The president of US unscripted specialist Big Media says traditional television is missing several tricks in its fight to stop audiences and advertisers fleeing to social platforms.
It is no longer news that social platforms are capturing more of the media spotlight — and more of the media dollar. Deloitte’s recently released 18th edition of the Digital Media Trends (2025 Digital Media Trends, published March 25) report lays it out plainly: younger audiences are increasingly spending more time with social media content than with traditional TV or even streaming platforms. For anyone in the business of making and selling television, this is a wake-up call.
But let’s not jump to the wrong conclusions. This isn’t just about a generation falling in love with short-form videos and endless scrolls. It’s also about where the money, freedom, and focus have gone.
While social platforms were iterating, monetising, and pulling creators into their ecosystems, traditional media has spent much of the past few years consolidating, contracting, and recalibrating. The streamers tightened their belts. The studios, many of them under new ownership or navigating internal restructures, pulled back on output. The greenlights slowed. The funding dried up. Meanwhile, social media kept growing – fast, cheap, and unburdened.
We shouldn’t mistake this moment as a failure of TV as these cycles of unsustainable channel expansion and tech disruptions happen every 5-10 years. Audiences still love great stories, compelling characters, and premium experiences. But we need to acknowledge that it’s easier for social platforms to gain ground – not just because they’re new and exciting, but because they’ve been unencumbered by the structural challenges we’ve been navigating.
So, what now? How do production companies and sellers like us survive – and better yet, thrive – in this environment?
The answer, I believe, is in building a more flexible, dynamic multi-lane approach. We need a co-matrix system that doesn’t pit traditional against digital, but instead integrates them.
On the one hand, let’s not abandon the tried-and-true: output deals, windowing strategies, and partnerships with broadcasters and global buyers who still crave original content. There’s still a meaningful business there – especially for production companies who can deliver at scale and with efficiency and who are not reliant on a few key clients or territories. This requires producers to be more disciplined in deciding how they produce and presell their shows, being financially stable enough to wait longer for higher profits, versus quicker smaller ones. Doing this while maintaining quality and reducing expenses is a difficult needle to thread, but it is what will separate the producers that will thrive as opposed to those looking to merely survive in this environment.
We must extend our business models into digital: selling libraries and original content to FAST channels, licensing into AVoD platforms, and working with channel aggregators who can help us reach audiences across devices, geographies, and algorithms. Some of the smartest companies in the business are already doing this – not as a pivot, but as an expansion.
Over the past few years, Big Media has made no secret of the fact that our international co-pro and output deals have afforded us the opportunity to produce high-quality documentary series that wind up selling to broadcasters globally. But that system for producing original content has been extended to the digital front as well, with the company selling not only to platforms like Roku, Pluto, Tubi, Netflix, Max, and others, but also to companies like Little Dot in the UK and Quintus in Germany who are in the business of creating channels they distribute across social media platforms like YouTube.
We don’t need to become TikTok creators to stay relevant. But we do need to be nimble, diversified, and tuned in to the new media economy. Deloitte’s report makes it clear: consumers are shaping the future. Our job is to meet them there – not by abandoning what we’ve built, but by being smart about where we go next.
After a couple of decades in this business, I have seen plenty of cycles. And one thing I’ve learned is that the story is never over – it just moves to the next chapter. If we adapt, evolve, and keep making great content, there’s still plenty of room for TV in the digital age. We just have to be willing to sell it a little differently.