The UK’s public service broadcasters – the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, S4C – have today come together to ask the Government to work with them to support freelancers working in the broadcasting industry during this unprecedented period. In a joint letter to the Chancellor signed by all the PSBs, the broadcasters highlight the value of freelancers to the success of the UK’s Creative Industries and urge the Government “to provide a package of...
Disney+ has launched today in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, and Switzerland. The service will launch in France on April 7th. In light of concerns regarding the current ability of certain broadband infrastructure to handle the anticipated consumer demand for Disney+, the service will now feature a lower overall bandwidth utilisation by at least 25%. With over 500 films, 26 exclusive original movies and series and thousands of television episodes from Disney, Pixar,...
ITV has announced business continuity plans to address the continuing coronavirus pandemic. The broadcaster assures viewers that news and popular TV shows like Coronation Street and Emmerdale will remain on air. Daytime linear TV viewing, as well as OTT consumption on ITV Hub, has increased. Carolyn McCall, ITV’s CEO, today gave an overview of ITV’s response to the coronavirus crisis: “This week has seen an escalation in the impact of the coronavirus with the Government...
Viaplay, the Nordic streaming service, has reported major increases in viewing for its non-sports content. Total streamed minutes on Viaplay – across Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland (excluding sports coverage) – were up 44% last week compared to the same week in 2019, and up 13% compared to the previous week. Started streams and streamed minutes (excluding sports coverage) were up 25% and 21%, respectively, on Saturday and Sunday when compared to the previous weekend....
ITV, the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster, has published its 2019 financial results which show strong growth across a range of the company’s activities. Content production revenues (via ITV Studios) rose 9% to £1.8bn YOY Long form online viewing broke 500m hours served for the first time (506m compared to 447m in 2018) accompanied by a 6% increase in dwell time and 28% increase in monthly active users ITV Hub registered user accounts were up to 30.8m (vs....
BBC Studios, the principal commercial arm of the BBC, and ITV, the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster, today announce plans to launch the BritBox streaming service in Australia. The ad-free subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) streaming service will bring Australians an unrivalled collection of great British TV shows, and will build on the successful launch and operation of the service in both North America (USA and Canada) and most recently in the UK. BritBox is anticipated to launch...
ITV has announced Rhys McLachlan will become their new Director of Advanced Advertising. McLachlan was previously Head of Global TV Strategy at Amobee, the global digital advertising technology company with whom ITV signed an exclusive UK and Ireland licensing agreement with last year. Since announcing the Amobee deal, ITV has been working closely with Amobee to design, develop and integrate the technology to power ITV’s new programmatic TV platform, Planet V. Reporting to Kelly Williams,...
Channel 4 today announces the appointment of Bede McCarthy as Head of Product, All 4. Reporting to Chief Product Officer Dave Cameron, Bede will be responsible for creating Channel 4’s’s digital product experience on All 4 in order to drive additional consumption as part of the channel’s mission to accelerate digital growth. He will lead All 4’s talented team of product specialists to shape future product strategy and deliver customer value via a product roadmap...
The latest research from Ampere Analysis confirms the growing global demand for movies, despite radical changes in the entertainment industry. Global consumer spending on movies has grown by nearly 30% over the past decade, encompassing theatrical/cinema, home entertainment*, premium pay TV and subscription OTT. And most film fans use more than one way to consume movies. The main drivers of the market’s ongoing expansion are theatrical – with notable growth in Asia compensating for...
Earlier this month I suggested that the Streaming Wars should more accurately be described as the Streaming Skirmishes because although this wasn’t a winner-takes-all scenario, and that multiple SVOD services could happily coexist, even if (hypothetically) one champion emerged they’d still then need to tackle the wider threats for attention and eyeballs from editorial, gaming, social, real-life experiences and eventually, AR / VR. It’s still fun to play the game, however, and try to address...
