The £30 billion question isn’t whether linear TV dies, but whether the industry can split gracefully into what still works and what doesn’t.

By Ben Anchor — Monday, 15 September 2025 · Listen to the podcast episode

I’ve just recorded a conversation about the so-called death of traditional television — the £30 billion revenue crater, the cord-cutting tsunami, Warner Bros. Discovery preparing to cleave itself in two. But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced we’re asking the wrong question entirely.

The real story isn’t death. It’s divorce.

The Marriage That Made Billions

For decades, television was a bundled marriage of convenience: live events married to scripted drama, news married to reality TV, all held together by the dowry of advertising and the iron grip of distribution infrastructure. You wanted Match of the Day? You paid for fifteen channels you never watched. The economics worked because there was no alternative.

Then the internet arrived, and suddenly the couple could live apart.

What strikes me most from the data isn’t the headline figure — though $30 billion in lost US revenue between 2017 and 2026 certainly concentrates the mind. It’s the precision of what’s leaving and what’s staying. 86.7% of cord-cutters cite cost as their primary reason, yet over a third of them come back because they can’t get live sports and news elsewhere. That’s not rejection of television. That’s rejection of the bundle.

The marriage is ending because the partners want different things. Live content — sport, breaking news, shared national moments — still commands phenomenal power. When England plays in a World Cup final, we all watch together. When Stranger Things drops, we watch alone, at 2am, on our phones, in bed. These are fundamentally different behaviours, and trying to fund them with the same business model is like trying to pay for a wedding and a divorce with the same bank account.

The IP Switchover Nobody’s Talking About

Here’s where it gets more interesting, and frankly more worrying. The BBC is pushing for an “IP switchover” in the 2030s — moving everything from aerial transmission to broadband delivery. On the surface, that sounds sensible. The UK’s digital terrestrial television (DTT) infrastructure dates to the 1990s. It’s creaking. Why maintain expensive transmission towers when everyone has Wi-Fi?

Except 17% of UK households still rely primarily on DTT. And those households aren’t evenly distributed. They’re disproportionately lower-income, older, disabled, geographically concentrated in the North, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. The very people who can least afford a broadband upgrade or a new device are the ones who’ll be cut off when the transmitters go dark.

The BBC’s solution — Freely, a broadband-based platform with a potential low-cost dongle — is well-intentioned. But it hinges on two massive assumptions: that broadband coverage will be universal and affordable, and that the audiences most at risk will adopt new technology smoothly. Both assumptions are, to be generous, optimistic.

This is where the divorce metaphor really bites. When you split up, somebody usually gets the house. In this case, the streamers get the house, and legacy audiences get told to find somewhere else to live. The question isn’t whether the IP switchover happens — it almost certainly will — but whether we’re prepared for the social cost when it does.

AI as Couples Counsellor (or Undertaker)

And then there’s AI, which could either save this marriage or bury it entirely.

On one hand, AI offers traditional broadcasters a lifeline. If you can use machine learning to understand audiences at a granular level — not just what they watch, but why and when — you can make advertising infinitely more valuable. You can personalise recommendations without losing the lean-back simplicity that still draws people to linear TV. You can automate compliance, rights management, content production. You can work smarter in a market that’s working you harder every quarter.

But here’s the rub: AI also makes it trivially easy for the streamers to do all of that better. YouTube’s viewing share is up 120% since 2021. It hit 12.5% of all TV time in May 2025 — more than any single traditional broadcaster. That’s not because YouTube has better content than the BBC or ITV. It’s because YouTube has better AI. It knows what you want before you do, and it serves it to you instantly, for free, funded by ads so precisely targeted they feel like magic.

Traditional broadcasters are trying to use AI to defend the castle. The streamers are using it to build a new city next door, with better plumbing.

What Comes After the Split?

So where does this leave us? Not with the death of television, but with its bifurcation into two distinct species.

One species — live, communal, event-driven — will survive and possibly thrive, because it offers something streaming can’t replicate: simultaneity, national conversation, the feeling of watching history unfold together. That’s why sport still commands billion-pound rights deals. That’s why over a third of cord-cutters come back.

The other species — scripted, on-demand, hyper-personalised — belongs to the streamers now. That battle is over. Warner Bros. Discovery spinning off its cable networks by mid-2026 isn’t a strategic pivot. It’s a white flag.

The £30 billion question isn’t whether linear TV dies. It’s whether the industry can split gracefully into what still works and what doesn’t, without leaving the most vulnerable audiences behind in the process. Because right now, we’re cutting the cord on the bundle — and accidentally cutting the cord on public service broadcasting too.

That’s the divorce settlement nobody’s written yet.