Subscribers to streaming platforms get access to all of the content on them so it isn't possible to attribute revenue to specific shows. In turn, it isn't possible to tell whether they made a profit or a loss. As Tom Harrington of media consultants Enders Analysis explained, "given the structure of the streaming model it is almost impossible to robustly attribute profitability to any single piece of content."

In one sense, this is all small change to Apple which – as of March 2024 – was the world’s seventh largest company by revenue, earning $97 billion in income from a turnover of $383 billion. The company’s problem, according to Tom Harrington, analyst at Enders Analysis, is that growth over the last couple of decades has come through selling iPhones at a high price to the world’s wealthy.

“Apple TV+ is never going to be a particularly broad service given the reverence that has to be shown to the Apple brand, but currently it appeals to so few,” Harrington points out. “This has caused it to then undermine its own value with free offers and deals. The future is difficult to map due to the reluctance of management to ever explain what the actual point of the service is – Tim Cook has mentioned in the past that content decisions are not ‘purely financial’, for example – and aggregating its metrics with other Apple subscriptions.”

“The loss of 250,000 subscribers in the wake of The Post’s non-endorsement has highlighted the fragilities in the subscription model,” said Enders Analysis senior research analyst Abi Watson. “Acting in ways contra to a publisher’s perceived values—Democracy dies in darkness, etc—will turn off subscribers because it’s effectively acting against their own personal values.”

Channel 5 is set to revamp its BVOD service this year, as parent company Paramount seeks to update the existing My5 service. Research from Enders Analysis, based on Barb data, shows that BVOD viewing currently makes up significantly less of Channel 5’s viewing compared to other UK commercial broadcasters.

Collective losses among the so-called altnets hit £1.3bn in 2023, according to a survey of the companies’ most recently published accounts by research group Enders Analysis, which warns the picture will not improve this year. James Barford, director of telecoms, said “2024 might well be worse due to increasing interest costs”.

A report published by Enders Analysis in October said weaker than expected penetration was a critical driver for the collective losses.

"2024 was another year where Apple failed to break out a killer new product line," said Jamie MacEwan, senior media analyst at Enders Analysis, a research firm. Failure to turn these futuristic platforms into generation-defining products could have long-lasting implications.

"Vision Pro is too expensive for what it can do," MacEwan said. "It's not yet at a high enough image quality to enable real work such as on spreadsheets, and it simply doesn't have that density of apps and experiences yet."

“Broadcaster decline is slowing down, that is clear,” says Tom Harrington, the head of television at the research service Enders. “It is not as bad as it was, but broadcasters’ video-on-demand services are not balancing the decline in linear TV. Streaming is not keeping up with the viewing decline, the amount leaving broadcasters is still more than material.”

“Outside of the top few the others are kind of bundled in a way that makes them almost like they are free,” says Harrington. “They are just not as valued by customers, usage levels are low, and they have no leverage to put prices up. Netflix is smart. They have now anchored the low cost end of the market with its ad-supported package. Others can’t put prices up without looking expensive, but they are all having to foot the same content costs without Netflix’s scale.”

As Jamie MacEwan, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis, explained: “The benefits like badges, icons, early access and customisation options are more akin to features we see on social apps in China or Japan than the paid tiers being rolled out by Western social platforms.”

“Given that subscriptions doubled in the last year, they could actually be responsible for about half of incremental revenue last quarter — that’s a great story, but one that will get harder to sustain over time,” added MacEwan.

“If you want to challenge Sky, you must put a lot of money on the table,” says Francois Godard, senior media and telecoms analyst at Enders Analysis.

“For the money Amazon spent, they will have been very happy,” says Godard. “If the same thing had been available, I’m sure they would’ve been interested again, but that package was not there.

“They came into the Premier League with a retailer’s mentality, wanting people there on the platform right at the time they would shop most, and then moved towards a broadcasters’ mentality, where you need to people to come back to your service.

“For that, weekly sport is ideal. Amazon were so happy with the Champions League in Italy and Germany that they switched to the UK. I never saw this as a vote against the Premier League, but it is so expensive.”