Versatile Amphibian

About 10 days ago my team and I published an analysis of the creative challenges for UK TV. Our concerns were that the creative basis of our TV economy was being damaged, despite an environment of increasing revenues, driven by TV's role in reinforcing the telecoms market through triple and quad-play bundling. What we found was troubling. Although revenues are indeed up by 10% since 2012, our share of global TV revenues has fallen and that the entire of the revenue increase can be accounted for by sports rights. As we showed in our 2013 Royal Television Society report , sports rights spending flows straight through the industry into the rights bodies, clubs and players, rather than into new skills, ideas and creative formats. And the worst is yet to come: the new Champions League and Premier League rights deals add more than a billion pounds a year onto the rights budget, so unless revenues increase new funding sources will be required if net spending on new creative content is t...

September is a busy month in UK TV, with the Media Guardian Edinburgh International TV Festival in late August, followed in close order by IBC in Amsterdam and the RTS annual conference   at the end of the month . TV remains the most influential media in the UK and in large parts of the rest of the world, so it deserves special attention. With apologies for the small advertising pitch, since I've had a (small) hand in the reports that Deloitte prepares for these important events, I thought I'd provide links to them as they're released. First up, our annual Edinburgh Festival report, which answers questions such as "why we whinge about what's on TV and keep on watching" and "why a trillion TV ads matter". It's based on ongoing primary research into audience preferences and is definitely worth a read if you make TV, advertise on it or just want to know why you watch and whether you're typical. Download it here .

Deloitte’s 6th annual State of the Media Democracy report was released today. There is so much data in the survey that to discuss it all would take a novel, so over the next couple of days I’ll try to provide some insights and perspectives into subjects that didn’t make the cut. A Media Democracy B-Side , if you will. First up, eReaders, via media favourites and device ownership. Deloitte's UK consumer survey shows that professional media, be it on TV, in print or on the radio, is as popular as ever. 50% of respondents said that TV was their favourite type of media and despite falling circulations, 40% rated newspapers in their top 3 (although only 6% placed it #1). TV and print adverts were also rated as massively more impactful than online and social equivalents and after search are the principal way in which consumers discover websites. A desire to access content from traditional channels on non-traditional formats may be driving uptake of consumer technology. We estimate that ...