Donald Clarke: Despite the doom-mongers, linear TV is still hanging on

Netflix has announced the imminent “end of linear TV”.

Reed Hastings, co-chief executive of that organisation, delivered the gloomy prognosis as ambiguous news emerged concerning the company’s second-quarter earnings. The streamer lost around 970,000 subscribers in that period, but, having predicted the evacuation of around two million users, the result felt like a qualified win. “Our share of US TV viewing reached an all-time high of 7.7 per cent in June (v 6.6 per cent in June 2021), demonstrating our ability to grow our engagement share as we continue to improve our service,” Hastings stated, summoning up reminders of Soviet propaganda concerning tractor production. The five-year plan remains on track. It was, however, Hastings’s comment on the competition that attracted most attention. “It’s definitely the end of linear TV over the next five to 10 years,” he said.

The first point of irritation is, of course, that infuriating buzz phrase “linear TV”. It is scarcely less horrible than the use of “legacy media” to describe newspapers, radio, theatrically released movies and what we used to call simply “television”. One naively imagines that no adult could utter such a term with a straight face. It seems the stuff of an Armando Iannucci parody. Yet here we are.

The notion of a drama or comedy episode being tied to a particular time and date will seem as archaic as having a meeting in an office rather than Zooming from the one corner of your home not littered with empty spaghetti hoop cans

If you are not fluent in media-speak, be aware that “linear TV” refers to an old-school system — originally received by aerial, later by cable or satellite — that invites the viewer to watch the programme when broadcast on its original channel. Definitions shift a little, but if you are, sometime after first showing, watching your own digital video recording of, say, Fair City then you are probably still watching linear TV. If you are watching it on the RTÉ Player then you may not be. At any rate, the phrase describes what we understood television to be before the internet mucked everything up. Dad’s Army. Bosco. Today Tonight. The All-Ireland Final. The Eurovision Song Contest. If you are bingeing every episode of Better Call Saul on Netflix then you are being non-linear. You are an ellipse. You are a trapezoid. You are a helix.

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Mr Hastings tells us linearity will be gone by the end of the decade. The notion of a drama or comedy episode being tied to a particular time and date will seem as archaic as having a meeting in an office rather than Zooming from the one corner of your home not littered with empty spaghetti hoop cans. Throw your telly in the skip. Actually, don’t do that. You will need it to not watch the 48 obscure streaming services you drunkenly subscribed to as Netflix’s grip on the market slackened. What the hell is Monkey-Spit Vidz, again?

This conversation has been going on for some time. As long ago as 2007, the European Media Leaders Summit wondered if “The death of linear TV [was] exaggerated, imminent, or simply premature?” Earlier this year, again nodding to Mark Twain’s early obituary, Michele Madaris told Adexchanger that “the death of TV is being greatly exaggerated”. That refrain has been echoed repeatedly since the first moving image appeared on a computer screen.

The pandemic offered some hope for the traditional medium. Figures from Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, showed an unsurprising increase of 32 per cent in the nation’s daily consumption of moving images during that period. The increase for streamers was greater than that for solid-fuel television, but only just. Punters watched about 37 minutes more of Netflix, Amazon Prime and the rest. Linear TV went up by 31 minutes.

You can catch professional tennis on Prime, but sport remains largely a preserve of the dusty old cathode-ray survivors and no streamer has yet mastered news

That does not suggest implosion for the heritage stations, but there is certainly a drift towards the newer approach. In May, the BBC announced that the kids-friendly space CBBC and the upmarket BBC Four were to end as linear TV channels. The decline of the latter has been particularly grim. A decade ago, BBC Four, now stuffed with repeats, could claim to be among the best stations in the world. It delivered strong documentaries on a weekly basis — the Friday-night music slot was particularly excellent — and released superb comedy series such as Detectorists and The Thick of It. It seems unlikely linear TV will expand in that direction ever again.

Those figures from the pandemic do, however, confirm that there remains an enthusiasm for the older models. This column lands as Love Island transfixes fans on ITV and Virgin Media. The capacity to Tweet along live as the love happens live(ish) is a vital part of that show’s appeal. You can catch professional tennis on Prime, but sport remains largely a preserve of the dusty old cathode-ray survivors. No streamer has yet mastered news. Recent drama series such as Kin and Sherwood reminded us that appointment telly can still be a draw. The danger for the BBC, RTÉ, ITV and the rest is that the streamers may find a way of fitting their sleek delivery systems around those venerable forms. Until then, reports of linear television’s death will remain ... well, you know where we’re going.