The high performance and fashion savvy appearance of the BBC’s brilliant line-up of female presenters at the Olympics rightly has attracted favourable attention.
Viewers might want to consider why there is so much talking and so little of the more esoteric activities much loved by sports aficionados.
There is only so much of Britons gold medal athletic hopefuls being beaten at the tape that one can take.
Reality is that the best way of watching Paris 2024 is on Discovery+ and its sports service TNT, which is streaming every event around the clock. Boxing, water polo, judo, surfing or whatever your taste, it is there in uninterrupted glorious colour.
Pay-per-view of maximum hours of Olympic broadcasting is a new phenomenon, which offers a graphic illustration of how broadcasting is changing.
Tuning in: Pay-for view of maximum hours of Olympic broadcasting is a new phenomenon, which offers a graphic illustration of how broadcasting is changing
Sports has long been used as a gateway to cable and satellite. Rupert Murdoch’s Sky built its satellite audience on the back of Premier League football. The subscription Olympics may also prove to be the canary in the mine.
Linear broadcasting, as provided by the BBC and ITV, may on occasion attract huge audiences when a monarch dies or during the Euros, but they increasingly will struggle against streaming.
I think of my oldest grandson, a youth leader at a summer camp, streaming his beloved F1 coverage on his mobile.
The programme excellence offered by the Beeb, ITV and Channel 4 may mean they have a longer shelf life than programmes on rivals such as Sky, Netflix and the dozens of other streaming channels which pop up on our smart TVs. But the writing is on the wall.
ITV boss Carolyn McCall recognised that when she invested in ITV X in the face of scepticism from short-termist investors.
The iPlayer will be the BBC’s future if and when the much-despised licence fee, a poll tax on every household in Britain, is finally reformed.
Nothing better illustrates the changing face of broadcasting than the latest financial results from Warner Bros Discovery.
The American media giant wrote down its TV assets by £7.2billion in the first quarter amid uncertainty over cable fees as viewers switch to streaming.
The switch from traditional TV and cable to streaming has hit advertising and fees from the networks hard.
Sports rights are the golden nugget but the price is soaring as the recent 11-year £60billion fee for rights to the National Basketball Association (NBA) shows.
The real guide to the future now is global direct-to-consumer customer numbers. Disney is seeking to increase its exposure by buying out the minority stake of Sky-owner Comcast in Hulu.
Revenues from advertising on streaming are perking up as media buyers switch attention to a new world. Be prepared.
Home comforts
A plus for Labour’s growth agenda is a recovering housing market.
The latest survey from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors shows a recovery in both demand and prices in July.
Lower mortgage rates and the prospect of further cuts in Bank of England rates should help.
Out-of-sorts housebuilder Persimmon is also on the mend. It has never quite recovered from the greed of former chief executive Jeff Fairburn and the discovery that it was building inferior homes which could be a fire hazard.
Persimmon applauds proposed planning reforms but recognises that they may make time to come through.
First-half profits slipped. That might be a good thing if it means that lessons have been learned from the past.
Quality control and treating customers with respect is as important as meeting stretching targets.
Gourmet living
Deliveroo is one of those UK online enterprises which looked for a time as if it would lose its appeal post-pandemic.
But it is proving to be one of those risky British start-ups and initial public offerings, deploying tech and logistics, which could prove doubters wrong.
Metrics improved in the first half of this year as demand stabilised post the cost of living shock. The company moved into the black and free cash flow strengthened. Shares spurted 9 per cent.
The key may be the loyalty programmes Plus Gold and Plus Diamond for upmarket customers using Deliveroo to access better restaurants, which accounts for 40 per cent of customers. Good food while streaming.
