Content London is a development market and conference or, as C21Media founder David Jenkinson describes it, a ‘watering hole’ where creators, producers, commissioners and financiers from across the world come together to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the industry – and right now both are in plentiful supply.

While the conference features unscripted and formats as well as the scripted business, we focused on the latter as we navigated our way around three days and nearly a hundred sessions to get a sense of where the opportunities are for writers and creatives.

It is clear that the ‘golden age’ of tv drama, with its hugely increased number of commissioned hours and increased budgets of a few years ago, led by the US streamers using expensive and noisy scripted shows to bid for subscribers, is over. And although the UK industry is still adjusting, with news of more drama production companies going under, this level of hours and spend feels perhaps more sustainable for our domestic market.

Certainly there was no shortage of sessions in which execs decried ‘copycat commissioning’ (Banijay’s Patrick Holland) and Jack Thorne, in an excellent session on ‘Adolescence’ was frustrated by the ‘focus on crime’ and the lack of opportunities for writers to tell any other kind of stories – though it’s worth noting that even ‘Adolescence’ is a mystery crime story; it may not ask ‘who dunnit?’ but it still uses the high stakes of a murder to ask ‘why dunnit?’.

So are commissioners just looking for crime? Well Sky’s Meghan Lyvers said she’s looking for ‘guilty pleasure’ scripted series while HBO Max’s content chief Sarah Aubrey is eyeing up ‘pulpy, sexy’ projects. Is this the ‘Rivals’ effect coming into play?!

Certainly, there was a sense across the board, brilliantly expressed by Warp producer Emily Fellers, that it has become more challenging to get broadcasters to invest in development of projects early, and as a consequence there are ‘brilliant producers out there struggling to keep their companies going’.

We find ourselves in a slightly more risk-averse commissioning and financing climate that we’ve been used to. But is that because there is less audience appetite for long-form scripted, or because that audience is watching that content elsewhere? And if so, where are the audience and the opportunities?

In his excellent DQ Drama Trends Report, provocatively and perhaps accurately titled ‘Drama waves farewell to TV’, Michael Pickard outlines the shift in the landscape and how the industry is responding to it.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that YouTube is now the most watched content platform in the US, and the second-most watched platform in UK behind the BBC. And not just for clips and user-generated-content, but as a major second window for full scripted series. Check out the Ofcom Media Nations Report for a deep dive into changing viewing habits in the UK media.

But the big story at Content London was the extraordinary rise of vertical dramas. Having already leapt from an industry worth US$500m in 2021 to one worth US$7bn in 2024, this hyper short (eps are typically ninety seconds), hyper hooky, ultra low-budget story space shows no signs of slowing down, yet. As huge numbers of players, from ambitious young start-ups to traditional media brands pile into the space there is certainly no shortage of platforms hungry for stories, and writers to write them.

The big question is how the form will evolve as it matures; in its business model, production practices, format (vertical vs landscape) but also in the kinds of stories it tells and the genres that find an audience in this space. Will the vertical drama evolve into a broader microdrama content ecosystem?

It’s a question that this year’s Studio21 Script Competition posed to the screenwriting community as it set out to find a compelling microdrama series made up of 2-3 minute episodes across 40-60 episodes for the series. The range of genres, tone and stories that emerged was impressive, from dystopian thrillers, to rom-coms and everything in between. The six finalists were invited to pitch their shows live at Content London with Danielle Reid’s ‘Flagged’ chosen as the winner.

So has long-form drama disappeared to be replaced by bite-sized content served up on apps? Well, if the viewing habits of Gen Z, currently aged 13-28, is an indicator, then the jury is very much still out. Hayley moderated the session ‘How to reach, engage and retain Gen Z audiences’, with speakers from Eleventh Hour Films, Little Dot Studios, Tubi UK and LadBible Group. It’s clear that while Gen Z’s viewing habits are part of the driver of increased short-form content consumption across social media, YouTube and elsewhere, they are by no means the only factor. And while as a cohort they value authenticity, transparency (if you’ve used AI you had better have labelled it!), fandoms and niche communities, they are just as likely to dive into a long-form scripted series as any other audience group – as evidenced by the phenomenal success of ‘Wednesday’ and ‘Stranger Things’

We may be past ‘Peak TV’ with fewer shows being commissioned and budgets being squeezed, but what’s changing more dramatically is where and how audiences want to consume them and how they discover them. And the savy producers out there are following the audiences and making drama and comedy in new ways, in different forms and reaching audiences where they are.