First there were the streamers: the seismic arrival of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and the rest, offering previously captive TV viewers the chance to watch seemingly whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. Then TikTok joined YouTube to permanently crush what was once a unified small screen audience into a billion individual pieces.
On both sides of the Atlantic, ratings plummeted. The spectators moved away. Advertising revenues collapsed and budgets followed. For much of the last decade, she felt like the traditional TV industry was running down a steep incline, legs pumping and lungs heaving as the ground moved quickly beneath her feet.
Now, in Britain, a group of bodybuilders, personal trainers and various gym rats have stepped into the breach. Wrapped up in skin-tight Lycra suits, they wield large sticks, run around suspended scaffolding and chase only slightly less muscular members of the audience against walls, in front of a cheering crowd.
In much the same format that first graced American screens in 1989 and British stages in 1992 — “regular” contestants compete in a variety of bizarre challenges against experts, intimidating athletes each week — “Gladiators” in 2024 not only has provided the BBC with a refreshing jolt, but it has also provided the latest indication that so-called ‘linear TV’ may be more resilient than previously thought.
Even in an instant, on-demand media landscape, the idea that people would sit down to watch something — on a TV, at a scheduled time, with other people in the room — has regained some ground.
According to the BBC, 9.8 million people watched the first episode of the British “Gladiators” reboot, which first aired in January. What’s more striking, however, is that the vast majority of those viewers didn’t see it at their convenience. Instead, the broadcaster says, 6.6 million – 10 per cent of the UK population – sat down to watch it as it aired.
“I was really shocked by it,” said Kalpna Patel-Knight, the BBC’s head of entertainment. “You don’t get those numbers anymore at that point.”
That audience remained relatively stable during the show’s run — episodes in early March drew aggregate figures, measured over a week, of about 5.5 million — but the finale, which airs on Saturday, is expected to provide another boost. The BBC has already ordered a second season.
Both the broadcaster and Hungry Bear, the show’s production company, felt the format fit the zeitgeist. Dan Baldwin, CEO of Hungry Bear, pointed out that the Gladiators — with names like Nitro and Saber — capitalize on both the popularity of gym culture and superhero franchises.
“The world of fitness has never been bigger,” he said. “You can’t walk down the street without seeing people in Gymshark or Lululemon. At the same time, the superheroes, the Marvel movies, are huge. ‘Gladiators’ means both of those things.”
The staging of the show – the rowdy arena, the underdog contenders battling the knowingly cartoonish Gladiators, the vivid colors, the dramatic lighting – all have an obvious appeal to younger viewers.
But the critical ingredient is familiarity. “Nostalgia is big business,” Baldwin said. But it is, he added, dangerous: Get it wrong and “the public can be wild. It must be an evolution.”
And so the show’s updates are gentle, discreet. There are new challenges, generally a bit more spectacular. The Gladiators themselves are slightly more rounded characters and more diverse than their 1990s ancestors (including the first deaf Gladiator). The producers have also borrowed from sports documentaries to insert “behind the scenes” footage of the Gladiators’ dressing room.
But, in substance and feel, “Gladiators” is about the same show that aired a generation ago. The crowd is waving big foam fingers. The Gladiators dance to Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust” to celebrate a victory.
For older viewers – parents, grandparents – the whole production is wrapped in a comforting, familiar glow: family viewing, without intergenerational resentment. “We wanted to make something that parents didn’t have to pretend they liked,” Baldwin said.
This allowed The Gladiators to access an audience that, according to the BBC’s investigation, still existed but was, as Patel-Knight put it, “underserved”: the millions of people who still sit down on Saturday nights, but they have to click through a myriad of channels and platforms in hopes of finding something they actually want to watch.
Nor is ‘Gladiators’ an entirely isolated case in Britain. It started airing just as another BBC hit, the reality show ‘The Traitors’, was coming to an end. Its finale drew 8.8 million viewers in linear and on-demand, according to the BBC.
“It’s been an encouraging few months for the industry,” Baldwin said, citing not only the popularity but also the political impact of the TV drama “Mr. Bates v. Post Office,” as a further example. This show, which was based on a true miscarriage of justice, attracted an audience of around 11 million, making it the best drama of 2017 on ITV, the station that broadcast it. This has even prompted UK lawmakers to introduce new legislation.
All of this runs counter to the common consensus that linear television has long since fallen into near obsolescence. But this perception has some basis in reality. “It’s in decline,” said Tom Harrington, head of television at research firm Enders Analysis. “Viewing numbers are being boosted by older people, who only watch TV shows and watch a lot.” (In the United States, some broadcast networks have planned their primetime schedules with these older 60-plus viewers in mind.)
However, this decline is not the whole picture, Harrington said. “People still spend more time watching linear TV than doing anything else, except sleeping and working,” he said. “It still requires tremendous attention.”
Figures from Ofcom, Britain’s broadcasting watchdog, show that two-thirds of viewing is still driven by traditional broadcasters, with the majority coming from linear audiences. It doesn’t feel that way, Harrington said, perhaps because the shows that attract the most buzz aren’t the ones that attract the most viewers.
The biggest change, Harrington said, was in the “community” of the experience: We’re consuming more content than ever before, but we tend to do it ourselves. This means there is less overlap between what young people are watching and what older generations are doing. “Those touchpoints have been lost,” he said. “And that means there’s a lack of shared culture, which is a bit sad.”
Audience data suggests ‘Gladiators’ is the ‘cross-generational’ hit Patel-Knight was hoping for. However, the show may end up being a great filler in a pattern of decline.
This uncertainty, perhaps, explains the excitement surrounding it, both outside the industry and within it. Baldwin said he was often asked when a line of “Gladiators”-themed merchandise would be available.
There has also been interest from broadcasters and producers around the world in bringing the format to other countries, Baldwin said. “Gladiators” did enough to suggest there’s still an audience for traditional, linear TV, as long as you give viewers enough sticks.