TikTok

The day before filling a panellist’s chair at the RTS National Event “2024 TV predictions”, in late January, media universe cartographer and analyst Evan Shapiro appeared solo at a sold-out RTS London session.

“Content remains king – that’s not going to change,” he told a rapt Everyman King’s Cross audience. However, he added, there is a misperception “that most television watched on Earth is streaming – it’s just not true”.

Before she’d even finished reading the novel, bestselling author Juno Dawson approached Clark to adapt it for television.

Clark, who was just named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists of 2023, became more widely known after her first novel Boy Parts went viral on TikTok, causing it to become a ‘BookTok’ hit.

Frustrated that he couldn’t get a break in TV, comedian Munya Chawawa took to impersonating celebrity offspring. “I was so desperate… I told a TV agent that I was Idris Elba’s son, which obviously you can’t verify until you see the person. I’d turn up and they’d say to me: ‘Look. If you had 30,000 followers, maybe we’d talk to you. We like your showreel but you’ve got no profile.’”

Chawawa felt his comedy suited TikTok’s “quick bursts of entertainment…. Most videos have one punchline at the end, so my rule was that I was going to have 11 punchlines in 60 seconds.”

BBC Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet argued that broadcast news was facing a series of existential threats.

“Our habit of sitting on the sofa to see what’s on the telly is changing fast,” she said. “Our future is, literally, in our hands, in those phones or other devices that so many of us are using to access news – or not – especially a younger generation,” who, she said were turning to TikTok and YouTube.

How to launch new content depends on the platform you want to launch it on was the main message from some of the leading practitioners at the cutting edge of content creation and marketing.

During an entertaining and engaging session chaired by Roughcut Television Chief Executive, Ash Atalla, it emerged that word of mouth is a key attribute, especially when it comes to relatable and shareable material.

TikTok is the new social media kid on the block, but it’s also stirring things up among broadcasters – and not simply because of its controversial Chinese ownership.

Fears that TikTok is mining our data and sending it to Beijing has created a tricky dilemma for media companies. The app has been banned from work devices by a number of governments, international bodies and companies and is under fire from the US Congress.

Pitching, in person and in Russian, at the Kremlin for an interview with President Putin was not something I ever imagined myself doing, even in the weird and wonderful world of TV news. 

I was working for NBC News at the time, leading its digital operation and, having studied Russian, I was asked to join the delegation to request a ­one-on-one interview between the President and our lead anchor. 

“I would love to see that on DAZN [in the UK],” revealed the Group Chairman, Kevin Mayer, one of the star speakers at the RTS Convention. 

“This is a huge market and [football] is an incredibly popular sport – it’s a high-quality experience for sports fans. Of course we’d want that.”

He added: “Football rights in major territories in Europe is [DAZN’s] centre of gravity.”

At the beginning of August, Reese Witherspoon sold her company, Hello Sunshine. Even in a world where film-stars-turned-brands have become 10 a penny, the Oscar winner made international headlines thanks to the jaw-dropping sale price – reportedly $900m. Witherspoon said she was “thrilled to be working with Blackstone, Kevin, and Tom to grow a next-generation media company”.