TV outlets keep multiplying with SVoD, AVoD, and FAST. The number of quality TV production keeps dropping. Overall, advertising money keeps increasing. Linear TV outlets continue to be profitable. And yet, the content distribution industry is crying in unison: “No one is buying.” What gives?
The complaint from international content distributors is almost universal: “They are not buying.” There are a lot of online talks, in-person meetings, and casual encounters (especially during TV trade events, which are now multiplying like rabbits), but licensors say they are inconclusive because TV outlets don’t have any money to buy new content.
But this doesn’t make any sense: How can a TV outlet fill its daily programming schedule? An in-house production is certainly more costly than an acquired show. Local production is much more expensive than any acquisition. Reruns are less costly than a new acquisition, but they might not bring high ratings.
Plus, TV outlets keep multiplying with SVoD, AVoD, and FAST, and the number of quality productions keeps dropping. Reps from the E.U. government agency, the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO), noted that in 2023, after a brief return to growth post-pandemic, the production and release of original TV dramas is declining in the E.U.
The drop related to the number of titles (six percent), the number of episodes (six percent), and number of hours (three percent), compared to 2022.
According to the EAO, on average, 1,200 titles, 23,000 episodes, and 14,000 hours are produced in Europe (including the U.K., Norway, and Switzerland) each year, excluding animation. The EAO also reported that over 2,000 production companies produced at least one drama title between 2015 and 2023, but only three percent of those companies produced a title for each of the last nine years.
With 159 titles in 2023, the U.K. was the main producer, ahead of Germany (119), France (92), Italy (58), and Spain (58). The BBC, Netflix, Amazon, ZDF, and ARD were the five main commissioners of series per season.
Global advertising spending reached U.S. $1 trillion (i.e., $1,000 billion!) in 2024. Even linear TV stations are recording large profits. For 2024, Italy’s Mediaset reported a 7.7 percent increase in revenue compared to 2023, while net profit surged to 38.8 percent.
In the U.S., Disney’s legacy media’s (formerly known as “mainstream media”) 2024 quarterly results have shown $498 million in profits, with revenue now reaching $2.5 billion.
In 2024, Comcast’s cable TV networks generated $7 billion in annual revenues. Similarly, in the first nine months of 2024, Warner’s cable unit posted $15.4 billion in revenue.
So what gives? Even considering the very low license fees for AVoD and FAST — which mostly consist of old library material and social media content –– high-quality productions should be having the time of their lives in the international distribution business!
(By Dom Serafini)
Audio Version (a DV Works service)
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