This piece breaks down exactly what that looks like in practice—the five commissioning shifts that are actually moving the needle in 2026, with specific examples from broadcasters navigating the transition in real time. If you’re a producer, a distributor, or a rights holder trying to read where the commissioning money is flowing, this is the map.

How Deep the Linear TV Decline Actually Runs in 2026

The advertising model is getting squeezed from both ends. Audiences are leaving, and the advertisers that remain are paying less per impression because the demographic mix has skewed significantly older—which means lower CPMs for most verticals. Traditional broadcasters are now competing for a shrinking, less valuable linear audience while simultaneously building streaming infrastructure that requires entirely different content economics.

But—and this is the part the obituaries miss—total content demand hasn’t declined. It’s shifted. The same audiences that have left linear are consuming more content than ever across streaming platforms, FAST channels, and social video. The Fragmentation Paradox™ applies here too: 600,000+ production companies are competing to supply content into a distribution environment that’s more complex, more fragmented, and more opaque than at any point in television history.

For broadcasters, that complexity creates both a commissioning challenge and a strategic opportunity. Those reinventing their approach to commissioning—not just cutting budgets—are finding defensible positions. Those waiting for linear audiences to stabilise are running out of runway.

Here are the five strategies defining the broadcasters that are getting it right. As we explore in our analysis of co-commissioning models shaping streamer-studio partnerships, the structural shift is well underway—and accelerating.

Rolla Karam (SVP Content Acquisition, OSN) discusses how the shift away from traditional linear output deals is reshaping content acquisition strategy across 23 MENA countries in this Vitrina LeaderSpeak episode:

Shift 1: The End of Long Output Deals

The multi-year output deal—where a broadcaster commits to taking everything a studio produces over a fixed period—was the backbone of broadcast commissioning for decades. It gave studios predictable revenue and gave broadcasters assured supply. It also locked both parties into content strategies that couldn’t adapt when audience behaviour changed. And it was expensive.

Rolla Karam, Senior Vice President of Content Acquisition at OSN—the premium pay TV and streaming platform operating across 23 countries in MENA and North Africa—is direct about where this is going. In a 2025 Vitrina LeaderSpeak interview, she stated that she no longer does long output deals with major studios. Her position: why commit to content from five years ahead when audience preferences, platform mix, and content strategy are all in flux? A two-year deal at most—then it’s back up for negotiation.

That’s OSN. But it’s not just OSN. Across European public broadcasters, US cable networks, and regional pay TV operators, the multi-year blanket output deal is being retired in favour of title-by-title commissioning, shorter windows, and more granular rights structures. The logic is sound: why pay for a guaranteed flow of content when you can be selective and only acquire what your data tells you your audience will actually watch?

For producers, this is a seismic change. You can no longer rely on a broadcaster relationship to sustain a slate. Every title has to justify itself independently—on projected audience data, on IP value, on multi-territory appeal. That’s harder. But it also opens the door to independent producers who couldn’t previously break into broadcasters’ closed output deal ecosystems.

Shift 2: Co-Commissioning as the New Default Financing Model

The single-broadcaster commission—one network funds a series, takes domestic rights, and optionally sells internationally—is increasingly untenable at the budget levels required to compete with streaming originals. A prestige drama that would have cost a UK public broadcaster £2M per episode in 2018 now needs closer to £5–8M to look competitive against what Netflix and Apple TV+ are putting on screen. No single linear broadcaster can justify that spend against a declining audience base.

Enter co-commissioning. Rather than one broadcaster owning a series outright, two or more commissioners—from different territories or platforms—each contribute funding in exchange for distribution rights in their markets. The capital stack looks more like a film financing model, and it’s changing how commissioning conversations happen.

The TF1 and France Télévisions model demonstrates this clearly. Both French broadcasters have entered into streaming partnerships with Netflix and Prime Video that are structured as co-commissioning arrangements—not just content licensing deals. The broadcaster brings the domestic audience relationship and the regulatory benefit; the streamer brings scale financing and global distribution. Both get content they couldn’t justify solo.

What this means for the Weaponized Distribution™ playbook: content ownership—not exclusive platform control—is now the primary value driver. Warner Bros. Discovery executed this precisely with its licensing arrangement with Netflix, turning HBO’s premium library into a recurring revenue stream while retaining IP ownership. Broadcasters watching that deal are learning that being a platform monopolist is less valuable than being an IP owner with multiple distribution levers.

For independent producers, co-commissioning means the pitch has to address multiple commissioners simultaneously—or have a financial partner who can assemble the consortium. But it also means that a project with genuine international appeal can attract budget that would have been structurally impossible under the old single-broadcaster model. That’s not a small opportunity.

As Andrea Scarso, Managing Partner at IPR.VC—which manages content investment funds for institutional investors across Europe—notes, the co-production and co-commissioning space has become critically more important for producers navigating local incentives, broadcaster requirements, and financing structures simultaneously. Smart producers are treating it as a given from development stage, not a fallback if the first commissioner passes.

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Shift 3: FAST Channels as the Strategic Monetization Layer

Free ad-supported streaming television has gone from a niche play to a mainstream broadcaster strategy in roughly 36 months. And it’s changing the commissioning calculus in ways that aren’t yet fully priced into how producers pitch.

Here’s the structural logic. A broadcaster sitting on decades of library content now has a monetization channel for that asset that didn’t exist 5 years ago. FAST channels allow you to programme themed linear experiences—true crime, home renovation, classic drama—at essentially zero incremental content cost. The ad revenue is additive, the audience is incremental (predominantly cord-cutters who wouldn’t have watched linear anyway), and the marginal cost of delivery is low.

Fremantle and Pluto TV extended their partnership to launch 25 FAST channels globally across 13 new markets, programming content including Baywatch and Three’s Company. That’s a clear signal: legacy library titles with built-in audience recognition translate into FAST channel programming that generates advertising revenue without requiring new commissioning spend.

But FAST channels are also changing how new commissioning is evaluated. Content that fits FAST channel formats—episodic, genre-defined, re-watchable, lower-cost—now has a secondary monetization path baked into its value calculation from day one. A broadcasters’ commissioning exec today is asking not just “will this work on our linear prime-time?” but also “does this have FAST channel legs after its linear window?” That changes the types of content getting greenlighted.

For factual, reality, and lower-budget scripted formats, this is genuinely good news. The economics now stack differently. A series that might have struggled to justify a linear commission on audience projections alone can now be assessed against a combined linear + FAST + SVoD monetization model. The ceiling is lower—but so is the barrier.

Check our analysis on how ad-supported streaming is reshaping production budgets for the full financial breakdown on what FAST-viable content economics look like in 2026.

Shift 4: Data-Driven Commissioning Replacing Relationship Gut Feel

Rolla Karam at OSN is explicit about this transition. When asked about how OSN’s content acquisition decisions are made, she described a dedicated research department that furnishes data to guide what to acquire, from which territories, in which genres. The platform is actively developing AI-driven tools for content curation and acquisitions analysis. Her framing: “we are becoming, and have been, or are becoming a data-driven platform.” The shift from intuition to intelligence is organisational, not just technical.

But OSN isn’t unusual. As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, the shift toward data-informed commissioning is now standard practice at major broadcast and streaming groups—with audience demand signals, search behaviour, social engagement metrics, and retention data all feeding into greenlight decisions that used to depend heavily on editorial instinct.

What does this mean in practice for producers pitching broadcasters in 2026?

• Your pitch now competes against data, not just other projects. A commissioner who runs your concept against their internal demand signals and sees weak audience search intent isn’t going to override that with enthusiasm about your track record.
• Genre and format specificity matter more than ever. Vague concepts don’t parse well against data tools. The clearer and more specific your format, the easier it is for a commissioning executive to model audience demand.
• Comparative titles are a currency. If you can point to a comparable title that overperformed on your target broadcaster’s platform—with numbers, not just reputation—you’re speaking the language of data-driven commissioning.
• Window and territory strategy needs to be pre-built. Broadcasters using data tools are modelling not just domestic performance but multi-territory value from the start. Arrive with a territory strategy, not just a story.

And for broadcasters themselves, the data infrastructure build is a genuine competitive differentiator. The platforms with the most granular real-time audience intelligence will be commissioning earlier, more precisely, and with less capital wasted on content that misses. That’s EBITDA protection built directly into the commissioning model.

Shift 5: Regional Commissioning via Sovereign Content Hubs™

The fifth shift is the one that changes the global map—not just the strategy of any single broadcaster. Sovereign Content Hubs™ are creating commissioning ecosystems in markets that, five years ago, had no meaningful domestic production infrastructure. And broadcasters who’ve noticed are repositioning their co-production and acquisition strategies accordingly.

Saudi Arabia is the most dramatic example. Since the cinema ban was lifted in 2018, the country has built 17 operational studios, grown to over 630 cinema screens, and released 35 Saudi films in 2024 alone. The Vision 2030 entertainment allocation—$71.2 billion across the sector, with $4 billion+ specifically directed at film infrastructure—is creating a commissioning and co-production market that didn’t exist at all less than a decade ago.

The strategic implication for regional broadcasters is direct. OSN’s move to develop original Arabic-language content—announced through its WBD partnership to co-develop and produce regional scripted series—is the broadcaster response to a commissioning environment that’s simultaneously more competitive (more platforms competing for regional content) and more opportunity-rich (more government-backed production capital available). Rolla Karam describes it clearly: the immediate focus for 2026 and 2027 is Arabic content that resonates in the region, local to local, with aspirations to become local to global.

That “local to global” framing is the Sovereign Hub commissioning strategy in its most succinct form. It’s not about servicing Hollywood—it’s about building IP with domestic roots and global export potential. And it’s creating commissioning opportunities for producers who understand how to structure content for regional audiences while retaining international licensing value.

Beyond MENA, South Korea‘s Hallyu-driven content export machine and India‘s multi-language production capacity are both generating regional commissioning windows that global broadcasters are actively competing to tap into. The capital stack implications are significant: co-production treaties, local incentive stacking (UAE offers up to 50% rebates, Saudi Arabia 40%), and sovereign fund backing make regional co-commissions materially cheaper than fully self-financed Western productions.

For producers, this represents the most structural opportunity the linear TV decline has created. Not just a gap left by retreating linear budgets—but a genuinely new commissioning frontier, backed by patient government capital, with built-in distribution in some of the world’s fastest-growing entertainment markets.

What This Means for Producers Pitching Broadcasters in 2026

The five shifts above share a common implication for anyone in the market pitching projects to broadcasters: the old playbook doesn’t work anymore. The pitch that used to get you in the room—strong producer track record, a familiar relationship with the commissioner, a comparable title that performed—is now table stakes, not a differentiator.

What moves the needle in 2026 is intelligence. Knowing which broadcasters are actively commissioning in your genre right now—not which ones commissioned 18 months ago. Knowing which co-commission partnerships are live and which are in development. Understanding where Sovereign Content Hub capital is being deployed and what co-production mandates are attached. And arriving with a financing structure that already reflects the multi-party commissioning reality, rather than expecting the broadcaster to build it for you.

This is exactly the Data Deficit problem that kills deals before they start. You walk into a pitch at a broadcaster who quietly pivoted their commissioning focus 6 weeks ago—before it hit the trades—and you’re presenting a project that no longer fits their 2026 strategy. Not because the project is wrong. Because your intelligence was stale.

Vitrina maps 400,000+ active projects and 140,000+ companies across the global supply chain in real time. That means you can track commissioning shifts as they happen—active development slates, greenlit projects by genre and territory, executive movements that signal strategic pivots. The Insider Advantage™ used to require decades of market relationships. Now it’s a search query.

And for regional commissioning—the Sovereign Content Hub opportunity—Vitrina’s Smart Pairing capability maps co-production partners and active commissioners across MENA, APAC, and LATAM with the same verified intelligence available for traditional Western markets. So you can arrive at a Saudi or UAE broadcaster conversation knowing what they’re actively developing, what their content mandates are, and who else in their network is positioned for a co-commission structure. That’s not intelligence you can develop in a meeting. It’s intelligence you need before you get one.

Frequently Asked Questions: Linear TV Decline and Broadcaster Commissioning

The Bottom Line: Linear TV’s Decline Is a Commissioning Opportunity, Not Just a Problem

The broadcasters treating linear TV’s decline as an existential threat—rather than a forcing function to build better commissioning strategies—are the ones running out of time. The ones leaning into co-commissioning models, data infrastructure, FAST monetisation, and Sovereign Hub partnerships are finding that the structural shift has created real strategic advantages for those willing to move.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most of the intelligence gaps that make broadcasters slow—and most of the information deficits that make producer pitches miss—exist because the market still doesn’t have a reliable, real-time view of what’s actually getting commissioned, where, and by whom. The trades run 6 weeks behind the deals. Relationships surface a fraction of the market. And the Fragmentation Paradox™ means that 600,000+ companies competing for commissioning windows are largely invisible to each other.

That’s the gap Vitrina closes. For broadcasters doing competitive intelligence on peer commissioning strategies. For producers tracking where active development slates are moving before their window closes. And for anyone navigating the Sovereign Content Hub opportunity in markets where the commissioning infrastructure is building in real time, right now.

Key Takeaways

• Linear TV decline is structural, not cyclical: Audiences under 50 have shifted permanently. Broadcasters designing for linear recovery are designing for the wrong future.
• Long output deals are over: Title-by-title, data-validated commissioning is replacing multi-year blanket commitments—even at major premium platforms like OSN across 23 MENA markets.
• Co-commissioning is the new capital stack: No single broadcaster can fund prestige content alone. Multi-party financing structures are now the baseline for anything competing with streaming originals.
• FAST channels monetise the library and change new content economics: Content with FAST legs has a higher combined value—producers who understand this get more competitive commission offers.
• Sovereign Content Hubs™ are creating entirely new commissioning windows: Saudi Arabia’s $71B+ entertainment investment, UAE’s 50% rebates, and regional broadcaster partnerships represent a commissioning frontier that barely existed 5 years ago.