Buckle up

The C21 Content Business Trends Report, a quarterly outline of the biggest trends in the business, continues in this issue with four leading data experts highlighting the shows, trends and genres that defined 2022 and looking ahead to the key drivers for change in 2023.

By Jonathan Webdale

While it may seem a little early in the year to select bywords that will define 2023, the phrase ‘belt-tightening’ seems a fair bet given the number of companies across media and entertainment that have already made cutbacks, with many anticipating more to come in the months ahead.

Ampere Analysis executive director Richard Broughton is keen to point out that global content spend will still increase by around 2.5% this year (a figure he says most industries would kill for). But putting the pandemic-decimated 2020 aside, 2023 will see the weakest levels of investment since the 2007/08 financial crisis. While TV budgets have been on a tear over the past decade thanks to the been on a tear over the past decade thanks to the rise of SVoD, Broughton says the bo b ttom line is the industry is now “no longer in its s bo b om years.”

Indeed, February 1 marks 10 years since Netflix released its now – for obvious reasons – barely mentioned debut original House of Cards. Hollywood has been in a spin ever since in more ways than one, including an upward spiral of expenditure on technology, talent and programming to power its own pivot to on-demand viewing. The studios’ biggest outlay, replicated by platforms around the world, has been in scripted. But this, Broughton asserts, has also now reached tipping point. at 2022 v of 2018. Within the category subgenr

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A shift towards unscripted is observed by others. Parrot Analytics EMEA director of insights Amit Devani says that, according to the company’s own data, documentary is the genre that has grown most in the past five years, accounting for 7% of the market at the end of 2022 versus 4% at the start of 2018. Within the category, true crime has been the fastest-growing subgenre, with Devani noting Tiger King The Most Hated Man on the and Bad Boy Billionaires (significantly, out of India) among the top performers. Indeed, Parrot reports that, in the past 12 months, over a quarter of the demand for true crime docs has been based on Netflix commissions.

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Nature and science have also gained significant traction, but the fastest-growing category has been sports documentaries. However, despite these gains, scripted still dominates. At the end of last year, drama claimed a 49% market share, by Parrot’s numbers, up from 47% at the outset of 2018. Ampere es crime drama, comedy drama and contemporary drama as faring best – the at the outs identifies drama drama a former in part thanks to the influence of unscripted true crime filtering in, with Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story on Netflix a recent example, also identified by Devani.

Spin-offs and adaptations like HBO’s House of the Dragon, Amazon’s The Rings of Power and AMC’s Better Call Saul are also proving more durable, according to Broughton, though the latter series has now ended. “In a market where consumers are belt-tightening, commissioners are belt-tightening and content acquirers are belt-tightening, they’re looking for solid, predictable IP they can rely on,” he says.

Increasingly diverse casting is also a feature, notes the analyst, highlighting NBC’s This Is Us and South Korean drama Extraordinary Attorney Woo Territorially speaking, the Korean market continues to be among the key engines of media and entertainment interest. Parrot’s Devani highlights Squid Game and Parasite as examples of South Korean titles the world has embraced, with others like All Of Us Are Dead, Hellbound and Our Beloved Summer also propelling the country into global consciousness, and Apple TV+’s Pachinko more recently continuing the trend.

Devani also identifies growing worldwide appetite for content originating from Spanishspeaking markets. Netflix’s La casa de papel (Money Heist) has led the charge, but Colombia is also emerging as a significant player, illustrated by the same streamer’s remake of classic telenovela Café con aroma de mujer

Elsewhere, India’s influence is spreading. “If we take the top 50 Indian shows this year to date, 26% of those have come from and been produced by Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+. They have figured out this is a real stomping ground for them moving forward,” says Devani. He notes the vast scope of opportunity, with Bollywood movies – traditionally in Hindi – representing a fraction of the diversity of a country that has 22 official languages plus more than 100 spoken unofficially.

The rise in popularity of non-English-language programming – drama in particular – has been a phenomenon of the past five years. Avril Blondelot, head of content insight at Médiamétrie-owned imprint Glance, notes that while Netflix and Amazon have been responsible for the majority of this programming reaching international audiences, others like Disney+ and HBO Max are catching up. And streamers are not alone in picking up the gauntlet. For example, Turkish telenovela Hercai (from ATV) is among the most watched foreign titles in 10 key markets monitored by Glance, mainly thanks to viewership via Telemundo and Nova in Spain.

Ahead of Hercai, across 95 channels, All3Media’s Midsomer Murders ranks as second most popular show, while CBS Studios’ NCIS comes in at number one, with Blondelot identifying the latter’s first international version, NCIS: Sydney for Paramount+, as a significant development for 2023.

The popularity of Midsomer Murders, meanwhile, points to a growing need for optimum windowing as the industry witnesses its latest transformation with the growth of AVoD and advent of FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channels. Blondelot cites NBC’s shift of daytime drama Days of Our Lives to its streamer Peacock and Amazon Freevee’s resuscitation of Australian soap Neighbours (see pages 10-11) as pertinent to this narrative, while speculating that Netflix – having now entered the ad market – may begin licensing its originals as well, as the economic climate demands it.

3Vision executive VP Jack Davidson also sees this as an area of intense interest. SVoD stumbled in 2022, he says, with Netflix’s missed subscriber target the “canary in the coalmine,” which also had a ripple effect for studios that had begun warehousing homegrown content to power their own streaming services.

The vertical integration the industry has witnessed over the past decade is now giving way to the complexities of pipeline management –how to extract the greatest return from content investment across a business like Paramount Global, for example, which counts CBS, Paramount, Paramount+, Showtime, SkyShowtime and Pluto TV among its outlets. This as financial reality bites – Lionsgate’s decision in November to abruptly withdraw its recently rebranded StarzPlay streamer from seven markets offering a stark reminder.

Richard Broughton, executive director, Ampere Analysis

The global economy is facing a pretty torrid time at the moment and we’re expecting to see some of the macroeconomic issues – high inflation, slow growth – echo forwards into the TV industry and the content market. As companies in the market are thinking carefully about budgets, they’re looking at a period where consumers are belt-tightening and advertisers are cutting back, and they need to be just that little bit more efficient about where they’re spending their money. Even as the volume of content globally commissioned has grown over the last few years, we’ve seen a steady shift towards unscripted. It’s a little bit cheaper on average, and in the last quarter we saw those economic pressures filtering through to commissioning activity and declines in scripted.

Avril Blondelot, head of content insight, Glance

SVoD growth hasn’t declined. It’s slowing down but is still going up, and AVoD opportunities are emerging. There’s a huge interest in Asia and there’s the beginning of a new interest in Africa, but linear channels too are also tapping into the opportunities of non-English drama. Meanwhile, shows like Midsomer Murders are seeing sustainable growth through optimum windowing. The next years will see new kinds of windows and potentially a time when Netflix sells its originals, as it already has done in the kids’ space.

Amit Devani, director of insights, EMEA, Parrot Analytics

Sport documentaries are becoming a really strong parallel for streamers, which are now starting to bid for live streaming sports rights. Sport documentaries have no real language barriers and they cater to all demographics, regardless of ethnicity, age or gender. They’re family viewing. I heard someone say at a conference recently, ‘Content might well be king, but sports could very well be its queen.’ Meanwhile, the world has fallen in love with everything South Korean, from food to video gaming, culture and fashion, and now that’s translated into the TV and movie space.

Jack Davidson, executive VP, 3Vision

There are lots of headwinds that face SVoD – a cost-of-living crisis, global macro geopolitical issues and the fact that investors are much more focused on profitability than they are on subs now. The windowing ecosystem is changing and it’s throwing the value equation for content up in the air. It’s going to be an interesting few years.