Gavin Bridge-Senior: Last News

Gavin Bridge Senior Media Analyst The writers strike of 2023 is on. Now that the die has been cast, there’s one question on everyone’s lips: Who can ride out the storm?  VIP+ has conducted an analysis of the leading U.S. TV and streaming entertainment companies to assess how reliant they are on scripted content, which is most vulnerable to being disrupted by a strike. We examined the volume of scripted comedy and drama the companies program versus more secure unscripted genres, including documentaries, true crime, reality, pop culture and lifestyle.  Should a strike go as long as it did in 2007-08 (100 days), there are some factors to note. The first is that due to the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down productions, entertainment companies have recent experience in having to cobble together schedules on the fly. Unlike 2020, though, they now have a willingness to license their content after a certain point in time, aiding TV schedulers. 

Gavin Bridge Senior Media Analyst FAST is having a moment.  Discussions around free streaming channels have been the buzz of industry events, beginning with MIPCOM 2022 in France and continuing around the world, first in Canada for Prime Time 2023, then Australia for Future of TV Advertising Sydney and, most recently, MIPTV 2023’s Global FAST Summit, where the event was standing-room only.  Variety Intelligence Platform has had an onstage presence at all of these conferences and has seen the interest levels in FAST boom. Now the VIP+ subscriber exclusive “Global FAST” provides analysis of just who are the major international forces in FAST and a deeper look at the top five global markets. 

Gavin Bridge Senior Media Analyst Entertainment-industry pros believe the writers have more leverage than the studios as they begin negotiations over a new contract, according to an exclusive new survey. One-third of respondents gave TV scribes a vote of confidence, as opposed to one-fifth who touted the studios’ clout in an online poll of 640 U.S. adults working in showbiz conducted on March 15-16 by insights firm YouGov. The survey was commissioned by Variety Intelligence Platform, which recently released the special report “Time to Strike?”  What may explain the perception of the writers’ leverage is a sense that there’s newfound solidarity among members of the WGA, in the past a notoriously fractious group believed this time to be united around key issues, from its top showrunners to its newbie scribes.

Gavin Bridge Senior Media Analyst Note: This article is based on Variety Intelligence Platform’s special report “2023 Media & Tech Trend Tracker,” available exclusively to subscribers. Connected TV is no longer the future but the present.  The format will ultimately be how the vast majority of TV content is viewed, consumed via apps built into smart TVs, and thus represents where ad revenue will derive.   This also explains why the likes of Comcast, Charter, Roku and Amazon have all announced plans to build their own TV sets in order to own as much of the new revenue stream as possible. 

Gavin Bridge Senior Media Analyst Note: This article is an offshoot of Variety Intelligence Platform’s special report “The New Face of Content Piracy,” available exclusively to VIP+ subscribers. Content piracy is rife in the U.S.  Approximately 23 million U.S. adults (11%) pirated content in the last year, according to an exclusive survey fielded last month for VIP+ by YouGov.   Whilst the vast majority of Americans are law-abiding when it comes to content consumption, a sizable proportion confess to dabbling with illegal downloads or streams for TV shows, movies or live sports. But this doesn't necessarily come down to some wanting to collect every episode of shows they love or a sense of getting one over on massive corporations. 

Gavin Bridge Senior Media AnalystFree video streaming doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves.Attention is usually given in much greater detail to subscription streaming services that generate high revenue streams that catch the attention of investors and analysts, even if EBITDA is much less owing to the high costs of creating original content in a hypercompetitive market.Free streaming, which is made up of both on-demand AVOD titles and linear FAST channels, with the majority of services offering both, has a different business model than its SVOD brethren. The industry is based upon licensing content, with very few originals — the original Netflix streaming model — and bringing it to viewers for free in exchange for viewing ads.