During the last quarter of 2024, Netflix pulled a larger audience in the UK than BBC One, becoming the country’s most popular TV service. Across its entire portfolio, the BBC remains the UK’s favourite news and entertainment destination, but this is nonetheless a significant milestone for a US-based streamer. After all, Netflix was a service that sent DVDs through the post in California a couple of decades ago.

I have researched TV in the streaming era and the issue for national broadcasters is that streaming is a global industry. That is to say, content produced locally benefits operations globally – subscribers in country A benefit from content produced primarily for viewers in country B. As such, there are mutual gains from subscriber growth in either territory, since that provides an incentive for a platform to increase content in either location.

And as Netflix grows, so too does its value to viewers. This model constitutes a considerable competitive advantage for it and other platforms that stream content across borders.

Without Hollywood films and TV series, Netflix would be a fringe player in the US market, but this content also appeals to subscribers around the world. The same applies to Korean programmes, which serve a demanding local audience and have also proved popular worldwide. In mid-January, Netflix’s most viewed shows in the UK were a mix of US and Korean programmes, including the second season of Squid Game.

Netflix is savvy at making content circulate across continents, using its huge library to its advantage. Its scale gives it an unassailable edge over local rivals.

This strategy is centred on content portability and was explained by Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, who said: “We’re not trying to make more Hollywood content for the world, we’re trying to make content from anywhere in the world to the rest of the world.”

In fact, Netflix has both Hollywood and non English-language content. But in any event, the platform never competes on a level playing field with local services and whenever it enters a market it does so with the benefit of a library built for other territories.

Netflix and the other streaming giants are reshaping media systems across Europe. An audience survey in four European countries (Denmark, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands) of 1,813 respondents aged between 16 and 34 revealed that Netflix was by far the most popular destination for long-form content such as films. The survey also confirmed that Netflix, alongside Amazon Prime Video and Disney+, were the most watched streaming services in these four countries.

THE STRUGGLE FOR BROADCASTERS

As a result of this renewed competition, Europe’s commercial broadcasters are struggling for advertisers, viewers and investors. My calculations show that at the end of 2024, the collective market capitalisation of Europe’s largest commercial broadcasters in the region’s five biggest markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK), plus the Nordic countries, was just 5.6% that of Netflix (US$14.2 billion (£11.5 billion) versus US$252.5 billion).

Navigating this global system is equally challenging for public service media like the BBC. They too are losing audiences, particularly young viewers, to streaming services. Historically, the EU and the UK have been good at protecting their film and TV production sectors.

An EU directive, for example, stipulates that streaming services must “secure at least a 30% share of European works in their catalogues” and ensure that content is prominently available. In the future, the EU and UK may have need to strengthen their support for public service media as well.

Netflix has invested billions in UK-produced content, including Black Doves starring Keira Knightley. Ludovic Robert/Netflix

But Netflix is fond of European content anyway, and is investing billions of dollars in the region. For the first time in 2024, the service was spending more on international content than US programming (US$7.9 billion versus US$7.5 billion). And, in the UK alone, Netflix has invested more than US$6 billion since 2020.

While on the face of it this investment is a coup for domestic creative industries, the issue is that it remains a US-based service that decides which stories are told, and how. Netflix is interested in indigenous content, but during the production process its commissioners shape these stories with a transnational audience in mind.

As such, the local stories that Netflix selects in the UK and elsewhere are not necessarily those that a public service broadcaster would choose to tell. What’s more, the UK has no control over the ownership of these platforms and, depending on whose hands they fall into, this may prove an issue in the future.

Public service media, including the BBC, are instruments of national self-representation, which reflect a country’s idiosyncrasies, its mood and its strengths and weaknesses better than any other platform. It is an ability and a privilege the UK must retain.

(Author: Jean Chalaby, Professor of Sociology, City St George’s, University of London)

(Disclosure Statement: Jean Chalaby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

In this video grab taken from footage broadcast by the UK Parliamentary Recording Unit (PRU) via the Parliament TV website on November 29, 2024, tellers (L-R, Bambos Charalambous, Sarah Owen, Florence Eshalomi and Harriett Baldwin) announce that MPs have approved the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on second reading by 330 votes to 275, a majority of 55, in the House of Commons. Supporters and opponents of a bill to legalise euthanasia in the UK gathered outside the Houses of Parliament as UK lawmakers debated on whether to advance divisive and emotive legislation to allow assisted dying for terminally ill people in England and Wales.

Britain’s parliament voted in favour of a new bill to legalise assisted dying on Friday (November 29, 2024), opening the way for months of further debate on an issue that has divided the country and raised questions about the standard of palliative care.

After a passionate debate in the House of Commons, lower house of parliament, 330 lawmakers voted in favour of the “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life)” bill with 275 against.

The vote will start months of further debate and the bill could be changed as it wends its way through both House of Commons and the upper house of parliament, the House of Lords. Kim Leadbeater, the Labour lawmaker who introduced the bill, has said she expects the process to take a further six months.

Britain is to rejoin the Horizon Europe science research programme under a new bespoke deal, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office and the EU said on September 7.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Britain is rejoining the European Union’s $100 billion science-sharing program Horizon Europe, the two sides announced on September 7, more than two years after the country’s membership became a casualty of Brexit.

British scientists expressed relief at the decision, the latest sign of thawing relations between the EU and its former member nation.

After months of negotiations, the British government said the country was becoming a “fully associated member” of the research collaboration body U.K.-based scientists can bid for Horizon funding starting Thursday and will be able to lead Horizon-backed science projects starting in 2024. Britain is also rejoining Copernicus, the EU space program’s Earth observation component.

“The EU and U.K. are key strategic partners and allies, and today’s agreement proves that point,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who signed off on the deal during a call with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday. “We will continue to be at the forefront of global science and research.”

The EU blocked Britain from Horizon during a feud over trade rules for Northern Ireland, the only part of the U.K. that shares a border with an EU member, the Republic of Ireland.

The two sides struck a deal to ease those tensions in February, but Horizon negotiations have dragged on over details of how much the U.K. will pay for its membership.

Mr. Sunak said he had struck the “right deal for British taxpayers.” The EU said Britain would pay almost 2.6 billion euros ($2.8 billion) a year on average for Copernicus and Horizon. The U.K. will not have to pay for the period it was frozen out of the science-sharing program, which has a 95.5 billion-euro budget ($102 billion) for the 2021-27 period.

Relations between Britain and the bloc were severely tested during the long divorce negotiations that followed Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the EU. The divorce became final in 2020 with the agreement of a bare-bones trade and cooperation deal, but relations chilled still further under strongly pro-Brexit U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Mr. Johnson’s government introduced a bill that would let it unilaterally rip up parts of the Brexit agreement, a move the EU called illegal.

Mr. Johnson left office amid scandal in mid-2022, and Mr. Sunak’s government has quietly worked to improve Britain’s relationship with its European neighbors, though trade friction and deep-rooted mistrust still linger.

British scientists, who feared Brexit would hurt international research collaboration, breathed sighs of relief at the Horizon deal.

“This is an essential step in rebuilding and strengthening our global scientific standing,” said Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute for biomedical research. “Thank you to the huge number of researchers in the U.K. and across Europe who, over many years, didn’t give up on stressing the importance of international collaboration for science.”

The U.K.’s opposition Labour Party welcomed the deal but said Britain had already missed out on “two years’ worth of innovation.”

“Two years of global companies looking around the world for where to base their research centers and choosing other countries than Britain, because we are not part of Horizon,” said Labour science spokesman Peter Kyle. “This is two years of wasted opportunity for us as a country.”