How Does the Media Industry Change During Pandemic?

The 2020 year baffled us with accelerated changes in our habits and made us take the steps that we wouldn’t have made before. It affects us at every level of our lives, work, or consumption decisions. 

Coronavirus has an impact on almost everything but let’s focus on the media industry. From the beginning of March 2020, it was said that during the pandemic, ‘staying at home’ would result in moreover 60% increase in the amount of watched content. Everyone would think that this is a perfect time for the TV industry. On the other hand the economic situation in the world affects business, trade, and consumer spending patterns on goods and services. Advertisement revenue decrease brought some industry players to radical decisions such as reducing personnel or staff layoffs. The broadcast and media industry are touched by the shock created by the pandemic but could take some actions to adapt to it.

How does coronavirus impact television? 

Recently, television was thought to be losing audience and attention while time spent on watching tv has never been so high as during a pandemic. In France 4,5 hours, in Belgium 3,5 hours and in the United Kingdom 3 hours what lead to increase an average time spent in front of the TV to moreover 10%.

Besides the news media which was the most sought-after content on the television, channels were forced to recycle content because of the halt in content production. For example channel France 2 ZDF (Germany) offers in schedule a lot of documentaries, ITV in the UK reviewing the 1996 European championship or RTBF in Belgium offers cycling races of the 1990s. 

How does the coronavirus impact the streaming industry?

Streaming sites are one of the victors of the crisis. Netflix gained 26 million additional subscribers in the first two quarters of 2020 (worth say during all of 2019 they had 28 million new subscribers). Another big player is Disney+, this platform was published to customers in 2019. They got 24 million subscribers in just one month and thanks to that they reached 50 million subscribers worldwide 2 years before it was planning. Interesting is the fact that Disney+ has more viewers in some countries ahead of Netflix.

One of the most demanded features during a pandemic is single-sign-on and it is a good way to generate greater revenue. The best examples are ITV Hub+ with an increase of consumption by 40%, RTL Play platform where over one million people registered, or Auvio with exceeded 3 million accounts.

The only drag chain in market growth could be the lack of data network facilities for OTT and this is what most companies focus on to do their best.

Summary

Coronavirus has a huge impact on the media industry, the trends which began in march 2020 may produce some lasting changes in the industry. Quarantine and self-isolation affecting increased media consumption mostly in the form of OTT platforms or gaming. The worse pandemic is the higher consumption seems to be. 

But this situation also brings some disadvantages. Though more people are watching tv, fewer and fewer companies decide to pay for television advertising which may herald a slow collapse in favor of the development of OTT.

Sources:

• https://www.v-net.tv/2020/03/23/the-impact-of-coronavirus-on-the-television-and-wider-media-industry

• https://theiabm.org/how-the-coronavirus-outbreak-is-effecting-the-broadcast-and-media-industry

• https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/en/impact-covid-media-industry/