As the United Kingdom slowly emerges from the recent recession, the UK TV industry is looking decidedly healthy…

Film London recently stated:

“The UK is wooing international broadcasters with its wealth of creative talent and production capability and the majority have now based their European headquarters in the country.  London is at the heart of this booming television economy – employment in the industry has doubled in the last decade”.

The UK is now a leading exporter of television, thanks in part to the unprecedented growth in the country’s multichannel sector.  This sector is now worth £5bn a year and broadcasts 127 non-UK channels to the rest of the world.  Multichannels have established global and European commissioning hubs in the UK, bringing greater overseas investment into domestic production.   In fact, the sector has increased investment in UK content by nearly 30% in the last 3 years, rapidly growing its commissioning from UK independent producers.

These figures were published in a recent report by the Commercial Broadcasters Association (COBA) supported by Film London and the British Film Commission.

The report’s key findings included:

• The UK is one of the most important broadcasting hubs in Europe
  The UK is building scale and competitiveness through an increasingly diverse ecology of domestic and multinational players and is a leading global centre for television.
• The multichannel sector is growing fast
  It has grown investment in UK content by nearly 30% in the last three years, rapidly increasing its commissioning from UK independent producers
• Production investment is increasingly global
  Whilst expanding their investment in UK production, multichannels have brought more overseas investment into domestic production.
• Growth in ‘inward investment’
  The range of investment in the UK production sector is expanding further, as it attracts large scale ‘inward investment’ productions, bringing long term investment in multiple series over a number of years.

For the full Building a Global TV Hub report and analysis, please visit www.filmlondon.org.

Sources:
www.filmlondon.org    www.4rfv.co.uk