. You can find a full, cited transcript here.
Hello - great to be with you - thanks for joining us for this session -‘Back from the Brink: Reimagining The Future of Television’.
Now - as you may know, my job at BBC News is to explain complex subjects - often in short periods of time. And to start us off - the festival has set me a task - to explain the situation in which the UK TV industry finds itself.
In 13 minutes.
To a room full of people who know the subject inside out.
Followed by a panel of industry heavyweights.
I’ve had easier commissions. So for what it’s worth - here are a few thoughts from me - as someone on the outside looking in.
And I want to start in the early 2020s - a time when the TV industry was being heralded. The head of the British Film Commission declared: "We have embarked on a new golden age for film and TV’. And the industry did appear in rude health. It employed over 90,000 people. Producer revenues reached 6.8 billion. Up 36% in a decade. Not just that - TV viewing was helping to make the UK’s entertainment and media market the fourth largest in the world.
It looked like a golden age. But there were warnings.
John Landgraf, the Chairman of FX Networks, by his own admission, is not shy of making predictions. ‘2022 will be the high watermark,” he told us. "We’ve reached the peak of the Peak TV era”. In other words - it couldn’t go on like this.
And it didn’t. In 2023, the UK saw the steepest annual decline in broadcast TV audiences since records began. ITV declared the worst downturn in ad revenue in 15 years. The union Bectu declared a state of “emergency” in the industry. Commissions slowed. Work dried up. This didn’t look like a golden age. And we were offered a lot of reasons why this had happened.
A post-pandemic drop in viewing.
The writers and actors strike in the US.
Rising costs - affecting production and consumer spending.
And a UK economy that was struggling to grow.
No doubt - these were significant factors. And the industry was keen to offer reassurance. The CEO of marketing body Thinkbox predicted: “Once the economic pressures start to ease, TV will bounce back very quickly” This year - Julian Bellamy of ITV Studios promised: “The ad market will come back, there’s always a cyclical nature to it.” Ad markets are - sometimes - cyclical. Ad revenue has picked up this year. But - the digital revolution we’re living through has issued the media with plenty of one-way tickets. Not everything comes back to where it was.
And I’ve tried to understand this moment for UK television, I keep coming back to four major shifts. All of them interconnecting. All of them taking TV somewhere new.
The first is the shift in TV and video consumption. What people watch - and where they watch - are fundamentally changing.
Last year, Broadcast TV channels accounted for 62% of long-form programmes. That’s projected to be 28% by 2035. The BBC’s Tim Davie acknowledges: “A switch-off of broadcast will and should happen over time.” And already two types of platform are taking its place. Video on demand - streaming services. And video sharing platforms - like YouTube and Tiktok. Together, they make up at least 30% of viewing minutes across all devices in the UK. That is certain to go up.
Though not everything is growing at the same speed. In 2023, UK viewing hours for Netflix were flat. YouTube was up 32%. It’s closing in on Netflix - helped by greater access to YouTube via TVs. Former Disney exec Kevin Mayer describes YouTube as ‘the 800-pound gorilla in this space’. In part, because it’s a rival platform for programmes. But also because YouTube is part of a surge in content creators. And a surge in short-form video. The analyst Omar Oakes argues: ‘All media is being threatened by the ubiquity of shortform’. Others point to opportunities for TV in short form - and on YouTube.
But the broader point here - is that the internet hasn’t just transformed the distribution of TV and video - it’s transformed what we watch and who is making it. For me that’s the starting point to understanding what’s happening in this industry. And that shift in consumption connects directly to a second shift - the globalisation of TV.
As streaming and video sharing take more of the market - more content and distribution is controlled by a small number of international businesses. Amazon, Netflix, Disney, Apple, Google - based in America. And Tiktok, which has a Chinese parent company.
Of course, globalisation has significant upsides. Many more places for producers to pitch. The largest of stages for British content. Investment too. In 2022 - 86% of all investment into film and high-end TV production came from overseas - primarily from the US. Netflix says it invested close to 6 billion dollars in the UK between 2020 and 2023.
But some see the risks of globalisation too. Of marginalisation of British stories. Of British ideas becoming someone else’s IP. Of British media losing market share. The merits of globalisation are debated but what’s certain is that it’s happened. And to understand the consequences of this - and of the shift in consumption - I factored in a third shift… advertising’s digital transformation.
Last summer - Channel 4’s Ian Katz wrote to production companies about a slowdown in commissions. He told them the current situation was ‘cyclical’ - and that “normal service will resume soon. This week, Ian Katz told Broadcast that in the first half of this year “spending on original programmes is in line with pre covid levels”. But commissioning, of course, connects to revenue. And with advertising, there are long-term trends that pose challenges for broadcasters. The amount of money spent by advertisers in the UK in 2023 was over £36 billion. But of that total - online advertising - is over three-quarters of it - the highest percentage it’s ever been. TV advertising - is 13% - down nearly 9 percentage points in 12 months.
And we’ve seen this movie before. As Group M’s Kate Scott-Dawkins puts it: 'Advertising revenue has shifted to digital platforms from a range of media businesses. Now it's TV's turn.’ And on what can be done - Kate Scott Dawkins manages expectations. She says: ‘'TV companies may need to accept that their ad revenues from streaming, while being significant, won't match what linear once offered, at least in the near term.” Adding: “That era may be over…” And as broadcasters go in search of new revenue - who should be waiting for them? ‘Google and Amazon to LG and Samsung…(are all) competing for streaming ad revenue.' Across the media, the biggest beasts of the tech world - with their sophisticated ad technology - are taking the bulk of the ad market. That’s the context as business models in the TV industry are reshaped. And in advertising’s move to digital - in TV’s globalisation - in the shift in consumption - we see a fourth major shift - the centrality of technology.
Of course, technology has always mattered - but now it’s a dominant factor across the industry - from streaming platforms to production to ads - to, well, just about everything. And that requires investment. This year, BBC is spending £71 million on online & TV development. That’s 90 million dollars. Netflix has spent 1.4 billion dollars on technology in the first half of this year. UK streamers can point to rising user numbers, rising viewing hours, to new and improved products. But a truth remains. The need for ever more complex technology is increasing exponentially - not least because of AI. And the biggest global companies - with their vast resources - inevitably have an advantage.
Shifts of this scale would be a lot for any industry to navigate. They ask fundamental questions about how the UK TV industry works - and what it wants to be. And right in the middle of those calculations is public service broadcasting. One senior executive said to me recently -‘do we just want to be an adjunct to big tech?’ We can see the answer to that. ITV’s invested millions in ITVX. Channel 4 has a new strategy to speed its shift to streaming. Tim Davie says the BBC will create “algorithms to serve our values”. And asserts: “We can choose not to rely solely on US and Chinese tech companies that may not have the interests of a shared British culture.”
Of course, British culture does feature in programmes on the global platforms - but the PSBs see this as their point of difference. Responding to PSBs’ recent sharp growth in streaming figures, Alex Mahon of Channel 4 said: “That is a sign of audience demand for particularly British content’. Maybe it is. AND with broadcast included - PSBs still dominate viewing hours overall. But they’re facing significant challenges. For example, with broadcast, the electronic programme guide gives PSBs guaranteed prominence. That’s regulated. The same guarantees don’t exist in the streaming world.
And the consumer is making different choices there too. The viewing hours on streaming for this year show that Netflix is over twice as big as anyone else. BBC is next, then Disney+ and Amazon Prime. Let’s stop to think what this shows - based on everything we’ve already considered. In the streaming market - where we know viewers are heading - where big tech is competing for ad revenue - where expensive tech development is crucial - the PSBs are there, they’re growing - but the majority of viewing isn’t with them - it’s with the global players. The merits or otherwise of this can be discussed. if that continues, there are a range of commercial and cultural consequences that may follow.
Watching this closely is new Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy. They’ll know that, already, across Europe some action has been taken. Since 2020, rules for streamers have insisted “providers should have 30% European works.” The UK is part of this. And there’s pressure to go further. The European Broadcasting Union - the EBU - says regulators should take more action. “to ensure global platforms give the public access to diverse content that actually represents them." As for UK government - Lisa Nandy says she’s a big supporter of the BBC and the whole notion of public service broadcasting. Not long after the election, she visited CBBC and Hacker the Dog. But we don’t know if further regulation is planned to protect the PSBs.
And while these issues are considered, right now, the UK industry faces an urgent situation. An estimated 51% of those in TV drama are out of work. In unscripted, 57% In commercials, 53%. The personal cost to many is enormous. Their situation raises a profoundly difficult question. How big can this industry be? There’s acceptance some traditional roles will go. There’s optimism about new digital roles. And unions want more support for retraining and reskilling. Improving ad revenue may increase commissions. However, it remains far from clear how the industry will provide work for all the people who are looking. And for all the hundreds of production companies.
All of this - everything I’ve mentioned - is the context in which this industry reimagines its future.
TV continues to entertain, inform, influence and inspire - at scale. The UK remains one of the biggest media markets. TV’s global players still want British creativity and British production. This is still a multi-billion pound industry.
But a lot has changed in a short space of time. To this outside observer, this looks like a new era. One in which what we watch and where we watch has changed. Where new revenue streams are required - and where technology is dominant. Where public service media will have to restate its case - and regulators consider their options. Where the routes to the consumer and the routes to success are changing.
What to do next is keenly debated - as we’re about to hear. But we can perhaps agree on one thing? The digital revolution in TV and video isn’t coming. For better or worse, it’s here. There’s no going back.
Thanks for listening.