The biggest screen in the home shouldn’t be the slowest to evolve

For decades, British television was as much about habit as content. The epitome of this was the multi-award-winning series The Royle Family which reflected a time when the TV sat at the centre of the living room, before attention became divided across multiple screens.

That feels a long way from where we are now. Reports of Netflix encouraging a “second screen friendly” approach – making content easier to follow for viewers who are simultaneously scrolling on their phones – have sparked debate about whether television is adapting to fragmented attention rather than competing for it.

Whether or not those claims are overstated, they tap into a broader industry reality: audiences consume content differently, and expectations around discovery, personalisation and ease of use are increasingly shaped by digital experiences beyond traditional TV.

For younger audiences in particular, phones act a primary way to discover and interact with content. People no longer compare TV with TV; they compare it with everything else that vies for their attention.

Rethinking the experience, not just infrastructure

If we aspire to deliver better audience experiences and greater value for the industry, the bigger challenge is whether the industry is still designing experiences based on legacy models rather than focusing on how people want to discover content and interact with video services now.

Meeting those expectations requires more than new interfaces or incremental improvements. It depends how quickly experiences can evolve and adapt over time, something that has often been limited by the devices and platforms on which television services run.

Moving beyond device constraints allows television to evolve at the same speed as the rest of the digital world. The biggest screen in the home should no longer be the slowest to innovate.

That shift changes more than technology; it changes pace. For years, the industry has layered features onto legacy boxes and interfaces, resulting in experiences that feel increasingly complex in marked contrast with the more intuitive and continuously improving digital services audiences have become used to.

By moving intelligence beyond the device and into the cloud, television is no longer bound by hardware refresh cycles. Experiences are no longer constrained by chipset capability, memory or browser performance, while innovation moves at web speed rather than long firmware cycles.

The opportunity now is to design around how people actually want to use TV, not how television has historically been built.

Changing where the intelligence sits also changes what becomes possible. Developers spend less time solving fragmentation across hundreds of device variations and more time innovating. Critically, this means innovation happens faster than ever which is particularly important as AI accelerates expectations.

Asking different questions

Rather than focusing on how to improve familiar concepts like the EPG or the remote in an IP world, the industry needs to consider how people discover content and want to interact with television now. It’s not about optimising existing models but designing the next generation of experiences.

Some audiences still prefer familiar viewing habits. Others expect different ways to discover and interact with content. A modern television experience is unlikely to look the same for everyone; it needs to flex around the user.

The UK enters this transition with enormous strengths. Its history in broadcasting, storytelling and public service media remains exceptional. Yet that history has also created complexity which can make it harder to move quickly. 

The priority now is making it easier to evolve at pace, so the UK continues to lead innovation rather than being constrained by the success of what it built before.

Because audiences will not wait. If experiences elsewhere feel more intuitive or more personal, the audiences will head there.

Creating value, not complexity

The technology to move faster already exists. The bigger challenge is making it easier to innovate across the UK ecosystem and aligning around experiences that genuinely work for audiences. No single organisation can solve this complex transition alone. This feels less about capability and more about coordination, alignment and willingness to change.

The question is how quickly the industry chooses to move.

Perhaps that is the real shift from The Royle Family living room to today. The TV that once sat at the centre of the room is no longer judged solely against other television experiences but increasingly compared with the mobile, streaming and digital services used elsewhere. By moving intelligence into the cloud and removing hardware constraints, IP creates an opportunity for TV to evolve at the pace audiences already expect.

Sally Nelson is VP of Streaming Platforms at Synamedia and was on of pour panellists at the 2026 DTG Summit TV: The Bigger Picture.