Sony Pictures Television’s Ravi Ahuja: U.S. Market Got “Too Hot” But Is Now “Cooling”

deadline.com:

Sony Pictures Televisions’ Ravi Ahuja has described how the U.S. market had become “too hot” and “inefficient” over recent years, but is now moving towards a healthier “cooling phase.” During a keynote interview at Content London, SPT’s Chairman of Global Television Studios said the U.S.

market was “getting back to normal” two weeks after the SAG-AFTRA deal was unveiled, though it has been a “mad scramble” to get productions back up and running. “This is an interesting inflection point for our industry,” he added, pointing to Covid, the streaming reset and other market factors. “So many things have happened.

It’s a new normal, let’s look at it that way.” Ahuja said that volumes of programs being ordered had dropped off “a decent amount, even before the strikes.” He added: “Against the strikes, the ad market contraction around the world and the streaming reset happening at the same time, it was almost as though we ran though this phase that was too hot.

Now we’re in a stage where it’s a really cooling off.” He said these conditions had made it more critical to make “shows of quality” but added Sony Pictures was positioned to deliver more shows in the ilk of The Night Agent, Platonic and The Blacklist. “We’ll see contraction but we’ll be okay,” he said, before predicting “big tech companies” would look to consolidate or aggregate platforms in the next decade. “Linear TV will exist in eight or nine years but it will be smaller and will vary from market to market.