‘British stories are dying out’: the cash crisis threatening TV

https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/companies/article/british-stories-are-dying-out-the-cash-crisis-threatening-tv-ts2t5vn6h

by Skavau

25 comments

  1. Alot of Youtubers produce better quality stuff than the BBC or ITV

    Terrestrial TV is just reality TV and shitty soaps

  2. Because the working class find it almost impossible to get into the industry. It’s an upper middle class closed shop which excludes a lot of creative talent.
    I’m sick of seeing the same dozen or so university educated “celebrities” presenting half of the content on television. Panel shows, chat shows, travel and even history programmes seem to have the same people on them.

  3. I watch hardly anything on terrestrial TV nowadays, apart from the news and maybe a bit of sport. I enjoy YouTube, which has an endless supply of videos that appeal to my interests: not a single celebrity in sight!

  4. Is it also a crisis called, people not even admitting to watching it? If an age group actively rejects it as out of date, it isn’t likely it’ll be easier to work in it.

  5. Yeah British TV is a small fish in a big pond and you have to accept that. It’s delusional to think you can compete with streaming platforms. Especially with our outdated approach to TV.

  6. It seems that everything on either BBC or itv is a gritty detective show. It’s fucking boring.

  7. They all end up shit or appeal to the lowest common denominator, Doctor Who has quite frankly become satire with how completely focused on virtue signaling the writer’s political beliefs it is. Other than that you’ve got what? Love Island? The soaps?

  8. This is 100% the british people’s fault.

    TV is obsolete. There are better ways to make and air content. But in the 2000’s when youtube started to rise, instead of investing into the future with at first unprofitable formats like we did for Radio, black and white tv, and colour TV before to GREAT financial benefit the UK said ‘why am i wasting all this money on things we don’t watch’ and chose to cut and veto the bbc’s attempts to do so to to great political success.

    Now the market has been flooded with better products from much smaller organizations like Business insider or the Canadian Broadcast Service and Britain is too far behind to catch up.

  9. I used to watch BBC period dramas based on classic lit or history but the last one I liked was War & Peace. I haven’t finished Wolf Hall, so I can’t comment on that.

    I am bored of gritty crime and/or detective dramas though. I don’t even hate crime dramas in general. I just don’t like ours.

  10. The entertainment industry makes plenty of money, this is just the BBC complaining they can’t just expect free money despite producing low quality content.

  11. I mean outside of the Inbetweeners and David Attenborough British tv is fucking awful😂

  12. Modern British TV is awful, it’s boring and written like it was approved by HR for “modern audiences”.

    Not exactly surprising that nobody wants to watch it.

    Fun watching BBC kill globally successful shows like Dr Who though.

  13. If instead of the TV license they had gone the subscription route then I, and many my age, would likely subscribe; it’s an archaic business model.

    That and the content focus seems to be made for the lowest common denominator. It’s so risk averse that it becomes a boring and unappealing set of options. There should be more emphasis on fun and interesting scripts, cool ideas and concepts, etc.

    All in all, I’d love to support British television but at present there’s very little being offered I actually want to watch.

  16. They need more economic diversity in British TV and reality TV shows etc that relate to the working class.

    Maybe grants for new TV and animation studios to start up, with guaranteed spots on BBC or UK based TV channels.

    Also many working class don’t want to pay for a TV licence when most of the content is aimed at middle and upper classes.

  17. Monday: Repeats, Tuesday:Repeats, Wednesday: Repeats, Thursday: Repeats, etc etc but let’s increase the TV License fee

  18. I think there will be a point where the most of the linear tv output will need to be culled since the most dependable audiences (boomers and older gen x) are dying and/or retiring. Commercial channels also can’t rely on that demographic anyway as the advertising revenue is limited.

    The schedule fillers of antiques shows, property shows, celebrity travelogues etc. are dated formats and rely on the captive audience of linear tv channel surfers, of which there will be fewer and fewer every year. They’re suck in a loop creating this slop though because it’s fairly affordable and until recently worked well enough.

    I assume the article (paywalled, so I couldn’t read it) is more about drama and other scripted shows though. I think one problem here is, UK broadcasters feel like they have to compete with very expensive shows from streamers/US broadcasters when it’s definitely possible to create lower budget drama and comedy. I remember in the late 90s/early 2000s when there was very inventive programming on 4Later and series like The Comedy Lab. These very very inventive shows with small budgets.

    With a bit of vision, the UK could create interesting shows again. It would require some risk taking and extending opportunities to talent who might not be connected via the traditional public schoolboy network. But yes, I think the resources have to be directed away from linear slop for old people. I think they’ve been catered to for long enough anyway and should be well-served by archive material.

  19. I’d also argue that there’s been too much of a push to deride and actively dismiss what was British tv and media content in recent years as being “too problematic” without digging any deeper, simply widespread dismissal of that, and an embracing of increasingly Americanised ideas of acceptable television.

  20. The bbc raised £3.7 billion from license fees and about £2 billion from other sources, Netflix made 10 billion globally.
    The bbc isn’t broke, it’s just managed poorly like most public institutions. They have a guaranteed income source so they can do as they please because if they mess up, they still get money.

  21. The latest series of Gritty Cop Drama not doing well? Maybe Shitty Period Drama will be a smash hit.

  22. Everyone loves their country suddenly when the money runs out. I will gladly bet 20 years of my life expectancy that never in the history of tv board meetings has the discussion point been around “telling british stories” and always around “what will make the most cash money”

  23. This happened with movies in the USA. Up until the late 1990’s mainstream fare was still all about US culture and society, just a decade later it was very rare.

  24. Everyone just watched the Detectorists until they make a new season!

  25. The TV industry is super diverse – as long as you’re not working class.

    The legacy media deserves its end.

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