Traditional broadcasters face a new competitive onslaught

Amazon is finally making waves in original TV production with The Man in the High Castle.

The global appetite for original drama is creating increasingly complex markets filled with new and old players, writes Raymond Snoddy. Where is it all going?

A relative will receive on Christmas Day a boxed set of all the episodes of Borgen, the splendid drama about the first, fictional, woman Danish Prime Minister.

The present could sit gathering dust in the wait for the right time to watch, or end up in the nearest charity shop.

If, however, the effort is made and the Democratic Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg weaves her spell, there are six DVDs in the trilogy and another viewer will be taken out of the path of live television for hour after hour in 2016.

Across the country Christmas TV box sets will be arriving by the ton in the next few days, many of them delivered by Amazon.

In the case of Borgen the series was produced by the Danish public service broadcaster and broadcast in the UK by the BBC.

And as the pressure group Thinkbox emphasised earlier this month, despite all the alternative attractions, among all individuals 67 per cent of total viewing time is still spent with live TV. With 16 to 24 year olds the proportion drops to just under 49 per cent.

Yet there is no doubt that the growing box set Christmas market could take a bite out of traditional broadcasters – a set of the entire output of Mad Men still awaits attention beside the television.

This year Amazon, beyond it postal warehouse service, finally started to make waves in original television production with The Man in the High Castle.

The likes of Amazon and Google have launched dozens, hundreds even, of online TV channels, which have largely sunk without trace at the margins of viewing and beyond the margins of any possible interest from advertisers.

Taking a heavy hint from Netflix with The Man in the High Castle, Amazon has spent serious money on an alternative history drama in which the Axis powers won the Second World War and the US is partitioned into three parts. The Japanese-controlled Pacific States of America is held by the Japanese, the Nazis are in charge in the Eastern US States, with the Rocky Mountain States acting as a neutral buffer zone.

The pilot, based on the novel by Philip K. Dick, launched in January and nine further episodes were released last month.

The list of executive producers is headed by Ridley Scott and The Man in the High Castle has been hailed as the most-watched series since Amazon developed its original development programme.

It’s not just being watched, it’s being talked about, and critically acclaimed, an indication of how really big money can talk when properly applied to skills and creative ambition. It’s been said it’s like nothing else on television.

The Amazon initiative, designed to boost its Prime premium subscription service, is another indication of the plates moving, and both traditional broadcasters and indeed the cinema, should watch out.

Amazon now has enough money to do almost anything it likes.

Another straw in the wind this week came surprisingly from that well know British television company, BT.

The communications group announced that it would be premiering the AMC series Manhattan written by Sam Shaw of Masters of Sex and directed by Emmy award-winner Thomas Schlamme of West Wing fame.

Manhattan will make a small splash among BT subscribers but the group was able to point out at the same time that BT Television has just had its best ever quarter adding 106,000 new subscribers taking its television customer base to 1.3 million.

This is still small compared with Sky’s 12 million customers in the UK and Ireland but is a sign that BT Television is starting to get modest traction.

Sky channels such as Sky Atlantic are also starting to increase competition in the market for imported American drama with compelling, if spun-out series such as The Affair.

Right on cue along comes Netflix with an announcement that it plans to double the number of original scripted shows it will make next year.

Its chief content man Ted Sarandos said Netflix plans to launch 31 original series next year plus no less than 10 feature films, 12 documentaries, 10 stand-up specials and 30 children’s programmes. Sarandos assured listeners at the IBS Media conference in New York that it was not just a lot of volume it would be quality stuff.

Netflix also intends to complete its international expansion next year after adding six new countries this year including Italy, Japan and Australia.

Where on earth is Netflix getting all this money from? You can only assume it is in a race against the clock to increase the number of subscribers before the increasing cost of original production and global rights acquisitions starts to lap around its ankles. There is also the race against US networks launching their own video and streaming channels.

The only longer-term logic in the Netflix strategy must be to increase the reputation for quality viewing rapidly enough to keep competition at bay and enable Netflix to move away from cheap and cheerful and enable it to continue to increase subscription levels.

Netflix also claimed worldwide supremacy for its Narcos TV series.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the Game of Thrones is the most watched cable and pay-TV series.

Netflix claims that if you add in the streaming numbers – not that Netflix is that flush with offering up viewing numbers of any kind – then it is Narcos rather than Game of Thrones that sits on the pinnacle.

It all adds up to more and more choice for viewers everywhere and more and more competition for traditional broadcasters and maybe even in some cases a reinvention of the genre for the coming generations.

Well might Sir David Attenborough warn in a slightly different context last week that the BBC is “in real danger” as a result of government-imposed cuts and competition from rivals such as Netflix.

Sir David could have added that some of those pressures apply equally to all broadcasters.