RTS event

Ash Atalla, Claire Enders, Evan Shapiro, Dan Clays and Patrick Holland on their 2024 TV predictions

Last year was a sobering one for television as a post-Covid boom that had seen production and advertising revenues surge fizzled out. Will 2024 see the industry refill its glasses and toast its own success – or is the bubbly still flat?

To answer this question, the RTS assembled a top-notch panel for its first national event of the year; late last month, it asked panel members for their 2024 TV predictions.

Advertising revenues would bounce back during the year, Claire Enders, the founder of Enders Analysis, told a packed house in central London.

Litvinenko Q&A with Marina Litvinenko, Richard Kerbaj & Jim Field Smith

Marina Litvinenko, co-producer Richard Kerbaj and director Jim Field Smith discuss the making of ITVX's Livinenko, finding the right cast and the responsibility of making a series based on real people and events. Marina also gives her first hand experience of the events surrounding her husband's death.

Livinenko starts on Thursday 15th December on ITVX, starring David Tennant, Margarita Levieva, Mark Bonnar and Neil Maskell.

Industry experts discuss the future of sport on TV

Women’s football is “a success story but it’s only just beginning”, argued Dawn Airey, Chair of the Barclays FA Women's Super League and former Channel 5 Chair. “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it. We want young women to see you can play football at a very high level and make a really good career out of it.”

Free-to-air access, she said, was “absolutely critical”, adding that women’s football has to balance “revenue and reach. We need to drive money into the game but we absolutely want engagement, and to get engagement you need that fee-to-air opportunity.”

Winners, losers and own goals: Live sport in lockdown

At an RTS event in September, some of the leading figures in sports broadcasting recalled the moment when the Covid-19 lockdown brought down the curtain on live sport in the UK.

“It was a moment that had been coming,” said Sky Sports Managing Director Rob Webster, looking back to the March lockdown. “Our Italian colleagues were ahead of us in terms of the virus and their sport. It was only a matter of time.