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Hi, I'm Justin Crosby and welcome to a special end of the
year episode of Telecast. Today we're looking back at
2025, a year that didn't just push the content industry
forward a little, it fundamentally changed the centre
of gravity across platforms, producers, creators, brands,
studios and distributors. Everything quietly realigned,
not in one dramatic headline, but in hundreds of small shifts
that all pointed the same way. So today we're pulling those
threads together. This is the state of the Digital
First industry in six main trends told through the stories
and reporting of our news website and magazine, The drop,
the conversations we've had on this show and our events
throughout the year. We're then going to look forward
to 2026 and summarise a list of predictions collated over the
past couple of weeks from articles from the Digital First
industry leaders on what next year in Digital First might look
like. So let's get into it.
Our first trend this year was creator collectives as studio
systems. Let's start with the clearest
shifts this year, the rise of creator collectives.
Not as loose networks, but as fully fledged studio systems.
We've seen this with sidemen of course, Beta Squad, The Fellas
and countless others building out on YouTube.
But in 2025 it became clear that these groups are no longer just
producing content. They're running studio
organisations, writers rooms, data analysts, production teams,
thumbnail experts, publishing workflows.
Creators have industrialized. They've created a new production
landscape. While many traditional TV
production companies have watched on from the sidelines.
The Side Men model is no longer an outlier, It's the blueprint
for creative studios. Collectives now behave like
digital first broadcasters, multiple shows and formats,
recurring slots, brand deals, spin offs, live events, merch
and diversified revenue. They control the IP, they
control the platform relationship and crucially, they
control the audience. This creator LED studio
infrastructure is now one of the most powerful parts of the
production economy, and it's only getting more sophisticated
as more and more investors are flocking to the sector, valuing
businesses by the depth of engagement with their community
audiences as one of the key factors.
I think we'll see more and more creator collectives and digital
studios scale, attract investment and sell to legacy
media in 2026 as they seek a shortcut into the new production
economy trend #2 from 2025. Is micro drama pointing the way
for vertical video? So the next big shift we've seen
in 2025 is of course micro drama and indeed overall vertical
video. Vertical micro dramas solidified
into a real format category, scripted series with character
arcs, seasoned structures and bingeable narratives.
Gamma Time launched in the US with over $14 million in
funding. Fox Entertainment bought into
Holy Water, the sole publishing launch short and drama box.
Drama Wave Short, Max Real Short, and Good Short, amongst
many others, continue to grow. OMDEA forecasted that revenue
from this format is forecast to be nearly twice that of FAST
channels globally, generating around $11 billion in revenue in
2025. Traditional producers are now
studying this format closely, creator studios are building
writers rooms, and specialist directors are in high demand.
It's cheap, it travels globally, it builds enormous loyalty, and
it fits a consumption patterns of Gen.
Z like nothing else. And the biggest series are
generating huge revenues. Micro drama and vertical
storytelling isn't fringe anymore.
It's now a pillar of the new content economy and looks set to
explode in 2026 with higher quality productions, A list
talent and unscripted formats coming to the fore who are
potentially huge opportunities for producers and distributors
and especially brands. After all, the soap opera genre
was created by brands in the 50s.
We're starting to see a full circle movement involve in
vertical video with beauty brand Maybelline, Procter and Gamble's
P&G Studios already launching microscopes.
Trend #3 in 2025 is vodcasting. 2025 was the year that Digital
First Studios perfected the visualised podcast and it became
established as a powerful business model.
Diary of a CEO creator Stephen Bartlett's firm raised
$425,000,000 in funding. They're getting 50 million
YouTube views a month. 30% of those views are happening on ATV
Set. They now see themselves as a
media company, not a podcaster like other players in this
space. They build mission based content
ecosystems on a global scale. Goal Hanger Struck deals with
the international football bodies for rights for their
podcasts. Mark Goldbridge, an independent
creator, did that too. The drop covered multiple
creator LED podcasting launches across the year and this pattern
is unmistakable. Video podcasts are now in
attention format, not a passive background medium or just a
companion show for broadcast TV. For production companies, the
opportunity is enormous to apply the skills from TV format
thinking, segment structure in casting, talent, partnerships,
pacing. They all map perfectly into the
new wave of vodcasts. In fact, you could say
vodcasting is now the new TV, just built from the bottom up
rather than the top down. In traditional TV, producers of
course deliver a program, wait for the TX and then wait for the
ratings to be given to them by the broadcaster to work out if a
success or not. In the digital first world, you
drop the content, review the data, change the thumbnails,
maybe recut it and continue to optimise as you go forward,
responding to the audience in real time.
These new digital teams are thinking like Youtubers, content
creators, editors, packaging specialists.
The opportunity is there for Indies to create an own IP and
exploit it in multiple ways, including licensing to TV and
monetizing through FAST and other platforms.
This has got to be the most logical transition step for
traditional TV producers looking to make the move into digital.
My prediction is we're going to see much more of it in 2026 #4
YouTube dominated AVOD and streaming platforms turned to
creators. Now let's talk platforms,
because 2025 was the year the market finally understood
YouTube's real position. The drop covered this again and
again throughout the year. YouTube is no longer seen as a
social platform, it's the biggest AVOD platform in the
world. Ofcom data says UK audiences
watch 4 1/2 hours of TV and video a day, and YouTube alone
counts for 39 minutes of that. That puts it second only in the
UK to the BBC, and viewing is moving more and more to the big
screen. UK viewers watched 16 minutes a
day of YouTube on TV sets, 16 to 34 year olds watch 18 minutes
and over 50 Fives doubled their YouTube on TV viewing, with 42%
of their YouTube time happening on the living room screen.
Then in the US, YouTube became the first streaming platform
ever to take more than 10% of total TV viewing.
It's currently around 13%. No S VOD has ever hit that
level. At the same time, Fast Platforms
Roku, Tubi, Pluto, Samsung TV Plus had their biggest years
yet. Roku hit 2.8% of all TV viewing
in the US. Tubi hit 2.2% in the US.
But the big twist was Fast Platforms starting launching
creator LED TV channels and S VOD starring commissioning
content from creators. On the drop.
We covered Samsung TV Plus launching full 24/7 channels for
Da Man and Mark Rober. Jelly Smack launched creator LED
FAST channels on Roku, and Roku is launching 40 new FAST
channels alone by the end of 2025.
S Creator content isn't adjacent to TV anymore.
It's becoming established as a key part of the ad supported TV
ecosystem #5 brands are now broadcasters.
All right, the next big shift in 2025 was brands stopped becoming
advertisers and started becoming broadcasters.
Now, it probably started much earlier than that, but let's
talk about Foot Asylum in particular.
We've reported on them all year in the drop.
Foot Asylum is operating like a youth entertainment network.
We've covered the new dating format Tick or It with Harry
Pinero, produced by Cowshed Collective, dropping on a
channel with nearly 3,000,000 subscribers.
We've covered Specs Revenge, a Foot Asylum commissioned
entertainment special around the side Men charity football match
at Wembley and they won the Brand Channel of the Year award
at the Telecast Digital Video Awards.
Of course, that's a retailer beating media companies at their
own game. Then of course we've got Boohoo
Man, our story on The Heist and Are You Even Real highlighted
Real Entertainment series being produced as part of a larger
slate of content on their YouTube channel.
This is a brand building formats and franchises, not campaigns,
and brands with smaller budgets are starting to test and
collaborate together across non competing categories to get into
the game. And then there's a host of other
brands, major brands like Starbucks creating their own
studios, becoming lifestyle and documentary businesses.
The brands aren't buying around the shows anymore, they're
making the shows. And finally, AI becoming
plumbing, not posturing. So let's finish with AI. 2025
wasn't the year AI replaced the industry, it was the year AI
became invisible. And that's exactly why it
mattered. AI became infrastructure, the
quiet, boring, everyday plumbing behind the production economy.
Development teams used it to visualise pitches overnight.
Editors used it to automate and become a key part of the editing
process. Social teams used it to test
thumbnails, titles, using it for localisation, versioning, rights
tracking and analytics. It didn't just replace jobs, it
replaced tasks and unlocked speed.
Companies that treated AI as a novelty didn't move.
Companies that treated AI as a workflow have moved faster. 2026
will widen that gap dramatically.
AI won't replace people totally, but people using AI will replace
people who aren't. So how about 2026?
Well, it looks like 2026 isn't going to be defined by a new
platform, new format, or sudden technological breakthrough.
It's going to be defined by a change of intent.
For the last few years, digital First production has been about
speed. More content, more platforms,
more output. Be everywhere, more noise.
What we're seeing now is a decisive shift away from that.
2026 is the year Digital First stops chasing momentum and
starts building value. From publishing content to
building IP. The biggest shift I see in 2026
is the move from publishing videos to building intellectual
property. An upload is no longer a unit of
value. A format is.
A world is a relationship with an audiences.
One off videos, even successful ones, don't build businesses.
Returning formats do. Ideas that can sustain seasons,
spin offs, partnerships and extensions do.
The producers Who Will Win in 2026 won't be the ones who
publish the most. They'll be the ones who design
ideas that compound over time. Engagement, beating, reach.
For years, reach and subscribers was the metric that everyone
chased. 2026 that obsession finally starts to break.
Platforms are now rewarding behaviour that signals intent.
Watch time, return visits, saves, shares, comment depth,
community behaviour. Reach without connection is
becoming worthless. What matters now is whether
people come back, whether they care whether they follow you
across formats and platforms because they trust your voice.
This is the shift from a creator economy to an audience economy.
Loyalty beat scale. Another trend we're going to
see, I think, is YouTube. It's not social anymore.
It is TV. We mentioned that earlier.
One of the most important changes is already underway is
how YouTube is being used. It's no longer behaving like a
social platform. It's becoming the default Free
TV layer of the Internet. Living room viewing is rising
fast. Long form watch time on
connected TV's is growing. Series appointment viewing and
30 to 60 minute formats being actively encouraged.
The implication is massive. Digital first producers are now
competing directly with broadcasters and streamers.
And they're doing it without any gatekeepers.
In 2026, YouTube isn't feeding television, it is television.
Brands stop interrupting and start investing.
In 2026, another continued shift is how brands show up.
The old model of interruption advertising is broken.
Audiences avoid it. Platforms de prioritise it.
Brands know it doesn't work like it used to.
In 2026, more of the smart money moves into brand funded
entertainment. Brands underwriting IP, Co
creating formats, investing in ideas people actively choose to
watch. This isn't branded content as TV
once understood it, it's brands acting as entertainment
partners. Production companies that
understand audiences, not just production, will be treated as
collaborators, not suppliers. Social will become the R&D
engine. Well, it probably already is.
But social platforms are no longer just distribution,
they're the industries. R&D lab formats have been tested
in public, refined in real time, and scaled once they prove they
work. Development no longer happens
behind closed doors. This flips the traditional
pipeline on its head. Ideas don't move neatly from
broadcast to digital. They flow both ways.
The producers who succeed in 2026 will treat publishing as an
ongoing development process, not a release moment.
Relevance beats recency. Another quiet but important
shift is how content ages. Platforms don't care when
something was made, they care how it performs.
Smart reuse of archive, timely re edits, and reframing content
around cultural moments are increasingly outperforming brand
new uploads. This isn't about reposting for
the sake of it, It's about understanding relevance, timing,
and audience mood. Newness in 2026 isn't about
recency necessarily, it's about resonance.
AI scales output. Humans create value.
AI is everywhere in the conversation, but it's not the
headline. In 2026, AI becomes even more
central to the infrastructure, speeding things up.
It unlocks archives, it supports iteration, It reduces friction.
But it doesn't replace the human core.
If anything, low quality AI output is making personality,
authenticity, and voice more valuable, not less.
Audiences can tell the difference.
AI helps you make more. Humans help you matter.
Talent, personality, and trust. We're fully in the age of
parasocial relationships. Audiences follow people, not
logos. They invest in voices,
perspectives, and personalities they feel connected to.
That doesn't mean Polish. In fact, it means quite the
opposite. Looser, more authentic, more
human content builds trust faster than overproduced output.
For producers, their role is shifting.
It's less about managing shows and more about building worlds
with talent at the centre, from commissioning to collaboration.
The old buyer supplier relationship between
broadcasters and digital studios is breaking down.
The future is shared risk, shared data, shared IP and the
collaboration at the idea stage, not the delivery stage.
Broadcasters bring scale, sales and rights expertise.
Digital studios bring speed, cultural fluency and audience
insight. The smartest deals in 2026 will
be partnerships, not transactions.
So if I had to boil all of this down to one piece of advice is
this. Stop chasing the algorithm.
Start understanding your audience.
Build returning formats, not isolated videos.
Spend wisely, Test publicly, Learn fast. 2026 isn't about
doing more, it's about doing the right things deliberately.
So that's our take on 2025 and some predictions for next year.
I hope you enjoyed the show. I want to say thanks for
listening to the show this year, for reading the drop online and
in print and coming to our events, the Digital Content
Forum, the Digital Video Awards, how to make money in digital if
you had the chance to. All three events are returning
in 2026, plus our telecast, digital boot camp, training
courses and one or two other initiatives in the digital first
space designed to help you make sense of the new production
economy. Thanks also to our production
partners, Spirit Studios, who produced the show for us.
We'll be back in January with a new look in the studio and more
great guests. Until then, have a great
Christmas and New Year. And above all, stay safe.
We'll see you in 2026.