TikTok has been dealt a devastating blow as a US bill has been signed into law forcing owner ByteDance to sell within a year or face its removal from app stores.
The stakes are higher than in 2020—China's opposition to a divestment will make an optimal sale harder to conclude, so all sides must be prepared for a ban.
The TikTok bill introduces extraordinary new powers in the context of the US and China's broad systemic rivalry, though online consumer benefits will be limited.
Despite its scale, YouTube can get overlooked. But its tremendous reach and impact across all demographics make it the internet's universal service provider.
YouTube is still the golden child for creators who want to make a living from their content. For YouTube, this broad base of suppliers ensures a position of strength from which to claim a large revenue share.
Competition from TikTok took some of the shine off YouTube's usage, and forced it promote lower-monetising Shorts. YouTube is pushing heavily into subscriptions, TV sets, and premium content via sports rights to boost the money it makes per minute spent.
On 18 May 2023, Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media and Telecoms 2023 & Beyond Conference with Deloitte, sponsored by Barclays, Financial Times, and Salesforce.
With over 550 attendees and over 40 speakers from the TMT sector, including leading executives, policy leaders, and industry experts, the conference focused on how new technologies, regulation, and infrastructure will impact the future of the industry.
This is the edited transcript of Session Four, covering: news publisher growth, the way forward for UK telecoms, regulation, and closing remarks. Videos of the presentations will be available on the conference website.
We forecast broadcaster viewing to shrink to below half of total video viewing by 2028 (48%)—down from 64% today—as streaming services gain share of long-form viewing time.
On the key advertising battleground of the TV set, broadcasters will still retain scale with a 63% viewing share by 2028, even as SVOD and YouTube double their impact.
Short-form video will continue to displace long-form as video-first apps (e.g. YouTube, Twitch, TikTok) gain further popularity and others (e.g. Facebook, Instagram) continue a relentless pivot to video. This will expand the amount of video watched and transition habits—even amongst older demographics.
Recent developments in AI have ignited a frenzy in the tech world and wider society. Though some predictions are closer to sci-fi, this new phase is a real advance.
We view AI as a ‘supercharger’, boosting productivity of workers. The impact is already being felt across media sectors, including advertising and publishing.
Firms thinking about using AI should assess which tasks can be augmented and what data is required. Be prepared for unpredictable outputs and a changing legal and tech landscape.
This report is free to access.
Cross-party support for an 11th hour amendment to the Online Safety Bill’s Commons report stage has forced the Government to agree that a new criminal liability for tech executives will be added in the Bill’s passage through the Lords.
The proposed amendment cites faulty precedents, including in financial services, and a new, not yet established Irish online safety regime that is lengthy in procedural steps before criminal sanction.
The introduction of criminal liability will not strengthen the safety objectives of the bill. It is at odds with the approach of the wider regulation, and is practically unworkable.
The amended Online Safety Bill contains sensibly scaled back provisions for “legal but harmful” content for adults, retaining the objectives of removing harms to children and giving users more choice. However, this comes at the expense of enhanced transparency from platforms.
News publishers have won further protections: their content will have a temporary ‘must-carry’ requirement pending review when flagged under the Bill’s content rules. Ofcom must keep track of how regulation affects the distribution of news.
The Bill could be further strengthened: private communications should be protected. Regulators will need to keep up with children’s changing habits, as they are spending more time on live, interactive social gaming.
FAST services that include digital linear channels (FAST channels) appear to be experiencing solid growth in the US. In the UK, this success has been used to highlight a potential mechanism to diversify away from broadcast linear and SVOD
However, the growth potential of these services on this side of the Atlantic contends with a very different video market than the US—the free output of the PSBs remains prolific and of high quality, while prominence legislation is likely to tougher
Furthermore, overall viewing of long-form video content is declining. Any new FAST services will be fighting for a declining amount of screen time with poor content slates and little name recognition—however, growing demand for US content is an advantage
This report is free to access.
The Glasgow Climate Pact agreed at COP26 sets out national pledges to achieve net zero and contain global warming to 1.8°C above its pre-industrial levels— COP27 will buttress pledges, now at risk from the energy crisis, and advance some nations to 2030.
The TMT sector is a leader on net zero in the private sector. Companies that measure their end-to-end carbon footprint throughout their supply chain—as many do in the UK’s TMT sector—can target their GHG emissions.
The TMT sector underpins the UK’s vibrant digital economy that enables hybrid work-from-home (WFH), which reduces fossil fuel use thus heading off both the energy crisis and the climate crisis.
Broadcast TV viewing resumed its downwards trajectory in 2021, following a pandemic-inflated boost in 2020. The effect has been compounded by streaming services retaining much of their lockdown gains, consolidating their place at the heart of people's viewing habits
Within the shrinking pie of broadcast TV viewing—still c.70% of total TV set use—the PSBs have held relatively steady, whilst Channel 5 has increased both its share and absolute volume of viewing
However, further decline seems inevitable, with the largest components of the programming landscape, namely longstanding formats and the soaps suffering badly since the beginning of the pandemic. We await the effect of various new scheduling strategies