How A Year To Forget In The U.S. Hit The International TV Sector And What The World Did In Response – Mipcom Cannes Special
17.10.2023 - 15:31
/ deadline.com
Queen Elizabeth II may have popularized the phrase “annus horribilis” decades ago, but the Latin term feels more relevant than ever when thinking about the state of the U.S. TV sector in the last year.
Midway through 2022, the industry was rocked by an unanticipated Netflix subscriber slide that sent shockwaves through Wall Street. Since then, there have been a series of struggles for virtually all legacy studios and streamers, thousands and thousands of layoffs across the sector and dual labor strikes for the first time since a young Ronald Reagan was helming the actors’ union.
When it rains, it pours, as they say, but what did this all mean for the industry outside the States? As globalization has taken hold, the international business has become more intrinsically linked with the U.S. and is also largely driven by the streaming revolution.
Deadline has spoken to around a dozen creatives, producers, sellers and analysts from around the world — some of whom preferred to remain anonymous — to piece together how a year to forget for the U.S. has impacted the international TV biz. At the same time, a global economic downturn has deepened its grip. Major European players such as Viaplay and ProSiebenSat.1 have been forced to shed hundreds of staff members and cull hours and hours of shows in response to economic turmoil, which has run concurrently with the strikes, buttressing an across-the-board commissioning slowdown.
Sources vary in their position on the doom-and-gloom spectrum, but they leave Deadline in no doubt that the ripple effects from the U.S. have, at times, felt like tidal waves.
“This was the year the bubble burst,” says Frank Spotnitz, The X Files exec who has been based in Europe for more than a decade,