Smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home accelerated their prodigious rate of adoption in Q4 2018, and we expect they will soon be in 20% of UK homes
Amazon and Google price devices low to drive adoption to mass-market levels and win the race to own the home, in contrast to Apple’s profit-making strategy for its speaker
Echo’s main strategic benefits to Amazon are the scope for data collection and the intelligence it supports, and gatekeeping partners’ access to customers
With the UK perhaps Netflix’s most valuable market outside the US—home to a stellar production sector—the streaming service is escalating its foray into local production, opening a content hub in London and moving from co-productions to direct commissions
As UK content completely dominates UK video viewing outside of the SVODs, to expand subscription reach Netflix is endeavouring to become an alternative to the PSBs’ entertainment output; this local spend is efficient given the universality and worldwide appetite for British content
With a growing proportion of local content expenditure now coming from Netflix and other SVODs, there are ramifications for both broadcasters and producers—loss of viewing, potential market pressure, increased competition for premium content and hesitancy around their own SVOD plans—along with implications for the cultural landscape
Amazon’s recent deals with Apple in TV, music and device sales mark a turning point after a decade of frosty relations
The context for this involves shifting priorities at both firms, growing pressure on Apple’s iPhone business, and rivals in common — first and foremost Google, but also the likes of Netflix and Spotify
The uneasy alliance helps both companies consolidate their strengths in the platform competition over media and the connected home — but trouble already brews
When its acquisition of 21st Century Fox closes, Disney will own 60% of Hulu. If it bought Comcast’s 30% stake (and WarnerMedia’s 10%), it could fully leverage the platform for its US direct-to-consumer strategy
Comcast’s Hulu stake has little strategic value to it. We argue it should sell to Disney in exchange for long-term supply deals for ESPN, as well as for the upcoming Disney+ and Hulu, similar to its recent pacts with Amazon Prime and Netflix
This could naturally be extended to Sky in Europe depending on whether Disney decides to launch all direct-to-consumer or sticks with pay-TV in certain markets
There is a belief in some quarters that there is space for a myriad of large SVOD services in the UK. We question whether there is room for more than the current three pacesetters; Netflix, Amazon and NOW TV
Like the UK, the US market is dominated by three services, and there is evidence of an appetite for further offerings. But the US market is conspicuously different to the UK's, with the forces behind cord-cutting in the States less apparent this side of the Atlantic
Potential domestic UK services would struggle to compete with the resources—supported by debt-funded and loss-leading models—that foreign tech giants can marshal
The TV, the main screen in the house, is rapidly becoming connected to the internet, opening a new front in the battle for people's attention
Tech players, pay-TV operators, and manufacturers are all aiming to control the user interface, ad delivery and data collection, leaving incumbent broadcaster interests less well represented
To protect their position, and the principles of public service broadcasting, broadcasters will have to work with each other at home and in Europe to leverage their content and social importance
The overall scale of the GAFAN digital media giants may be huge, but the cost of becoming a major player in Premier League (PL) football remains utterly disproportionate to the current scale and ambitions of their video businesses in the UK.
Furthermore, the main package PL rights are live-only, UKonly, and of limited breadth of appeal, making a poor strategic fit for any of the digital players.
The cheaper minor packages, near-live and clips rights may be a better fit, but bidding on these will not move the needle in terms of the £1.7 billion per year main PL auction rights costs.
We interviewed the biggest hitters in the UK television production sector, asking them about the current issues affecting their industry, such as consolidation, Peak TV, and Nations and Regions quotas
Most pertinent, however, was the production sector’s relationship with the new buyers—Netflix, Amazon, Apple et al.—and how their approach to them differed for each one, as well as traditional broadcasters when pitching, negotiating deals or producing programmes
With views anonymised for candour, this report is an honest representation of an industry where quality and volume are both at an all-time high, despite the challenge of change brought about by these new players
Our latest forecasts predict traditional broadcasters will account for 72% of all video viewing in 2027, down from an estimated 82% in 2017, reflecting the continuing adoption of online video services across all UK age groups.
Additional viewing of online short-form content such as YouTube will keep pushing overall volumes higher, with SVOD services serving more as a substitution for linear TV.
The extent will be greater among younger age groups, for whom the shift has already been significant. We predict that in 10 years just 42% of 16-34s’ total viewing will be to conventional broadcasters versus 91% for the over-55s.
Linear TV's decline continued into 2018, with an overall drop of 3% across the first 12 weeks YOY. However, overall TV set usage remained flat at 4 hours/day, as time spent on unmatched activities—which includes Netflix, Amazon and YouTube—continues to rise.
Within the ever-shrinking pie of consolidated viewing to the TV set, share of viewing (SOV) to the ten largest channels remains broadly flat. Across the whole of 2017 and the start of 2018 the best performer has been ITV (main channel).
Several big-name digital channels are showing surprising signs of recent decline, including UKTV’s Drama and Viacom’s 5USA. It is too early to tell if these declines are a blip or a trend. However, they reflect stalling growth from the long tail of digital channels in aggregate.