In The Frame – December ’15

Tom Pammenter Published: 31.12.2015 Industry news

TalkTalk has boosted its TV operation by hiring former senior executives from Virgin Media and Amazon’s video business, having Blinkbox from Tesco earlier this year. BT TV, meanwhile, is to be the first UK service provider to offer Ultra HD Netflix, and YouTube is seeking streaming rights to TV series and movies to bolster its new subscription service.

New proposals will allow Europeans to access every media service they subscribe to in their home country while “temporarily abroad” within Europe. The rules are part of the European Commission’s digital single market strategy.

New research shows that UK viewers lead the world when it comes to watching TV online, with online viewing more prevalent in the UK than any other major country and more people likely to use a tablet to do so here than elsewhere. The Ofcom research revealed that 16 per cent of adults in the UK would watch catch-up TV on a tablet and 81 per cent would use an online service to watch TV or films.

The research also found that that 70% of UK adults (roughly 31 million people) were expected to watch TV using free-to-air catch-up services such as the iPlayer and ITV Hub this month, which is more than other major European countries, as well as the USA, Japan and Australia.

Other recent research, by Paywizard, who provides software-as-a-service (SaaS) and marketing products to pay-TV operators, found that more than 50 per cent of viewers globally planned to use an online TV service over the Christmas period. However, this study also revealed that 45% of subscribers expected to cancel immediately or within six months after Christmas, mostly due to cost and a lack of quality content.

But viewing on Christmas Day itself remains traditional – millions of families sitting in front of a TV set, rather binge-watching Netflix or Amazon, as The Guardian points out: “Keeping the peace remains the top priority. Christmas specials aimed at keeping everyone happy (or at least not too unhappy) may be around for a while yet.”

BBC News

It’s emerged, in a report by The Guardian based on “government data”, that George Osborne met Rupert Murdoch twice before imposing cuts on the corporation and also held meetings with News Corp representatives four times in the weeks between the election and the BBC being informed deal by the Treasury and the culture secretary of the controversial funding deal, in which it was told it’d have to pay the £700 million cost of paying for TV licences for the over-75s.

As we detailed at length in last month’s In The Frame…, the BBC has major spending cuts planned for the next couple of years and with this month’s news that the Beeb is to end Formula 1 television contract early, it looks like it’s already started to rein in it's spending.

Elsewhere, BBC Store customers will be able to stream their purchases via mobile and tablet devices for the first time – as iPlayer launches on Apple TV.

BBC News at 10pm is to be extended by 10 minutes between Monday and Thursday inclusively from January, as competition with ITV’s News at Ten intensifies.

And finally…

ITV is to create a Top Gear-style celebrity driving format after missing out on the chance to sign Jeremy Clarkson earlier in 2015. Clarkson, meanwhile, has been given the go-ahead to appear on future BBC shows after the corporation’s governing body rejected a long-running complaint about the presenter hosting Have I Got News for You.
US media conglomerate Comcast, which owns NBC, has denied reports that it is in takeover talks for ITV, whose share price fell by almost three per cent as a result of speculation.
There’s been lots of talk of late about the possibility of Channel 4 being privatised. Greg Dyke has warned that the broadcaster would be “destroyed” if it was sold to a private equity firm, while Culture minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe has stressed that Channel 4 is not under threat from what Liberal Democrat Baroness Grender described as “one-off car boot sale”. Lord Grade, however, backs its privatisation, arguing that, “If you privatise it, you could build a very big media business around the brand”.
A drone camera almost took out a skier on live TV this month when it fell to the ground and crashed very close to four-time defending World Cup champion Marcel Hirscher, who said: “This is horrible. This can never happen again. This can be a serious injury.”
The heads of technology at Encompass, Ericsson, Babcock, DMC and Arqiva have revealed their priorities and where they’re investing to develop their business, in a Broadcast Q&A (a subscription may be required to view this external content).
The traditional Christmas Day UK ratings battle was won by ITV, thanks to Downton Abbey, while Boxing Day was all about the Beeb, with BBC1 sweeping the board with the 10 most-watched TV shows.