Broadcaster decline accelerated in 2022, with record drops in reach and time spent. This was primarily driven by the lightest and youngest viewers leaving broadcast television while over-65s also reduced their viewing for the first time.

Loss of lighter viewers threatens the future viewing base of broadcasters and relevance to a new generation. Further, broadcaster status as the home of mass audiences becomes compromised.

However, retention of lighter viewers is not yet a lost cause. They are amongst the heaviest Netflix viewers, and the very lightest are spending more time in front of the TV set than previously—suggesting enduring appetite for TV-like content.

ITV’s external revenues increased 8% in 2022, driven by a big boost from Studios (+19%, £2.01 billion) with COVID overhang now appearing to be a thing of the past. Total advertising revenue (TAR) was down just 1% on last year’s record highs

ITVX had a successful launch, leveraging big audiences for the World Cup to drive awareness and use of the service. We will have to wait and see what effect ITV’s aggressive new content windowing strategy will have on linear viewing

Guidance is that Q1 2023 TAR will be down 11%, with April down between 10% and 15%. TV advertising should recover later in the year, but we are forecasting that the total market will be marginally down

Structural shifts in the delivery of video are causing long-form viewing to coalesce around fewer programmes—this comes despite an explosion in the volume, spend and perceptual accessibility of content

For the time being this theoretically favours the largest of shows, along with the declining number of content providers that are able to create and distribute them at scale, forming critical masses of interest

Incoming technologies leveraging AI and virtual production will have the ability to drastically lower production costs. But until that happens the spend on most programming will become increasingly less efficient

ITV plc set itself the annual target of 3-5% revenue growth up to 2010, then 5% to 2012, in its strategy presentation on September 12th 2007. Within the overall business growth target, ITV set itself a further three sub-targets. Two of these, the doubling of production revenues (currently in the region of £600 million per annum) by 2012 and the fivefold increase in online revenues from about £30 million in 2007 to £150 million in 2010 raised a good few eyebrows to judge by reactions afterwards; but the third target of 38.5% adult SOCI (share of commercial impacts, or ‘eyeballs delivered to advertisers’) by 2012 has drawn almost no attention

The distribution side was slightly weak again, but the prospects for the Christmas quarter are much better, with the iPhone exclusivity a big help even if its sales prove to be weak

BSkyB’s 17.9% shareholding in ITV is likely to lead to a substantial lessening of competition in the all-TV market, according to the provisional findings of the Competition Commission (CC) investigation announced on 2nd October 2007

The Apple iPhone will finally be available in the UK on 9th November, sold exclusively through Apple, O2 and Carphone Warehouse, and costing a hefty £269 when bought with a minimum £35 a month 18 month contract

Carphone Warehouse is seeking to position itself as an impartial guide to the broadband products from 6 different brands, although it is not selling the product sets of BT, Sky or Tiscali

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has confirmed receipt of a formal request from ITV plc for a review of the Contract Rights Renewal (CRR) remedy and will announce its decision whether to proceed before the year is over

The distribution business was slightly weak despite good like-for-like store sales, due to the lower quality ‘off-the-page’ newspaper advertisement business being successfully cut back by the mobile operators