It’s not been a great start to the year for broadcast television. Last month research by Barb and the media analyst, Evan Shapiro, revealed that there’s been a staggering 36% fall in viewership amongst the 16 to 34-year-old age group in just the last two years.
However, it’s no longer the big streamers like Netflix that are proving to be TV’s biggest threat. At a recent RTS event BBC Director of Content, Kate Phillips, revealed that the main competition for younger viewers was now YouTube, TikTok and gaming.
She believed that the biggest challenge for our terrestrial broadcasters wasn’t creating great television for younger audiences but getting them to come to the shows and “get them off their devices”.
Kate’s concerns are well founded, but they also raise an important question for the future of the industry; will a generation brought up on interactive and immersive multiscreen entertainment, want to ditch their devices for a passive TV experience?
Cross-Platform Storytelling: If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them
I believe that if broadcasters are going to reconnect with 16 to 34-year-olds, they need to view these interactive platforms as tools that will reinvigorate, rather than compete with, their big TV shows.
I’m not talking about posting ‘behind the scenes’ clips on social or uploading entire series onto YouTube. I mean developing cross-platform formats that allow younger viewers to genuinely interact with and influence the main show.
- Imagine being able to design challenges on Roblox for a show like I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, have one chosen by producers, and then see it become TV reality.
- A weekly quiz series where the nation collectively builds a big pot of cash by answering fun questions on an app, the best players then compete to win it all on a TV show on Saturday.
- Strictly Come Dancing fan? Watch Craig’s weekly YouTube tutorials, practice his short routine with your family, post it on TikTok, and be picked as ‘dancers of the week’ on It Takes Two.
- A Love Island style show where, unbeknown to the contestants, six influencers are interacting with viewers on their socials pleading to be flown to the island for a date. Who will the viewers pick and match them up with?
Whilst these ideas vary in ambition, all deliver added layers of entertaining interactive engagement without compromising the television viewing experience. These shows can still sit on a broadcaster’s streaming service and be watched on-demand.
By embracing this type of storytelling, broadcasters can create shows with cross-generational appeal that reach younger audiences seeking interactivity, but also provide a richer, deeper and more dynamic experience for everyone.
And I believe that there has never been a better time to do it.
Broadcast TV’s Missed Opportunity
Back in 2011, when social platforms were developing their first mobile apps, I exec produced Live & Lost with BlackBerry, an innovative cross-platform TV series for Channel 4.
The premise was simple, we’d drop a music artist in the middle of nowhere with only a BlackBerry phone and £20. They had a week to reach a secret gig in the UK, relying on just the phone and their socials to beg fans for lifts, food and a bed for the night.
The journey unfolded in real-time across six daily, 8-minute online episodes, with a 30-minute TV recap airing on Channel 4 on Sundays. Over the three series, top emerging artists like Rizzle Kicks, Professor Green, and Example all took part in the show.
The utilisation of this new interactive technology was exciting and built a community around the series. It was a success for the channel, brand and record label, but yet this new cross-platform approach to ‘youth’ engagement didn’t take off on television.
Cross-Platform Storytelling: A Universal Language
However, in the last decade pretty much every big marketing agency in the country has become fluent in this storytelling technique. Brands are now skilled at engaging Gen Z across multiple platforms, and increasingly at the expense of advertising on TV.
And the teams I advise at cultural organisations are also cross-platform literate. Tate for example, will build a whole ecosystem of digital content around an exhibition to help promote it and then enrich our experience whilst it is on. This content also helps open up other revenue streams by promoting Tate’s tutorials, events and merchandise.
Cross-platform storytelling helps to find, build and retain engaged audiences around a product. So, given the challenges facing the broadcast industry why, 14 years after I produced Live & Lost with BlackBerry, is TV still largely a standalone experience?
Broadcast TV’s On-Demand Dilemma
Over the last decade, as we moved from linear to digital, traditional TV broadcasters had to compete with on-demand global streamers like Netflix. Viewing habits changed and we began to ‘binge’ series – a solitary, gluttonous, video rental experience that was the antithesis to the slimline, scheduled, shared viewing of the past.
Of course, traditional TV broadcasters like the BBC and Channel 4 had to pursue this strategy, but it felt like they were beginning to move away from what they really do best, commissioning cultural events that bring people together, create conversation, and deepen viewer’s connection with the subject matter, in real time. Exactly the kind of content that can be enhanced by engaging younger viewers across platforms.
The Return of Live: Broadcast TV’s Big Opportunity
However, now, with the shelves at the streamers over stocked with passive on-demand content, and younger audiences looking to ‘lean in’ rather than ‘lean back’, it feels like we could be about to experience a return to live events, and fast turnaround shows like Love Island. Netflix is already making moves with their NFL Gameday and Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul streams, and they are also looking at live entertainment shows too.
I think it’s great news for UK broadcasters because if this is going to be the next battleground, they are in a much better position to take advantage. They have a history of delivering events at scale, they have established audiences that watch content live, and cross-platform engagement and interactivity around a format is much easier to deliver nationally. They can differentiate themselves from streamers by creating content that isn’t on-demand, but content that demands to be watched.
I know first-hand from overseeing Sport Relief, Comic Relief’s huge cross-platform campaign, that when the BBC pulls together it can deliver events with extraordinary levels of reach and engagement. If broadcasters can apply this same storytelling expertise to their television formats the return of live could be a huge opportunity.
But Won’t Cross-Platform Storytelling Be Expensive?
Yes, but it will be worth the investment.
Even with its current ‘fewer, bigger, better’ mantra, I can’t see broadcast TV ever being able to match the sheer scale of streamer shows like Amazon Prime’s Beast Games. However, rather than trying to compete by throwing more money at the core show, ‘bigger and better’ would mean delivering quality storytelling across a breadth of interconnected platforms. TV shows would then become cultural “brands” with a wider reach, loyal communities, and multiple points of engagement.
Not only will embracing this strategy lead to the development of new, innovative formats, but it could also offer a powerful way to reinvigorate legacy IP. Imagine if BBC’s Gladiators was produced more like a real-time sports event. The opportunity to build engagement across social platforms and generate fan followings could be huge.
A cross-platform approach is also more cost effective. Content can be worked hard and utilised across various platforms to help market the show in more dynamic ways. A 360 approach would appeal to brands, presenting broadcasters with new opportunities for sponsorship and cross-promotion, and opening up new avenues for monetisation.
It’s also a method of production that will make the most out of AI. Producers will be able to use the technology to personalise the viewing experience, track real-time engagement across platforms, and create bespoke content for social platforms.
Most Importantly, Cross-Platform Innovation Will Be Liberating
Broadcast television needs a huge creative jolt, and in the 25 years that I’ve worked in TV the biggest and most exciting shifts have come from new technology, whether that be the production or delivery of a show, rather than from subject or format.
In 2000 the BBC and C4 went head-to-head with two new reality shows, Castaway 2000 and Big Brother. The BBC’s Castaway trailer had helicopter shots sweeping over the wild and majestic landscape of Taransay, the location for the start of a brand-new community. It looked epic, but in truth it sounded like a bigger budget version of things I’d seen before.
The Big Brother trailer showed CCTV footage of an empty house and some chickens, cut to a Paul Oakenfold track. I was told ten people would be completely at my mercy and I could “follow it on the web”. I’d never seen anything like it before and Big Brother its fixed rig and live streaming technology, blew Taransay and its community out of the water.
If the UK broadcast industry is going to evolve, differentiate itself from global streaming services, and reconnect with our younger audiences, it is in desperate need of a similar big creative turn of the wheel. I believe it will find it in the technology and devices the younger generation already has in its hands.
Daniel Glew is the founder and CEO of Navigated Media, a consultancy that helps brands and organisations strategically develop, position, and commercialise their stories and IP across TV, film, and digital platforms.