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Your DIY Guide To Gaining an Audience of 17 Million

Could delivering online content be the way to find treasure at the end of the rainbow? We’re all aware of its potential, but how it can be exploited?

It’s a quarter of a century since Channel 4 opened the floodgates to the growth of the independent production sector. Many indies are now bigger and richer than anyone thought possible, and arguably they are the core of the television industry.
In contrast, some of the broadcasters are beginning to resemble shop windows for the formats of any production company with the cash flow to put them there.

But there was an exciting time in the mid-1980’s when it seemed that anyone with a commissionable programme idea could put together a production company and get it made. It might not have made them rich, but they were part of a thrilling cultural movement.

Forget The Medium, Stick To The Message

This week, I look at the future of television content and offer some optimism for how production companies and programme makes can pave their way to a sustainable future.

We know that these are turbulent, insecure times. The commercial broadcasters are watching their traditional sources of income dwindle, the BBC is fighting to keep the licence fee revenue to itself, Ofcom is offering Channel Four a choice of shotgun weddings to Five or to BBC Worldwide, and all the terrestrials are likely to screen more repeats through 2009 at the cost of new commissions. Where’s the good news?

As long as you are a programme-maker or a production company executive, and you probably are if you’re reading this in the first place, then this is an exciting time of opportunity and change for you personally. Whatever massive shifts the mass broadcasting media are undergoing, viewers will always want professionally made, editorially intelligent programmes and content to watch. That means there will always be work for you to do. But it probably won’t be for traditional one-way broadcast television programmes in the long run, and you could find that getting paid is a more complex business than before.