sVOD

Session chair Amol Rajan: Did you interpret the new culture secretary saying that she is re-examining the business case for privatisation as implying that she and Prime Minister Liz Truss are not as committed to privatisation as their predecessors? 

Alex Mahon: We’re in discussion with the DCMS about where they want to end up and what the options are. I imagine they’ll look at the things that I like: facts, data and evidence. Then we’ll see what the coming weeks and months hold as they think about that. 

Broadcasters no longer battle just each other in the bid for growth. With expanding options in leisure and home entertainment, and consumers reeling from the cost of living crisis, the competition has broadened. Now, it includes other leisure pursuits as much as traditional rivals.

This battle for consumer attention was the focus of the second convention session, “Follow the eyeballs, follow the money: winning in the attention economy”. 

Accepted TV wisdom says that traditional broadcasting’s days are numbered, and the US streamers are taking over. Up to a point, yes, but there’s still plenty of life left in television’s old guard. And no less an authority than Barb says so.

By his own admission, Plimsoll Productions founder Grant Mansfield is an obsessive jogger. When we speak over Zoom at 9:00am, he has just returned from a run – one of four that he tries to fit in each week. “It has certainly helped keep me sane during the past eight months of this process,” he explains, referring to the recent sale of Plimsoll to ITV. 

ITVX will be the UK’s first integrated advertising and subscription funded platform, which will be viewer led.

New ITV shows will premiere on ITVX first before airing on ITV linear channels months later. 

Will the future of streaming be defined by SVoD (subscription video-­on-demand) or free, advertising-funded video-on-demand – or can they both prosper? Those were the big questions ad­dres­sed by BritBox launch director Reemah Sakaan and Viacom International Media Networks chief David Lynn.

Speaking on the day that the “best of British” SVoD announced a deal with Channel 5, Sakaan was asked by session chair Wayne Garvie how she was going to “persuade my mum and dad to spend £5.99 a month on BritBox”?

At this year’s Steve Hewlett Memorial Lecture, former BBC Director-General Mark Thompson recounted a conversation he had had with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in 2007, during discussions concerning the launch of the iPlayer. According to Thompson, Hastings told him: “I don’t know why you’re bothering, Mark, you’ll never beat my algorithm. Why not just give us all your content instead?”

The BBC has responded to the rise of subscription video-on-demand services by extending the iPlayer catch-up window from 30 days to one year.

BBC iPlayer chief Dan McGolpin defended the decision: “TV works in seasons… it means that things which are on a yearly cycle, such as The Apprentice, will be there.” He claimed that audiences, months after transmission, can now be “substantial” – some 40% of Killing Eve’s audience came to the thriller after the original catch-up window.