Opening this year’s TV Drama Vision at the Gothenburg Film Festival, Guy Bisson, executive director of London-based Ampere Analysis, spoke about the industry’s current moment of ‘reinvention’ after five turbulent years that included the COVID-19 pandemic, the writers’ strike and the rise of AI that is shaking up business as we know it. What opportunities are decreasing and what opportunities are increasing in a post-peak TV world?
Bisson also provided Variety with a comprehensive look at his research ahead of the festival, calling this year’s presentation “From Rubble to Reinvention,” noting that we are experiencing a moment of significant disruption that comes every 20 years. “We are dismantling and rebuilding old ways of thinking and doing business.” Below is a breakdown of the key takeaways from Mr. Bisson’s analysis of the current state of the global market and the evolving television landscape.
2028: Streaming Takeover
Bisson reiterated that market growth is “coming from streaming,” with spending up 2.5% in the past 28 months and criminal investigations remaining at the top. Streamers around the world are still increasing their spending, with licensing growth outpacing spending on original content, which is suffering from this exit effort by streamers. Most importantly, he pointed out that a key turning point will come in 2028. That means streamers around the world will spend more than the entire traditional broadcast business combined.
“Public and commercial broadcast television has seen a significant decline when it comes to commissioning entirely new content,” he added. “Of course, it will have a disproportionate impact on Europe and European production, but it will not be particularly significant in the United States.”
Still, Bisson emphasized that “there is still room for a premium,” saying, “It’s still important, although it’s not as important to the overall picture as it used to be.” “Priorities have changed. Especially for streamers, we’ve left a market where five years ago it was basically all about premium drama. That was the basis of their strategy. They didn’t have a lot of reality TV, formats, light entertainment, sports. Now they have it.”
Of course, public and commercial broadcasters remain “very important commissioners”, especially in Europe. “Legacy players will still be more important than streamers in 2025. It’s a time of change, the balance of everything is shifting, it’s not just black and white. We’re talking about a market that is struggling to recover from the huge disruption that has occurred over the last five years.”
Unscripted sports are here to stay
With the launch of advertising on streamers, unscripted ads are now on par with scripted ads in terms of new first-run commissions. “This is definitely a change from streamers looking for market share, where unscripted is much more cost-effective,” Bisson said. “Frankly Netflix won’t use high-value content to acquire those customers and retain them once many markets are saturated. Of course, they still need some customers. That’s why the demand for premium drama remains You can use low-value content to do that, and the reality TV format lends itself to that, as opposed to binge-watching, where you want to have a longer viewing period for weekly engagement.”
In this context, the sport has experienced significant growth, with Bisson stressing that the sport is “still in its infancy” in the market, but that it is “already a nightmare” given that “competition from deep-pocketed streamers drives up costs.”
“If you go from spending nothing at all to spending a lot on sports, that means you have less time for other projects,” the analyst said. “Proportionately, streamers now spend about 13% of their total content budget on sports, compared to zero a few years ago. Of that 13% is no longer broadcast on TV or movies.”
“Where is the ceiling for sports in streaming? Well, pay TV spends half of the budget, and broadcasters spend about a third. If streamers reach the level of traditional TV in terms of payouts, it’s going to cost a lot of money. If we matched pay TV’s investment level based on annual programming budgets, Netflix alone would spend between $9 billion and $10 billion on sports.”
But the interest in sports presents a huge opportunity for producers in the form of companion shows. Sports content, such as Netflix’s Formula 1: Drive to Survive, is a big growth area, as is sports-focused entertainment programming.
Integration: Netflix x Warner Bros. Deal
Bisson noted that there has been a lot of talk within the industry about consolidation following the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal. The expert said such a large deal stems from “the single most important change in the industry” over the past decade, noting that “for the first time in an industry built on geographic licensing, segmentation and distribution, we now have a global platform.”
“All business models are becoming focused on streaming due to the fact that the audience is focused on streaming and the need for attention,” he added. “For legacy players, they have to find ways to get some of the growth from areas that are still growing, primarily online video and streaming. That’s why we’re seeing an increase in collaboration between broadcasters and streamers, which I call diagonal integration.”
“Major content owners and producers are becoming increasingly vertically integrated with the distribution tiers they own and operate, and that is their streaming platforms. The Warner Bros.-Netflix deal is a kind of reverse vertical deal in that Netflix feels the need to have huge content assets to satisfy its voracious appetite for content. Naturally, HBO We’re going to bring Max into that vertical as well. In a way, it’s vertical because it’s content and distribution, but it’s also diagonal because it’s legacy media with the growth of streaming. This is what the deal is all about.”
Guy Bisson at the Gothenburg Film Festival, presented by Rapha Sales Ross
“New third-party delivery layer”: YouTube issue
Looking at the types of content that have seen the biggest decline in investment in recent years, Bisson cited comedy and documentaries as the types of content that have seen the most disproportionate decline. The expert added that one theory for this decline is the rise of YouTube, which offers a wealth of children’s and non-fiction content. “We are seeing the impact of the rise of social media, especially YouTube on television.”
So, is YouTube TV? Bisson’s answer is that YouTube is “on TV, and that’s what matters.”
“YouTube’s global reach, and of course its reach to young viewers and its incredible ability to sell ads, makes it a critical distribution layer for everyone in the streaming content and traditional content distribution space.” Legacy players are currently facing a “distribution value challenge” as they are losing younger viewers, while the broadcast audience is aging at an “alarming rate”, creating a “vicious cycle”. This situation has led to an increase in distribution partnerships, such as RTVE and Amazon in Spain, Channel 4 and Spotify, and TF1 and Netflix in France.
Bisson says these partnerships “only solve the problem to the point where distribution becomes cannibalized and the power dynamics shift entirely to social platforms. This is a problem due to CPM (cost per mile) imbalance.” This is because content costs for streamers and broadcasters are very high, whereas YouTube’s costs are very low. The solution to this problem involves using YouTube as a complementary promotional platform. Increase advertising to increase the amount of advertising to compensate for the difference in value. Alternatively, the most common method is to control ad sales for content on YouTube, creating a two-tier CPM where higher-value content requires higher-value ads.
Microdrama: What are the chances?
The latest version of crossover content, short-form content, has been hugely successful on YouTube, and Bisson says this form of content is being consumed not only on the big screen but also on mobile. So what opportunities are there? “Microdrama is the latest attempt to leverage short-form vertical video using professional wrappers.” It’s no coincidence that it’s hugely popular in Asia, Turkey, and Brazil, where telenovelas are currently very popular. These are areas of great opportunity.
Bisson also added that microdrama viewers skew toward certain genres: romance, drama, horror, science fiction, music, and, interestingly, sports. Early adopters, whom he calls “superconsumers,” watch significantly more content than the average viewer, consuming an average of 37 minutes more per day. “They already see social as a platform for TV content.”
AI: Let’s go back.
For Bisson, the “real and immediate threat of AI” is actually not to professional production, but to the creator economy. During the presentation, experts played highly realistic AI-generated food influencer clips that were created for free and in seconds. “Ease of production and low or no cost to generate AI online content could lead to a single entity or organization being able to operate an army of influencers operating across multiple genres effectively and at zero cost. In one day’s work, you can create 50 food influencers, 50 travel influencers…”
“At what point will viewers start to see influencers for what they really are – an overt marketing channel – and start shifting their viewing loyalty back to premium human-created content?”
