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Is British TV under threat? BBC plans Netflix-style service

"The UK is sleepwalking towards a serious, long term weakening of its TV production industry," said Hall, in front of a DCMS committee in Westminster on Tuesday November 7th .

Hall proposed the idea of a new, paid-for on-demand service featuring BBC programming, following the closure of the BBC Store after only 18 months.

The appetite for video on demand (VOD) and other third-party platforms is growing in the UK and abroad, in what is a rapidly changing TV market.

Olivia Colman set to play Queen Elizabeth II in recast of The Crown

Colman, best known for her roles in Broadchurch and The Night Manager, is the first star to be announced for the third series of the Netflix drama series.

The entire cast is set to be replaced for the next phase of the Queen's reign when the drama jumps ahead to 1960s Britain at the end of the second series.

Watch highlights from the RTS Cambridge Convention 2017

James Murdoch in conversation with Sarah Sands (Credit: RTS/Paul Hampartsoumian)

The three-day Convention featured keynotes from James Murdoch, Ofcom chief Sharon White and the Secretary of State Karen Bradley MP, as well as some lively panel discussions.

Watch highlights from the event below, or scroll down to watch the sessions in full. You can read more about this year's RTS Cambridge in the October issue of Television magazine.

Video: Show Me The Money! Andy Harries and Andy Wilman discuss working on the new frontier of broadcasting

It’s the dream scenario for a producer: to be handed a huge budget and the creative freedom to create compelling content for a new platform.  Producers Andy Harries and Andy Wilman, in conversation with Peter Fincham, discuss the origins and production of The Crown and The Grand Tour respectively. How did it work, how sustainable is it and where do they go from here?

Ofcom reveals the UK’s binge watching habits

The research shows that UK viewers favour binge watching television series over waiting for new episodes each week, with 40 million people watching series back-to-back.

One third of the people binge watching episodes do so every week, and more than half do so monthly.

The study, included in the annual Communications Market Research 2017, has also shown a significant difference in viewing habits between younger and older audiences. 

Netflix unveils new Stranger Things trailer

The eerie trailer begins with the four childhood friends Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Will (Noah Schnapp) playing innocently on an arcade game.

The atmosphere quickly changes as Will Byers is momentarily transported back into the dark Upside Down world and faced with a much bigger threat than the terrifying Demogorgon. 

Andy Harries on how The Crown changed Left Bank Pictures

When Andy Harries was planning what became drama specialist Left Bank Pictures, around a decade ago, experienced TV executives told him that he was backing the wrong horse. They said that drama – expensive, time-consuming and hard to get right – was in decline. Reality shows were the future.

Today, drama is booming as never before and, by some reckonings, Left Bank is responsible for a fifth of all the TV drama produced in the UK.

Is targeted advertising the future of TV?

That was one of the main conclusions from an RTS early evening event, Is targeted advertising the future of TV?

A capacity crowd heard how the arrival of streaming services headed by Netflix and Amazon Prime plus the challenge from Facebook and Google are changing the dynamics of TV advertising. 

Catch-up TV and the traditional broadcasters' own on-demand offerings are also driving change.  

All this is posing problems for audience measurement, the bedrock of TV advertising for more than half a century.