Television: How the growth of streaming may be leaving some people behind

The signs of the revolution have become increasingly clear in the last few weeks and months. A range of new TV stations, as well as radio stations and podcasts. A multi-billion-pound TV production boom. Talk of reform of the BBC licence fee, and the possible privatisation of Channel 4. Big, well-paid stars such as Andrew Marr leaving the BBC for jobs elsewhere.

And most of all: a pretty profound change in the way most of us, although by no means all of us, watch television.

Some have called it a golden age, thanks to a booming independent television industry in the UK, and in Glasgow in particular.

There has also been an explosion in the production of high-end, high-quality TV drama, comedy and documentary. Netflix alone has 460 TV shows in production which will come online in the next 12 to 18 months. If you’re a Lord Of The Rings fan, you may also be getting quite excited about Amazon Prime’s new series Rings Of Power which, with a budget of £400 million, is the most expensive TV series ever made.

The point is: you don’t have to go the pictures anymore to get the best and glossiest entertainment.

However, there are others who worry that, rather than a golden age, we may be in a period of flux that leaves some viewers, particularly older ones, out of the loop. Older people are much more likely to still rely on linear channels like the BBC and Channel 4 –will the changes to come leave them out?

And what about the cost of the new ways to watch? If you were to subscribe to all the major streaming platforms, it could cost you up to £2,000 a year.

Could that leave some households struggling to afford the television that others might take for granted, particularly as the cost of living rises?

Market niche

THESE questions will be put to a leading industry analyst in one of the capitals of TV and film, LA. But what does the boss of one of the quirkiest TV channels in the UK – a channel that spotted a gap in the market and has defiantly followed its own path for the last seven years – think>

It’s called Talking Pictures TV and its defining remit is to show the kind of vintage and classic movies, and TV shows, that had been neglected by the other channels. On TV and on its online catch-up platform, and with more than three million weekly viewers, it has become a cult success.

Its boss isNoel Cronin, a former film distributor who runs the channel with daughter Sarah from his family home near Watford. Asked how he thinks television has changed and is still changing, he says: “One big change is that people don’t automatically come into the living room and turn the television on – it’s all very much time shift and people’s attention span is very short.”

Cronin also believes that many people who like his channel dislike the way modern television is made. “Most people over a certain age dislike modern programming,” he believes.

“The attitude, the way they’re made, they all mumble and by and large it’s true. I’ve also always had a liking for old films and when to a large degree the BBC and certainly ITV dumped older programming for How To Resell Your House For The 58th Time or How to Turn Your Settee Into Whatever and all those dreadful shows that are endlessly repeated, I realised there was a gap.”

Cronin went on to fill the gap with a 24/7 channel that largely shows film and TV made between the 1920s and the 1990s although he says the trick is to pick the right programme – just because a programme was made in the 60s doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good.

The feedback from his audience is also largely positive, he says, because in a way he is preaching to the converted, to people who think pretty much the same way he does.

But speaking from his family HQ, Cronin says even his little successful channel cannot escape the fact that fewer and fewer people are watching terrestrial television. “The numbers are dropping,” he says. “You can’t get away from that. People who watch television are less and less, and our audience sadly has natural wastage.”

New age awareness

THE wider question is what this means for television in general and Guy Bisson, the entertainment and media analyst and managing editor at Ampere Analysis, based in LA, says that programmes and services for older viewers may in fact be one of the next growth areas, largely because in the US and the UK, Netflix and other streamers may have squeezed as much as they can out of younger viewers.

“I think it’s fair to say that the demographic focus perhaps hasn’t been inclusive in terms of age,” he says. “But that is changing because obviously streaming services skew younger and younger people who have different interests. It’s changing because Netflix and others are now saturated in those age groups so you’re seeing them make more documentaries, more crime drama, and more period drama.”

It should, says Bisson, mean more and better programmes for older viewers.

What the changes in television have also meant is a massive boom in television production – more doesn’t necessarily mean better but there’s certainly more.

Bisson says that you can sum up the driver for the change in one word: Netflix. Before Netflix, the industry had been operating on the same model it had been using since 1950 pretty much, with a few changes along the way, like digital TV.

But the big difference with Netflix was it was a global platform that wanted to show programmes globally and when it couldn’t get global rights, it started making its own programmes instead.

Other streaming platforms like Disney then decided they wanted a piece of the action and this, in turn, meant other channels that might have bought programmes from Disney and other studios also had to start making more of their own stuff. And so we have a production boom – a golden era.

But the question is whether it is golden for the channels that might be left behind. For a start, it is clear that although there is a revolution, the revolution hasn’t reached every living room in Britain.

Indeed, when you look at the figures for the entertainment industry it is striking in some ways how much has stayed the same.

Still gaga for radio

FOR example, nine out of 10 adults in the UK listen to the radio every week and have done since the 1990s even though there has been a massive explosion in podcasts.

“While we talk about the new and there are massive changes, the old is still actually really important for the average consumer,” says Guy Bisson. “So, actually people spend far more time watching linear TV than they do watching streaming – it’s just a fact. It’s changing, but the average household spends most of its time watching linear channels like the BBC.

“And because of all the changes we’ve talked about, and the competition with Netflix, it’s fair to say that the BBC is putting huge resources into original drama that’s very high quality and resonates probably far better with a British audience than the Netflix stuff, certainly some of the Disney stuff, some of the Warner stuff.”

In other words, we’re still watching a lot of the BBC and it could be getting better.

However, Bisson says we shouldn’t underestimate the pressures on the BBC and other traditional channels, which brings us to the controversial subject of Channel 4.

Nadine Dorries, the UK Culture Secretary, has decided to press ahead with plans to privatise the channel even though she didn’t appear to know how Channel 4 actually works when she was giving evidence to a select committee hearing recently (it is publicly owned but funded by advertising, Nadine).

The opponents of her plan for privatisation point out what the channel has done for the independent television industry in the UK, but it is not immune from the greater trends – the percentage of adults watching at least 15 minutes of Channel 4 on linear TV has declined and the sharpest decline is among 16 to 24-year-olds.

The channel’s particular model, which relies on programmes being made by independents, also means that it cannot exploit the rights to programmes, and therefore make more money, in the way that other channels can.

Could privatisation be good?

GUY Bisson accepts that some people believe this means privatisation could be good for the channel but he is dubious about whether it will go ahead. “The independent production sector in the UK is a massive success and that sector is going out to the global market and is much in demand from the streamers as well,” he says.

“When we talk about original Netflix content, it’s not made by Netflix – they are also commissioning it from independent producers and they’re often turning to the UK, and part of the reason the UK is so diverse in that respect is Channel 4.

“So, yes, you could argue that there’s a middle ground where they would renegotiate some of those deals to retain global rights and market them themselves but I’m not sure that’s a benefit to UK plc.

“What I think is interesting is that when I took part in a debate in parliament on the privatisation of Channel 4 when it was first being mooted seriously five or six years ago, at that time there was quite a long list of buyers that included Viacom and Discovery and others.

“But I think because of the focus of those groups now, I wonder how attractive Channel 4 would be to them. Given all the global stuff, it is still attractive but I think there might be a shorter list of buyers than there would have been five or six years ago.”

The other question that needs tackling is how much it will end up costing viewers if we move more and more to streaming services rather than the more old-school channels. The problem is that for a long time the streaming market has been supported by debt-funded, loss-leading models and now they’re trying to claw some of the money back.

However, Bisson doesn’t think we’ll see sudden huge increases in subscriptions because there’s growth left for the likes of Netflix.

“They have been putting up prices, at one or two pounds or dollars a time,” he says. TThey had a massive negative free cash flow that was running into the billions but that’s closing now and actually, if you think about the economics, if you spend, let’s say, £5 per subscriber on content, as long as you continue to grow that subscriber base, you can grow your total content spend significantly.

“So, it’s a growth model and Netflix still has growth left, as have all the other streamers principally outside the USA.

“And that’s why we’re seeing one of the other big changes which is the internationalisation of content – more than half of Netflix’s new TV commissions are non-US.”

Bisson also points out that there are new, lower-cost channels emerging and even free ones such as IMDb TV, and believes we’ll see a mix and match between the services in the years to come. So: what next? How will television continue to change? Noel Cronin of Talking Pictures TV says it is inevitable that the traditional audience for linear TV will continue to fall – the reality is that older people who like to watch television in the way they did 10 or 20 years ago will gradually die off to be replaced by younger people much more comfortable with streaming platforms.

However, Guy Bisson says we should be careful not to exaggerate the effect because many traditional channels, particularly in the UK, have been using catch-up platforms for years which capture both the older and younger viewers: about 50 to 60% of viewers use them on a regular basis.

What this has led to is a kind of hybrid model that can serve both young and old: a drama will premiere on a Sunday night and be serialised over a number of weeks but the box set will also drop onto iPlayer or ITV Hub so the younger audience can binge it all in one sitting.

Increased choice

THE streaming platforms are also aware there are some audiences that they could be serving better (and making more money from) and Bisson believes this will lead to more choice.

Many of the studios are in the process of pulling back their rights to a lot of their classic material so they can exploit them on streaming platforms which should mean that if you’re into your cult or indy or classic movies, you should be in for a treat in the years to come.

But what changes would Bisson like to see himself? Well, the TV analyst is over 50 years old so he would like to see fewer targeted ads for funeral plans on digital TV, thank you very much. But he also sometimes worries that streaming platforms constantly serve us up more of the same and reduce the chance of stumbling on something different – or even something that might challenge our assumptions.

So, what he would like to see is streamers changing their pages to take this into account, and he notes that Netflix is already doing so with its “Watch Something” button.

As for the rest of it, it’s hard to predict. For British television, there are certainly opportunities – BritBox, for example, could go global and it wouldn’t cost the BBC very much to do it.

The proliferation of smaller, more niche channels like Talking Pictures for people who love classic TV or even GB News or people who love right-wing views should also mean that, unlike

the days where there were only three or four channels, you should be able to find a programme you like when you switch on. However you watch, and whatever you watch, there’s probably something for you.