TV is Dead- Long live Great content! Pete Lawrence

I saw it coming to be honest. Way before Covid, I knew I had to make big changes to my business model because I could see the television money tree was not only losing its golden leaves but rotting from the inside out.

Today the TV Industry is on its knees, with 50% of freelancers out of work and over a third changing careers entirely. The mantra 'survive until 25' has been adopted by small/medium Indies and programme makers in the hope that a new year will bring new opportunities. I can't see it to be honest. A lot of Indies have just closed their doors for good.

So what happened? Covid was definitely a catalyst for the beginning of the end of a media that is less than 100 years old. Quite simply, when we were all stuck at home, we all gorged on TIGER KING, BREAKING BAD & THE CROWN and when we weren' t obsessing with what happened to Carol Baskin or if Walter White would kill Hank, we were burpying along with Jo Wickes or dancing with Sophie Ellis-Baxter in our kitchens, thanks to Youtube.

The truth is people just don't watch TV like they used to. Yes we will all stream some amazing content but we aren't just going to sit there any more and watch whatever the terrestrial channels throw at us. As the viewing figures dwindle , the ad revenue disappears. Why advertise to a broad audience when now your spend can be targeted to the people you want to reach- through social media?

As the budgets get tighter, the quality drops even more and the circle ever decreases.

Meanwhile 300 thousand videos are uploaded to Youtube every hour- and three times more than that to Tik Tok- so people are still hungry for great storytelling- its just harder to find amongst all the dross.

My company still makes TV but I have made a conscious effort to swing towards commercial or corporate clients. Customers with brands that want to be associated with compelling content, whose audiences don't want to be sold products but want to buy or aspire to a lifestyle. As storytellers we need to adapt- we cant keep painting the same pictures on cave walls- we need to find new stories, new ways of telling them and seek creative avenues for distributing them. Whilst once the corporate market was sneered on my those in mainstream media (me included) , it now offers a platform for real creativity and innovation.