Content studios racing into streaming are carrying over habits that no longer fit the medium. Simply simulcasting a linear channel may extend reach, but it fails to reflect how audiences watch today or how revenue works in a streaming-first market. As ad-supported streaming accelerates, the "lift-and-shift" approach is exposing its limits, leaving creators with a model built for broadcast in an environment shaped by entirely different rules.
To understand how creators and content studios can reframe their approach, we spoke with Jamie Branson, the Founder and CEO of View TV. His perspective is shaped by a career spanning both sides of the disruption. Branson's understanding of traditional broadcast economics was formed through roles at industry leaders like Sky and Virgin Media, but for the past decade, he's been focused on building an end-to-end streaming solution from the ground up. His background, which combines an MBA with an engineering degree, gives him perspective on both the business strategy and the technology behind the streaming shift.
"A lot of people just think it’s an engineering change rather than a cultural change, and that misunderstanding is what’s holding streaming businesses back," says Branson. That cultural change, he says, is eroding the traditional moats that once protected broadcasters. The high-capital barriers to entry have dramatically lowered, and the scarcity that once guaranteed an audience has been replaced by intense competition. "Simply picking up your old cable channel and simulcasting it across streaming is a good start, but it’s certainly not the way that you fully monetize or fully transition into the streaming world."
Your new competition: The industry is moving toward lighter, multi-channel operations, which is a fundamental departure from the expensive, single-channel businesses of the past. Branson describes a resulting market where the competition is structurally different. "Streaming is no longer a heavy, capital-intensive business that's impossible to get into. Anyone could set up as your competitor in a shed in the garden and go head to head with you, just as YouTubers have done with content studios."
First comes second: In this new, fragmented market, the strategic calculus is changing, too, as audiences place an increased premium on trust. "It's no longer about being first. It's about being current. I think that's the difference between the two. Being first comes secondary on the basis that the audiences trust you."
The transformation in viewing habits is also changing how content itself is made, forcing storytellers to adapt to a world of partial attention and second screens, a reality reflected in new metrics for viewer engagement. "They're redesigning movies for Netflix, not in a traditional Hollywood way. It looks like a Hollywood movie, but what they're doing is they're redescribing the plot several times over because the audience is not 100% engaged."
Nowhere is the disconnect between the broadcast mindset and the new cultural reality more apparent than with monetization. Many in the industry have been sold on a simplistic pitch of fully automated, programmatic ad technology, with major industry players even adopting the model. But Branson says this "lazy sales" approach is creating a structural revenue gap for creators despite projections for increased ad spending. "As most broadcasters will say, they're selling easily less than 20%, probably around 10%. And the advertising is being sold at a fraction, maybe a quarter, of what traditional broadcast has done."
Broken math: Branson describes how a transition from broadcast to streaming might make sense on paper, but if a creator is completely reliant on programmatic, the numbers don't add up. "We're making TV shows here in LA at a million dollars an episode. Running it through FAST would mean we'd have to do 100 million views to break even, which is not economic. Programmatic has been sold as being the ultimate solution, but it's far away from that."
A layered approach: His solution isn’t to abandon the technology, but to put it back in its place. ViewTV's approach treats programmatic as just one tool for yield, then adds additional layers underneath it to ensure all inventory gets filled. "That includes addressable advertising, which is exactly how you would do traditional broadcasting. So we put traditional ways of doing ad sales back into that loop and fill every single ad opportunity with a paying ad."
The success of this approach, which Branson says produces 10x average lift for the broadcaster, brings him to a clear conclusion. For the economic model of streaming to become sustainable, the industry must reclaim control from the opaque systems to which it has outsourced its monetization. He believes the cost of ad technology should be borne by those who benefit from it most, transforming ad tech from a cost center into a substantial revenue driver. "We don't believe that broadcasters should pay for ad tech, for SSAI. That advertising tech is to position the advertisers, and the broadcaster shouldn't be paying for that," he concludes.
