Blog: scripted drama

With both the ICC Cricket World Cup and FIFA Women’s World Cup approaching their climaxes, the stark difference in audience engagement raises the question, is pay-TV killing off niche sports? Deciding the medium through which to distribute live sports has never been more crucial.

Cord cutting and “the attention economy” are the landscaping trends reshaping everything video in 2019, and sports television – despite its reliably existent fanbase – is no exception. New sports proposition streaming video on demand (SVOD) entrants face hefty competition on all sides, from regionally established SVOD services with more varied offerings to tech majors waiting in the wings to buy up the biggest rights before moving onto the scene.

On the 20th March 2019 , The Walt Disney Company’s acquisition of Rupert Murdoch’s 21 st Century Fox became official. What did Disney acquire? The $71.3 billion merger significantly strengthens Disney’s value proposition as a service, solidifying its position as the world’s largest media conglomerate.

As the world shifts closer to becoming a digital video landscape, the ‘original’ has become a key part of the value proposition for subscription video on demand (SVOD) services as they battle for market share.

The news last Thursday about AT&T’s 390,000 pay-TV subscriber losses in the third quarter of 2017 are a salient reminder of the winds of change currently sweeping through the traditional video industry.

Cultural trends are defined by technology and taste arbiters. In the modern era, increasing disposable incomes have transformed the majority of the world into consumers of services as well as products, and newly created audiences have gravitated towards emerging forms of media technology.

At the start of 2016 the tech hype machine was going into overdrive over the potential for Virtual Reality to finally break through to the mainstream. January’s CES in Las Vegas featured the launch of Fox Studio’s The Martian Experience, their second VR project in conjunction with a major big screen production.

The inevitable first shot by Apple in the video streaming originals battle has been fired. On Friday the Hollywood Reporter ran with the announcement that Apple was paying for media mogul Andre Young – aka hip hop star and Beats cofounder Dr Dre to script and produce a six-part “semi-autobiography” provisionally entitled Vital Signs .

So The Hollywood Reporter runs with a story about the tumultuous Fall Season for the American TV production community . It wasn’t meant to be this way, it was meant to be the scripted drama renaissance.