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The high performance and stylish appearance of the BBC’s glittering line-up of female presenters at the Olympics have rightly attracted favourable attention.
Viewers may want to ask themselves why there is so much talk and so little about the more esoteric activities that sports fans love so much.
There is a limit to what one can bear when British athletes with gold medal hopes are defeated on the treadmill.
The reality is that the best way to watch Paris 2024 is via Discovery+ and its sports service TNT, which broadcasts all the events 24 hours a day. Boxing, water polo, judo, surfing or whatever you like, it’s all there, in glorious, uninterrupted colour.
Pay-per-view for maximum hours of Olympic broadcasting is a new phenomenon that provides a graphic illustration of how broadcasting is changing.
Tuning in: Paid viewing of the majority of Olympic broadcast hours is a new phenomenon, offering a graphic illustration of how broadcasting is changing.
Sports have long been used as a gateway to cable and satellite TV. Rupert Murdoch’s Sky built its satellite audience on Premier League football. The subscription-based Olympics may also prove to be the canary in the mine.
Linear broadcasts such as those offered by the BBC and ITV can sometimes attract large audiences when a monarch dies or during the European Championships, but they will increasingly struggle to compete with live broadcasting.
I think of my eldest grandson, a youth leader at a summer camp, streaming his beloved F1 coverage on his mobile.
The excellence of the programming offered by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 may mean they have a longer shelf life than programmes from rivals such as Sky, Netflix and the dozens of other streaming channels that appear on our smart TVs. But the future is yet to come.
ITV chief executive Carolyn McCall recognised this when she invested in ITV X in the face of scepticism from short-term investors.
The iPlayer will be the future of the BBC if and when the much-despised licence fee, a per capita tax levied 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 US media giant cut its TV assets by £7.2bn in the first quarter amid uncertainty over cable rates as viewers shift to streaming.
The shift from traditional television and cable to streaming has hit advertising and network rates hard.
Sports rights are the jewel in the crown, but their price is skyrocketing, as evidenced by the recent payment of £60bn over 11 years for the rights to the National Basketball Association (NBA).
The real guide to the future now is global direct-to-consumer customer numbers. Disney is trying to increase its exposure by buying out Sky owner Comcast’s minority stake in Hulu.
Streaming ad revenue is on the rise as media buyers turn their attention to a new world. Be prepared.
Home comforts
One bright spot for Labour’s growth agenda is the recovery of the housing market.
The latest survey by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors shows a recovery in both demand and prices in July.
Lower mortgage rates and the prospect of further Bank of England rate cuts should help.
Homebuilder Persimmon is also on the mend, though it never fully recovered from the greed of former chief executive Jeff Fairburn and the discovery that it was building substandard homes that could be fire hazards.
Persimmon welcomes the proposed planning reforms but acknowledges they may take time to materialise.
First-half profits fell, which could be positive if it means lessons have been learned from the past.
Quality control and respectful treatment of customers are just as important as achieving ambitious goals.
Gourmet life
Deliveroo is one of those UK online companies that for a while looked like it would lose its appeal after the pandemic.
But it is proving to be one of those risky British startups and IPOs, deploying technology and logistics, that could prove the skeptics wrong.
The indicators improved in the first half of this year, as demand stabilised after the impact of the rising cost of living. The company turned positive and free cash flow strengthened. The shares rose by 9 percent.
The key may lie in the Plus Gold and Plus Diamond loyalty programmes for high-end customers who use Deliveroo to access better restaurants, which accounts for 40 per cent of customers. Good food streaming.