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For François Godard, senior analyst at Enders Analysis, the reason for this discrepancy is to be found in the platform's ambition to compete with players like Netflix. "Salto, it was a mistake from the start. Its shareholders are free channels for which the challenge is not to replicate Netflix. How to finance original content with a million subscribers and at very low subscription prices? down ?" Salto is losing money, generating around 50 to 60 million euros in revenue and 180 million in gross losses for its shareholders, according to Les Echos. "The only ones to do this in Europe are Canal+ and Sky. These players have a much greater economy of scale, offering sport and the services of other platforms as aggregators," he continues.

TV expert at research hub Enders Analysis Tom Harrington underplayed this hype around the digital launch.

“ITV is just accepting that it needs to get into the future,” he told City A.M., explaining ITV’s reluctance to evolve in recent years, especially compared to Channel 4 and the BBC.

Other observers worry about the potential impact of increased streaming viewership on ITV’s traditional core networks business. ”We are confident that (ITVX) will be a step change for ITV’s online engagement, however, we believe that ITV may be understating its potential cannibalization of linear,” Enders Analysis analysts Tom Harrington and Gill Hind argued in a Nov. 9 report.

“It has been refreshing to see ITV publicly talking down its current streaming service, the Hub, picking at the failings — its clunkiness, dated feel and lack of content — that have been obvious to consumers for years,” the Enders Analysis duo wrote. “That nothing was done about it sooner was clearly due to mitigation of linear cannibalization and the relative difficulty of monetizing online audiences. If ever there was a sign of a tipping point in the decline of linear, it is this: the least tech-minded broadcaster pushing hard into streaming.”

Head of Mobile at Enders Analysis Karen Egan was also unsurprised by Read’s departure, but told City A.M. that whoever replaces him must come from outside of the Vodafone bubble to bring a “fresh approach for a complete rethink."

Behind comes Salto, with more than 800,000 subscribers. The TF1, M6 and France Télévisions platform is aiming for the one million mark by the end of the year. “It's a positive figure, given the fact that Salto is not distributed by the main telecom operators and Canal (only on Bouygues Telecom and Amazon Channels, editor's note). But it's not big enough to have a sufficient scale and make original productions that would make the difference”, observes François Godard, at Enders Analysis.