In The Frame – June ’19

Streaming / Online / Tech

Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings is to make a rare UK appearance to deliver the international keynote at September’s Royal Television Society (RTS) Cambridge Convention, following the recent statement by the streaming company’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos that it is looking to “physically” set up here.

EE has launched a new range of home broadband plans that include Apple TV 4K and access to BT Sport, while Virgin Media is claiming a UK first after trialling the use of wireless radio signals to help connect homes in a Berkshire village to gigabit speeds and TV services over full fibre.

ITN Productions is now using the cloud for almost every part of the production process. The company has built up its use of services on Sony’s Ci Media Cloud Platform – which is built on Amazon Web Services – over the past five years.

Roku’s streaming TV platform accounted for more than 30 per cent of US sales of connected TV devices in the first quarter of 2019, increasing its lead in streaming TV platforms.

BBC News

Ofcom has “provisionally” approved changes to the iPlayer that would enable the corporation to show programmes for a year instead of 30 days. After a competition assessment, Ofcom decided the changes could “deliver significant public value over time”.

The BBC had said it feared for its future unless it were allowed to make the change, and that younger audiences who are used to Netflix struggle to understand why contents is removed from the iPlayer after a few weeks. Ofcom said the proposed changes “would pose challenges for other public service broadcasters’ video-on-demand services” and is expected to make its final decision in August.

Brexitcast, the award-winning podcast, is the first BBC podcast to be commissioned as a television programme. It will be broadcast on Thursday evenings on BBC One at 11.30pm

More people are tuning in to the World Service and BBC World News than ever before. New figures show that a high of 426 million people a week are accessing the services, a year-on-year increase f 13%/50 million.

And finally...

• The Cricket World Cup final, scheduled for July 14th, could be shown on free-to-air TV in the UK. Sky are in talks with the International Cricket Council, organisers of the tournament.
• The Women’s football World Cup has set a record for total UK TV reach for a women’s football competition: 17.2 million, beating the previous record of 12.4m, set in 2015 during the World Cup in Canada. England’s victory over Cameroon became the UK’s most-watched women’s football game ever, with a record-breaking 6.9 million viewers. A survey, meanwhile, has found that viewership is mostly male (a 64% / 36% split).
• A study by the Mental Health Foundation has found that almost one in four people (24%) aged 18-24 say reality TV makes them worry about their body image.
• A new survey has found that 75% of UK viewers have a second screen device nearby when watching TV, and traditional 30-second ads are the best performing in the UK market.
• The former Granada Studios in central Manchester is to reopen next month under the name Manchester Studios. The studios were once home to Coronation Street, Stars In Their Eyes and University Challenge.
• The BBC is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing with a series of programmes across TV, radio and online.
• Earlier this year, Frame 25 blogged about piracy, and how beoutQ, the Saudi Arabian broadcast platform, had been described by Sky as a “wholly parasitic rebranding of the Qatar-based beIN pay-TV platform and channels”. The blight of two years’ sustained content piracy is to blame for the 300 job losses at beIN Media’s Doha headquarters, the company has said.

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