2024 in TV: Streamers close in on UK as broadcasters adapt
2024 in Review
The year in TV began as it has ended for the buy side: with an M&A frenzy, as two of the world’s biggest broadcasters entered merger talks.
Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) CEO David Zaslav and Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish had reportedly met to discuss a merger.
5 reasons Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount are discussing merger
By late February, the deal was dead because WBD didn’t end up making a formal offer.
But the tone was set for the rest of the year: home internet speeds have become fast and reliable enough to enable TV to become a global game. But it’s a game increasingly dominated by international streaming businesses — Netflix, Amazon, Disney, YouTube and TikTok (if user-generated video counts).
It’s a scale that regional broadcasters can’t match. So how do they adapt to survive?
2024 showed that adapt they must, as the market continues to rapidly change.
Ad revenue concerns at broadcasters
Sky’s losses doubled last year to £224m, the pay-TV broadcaster reported in an October Companies House filing covering its full-year 2023 financials.
Sky in November revealed that it owed its advertising partners hundreds of millions of pounds after it discovered it had been under-reporting revenue to them. This dated as far back as 2017, before its acquisition by Comcast.
Later that month, chief advertising and new revenue officer Priya Dogra said Sky would “fully reimburse” its clients, which include Paramount and WBD, at Sky Media’s upfronts event.
Meanwhile, at least another potential issue has been averted: Sky has now renewed its distribution and bundle agreement WBD.
Sky failed our high standards, ads chief tells industry at upfronts
ITV — itself the subject of recent M&A speculation — expects to grow by 2.5% this year. This is despite total ad revenue declining by up to 7% in Q4 — normally the most fruitful time of year for advertising-dependent media owners.
The UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster now also has a big Studios content business, but that performed even worse. Revenue at ITV Studios fell 20% to £1.2bn in the first nine months of the year.
ITV also doubled down on its now two-year-old VOD platform ITVX. In March, it announced it would sell its 50% stake in global streaming service BritBox International to joint venture partner BBC Studios for £255m.
Over at Channel 4, revenue fell by 10% in 2023 and it admitted that spending on content dropped last year and would continue to decline — confirming indie producers’ complaints this year that commissions have been all but frozen.
Channel 4 linear ad revenue down 16% after TV market recovery ‘failed to materialise’
Verica Djurdjevic’s departure as chief commercial officer was announced in July. She will be replaced by Spotify’s EMEA commercial lead, Rak Patel, who starts in January.
As for Channel 5, parent Paramount decided to rebrand it as just 5 next year as part of plans to relaunch the public-service broadcaster across linear, streaming and digital platforms under one unified name, The Media Leader revealed.
The relaunch, due to happen by April, meant Paramount will no longer merge Channel 5’s broadcaster VOD service My5 with free ad-supported TV platform Pluto TV, as was due to take place this autumn.
Channel 5 to become just ‘5’: UK PSB’s first ‘unified’ rebrand
More collaboration
And yet the UK’s “big three” broadcasters continued to respond to a changing market, particularly by showing they can offer joint solutions to benefit advertisers.
Freely, the streaming service backed by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, formally launched. It marked the first time all four UK public-service broadcasters have collaborated on a streaming proposition.
In September, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky announced a new joint measurement panel, Lantern, aimed at tracking the short-term impact of TV advertising on sales.
Whereas their existing joint venture CFlight measures deduplicated reach and frequency on linear and digital, Lantern aims to give advertisers much more information to the question “Did my TV campaign work?” by pooling data and tracking the behaviour of consumers after they were shown particular ads.
Fighting for TV
Commercial telly’s UK marketing body had a busy year too. Among Thinkbox’s highlights were the release of Profit Ability 2, which found advertising gives a short-term profit return on investment of £1.87 per £1 invested.
Advertising generates profit, but not all media channels are equal
One of the agencies involved, WPP’s EssenceMediacom, crunched the data and concluded that brands could be spending three times too much on social. TV, meanwhile, is getting less cash and credit than it deserves.
Brands could be spending three times too much on social. You read that right
As for Thinkbox — an outfit known for leading media research — it’s goodbye to long-serving research and planning director Matt Hill, who was poached by Sky Media. He replaces Lucy Bristowe, who left earlier in the year to join Kantar Media.
In December, Thinkbox announced that Hill would be effectively replaced by Wavemaker UK’s chief strategy officer Elliott Millard.
Streamers play the UK game
Thinkbox, like UK TV’s joint industry currency provider Barb, is part of a established TV ecosystem. Whereas this could have been a hurdle to navigate for the world’s streaming giants, 2024 spelled a new era of collaboration. Or perhaps foxes entering the henhouse.
In February, Thinkbox announced new associate members Amazon, Netflix, Vevo, WBD and Disney.
This had been coming; media agencies had been clear with the streaming providers that they need to sign up to existing structures, including Thinkbox.
The news came within weeks of Amazon Prime Video launching advertising on all programming in the UK for bottom-tier subscribers.
A Kantar Media study found that, even though Netflix and Disney+ had introduced baseline subscription options that included ads, Prime Video — which had moved its subscribers to a default ads tier — was “the only major service whose subscribers display an active net dissatisfaction with the number of ads being served”.
Amazon Prime Video sees ‘significant’ UK churn following ad tier launch
Netflix, meanwhile, said it would be expanding the number of programmatic partners for advertisers beyond its once-exclusive deal with Microsoft and developing an in-house adtech platform.
It announced Q3 revenue growth of 15%, while Netflix continues to dominate reported usage in Barb’s Establishment Survey.
It’s a significant year for the streaming giant as it prepares to live broadcast its first NFL games at Christmas. Sports rights continue to be a big preoccupation for broadcasters to defend market share, with Sky retaining the prestigious UK Premier League rights and Amazon Prime Video broadcasting Champions League football for the first time.
Elsewhere, the summer saw the UK entry of Fox’s ad-supported streaming service Tubi, which launched in the US in 2014.
Measurement remains key topic
Perhaps the most significant story of 2025 will be what happens to TV measurement, particularly as advertiser trade body Isba’s cross-media measurement solution Origin formally launches.
November saw the major development of a possible impasse being broken, with Barb entering talks to join Origin under a plan that would see Origin incorporate two reports with different viewability standards, The Media Leader revealed.
Plan tabled for Barb to join Origin in hybrid reporting model
The challenge for UK broadcasters, as well as lacking the scale of global players, is that the likes of tech platforms have masses of user data to offer advertisers. Barb exists to provide a baseline of measurement standards to stop advertisers being ripped off; it seems Origin will provide a choice for marketers to choose their own TV adventure.
An Ofcom first
Of course, TV was not immune from the AI hype.
ITV launched two TV ads that have been created using generative AI and wants to sell more of them to small businesses.
The future of TV ads? ITV creates two spots with generative AI
And it was also a landmark year of sort for media regulator Ofcom, which in October levied a £100,000 penalty on GB News for breaking due impartiality rules with People’s Forum: The Prime Minister, which was broadcast in February.
It was the first time Ofcom has imposed a fine on the free-to-air channel after multiple alleged infractions.
Ofcom issues first financial penalty to GB News for Rishi Sunak Q&A
Of course, the global streamers are also privileged by not having to abide by the same level of regulations as the UK’s national broadcasters. As this author noted in February, it rather feels like broadcasters are being asked to play a game with one hand tied behind their back.
Does this market have the forbearance to encourage (or even force) streamers to adopt local market customs and regulations? Or will TV become a more flexible and anarchic landscape dominated by automated trading and algorithmic content recommendations?
Stay tuned.