One in all CAA’s most senior brokers frolicked within the UK late final 12 months taking conferences, however he wasn’t eyeing prime expertise that might break Hollywood, he was talking with the folks representing the subsequent era of content material creators.
Brent Weinstein’s journey to London didn’t go unnoticed within the UK agenting world and was reflective of the place the trade finds itself as 2026 kicks off.
As Weinstein was breaking bread with UK brokers, Offended Ginge, a Twitch streamer who went viral after importing a fictional outburst about chips (fries in U.S. parlance), had simply received one of Britain’s largest leisure reveals, I’m a Superstar… Get Me Out of Right here! A fortnight later, George Clarke, an leisure vlogger with greater than 3 million followers, reached the ultimate of one other juggernaut, Strictly Come Dancing. The debut season of The Superstar Traitors, in the meantime, landed Niko Omilana, who made his title creating prank YouTube movies. In what turned considered one of Superstar Traitors’ most viral moments, he found that British display screen doyen Stephen Fry was a fan.
These staple TV reveals are watched by households up and down the nation, loved by all ages demographic and rooted within the mainstream. Whereas the rise and rise of content material creators has not gone unnoticed by this publication, a shift has taken place over the previous 12 months, and can absolutely proceed into 2026, that has seen creators get extra concerned behind the digicam, as the standard gatekeepers of British TV assume desperately onerous about the right way to stay engaging to youthful audiences. A number of producers inform us prime broadcasting executives at the moment are obsessive about content material creators and the way they will higher leverage their expertise and viewers base.
“It’s not nearly who holds the mic,” says Glenn Miller, who runs CAA’s creator biz out of the UK, working intently with Weinstein. “It’s in regards to the viewers that comes with them. Once you take a look at it that method, you see how seamlessly a creator can match right into a tv format. They’re not simply employed presenters – they create significant added worth.”
That “added worth” was noticeable at late-2025 trade gatherings just like the Edinburgh TV Competition and the RTS Cambridge Conference. Whereas prior to now, these confabs could have paid lip service to content material creators, this time across the stars of YouTube, Instagram and TikTok occupied middle stage. The Edinburgh YouTube session was full half-hour earlier than it began and the fest’s Various MacTaggart lecture was delivered by Munya Chawawa, a multi-hyphenate who broke out doing parody information sketches on YouTube throughout the pandemic.
Jade Beason, a advertising content material creator, says she was “inundated” with requests from conventional TV sorts after talking on a panel at RTS Cambridge. Since then, she has utilized her twin content material creator and advertising expertise to seek the advice of with broadcasters over how their reveals can higher use social media from “ideation to launch” and be extra focused at younger viewers. She thinks bombshell analysis that discovered YouTube is the second most-watched platform within the UK – forward of the likes of Netflix and ITV – modified the sport.
“Information and numbers converse louder than anything and I personally really feel that the previous 12 months has seen folks in conventional industries get up to the ability of content material creators,” says Beason. “The trade is feeling the pinch and it’s tougher to struggle for folks’s consideration. The cash goes the place the eye goes and that focus is on social media and digitial-first channels.”
Beason is turning into one thing of a go-to within the content material creation discipline and has visited the Prime Minister’s dwelling at 10 Downing Avenue thrice over the previous 12 months, together with growing a not-for-profit targeted on serving to younger folks from various backgrounds into the trade. She says TV gatekeepers are realizing that established TV names and content material creators “each converse the identical language, however considered one of us, the content material creator, has a heavy accent.” “So it’s all about collaborating so we will perceive one another a bit extra,” she provides.
A “mutually helpful relationship”?
Munya Chawawa delivered the Various MacTaggart at Edinburgh. Picture: Edinburgh Tv Competition
Chawawa is maybe the best embodiment of how viral expertise can work each behind and in entrance of the digicam on conventional TV. He speaks with Deadline whereas taking a break from a TV undertaking he’s producing and a number of other months after his Various MacTaggart blasted the British TV trade for “ignoring evolution” because the “identical outdated gatekeepers keep on with the identical outdated weapons.”
Chawawa works obsessively as a producer. He has spent the previous fortnight “painstakingly” researching one of the best music for his subsequent undertaking utilizing strategies impressed by celebrated documentarian Michael Moore.
“[TV and content creators] will be such a mutually helpful relationship,” Chawawa says, noting that he was behind YouTube’s first ever BAFTA nomination. “For seven years I used to be leaping on a practice from Birmingham pestering folks on set, filling my boots for when my shot got here. Now you’d be onerous pressed for me to not be an exec [on a project]. I need to die on the sword of each present I make.”
However Chawawa fails to see a lot of a sea change when it comes to a wave of content material creators forging the subsequent era of small display screen hits, and he suggests it “feels a little bit tokenistic” for digital expertise to be requested to be consultants on TV reveals. “It’s like the standard people are saying, ‘Hey younger whippersnapper, you perceive younger folks, may you inform us what the 2025 model of [viral dance move] The Dab is?’.”
Reflecting on his Various MacTaggart 4 months on, he’s downbeat. In his thoughts, “the individuals who ought to have been in that room weren’t there” similar to channel executives and the heads of powerhouse manufacturing corporations. As an alternative, these execs are “resorting to resurrecting previous reveals,” he provides. “You’ve bought [returning sitcom] Mitchell and Webb, Inbetweeners reboots, Strictly Come Dancing ongoing and varied iterations of Bake Off. I take pleasure in these reveals however you don’t need to cling like a limpet to the rock of safety. You need to take the dangers that triggered such pleasure to rumble by British tv within the first occasion.”
On-line is “inevitably going to overhaul TV,” Chawawa believes, and he posits how there must be a “refresh” of the gatekeepers for youthful audiences’ relationship with conventional TV to be rescued from potential “extinction.”
Kaio Grizzelle could disagree with this sentiment. The Channel 4 digital commissioning exec is a uncommon breed, a community commissioner who used to work within the content material creation area, having helped launch Gen-Z-focused way of life YouTube channel Kyra TV almost a decade in the past.
Grizzelle has been one of many driving forces behind Channel 4.0, the community’s digital-first model that makes content material for social. Channel 4.0 is now three years previous and through that point has amassed 2.5 million subscribers and multiple billion views (It took Mr Beast double this period of time to hit the identical milestones, in keeping with Channel 4), handing frequent alternatives to the likes of Catfish UK presenter Nella Rose, Love Island star Chloe Burrows and DiaryRoom, a trio of Muslim girls who’ve made it massive on YouTube.
“It helps that I got here from the skin as I wasn’t essentially constrained by conventional considering,” Grizzelle tells Deadline. “Broadcasters must be taking a look at these areas and at expertise with these skillsets. We work on what we’re commissioning however we exist inside the wider [Channel 4] commissioning division, and all the things is tremendous collaborative.”
Channel 4.0 is a key pillar of the Gogglebox community’s long-term technique and ex-CEO Alex Mahon repeatedly sang its praises at trade gatherings. To the subsequent era of expertise, Grizzelle says this actually does matter. “We’re a younger, pioneering crew and may champion youthful, scrappier, digital first manufacturing corporations,” he provides.
Not that indies need to be “younger and scrappy” to get in on the digital act. Grizzelle’s boss Sacha Khari just lately exited to grow to be an SVP at Sony’s new digital studio, Fremantle has simply opened a digital and branded content material division and BBC Studios has been speaking up the virtues of TikTok to anybody who will pay attention after a success season of Dancing with the Stars that leveraged the platform in a giant method.
Embracing new fashions
Twiggy Jalloh, repped by MonRae Administration. Picture: Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty
Preserving a beady eye on developments has been Bronagh Monahan, who co-runs digital company MonRae Administration and its manufacturing arm MonRae Productions, repping expertise together with gamer DanTDM and Take Time with Twiggy pod host Twiggy Jalloh. Together with the likes of InterTalent, YMU and MVE, MonRae is considered one of a variety of digital companies competing for expertise in London’s bustling scene. Companies specializing within the space grew their employees bases by 15% in 2024, which was double the variety of scripted companies and quadruple unscripted, in keeping with latest analysis. It’s due to this fact no marvel that CAA’s Weinstein was in London a number of weeks in the past, eyeing up agent hirings or attainable boutique acquisitions.
For Monahan, IP is the secret. She reveals her company is working with rights house owners on a variety of reboots of previous codecs for YouTube, with extra information coming later this 12 months.
“There are codecs which have existed over many years and continuously need to be tailored for the time,” she provides. “Viewer expectation is a lot larger now so you possibly can see how inventive and growth folks get pissed off [trying to come up with original formats]. You may’t be sure by the previous fashions. You must kind partnerships, share IP and open issues as much as different income streams to outlive.”
On this vein, Monahan says The Sidemen’s Inside, which is successfully a remake of Large Brother for the YouTube era and was picked up by Netflix, is a stable blueprint. “I hope streamers proceed to do that as a result of finally streamers are investing extra into manufacturing than a YouTube present.”
Monahan, who has labored with Amelia Dimoldenberg and BAFTA-winning Issues You Ought to Have Completed creator Lucia Keskin, is enthused by how the success of creators like Offended Ginge may result in new alternatives for her shoppers. She does, nonetheless, have a phrase of warning for broadcasters searching for the subsequent era of Offended Ginges to bedeck the small display screen.
“Offended Ginge is fast, charismatic and humorous and I can see why he has carried out properly in that dwell atmosphere, however he additionally has the good thing about big Twitch numbers that not each different [digital] expertise has,” she provides. “I actually hope there will probably be different metrics of expertise discovery. Within the TV and movie world you will have scores however you even have critics and tastemakers saying, ‘I feel these things is de facto good and I’m advocating for it.’ Expertise who create on the web don’t all the time have that profit.”
Monahan’s concentrate on reinventing IP for the YouTube era is a brand new demand that’s being met head on by Nicole Finnan, the previous Peaky Blinders exec who now runs a consultancy, Jaeger Media, and was one of many many who contacted Beason after her RTS Cambridge look. Jaeger Media is working with start-up and small-to-mid-size producers, artists and influencers to assist them maximize business alternatives and shield their IP. The concept got here after Finnan noticed the potential to take a “360 method” on Peaky Blinders, which has seen clips of Steven Knight’s smash hit re-versioned for social through a variety of “Greatest Ofs” which have delivered hunderds of hundreds of views. She and Beason at the moment are working with Frank Beddor, creator of The Wanting Glass novels, in a bid flip his franchise “360” in an analogous vein to Peaky.
“I made a decision the market is in absolute chaos and I really like constructing one thing,” says Finnan. “Social media may be very advanced however in case you have a pre-existing model then that’s one thing to construct on.”
Finnan’s firmly held perception is that it’s “harmful to disregard the older demographic” relating to this specific digital revolution, as she cites a number of research discovering that individuals of all ages are watching longform creator content material on good TVs. Streaming platforms have responded to this development by partnering with influencers similar to Netflix with Miss Rachel, Disney with the D’Amelios and Amazon with Molly-Mae Hague. “The hype of longform and monoculture being over is the most important delusion identified to man,” provides Finnan. “My mum watches YouTube and she or he is 82.”
Finnan and Beason are engaged on lots upcoming initiatives collectively and in a way they neatly characterize how the content material creator revolution is occurring throughout all components of the trade.
Beason is quietly assured that these in cost are really catching on and may save TV from “extinction,” as Chawawa phrases it.
“I simply assume if we will do that with our good telephones then we will help extremely proficient, skilled folks with all of the assets they’ve,” she provides. “I don’t assume it’s too late.”
