The maddening bit is that I’m not even arguing about anything particularly romantic. I’m arguing about basic commercial sense in a market where distribution has narrowed, marketing has become harder, and discoverability is now the real currency. Yet we still behave as if the only way to prove you value a show is to lock it in a cupboard for eighteen months and act shocked when nobody’s talking about it by the time you let it back out.

But let’s rewind for a second. Old-school exclusivity was built for a world of scarcity. Five channels. One time slot. One audience. Getting the eyeballs was everything. Miss the slot and it was trade-news worthy. Exclusivity wasn’t a tactic, it was the game. Own the biggest movie, the biggest sporting event, or the only access to the biggest story of the day. If your channel didn’t have exclusivity, you were on a road to nowhere.

That logic made sense when audiences were linear, marketing was blunt, and discovery meant a Radio Times listing or a splash in the tabloids. But that world has gone. Audiences have fractured, attention has thinned, and discoverability has become the single hardest problem in the business, even for the streamers. Just think about how much content exists, versus how little of it any one of us actually watches.

Strangely, television has yet to adapt in the way other industries have for decades. Food, retail, publishing all worked this out long ago. In a world where every channel’s distribution has narrowed, TV still behaves as if locking something away is the same as valuing it. Imagine if Oxo only sold stock cubes through the Co-op, or Ralph Lauren was only available in its own boutique stores. They’d be a fraction of the businesses they are today.

What we’ve ended up with is a system that damages almost everyone involved. Producers are forced into artificial windows that kill momentum. Channels overpay for exclusivity that no longer delivers proportional value. Audiences struggle to find things they would love because the trail has been deliberately obscured in a world of noise and choice. Credits are buried or skipped entirely, making it harder for creators to build reputations and for channels to accrue long-term brand equity.

The irony is that digital has already moved on. Progressive deals, shared visibility, open attribution and algorithm-friendly crediting are now basic hygiene online. Television, meanwhile, is still being run by people steeped in traditional lore, but unable or unwilling to take the steps needed to drag the industry into its next phase.

The myth of protection

Exclusivity is usually justified as protection. Protecting brand. Protecting spend. Protecting perceived value. In practice, most modern TV exclusivity does the opposite. It shrinks the potential audience, shortens the life of a show and forces marketing to work far harder than it should. Just how many subscriptions to small, niche channels can any of us realistically afford?

A factual series can cost hundreds of thousands to make, yet we deliberately constrain where and how it can be seen because discovery is limited to the originator’s channel, usually behind a paywall. This tends to come from desperation rather than strategy. Channels are hunting for a hit, something that will magically reverse declining reach and bring audiences flooding back. But that’s not how it works anymore.

Instead, we insist on long, aggressive holdbacks that kill word of mouth just as it’s starting. We treat secondary windows as dilution rather than amplification. Then we complain that shows don’t travel, don’t land culturally, or don’t build any kind of momentum beyond their initial run.

Of course there is sense in having a unique home for a big brand. If you create the next Downton Abbey, you are quids in as a producer and as a channel. But that is the exception, not the rule, and I’m not convinced it could even happen today behind a narrow paywall. Even the next Game of Thrones has struggled sitting inside a closed ecosystem during a cost of living crisis. Most projects simply won’t become juggernauts unless the platform they sit on has real, meaningful reach.

What linear channels actually want is simpler. They want their content to be seen, and crucially, to be recognised as the place that created it. The unspoken assumption is that if you like this, you’ll come and find us.

That assumption holds for very large platforms with scale. It breaks down fast for smaller channels. They need different tactics. Yes, be the home. Yes, take the premiere. But then move quickly to ensure that other platforms, even in the same market, can carry the show once that initial run has done its job.

It takes a brave broadcaster to think like that. But that’s exactly what Sky History did when they commissioned Battle Treasures. Within months, the entire first series will be available on my Amazing War Stories YouTube channel. That’s a win for my company, and I’d argue a win for Sky History too.

But would that same thinking stretch to sharing with a terrestrial channel? I’m not so sure.

Digital collaboration exists. Linear pretends it doesn’t.

Setting my own deal aside, here’s the really strange part. This kind of collaboration already happens. Just not where it’s needed.

Digitally, broadcasters have been quietly doing progressive, brand-safe sharing deals for years. ITV and Disney now surface each other’s shows on their platforms, clearly branded, clearly attributed, and without anyone panicking about loss of identity. Netflix carries a significant amount of BBC content, proudly badged as such. Nobody is confused. Nobody thinks the BBC has disappeared or that Netflix has somehow weakened itself by sharing the shelf.

In fact, the opposite happens. Brands travel. Audiences learn where things come from. Curiosity is sparked rather than suppressed.

So why does this logic evaporate the moment we talk about linear television? Why is it perfectly acceptable on a streaming homepage, but apparently heretical on an EPG? Audience behaviour hasn’t changed. Branding principles haven’t changed. The commercial upside certainly hasn’t changed. Only the mindset has.

Linear still behaves as if visibility is something to ration rather than maximise. It treats shared branding as dilution, even though digital has repeatedly proven it to be amplification.

The usual counter-argument I hear from old-school execs is, “How would viewers know they’re watching our content if it’s on someone else’s channel?” The answer is disarmingly simple. Put your name on it. Properly. At the front. When you buy a jumper from a department store it doesn’t say the stores name on it but the manufacture’s label. It would be akin to the shops asking that the clothing labels were cut off before they could sell them.

Credits are not vanity, they are infrastructure

This isn’t accidental. The film industry and high-end drama front-load credits all the time, and they do it for a reason. Billing matters. It’s contractual, cultural and commercial. Studios understand that attribution is part of the asset, not decoration for the end once everyone’s picked up their phone.

Every major film opens with a studio identity. A logo. A statement of origin. You immediately know whether you’re watching something from Paramount, Warner Bros or Universal. That branding travels everywhere the film goes. Cinema, streaming, airline edit, late-night TV. Nobody thinks this dilutes the movie. It reinforces where it came from and who backed it.

Drama works exactly the same way. Creator names sit up front. Writers, producers and directors are clearly signposted. That isn’t indulgence. It’s how reputations are built, how audiences learn to trust voices, and how commissioners learn who can actually deliver. Credit builds careers. Careers build trust. Trust builds value.

Unscripted somehow decided it didn’t need this discipline. Credits were pushed to the back, squeezed, rushed or skipped entirely, as if speed mattered more than identity. In doing so, factual didn’t just hide its talent, it erased its origins. Shows began to float free of the channels that created them, stripped of context, provenance and long-term brand value.

And this is the crucial point. Credits aren’t just about people. They’re about who originated the content. If films can proudly open with a studio logo wherever they play, why does television shy away from the same principle? Why shouldn’t a factual series carry an originator credit wherever it appears?

A simple “presents” at the front does an enormous amount of work. It tells the audience where the idea was born. It creates a trail back to the commissioning channel. It allows shows to travel without pretending they appeared out of thin air. That isn’t giving something away. It’s staking a claim.

In a world where discoverability is scarce and loyalty is fragile, removing origin branding isn’t neutral. It’s self-sabotage. If you want audiences to follow you, you have to tell them who you are, every single time.

Discoverability is the real currency

We talk endlessly about budgets, rights and windows, but the real battle is being fought elsewhere. Discoverability is now the scarcest resource in the system. If audiences can’t find you, nothing else matters.

Exclusivity once functioned as a discovery tool. “Only on” meant something. In a world of infinite choice, it rarely does. What cuts through now is repetition, reinforcement and cross-pollination. Seeing something in more than one place isn’t confusing, it’s reassuring. It signals quality. It suggests momentum.

Digital creators understand this instinctively. They collaborate, cross-post, credit obsessively and build networks of mutual amplification. Television still behaves as if collaboration is weakness rather than strategy.

All boats really do rise when the tide comes in, but only if we stop chaining them to the dock. We have to allow audiences to encounter brands in as many places as possible. If they like what they see, they’ll know exactly where to go for more, provided we’ve signposted it properly.

A bit more sharing, and frankly a bit more confidence in your own brand, would do wonders for viewing figures. And believe me, the commercial channels need all the help they can get.

Who is really holding this back?

It would be comforting to blame contracts or lawyers, but the truth is simpler and less flattering. The industry is still dominated by people whose formative experiences belong to a different era.

They grew up in a world where control equalled power. Where letting go felt dangerous. Where sharing credit meant losing status. The next phase of television requires the opposite instincts. Openness. Attribution. Confidence in origin rather than fear of leakage.

This isn’t about being nice. It’s about being competitive.

Television doesn’t need more exclusivity. It needs more shared success. The shows that survive the next decade won’t be the ones locked away most tightly. They’ll be the ones that were seen, credited and talked about everywhere.

If sharing makes you uncomfortable, good. Discomfort is usually the first sign that the ground has already shifted.

However, there are two things that strangely people arent talking about - compatibility and discoverability. When two organisations with utterly different cultures collide, the result is never just a bigger catalogue. It’s an identity crisis waiting to happen. I know because I’ve lived in these cultures and I’ve also lived through consolidation when I was at LWT - which became first Granada before becoming ITV. My time at Discovery and National Geographic taught me about how giant American organisations worked and I can tell you these two beasts may, to the outsider, seem the same but their ethos’s are definitely not.

I have never worked at Netflix but I know plenty of people who do (or did) and one thing I can takeaway from that organisation is that they operate at a velocity that Discovery could never have imagined. These are two organisations that are In fact worlds apart. They may make content, but thats where the similarities end. They maybe neighbours on your smart TV’s menu but in reality they’re different planets entirely and when one planet is much larger than the other, gravity becomes a problem.

Despite this, the real story isn’t scale - scale is a commodity now. The real story is discoverability, identity and the uncomfortable fact that the bigger you get, the harder it becomes to know who you are. The platforms think size guarantees survival, that scale means they’re too big to fail. In reality, size is the enemy of taste. And taste is the only thing audiences actually trust. I think the next decade will be shaped not by who owns the most, but by who still feels like something in a world where everything looks the same.

The Illusion of Infinite Choice

There’s a paradox our industry refuses to confront. Human beings think they want endless choice, but in reality we crumble under it. Who amongst us hasn’t spent at least 30mins endlessly scrolling for something to watch on various platforms? Netflix already offers more content than anyone could meaningfully navigate, displaying only a tiny fraction of its inventory to us and now it is hoovering up the most prestigious catalogue of the last century.

Does that sound like a good idea to you as the consumer? Were you sitting in front of Netflix saying “Damn! I wish there was more to watch on here I’ve seen everything they have to offer…”No. So a combined Netflix WBD library isn’t abundance it’s just a fog and when the fog rolls in, audiences cling to whatever is easiest to find. This is why discoverability has become the core strategic battle of the streaming era. If a viewer can’t see you, you’re dead. It doesn’t matter how good your show is. It matters whether it surfaces. And in a world ruled by algorithmic inertia, most things don’t.

This merger risks turning a library into a landfill. The shiny titles rise to the top because they’ve been engineered to, while the quieter, stranger, more inventive series sink into the sludge. This is why recently the BBC has been arguing that they need to have laws to ensure their content is placed high on platforms like YouTube - they know that even their expensive content will drowned out by American funded programming. I mean they commission so much stuff that even they have problems surfacing content on their own platforms meaningfully - so imagine whats its going to be like when you own the biggest library on earth.

It’s a deep irony, we keep making more, yet fewer people watch because things are actually no longer discoverable. Too much content is beginning to resemble too much noise.

What The Clash Taught Us

There is a useful analogy here, immortalised to me by the cult British punk band, The Clash. Their song “Lost in a Supermarket” perfectly depicts what happens when consumerism takes over in an industry - it causes a broader cultural flattening, the beginning of a world where everything is packaged, branded, optimised, and drained of soul. If they’re not careful, the mega supermarket offering of content that Netflix will become could cause it to be a cathedral devoid of any higher being. So far from this merger being the end of Hollywood, it could in fact mark the beginning of a new dawn.

People love to say that supermarkets killed the small shop. They didn’t. They killed the small shop pretending to be a supermarket. The butcher survived. The baker survived. The fishmonger survived. The people offering a weaker version of what Tesco could do better did not. That distinction matters. You cannot out-Tesco Tesco, and you cannot out-Netflix Netflix. Anyone trying to behave like a generalist in an age where the generalist slot has been definitively claimed is signing their own death warrant.

What survived were the specialists. The places with personality, expertise and soul. The shops that still smelled of something distinctive when you walked in. And increasingly, that is exactly what audiences want from content brands. Not volume. Not scale. Just character.

I love a wee dram…

Talking of character Whisky might be the clearest analogy for what content must become. You can buy a bottle in a supermarket for convenience. You can order a dram in a pub for sociability. You can taste a twelve-year single malt in a cocktail bar because you’re in the mood to feel fancy. Or you can visit the distillery itself and immerse yourself in the craft. The liquid doesn’t change. The price does and the experience changes everything. You might not like whisky so don’t buy it. But I can tell you, some of those distilleries, despite being owned by massive parent companies, still turns over some pretty giant numbers in a literal sea of alcohol.

This is precisely how premium content behaves. Sadly, as a result of this merger we might all find that a Netflix–WBD subscription may well become a bit more expensive - I mean they’re going to need to repay that $80 BILLION + somehow, But ask yourselves this. Didnt we all just “cut the cord” because we all wanted to choose our own content? Didnt we want to cherry pick a channel here, a channel there? Isnt that’s the reason that we hated the homogenised bundle of cable - there was too much crap we just didnt want and hated the thought of paying for. I think thats whats going to happen with Netflix - I don’t want TONS of content, I want their carefully curated originals. Their sports docs, their crime specials, the content that makes you see the world in a different way. Do I want Shark Week? Nope.

This is the point, the premium brands, the distilleries in this metaphor, become more valuable precisely because they are not for everyone. What they sell is not quantity. It is meaning and people will always pay more for meaning.

Culture Clash

Now let’s talk about culture, because it is the most overlooked consequence of this merger. Discovery and Netflix do not share a history, a rhythm or a worldview. Discovery built itself on craftsmanship, tight budgets, big characters and the strange beauty of the real world. Netflix built itself on velocity, scale and ambition bordering on mania. One is a long-form documentary maker with a love of real people. The other is a tech company wearing the skin of a studio.

Put those two together and you don’t get harmony. You get dilution. Once the WBD catalogue is absorbed into the Netflix machine, the identity of both will weaken. It’s inevitable. That’s what happens when you cram too many signals into one system. The BBC feels like something. ITV feels like something. Apple feels like something. A gigantified Netflix risks feeling like nothing at all.

We forget that culture is not an output. Culture is the thing that shapes the output. And if the culture becomes a messy blend of incompatible instincts, the work will follow. Zaslav never got this, I thought Sarandos did. However, I guess in the end, the plans for world domination always corrupt even the best intentions.

Techbros at the Gates

Maybe I’m being harsh. We’re also living through a moment where media is desperately trying to behave like tech because tech valuations are the only valuations worth having. This is why the platforms keep consolidating. Not for creativity. Not for craft. For share price. For investor mood music. For the kind of one-generation wealth creation you only get when a CEO believes scale itself is the product.

But it’s definitely true to say that tech doesn’t care about culture. Tech cares about leverage. Tech cares about data. Tech cares about absorption. So the irony is that Netflix, in all its power, may eventually become the thing it once disrupted: a resource to be bought and scraped by an even bigger player. Whether that’s OpenAI or someone else, the direction of travel is obvious. The mega-corporations will eat everything. It’s the only playbook they know.

The Future Belongs to the Distilleries

And yet, despite all of this, the creative economy will live on. It always does. Not in the skyscrapers. Not in the mega-consolidated platforms. It lives on in the places with identity, soul and stubbornness. It lives on in the artisanal bakeries of storytelling, the distilleries of character, the creators who know exactly who they are and refuse to be mistaken for anything else.

The giants will merge, swell, wobble and eventually topple into the arms of tech. Meanwhile the distilleries, the content shops with a smell, a texture, a point of view will keep producing work with meaning. Until, of course, someone buys them too. That’s the cycle. But between now and then, craft always finds a way to breathe.

Scale will win battles, yes, but I truly believe identity will win the war. The future will belong to those who stand for something in a world determined to flatten everything into the same beige paste. For all the noise around the Netflix–WBD merger, the opportunity for the rest of us has never been clearer. Don’t try to be the supermarket. Be the distillery. Be the whisky people remember. Be the thing that cuts through the fog.

The answer, I believe, is speed, or rather the complete absence of it. I actually think that TV does produce the best content but annoyingly, even when our industry does produce something that genuinely cuts through, something that actually connects, we seem incapable of capitalising on the moment. Channel teams move so slowly that any heat a show generates evaporates before anyone has a chance to act. A programme finally catches fire and, instead of throwing oxygen at it, we stare at the flames, hold another meeting, discuss next year’s budget and then wonder why it has already gone out.

Television needs a reality check. We live in a world built on immediate gratification, where audiences expect a constant flow of content and where creators outside of our traditional structures deliver exactly that. Digital responds to appetite in real time. A show lands on YouTube on a Tuesday and by Wednesday morning the team are already building the next instalment because the metrics demand it. Television, by contrast, behaves like coaxing an ageing lawnmower to life. You pull the cord, hear the sputter, feel that brief spasm of triumph and then watch as it coughs itself back into silence because you did not move fast enough. The commissioning system has become a machine incapable of holding momentum, even when it finally connects with the audience it claims to serve.

LESS & MORE

Budgets are not going to grow. Given how the industry is structured, they may never return to the levels people still nostalgically cite. So if we cannot buy speed with more money, we have to create speed with method. That means doing less of the wasteful reinvention that plagues every returning show and far more of the work that preserves momentum.

There is a persistent belief inside broadcasters that a recommission must begin again from the start, as if every returning series needs the same delicate courtship as a brand new idea. It doesn’t. Once a programme has landed, you already have the creative blueprint, the muscle memory, the working edit pipeline and, crucially, a team who understand the show instinctively in a way no deck or onboarding document can replicate.

This is where slowness becomes genuinely destructive. Anyone who has worked in production knows the weary struggle of keeping a team together between jobs. Freelancers scatter to the four winds because they have mortgages to pay. In this new world of falling budgets, the freelance model is collapsing because there is no certainty at all. Ask any freelancer. It is brutal out there. And it harms small indies most. You cannot build a functioning company culture when every recommission arrives too late for the people who actually made the show to still be available. The speed of a recommission is not just a creative issue. It is the difference between stability and chaos for the entire workforce.

So how do you fix it? Recommissions need to happen far earlier than they currently do - sometimes before the show has even gone out. I think if a channel sees something it genuinely believes in, something it knows it wants more of, it should hit go immediately. Not after the ratings report. Not after a Q4 budget review. Trust your instinct while it is still warm because if you wait too long, the team will have dispersed, the opportunity will have cooled and the chemistry that made the first series work will take more time and more money to recreate. A recommission that turns up six months late is not a recommission. It is a restart. And restarts cost more, take longer and lose the energy that made the idea work in the first place.

Speed is not about producing more episodes for the sake of it. It is about removing friction. It is about keeping hold of the people, the instinct, the rhythm and the creative heartbeat that already exist. When something works, the fastest thing you can do is carry on while the idea is still alive in the hands of the people who shaped it.

WHY DIGITAL ALWAYS WINS

Digital has absorbed something television has never properly understood. Speed is not a tactic. Speed is a philosophy. It determines how ideas are chosen, how teams operate and how audiences behave. It recognises that momentum is not a luxury in the modern attention economy. Momentum is survival. When digital creators find a spark, they fuel it immediately. They do not debate tone for months or wait for next year’s budget cycle. They move, they publish, they iterate. They stay in the conversation while people are still listening.

Spend a week watching a successful YouTube creator and you will see a model of content-making television once understood but let slip away. They shoot what they can shoot, edit what they can edit and refine the next piece while the previous one is still warming the algorithm. They are not reckless. They are responsive. Their work improves because they are constantly in motion, constantly learning, constantly adjusting in real time. Television has spent years convincing itself that slowness equals quality, when in reality all it produces is distance. Distance from the cultural moment. Distance from the audience. Distance from the spark that made the idea compelling in the first place.

THE ECONOMICS OF SPEED

And here is the part broadcasters should care about most. Speed saves money. Slowness costs it. When broadcasters delay a recommission, the team disperses and rebuilding from scratch costs significantly more. When a returning series is treated as if it is a brand new commission, you repeat work that has already been paid for. When technical sign-off drags on for weeks, you pay for idle edits, extended suites, extended staff, extended everything. Budgets are not fixed laws of nature. They are shaped and inflated by the glacial systems that manage them.

For production companies, slowness is not an inconvenience. It is existential. You cannot retain good editors when the gap between series is at least half a year on a good day. You cannot build a permanent team when no one knows if or when a recommission will appear. You cannot run a sustainable company when your financial life depends on decisions that arrive months too late for your workforce. A recommission delivered at pace stabilises companies, protects jobs, creates continuity and lowers cost. Slowness does the opposite.

THE SLOWEST PART OF ALL: DELIVERY

But perhaps the most damaging slowness sits in the part viewers never see. Delivery. Even when a show is cut quickly, even when the team have captured something alive, the entire process is dragged into the mud by technical compliance. This isn’t about safety or duty of care. This is about a sprawling architecture of legacy requirements that add cost, delay and friction at exactly the moment the programme should be finding its audience.

YouTube can ingest a 4K file within minutes. It runs automated checks, processes it, flags issues almost immediately and makes it available while the idea is still warm. It does so because the system is designed for speed. It prioritises access over internal comfort. It assumes momentum is normal.

Television does the opposite. A finished show can sit for days because of a technical review process designed for an era when broadcast infrastructure genuinely demanded caution. Viewers at home now watch on equipment far more capable than the systems the broadcasters themselves are using, yet the industry continues to enforce specifications that cost thousands per episode but deliver no meaningful improvement to the viewer. Audiences cannot tell the difference between a £15,000 post pipeline and a £2,000 one. They care about the story. They care about the tone. They care about the energy. They do not care about whether the file meets engineering standards that have not been updated in a decade or what file ‘wrapper’ you’re delivering a show in.

Despite what the boffins will tell you technical drag does not protect quality. It slows everything down. It makes the work way more expensive than it needs to be. It delays transmission. It stops teams moving on to the next project. In a world where budgets are shrinking and where production companies are under extreme pressure, this is waste we can no longer afford. If I was in charge of a channel now, this is one area that I would instantly look at. As an Industry, we need to be less afraid of ripping up the rule book and making sure we can compete with the new content players.

THE CULTURE THAT MUST CHANGE

Ultimately, all this slowness comes from a belief that caution is safer than speed. That taking time reduces risk. That programmes improve with endless polishing. They don’t. Fortune really does favour the brave and the new digital entrants have shown that. Programmes improve when the team who made them are still in the room the second time round. Programmes improve when they arrive close to the moment they were made. Programmes improve when barriers are removed, not added.

Television continues to behave as though time is neutral. It isn’t. Time eats energy. It eats certainty. It eats budgets, trust and it eats audiences, because in an attention economy the only people who stay relevant are the people who keep turning up.

THE WAY FORWARD

If television wants to survive, it needs to build systems that move at the speed the world now lives at. That means less reinvention and more continuity. Fewer layers of approval and more instinct. Faster recommissions. Tighter delivery pipelines. Honest examination of which parts of compliance matter and which are simply historical artefacts. It means treating audiences not as patient spectators but as people with infinite choice who will not wait for us.

Speed is not a threat. It is the only competitive advantage the industry has left. And if we build around it, if we design our workflows to support it, if we protect the teams who thrive on it, there is a future in which British television is not just surviving but leading. But if we continue at the pace we are moving now, the audience will keep drifting, the talent will keep leaving and the medium will keep shrinking.

Television is not dying because people no longer care. It is dying because it is standing still and in a world moving this fast, standing still is just another way of disappearing.

This made absolute sense in the days of four channels, when scarcity shaped everything and variety acted as a defensive tool. Schedules were constructed like relay races, handing viewers from one flavour to another to keep them from drifting to the competition. But that logic comes from a world where choice was finite and attention could be channelled with relative ease. Today the landscape works differently. People swim in excess. They cling to continuity, not novelty. A shift in tone no longer feels refreshing. It feels like an invitation to go elsewhere.

Variety Isn’t a Virtue Anymore

British television’s reliance on the three or six-part series is not a creative hallmark, it’s a relic of the scarcity era. The short run was never an artistic decision - it was a scheduling tactic. If you only had so many hours to fill, variety became the safety mechanism. You kept viewers moving because if you didn’t, someone else would.

What once worked as a protective rhythm now functions as the opposite. In a hyper-choice environment, the viewer doesn’t want a selection box, they want a world to step into. They want the comfort of knowing they can stay, that by the time they hit episode six, episode seven is waiting for them. If they sense the broadcaster isn’t committed, they see no reason to commit either.

And this is the fundamental contradiction British linear TV is trapped in. It still behaves as if novelty helps retention, when in reality novelty resets habit. Every change of tone asks the viewer to make another decision and in a world flooded with decisions they will almost always drift toward the shows that promise stability.

The irony is that recent British hits prove this point more clearly than anything else. Look at The Traitors. From the very beginning the BBC committed to twelve episodes, a decision that would have been unthinkable a decade ago for a new entertainment format in the UK. That confidence paid off immediately. The show didn’t just rate, it became a national conversation, the kind of shared cultural moment broadcasters claim to want but rarely engineer and it happened because viewers were given enough runway to invest emotionally. If The Traitors had been commissioned as a neat six-part pilot series, it might have been admired but I don’t believe it would not have become a phenomenon or would have built in the same way. The lesson is obvious. Volume isn’t indulgence. It’s oxygen.

The Global Playbook: How We Learned to Back Volume

For those who know my background, you’ll know I spent years commissioning at National Geographic International and later running Original Commissioning at Discovery International. These were global brands with extraordinary reach, but their strength didn’t come from big numbers in any single territory. A prime-time British slot used to draw three, four or five million viewers on a strong night, while a Nat Geo premiere might pull a fraction of that in any one country. The difference was what happened next. Once a programme rolled out across dozens of territories within days, the cumulative audience often dwarfed anything achievable in a domestic market.

We were stitching together impact from all over the world. In many ways, that distribution logic prefigured how YouTube works today. A video may not dominate any single territory, but spread thinly across the world, it becomes enormous. We were working with that model long before digital distribution existed and because we could not rely on one country to prop up a commission, we learned very quickly that the only responsible way to build a new show was to back it with conviction.

Sometimes those decisions looked bold from the outside, but they were simply the internal logic of the model. Ultimate Airport Dubai is a perfect example. We didn’t creep into that series with a tentative three-parter to test the water. We committed to a ten-part series from day one. That kind of confidence tells the audience something vital: if we believe in this world enough to build it properly, then they should trust us with their time. Had we played it safe and opted for three episodes, the data might have painted the wrong picture and the show might never have become the global hit it ultimately became. As we all know, caution rarely creates breakthroughs but commitment does.

British commissioners once understood this instinctively but somewhere along the line that courage has thinned, surviving mainly in the endless re-orders of familiar daytime workhorses. But courage is what grows new worlds. Without it, audiences drift toward platforms that offer belief in bulk.

Niche, Super-Niche and Why Volume Wins

Another lesson from the my time in international channels was one that is even more essential now than it was then: niche behaviour rules everything. Long before algorithms or infinite scroll, international cable channels were built on the same rule that now governs YouTube. They didn’t try to please everyone. They drilled into obsessions. Aviation. Engineering. Space. Disaster investigation. Ancient civilisations. Wildlife. Viewers who cared about these worlds didn’t want a tasting menu. They wanted immersion.

Aviation is the clearest example. Aviation fans do not casually watch plane programmes - they devour them. I spent years producing and commissioning inside that world. I produced Airline. I commissioned and exec’d Ultimate Airport Dubai and Air Crash Investigation and the same principle applied to Science of Stupid, a show I helped create and ordered in bulk. It eventually ran to one hundred and thirty four episodes across eight seasons. None of these programmes succeeded because they were quirky curiosities. They succeeded because they served a specific appetite with unbroken consistency. Once Science of Stupid connected, we didn’t taper the order - we expanded it. That is how a niche becomes a super-niche, and how a super-niche becomes a global engine.

The modern audience is even more niche-driven than the audiences of twenty years ago, because choice has revealed just how deeply specific tastes run. People want to live inside their interests. They want volume. They want continuity. They want identity. And this is where short-run commissioning breaks down. You cannot satisfy a niche with a six-week experiment which then moves on to something different in the same time slot.

The Lost Art of Strands and the Problem With Modern Schedules

British broadcasters once had a tool that solved this problem effortlessly: the strand. Horizon on the BBC wasn’t just a slot; it was a destination. If you cared about science, that was where you went. Channel 4 had Equinox, which commissioned around eighteen documentaries a year, sufficient volume to create a coherent editorial world rather than a loose collection of one-offs.

Strands acted as editorial homes. They carried expectation, memory and trust. They allowed single documentaries to accumulate power because viewers didn’t approach each week as strangers. They arrived as people who already belonged.

Over time strands were stripped away. Not replaced or reimagined. Simply removed. Why? Sadly because they were expensive to produce. A collection of one-offs, made by differing production companies, doesn’t offer economies of scale, but it does keep viewers returning to your channel. Getting rid of them was a very big mistake in my opinion.

Without strands you lose the connective tissue that once held factual television together and without overarching brands, singles became orphans and they are much harder to promote. Of course you can market a one-off heavily and draw a strong overnight, but the following week, without more of the same, the audience evaporates because nothing connects one documentary to the next. Variety, once a virtue, becomes fragmentation.

Marketing exposes the problem even more starkly. Promotion is finite. Spend it all on a three-parter and you might get a strong launch, but within days the show ends and the audience has nowhere to go. Marketing becomes a spark rather than an engine. Sparks are bright but brief. Engines take you somewhere. A three-parter gives you a night. A ten-parter gives you a month. A fifty-parter can anchor an entire year and they dont need to be that expensive. Offer a prodco 50 episodes at two-thirds of the price or 10 at full fat and I know which one I am choosing - and I know which ones the channels should be choosing too.

This is what many commissioners don’t understand. Their constant search for the next hit, by trying dozens of small ideas just doesn’t work. The modern schedule asks marketing to deliver miracles on formats that cannot sustain momentum and then wonders why viewers drift.

What the Future Actually Looks Like

I think that channels already know this, and it’s another reason why the number of unique commissions are falling, There is of course a consequence to this strategy, and it is one the production community already feels. The number of traditional broadcast orders will continue to shrink. Schedules will tighten and the light spread of work across dozens of indies will not return in the same form but it’s not all doom. Opportunity hasn’t vanished - it’s just shifted.

FAST channels, AVOD hubs, specialist streamers, YouTube verticals and global niche platforms now reward the very model British broadcasters are resisting: repeatable, scalable, identity-driven content with the ability to run for long stretches and genuinely serve an audience. Low cost. High volume. Built for ecosystems, not for a single slot in a single week. If you want to survive now, these are the grounds you need to hunt in.

Television has changed. The audience has not. People still want what they have always wanted: a world to step into, a place to belong, a story with room to grow. Channels that recognise this will keep their viewers. Channels that cling to short runs and variety-for-its-own-sake will watch their audience drift.

The question for British television is whether it can let go of the habits inherited from scarcity and rediscover the qualities that once made it strong. Commitment. Identity. Territory. And the courage to stay with something long enough for the viewer to stay with you - even if it means you feed less producers mouths…

Last week exposed that. A leaked internal memo pointing to editorial failings, including a flawed Panorama edit of President Trump’s speech, became a flashpoint. The BBC Board hesitated, the narrative slipped away, and within days both the Director General and the Head of News were gone. Senior figures spoke of coups. Critics from the left and right piled in. What should have been a contained governance issue became an institutional rupture.

Over the past 100 years the BBC has weathered wars, governments and cultural revolutions. However, the one thing that could ultimately bring this venerable institution down is confusion about its purpose. That’s the real danger now and it could be a very real wrecking ball.

Crisis

Let’s put last week’s meltdown into context. It did not happen because of one memo or one edit. It happened I think because the BBC no longer has a unifying idea strong enough to hold it together. Without shared purpose, the organisation reacts to pressure like a body without a spine, collapsing inward and pulled apart by competing instincts.

The warning signs have been visible all year. When more internal complaints were made about Martine Croxall’s off the cuff reaction to the phrase “pregnant people” than from viewers, it revealed a staff base divided not simply by opinion but by a lack of common mission. A confident institution would have absorbed the moment. A divided one inflated it.

Everything that happened this week, from the hesitation to the resignations and the internal tensions, points to the same truth. The BBC is operating without a mission suited to the modern age. When purpose disappears, leadership can no longer lead and staff can no longer align.

Cause

The root cause is pretty straightforward. It’s clear the BBC no longer really knows what it is for. The old Reithian slogan of Inform, Educate and Entertain may have served its time, but it now feels too small for the complexity of the modern digital world. When an institution loses its sense of self, its people inevitably lose theirs.

This is not a problem created by a single individual at the top. In fact, the BBC’s new Chair, Dr Samir Shah, has openly asked the same fundamental question in his email to staff when he first started: “What is the point and purpose of the BBC in this new media environment?” That question shows awareness, not indifference.

The difficulty is that much of the internal culture, from the Director General downwards, has been shaped by people who built their careers inside commercial broadcasters or global consumer companies such as Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo. Most are, of course, highly skilled and committed so the issue is not who they are, but the mindset they bring with them. Their desire to prove they deliver value will often mean their instincts naturally revolve around ratings, competitiveness and tactical wins rather than long term public value.

The danger is, in an environment shaped by those instincts, the BBC begins to behave like a polished alternative to ITV rather than a national cultural institution. Success becomes defined by audience graphs instead of public purpose. Meetings shift towards share and reach rather than leadership and invention. Strategies become focused on keeping up rather than standing apart.

At the same time, despite Shah’s declaration that the Beeb needs to find its new purpose, the Board has been criticised for slow decision making and hesitant governance. Last week exposed the consequences. When leadership pauses, the rest of the organisation fills the vacuum with anxiety and division. Departments then harden into tribes. Culture becomes brittle and the workforce becomes defensive.

Over time this misalignment has pushed the BBC into every conceivable digital niche in search of relevance. Weather apps, recipe portals, lifestyle content and large scale podcast distribution have stretched it so widely that its identity has blurred. The organisation is everywhere and nowhere at once. A public broadcaster created to enrich national culture now competes in areas where it adds little unique benefit.

In the past the BBC kept the UK broadcasting landscape healthy by raising standards and setting creative markers. Today it is trying to compete with global giants. Yet Netflix will never be a civic institution just as Amazon will never commission shows like Songs of Praise. YouTube will never truly reflect the national conversation. It will simply host polarised views delivered by partisan creators. Only the BBC can do all these things. When it loses sight of this, the rest of the organisation drifts into confusion.

Consequence

The effects of this purpose vacuum are now visible across the institution. Teams operate like islands. Editorial disputes turn into ideological battles. Every disagreement feels existential because nobody is sure what the organisation is aiming for.

When mission is unclear, leadership loses authority. Nobody can define what good judgement looks like. Creators and managers become defensive. The institution becomes timid instead of confident and aspirational. This is basic organisational management behaviour but I guess it is easy to lose sight of when you are in it. I know when I worked there I did.

Despite this, the BBC still produces world class work in places. The Natural History Unit, The Traitors and Strictly show what happens when purpose and ambition align. This is not surprising. The organisation is filled with talented and committed creative people who want to serve the public. The problem is not the workforce. The problem is the timid environment they operate in. Much of the wider output now feels engineered to avoid criticism rather than designed to inspire. Creativity becomes cautious when purpose disappears.

Distorted markets

Worse than that, the BBC is in danger of losing its soul. Its purpose is not to overpower competitors. Its purpose is to guide the market towards areas that matter and to create space for new voices. A public broadcaster is not meant to become the only content provider people rely on. Commercial giants want dominance. The BBC should never want that.

Local news demonstrates the point. Local reporting is a genuine social purpose. Yet the BBC’s digital expansion has long been criticised by regional publishers for crowding out independent newsrooms. Imagine if the BBC used its scale to strengthen local journalism rather than replicate it. Shared investigations. Pooled resources. Co produced reporting that enriches civic life. That would be public service. Dominating the space is not.

The same pattern appears elsewhere. Why does the BBC need an enormous recipe library. Teaching people to cook well and live healthily is valuable. Publishing hundreds of lifestyle recipes already offered by commercial publishers is not. It adds little public value and suppresses others who rely on that traffic.

The weather app raises the same questions. A wide range of free and established weather services already exist. Running another one with public money is duplication rather than public service. It distracts from the areas where only the BBC can make a national impact.

Podcasting exposes the issue most clearly. BBC Sounds is an excellent platform. Yet the BBC also pushes its in house, publicly funded podcasts onto Apple and Spotify. The result is dominance of the charts. Independent creators, including working class producers and small companies, are pushed down not because their work is inferior but because they are competing against a taxpayer funded giant. This is not healthy competition. It is structural distortion.

If the BBC wants to appear on open platforms, the solution is obvious. Independently produced, commissioned content should appear there. In house content should remain on BBC Sounds.

These examples do not create the problem. They reveal it. They show how the BBC has drifted into becoming something it was never meant to be. The organisation is not a general purpose content factory, but it is in danger of becoming one. When an institution tries to operate in every space, its identity blurs. The BBC’s greatest achievements have never come from covering everything. They have come from choosing wisely where to intervene and then elevating those areas for the entire industry.

The history of the BBC proves this. Natural history television barely existed before the BBC invested in it. The BBC Micro brought coding into classrooms when computing was still a fringe interest. These were not commercial plays. They were public interventions. They reflected a willingness to lead.

Modern BBC staff are just as capable of this. The organisation contains some of the most creative and publicly minded professionals in the country. Many want to make work that contributes to society in ways only the BBC can. The malaise they face is the predictable consequence of unclear direction. It is difficult for staff to unite behind a mission that is no longer expressed with clarity or ambition.

The BBC does not lack creativity. It lacks leadership that knows how to focus it. It needs a purpose strong enough to unify its people and leadership confident enough to articulate it.

Above all, the BBC must stop trying to keep up and start trying to lead. This is the test of the next Director General. Not managing decline. Not defending the licence fee. Not issuing apologies after the next crisis. The test is whether they can restore the BBC’s creative purpose and with it the country’s faith in the institution.

If they can do that, the BBC might not simply survive. It might matter again.

What has surprised me over the past week is how many otherwise sensible people seem to think this is good news. Commentators have lined up to call it logical, even inevitable, as if size alone can solve structural decline. Yet few seem to have thought through who actually owns Sky or what the final upshot of this union would be. Sky is not a British company; it is a subsidiary of Comcast, one of America’s largest media conglomerates. Before we start applauding this as a bold act of British consolidation, we might stop to ask ourselves what we are really consolidating, and for whose benefit.

The logic being peddled is seductive. If you are fighting global behemoths like Netflix, Amazon or Apple, you need scale, right? In theory, yes. In practice, it is poison. When two large companies collide, the first things to be “rationalised” are always the people and the ideas that make each organisation distinct. The redundancy letters will be written before the press conference is over. Two commissioning heads become one, two digital teams are merged, two marketing departments are “aligned.” On paper this looks efficient; in reality, it replaces creativity with exhaustion.

Once the people are gone, the budgets follow. Maintaining two commissioning pots will be deemed “duplicative,” so the money is pooled, then quietly reduced. Before long, the new entity is indeed larger, but what appears on screen is smaller: cheaper shows, narrower ambition and a creeping sense that the numbers matter more than the stories. I have watched this happen too many times to mistake it for progress.

The “Why Now” Problem

To understand why this merger is even being discussed, you have to look at the pressures on both sides. ITV has been slow to pivot into a digital-first world. Its linear schedule still does the heavy lifting, but the arteries are clogged. ITVX was a step in the right direction, yet it remains an incremental response to a structural change. Sky, meanwhile, is facing problems of its own. The broadband business that underpins so much of its offer has been hampered by the national fiasco of BT’s high-speed fibre rollout. Years of underinvestment, weak government oversight and glacial project management have left Britain trailing behind Europe. Even Ofcom has admitted that our full-fibre coverage is late, patchy and overpriced. That is not Sky’s fault, but it has eaten into margins and customer trust.

Add to that a premium product that now looks expensive and inflexible in a world of month-by-month streamers, and you begin to see the logic. Sky needs customers; ITV believes it needs scale. Each hopes the other will provide salvation. Technically, ITV Studios is not part of the talks. It has been described as “off the table.” But that is precisely what makes this situation so dangerous. Studios is the part of the business that actually makes things: the division chasing international commissions and bringing work into the UK, the part that sustains the freelance economy. The health of ITV Studios, and indeed of every other indie, depends on broadcasters competing for ideas. If the biggest buyers consolidate, that competition evaporates. Prices drop, risk shrinks and the creative sector withers long before anyone realises what has been lost.

There is also a deeper strategic flaw. If Studios is hived off, the deal stops making sense even on its own commercial terms. The whole point of ITV’s model is vertical integration: the ability to commission, produce and sell content internationally. That loop of creation, broadcast and export is what gives ITV its leverage and its identity. Strip that away and what is left? A declining linear business weighed down by public-service regulation and an increasingly squeezed advertising market. It is hard to see why anyone, even Comcast, would want that without the creative engine attached. In trying to make the merger easier to pass through regulators, ITV may end up removing the very thing that made it desirable in the first place.

Unfortunately, the people deciding the fate of this merger - the politicians, lawyers and accountants - rarely see or even understand the creative fallout. They will look at the spreadsheets and nod approvingly. To them this will appear as sound industrial logic: fewer inefficiencies, more heft, a stronger balance sheet. What it will actually deliver is another round of asset-stripping followed by a slow, quiet fire-sale of British culture.

The Wall Street Play

This is not really about competing with Netflix; it is about copying Netflix’s balance sheet. We have seen the pattern before. When Discovery merged with Warner Bros., the rhetoric was all about synergy and integration. What followed was the division of the company into two halves, streaming and studios on one side, legacy television on the other and thousands of jobs lost with billions wiped off the market value. The only people who truly benefited were the shareholders and the chief executives who walked away with their bonuses intact.

The justification, as ever, was “falling ad revenues” and “dispersed audiences.” But the truth is simpler: viewers were leaving because the programmes were not very good. The obsession with scale produced bland, risk-averse content designed by committees of accountants in New York. And the same thing will happen here. People do not stop watching television because they suddenly want to read Proust or paint watercolours; they stop because they no longer see themselves or their stories on screen.

The pursuit of profit in media is only noble if that profit is reinvested in making more and better content. The problem is that creativity is inherently risky, and accountants dislike risk. So rather than back new voices, they buy existing audiences. It never works. The viewers who once watched Gangs of London on Sky and those who tune in for The Voice on ITV are not interchangeable. Merge the two and you alienate both. Consolidation always promises growth; it almost always ends in loss.

Bring Back the Kangaroo

If all this feels familiar, it is because we have been here before. In 2009 Project Kangaroo, a joint venture between ITV, the BBC and Channel 4, was poised to create a home-grown streaming platform years ahead of its time. The Competition Commission blocked it, declaring that such collaboration would be “anti-competitive.” Within a few years the same regulators happily welcomed Netflix, Amazon and Disney into the market, effectively dismantling the very industry they had sworn to protect.

Now history risks repeating itself, only in reverse. Instead of blocking a British partnership that could foster innovation, we may end up approving a foreign-owned merger that will kill competition altogether. And once one jewel falls, the rest will follow. Channel 4 will be next. Channel 5 is already gone. With every acquisition, more British ownership disappears offshore, and the diversity that made our broadcasting landscape so distinctive evaporates into a handful of global conglomerates.

Collaboration, Not Consolidation

There is another path as the dead on arrival Project Kangaroo demonstrated. The answer is not to build one lumbering mega-company pretending to be creative but to forge a genuinely collaborative ecosystem between the existing players. Imagine a shared technology spine for streaming, ad-sales and data, but with each broadcaster retaining its editorial independence. A network of strong, individual brands working together rather than consuming each other. That is how you compete with the streamers: not by mimicking their scale but by matching their ambition with our originality.

We are already starting to see meaningful collaboration. Channel 4 and UKTV have struck a multi-year content-carriage deal that will put hundreds of U-service titles on Channel 4’s streaming platform from January 2026. Meanwhile ITV and Disney+ have launched a unique UK partnership, exchanging curated rails of each other’s content under A Taste of ITVX and A Taste of Disney+. Imagine if a reborn Project Kangaroo were allowed to go further, where the whole of British TV and film sat under one shared digital roof.

For that to work, government has to help. We need tax incentives that attract private investment into production, fewer bureaucratic barriers to partnership and a BBC that acts as an engine for the creative economy rather than a fortress protecting its own walls. Not everything needs to be bought, sold or floated. Not everything has to exist on a spreadsheet. The faster the people in charge understand that, the sooner we can start building a sustainable future for British television.

The Stakes

This debate is not simply about corporate structure; it is about national identity and public responsibility. Television remains one of Britain’s crown jewels, a calling card for our creativity and our culture, but it is also a public good. ITV is not just another entertainment brand; it is a Public Service Broadcaster with obligations that run deeper than quarterly profit. It must provide impartial news, regional coverage, children’s programming and stories that reflect the breadth of British life.

If a company such as Comcast were to take control, those obligations would quickly become a nuisance rather than a mission. A global conglomerate will not see the PSB licence as a badge of honour; it will see it as a cost centre. And every time the company wants to trim its commissioning budget, it will point to the “regulatory burden” of public service as the excuse, arguing that news, regional output and other non-commercial strands make it too hard to turn a profit. The result would be predictable: fewer risky commissions, fewer distinctively British voices and a slow erosion of the very content that justifies ITV’s licence to broadcast in the first place.

Selling ITV to a purely commercial operator is not modernisation; it is abdication. It hands cultural stewardship to an overseas balance sheet and calls it strategy.

Lisa Nandy, the current Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, now faces a defining choice. If she approves this deal, she will be remembered as the minister who signed the death warrant for British broadcasting. If she blocks it, she gives the industry a chance to reinvent itself before it is too late.

The future lies in collaboration, not consolidation, and in protecting public service, not selling it off.

In the past week I’ve had a a lot of interest in the deal I struck between my production company, Legend Entertainment, and Hearst/Sky HISTORY for my new show Battle Treasures. Colleagues, producers, even a few commissioners have asked how it happened, why they agreed to it, and whether it might work elsewhere. This feels like the right moment to explain it properly (as far as I can), definitely not as a boast, but as a small case study in how television might rebuild itself.

For decades, the commissioning model has assumed broadcasters carry the main financial risk and therefore deserve the lion’s share of rights. Indies accepted that logic because tariffs were once high enough to sustain margins, and owning rights meant little without global distribution. Times have changed. Budgets have been slashed, margins have collapsed, and platforms have multiplied. Yet the old structures remain. Channels still cling to exclusivity and long holdbacks, as though locking a programme in a cupboard were the same thing as creating value.

The Battle Treasures deal set out to test whether a different balance was possible.

The Reflex of Exclusivity

Exclusivity once made sense. In the linear era, the schedule was the product. Channels competed for appointment viewing, and a “first and only” status could be sold. In an on-demand world, that logic is faintly absurd. When content can be watched anywhere, locking it to a single platform is self-sabotage.

It’s like Kellogg’s insisting Cornflakes are sold only in one small supermarket chain. However loyal those shoppers are, you limit reach and growth. Let the cereal prove itself across other stores and everybody wins: Kellogg’s grows the market and the original supermarket still benefits from being the home of the premiere.

Yet the reflex persists. The opening line of most international negotiations is still, “We’ll fund part of it, but we must have all of it.” There’s comfort in that position, a legacy sense of power. But power doesn’t automatically create growth. The more a broadcaster insists on total control, the fewer partners it attracts and the less sustainable the market becomes.

When I began discussions with Hearst, that instinct was still there. They loved the concept, Foxy and Bruce bringing history to life through extraordinary artefacts, but the idea of commissioning a show without complete exclusivity felt risky. In the end, however, the logic landed.

Redefining the Commission

From the first meeting I was clear I wasn’t seeking a traditional commissioning fee. I proposed something I called “an acquisition with benefits”: lower up-front cost for the broadcaster, higher long-term risk for the producer, and a more flexible rights structure for both. In short, a model that valued speed and reach over ownership.

When it reached lawyers it sounded heretical. How could a channel commission a series and end up with an acquisition-style position? But if I was carrying the majority of the cost, why should the broadcaster also control the rights? Their upside would be brand halo and immediate return; mine would be the long tail.

This required absolute transparency. I showed where our money went and what efficiencies we’d built in. Once Hearst saw the structure protected them rather than exploited them, the tone shifted. They would get premium content at a fraction of the usual cost; we would keep the freedom to grow the brand beyond broadcast.

To their credit, they were superb partners. Cashflow is the silent killer of most indies, but Hearst paid promptly and fairly. That single act made the experiment viable.

The Holdback That Unlocked Value

The real breakthrough was the holdback. Traditionally, broadcasters lock a programme for months before the producer can do anything else with it a hangover from linear scheduling that now throttles opportunity.

When Hearst agreed to reduce the holdback, everything changed. They kept a short exclusivity window, but afterwards we could share the content across the wider Amazing War Stories ecosystem and sell it to partners outside their networks. Battle Treasures could live far beyond its TV slot, feeding YouTube, podcasts and future opportunities. The audience could encounter the same world across multiple platforms rather than being funnelled into one window.

It wasn’t a trivial concession. It required a different view of value. Do you want to own a static product or be part of a living brand which ultimately - if it plays out the way we want, will drive viewers to your channel and platforms? Hearst chose the latter, and that single decision unlocked creative and commercial possibilities that would have been impossible under a traditional rights regime.

Flipping the Risk

The financial structure was equally unconventional. In a standard commission, the producer earns a healthy production fee and a slim chance of backend income. The broadcaster takes the upfront risk and commands the rewards. We inverted that. Due to the low budget Legend could only earn a small production fee, having faith that in the end that we would earn money in the long run from a stronger back-end position. Hearst on the other hand benefited from a low entry cost for a premium series that could play across their international portfolio.

Yes, Legend absorbed more risk than usual and this model for some won’t be appetising. However, I believe risk and ownership are twins. If you want one, you take the other.

Like every production, we hit headwinds and unexpected costs. An honest conversation with the commissioners led to them covering a small overage. They didn’t have to. They simply recognised the risk we were taking. After the initial contractual tussles, the rest was smooth: clear notes, responsive departments, a shared sense of purpose.

Why did they do it? Because Hearst, under Heather Jones’s leadership, has created an environment where people can experiment with new models. They understand that television has to evolve.

What makes this sustainable is not a single deal but an ecosystem. Each Battle Treasures episode fuels YouTube, social, podcasts and potential live events. Every platform feeds the next. When the rights are yours, you think horizontally. When they’re not, you deliver vertically and that ladder is getting shorter.

In a way, we’ve gone back to how television began. In the early days, the true risk-takers were creators and small production companies, not broadcasters. Over time, the balance shifted because channels had the capital. Technology has flattened the field again. You can produce, publish and distribute from your laptop. Millions already do it, funding their own work and building audiences. The difference is scale and polish, not philosophy.

What Digital Creators Already Know

Television has been slow to learn from that world. It still behaves as though creative risk must be underwritten by a corporate entity. What matters is not who writes the cheque; it’s who holds the rights when the cheque clears.

Adopting a digital mindset doesn’t mean abandoning rigour. It means embracing agility. Fast cycles. Simple approvals. A direct relationship with the audience. That’s what the Battle Treasures structure allowed us to do: act like a studio, deliver like a broadcaster, think like a creator.

However, the most transformative element of the deal I think was speed. Everything about the project was accelerated: pitch, greenlight, production, delivery. We had one set of notes, one clear line of authority, no circular approvals. I was trusted to get on with it. The channel knew there was as much riding on this for me as for them and I was allowed to concentrate on the most important thing - creating great content.

Compressing time also changed the economics. A faster process meant a smaller budget could still deliver high value because less money was lost to drift. It also kept the creative energy alive. You can feel that pace on screen; the show has momentum because the production did.

Speed isn’t just efficiency. It signals confidence. It tells everyone involved that the makers know where they’re going. When you move at that rhythm you rediscover something television lost: urgency.

Audiences now expect new content constantly. The only way to feed that appetite without collapsing under cost is to move faster and own what you make. If Battle Treasures works for Sky HISTORY, I can deliver a new series within six months of the first airing.

Partnership, Not Patronage

If this sounds like a puff piece for Hearst, perhaps it is. However, the reason I think this deal matters is not just rights or economics - it’s the spirit of partnership, and it’s something I want all the channels and broadcasters to embrace. Finding the right partner is everything. After tough negotiation, the agreement was built on mutual respect. Hearst backed a small company when they didn’t have to. They trusted us to deliver on time and on brand. They were pragmatic enough to test a new approach.

If more broadcasters behaved like that, the industry would be in far better shape. The obsession with control has drained energy from commissioning. What we need now are genuine collaborations: broadcasters who see value in helping indies build long-term IP rather than extracting short-term content.

Hearst’s prompt cashflow wasn’t a minor courtesy; it was essential. Indies don’t fail because of bad ideas. They fail because of slow money and slower often terrible decisions. Paying on time isn’t generosity; it’s good business.

I also wanted to prove that this kind of deal isn’t just for the super-indies and studios who can absorb cost and risk. I’m a tiny company and we made it work. It was hard and painful at times. That’s television. The point is that with the right partner, it’s possible.

The Road Ahead

Will this model work for everyone? Probably not. It demands appetite for risk and the capability to monetise the backend. It demands you work for less with the promise of greater returns somewhere down the line. Not everyone will like the thought of that but I also believe, if you think you’re so good then you actually have back yourself.

So for some, this model wont work. Remember my article on the content dumbbell? Well this is in practice. This is content that is not super high-end, it’s premium factual designed for volume and not everyone knows how to, or want to play in this end of the market. It does, however, offer a glimpse of how the next phase of factual television could function.

We’re moving towards a hybrid world where broadcasters act more like investors and producers behave more like studios. The boundaries between commissioning, co-production and acquisition are blurring. What will matter most is speed, clarity and shared purpose.

For producers, that means building brands that live beyond one screen. For broadcasters, it means accepting that ownership isn’t the only route to value. For audiences, it means more stories made by people who actually believe in them.

The Battle Treasures deal worked because both sides understood what they were really buying. Hearst weren’t purchasing a set of episodes; they were investing in momentum. We weren’t selling a show; we were building a world.

Television now has to decide whether it wants to own things or grow them. Because if broadcasters don’t start thinking more progressively about how they work with producers, the entire system will eventually crash under its own weight.

If that sounds dramatic, good. The truth is simple: evolve or die.

Broadcasters aren’t broke. They’re just very good at looking broke.

Every year, producers are told the same story. Budgets are down. Advertising’s soft. Times are tough. Yet somehow, the same networks launch new digital channels, build podcast studios, hire expensive office space, and send executives to Cannes to celebrate “a challenging but successful year.” The maths never seems to add up.

Meanwhile, those actually making the shows are asked to do more for less. “Could you find a bit more finance?” “Maybe we co-produce?” “We just can’t afford more, the numbers are down.”

But are they really? Yes, on legacy linear platforms they might be. Yet when you account for all outlets, things aren’t nearly so bleak. Despite this, producers are being asked to take on more risk than ever, finding private investment, shouldering upfront costs, and hoping that somehow, on the back end, it will all come good.

But that back end is invisible. No one outside a broadcaster really knows how much a single programme earns once it’s transmitted across all platforms, yet distributors can account for every pence, dime and euro from global sales and we have to share that data back to channels.

And despite what you hear, it’s not as if the money has disappeared. Ofcom’s Media Nations report shows total UK commercial TV and online video revenues rising slightly in 2024 to £17.1 billion. ITV’s revenues dipped just 3 percent to £4.1 billion, Channel 4’s fell around 10 percent to just over £1 billion, while both grew digital income by double digits. This isn’t collapse. It’s reorientation.

Yet in the same period, UK production income fell by about £400 million, down 8 percent year on year, as commissioning spend dropped more than 10 percent. The production sector’s pain far outweighs the broadcaster’s.

In a world where everything can be tracked and accounted for, I believe that broadcasters’ opacity is quietly undermining the entire system.

Inside the Black Box

When I was a commissioner, I was struck by how much time went into defending “not spending money.” We would debate how to save a few thousand pounds by shaving archive rights or reducing production fees because channels wanted a higher margin.

Even inside broadcasters, discussing ad rates and profit margins is a closely guarded secret. Channels know exactly what a programme is likely to earn. They know which faces open up sponsorships and how ad revenue differs by genre. Every commission sits inside a spreadsheet that models its financial potential before a single frame is shot.

I understand the logic. Channels don’t want competitors knowing their rates or margins. And if producers discovered how much profit they actually made, negotiating fees would become awkward.

But now they’re asking producers to do the heavy lifting and should be obliged to show them the details.

It’s a strange contradiction. The very people carrying the financial risk are the only ones not allowed to see the financial return. This lack of transparency isn’t just frustrating; it’s structurally dangerous. It encourages short-termism and erodes trust. If broadcasters want real partnerships with indies, they need to share what success looks like in monetary terms for both parties.

Television isn’t as poor as it pretends to be. The advertising model may have plummeted on single platforms, but monetisation has multiplied. A single show can now earn from ad sales, sponsorship, VOD, FAST, YouTube, podcasts, international sales and, in some cases, merchandise. Each layer adds value, yet almost none of it is visible to those who created the content.

It’s like being asked to build a car for Ford while shouldering the financial risk but never knowing how much they’ll sell it for in the showroom.

The Invisible Halo

The financial value of a programme isn’t limited to its direct ad slots. Publicity has a currency of its own. When a show lands well, when it trends, pulls headlines or sparks a cultural moment, the channel cashes in twice. Strong ratings and brand buzz allow ad-sales teams to lift rates across the schedule. One hit can raise the tide for everything around it.

That halo effect is gold for a broadcaster, yet invisible to the indie. Producers rarely see a penny of the value they’ve created, even when their programme becomes the face of a season’s campaign.

For international networks like Discovery, this multiplies again. Each territory brings new income through local ad sales, carriage fees or affiliate deals. A show that performs in ten markets can make serious global money but for the producer, it’s meaningless. You might be praised in a press release for “global success,” but it doesn’t pay the overdraft you took out to make the series.

Until broadcasters share what a programme truly earns the partnership will remain one-sided. That was fine in the days of high production margins and decent budgets, but that model no longer works when producers are effectively making programmes for cost.

What YouTube Gets Right

Broadcasters talk a good game. I’ve heard many say they’re looking for “partnerships” with producers and want to explore new ways of working. The “Acquimission” is now a thing; they commission at levels they’d normally acquire programming at, and you get to keep the rights. Fair enough. But if you want us to invest in your future as well as ours, you have to show us the numbers.

YouTube, for all its flaws, of which I’ve written many times, is financially honest. We may not like its model, and it may have upended the whole industry, but at least creators know they keep 55 percent of ad revenue while YouTube takes 45. They can see exactly how much each video earns, broken down by region and ad type. They may not know Google’s costs, but they can see the pot.

Television, by contrast, operates in a financial fog. Once a show is delivered, it can be reused, repackaged and re-monetised across countless platforms without the indie ever knowing. The supposed Wild West of YouTube is more transparent than the industry that claims to have invented professionalism.

The Cost of Secrecy

This secrecy has warped the production landscape and hollowed out the business beneath it. Indies are told to be “entrepreneurial,” which really means shouldering debt and gambling on back-end revenues. Without visibility of the broadcaster’s returns, that risk becomes blind speculation. You might be financing a show already guaranteed to make the network a healthy margin.

When broadcasters pay less, they aren’t just tightening budgets, they’re dismantling the ecosystem that keeps television alive.

The imbalance trickles down. Fewer shooting days. Thinner crews. Freelancers waiting longer for pay. Quality drops, morale dips, and the industry’s middle tier slowly disappears. All because one side holds the data and the other doesn’t.

Production companies once had staff producers, runners and editors who could count on steady work across longer runs. That model spread experience, built loyalty and kept talent in the business. Today, shorter runs and smaller commissions mean everything revolves around freelancers. Crews move from project to project with no stability, while companies carry the overheads between jobs without income to cover them.

The standard production fee has stayed at 10 percent for decades. It used to represent a real margin on a properly budgeted show. Now, when producers are expected to deliver at cost, that 10 percent barely covers the accountants, insurance and compliance paperwork, let alone any profit.

Instead of investing in development or training, companies chase volume and cut corners. It’s a survival economy built on creative exhaustion.

Transparency isn’t about envy; it’s about equilibrium. Imagine if, six months after transmission, broadcasters shared a simple revenue summary: ad sales, sponsorship, digital performance. It wouldn’t need to be public, just shared with those who made the show. Deals would become smarter. Trust would grow.

If broadcasters can show they’re not broke, or indeed demonstrate that they are, then producers should be able to charge accordingly. Transparency isn’t just about fairness; it’s about rebalancing a business relationship that has become one-sided. High margins and profits shouldn’t belong to only one half of the partnership.

The Reckoning Ahead

The old “trust us” model belongs to another era. Audiences now expect transparency from Spotify, Substack and every creator platform. In TV, the people making the content aren’t shown the same courtesy.

Many broadcasters benefit from public charters, spectrum access or tax incentives. That should carry a higher duty of openness. The public has a right to know how airwaves are monetised, and the production community has a right to know how its work is valued.

Commercial secrecy might have worked when the market was buoyant. Now it breeds resentment. Producers talk. Commissioners leave. Trust erodes. Transparency isn’t a threat; it’s a pressure valve.

If broadcasters want producers to take more risk, they must let them see the reward. The next time you hear a commissioner sigh and say, “We just don’t have the budget,” ask the follow-up: “Fine, but how much will you make?”

Television’s future depends on rebuilding trust between those who make the shows and those who broadcast them. That won’t happen through another working group. It will happen when money stops being a secret.

Because if YouTube can show its creators what they earn, so can television.

And maybe then we’ll finally stop pretending that TV is broke and start rebuilding an industry that values honesty as much as creativity.

Are we experiencing the beginning of the end of television as we know it?

My answer? Maybe. But is TV itself dying? No way. Let me explain.

Over the next decade, the industry will change beyond all recognition. Transformation in television is incremental, it’s like growing old. You don’t notice it day by day, but one morning you wake up and the face in the mirror looks very different from the one you remember.

Even in my own career I’ve watched that cycle play out. In factual production, separate Producers and Directors were once the norm. Then came the ‘hybrid’ PD. Innovation in cameras like the Sony PD150 let PD’s dispense with camera crews, and the self-shooting PD was born. I was one of the first to make a broadcast show shot entirely on one. Camera operators complained that the craft was being lost; some adapted, others left the business. Then came the “Preditor” - the Producer/Director-Editor who handled the story, did the filming and produced the cut. Edit periods shrank, costs fell, and control shifted to whoever could operate the kit.

Looking back, it all feels inevitable. Each innovation reduced headcount and tightened process. And tomorrow? If things stay unregulated, the next transformation is easy to see.

But before I get going I don’t want you to see this as another apocalyptic forecast. It’s a reality check. Change is coming whether we like it or not, and I like to believe forewarned means forearmed.

Think about the last great industrial pivot: the motorcar replacing the horse. Before cars, transport revolved around animals: you needed to own one, feed it, stable it. An entire economy of blacksmiths, saddle-makers and stable yards grew around the horse. Then cars arrived and within a couple of generations the model collapsed. Horses didn’t vanish, but they became niche, as did the industry around them. Yes, there are still examples of all of the above, but most changed - stables became multi-story car parks, blacksmiths became mechanics, saddle makers became car fittings manufacturers.

If you lived then and you worked in traditional transport and knew what was coming next what would you do differently? Leave the industry or adapt?

Television will follow a similar path. Classic broadcast will survive, but only for certain genres and legacy audiences. The infrastructure that supports it, compliance teams, edit assistants, large crews will give way to something leaner, faster and more technical. The future of TV isn’t extinction; it’s re-engineering.

The Future Is Data

The real change ahead is no longer about genre or platform but process. I think many people have it wrong. They imagine AI wiping out everyone in the chain. But regulation and public demand will still want humans involved - in front of and behind the camera - there will be just far fewer of them.

The first change to understand is how we get our footage. The professional broadcast camera is about to stop being a lens that is pointed at something and instead it starts to become a data-collection device that captures everything.

That shift rewrites the director’s role. What was once an on-set, people-facing craft becomes a post-production discipline. Editors become the new directors. The decisions that used to happen in the gallery or on set, where to cut, when to pan, how to frame emotion will all be made later, on a timeline. Directing will move off the floor and into post-production. Why do I think this?

Ten years ago, 4K felt novel. Today, 8K is edging beyond niche, and professional cameras like the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro already shoot in 12K. Why go beyond 4K if most viewers can’t see that extra detail? Because higher resolution gives you data headroom. A single locked-off wide in 12K can be cropped, reframed and stabilised into multiple clean angles, all delivered in 4K or 8K. With 8K you already have four times the frame area of 4K, giving plenty of room to move your framing in post. When the captured image contains every possible shot, the pressure to make instant decisions on set weakens.

Obviously, this change won’t happen overnight. Technology still has a way to go: lens quality, sensor noise, codec limits, data size and motion blur still impose boundaries. But eventually the balance will shift toward the timeline.

The march to 16K is inevitable. Whether it arrives in five years or ten, the principle remains the same: more resolution means more flexibility. But we don’t have to wait for it. Alongside that evolution, AI is already filling the gap. It can already extend shots, remove unwanted cameras, and simulate pans or add focus pulls that were never there. The dataset plus AI effectively becomes a synthetic multi-camera rig.

Creative decision-making will be largely leaving the set. The on-day job becomes data capture: get the wide, get the coverage, record clean material. The artistry comes later, when algorithms and editors carve the story from the data.

Which leaves one crucial gap: the human connection. Directing contributors, asking questions, shaping tone or guiding actors - these remain vital parts of storytelling, but they will fall solely to the producer. The producer becomes the emotional interface between story and subject, while the editor-director shapes the visual narrative afterwards. It’s a quiet inversion of the hierarchy that defined production for decades.

Crews shrink. Studios dominate because they are controlled environments. Producers rise because they manage the workflow from capture to AI to edit. What remains is data and the people who can turn it into story.

Studio First, Location Second

If I was going to invest in anything now it would be studios. In this new world where backgrounds can be simulated in post, what you do need for pro grade productions is perfect conditions and a ‘safe’ environment. Studios, I believe, will once again dominate not because they’re glamorous but because they’re controllable. Lighting, sound, insurance, safety - all predictable. Add AI and you can conjure backdrops, extend sets, erase clutter and make a modest space look vast. Why build the palace when you can add it in post?

Which makes Hollywood’s current retreat from some of its historic sound stages all the more baffling. At the very moment the world is rediscovering the value of controlled space, the birthplace of studio filmmaking seems to be letting some of it slip away.

Location filming will of course continue, but with fewer people. Instead of roaming crews with cranes and Steadicams, you’ll see forests of tripods capturing 12 K plates, maybe one handheld for texture. Drones will still have their place, but the artistry of camera movement will become software.

This favours some genres and punishes others. Studio quizzes, talk shows and documentaries thrive in controlled spaces. Big, chaotic reality formats such as survival may struggle because unpredictability still needs human eyes behind the lens. But even there, automation and new technology will take on more of the heavy lifting while humans supervise the feed.

The Money Problem

Despite having to hire studios and expensive equipment, production costs will keep falling, not because commissioners are forcing them down but because AI is erasing departments. Graphics, maps, supers and even opening titles will be generated instantly. AI will scan rushes and build rough cuts in minutes. It won’t always be right, that’s why producers will still oversee it, but the speed will change the economics completely.

Don’t believe me? Look at stunt work. What was once one of film’s most dangerous jobs now happens mostly on green-screened wires. Why risk your life jumping off a building when AI can finish the illusion safely in a studio? And when people say audiences care, I don’t buy it. Look at the Avengers franchise. Does anyone complain that none of those stunts are real? Of course not. I love that Tom Cruise insists on doing his own but that matters more to marketing than to the film itself.

The other major cost in television is regulation. Insurance, safety officers and risk assessments protect large crews in unpredictable environments. As production shrinks into safer studios, those costs collapse. AI will monitor safety, flag inaccuracies and pre-check content. The regulatory load that once justified the expense of “proper television” will evaporate.

So if budgets collapse, how do people still make money? Few want to ask, because the answers are uncomfortable.

The good news is that potentially salaries for the survivors should rise. When you cut thirty jobs and leave six, those expertly skilled six must be paid properly. The producer, the presenter and the editor-director become premium roles.

Production fees will of course have to increase. Ten per cent of a much smaller budget barely keeps the lights on; twenty or twenty-five will be the new norm. With fewer people doing more, margins must stretch.

And AI itself becomes a cost. Professional-grade tools won’t be free. They’ll sit on the balance sheet like insurance once did. Subscriptions and licences will eat into every budget. Soon you’ll see a credit reading “AI by [tool]” just as you once saw “Film stock by Kodak.”

The paradox is that overall budgets fall, crews shrink, yet salaries, fees and AI costs rise. The pie is smaller, but each slice costs more.

The Culture Shock

With all this cost cutting how do you get into the industry? I think Filmschools and courses will have an increasingly important part to play. The junior roles won’t vanish, they’ll just move down-market. Assistant producers, edit assistants, junior researchers and camera trainees will still exist, but mainly on smaller, self-funded or experimental productions. Most will be self-taught, or if they’re lucky, guided by a single experienced producer at the helm. The big training pipelines once provided by broadcasters will shrink as the industry fragments.

As production companies take on more of the commissioning risk that broadcasters used to shoulder, they’ll want to limit exposure. When they test a new strand or launch a piece of digital content, they’ll use junior talent rather than top-tier crews. The result will be a two-tier system: small, agile teams experimenting with low-budget ideas, and elite producer-led units delivering the premium shows that keep the lights on.

Executives rarely say this out loud. To admit it is to admit they can’t protect the pipeline. Yet the shift is already visible. Every time a creator makes a million-view documentary with a laptop and one camera, another hole is punched in the case for large crews. Every time an AI tool cleans up dialogue or reframes a shot, another traditional task disappears.

Governments are nowhere near catching up. Television is showing early signs of regulatory capture: the very bodies that might slow the race are being courted by the platforms and technology firms driving it. Regulators no longer act purely as referees; too often they cheerlead for innovation.

When the industry was analogue, regulation protected standards, labour and truth. In the digital age it protects flexibility and growth. That’s why automation and AI advance unchecked while Ofcom, DCMS and even the unions still work from a twentieth-century playbook as twenty-first-century technology races ahead at software speed.

This story isn’t about television disappearing. It’s about the social contract of production unravelling. The days when a commissioner could boast about creating hundreds of jobs per series are rapidly disappearing. In their place is a new arithmetic: fewer people, bigger machines and a generation learning the craft the hard way, from the bottom up.

The Channels’ Reckoning

The other great shift will be the continuing change in how content is distributed. The old model of linear channels commissioning, funding and owning shows is already weakening, and that erosion will only accelerate. Traditional broadcasters will survive, but they will look more like cinema chains than production houses. They will still curate the best stories and host the big cultural moments, but will commission far less and buy far more.

The cost pressures are relentless and the government seems scared to act. They don’t want to regulate the new technology “bro’s” from San Fran so the inexorable decline will only continue. Advertising is already fragmenting, public funding is flat, and audiences are scattered across platforms that didn’t exist when the current system was built.

As a result, channels will have to choose a side. Some will move heavily into production, as Channel 4 in the UK seems to doing, building in-house units to make bespoke content more cheaply. But most, I believe, will go the other way. They will become publishers rather than producers - licensing rather than creating, persuading Governments they are more like YouTube that TV publishers. It makes sense, why pay for finished programmes when you can fill your schedules without taking on the development risk or the long-term rights burden?

This shift will reshape ownership. The value of a good idea will increasingly sit with the production company or the individual creator, not the channel. Broadcasters will rent prestige rather than build it. The industry will begin to resemble the book trade: a few powerful publishers curating a vast ecosystem of independent authors. And for the first time in television’s history, the people who make the programmes may finally hold the stronger hand.

The Silver Lining

So is there anything positive to take from all this? Yes. Every technological revolution brings pain, but it also brings democratisation. Now the tools of professional storytelling are within reach of almost anyone, just as motorcars democratised travel.

One huge positive is that AI-driven production will open the door to new entrants in television, allowing new voices from more diverse backgrounds to be heard. The walled garden of professional TV is finally being torn up - anyone with vision and a few smart tools will be able to compete - at least at a certain level.

However, while the loss of craft may make it seem that anyone can play, very few will truly compete at the top end, hurdles will still remain. Technology may have lowered the barrier to entry, not the bar for excellence. AI workflows will still cost money. Licences, hardware and data power all carry a price - and that price, I believe, is set to go up. Access maybe democratised but success is definitely not.

Just because you can own a Formula One car doesn’t mean you can drive it. That’s what professionaproduction teams will become - elite supercars piloted by the few who can handle the speed. The difference is that there will be thousands on the grid, not hundreds.

So yes, TV will survive. It will evolve. And perhaps, in the chaos of automation and disruption, a new generation of creators will emerge - leaner, faster and maybe even braver than ever before.

Donald Trump’s new 100% tariff on “foreign” films is being sold as protection, a patriotic wall around American cinema. But let us be honest about what he means. He does not mean Parasite or Squid Game sneaking into US theatres. Foreign language films are a sideshow in America: they make up about 18% of theatrical releases but barely 1% of US box office revenue. The real target is Hollywood’s own supply chain. Films that look American on the marquee but are made in Britain, Canada, or Eastern Europe. Rogue One, shot almost entirely at Pinewood, would count as “foreign” under Trump’s definition.

And that is why this policy is so self destructive. If enforced, it will not save Hollywood. It will strangle it

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The immediate sting

In the short term, the UK and Europe will feel some pain. Projects in pre-production may be paused or cancelled as US studios scramble to work out what qualifies as “foreign.” Crews who expected months of work might suddenly find gaps in their diaries. Studio space that looked booked solid could sit empty.

But those cancellations do not mean more work for American crews. They mean fewer films. Because the studios cannot afford to keep everything in California. It is not ideological, it is arithmetic. 87% of US studio films already have significant elements produced outside the country. Pull those pieces out and the entire pipeline shrinks.

Less US content, not more

So what happens when you cannot make enough? America’s screens, already thinning out as streaming grows, risk running dry. Instead of strengthening Hollywood, tariffs would reduce its output. At the very moment audiences demand more content, Trump’s policy delivers less.

And then there are the foreign films Trump thinks he has locked out. Price them out of the US box office and distributors will not simply stop making them. They will go harder at the rest of the world. Already, over 70% of Hollywood’s own box office comes from international markets. If the US is hostile, producers will chase that revenue elsewhere.

The appetite is already there

Audiences are ready. Squid Game turned subtitled Korean drama into global water cooler TV. Alice in Borderland, House of Ninjas, Money Heist, RRR. All foreign, all global. The idea that Americans can shut themselves off from “foreign” stories feels quaint in 2025.

For UK audiences, foreign content is already mainstream. The more US distributors block films from their own cinemas, the more international distributors will lean into Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Trump is not protecting Hollywood, he is giving everyone else a head start.

Britain’s accidental jackpot

And here is where Britain stands to benefit. Yes, there will be some wobble at first. But long term, we are perfectly placed. Pinewood and Leavesden are world class, our crews are seasoned, and our tax reliefs are among the best globally. The UK offers 25% relief on qualifying spend, capped at 80% of core costs, which makes budgets up to 38% cheaper than the US once you run the numbers. Disney alone has banked £1.6 billion in UK tax credits over 15 years.

Add to that our ability to deliver English language content with global reach, and suddenly we look like a tariff proof haven. Hire American actors, base the shoot here, and finance internationally. By the time the film hits cinemas in 2027 or 2028, Trump will be gone, but the infrastructure we have built will remain.

Reciprocity: the elephant in the room

And what about the rest of the world? Trade does not happen in a vacuum. If America slaps 100% tariffs on foreign films, do not be surprised if Europe or Asia retaliate. Maybe not with films, but with other parts of the US media and entertainment ecosystem: streaming rights, licensing deals, advertising access. If the US says “no” to international films, the rest of the world could just as easily say “no” to American ones.

Hollywood’s great advantage has always been global distribution. Jeopardise that, and you weaken the very thing the industry depends on.

Theatres and streaming: two levers

Theatrical exhibition in America has always been stacked against foreign films. Imports may represent close to one in five releases, but they account for just 1% of box office takings. Now Trump wants to push even US studio tentpoles, made abroad but labelled “domestic,” into that same trap. Imagine Disney’s slate of UK shot Marvel films suddenly treated like French arthouse.

Streaming is the wild card. YouTube and Netflix do not respect borders the way customs officers do. Enforcement of tariffs on digital distribution will be a bureaucratic nightmare. Which means more foreign films may simply skip US theatres altogether and go straight to streaming, monetising globally and building fandoms without ever passing through a US multiplex. Another step away from Hollywood’s monopoly.

The end of the road…

In the short term, there will be pain. Productions cancelled, crews in limbo, financing tied in knots. But in the long run, Trump has not saved Hollywood. He has throttled it. By trying to force production back to US soil, he has created an impossible cost structure. By locking out “foreign” films, he has encouraged them to look elsewhere, and they will find plenty of eager audiences.

The outcome is clear: fewer US films, more international ones. Hollywood loses its stranglehold, and a new era of global content begins. Britain, with its infrastructure, language, and incentives, is perfectly placed to step into the gap.

Trump thinks he is protecting American cinema. What he has really done is hand the rest of us the keys to the future.

So the only question is: are we ready to use them?

I know to utter those words will sound like heresy to some. The instant assumption is that I must be arguing against workers’ rights, against diversity, or in favour of letting producers wave guns around on set without consequence. I am not. Nobody is suggesting we scrap the protections that matter. What I am saying is that over sixty years of regulatory layering has left us trapped in paperwork theatre, protecting what-ifs rather than people, and in the process, we have made TV uncompetitive in a digital age

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From Wild West to nanny state

It was not always like this. In the 1980s, television was closer to YouTube than we care to remember. Crews shot wherever they fancied, release forms were virtually unknown, and if someone got hurt the company paid out and carried on. Risk was part of the job.

Remember when David Attenborough was famously bowled over by a silverback gorilla while filming Life on Earth? That raw jeopardy made extraordinary television. It would never happen now, a modern compliance team would shut it down at the first risk assessment, before a camera had even been switched on.

And consider the moral panics of the 1970s and 80s. When Johnny Rotten swore on live television with the Sex Pistols, it triggered national outrage, front page headlines and the suspension of presenter Bill Grundy. One punk singer’s profanity was enough to stoke a full blown moral panic.

Contrast that with today, when the horrific Charlie Kirk assassination video has been shared across digital platforms and not one government has called a public enquiry, or even said “enough is enough.” Back then, a single swear word provoked a storm. Today, violent content floods platforms without a raised eyebrow from those in power. And still, regulation piles higher on broadcast TV while digital remains largely untouched.

Paperwork theatre

Fast forward to now, and the rituals are everywhere.

The call sheet, once a vital tool, is now a novella: arrival times for every crew member, every phone number, screenshots of the nearest hospital. In practice, the PM and exec have the contacts on their phones, the runner has WhatsApp, and the location is a pinned drop. If someone is injured, we do not need a photocopied map, we need a car and Google Maps.

Or take safety. Of course nobody wants crew injured. But the way regulation has layered up, productions often end up preparing for risks so vanishingly small they border on the absurd. True story: I once had a production manager tell me I had to hire a Geiger counter to check whether the faint radiation from the illumination on an antique watch made it safe to handle. We had already consulted an expert, who said wearing gloves was sufficient. But because a box needed ticking, we wasted money proving something everyone already knew.

This is what happens when an industry becomes too risk averse. Instead of focusing on genuine hazards, we throw money at hypothetical ones. We mistake paperwork for protection, and in the process we lose sight of proportion.

Then there is E&O (errors and omissions) insurance. A commission already bakes in the cost of a broadcaster’s own blanket policy. Yet production companies are still forced to take out parallel cover. Two policies for the same show. It is the insurance equivalent of buying two umbrellas for one person and still getting wet.

And here is the kicker: most E&O policies come with an excess of around £10,000 that the production company has to cover before the insurance even activates. Which means many claims are simply cheaper to fix than to file. In practice, the broadcaster is covered, the producer is paying twice – I’d love to know how many times an E&O policy has been activated.

Or compliance. The production company spends time and money ensuring the cut meets the rules. Then the broadcaster’s compliance team does the same again. Duplicate notes, duplicate delays, duplicate costs. One standard, two owners.

And QC. Endless hours fixing GOP structures or gamma irregularities that no viewer will ever notice. YouTube ingests 4K uploads daily without demanding medieval pilgrimages through Baton reports. Broadcast could do the same, but will not.

These are not protections. They are rituals. They create the illusion of control while draining money from already fragile budgets. Here’s the mad thing though – it’s the channels themselves who are paying for all this. They say they can’t compete, yet they can’t wean themselves off covering themselves for infinitesimal risks.

Legacy deliverables nobody needs

Then there are the deliverables that have taken on a life of their own. Annotated scripts, for example. Nobody reads them except lawyers and archivists, and yet producers are still forced to spend hours delivering them. AI can and does generate them instantly – but have the channels asked anyone within their organisations whether they are actually used? If the broadcaster wants an as broadcast script, then let the broadcaster run the tool.

Production stills? Another box tick. We make producers grab photos on set, but if the channel needs reference images, AI can now pull clean stills straight from the final master.

Even the number of cuts. Rough Cut, Fine Cut, Programme Lock. Do we really need all three? Two would do the job. Every extra round means another week of edit time, more compliance notes, more cost, all for a marginal difference most viewers will never notice.

The important thing to remember: audiences do not watch the way they used to. They are often two screening, half scrolling Instagram or WhatsApp while your lovingly finessed archive shot plays in the background. I once asked a commissioner, who was asking for an extra archive clip, whether it would make the show £450 better. He admitted no. We / they did not buy it. Right call, nobody noticed.

This is not an argument for sloppiness. It is an argument for proportionality. For remembering that every deliverable is a cost, and that not every cost is worth it.

The political hangover

And here is the strangest part: politicians still act as if broadcast TV is the only medium that matters.

Look at the saga around Jimmy Kimmel. A single off colour joke on a late night talk show was enough to trigger a political firestorm and pressure networks into action. Broadcast comedy is still policed as if it can topple governments.

But does Trump, or any modern leader, really lose more sleep over a Kimmel gag than over the thousands of hours of unregulated, viral video attacking him daily on YouTube, TikTok or Rumble? That digital avalanche is far more vicious, far more dangerous to his presidency. Yet it carries almost none of the regulatory scrutiny broadcast still labours under.

Why? Because politicians are stuck in the old mindset that TV is “the” medium. And TV bosses, desperate to survive, keep reinforcing that myth. “We are still the most important platform,” they say, hoping for favours and protection. Meanwhile YouTube executives play the opposite game. They would never claim to be “the biggest show in town,” because the last thing they want is regulation. Better to stay quiet, re-enforce the lie that they are “just a platform,” and keep the freedoms that come with it.

So regulation piles higher on television, while digital sails by untouched. Which brings us to the kicker: in the unlikely event politicians finally grasp that it is regulation, not just audience drift, that makes TV so uncompetitive, what would deregulation actually look like? Which rules should stay and which should go?

Smart deregulation: protect people, not paper

If I were in charge of a channel here’s what I’d do. Let us start with what stays. Worker protections must remain sacrosanct: fair hours, prompt pay, anti bullying, safeguarding vulnerable contributors. Safety rules for genuinely risky shoots, stunts, extreme environments, minors, inclusivity and safety of contributors should never be watered down. And audience trust is non-negotiable: fairness in journalism, harm and offence standards, clear accountability when things go wrong.

But the rituals? They can go.

Call sheets should be shorter and live. One page with key times, location, hazards, and a link to a digital doc that updates in real time. Hospital maps? Everyone has Google Maps. Phone numbers? Keep them with the PM and exec, not blasted across a PDF.

E&O insurance? One policy per broadcaster, with productions named onto it. Cheaper at scale, cleaner in responsibility.

Compliance? One owner. Let the broadcaster’s compliance team be the arbiter. The prodco warrants good faith but does not duplicate the process.

QC? Move to a tolerance model. Hard fails for real issues like silent channels or severe sync drift. Soft fails for cosmetic quirks. The broadcaster decides whether to fix or ship.

Busywork? Annotated scripts, production stills, music cue sheets, automate them at the buyer’s end. AI can generate most of these in minutes. Producers should produce, not hand write archive fodder.

And instead of blanket bureaucracy, use randomised audits. Like food safety inspections, the possibility of spot checks keeps standards honest without forcing every project through the same grinder. Fail and you face stricter oversight next time. Pass consistently and you enjoy lighter touch.

This is not deregulation as chaos. It is deregulation as focus. Strip out the paperwork theatre, keep the protections that matter, and you buy back both money and creative oxygen.

The Result?

What happens if we do this? Budgets fall without cutting people. Insurance premiums drop. Producers spend more time producing, editors more time crafting stories. Broadcasters save, audiences get TV that takes risks again.

It is almost comic if you zoom out. In the 1960s, TV was the Wild West. By the 1990s, it was the nanny state. Now we live in a hybrid era: TV still trapped in over regulation, digital still running barefoot across the prairie. Politicians once terrified of television’s power have barely glanced at the platforms that now dominate elections, shape childhoods, and bend culture at scale.

Television, the medium that has lost dominance, is still treated as the dangerous one. Digital, the medium that has gained dominance, is still treated as a toy. No wonder the economics do not add up.

Are we the problem?

But here’s a thought: maybe the problem is not YouTube being under regulated. Maybe the problem is us. Maybe television has become addicted to its own paperwork? Is anyone in TVland bold enough to throw away the rule book and start again? Whoever does, will definitely win.

Deregulation does not mean throwing away protections. It means throwing away rituals. Call sheets that nobody reads. Duplicate E&O. Duplicate compliance. Too many reviews. Baton reports for phantom errors. Annotated scripts producers do not need. Filming in 4K when you only need to deliver in HD.

The danger is not recklessness. The danger is inertia. An industry so wrapped in its safety nets it cannot afford to leap.

If last week’s argument was “raise YouTube up,” this week’s is “take the weight off TV’s ankles.” Both can be true. We need a regulatory framework fit for a hybrid age, fast, fair, and focused on protecting people, not paper, otherwise we will have no industry left to protect at all.

If you’ve ever delivered a show to ITV, Sky or Netflix, you’ll know the routine. Before a single frame goes near transmission, the production team must assemble a stack of paperwork that could floor a donkey. Errors & Omissions insurance (E&O), compliance notes, rights clearances, risk assessments, proof that someone on set is trained in first aid. And that’s before you even get to the less obvious stuff: electrical certificates for the lights, health and safety checks for the location, contracts proving you own the rights to the archive you’ve cut in. Miss just one of these and the broadcaster will bounce the programme.

Why? Because if something goes wrong, if a lawsuit arrives, or someone gets hurt, or a rights holder challenges you, the broadcaster is ultimately responsible. So understandably, they insist you tick every box.

On YouTube however? You just hit upload. There’s no E&O or pre-clearance. And while platforms in some countries now face online safety duties, they still don’t carry the broadcaster-style liability that forces TV to insist on compliance paperwork.

Fool’s Gold

It’s obvious why making content this way is appealing: freedom from regulation and a massive saving in costs. Not only that, it’s even more obvious why younger people prefer to watch it over traditional TV. It’s edgier, more exciting. More dangerous.

But that difference in production procedure doesn’t just distort the economics. It encourages risky practice. On YouTube, no one asks for insurance certificates or safety paperwork, so many creators don’t bother. Why spend thousands on lawyers when you can just wing it? Why worry about duty of care when you’re a one-person band?

The incentives are skewed. The more dangerous the stunt, the more clicks. The more reckless the risk, the more likely you’ll get noticed. As TV professionals we’ve all watched this type of footage, sometimes through our fingers, knowing we could never make the same content for our channels.

And sadly, sometimes people pay the ultimate price for trying to get noticed.

Just last year, a 26-year-old British content creator died after falling from the Castilla-La Mancha bridge in Spain. The 630-foot structure was the backdrop for a stunt he was attempting to film for social media. He fell from around 40–50 metres while his girlfriend, who was with him, reportedly witnessed the tragedy. A TV production would never have allowed someone to scale a structure like that without harnesses, risk assessments and insurance. But on YouTube or TikTok, the incentives reward exactly this kind of spectacle.

If that had happened on a TV shoot, the consequences would have been seismic. Investigations. Lawsuits. Damaged reputations. Possibly criminal liability. The kind of reckoning that forces the entire industry to re-examine its processes. On YouTube, it was reported as a tragedy — but the wider system didn’t change.

The distribution danger

It isn’t just how content is made. It’s also what content is shown.

There’s no watershed and, unlike TV, platforms don’t operate under broadcast scheduling rules. In the UK, Ofcom’s Online Safety Act regime now applies to platforms, but it isn’t the same as the broadcaster obligations that keep pre-watershed violence off TV.

When US commentator Charlie Kirk was recently assassinated, mainstream coverage noted that graphic footage of the killing spread rapidly across platforms. Millions could find and share it including children. My own son showed me the horrific video before the event had even reached mainstream news.

Now imagine if a broadcaster did the same. If Channel 4 ran unedited footage of a killing before 9pm, Ofcom would be on them in hours. The fine could run into millions. Politicians would call it a disgrace.

That’s the double standard: broadcasters face sanction for lapses, while platforms continue to operate under a lighter framework.

The excuse doesn’t wash

Ask YouTube why it doesn’t apply the same level of regulation and you’ll hear the familiar refrain: “Billions of uploads. Impossible to manage.” It sounds convincing - until you look at music.

Their Content ID system fingerprints every song uploaded, matches it against a global database, and instantly decides whether to allow, block or monetise it on behalf of the copyright holder. Upload a Beyoncé track and within seconds the system knows who owns it and where the ad money should flow.

If they can do that for Universal’s back catalogue, they could do something similar for compliance. AI already has the capacity to scan video for dangerous stunts, violent imagery or defamatory material. It wouldn’t be perfect but neither is Content ID, and it still works at scale.

Imagine a traffic-light system that happens at upload:

• Green videos: passed by AI, automatically covered under YouTube’s own pooled E&O insurance.

• Amber videos: flagged for human review, with the producer required to submit paperwork.

• Red videos: blocked until compliant.

Complicated? Not really. The infrastructure already exists. It simply isn’t applied in this way.

Why it hasn’t happened

Of course, there’s a reason. If platforms were forced to apply the same compliance rules as broadcasters, the cost and burden would almost certainly be passed back on to the uploaders. Suddenly, instead of hitting “publish,” you’d be paying for lawyers, insurance, certificates. For most creators, that would be the end of the road.

Bad news for platforms, perhaps. But potentially good news for the TV industry. Because if that happened, we’d finally see some kind of regulatory parity. Traditional producers already know how to work in a compliance-heavy environment. We’ve been doing it for decades. If advertisers began to question how safe YouTube really is, really understand how much risk their brands are exposed to, some might reconsider TV as a safer place to be.

Wishful thinking? Probably. But levelling the playing field could be the fastest way to stabilise the industry.

The missing voices

And what about our own industry bodies? We are constantly being told that YouTube is where it’s at. My own company creates content for the platform amongst others, but I still do it the old school way - safely. However, do I feel supported by the big trade bodies? Do I think they truly understand the challenges?

PACT, Ofcom, DCMS - they’re still staring at linear TV decline, while the biggest “broadcaster” in the world carries on seemingly untouched. No meaningful digital compliance standards. No serious lobbying for regulation. No plan to close the loophole that lets YouTube enjoy broadcaster reach without broadcaster responsibility. It’s this that’s killing our industry.

Of course younger people prefer the “edgy” online videos compared to our industry’s safely made, compliant content. No wonder creators can more easily monetise if they’re allowed to make “TV” without the same regulatory burden.

That leaves independent producers in a bind. Try to make responsible content for YouTube and, depending on what you’re making, you’re priced out. Lawyers, insurance, paperwork are impossible to fund on advertising pennies alone. Meanwhile, riskier content thrives made by those who shirk those responsibilities. It’s no longer acceptable for the platforms to say that it’s “at the creator’s own risk” because, of course, most will gladly take those odds.

PACT for one needs to wake up. It’s no longer enough for it to fight linear battles for the industry. The frontier is digital. Unless producers demand a framework, the chaos will continue and more people will continue to get hurt.

So what do we do?

There are options, but they all require pressure from the bodies I’ve just mentioned.

• Industry standards. Voluntary compliance codes backed by PACT, tied to pooled insurance from the platforms. Sign up to the code — get an easier upload.

• Shared insurance. Platforms could extend pooled E&O cover to compliant creators, as they already do with music rights.

• Regulatory parity. If you’re distributing to millions, you’re a broadcaster in all but name. Governments need to be firm and step in here.

• Producer strategy. Don’t rely solely on ad revenue. It will never initially cover the cost of safe, compliant production. Hybrid models: subscription, sponsorship, and perhaps most importantly broadcast backflow, are the only realistic path.

The uncomfortable truth

So, is YouTube dangerous? In my view, yes, but not simply because of the videos it hosts - it’s dangerous to the longevity of our industry. The real danger lies in what’s missing: insurance, compliance, watershed, accountability.

The death of a young British content creator in Spain shows what can happen when creators are left without safety nets. He fell from the Castilla-La Mancha bridge while attempting to film a stunt - something no TV production would ever have allowed without risk assessments, insurance, and proper safety measures. The spread of violent assassination footage shows what happens when audiences see material no broadcaster would dare run pre-watershed.

But beyond individual tragedies, there’s a deeper risk: the more YouTube thrives on a lighter set of rules, the more it undermines the economics of professional TV.

And while YouTube continues to insist it’s just a platform, we all know the reality: it is the world’s most powerful broadcaster. The question is whether we producers, regulators, governments are prepared to treat it as such, and whether advertisers will keep underwriting the risks.

Because if we don’t, the next scandal won’t just be a tragedy for creators or audiences. It will also be another nail in the coffin for an industry that has spent decades proving it can make content safely, responsibly, and sustainably.

A decision rooted in accuracy. And in a way, it’s hard to argue: Hawk-Eye doesn’t blink. Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t miss.

But here’s what it doesn’t do:

• It doesn’t hesitate or doubt its own call

• Its calls don’t trigger a contentious gasp from the crowd

• It doesn’t spark a confrontation at the net

• It doesn’t make a player doubt themselves, even when they’re right

Because the line judge wasn’t just a function, they were a character, a part of the story. Yes, occasionally, they got it wrong. But that’s exactly what made them matter and why the drama of Wimbledon was so compelling. Was a player robbed? Did a wrong call turn the tide of the game? This is whats happens in real live to everyone of us, and it’s why we connect with sports. The injustice, the ability to overcome adversity. These are why sports people can become legends.

The same goes for drama. It’s the tiny human flaws - imperceptible at first - that make acting performances compelling. Today, directors can become so enamoured with process and technology that they overlook the very thing that matters: the nuances of human frailty that only actors can capture.

With AI becoming more and more adept at creating incredible imagery, we’re not far away from using it in our visual workflows. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no luddite. AI-generated imagery will be brilliant for the sector. It will allow new content makers to enter the industry. It’s a great equaliser, tearing down barriers that once kept outsiders firmly out. If you weren’t trained on pro kit, you weren’t welcome. Now all that changes.

But. But.

We need caution and a clear understanding of what AI-generated content does and doesn’t do. Yes it can conjure the streets of Victorian London. But are the clothes, vehicles and buildings correct? In the old days, you’d have consultants advising on every aspect of the production - depending on the budget, of course.

AI can’t direct actors

Most importantly though, AI doesn’t direct actors. It’s an algorithm, a piece of code, not a Director. It looks at how actors have behaved in other shows and replicates those emotions but replication isn’t direction and simulation isn’t performance.

AI’s output is only ever an approximation of how it thinks an actor should behave, not how we actually would act in a given environment, and it’s this nuance that matters. We it’s ignored, we can see the effects.

We can already see the results of losing the human element by looking at Wimbledon. The match plays on. The line beeps. The point continues. It’s smoother. More efficient. And somehow, a bit more forgettable, a bit more boring.

And TV’s in danger of doing the same thing

I read that Sky History has begun using AI for its historical reenactments.
Of course they have - they’re smart. They’ve always been nimble, unafraid to experiment with new models and tech. A small channel with big ideas.

Not only that, they’re right to do it: AI reenactments will let smaller indies deliver shows that previously would’ve been unviable. Armour is expensive. Horses even more so. Weather insurance, extras, makeup, location fees… it adds up fast.

As I said before, AI can bring costs down and access up. It can help more people tell stories in a way they never could before. It’s one thing being able to light a glossy MIV, totally another to film a full-scale reenactment with insurance and risk assessments - and it’s that kind of risk which prevented smaller companies being entrusted with bigger work.

But here’s the rub. It’s great that new entrants will enter the sector because of AI. But will they be able to use it properly?

Will that AI-generated soldier ever stumble in the mud, drop his musket, or stand awkwardly in the smoke? Will his eyes dart, unsure, as the scene unfolds?

Because that’s what real soldiers do. Not because it was written that way, but because humans behave in ways that are entire unpredictable. They shake. Adjust. Sweat and in doing so, they become real.

AI doesn’t do real. Maybe it does accurate. But what it really does is clean. Soulless.

It doesn’t flinch when the gun misfires because the gun never misfires unless you tell it to.
It doesn’t mutter something unscripted.
It doesn’t carry the weight of its own nervous energy into a performance.

It just does what it’s told.

And that’s the problem because human made drama doesn’t live in the expected - it lives in the unpredictable.

We think we want polish. But we really want presence.

I’ve met many a young director who obsesses about the latest kit, using cinema grade cameras. Fine, when I was there I got into this stuff too. But actually, thats not the stuff that matters.

Imagine a war film where every explosion is perfectly timed, every face perfectly lit, every movement smooth. It would feel more like a museum diorama than a battlefield.

We’d switch off. Not because it’s not impressive but because it doesn’t feel alive. There is a famous scene in Sam Mendes 1917 when the lead actor is running along a battle-line as men start their attack - people fall over, they stumble, not because they were told to, but because it genuinely happened by mistake. Mendes kept every slip in there and guess what? It’s one of the most authentic, energetic scenes in modern war movie cinematography.

I’m really cognisant that, to some extent, reenactments have always had a faint unreality - we know we’re not really watching reality - thats what archive is for. However recree plays a vital role too. It immerses you in a story, and when it’s done badly it takes you out of the moment. However, the opposite is true too: when something becomes too slick, it’s just as jarring. Perfection also has its own set of risks.

What you aim for is the Goldilocks zone -where it’s just right -and that, I believe, only comes from authenticity, the unexpected, the compelling and messy human performance.

We need the human. The authentic. The unpolished.

It’s why people gravitate to bloopers. To behind-the-scenes footage.
It’s why we still love live broadcasts - even when they go wrong.
It’s why some of the most memorable moments on television were unplanned.

Because in those moments, we see the crack and in the crack, we feel connection.

Social media is built on these moments. Raw, reactive, unfiltered. Last week I wrote about the danger of making your content too beautiful. AI raises the stakes even higher. It’s not just beautiful - it’s airless.

The human touch always wins

Whenever I can, I work with my favourite editor, a lovely chap called Tony Simmons. He’s lightning fast, smart, brilliant. But he also works in what you might call an old-school way.

Back when we still ingested tapes in real time, Tony insisted on watching the whole thing as it came in.

Not for the dialogue. Not for the shot list. But for the mistakes.

He was watching for the camera wobble. The nervous glance at the start of a take. The moment the interviewee shifted, cracked, looked down the lens.

And he would use them.

He’d find a way to put those little fractures in the cut -not hide them. This was long before Netflix documentaries made it a house style. Before the pre-interview silence and mid-interview tears became tropes. Tony already knew what audiences feel, even if they don’t know it: imperfection = truth.

When we see the set-up, the awkward pause, the nerves - we believe it. We connect to it.

Because that’s how humans behave.

AI can’t spot a crack because it doesn’t know what one means

You could feed AI every archive interview ever filmed. Train it on 10 million human faces. Ask it to replicate emotion and it still won’t find Tony’s moment.

Because AI can simulate emotion, but it doesn’t recognise the value of hesitation. It doesn’t instinctively understand that a shift in posture or a muttered “God…” before the first question might be the most important part of the scene.

Editors like Tony are emotional archaeologists.
AI is just a surface painter.

And that’s the real danger. We’re not just replacing people - we’re replacing artisanal skills from the process. The friction, the doubt, the sparks of real emotion. All of it.

So where does this leave us?

We’re not anti-AI. We’re anti-perfection.

Use AI when it opens doors, not when it closes hearts. Use it to expand what’s possible but not to smooth over what’s powerful.

Because real drama comes from risk. From hesitation. From the moments where the actor blinks, the editor cuts late, the truth slips out.

So:

• Use AI to create what you couldn’t otherwise afford—but not what you could have felt.

• Don’t polish out the pauses. Build in the awkwardness. Let things breathe.

• Encourage the crackle, the stumble, the near-miss.

• Trust editors who dig for truth, not the clean take.

Remember: your audience isn’t just watching. They’re scanning and if they sense something’s too perfect, they’ll scroll past it.

Because if we lose those moments, we don’t just lose authenticity, we lose attention.

The algorithm might reward frictionless polish but remember, people still connect through mess.

Let AI generate the setting but let humans command the stage.

So if anyone at Wimbledon happens to be reading this - bring back the line judge before it’s too late…

What used to be a place for raw, reactive storytelling has been templated into safe, respectable, interview-heavy wallpaper. It’s watchable, but not memorable. Serious, but not surprising and for younger audiences raised on YouTube chaos, TikTok confessionals, and streamers who don’t care about the BAFTAs, it’s just not cutting through.

Which brings me to a bigger fear: this inadvertent repetitiveness not only means are viewers losing interest but the next generation of filmmakers are losing their training ground. The craft of observational storytelling - the school of standing in a police station or airport until a narrative emerges and then working out how to get a beginning and end out of the ensuing chaos. This vital storytelling practice is vanishing only to be replaced by slick re-creations and second camera angles. Essentially compelling actuality is being ignored in favour of soft-formatting.

Remember the dumbbell?

A while back, I said TV content looked a lot like a dumbbell. On one end: super-cheap, high-volume stuff. On the other: super-expensive, prestige content. And in the middle? Not much.

That’s where I believe traditional TV is heading - premium dramas, landmark docs and flashy formats at one end, and cheap, cheerful, high-turnover shows on the other. It’s actually a great place to be. TV has the financial muscle to play at both ends of the scale and deliver brilliant content in both.

But here’s the problem: some genres are being kicked aside in the rush to simplify and systematise production and nowhere is this more obvious than in factual.

Documentary, or more broadly, ‘non-scripted’, is becoming increasingly formulaic, particularly in the historical and crime spaces, and it's in danger of killing off the industry. The editorial pattern of the average doc goes like this:

1. Interview experts, victims, and key players in photogenic locations. Light them beautifully. Use prime lenses to blow out the background. Get them to stare down the barrel of the lens whilst talking but don't forget to add a second camera for your cutaways - usually at a slightly odd angle to add a bit of ‘Dutch’ to the process.

2. Slather on the archive. Let it do the heavy lifting.

3. Can’t find the archive? No problem - cue the tasteful re-cre (if you’re American) or reenactment (if you’re British).

4. Don't forget maps or other graphics if you're still struggling to cover up the talking heads.

5. Rinse and repeat until the hour is up.

So here’s the question: is that still documentary? Ask a director who’s made one of these 'films' and they’ll vehemently argue they are documentaries. Ask them if Clarkson’s Farm is a documentary, however, and they’ll look at you like you’ve just insulted their dog.

And yes, while it’s true that a four-part crime doc about a 1970s serial killer might feel 'important' what’s really happening is we’re making all of our docs look and feel the same. No wonder younger viewers crave the intimacy, immediacy and authentic nature of digital. It feels uncontrived, edgy, like you don’t know what’s going to happen next - weirdly how TV used to feel before it became too slick.

I believe we need to seriously look at how we're delivering our stories and how we're training our next generation of programme makers. We need to start appreciating the art of shows like The Grand Tour, Mortimer & WhiteHouse: Gone Fishing or any other fact-ent shows, because hidden in them are big messages that hit home. Beneath the entertainment are sharp, well-told stories they’re often delivering the same societal messaging our 'serious' docs do, but in a more digestible way.

I’m someone who’s lucky enough to have done both types of factual programme making and I’m here to tell you: observational fact-ent is the much tougher gig. Sadly, however, it’s being killed off - not by the audience, but by the industry - and if we're not careful the result will be we'll continue to haemorrhage even more viewers on short form, digital platforms.

Wonky angles, dusty archive and tasteful recon just can’t beat real actuality.

I think we’ve stopped making documentaries and instead we’ve started producing them. Hear me out - there’s a difference.

I’m starting to find that modern documentaries are boring. Yes, they’re polished. Yes, they’re expensive and yes their stories are often powerful. But it’s not enough and it’s not the stories that are at fault - it’s the way we deliver them. All our premium docs look fantastic but all of that gloss comes at a cost that’s not just financial.

What we’re losing is authenticity. The more stylised the image, the less it feels like real life. The more prime lens depth-of-field and drone swoops we use, the more we signal to the audience that what they’re watching isn’t quite the truth - it’s a stylised construction.

That’s the paradox: we’re spending more money to make things look beautiful, to signal to viewers how they should be feeling in a moment. We’re trying so hard to differentiate ourselves in the competition between YouTube and traditional TV that we’re making our content feel less real in the process.

Documentary used to feel unpredictable. It was messy. Grainy. Sometimes ugly but it pulsed with immediacy. Now, too many documentaries feel like they’ve been designed by committee, colour-graded into submission, and spat out with a melancholy score and pre-approved moral arc.

It’s not just that the format is repetitive - it’s that the emotional rhythm is predictable. You know where it’s going. You know what tone it’ll hit. You know how it’ll end and in a world of infinite content, predictability is death.

That’s not risk. That’s recipe and it's a recipe that clearly doesn't work if no-one is watching TV anymore.

The skill we’ve stopped teaching

Before we go further, let me name-check a film that still haunts me: Dave Nath’s Brian’s Story. Made in 2001, it was an incredibly crafted film made by a director who had literally just finished making the ITV series Airline. It followed a man called Brian, a homeless person who once had a 'normal life' as a journalist, through the brutal trial of trying to rebuild his broken life. Brian was unpredictable, suffered terribly from mental illness issues and often found it hard to properly articulate what was going on around him.

Dave spent over a year filming him, often just following, watching, listening. It wasn’t built in post. It was earned, on the street, being at Brian's side. Dave and the commissioner didn’t know how it was going to end but end it did, in a very tragic way.

The result? One of the most powerful portraits of homelessness ever broadcast. A reminder that society doesn’t just fail people once, it fails them again and again until no one notices they’ve vanished. Tragically, Brian died unexpectedly after falling from a window. He had high levels of alcohol in his bloodstream, and it seemed likely he accidentally fell. Whatever the reason, whether he decided to end his life or it was an accident, it was a shocking and devastating conclusion, not just for the audience, but for Dave himself.

It made for one of the most powerful documentaries ever made, but the only reason that was possible, was because everyone involved didn’t know how it was going to end - but they knew whatever the outcome was, that they would be able to tell an incredibly compelling and emotional story. This is documentary making.

But here’s the thing: Dave, like me, came up through the ranks of Airline and Ramsay’s Boiling Point - not from making sit-down interview shows. We made shows where you had to sink or swim, find a narrative in chaos, and fight for every frame. His later success in documentaries wasn’t a coincidence it was because of those early years spent in the fire. I honestly believe if he hadn’t of made those earlier fact-ent shows, he wouldn't have been able to tell Brain’s story the way he did.

So where does that leave us?

We need to start saying something uncomfortable out loud: a lot of young filmmakers aren’t being trained properly and I don’t mean at film school, I mean out in the field making observation documentaries for broadcast. Not because they lack talent but because that type of show isn’t really being commissioned anymore.

Instead, factual shows now work on tightened timelines, very often a ‘director’ either wont edit what they have shot or vice versa. There’s no room for unpredictable ob-doc and even if there is, no one person goes through the full editorial journey anymore. If you don’t own the full process you wont be able to learn new skills, or learn from making mistakes. If you’ve never had to dig a narrative out of a day of live chaos unfolding right before your eyes, you don’t learn how story actually works.

And this is where the broadcasters need to listen.

We need more risk in the way we tell stories. Yes, it’ll cost you. Yes, it might take longer and it’s not very efficient - but by god you get a better story at the end and isn’t that exactly what HETV has been built on? You’re already spending big on drama, so why are you squeezing your factual slate into 12-month slots and glossy templates?

Stop obsessing over beauty. Start obsessing over truth. Commission documentaries where no one - not even the director - knows how it’s going to end. Let your teams shoot with smaller cameras. Let them stay longer. Let the edit breathe. T he result won’t be polished but it will be unforgettable.

So what if it takes 18 months to make. Yes, it’s going to be hard but you know what? That’s where the gold is. That’s the gig.

So bring back observational documentary. People love it and it’s the one genre that, if we let it, can genuinely go toe to toe with YouTube. Not by copying it but by beating it at its own game: intimacy, unpredictability, and authenticity. After all, we invented that art form.

That’s how we win back audiences. That’s how we rebuild trust. That’s how we make documentary matter again.

That mindset made them great at delivery but it’s also what’s holding them back because when your instinct is to “get the commission, make the show, move on,” you’re not building a company. You’re just wrapping a limited company around your labour. Perhaps worse, you’re acting like a jobbing tradesperson like a plumber turning up to install someone else’s system with no upside after the job is done.

But that’s not what you do. You’re not just providing a service.
You’re creating the idea. The IP. The thing of value. The name.
The format.
The tone.
The entire blueprint. That’s not pipework. That’s architecture and when you hand it over, for free, or for cheap, or “just to get the commission”, you’re not being clever, you’re just building someone else’s asset.

Yes, obviously better to have a gig than no gig at all. But if that gig comes at the cost of your rights, your brand, your format, your future then you’re not growing a business - you’re just leasing your best ideas to someone else. However, now that the government is finally beginning to listen and is proposing to give you the tools to act like an entrepreneur and stop you thinking like a simple service provider.

The invisible goldmine

The UK is a powerhouse when it comes to global factual formats. Not just shiny-floor entertainment but real-world, specialist factual that quietly travels to dozens of territories and pulls in millions. Wheeler Dealers has been sold in over 150 countries. The Science of Stupid has been remade in more than a dozen local versions. First Man Out built a loyal, global fanbase from survival-obsessed audiences in Europe to military networks in Asia. These aren’t just one-offs. They’re brands. Formats. Franchises.

And in most cases, the people who originally developed them? No longer control them. In factual, perhaps more than any other genre, producers are lulled into thinking: this is a simple show - how valuable can it really be?

Answer: very.

Because it’s not about the headline - it’s about the repeatability. The low cost, high sell-through. The fact that you can dub it, localise it, spin it off, or re-version it for years. Channels love that. Investors love that. Distributors love that. But if you gave the rights away? You’re the only one who doesn’t benefit from it.

And here’s the irony. The shows I mentioned above - these are great formats - but they’re, in my opinion, massively under-exploited pieces of IP. Why? Because the channels that commission them are hungry beasts. They order, broadcast, move on. They just want content. They're not wired to think like brand builders.

The weird thing is, their aggressive rights grabs have created a kind of stalemate. The producers are so disincentivised by the deals they signed that they’ve no reason to push the IP forward either. The rights are locked up, but the engine is idle. Everyone moves on to the next commission, and the show sits there, under-used, under-exploited, undervalued. That’s not how you build equity. That’s how you waste it.

Desperation is expensive

Here’s the thing no one tells you: broadcasters and streamers often want all rights, in perpetuity, worldwide - not because they’ll exploit them, but because they can. Their lawyers are trained to capture everything "just in case." But most rights never get used. That board game, that podcast, that tie-in book? They’re not in anyone’s active plan. They're just parked. For 20 years. And that’s the trap. You give up optionality - just in case they want it - and in return you get… nothing.

So unless you actively carve out those rights, you won’t be able to make anything else from your clever idea and by the time the deal term ends, the show’s likely rinsed, irrelevant, or unrevivable. Ask yourself: other than scripted dramas, when was the last time you watched a factual show from 20+ years ago?

That’s not a library. That’s a graveyard.

I saw a show taken from its own creators

Yes, I’ve genuinely seen it happen. When I was a commissioner, I witnessed a production company lose its own show. They’d created it, shaped it, delivered the first two seasons. Then, once the numbers looked good, the channel handed it to their in-house team to continue. They didn’t break any laws. They didn’t even break the deal because the deal had already done that job for them. It was watertight from the broadcaster’s point of view. The original producer had signed away too much, too early.

I wasn’t at the channel when the original deal was done, but looking back, it was clear the company had been young, and probably desperate for the commission. They took the offer on the table but that offer came with strings. The result?
The channel made millions.
The production company got left behind.
They didn’t even control the spin-offs - we were allowed to give those to other companies entirely.

So let this be your red flag: just because a channel loves your idea, doesn’t mean they love you, no matter how many smiling execs tell you otherwise.

When the numbers look promising, the gloves come off and remember, if you’ve signed badly, they don’t need your permission to move forward without you.

Brand name first. Everything else follows.

Once a show becomes a hit, that’s when the offshoots begin. You’ll see local-language versions in Germany or Korea. You’ll see celebrity specials, YouTube reboots, merchandising experiments and every time they happen, if you’ve given up too much - you’re watching from the sidelines. Which is why the name is everything. Own the name of the show and you own the name of the brand.

That’s the key that unlocks everything else. Without it, you can’t enforce rights. You can’t gatekeep spin-offs. You can’t demand a licence fee. But with it? You’re holding the keys. Every local remake, every international version, every derivative product they all have to go through you. So when you’re sitting at that deal table and the lawyer slides across the “all rights” clause, ask yourself this: Are they protecting your brand - or trying to buy it cheap?

What’s the long game?

This is the real test. Not whether your show gets commissioned but whether it lasts because if you want to build a business, not just a busy year, you need to plan for what happens after transmission. That starts with one question: Does this idea have legs? Could it become a book, a board game, a podcast?
Could it travel? Be remade? Generate merch or a community? If yes - protect it. License selectively. Carve out those rights.
If no, then maybe you trade them. But do it eyes open because the worst deals aren’t the ones you walk away from. Stop thinking about what you get now - but what you could be getting in a couple of years time. Trust me you’ll be thanking me for this advice.
The deals you sign too quickly will be the ones you regret for decades.

However, I get it, I run a prodco, it’s hard when you’re chasing your first wins. Every deal feels like David vs Goliath at the beginning - but it does seem that the tables have just begun to tilt in our favour in the UK.

The Government Just Gave You Permission to Think Bigger

For the first time, government policy is catching up with what the smartest producers have been saying for years: intellectual property is capital. Production companies are growth businesses and rights, when properly protected, can power jobs, exports, and reinvestment. In the latest Creative Industries Sector Vision, there’s a quiet revolution underway:

• IP-backed finance pilots
• More support from the British Business Bank - so creative startups can finally access debt and equity
• A working group to dismantle the barriers to IP-backed lending across the industry Right now, it’s just talk.

A roadmap for what the creative economy could look like in a few years.
But the language has already shifted from subsidy to scale-up. Will it come to fruition? Ask Lisa Nandy, the UK’s Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. But if it does, it could mark a genuine sea change.
It would allow startups to flourish.
It would give producers control of their futures.
It would mean no more bowing to mega-corporations and overreaching broadcasters.

Until then though, here’s the catch: You’ll only benefit if you’ve kept your IP.
You’ll only qualify if you’re thinking like an entrepreneur - not a freelancer.
You’ll only grow if you’ve protected your most valuable asset: your rights.

So prodco founders remember - you’re not a freelancer anymore

You didn’t build a company just to be a producer for hire on your own idea, you started it because you wanted to create a sustainable long term business that would allow you to make the content you wanted to. But to do that you need to build it to keep control. To build value. To grow. That means no more defaulting to 20-year rights deals.
No more giving away the brand name “just to get it made.”
No more treating success like a one-time paycheque. You are not a freelancer anymore.
You’re a founder. Start acting like one.
And whatever you do - don’t give away the name.

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority has begun inspecting the algorithms that shape our digital experience. They’ve launched a formal ‘Analysing Algorithms’ programme. They're reviewing code and under the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, they now have the power to impose conduct rules on firms like Google and Apple.

So, the regulators are stirring. But have they really thought it all through? The CMA will approach its investigation through a lens that allows fair competition but not, I imagine, of exactly what type of content is being surfaced.

I think there’s a deeper issue hiding in plain sight. When an algorithm is designed to optimise for ad revenue, it will inevitably prioritise content that maximises engagement and clicks. That means sensational, familiar, populist material. Not nuance. Not complexity. Certainly not public service content.

This is where it gets dangerous because if the algorithm ignores or suppresses content that doesn’t drive revenue, then whole genres risk disappearing. Education, civic information, slow storytelling. Not because they aren’t valuable but because they aren’t profitable.

That’s where public service broadcasters should come in - especially those like the BBC, which receives £3.4 billion a year from the public. As my regular readers know, over the past few weeks I’ve been increasingly critical of the BBC’s desire to chase profitability over its founding principles to Inform and Educate. If it’s allowed to abandon its mission, it won’t just hurt the industry. It will hurt itself.

One producer even told me, and I don’t know if this is true, that the BBC has started to charge producers to put content on its Sounds platform. I sorely hope this isn’t the case because if so, it speaks volumes about how far Aunty has drifted.

If we want a plural creative economy, not just one driven by attention metrics then organisations with public value missions must open their platforms, and algorithms, to outsiders. That’s how you support real diversity. That’s how you create opportunity.

But this isn’t just about the BBC. It’s about all of us. How can anyone build a sustainable content business without understanding the rules of engagement? What earns money? What gets surfaced? What gets buried? These are strategic questions, not just creative ones.

Much like the government once compelled Sky to keep the BBC and other broadcasters high up on the EPG, we now need rules that apply to digital platforms - to Google, to TikTok, to whatever’s coming next. If culture is shaped by algorithm, then the rules of the algorithm must be known.

Right now, though, no one outside the platforms understands how they work and that’s the danger. We are standing outside Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, hoping the Oompa Loompas are nice.

So who is going to sort this out?

Ask any experienced TV exec whether digital is the future, and they’ll nod along. But then ask what they’ve made for digital. What they’ve commissioned, edited, launched, scaled.

Suddenly, it gets quiet.

The truth is, most leaders in our side of the content industry built their careers in a different world. One where TV ruled the cultural agenda. Where getting a commission meant broadcast slots and BARB ratings. Where you could walk into a room and talk to someone in charge.

Digital doesn’t work like that. You don’t pitch to an algorithm. You don’t get feedback. You don’t even know who made the decisions. There are no commissioners - only curation engines.

So when traditional media tries to go digital, it often does so with TV logic. Great storytelling, great packaging, great craft and then it often sinks. Why? Because no one in the building understands how their content is being surfaced or buried. We need someone to fight our corner, someone who understands both types of content as a commissioner and creator to break into the factory and see how the sweets are made.

There’s still a myth that “the best content will win.” - told by execs from those companies, That the algorithm is somehow Darwinian in it’s design. But I think in a world of infinite choice, we don’t just need survival of the fittest. We need discoverability for different content and a system that gives new voices a chance to be heard.

The algorithm isn’t neutral. It never was.

We’re told these systems are neutral. That the algorithm just gives people more of what they like. But let’s be honest: we’ve seen this movie before.

Remember when VW got caught rigging its emissions tests? The code inside the car knew when it was being tested and changed its behaviour. That wasn’t a bug. It was the design.

So when tech giants tell us the code is fair and unbiased, forgive me if I ask to look under the bonnet.

Because here’s the problem: no one outside the system really knows how content gets chosen, elevated or suppressed. It’s not just about news. It’s about culture. Comedy. Music. Education. Diversity. Innovation. What gets seen shapes what gets made.

And the platforms aren’t just showing us what we want. They’re steering what we get.

Legacy media is a compliance prison. But at least we can see the guards.

We all know TV is over-regulated. There are compliance officers, fairness reviews, watershed rules, taste committees.

But here’s the irony: at least we know what the rules are. Everyone in the system can read the manual. There are appeals processes. Independent watchdogs. Legal frameworks. You can challenge the decision.

Compare that to digital. You post a video. It dies. No views, no explanation. You post another - 2 million views in an hour. Why? No one knows. Not even the platform staff. Or worse: they do know, but they won’t tell us.

That’s what digital creators face every day. A roulette wheel that now serves as our main cultural filter.

The algorithm is designed to give you what you want but that’s the problem. Because what you want isn’t always what you need.

If you like Star Wars, your feed fills with Star Wars. Lightsabers. Fan theories. Behind-the-scenes footage. Merchandise. Re-edited trailers. Endless sequels. But would it ever show you Game of Thrones? Or Succession? Or even something non-fiction? Probably not. Because those aren’t safe bets. They’re not what the algorithm thinks you’ll click.

And when the system only serves what you already enjoy, it becomes harder to discover anything else. Harder to grow. Harder to change your mind.

It’s like food. We all like chips. But if your diet is nothing but fast food, you’ll end up addicted, overweight, and undernourished. Where are the healthy salads? The surprising flavours? The roughage that makes you uncomfortable but keeps you balanced?

In the old world, the menu was limited. You got the salad whether you wanted it or not. Now? You just swipe past it. Or the algorithm hides it from you altogether.

That’s not just personal preference. That’s a cultural distortion.

I think we need to regulate the algorithm like we regulate food

Here’s a question - would you eat something, made by a giant corporation, without knowing what was in it?

Of course not. Every snack has to disclose its ingredients. Every medication lists its side effects. Every toy has a safety warning. That’s because we’ve decided that when something goes into your body or your child’s hands, it has to be accountable.

So why don’t we treat the stuff that goes into our minds the same way?

Digital media shapes our perception of the world. It informs our kids’ views on race, gender, politics, sex, history, values and it does so invisibly, behind closed doors, based on logic no government or regulator has ever properly inspected.

We need an ingredients label for the feed. A ‘nutritional breakdown’ of why content is shown. A regulator who understands both the code and the culture.

We need a tour of Wonka's factory - not just a ride in his glass elevator.

We need to understand how the new system works. Who built it. Who audits it. Who decides what gets elevated or hidden. Who’s checking for bias, for harm, for integrity.

If a single platform can decide what a billion people see each day, that platform must be open to inspection.

Not to censor but to understand it. To learn from it. To level the playing field.

Let’s stop pretending the algorithm is like Wonka’s magic. It’s code. Someone wrote it. It can be studied, regulated, and made fair.

Otherwise we'll all end up like Augustus Gloop - sucked in to the pipes of the factory...

Once affectionately known as "Auntie," the BBC was set up to inform, educate and entertain. Today, though, she behaves more like an apex predator - hoovering up shelf space on streaming platforms, squeezing out regional outlets, dominating the podcast charts and gobbling up genres that other people are already feeding well. Desperate to make money as if she is a commercial broadcaster.

So Aunty is not nurturing the industry. She’s consuming it and the saddest part? She seems to think, according to Davie, that’s her job.

Let’s get one thing clear: the BBC is not broke. It makes £3.74 billion a year from the licence fee alone. That is an astonishing amount of public money. So why is it acting like a starving commercial rival, desperate to monetise every show, every podcast, every news bite?

The BBC always complains that it’s broke, but that’s because it has completely overreached. Apart from a few brilliant shows like Happy Valley (yes, yet another police procedural), the public sentiment is that it isn’t getting value for money. And while I personally believe they are, let’s be honest, sentiment rules in today’s world, not facts.

If the BBC wants to protect its future, it must become radically more collaborative. It needs to get its fingers into many more pies, spreading its brand across every corner of British life - not by dominating, but by supporting. That’s how people will feel its value again.

It needs to stop thinking of itself as a TV-first institution. It must reframe itself around a much bigger picture - an enabler, a connector, a national creative partner. But that requires a wholesale restructure and change. It requires big thinkers at the top - but that’s not what we’re getting at the moment. We have a technocrat in charge - admittedly by all accounts a very nice one - but nevertheless, to use a cricket analogy, a straight batter. What we need is a Botham - a slugger if Aunty is to survive.

The excuse is always the same: "We must compete to be relevant. We must make more money to make more shows." But here's the rub: in chasing commercial relevance, the BBC is distorting the very market it was created to balance. It doesn’t just compete. It competes unfairly.

It has the power of the state behind it, and increasingly, it’s using that power not to raise the industry but to outpace it. And in doing so, it forgets its Reithian roots.

The original mission? To inform, educate, entertain - in that order. That wasn’t just a poetic tagline. It was a moral framework. A guiding star and it’s slipping fast.

Just look at the content strategy. Endless prestige drama. Peak-time thrillers. Podcasts peppered with celebrity voices. They shout "Look at the numbers! Look at the charts!” But then plead they are broke - they need the Celebrities otherwise NO-ONE will watch. Interesting, so without Lineker, I presume Match of the Day is screwed? Now he’s gone will that brand collapse? Will people stop watching the football show because the lead host has left? Will the numbers flatline? These are answers we don't know yet - but I suspect not.

Public service isn’t a leaderboard. It’s not measured in streaming minutes - it’s measured in cultural value, public understanding, national reach.

Take Mr Bates vs The Post Office, the drama that sparked national outrage and political response. That should have been a BBC commission. It had everything: public interest, working-class stories, institutional failure, national impact and yet, it was ITV who made it - and reportedly lost money on it, because, as they admitted, it had "limited international appeal." That’s precisely the sort of story the BBC exists to tell. The fact it didn’t should be cause for national concern.

Instead, the BBC is spending vast resources churning out yet another crime procedural because crime sells. Because drama wins awards. Because prestige is easier to measure than impact. People argue that the “entertain” part of the Reithian principle is the most important factor - but it shouldn’t be the only part. What Reith meant was to make educational and sometimes niche content in an entertaining way. Not just make entertainment - because thats what commercial broadcasters do.

And all the while, regional newsrooms collapse. Niche sports vanish from TV. The BBC, increasingly, looks like a slightly smug version of its commercial cousins. Bigger budget, but same playbook.

The creator economy - the people making genuinely educational, inspiring, community-rooted content - is increasingly left out in the cold in this country. The government doesn't get the sector, there are very few investment funds out there so creators are left trying to get a foothold on platforms flooded with BBC content. What the hell? It’s not as if the BBC doesn’t have Sounds or iPlayer - so they should not be allowed to compete on commercial platforms whilst they are funded by the public.

BBC Studios, the commercial arm of the BBC, is a globally competitive production powerhouse. It makes shows for Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and Disney+. It has every right to. But it also gets first access to the BBC’s most powerful distribution engines: iPlayer, Sounds, the broadcast schedules.

All this creates a dangerous structural imbalance. A taxpayer-funded gate, mostly open to in-house bidders. If you’re an independent producer, how exactly are you supposed to compete?

iPlayer is not open. It’s not accessible. It’s a walled garden and only the favoured few are let in.

But here’s the thing: iPlayer doesn’t need to become YouTube. It can stay curated. It can stay high quality. But it can behave more like YouTube in spirit for British creators. Imagine a space that helped discover new production companies and allowed them to flourish by giving them a public funded platform to be seen and heard on.

That would mean investing in infrastructure: new content managers, more compliance teams, more data storage. But think of the value to the British economy. A national platform that offers editorial rigour, reach, discoverability and credibility. A place where new voices are not just tolerated but nurtured. Think of the money they would generate as they grew and found their feet.

What would that look like? I think you would expand iPlayer and Sounds where it would look like an open but standards-driven submission portal, where indies and creators can submit audio, video or visual journalism to be reviewed by BBC editors -not gate-kept, but guided. If content meets PSB thresholds for fairness, balance, and quality it goes on the platform. If it doesn’t, producers get structured feedback and support.

It would mean sharing infrastructure, archival access, subtitling tools, compliance templates. Supporting local journalists with rights-ready footage. Offering digital workshops not just to students, but to YouTubers, podcasters, TikTok educators.

It would mean covering sports no one else touches - squash, bowls, hockey, fencing, rowing, climbing, and Paralympic disciplines that barely make the schedule. These sports are played passionately in communities across the UK, yet are invisible in mainstream media coverage. The BBC, with its infrastructure and reach, could shine a light on them in a way no one else can.

This isn’t just about fulfilling a remit - these are spaces where public service broadcasting can genuinely lead. Where else but the BBC should you be able to watch a national lawn bowls final or a junior judo tournament with proper commentary, storytelling, and pride? Giving airspace to cultural expression that isn’t ratings-tested, but relevance-tested.

It would mean co-owning content, not just commissioning it. Building models where creators can retain IP and share in success - ensuring British content remains British-owned.

And above all, it would mean behaving more like the National Lottery than ITV. Dispersing value, not hoarding it.

Right now, the BBC is clinging to a legacy content model while pretending to be digitally innovative. It’s not. It’s simply exporting the same commissioning behaviour onto new platforms.

However, the next generation of talent doesn’t want a commissioner. They want a partner. A validator. A mentor. A distribution engine that isn’t trying to edge them out.

That’s what Auntie could become - IF she remembered who she was. If she stopped tearing up the rulebook just to play the commercial game.

Don’t believe me? I used to work there. I know exactly how it runs, so don’t let them say otherwise. I love the BBC. Truly. But I think it’s totally lost its way. It wants to champion diversity and that's commendable but all it seems to do is shuffle some minority faces onto screen and into production teams - that’s not going to fix the problem. Diversity isn't just about what's shown on screen - it's in a shows DNA, the thought behind the content.

Marginalised communities are already making content - they’re just doing it elsewhere, in their own networks, their own shows. If the BBC really wants to support diversity, it needs to elevate those voices and that content. Auntie needs to understand the more she fights to stay relevant, the more she risks becoming irrelevant altogether. She needs to be the thought leader, not the reactive follower, the champion of the British creator - the local voices that make communities great.

I believe the BBC wasn’t built to dominate the market - she was built to elevate it - and unless she reinvents herself soon, she won’t just lose the argument for the licence fee. She’ll lose the trust and the future of the very public she was meant to serve.

Ask any TV channel boss and they will tell you YouTube CPMs are a joke.

£4 to £12, if you're lucky. TikTok is even worse - sometimes pennies per thousand views. And yet, somehow creators are building brands, businesses, and sometimes empires on that.

Meanwhile, TV channels look at their rate cards and blanch and when you start comparing the tiers, it’s easy to see why some of them wince. The difference between daytime and peak, or a single vs returning series, can be eye-watering. A 30-second spot on linear TV can cost anywhere from £1,000 during daytime to over £35,000 during primetime.

On Channel 4, for example, a daytime hour might generate around £48,000 in ad revenue. This is based on ad slots costing between £1,000 and £2,100 for a 30-second spot according to the website Lambda Films. A one-hour show typically includes 3 to 4 ad breaks, each containing anything from three 1-minute adverts to six 30-second slots, adding up to 18–24 ads total over the hour. Hence the £48k gross income figure.

Sounds good, until you realise how much of that vanishes before it ever reaches the programme budget. Staff salaries, broadcast tech, scheduling, legal, archive management, building leases, compliance, Ofcom levies - the list goes on. C4 is a business, not a charity and they need to make a profit to exist - as we al do. The result - only a fraction of that ad revenue ends up funding the show.

That's why daytime shows are often made for around £20k an hour, sometimes less. Even then, the producer is just scraping by, because in truth, most TV producers make money in only three ways. For those of you that don’t know, here’s your bluffers guide to making money in TV in the good old days (of course there is more to it than this, but these are really the basics):

First, the Production Fee - usually 10% of the budget. Sounds healthy, but that’s what pays for the rent, staff, development time, and all the projects that never get commissioned.

Second, Margin, the difference between what you budgeted for and what you actually spend. And unless you’re pumping out volume and keeping overheads low, there isn’t much to skim. Employing staff helps, because they cost less than freelancers but that comes with risk and responsibility. You can make upwards of 5% if you’re wily…

Third, Back-End Share - the cut you make from selling the show internationally but that only works if your content travels. Anything too parochial, too niche, or too domestic? Good luck shifting that in global markets.

The channels, however, work in a different way. Their primary income is advertising, but of course there are a myriad of other income streams: sponsorship deals, international sales, and currency hedging if you’re an international channel.

Unfortunately, Channel 4’s linear advertising income dropped from £766 million in 2022 to £642 million in 2023 - a 16% fall in just one year. Overall, commercial PSBs have seen linear ad spend fall by 20% since 2018, with some calling it the steepest decline since the 2008 financial crash. While BVOD subscriptions (broadcaster video on demand) have grown slightly, it’s nowhere near enough to cover the shortfall from linear. Their digital platforms don’t yet replace their linear revenues, and with FAST channels, YouTube, and vodcasts pulling ad budgets in every direction, the market isn’t just shrinking - it’s fragmenting fast, and that's why channels try to have a presence on all of them.

So yes, even £48k from a Channel 4 daytime hour starts to feel like a windfall to them, but in reality, it's a disaster for the sector. There is too much choice, too much fragmentation and that’s why you’re seeing so much consolidation in the industry. The whole economic base of traditional TV is dissolving, so it’s not surprising everyone in town is talking about YouTube.

So every producer is now asking - if MrBeast can make a killing, surely I can? I mean, most of the stuff on YouTube isn’t that 'good' (compared to telly standards) and if I bring the same professional rigour to YouTube as I did making a TV show then won’t I just smash it?

Well, not exactly.

Why professionalism often fails (at first)

Professionalism is supposed to elevate. But on YouTube, in this country, it often tanks your content.

Because in digital, polish can look fake. Rehearsed lines land wrong. Editors with TV credits don't understand hook rates and producers who've worked on Channel 4 docs will still try to write a voiceover when the platform demands direct address.

Worse still, many teams try to mimic YouTube. They watch MrBeast or Emma Chamberlain and think, "Let's do that, but slicker." It rarely works, the authenticity is lost, it takes time to build an audience digitally - something the TV players have never really thought about.

You can spot the symptoms. Slow TV openings that cause the viewer to switch channel immediately. Cutaways and b-roll when the audience just wants the meat - just jump cut it instead! Scripted "authenticity" that we're used to on TV feels anything but in the world of YouTube. The video becomes overcooked, and the viewer bounces.

That's why professional TV teams often drown on YouTube. They're heavy. They're slow. They start to use TV methodology to make content that actually needs to monetise over 52 episodes. Minimum. When was the last time you got that kind of commission on TV?

So you need to think different not only about how you make your content, but also about how you fund it. Youtube is a long tail game - the more you make, the more you will see the money, hopefully, if you can find an audience. So you need to have guts.

But why are YouTube’s CPMs so bad? Isn’t it impossible to make content that monetises with those numbers?

Well it’s worth remembering why those CPMs are so low in the first place. YouTube might feel free to use, but it’s one of the most expensive digital infrastructures in the world to operate. Massive data centres, astronomical electricity bills, server farms running at scale, global delivery networks, constant upgrades to playback and compression - the cost of ensuring your video loads in 1080p without buffering is staggering. Also, unlike a broadcaster that monetises a finite number of ad breaks around one or two live channels, YouTube is funding playback on millions of videos simultaneously. That overhead crushes margins. So even with billions of views, the money per view stays low.

So you have to realise that producing volume at scale, cheaply, is the name of the game in YouTube. Remember, if you can create a library, that stays relevant, your videos will keep earning money - long after you have stopped making them. So the more you make, the more all those tiny CPM’s actually add up.

But don’t be fooled, this isn’t about lowering quality it's about knowing where that quality matters and that’s where most TV producers have a head start…you know how to tell a story - you just need to avoid the mistake in thinking that the audience is the same as British TV audiences - it's not.

Global audiences are different

Here’s where things get more interesting.

While Gen Z in London might crave chaos (I wrote about that in last week's piece), there are enormous global audiences, especially those who grew up in foreign public broadcaster cultures, who still want structure, clarity, and emotional payoff. These are viewers raised on dubbed documentaries and narrative-led factual TV.

They may not have Netflix because they can’t afford it, but they do have YouTube and they’re hungry for content that feels familiar.

In this light, traditional TV values start to look like a secret weapon. Story arcs. Thoughtful editing. Presenter-led formats. All still have value but only if you treat YouTube as an International platform, not a dumping ground where you hope that something will stick.

And here’s the commercial angle: if you can make traditional-feeling content resonate in Indonesia, Kenya, Brazil, or the Balkans? That might be more valuable than a hundred thousand UK views.

The trick is to stop thinking locally. Dub your content. Add subtitles. Learn cultural nuance. Public broadcasters have done this for years with syndicated content. Now producers can do it directly and YouTube is the gold standard global delivery system.

Which brings me to my second observation.

Tastes change (even for Gen Z)

Right now, short-form rules the roost. But the fatigue is definitely creeping in and we’re seeing that right now.

There are signs of a new appetite for depth. Long-form interviews. Character pieces. Narrative arcs. Diary of a CEO now outperforms many TV talk shows. Slow TV, journaling vlogs, long YouTube essays, all of them reward patience over punchlines.

Just as punk gave way to post-punk, the high-friction TikTok age will mellow. Maybe not entirely, but enough that audiences begin seeking something quieter. Richer. Slower.

Traditional skills won’t go out of fashion. They’re just waiting for the culture to catch up again. And when it does, it won’t turn to TV first, it will look for that emotional clarity - on digital.

And this is why I think pros can still win

Some producers are already getting this right.

Real Stories. Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Chicken Shop Date. History Hit. Sorted Food. LadBible. Tom Scott. They bring rigour, but they’ve built a YouTube-native muscle. Structure without bloat. Detail without dead weight. And, crucially, volume.

That’s the part most TV folk forget. You can’t make 6 beautiful episodes a year and expect to build an audience. You need to think 52. You need a publishing mindset.

Build lean. Trust your instincts. Let your storytelling carry you, not your lighting rig. Think about IP from day one and stop waiting for a commission to validate your idea. Publish it. Own it.

So professionalism can work on YouTube - you just need to be clear who you're making it for.

Don't think of your audience as single territory. Have a unique voice - mimicry does not work - and make it as slick, and as cheap as possible..

The job now is to bring everything you’ve learned from years in production - the story sense, the instinct, the emotional pacing and wrap it in the speed, honesty, and global openness that YouTube rewards.

If you can do that? You won’t just survive this new world. You might actually build the next one.

Ask senior execs why younger audiences are disappearing and they’ll blame competition for attention, falling ad revenue, algorithmic distraction, and a disdain for long form. Yes, there’s truth in all that (although I’d argue the last point). But let’s be honest: the real reason they’ve gone is because our content just isn’t good enough - it doesn't resonate with them.

They haven’t switched off because episodes are too long or the TV app is clunky. They’ve gone elsewhere because the content elsewhere is better, more authentic, more emotionally reactive.

In telly, we’ve become too scared and as a result our output is bland, samey, and mainly speaks to people over 40. In part this is because our content is too expensive, so more is at stake. Investors want a return, so they don’t want to do anything that will lose money. Ironically, making formulaic stuff does just that.

But why does this matter? Well, as people like Evan Shapiro have often argued, if we alienate the young from our industry now, they won’t come to it later. Traditional TV is not like gardening, you don't come to it when you hit a certain age, so we have to make content that appeals to them now.

Remember when TV was subversive?

When Channel 4’s The Word, Brass Eye, and Trigger Happy TV caused outrage? I once hosted a show called Celebrity Snatch, where I deliberately upset famous people until they said, “Don’t you know who I am?” (They never did, by the way.) You’d never get a title like that away now.

But even before those shows, culture was being upended. Punk ripped through society.

The Sex Pistols, The Clash - these weren’t just bands, they were a scream of rebellion. That energy used to be TV’s too.

We say we still want that kind of edge but tell ourselves we can’t make that content anymore even though, absurdly, we’re the ones setting the rules. “It was a different era,” we sigh. Yet scroll your teen’s social feed and you’ll see: that kind of content is everywhere. Wild, rude, outrageous, because that’s what younger audiences still want: something real. Something dangerous.

So what’s really going on?

TV used to be made by creative outliers: messy, brilliant artists who pushed boundaries. We trusted them and we trusted the curators: commissioners, heads of channels, maverick producers. Perhaps most importantly, we trusted the viewers. The stories were immersive, dangerous, emotional. They made us face uncomfortable truths.

Now, the pendulum has swung the other way. There are more creators than ever, and their digital, unpredictable work is often labelled “toxic” or “biased.” Our institutional reaction? Retreat. Not into better content but into safer output. Sanitised by compliance teams and terrified of cancellation or backlash.

The end result? Our stories no longer reflect how young people actually feel. If they did, they’d still be watching.

Instead, they’re glued to TikTok, YouTube, Discord, Twitch - platforms full of content that’s raw and reactive. That shift matters. Because when you hand discovery over to algorithms, you lose control of the cultural conversation.

And that causes people to polarise.

When your gateway to culture is curated by code, your world narrows. You get echo chambers and in trying to fix this, we’ve asked platforms to regulate themselves, which only increases automation - the very thing everyone’s now currently panicking about.

We need to understand, AI doesnt just create. It sorts. Suppresses. Sanitises.

We’ve started seeing that as a good thing. No chaos. No pain. No offence. Content must never upset anyone.

But ask yourself this: If nothing offends, then nothing challenges. And when no one’s provoked, no one’s paying attention.

So people then go looking for provocation elsewhere - in darker, more extreme corners of the internet. If TV veers away from making provocative content for younger adults, the vacuum it creates is filled by people like Andrew Tate.

If you ban offence, you don’t kill it. You just push it underground.

You have to risk offence - not gratuitously, but bravely.

If you want to challenge prejudice, you have to show prejudice. You have to depict ignorance, conflict, cruelty. Not glamorise it, but expose it subtly, in a way that’s uncomfortable to watch. You don’t scream “THIS IS BAD” and nor do you pretend it doesn’t exist. You let people realise it’s wrong. Which they will.

If we don’t trust that young adults will, in the majority, make the right decisions and instead decide that ‘normal people’ can’t be trusted, then we’ll end up in 1933 again, burning all the content we don’t think people should read.

That’s the accusation dogging much of the BBC’s recent output: it’s too safe. Too toothless. A vision of the world scrubbed clean of anything offensive, or conversely, a one-sided, moralistic view of what’s right and wrong, driven by people who believe “the masses” won’t make the right calls. That’s not a position I subscribe to by the way, but it’s one I hear increasingly often.

Go and “Snog a granny”.

Everyone my age remembers the “snog a granny” segment from Channel 4’s The Word. It was shocking. It was cheeky. But it was also a perfect cultural provocation. Young adults were asked what they’d do to get on TV, a valid question underlining that people would do anything to become famous. One week, the question was: would you kiss a really old woman? The guy did. Cue national outcry. Newspapers went berserk.

But it also raised some real questions. Why is that taboo? Is it about ageism? Erotic shame? What are we really offended by?

It was grubby, yes, but it made people think. That’s the point.

I was twenty when that aired. That’s what young people were watching then and they still are now. Just not on TV. On TikTok, Snap and Insta. The platform’s changed but the appetite hasn’t.

AI will win the war for blandness if we let it.

The irony is, if we keep playing safe, AI will beat us at it.

In a world of shrinking margins, AI will soon be able to produce safe, reliable, emotionally sanitised content faster, cheaper, and with less friction than we can. The lawyers will love it.

But it will be soulless. Edgeless. Dead on arrival and that’s because there’s one thing AI can’t do: it can’t make offensive TV.

It can write a script. Mimic a voice. Create a serviceable narrative. But it cannot, and will not, ever intentionally offend. That’s not a glitch - it’s the governing logic.

Remember The Matrix? Agent Smith tells Morpheus that the first simulated world was a perfect utopia. No pain. No hunger. No conflict. But humans rejected it. “Entire crops were lost,” he says because it felt fake.

That’s where we are now.

The smoother the world becomes, the more alienated we feel. The more we blunt our stories, the more our audiences disconnect.

AI’s inability to offend isn’t just a limitation. It’s a clue. A reminder that culture isn’t meant to be safe. It’s meant to be jagged. Messy. Human. That’s what drives debate. That’s what sparks discourse. That’s what TV used to do and what it still must.

Offence is not the enemy. It’s the edge of culture.

We need to wake up to the real danger of creative AI.

The risk isn’t job loss in our industry. It’s cultural anaesthesia.

If we let AI dominate content creation - optimising for safety, affirmation and speed - we lose the thing that makes TV culturally vital: its ability to provoke.

Even worse, we lose something else: the right to decide for ourselves.

Audiences should be trusted to make up their own minds. But when corporate gatekeepers strip out every rough edge pre-emptively, what’s left is moral spoon-feeding.

And no one, least of all Gen Z, likes being told what to think.

That’s why they’ve gone elsewhere.

The proof is right in front of us

Counter-intuitively, Disney, of all companies, recently offered proof of what works.

For years, its family-friendly output faced cultural blowback, accused of being too safe, too smooth. Until it took a risk. A big one.

Andor Season 2 is arguably the best Star Wars content ever made. Why? Because it didn’t try to please everyone.

The characters are morally grey. The politics are real. The violence is shocking. The drama is grown-up. There is suicide, sexual aggression, drug use, genocide and murder. All of it uncomfortable and that’s what made it brilliant. If you haven't seen it take the time to watch.

The gamble, on arguably their biggest franchise, paid off.

It holds a 97% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Some episodes are among the highest-rated in the entire franchise. It succeeded because it dared to say something. It had a point of view. It trusted the audience to handle discomfort.

That’s the test. That’s the model.

So we can blame tech. We can blame fragmentation. We can blame the algorithm. But the real reason young audiences left TV?

We stopped making anything worth arguing about.

If we want them back, we need to start making content that offends - just enough to start the right fight.

We must let people disagree. Let them shout. Let them think. And we must resist the urge to tell them what to think. Let them make up their own minds.

Ultimately, I believe, they won’t disappoint you.

That’s what storytelling is for. It’s parables. It’s warnings. It’s what draws us together around the campfire.

Stories aren’t there just to soothe, but to spark - and they must be made by human creators.

So go offend someone. Be a punk.

It might just save the industry.

Someone said to me the other day, with a straight face: “TV is dead.” Not declining. Not adapting. Just… dead. It’s a phrase I’ve heard so often in meetings it should come with a branded tote bag. And every time I hear it, I feel the same thing: mild irritation. Why?

Because it’s not true.

TV isn’t dead - it’s resetting and last week’s story about ITV potentially being up for sale counter intuitively proves it.

Yes, linear ratings are falling. Yes, traditional ad revenues are wobbling. But if you zoom out, what’s really happening is a strategic reshuffling. Broadcasters are no longer the undisputed kings of the hill, but they still sit on something powerful: infrastructure, brand recognition and a daily pipeline into people’s homes. So when a channel comes up for sale, streamers and supersized indies circle that pipeline like it’s a golden goose.

The Times reports that Banijay is exploring a takeover. RedBird IMI -fresh from acquiring All3Media - is sniffing around a merger. ITV Studios is already selling shows to every major platform and in the background, the mood music has changed. The question isn’t “Who would want to buy a broadcaster?” it’s now: Why wouldn’t you?

The appetite for legacy media assets goes beyond TV. Also last week, RedBird Capital Partners (closely linked to RedBird IMI) acquired The Telegraph group, ending a long ownership battle. A legacy newspaper brand, snapped up by private capital. Why? Because in an age of fragmentation and digital sprawl, heritage still carries weight. Trust, distribution, brand equity - they’re all back in fashion.

This week, we’re unpacking:

• Why ITV is suddenly acquisition bait

• Who benefits from owning a traditional channel in a digital world

• What the reset model really looks like (and who’s already playing it)

• And why FAST proves TV isn’t dying - it’s just changing lanes

• Plus: why the “death of TV” is a western obsession and completely wrong globally

As the creators on YouTube say - “Let’s get into it.”

ITV’s fire sale or golden opportunity?

A 1% dip in Q1 revenues, a shaky ad market, and delayed commissions. That’s the topline story of ITV’s recent results. The tabloids framed it as a decline. But in reality, it’s a pivot point.

ITV Studios still grew by 1% despite the current economic headwinds. Its global partnerships are solid. Its unscripted catalogue is vast and it owns formats that plug beautifully into the FAST ecosystem. Think of it as a factory that’s still running well but needs a new distribution network to truly thrive.

Now zoom out: Banijay, one of the world’s biggest unscripted producers, reportedly wants in. RedBird IMI, backed by Emirati capital and holding All3Media, is quietly sounding out mergers. And Carolyn McCall has confirmed that “all strategic options” are on the table.

Which raises a question: what’s the real value of a broadcaster like ITV in 2025?

The new shop window: why owning a traditional TV channel makes sense again

It seems counterintuitive. Why would a digital-first company, swimming in data and algorithms, want a dusty old linear broadcaster?

Simple. Because TV is a shop window and it’s never been more useful.

Imagine you’re a format creator. You’ve got a new unscripted idea. You could pitch it into 14 local buyers and hope it trends on TikTok. Or you could launch it on a recognisable platform like ITV, prove it pulls viewers at scale, then export it globally with an instant marketing hook:
“The #1 format in the UK - now available in 28 languages.”

That’s not fantasy. That’s how Love Island, Masked Singer, and Millionaire became juggernauts. Linear launches still matter, especially when they come with heritage, reach, and a free-to-air distribution base that guarantees visibility in a saturated market.

Streamers like Netflix are excellent warehouses. But broadcasters like ITV? They’re shop fronts. Format pipelines. Test labs. Brand engines.

Buy one, and you don’t just get ad slots. You get proof of concept, audience heat and the ability to scale IP in every direction - digital, live, branded, FAST, AVOD.

And here's the twist: if YouTube had come first, and broadcast TV was invented today, everyone would be calling it a game-changer. A frictionless medium that pipes curated, shared experiences into millions of homes at once, no log-ins, no fees, no buffering. It would be seen as a revolutionary social technology. It's not TV that’s tired. It's our framing of it.

FAST proves it: linear isn’t dead - it’s just shifted platform

Anyone still claiming linear TV is obsolete hasn’t spent time with FAST channels. Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television is growing faster than almost any other segment. Why? Because it’s replicating the best bits of traditional TVl ean-back scheduling, recognisable shows, bundled genres without the cord or the cost.

FAST platforms are eating into prime-time viewing. And what fuels them? Catalogue. Formats. Volume. Exactly the kind of assets a broadcaster like ITV already has in spades. But here's the catch: unless you understand how the economics of that model work, you can’t play in the new arena.

The days of £1M-per-episode vanity projects are over. The new model is low-tariff, high-volume, IP-led production:

- Producers accept lower per-episode fees
- In return, they keep more rights and profit downstream
- Broadcasters get cost-effective, schedule-filling content
- FAST and AVOD drive long-tail revenue from old formats

Everyone wins, if you’re structured for scale.

Meanwhile, look at Disney. Despite the noise around streaming, the vast majority of its revenues still come from traditional linear channels. In Q4 2024, their linear networks delivered the bulk of the Entertainment division’s $1.1 billion operating income. Streaming is growing, but broadcast is still the financial backbone. That tells you something.

Forget prestige. Think flywheel.

This is where most legacy producers still get it wrong.

They’re chasing prestige when they should be building format flywheels. Develop smart, repeatable ideas. Prove them on low-cost linear slots. Then pump them into digital with layered monetisation: live events, YouTube spin-offs, international remakes, FAST syndication.

Banijay understands that. Fremantle’s playing it too. And if RedBird IMI stitches ITV Studios and All3Media together? You’ve got a pan-European powerhouse capable of serving every part of that model - from boutique docs to primetime tentpoles, all monetised through multiple channels.

We’ve seen this before in publishing, in games, in podcasts. The company that owns the IP and the launch platform and the sales network… wins.

TV is catching up. ITV might just be the first test case.

The global lens: TV isn't dead - unless you're blinkered

Here’s the real problem: we’re insular. We see the world only as we experience it.

So many people working in London, LA, New York are convinced streaming is the only game in town. But take off the headset and look globally: streaming is massively expensive. It requires huge digital infrastructure, stable broadband for the end user, credit cards and consumer habits built on subscription culture. That’s not the norm for most of the world.

In sizeable overseas markets - India, Indonesia, parts of Africa, Latin America - over-the-air broadcast remains the dominant medium. It’s free. It works and it reaches millions who would otherwise be priced out. In fact, over 1.6 billion people globally still rely on terrestrial TV. In Indonesia alone, it’s 250 million viewers. So much for TV being “dead.”

The idea that TV is on life support only holds if you view it through a very specific lens: a privileged, western, high-speed one. Elsewhere, it’s still the beating heart of cultural connection. So if you create for TV - you need to think about how your content can work on those TV channels internationally, not just for your home market.

So that’s why it might make sense for a streamer to buy a TV channel - where it can create its content ‘cut to clock’ and then sell it internationally - exposing it’s brand and deriving income on other platforms. Imagine Season 1 of Squid Games on TV - but seasons 2-3 only available behind a paywall. Or imagine unique content that sits FTA in some markets but then gets added to the streamer library in other territories.

Then think about ITV’s public service commitments - news and sports in particular. That would add a very interesting meat to a Netflix sized bone.

But hang on, if TV isn’t dead and ITV is so valuable, why sell?

Good question. The answer is because the timing is right.

Firstly it’s because it is in good shape. No-one wants to buy a broken cart horse destined for the knackers yard. ITV has stable leadership, solid revenue from ITV Studios, global partnerships, and a strong digital arm in ITVX. That makes it ripe for acquisition at a good price for it’s shareholders.

Secondly it’s also because ITV sees what’s coming:
The next stage of this game requires serious scale.
To fully compete with global players, they’d need vast new investment - cloud infrastructure, international FAST operations, AI-driven distribution, and aggressive rights expansion.

That’s not a gamble ITV wants to take alone.

Much smarter? Partner with a buyer that already has that infrastructure then evolve into a vertically integrated format machine with global reach.

It’s not a fire sale. It’s a pivot play

The final frame: it’s not dead - it’s Darwin

So whilst you may all think this is good news, a relief to read that TV is alive and here to stay for many years I believe, I also have a starker message. If you’re still waiting for the “return” of traditional TV Industry, stop. It’s not coming.

What we’re in now is evolution and sadly much more blood will be spilt. The sector is economically not fit for purpose - companies often led by people who don’t really understand how the digital age works and are still trying to put square pegs into round holes. The broadcasters and producers that survive will be the ones that stop behaving like legacy institutions and companies and start acting like multi-platform format engines.

ITV has the bones of that system. So the question isn’t whether it should sell - it’s who’s smart enough to buy it before the reset completes.

Because TV isn’t a funeral. It’s a transformation, and if you’re smart you’ll be part of that exciting new world.

And if you’re watching closely, you’ll see the shape of what’s coming next.

Agree? Disagree? Think a streamer should swoop in and buy the whole thing? Or does it make more sense for a production group like Banijay?

Hit reply - tell me what you think.