What Comms Pros Need to Know About the Biggest Changes to Broadcasting in 70 Years
Sky's plans to merge with ITV and a historic High Court privacy ruling on the Daily Mail will have a long lasting impact on the media.
The media landscape is changing at pace – and keeping up with the latest developments and moves will give every comms expert an advantage over their rivals. Every week take a look at the media business from mainstream and ‘legacy’ media to cutting edge tech and the latest trends and developments – and how you can use that know-how.
Like buses, big news seems to come all at once. And this week saw two seismic developments that will change the face of the UK media significantly.
The first, the agreed merger (although getting it past the regulators may take another 18 months) of Sky and ITV’s broadcasting arm. The second the complete rebuttal of Prince Harry and others claims of hacking and illicit news gathering at the High Court.
Both are worth considering for the significant way they are going to change the media landscape in the years to come - for good and bad.
Sky’s £1.6billion merger with ITV is an effort to combat entertainment giants such as Netflix and Disney in an age where size is everything. The move will allow the new business to capitalise on both the subscription model and free to air markets and allow significant savings across the board. It’s been spurred by the continued drop in ad revenue that ITV is managing to pull in. Last year its top line earnings were £234million and that is trending downwards as streaming services and social media platforms gobble up ad revenue.
And, of course, like the print media, the number of people watching traditional scheduled TV is plummeting, particularly outside big events such as the World Cup. ITV’s biggest programme remains Coronation Street, with around four million viewers, but like seeing someone in the street holding a newspaper, those viewers are nearly all over 50 and often much older.
The implications for comms professionals are significant. A successful commercial broadcaster is part of a diversified media. How successful the merger will be may take a while to work out. But without doubt this is the biggest change to commercial broadcasting since ITV was launched in 1955.
But I wanted to make some observations on what is undoubtedly the most vulnerable part of the business, its news rooms.
