TV format sector consolidation and its impact on the configuration and ‘stickiness’ of the UK entertainment production market

This article is concerned with the consolidation of European TV format production companies during the first two decades of the twenty-first century and its likely impact on the configuration and long-term sustainability of the world’s leading format production market, the United Kingdom. Theoretically and methodologically influenced by various approaches – critical political economy, meso-level television industries research and scholarship concerned with the locational choice of economic activity – this exploratory study combines the macro-picture of consolidation at the European and international level with a fine-grained case study of the UK television market. It discloses an ecology faced with a range of opportunities and threats, likely to result in marked and enduring changes to UK entertainment.