I wrote about Jeff Zucker creating the world’s biggest indie producer, British TV falling into U.S. hands, what the U.K.’s YouTube trap means for Hollywood and how Saturday Night Live UK survived the skeptics. Email me at manori@theankler.com
A decade ago, unscripted cable networks couldn’t get enough live TV. High-wire artist Nik Wallenda strolled across the Grand Canyon on Discovery Channel; National Geographic dedicated four nights to wildlife doing its thing in Yellowstone National Park; and the U.K.’s Channel 4 and Nat Geo broadcast one of the International Space Station’s 90-minute orbits in real time. YouTube was in the mix early, carrying a live broadcast as the late BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier in 2012 with a “space jump” from 127,852 feet above sea level.
U.K. producer Plimsoll Productions, which made Nat Geo’s Yellowstone Live, was so eager to ride the live wave that in 2016 it set up an entire department dedicated to these productions. It made three shows and had one in late-stage development for Nat Geo when the network — by then owned by Disney rather than Fox — abruptly pulled the plug in 2019.
“Then it all went quiet,” says Grant Mansfield, CEO of ITV Studios-backed Plimsoll.
The tide was going out on live: Momentum was behind on-demand and streaming, which put a premium on evergreen shows that could be watched any time. Live events such as sports continued to dominate on linear — and eventually streaming, too. But for everything else, live was too expensive, too risky and out of sync with the way viewers wanted to watch.
Now, streaming has come full circle, and with all major platforms (other than Apple TV+) offering ad-supported tiers, live is fashionable again. Netflix has made the most noise about live so far, and despite some technical speed bumps on early efforts like 2023’s Love Is Blind reunion, sports and live comedy on the platform have thrived. In January, Plimsoll’s hair-raising Skyscraper Live, in which Free Solo star Alex Honnold scaled the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan, drew 6.2 million views in one weekend. That figure has since climbed to 13 million.
But the clearest sign of Netflix’s commitment is not an audience number. It is a spending paradox: Live accounts for only one percent of the platform’s viewing hours, yet Netflix devoted roughly $1 billion — five percent of its 2026 content budget — to it.
A New York Times profile of Netflix nonfiction boss Brandon Riegg last year revealed that in 2019 he set out to persuade Reed Hastings and other senior executives to lean in on live.
No one needs convincing anymore.
Below, I break down:
- Why Netflix spends five percent of its content budget on one percent of its viewing
- Why advertising is only half the explanation for live’s comeback
- Why the bigger prize is the format nobody has built yet — and how Banijay is assembling a production machine to chase it
- The one ingredient a live streaming event needs when it isn’t sports, comedy or household IP
- Why the commentary track is the show — and the mistake that got Honnold’s hosts panned
- And why the next land grab in live may be the calendar itself
Don’t stop here
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