This is the End of Television As We Know It

(And Why That’s Not a Bad Thing)

People in TV keep asking the same question:

Are we experiencing the beginning of the end of television as we know it?

My answer? Maybe. But is TV itself dying? No way. Let me explain.

Over the next decade, the industry will change beyond all recognition. Transformation in television is incremental, it’s like growing old. You don’t notice it day by day, but one morning you wake up and the face in the mirror looks very different from the one you remember.

Even in my own career I’ve watched that cycle play out. In factual production, separate Producers and Directors were once the norm. Then came the ‘hybrid’ PD. Innovation in cameras like the Sony PD150 let PD’s dispense with camera crews, and the self-shooting PD was born. I was one of the first to make a broadcast show shot entirely on one. Camera operators complained that the craft was being lost; some adapted, others left the business. Then came the “Preditor” - the Producer/Director-Editor who handled the story, did the filming and produced the cut. Edit periods shrank, costs fell, and control shifted to whoever could operate the kit.

Looking back, it all feels inevitable. Each innovation reduced headcount and tightened process. And tomorrow? If things stay unregulated, the next transformation is easy to see.

But before I get going I don’t want you to see this as another apocalyptic forecast. It’s a reality check. Change is coming whether we like it or not, and I like to believe forewarned means forearmed.

Think about the last great industrial pivot: the motorcar replacing the horse. Before cars, transport revolved around animals: you needed to own one, feed it, stable it. An entire economy of blacksmiths, saddle-makers and stable yards grew around the horse. Then cars arrived and within a couple of generations the model collapsed. Horses didn’t vanish, but they became niche, as did the industry around them. Yes, there are still examples of all of the above, but most changed - stables became multi-story car parks, blacksmiths became mechanics, saddle makers became car fittings manufacturers.

If you lived then and you worked in traditional transport and knew what was coming next what would you do differently? Leave the industry or adapt?

Television will follow a similar path. Classic broadcast will survive, but only for certain genres and legacy audiences. The infrastructure that supports it, compliance teams, edit assistants, large crews will give way to something leaner, faster and more technical. The future of TV isn’t extinction; it’s re-engineering.

The Future Is Data

The real change ahead is no longer about genre or platform but process. I think many people have it wrong. They imagine AI wiping out everyone in the chain. But regulation and public demand will still want humans involved - in front of and behind the camera - there will be just far fewer of them.

The first change to understand is how we get our footage. The professional broadcast camera is about to stop being a lens that is pointed at something and instead it starts to become a data-collection device that captures everything.

That shift rewrites the director’s role. What was once an on-set, people-facing craft becomes a post-production discipline. Editors become the new directors. The decisions that used to happen in the gallery or on set, where to cut, when to pan, how to frame emotion will all be made later, on a timeline. Directing will move off the floor and into post-production. Why do I think this?

Ten years ago, 4K felt novel. Today, 8K is edging beyond niche, and professional cameras like the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro already shoot in 12K. Why go beyond 4K if most viewers can’t see that extra detail? Because higher resolution gives you data headroom. A single locked-off wide in 12K can be cropped, reframed and stabilised into multiple clean angles, all delivered in 4K or 8K. With 8K you already have four times the frame area of 4K, giving plenty of room to move your framing in post. When the captured image contains every possible shot, the pressure to make instant decisions on set weakens.

Obviously, this change won’t happen overnight. Technology still has a way to go: lens quality, sensor noise, codec limits, data size and motion blur still impose boundaries. But eventually the balance will shift toward the timeline.

The march to 16K is inevitable. Whether it arrives in five years or ten, the principle remains the same: more resolution means more flexibility. But we don’t have to wait for it. Alongside that evolution, AI is already filling the gap. It can already extend shots, remove unwanted cameras, and simulate pans or add focus pulls that were never there. The dataset plus AI effectively becomes a synthetic multi-camera rig.

Creative decision-making will be largely leaving the set. The on-day job becomes data capture: get the wide, get the coverage, record clean material. The artistry comes later, when algorithms and editors carve the story from the data.

Which leaves one crucial gap: the human connection. Directing contributors, asking questions, shaping tone or guiding actors - these remain vital parts of storytelling, but they will fall solely to the producer. The producer becomes the emotional interface between story and subject, while the editor-director shapes the visual narrative afterwards. It’s a quiet inversion of the hierarchy that defined production for decades.

Crews shrink. Studios dominate because they are controlled environments. Producers rise because they manage the workflow from capture to AI to edit. What remains is data and the people who can turn it into story.

Studio First, Location Second

If I was going to invest in anything now it would be studios. In this new world where backgrounds can be simulated in post, what you do need for pro grade productions is perfect conditions and a ‘safe’ environment. Studios, I believe, will once again dominate not because they’re glamorous but because they’re controllable. Lighting, sound, insurance, safety - all predictable. Add AI and you can conjure backdrops, extend sets, erase clutter and make a modest space look vast. Why build the palace when you can add it in post?

Which makes Hollywood’s current retreat from some of its historic sound stages all the more baffling. At the very moment the world is rediscovering the value of controlled space, the birthplace of studio filmmaking seems to be letting some of it slip away.

Location filming will of course continue, but with fewer people. Instead of roaming crews with cranes and Steadicams, you’ll see forests of tripods capturing 12 K plates, maybe one handheld for texture. Drones will still have their place, but the artistry of camera movement will become software.

This favours some genres and punishes others. Studio quizzes, talk shows and documentaries thrive in controlled spaces. Big, chaotic reality formats such as survival may struggle because unpredictability still needs human eyes behind the lens. But even there, automation and new technology will take on more of the heavy lifting while humans supervise the feed.

The Money Problem

Despite having to hire studios and expensive equipment, production costs will keep falling, not because commissioners are forcing them down but because AI is erasing departments. Graphics, maps, supers and even opening titles will be generated instantly. AI will scan rushes and build rough cuts in minutes. It won’t always be right, that’s why producers will still oversee it, but the speed will change the economics completely.

Don’t believe me? Look at stunt work. What was once one of film’s most dangerous jobs now happens mostly on green-screened wires. Why risk your life jumping off a building when AI can finish the illusion safely in a studio? And when people say audiences care, I don’t buy it. Look at the Avengers franchise. Does anyone complain that none of those stunts are real? Of course not. I love that Tom Cruise insists on doing his own but that matters more to marketing than to the film itself.

The other major cost in television is regulation. Insurance, safety officers and risk assessments protect large crews in unpredictable environments. As production shrinks into safer studios, those costs collapse. AI will monitor safety, flag inaccuracies and pre-check content. The regulatory load that once justified the expense of “proper television” will evaporate.

So if budgets collapse, how do people still make money? Few want to ask, because the answers are uncomfortable.

The good news is that potentially salaries for the survivors should rise. When you cut thirty jobs and leave six, those expertly skilled six must be paid properly. The producer, the presenter and the editor-director become premium roles.

Production fees will of course have to increase. Ten per cent of a much smaller budget barely keeps the lights on; twenty or twenty-five will be the new norm. With fewer people doing more, margins must stretch.

And AI itself becomes a cost. Professional-grade tools won’t be free. They’ll sit on the balance sheet like insurance once did. Subscriptions and licences will eat into every budget. Soon you’ll see a credit reading “AI by [tool]” just as you once saw “Film stock by Kodak.”

The paradox is that overall budgets fall, crews shrink, yet salaries, fees and AI costs rise. The pie is smaller, but each slice costs more.

The Culture Shock

With all this cost cutting how do you get into the industry? I think Filmschools and courses will have an increasingly important part to play. The junior roles won’t vanish, they’ll just move down-market. Assistant producers, edit assistants, junior researchers and camera trainees will still exist, but mainly on smaller, self-funded or experimental productions. Most will be self-taught, or if they’re lucky, guided by a single experienced producer at the helm. The big training pipelines once provided by broadcasters will shrink as the industry fragments.

As production companies take on more of the commissioning risk that broadcasters used to shoulder, they’ll want to limit exposure. When they test a new strand or launch a piece of digital content, they’ll use junior talent rather than top-tier crews. The result will be a two-tier system: small, agile teams experimenting with low-budget ideas, and elite producer-led units delivering the premium shows that keep the lights on.

Executives rarely say this out loud. To admit it is to admit they can’t protect the pipeline. Yet the shift is already visible. Every time a creator makes a million-view documentary with a laptop and one camera, another hole is punched in the case for large crews. Every time an AI tool cleans up dialogue or reframes a shot, another traditional task disappears.

Governments are nowhere near catching up. Television is showing early signs of regulatory capture: the very bodies that might slow the race are being courted by the platforms and technology firms driving it. Regulators no longer act purely as referees; too often they cheerlead for innovation.

When the industry was analogue, regulation protected standards, labour and truth. In the digital age it protects flexibility and growth. That’s why automation and AI advance unchecked while Ofcom, DCMS and even the unions still work from a twentieth-century playbook as twenty-first-century technology races ahead at software speed.

This story isn’t about television disappearing. It’s about the social contract of production unravelling. The days when a commissioner could boast about creating hundreds of jobs per series are rapidly disappearing. In their place is a new arithmetic: fewer people, bigger machines and a generation learning the craft the hard way, from the bottom up.

The Channels’ Reckoning

The other great shift will be the continuing change in how content is distributed. The old model of linear channels commissioning, funding and owning shows is already weakening, and that erosion will only accelerate. Traditional broadcasters will survive, but they will look more like cinema chains than production houses. They will still curate the best stories and host the big cultural moments, but will commission far less and buy far more.

The cost pressures are relentless and the government seems scared to act. They don’t want to regulate the new technology “bro’s” from San Fran so the inexorable decline will only continue. Advertising is already fragmenting, public funding is flat, and audiences are scattered across platforms that didn’t exist when the current system was built.

As a result, channels will have to choose a side. Some will move heavily into production, as Channel 4 in the UK seems to doing, building in-house units to make bespoke content more cheaply. But most, I believe, will go the other way. They will become publishers rather than producers - licensing rather than creating, persuading Governments they are more like YouTube that TV publishers. It makes sense, why pay for finished programmes when you can fill your schedules without taking on the development risk or the long-term rights burden?

This shift will reshape ownership. The value of a good idea will increasingly sit with the production company or the individual creator, not the channel. Broadcasters will rent prestige rather than build it. The industry will begin to resemble the book trade: a few powerful publishers curating a vast ecosystem of independent authors. And for the first time in television’s history, the people who make the programmes may finally hold the stronger hand.

The Silver Lining

So is there anything positive to take from all this? Yes. Every technological revolution brings pain, but it also brings democratisation. Now the tools of professional storytelling are within reach of almost anyone, just as motorcars democratised travel.

One huge positive is that AI-driven production will open the door to new entrants in television, allowing new voices from more diverse backgrounds to be heard. The walled garden of professional TV is finally being torn up - anyone with vision and a few smart tools will be able to compete - at least at a certain level.

However, while the loss of craft may make it seem that anyone can play, very few will truly compete at the top end, hurdles will still remain. Technology may have lowered the barrier to entry, not the bar for excellence. AI workflows will still cost money. Licences, hardware and data power all carry a price - and that price, I believe, is set to go up. Access maybe democratised but success is definitely not.

Just because you can own a Formula One car doesn’t mean you can drive it. That’s what professionaproduction teams will become - elite supercars piloted by the few who can handle the speed. The difference is that there will be thousands on the grid, not hundreds.

So yes, TV will survive. It will evolve. And perhaps, in the chaos of automation and disruption, a new generation of creators will emerge - leaner, faster and maybe even braver than ever before.