‘A losing battle’: will UK public service broadcasters survive amid US onslaught?
Source: The Guardian ·
Jobs and programme budgets in firing line at BBC, Channel 4 and ITV as they are outgunned by YouTube and Netflix“I wouldn’t be surprised if the BBC or Channel 4 disappeared,” says one of the thousands of TV staff at risk of redundancy, as British broadcasters face what has rapidly become a fight for survival against US digital rivals.“My generation grew up with Netflix and YouTube … Honestly, I…
From the source
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the BBC or Channel 4 disappeared,” says one of the thousands of TV staff at risk of redundancy, as British broadcasters face what has rapidly become a fight for survival against US digital rivals. “My generation grew up with Netflix and YouTube … Honestly, I feel like it is a losing battle.” Over the course of the summer the crisis facing the UK’s biggest public service broadcasters (PSBs) – the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV – has reached fever pitch amid announcements of deep job cuts and talk of business models unfit to face up to the deep-pocketed streamers. Earlier this month, Priya Dogra, Channel 4’s new chief executive, announced that 28% of its staff are to be cut, the biggest round of redundancies in the broadcaster’s 43-year history, amid a slump in advertising and increasingly stretched finances. Meanwhile the BBC’s new director general, Matt Brittin, a former top Google executive, is pushing through up to 2,000 job cuts as he attempts to negotiate a…