Happy New Year – 2025 – what will it bring? My guess is a huge amount of change in film and television – if you think the last few years were tough, you ain’t seen nothing yet… but, with this upheaval comes a lot of opportunities if you get switched on…
Writers and filmmakers need to wake up to the fact that broadcasters, studios and traditional media gatekeepers aren’t your employers anymore – they’re your competitors!
I’m Matthew Cooper and I’ve been a script writer for hire and UK script consultant for over 25 years – back when I started out as a scriptwriter in early 1990s (I had my first credit as a scriptwriter on Channel 4 in the UK in 1993) the only real way to get a film or a TV show made, was to go cap in hand to the people who made films or TV shows – the guys who had the money and distribution channels…
In my day, there was the BBC (the BBC made films also), ITV, CH4 (CH4 for films too via Film4) and maybe the BFI and British Screen (latterly replaced by the regional screen agencies and lottery funding). That was it.
If you wanted to make a film or a TV show, you’d need a crew, professional actors, locations, film cameras and film stock, developing and most importantly for it all to work MONEY – funding.
Making a film or even a short film, making a TV show, or series, was a very expensive business and it required you to get backing from someone who had the money to finance the show/film – even my first short film, 11 minutes long and shot on 16mm cost close to £30,000 to make in 1993. That’s a lot of money considering you could BUY A HOUSE (or two) for that sort cash back in those days.
The people who held onto the money, the gatekeepers, be they commissioning editors at TV networks or people in charge of doling out funding from the likes of the BFI, they needed to be convinced by a LOT of things before they let you loose with their cash – they needed a great script, a cast with some names, a director with a strong vision and charming inspiring trustworthy personality, and all of these people (including the lowly writer) needed to have some sort of track record.
They all needed to be a known quantity. They wouldn’t hand over funding for a film or TV series, UNLESS the person or people getting the cash, already had some credits – what was known as the old ‘Catch 22’.
A lot of people moaned about this system and gave up trying, a lot of people (myself included) worked hard to build a career, often spent working on stuff that you didn’t like necessarily, but that you needed to do – to get credits. You needed to get credits to get anywhere (Russell T Davies started his career writing ChuckleVision for the Chuckle Brothers – arguably starting there was as good as it would ever get for our Russ).
I worked writing soaps for years (Emmerdale/ Eastenders etc) I have director friends in the UK who tread the exact same path, directing soaps, or children’s TV etc – YOU HAD to work your way UP – you had to get credits delivering shows.
The idea was, that with enough credits, at some point, if you were considered good enough – you might get a shot at something original. Although for many – over the years – that shot at an original film / show or series never ever came.
The industry changed as I properly got into it (around 2001) – in TV terms, original scripted drama and comedy disappeared around the time Big Brother became a roaring success on CH4 – in 2001 or 2002.
What happened after Big Brother became a runaway success, is that instead of drama or comedy, written by writers and acted by actors, the TV networks turned their focus to reality TV, with no writers or actors, they looked to formats – Big Brother was a HIT FORMAT SHOW and format’s which didn’t need actors or writers– like Gogglebox or the Great British Bake-off (which CH4 paid £25million pounds to steal the show from the BBC in 2016) formats, became the holy grail of TV execs.
Reality Tv Format shows got great viewing figures, with hardly any spend, and had none of those pesky directors, or actors or writers. It sounded like a recipe for success, until it wasn’t.
It was around 2023 – when the whole shebang of UK broadcast TV collapsed – the format reality shows – and other cheap TV hit a very big bump – they became unprofitable overnight, or at least it seemed to be overnight – in fact, the viewing figures ON EVERYTHING on terrestrial TV had been dropping for years – and that includes the scripted stuff they did commission – like tired soap operas, and tired hospital or police drama – ITV had a huge hit with the post office drama recently (an original commission of a scripted drama!) – but the viewing figures and associated ad spend didn’t cover the cost of the show (they lost money – 1million quid – making it).
So, where did it all – suddenly (actually gradually over about a decade) GO WRONG?
Ch4 / ITV and other broadcasters in the UK are reeling, because the viewers have gone. Where have the viewers gone? Well, they’ve gone to YouTube mainly, and Netflix and Amazon.
YouTube is the most watched thing on TV in the UK (yes, not on phones or apps – on the TV)… But the broadcasters cry – YouTube isn’t TV! It’s full of amateurs doing things? – What like Gogglebox is?- What like Bake-Off is? These broadcasters got us all used to watching amateur people do stuff – they laid the ground Vloggers – the paved the way for YOUTUBE.
As for drama – Netflix and Amazon arrived on the scene and when ITV/ CH4 and BBC were ignoring high end drama – the streamers were throwing more money at scripted drama than anyone ever had.
So, YouTube stole the eyes, it’s all YOUNGER people watch (who have never been properly engaged with TV since the dawn of web2.0 in 2006) and Netflix and Amazon also stole the people who wanted scripted drama – high end stuff – which ITV/ CH4 and even the BBC had deemed too expensive or risky (the BBC even recently cancelled Doctors, which was cheap to make and had a huge audience share – the BBC cancelled it because it cost too much…)
So, the industry currently is in crisis. The broadcasters are struggling with dire viewing figures – the advertising spend is through the floor. People around me in the business are desperate for work – but the work has dried up – all at once (but actually gradually since 2001).
Alongside this, in the last ten years the tech needed to make a show or a film has changed drastically – Digital Video cameras and cheap DSLRs and even iPhone’s all have broadcast level video capabilities – editing software – the most advanced ever – is free to use (DaVinci Resolve). Unreal Engine is game engine, that’s also free – and was used to make the Disney Series ‘The Mandalorian’ – and the latest MATRIX movie. Then on top of that, in the last 12 months AI video to video and text to video and image to video has arrived on the chat – apps like Runway ML, SORA, LUMA, KLING, these tech explosions will mean anyone can make a Hollywood level film – from their own PC, with a very low monthly subscription – the RUNWAY ML basic package costs about the same as Netflix per month (this is the greatest time ever to be a low budget indie filmmaker).
At this point creatives in film and TV are screaming – the jobs have gone, we’re in crisis – we need government help! Actually, while I feel for all the people who have lost their jobs, and incomes and worry about WHAT if any future they have in film and TV – what these creatives need to do is refocus on where we ARE NOW, and WHAT the skills they have are really WORTH – and I don’t mean to a broadcaster or production company I mean what they are WORTH to YOU – How you can moneywise those skills for YOUR OWN BENEFIT – we need a paradigm shift – and this isn’t going to be easy – change isn’t ever easy for people, it’s what we fear most – but whether they like it of not – the change – in the broadcasting landscape has ALREADY happened – and that doesn’t mean the end of your career, it means you need to pivot to where the AUDIENCES HAVE GONE TO.
We used to go to the broadcasters for money and permission to tell our stories. When the shows were commissioned – we were given jobs and money to make those shows – and that’s how we made a living in film and TV. We delivered shows for an audience – so that the broadcasters could sell adverts.
That audience – HAS GONE – to YouTube mostly and that advertising spend which paid for our wages and the shows we made – has gone with the audience to YouTube.
What’s also changed is that the kit, expertise and the budgets required to make TV have also changed, because we don’t need huge crews or expensive gear to make high end TV anymore. The equipment to shoot, and post produce films is now cheap (your iPhone will do).
Storytelling is still a highly prized and rare skill – but what people aren’t yet seeing is that the storyteller no longer needs permission from anyone or money from anyone – to write shoot and make their dream film or TV series or show. The age of punk, the great disrupter, has arrived in TV and film land. – B&Q it – Do it yourself.
The other thing with the old days and the gatekeepers was that they held the money, but they also held the keys to the distribution – that’s not the case now.
If you wanted your film or TV show to be seen by people – you needed that distribution apparatus that the gatekeepers held. These days, Channel 4 are putting new episodes of its teen soap Hollyoaks on YouTube because it gets better viewing figures ON YOUTUBE than it does on its own hugely expensive broadcast network. A bit like the BBC making radio programmes and giving them to a pirate radio station – because they have more listeners…
So, if CH4 is now putting its own shows on YouTube – that means they’re a YouTuber.
Would you go to a YouTuber to ask permission to make your own show?
No, you’d just make it yourself and put it on your own YouTube channel surely?
Yeah, that’s right, if you work in scripted drama or work in reality TV and your work for broadcasters has dried up – what are you waiting for? MAKE YOUR OWN SHOWS AND PUT THEM ON YOUTUBE – BECAUSE that’s all that channel four and the BBC are now doing. They’re All YouTubers now.
The broadcasters aren’t your employers anymore – they’re your competition.
So take that talent, and those ideas, and just fucking do it yourself.
How will you make a living doing it? It’s not easy – but its not a zero sum game either – if you make shows and programmes for YouTube and that content is popular, and you keep delivering viewers to YouTube eventually – YouTube will pay you– and that’s a better deal than you’ll get from CH4 or ITV or the BBC right now.
You do it yourself – you have the control – its your money and you make it – and if you DO DELIVER viewers – you will be able to make a living – and currently – most TV workers in the UK are NOT making a living doing this – the do it yourself way, is risky, without guarantees and will take time – but it IS the future – and the government isn’t going to help TV workers any more than steal workers or miners or anyone else whose skills are no longer required in a dying industry. You’re gonna have to do it yourself – this is the way….
Happy 2025 – the year the gatekeepers became irrelevant.
I’m Matthew Cooper and I’ve been a script writer for hire and UK script consultant for over 25 years. I’ve written for most of the UK soaps, including writing award-winning episodes of Emmerdale, EastEnders, Hollyoaks and Family Affairs and I’ve been BAFTA shortlisted and Royal Television Society nominated as a script writer.
I’ve done high profile rewrites on released and studio backed feature films and TV (often uncredited) in my time, I’ve also sold original screenplays to Miramax and Universal Pictures.
I’ve worked on feature films, TV series, web series and as a director I’ve made four micro budget features films, the rubber reality horror thriller ‘Markham’ was released in 2020, ‘At The Mountains Of Madness’ hit the screens in 2021, When The Earth Gives Up The Dead (2022) was released on Halloween 2022.
My fifth microbudget feature ‘H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ is free to view on his YouTube here: https://youtu.be/AEfaYEsx7pM
And I also wrote and directed the comedy feature film SOBER starring Dean Smith (Last Tango in Halifax / Still Open All Hours) and Tom Gibbons (Funny Cow / The Archers) which will be released in 2025.
You can find some of my broadcast credits on the IMDb.