At Sunday night’s Bafta Awards, the nation once more paid tribute to a group of Brits with little money and less clout who took on the rich and powerful. I’m talking, of course, not about the wronged sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses dramatised in Mr Bates vs the Post Office, but of the UK TV creatives and production companies battling for survival against the might of US streamers such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney+.
For British production companies, there appears an ever-dwindling hope of postmaster-style victory. Last week’s limited US trade deal and President Trump’s recent tariff threats on film and TV make the future appear bleaker than ever.
The crisis has been caused largely by streamers, who have flocked to Britain to make shows but are now increasingly refusing to work on co-productions with British companies. Meanwhile they have pushed up fees for talent and crew. All at a time when our public service broadcasters are struggling to commission due to a fall in ad revenue for ITV and a squeeze on licence fees for the BBC. It has meant that despite all its critical success, Mr Bates is still bearing a £1m financial loss.
Wolf Hall director Peter Kosminsky says his TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s books would not happen now and were only completed because he, Mark Rylance and others took pay cuts. Toby Jones also worked below the market rate on Mr Bates.
Kosminsky is among those calling for a 5 per cent levy on streamers to create a pot of money to offset costs. Global streamers could claim money back from the pot in return for co-producing shows with British firms. The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee has backed a levy, but the plan is going nowhere within DCMS: the government is desperate for foreign investment in creative industries and fears upsetting Trump with what sounds remarkably similar to a tariff. A White House memo said levies on US streamers would “violate American sovereignty”.
Collecting the award for Mr Bates, ITV’s director of television, Kevin Lygo, committed to continuing to make such shows even “at a time when funding is tricky”. There are murmurs from DCMS about a system of greater tax breaks. But BFI figures show that despite a boom in foreign investment into Britain, spending on domestic programmes was down by 22 per cent last year. Like bats and the green belt, home-grown British TV looks likely to become collateral damage in the “going for growth” offensive.
GB News viewers will be cheered to learn that Nigel Farage is due back on their favourite channel next month after a leave of absence in the run-up to the local elections. Farage himself will be cheered to learn he could scoop a stonking £4m from the channel between now and the next election, with colleagues claiming he is earning “the best part of £1m a year” on a deal stating he can work as few or as many shows as he is able.
GB News is already cheered by regulator Ofcom dropping investigations into radio and TV programmes fronted by politicians after a High Court ruling overturned its decision on a Jacob Rees-Mogg show. Decidedly not cheered is anyone who believes impartiality in British broadcasting is all that prevents us from sinking into a US-style sewer of TV partisanship.
GB News investors are apparently “thrilled” to have Farage back on screens – particularly as a weekend poll showed Reform support at ten points ahead of Labour. Farage’s shows consistently pull in some of the channel’s biggest viewing figures. Bosses hope his political momentum could drive GB News into the mainstream, and presumably help it stem the £33m losses it made in the year to May 2024 (more than £105m since its launch four years ago).
But its backers are less worried about financial losses and more interested in influence. Its biggest shareholders are hedge-funder Paul Marshall, who last year paid way over the odds for the Spectator,and Legatum Ventures Ltd, connected to the right-wing think tank the Prosperity Institute (formerly named Legatum). In GB News they have found a means of funding a platform for Farage and shunting the national conversation rightwards.
Ofcom must act fast in the interests of keeping British television as non-partisan as it can. Or we might yet have a highly paid prime minister addressing the nation from our TV screens each evening.
A Nevada court is to decide whether sealed documents should be made public in the courtroom battle between 94-year-old Rupert Murdoch and three of his children.
Last year he failed in a legal bid to change the terms of a trust which means his four eldest children will share control of his empire on his death. But you don’t get to be a four-times-married business magnate with a $21bn fortune who has controlled the media across three continents over 60 years by giving up that easily. So the court wrangle drags on.
Murdoch wants full control of his empire to go to his more conservatively minded eldest son, Lachlan, who has headed up Fox News and NewsCorp for the past two years. He fears shared control with his more liberal offspring will spell the end for Fox News and the Sun.
Finally Murdoch has found something he is compelled to control even more than politics and money: his legacy.
[See also: Who was the real DH Lawrence?]
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This article appears in the 14 May 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Why George Osborne still runs Britain