I wrote about SNL UK surviving the skeptics, the Cannes Film Festival and market with Ashley Cullins and Katey Rich, and YouTubers hijacking reality TV. Email me at manori@theankler.com
Hello, Series Business readers and guten tag from Germany. I’m in Cologne this week for the Seriencamp TV conference, where things are getting existential. This year, discussions around the creator economy have dominated — why, for example, haven’t we seen a breakout à la Markiplier’s Iron Lung out of Europe yet? — and YouTube comes up in virtually every conversation.
Even at Netflix’s summer party at Soho House in London last week, U.K. content boss Anne Mensah — who greenlit Baby Reindeer and Adolescence — joked that her team’s job was “to make you and your family turn off that bloody YouTube Short!” Days later, media measurement firm Digital i revealed that YouTube has overtaken Netflix for average daily viewing time — 99.1 minutes versus 93.4 minutes — across 18 international markets, including the U.S., U.K., Germany and France.
The numbers have translated into real industry standing. This summer’s MacTaggart Lecture, the most prestigious keynote in British broadcasting, is to be delivered by YouTube’s VP Head of EMEA, Pedro Pina. Past speakers have included Kevin Spacey (2013), Shane Smith of Vice (2016), both Elisabeth and Rupert Murdoch (2012 and 1989, respectively) and Ted Turner (1982). That pulpit has never belonged to a streaming executive before.
British broadcasters have spent the past two years racing onto a platform that is eating them alive. YouTube’s dominance among younger viewers has left the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 with no real choice but to feed their premium content into a machine that keeps 45 percent of ad revenue — a split unchanged since 2007. In return, YouTube uses its presence, and its political relationships, as a shield against tougher regulation. The result is a forced marriage neither side can afford to leave, and a growing suspicion among broadcasters that the more successfully they grow on YouTube, the worse their leverage gets.
Today I dive into…
- The YouTube trap: why British broadcasters have “no option” but to feed the platform eating them
- Why the BBC’s sudden YouTube push marks a major surrender in the war to keep young viewers inside its own walls
- How YouTube uses legacy broadcasters as both premium inventory and political cover against tougher regulation
- Why the 45 percent revenue cut has become the flashpoint — and why broadcasters’ leverage may get worse the more successful they become
- How the SNL UK-eBay deal shows one way to make YouTube math work — and why branded work is only a patch, not a solution
- The U.S. warning: why American networks should study Britain’s forced YouTube marriage now
Don’t stop here
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