[Horizon]

Companies such as Endemol and Shine aren't tiny little companies owned by the writers but are owned by the very distributors you mention, which in their case is Murdoch. I agree Murdoch and co are the ones with the big bucks, hence my remark about future funding of shows/films through p2p lenders.

In the future you might get a writer such as Carlton Cruze (creator of Lost) going onto a sci-fi portal which has Lost on it and he pitches to the subscribers of the site for funding for a new show he wants to do bypassing the big studios altogether. If a million subscribers donate a dollar, he gets enough dosh to make a decent pilot which may then be made into a full tv show. If the portal is worldwide, it will be far larger than any national tv channel.

I don't see linear tv going altogether, but I think things will change. You cite a programme on a Saturday at 7pm which gets large audiences. If you compare the size of audiences for prime time shows these days as to what they were thirty years ago, its clear which way things are going. It is very unlikely that any tv show today could get an audience of 20 million people which used to be the norm thrity years ago.

I agree with your Ripper Street example, but that's the same as what we have now with hundreds of linear tv channels and new shows are difficult to find amongst them all. I think better software will sort this out (super tivo??) to guide viewers to new shows.

I know ITV owns the shows I mentioned, but many of its popular shows beyond Corrie and Emmerdale are not owned by ITV and in most cases are either owned either by Murdoch, Sony, or one of the other US studios.