Big tech just moved into the corner office
Plus France TV wins the Palme d'Or, FAST goes interactive and more.
🎬 Cannes just made the case for public broadcasting
France Télévisions co-produced six awarded films at Cannes this week, including Fjord by Cristian Mungiu, which took the Palme d’Or, Mungiu’s second after 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in 2007.
This is the same institution running a €140M savings plan with 212 fewer staff than last year. It is simultaneously cutting costs, launching a YouTube partnership and co-producing Palme d’Or winners.
That combination is only possible with a public service funding model. Before Europe redesigns how it funds public broadcasters, it should look hard at what the current model produces.
🏆 FAST gets its first standing ovation
13% of viewers voted on a FAST platform with nothing but their TV remote.
Samsung TV Plus just picked up four awards across the Shorty and Telly Awards including a Gold in CTV/OTT for its Jonas Brothers FanVote. During an exclusive Jonas Brothers concert on Samsung TV Plus, fans voted in real time for the song performed live on stage. The winning song got played.
FAST has always been passive and underplaying its streaming nature with little on screen innovation. Well deserved.
🎥 Words matter
For the latest episode of Inside the Bundle: The Interviews, David Bouchier, Chief TV and Entertainment Officer at Virgin Media O2, made one thing clear within the first two minutes: he doesn’t use the word aggregator, he uses the word curator. His argument is that aggregation is a commodity, heavy lifting of content that doesn’t actually help viewers make better choices. Curation is something else entirely.
Virgin Media sits on cable infrastructure, two major brands, a loyalty scheme competitors envy and a FAST bouquet. He covers how Virgin Media made that bet, where it’s paying off and where the pressure is coming from.
Watch the full episode here:
Previous episodes: Kenechi Amobi Belusevic, Vincent Stevens.
Coming next: Joan Cruells from Viaplay.
🗓️ SME Live Tickets: Early bird tickets to attend our next Streaming Made Easy Live event in Amsterdam on September 10th, 2026, are now on sale here. Premium subscribers get 30% off. Early bird pricing ends June 19th.
📊 Total Video just lost one of its own
Realytics shut down last week. Founded in 2014, acquired by RTL’s Smartclip in 2022, it spent a decade solving the question every TV advertiser asks: how do I measure the performance of my campaign?
I had no background on the reason behind this shutdown so turned to Frank Liwecka (RTL AdAlliance) for clarity: “a market that constantly demanded better, more neutral TV measurement but never committed to actually paying for it”.
Their final white paper, “Totally Video”, pulls together FranceTV Publicité, M6 Unlimited, TF1 PUB, Magnite, Meta, Publicis Media and more. A decade of market intelligence, free to download. A lot of great talent now looking for their next move, go check them out.
🎙️ Big tech now runs the upfront
We caught Mike Shields just after the upfront wrapped. We wanted his take on what actually changed this year, what is real and what is PR jargon. Spoiler: the upfront is alive and well but it has a new centre of gravity.
👉🏻 APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | YOUTUBE | DEEZER with more platforms here.
📺 “This is so telly”
Brilliant opener from Matt Brittin as he’s being interviewed on his 1st day as CEO of the BBC after eighteen years running Google’s EMEA operations.
His first memo to staff was pragmatic right out of the gate. Brittin warned that “tough choices are unavoidable” as the BBC works through its savings programme. Welcome to public broadcasting, Matt.
He was picked, according to BBC chairman Samir Shah, for his “deep experience of leading a high-profile and highly-complex organisation through transformation.”Translation: the BBC’s board didn’t want another broadcaster. They wanted someone who had watched big tech eat the media industry from the inside for two decades and knows how that machine works.
Brittin is the headline but he’s not the exception. Priya Dogra (Channel 4), Clement Schwebig (RTL Group), Reemah Sakaan (Channel 5) and Sam Tewungwa (UKTV): every one of these appointments puts someone from a digital, streaming or platform background at the top of a European broadcaster.
Strategy, content investment, platform partnerships: all of it gets filtered through a different lens from here. The charter renewal question, the iPlayer transformation, the YouTube deal announced last month, these are no longer tension points between a legacy mindset and a digital one. The digital mindset just moved into the corner office.
Whether that’s enough is a different question. Brittin has no editorial experience and a workforce watching the headcount shrink. But the BBC’s problem has never been creative talent, it’s been the inability to move at platform speed without the platform economics. That's the job. That's why he's here.
The Telegraph’s diary of his first week makes for a good read: My first week as head of the BBC, by Matt Brittin.
That’s it for today but before you go: