Return of the Living Dead. Are British broadcasters zombies in disguise?
It’s quite interesting when people say that linear TV isn’t dead.
This old argument has raised its head again recently with recent buoyant quarterly reports from ITV and it’s true, it’s not dead in one sense of the word. Advertisers are flooding back to traditional TV, just ask Lord Melchett & McCall.
But really what we need to do is not take their word for it (only fools would do that). We need instead to look at the content that is driving those numbers. It’s sports, news and current affairs type programming (think Harry & Megan) drama and entertainment - everything else is a washout.
And the viewing figures for these successful types of programmes are also only ‘spikes’ in an otherwise downward-trending circle of ‘viewing despair’ for all the traditional broadcasters.
So really, instead of having a thriving channel in every part of the schedule what we are really seeing are Zombie channels - they look well and alive, tell investors that things are looking great, but in reality they are rotting from the inside out. Soon the botox and makeup will wear off and you will see a hideous dead creature parading around…
So, what do you do? Does it make sense to invest in low-cost, fact-ent and non-scripted programming to keep the channel alive until you get to your big events, I mean, you have to have something, you can’t put on a black screen right? (unless you’re Ian Katz - see one of my earlier columns). Answer - not really. That’s how traditional TV used to work. Make some amusing cheap stuff ’til we get to the serious programming at ‘peak’ just doesn’t cut the mustard anymore, you might as well have Katz’s black screen because who on earth watches it off-peak?
I know I don’t. In fact, if I do have the capacity to watch during the daytime hours. it’s ALWAYS on a streamer.
I think the only people who might be watching during the day are the people in retirement homes and the only reason they watch it is because they’re too weak to find the controller to turn it over to something more racy - like ‘Game of Thrones’.
So the major problem channels face is there really isn’t a ‘peak’ any more. Just ask Netflix.
Peak is now all day depending on who you are or where you are. Everything needs to be good or it shouldn’t be made. Go big or go home as the Americans would say - and they’re right.
The reality is, ITV only has a couple of dozen good shows, the rest are all substandard in viewing terms. So ITV should ditch them all, but, if they did and only centred therefore on the big drivers I mentioned earlier, where does good old fashioned documentary or fact ent programming go and what happens to the industry?
It’s these two genres that actually fill large part of the schedules because, compared to the others, they’re cheap to make and it’s these two genres that indies rely on to make ends meet.
I think the solution is simple, but it’s going to take brave CEO to take the plunge.
You need to scrap the old model of TV and work out the new one. No more ‘filler’ (I prefer the word CRAP but Justin doesn’t like it when I swear). And don’t worry care home providers - you won’t have to shell out for an expensive Sky or Netflix subscription because if you’re C4, ITV or the BBC you literally have TONS of inventory that you can lean on while you work out the new strategy.
Being the generous type and in the spirit of collaboration I’m going to give those CEOs some free strategy advice. Normally it would take hundreds of thousands of pounds investing in consultants to get to these conclusions - but I’m going to give them for free. See what you think:
1. Stop commissioning low rent TV - you have enough of it already to keep the screen filled for a thousand years. Some of the stuff in your archives is brilliant and still pertinent. Put it back on again.
2. Save the money and make few, bigger and more ambitious factual shows that actually look good and are good. This will still require increased investment - but it can be done. All us producers just want to make good stuff with decent budgets. None of us want to make cr*p…I mean filler. There will still be enough to go around - we’ll just make less hours but the bigger budgets will make up for it.
3. These new shows need to be made to different clocks. Stop thinking of everything in either 22 or 44 minutes. Book publishers don’t tell authors that they will only take books that are exactly 218 pages long - any more or less will have to get proper dispensation from channel production executives. It’s ridiculous. Let the stories be as long or short as they need.
4. Stop giving tiresome notes to production companies. Let them tell the stories they want, you might find some hidden jewels in there. A ‘light hand on the tiller’ I believe it’s called.
5. Start making decent budget, brand defining, multi-platform shows that are greater than the sum of their parts rather than propping up a bloated industry with shows that noone watches and can’t give ancillary revenues to the prod cos that make them. Yes there will be casualties but the cream will remain.
6. Start filling your schedule with all this new amazing content, after it’s played out on your AVOD channel, slowly at first until everything on linear TV is good. You’ll get there. Advertisers will love it, and coupled with your other amazing offerings revenues will rise.
So, there you go. Pretty simple. Just get on with it, please because there are only so many new episodes of ‘Joanna Lumley up the Nile’ or whatever I can actually watch before I kill myself.
Oh wait, I don’t actually watch them because I’m on Netflix instead.
