Content in context: The impact of mobile media on the British TV industry

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which smartphones, mobile technology and media and, with this, the growing practice of viewing and interacting with content on multiple screens and devices, are informing changes to the TV industry and the content it produces in the United Kingdom. The article reflects on how British TV companies, producers and executives understand their role and the types of content that is currently being commissioned and funded within this changing mediascape. Based on industry data from Ofcom and PACT, interviews with producers, commissioning editors and executives as well as participant observation at industry events, the article argues that mobile media is having a profound impact on the British production sector and ecology. In order to understand and describe the players and practices that make up the ‘TV industry’ today, it is now necessary to rethink how content is defined and where it appears. There is also a need to reconsider who the content producers, broadcasters and distributors are within this industry, and include a wider spectrum of producers as well as the telecoms, aggregators and social media networks as funders and distributors of audiovisual content within this ecology. These reconfigurations impact not only on constitution of the TV industry itself, its modus operandi and the content it produces but also on how arts bodies, policymakers and academics need to approach this ecology.