We spend about a third of our waking lives watching linear video. For the past decades the bulk of that has been on TV screens. The pressure on TV from new technologies has been around since the VCR and was certainly a huge concern what I was a strategist at the BBC in the 1990s. The jury is no longer out. The entire TV ecosystem has been under siege. Screens multiply and video platforms like YouTube and Facebook deliver a much wider range of video. Kids now view linear TV as a form of punishment (see
issue 17 of AEV).
Now Facebook is staffing up in product & engineering teams in London to help persuade brand advertisers move wholesale from TV to Facebook.
The combination of collapsing ad revenue, declining subscription revenue, increased alternatives for consumers and a weaker political clout (politicians get social now; Google, Uber & Facebook have better lobbyists than old media) is a depressing cocktail for traditional TV businesses.
The result?
Internet advertising has overhauled TV in many markets.
📺 Netflix
helps US consumers from seeing 130 hours of advertising per year.
Record numbers of Americans are cutting cable TV subscriptions says the Financial Times. These
two brilliant charts show the disruption of the US cable industry in action.
Of course, if you are an independent creator, the opportunity to create and build an audience is probably better than ever.