How Content Creators Are Shaping The TV Industry: Analysis

One of CAA’s most senior agents spent time in the UK late last year taking meetings, but he wasn’t eyeing top talent that could break Hollywood, he was speaking with the people representing the next generation of content creators.

Brent Weinstein’s trip to London did not go unnoticed in the UK agenting world and was reflective of where the industry finds itself as 2026 kicks off.

As Weinstein was breaking bread with UK agents, Angry Ginge, a Twitch streamer who went viral after uploading a fictional outburst about chips (fries in U.S. parlance), had just won one of Britain’s biggest entertainment shows, I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! A fortnight later, George Clarke, an entertainment vlogger with more than 3 million followers, reached the final of another juggernaut, Strictly Come Dancing. The debut season of The Celebrity Traitors, meanwhile, landed Niko Omilana, who made his name creating prank YouTube videos. In what became one of Celebrity Traitors’ most viral moments, he discovered that British screen doyen Stephen Fry was a fan.

These staple TV shows are watched by families up and down the country, enjoyed by every age demographic and rooted in the mainstream. While the rise and rise of content creators has not gone unnoticed by this publication, a shift has taken place over the past 12 months, and will surely continue into 2026, that has seen creators get more involved behind the camera, as the traditional gatekeepers of British TV think desperately hard about how to remain attractive to younger audiences. Multiple producers tell us top broadcasting executives are now obsessed with content creators and how they can better leverage their talent and audience base.

“It’s no longer just about who holds the mic,” says Glenn Miller, who runs CAA’s creator biz out of the UK, working closely with Weinstein. “It’s about the audience that comes with them. When you look at it that way, you see how seamlessly a creator can fit into a television format. They’re not just hired presenters – they bring meaningful added value.”

That “added value” was noticeable at late-2025 industry gatherings like the Edinburgh TV Festival and the RTS Cambridge Convention. While in the past, these confabs may have paid lip service to content creators, this time around the stars of YouTube, Instagram and TikTok occupied center stage. The Edinburgh YouTube session was full 30 minutes before it started and the fest’s Alternative MacTaggart lecture was delivered by Munya Chawawa, a multi-hyphenate who broke out doing parody news sketches on YouTube during the pandemic.

Jade Beason, a marketing content creator, says she was “inundated” with requests from traditional TV types after speaking on a panel at RTS Cambridge. Since then, she has utilized her dual content creator and marketing experience to consult with broadcasters over how their shows can better use social media from “ideation to launch” and be more targeted at young viewers. She thinks bombshell research that found YouTube is the second most-watched platform in the UK – ahead of the likes of Netflix and ITV – changed the game.

“Data and numbers speak louder than anything else and I personally feel that the past year has seen people in traditional industries wake up to the power of content creators,” says Beason. “The industry is feeling the pinch and it’s harder to fight for people’s attention. The money goes where the attention goes and that attention is on social media and digitial-first channels.”

Beason is becoming something of a go-to in the content creation field and has visited the Prime Minister’s home at 10 Downing Street three times over the past year, along with developing a not-for-profit focused on helping young people from diverse backgrounds into the industry. She says TV gatekeepers are realizing that established TV names and content creators “both speak the same language, but one of us, the content creator, has a heavy accent.” “So it’s all about collaborating so we can understand each other a bit more,” she adds.

A “mutually beneficial relationship”?

Chawawa is perhaps the greatest embodiment of how viral talent can work both behind and in front of the camera on traditional TV. He speaks with Deadline while taking a break from a TV project he is producing and several months after his Alternative MacTaggart blasted the British TV industry for “ignoring evolution” as the “same outdated gatekeepers stick to the same outdated guns.”

Chawawa works obsessively as a producer. He has spent the past fortnight “painstakingly” researching the best music for his next project using methods inspired by celebrated documentarian Michael Moore.

“[TV and content creators] can be such a mutually beneficial relationship,” Chawawa says, noting that he was behind YouTube’s first ever BAFTA nomination. “For seven years I was jumping on a train from Birmingham pestering people on set, filling my boots for when my shot came. Now you’d be hard pressed for me not to be an exec [on a project]. I want to die on the sword of every show I make.”

But Chawawa fails to see much of a sea change in terms of a wave of content creators forging the next generation of small screen hits, and he suggests it “feels a little tokenistic” for digital talent to be asked to be consultants on TV shows. “It’s like the traditional folk are saying, ‘Hey young whippersnapper, you understand young people, could you tell us what the 2025 version of [viral dance move] The Dab is?’.”

Reflecting on his Alternative MacTaggart four months on, he is downbeat. In his mind, “the people who should have been in that room weren’t there” such as channel executives and the heads of powerhouse production companies. Instead, these execs are “resorting to resurrecting old shows,” he adds. “You’ve got [returning sitcom] Mitchell and Webb, Inbetweeners reboots, Strictly Come Dancing ongoing and various iterations of Bake Off. I enjoy those shows but you don’t want to cling like a limpet to the rock of security. You want to take the risks that caused such excitement to rumble through British television in the first instance.”

Online is “inevitably going to overtake TV,” Chawawa believes, and he posits how there needs to be a “refresh” of the gatekeepers for younger audiences’ relationship with traditional TV to be rescued from potential “extinction.”

Kaio Grizzelle may disagree with this sentiment. The Channel 4 digital commissioning exec is a rare breed, a network commissioner who used to work in the content creation space, having helped launch Gen-Z-focused lifestyle YouTube channel Kyra TV nearly a decade ago.

Grizzelle has been one of the driving forces behind Channel 4.0, the network’s digital-first brand that makes content for social. Channel 4.0 is now three years old and during that time has amassed 2.5 million subscribers and more than one billion views (It took Mr Beast double this amount of time to hit the same milestones, according to Channel 4), handing frequent opportunities to the likes of Catfish UK presenter Nella Rose, Love Island star Chloe Burrows and DiaryRoom, a trio of Muslim women who have made it big on YouTube.

“It helps that I came from the outside as I wasn’t necessarily constrained by traditional thinking,” Grizzelle tells Deadline. “Broadcasters should be looking at these spaces and at talent with these skillsets. We work on what we are commissioning but we exist within the wider [Channel 4] commissioning department, and everything is super collaborative.”

Channel 4.0 is a key pillar of the Gogglebox network’s long-term strategy and ex-CEO Alex Mahon repeatedly sang its praises at industry gatherings. To the next generation of talent, Grizzelle says this really does matter. “We are a young, pioneering team and can champion younger, scrappier, digital first production companies,” he adds.

Not that indies have to be “young and scrappy” to get in on the digital act. Grizzelle’s boss Sacha Khari recently exited to become an SVP at Sony’s new digital studio, Fremantle has just opened a digital and branded content division and BBC Studios has been talking up the virtues of TikTok to anyone who will listen after a hit season of Dancing with the Stars that leveraged the platform in a big way.

Embracing new models

Keeping a beady eye on developments has been Bronagh Monahan, who co-runs digital agency MonRae Management and its production arm MonRae Productions, repping talent including gamer DanTDM and Take Time with Twiggy pod host Twiggy Jalloh. Along with the likes of InterTalent, YMU and MVE, MonRae is one of a number of digital agencies competing for talent in London’s bustling scene. Agencies specializing in the area grew their staff bases by 15% in 2024, which was double the number of scripted agencies and quadruple unscripted, according to recent research. It is therefore no wonder that CAA’s Weinstein was in London a few weeks ago, eyeing up agent hirings or possible boutique acquisitions.

For Monahan, IP is the name of the game. She reveals her agency is working with rights owners on a number of reboots of old formats for YouTube, with more info coming later this year.

“There are formats that have existed over decades and constantly have to be adapted for the time,” she adds. “Viewer expectation is so much higher now so you can see how creative and development people get frustrated [trying to come up with original formats]. You can’t be bound by the old models. You have to form partnerships, share IP and open things up to other revenue streams to survive.”

In this vein, Monahan says The Sidemen’s Inside, which is effectively a remake of Big Brother for the YouTube generation and was picked up by Netflix, is a solid blueprint. “I hope streamers continue to do this because ultimately streamers are investing more into production than a YouTube show.”

Monahan, who has worked with Amelia Dimoldenberg and BAFTA-winning Things You Should Have Done creator Lucia Keskin, is enthused by how the success of creators like Angry Ginge could lead to new opportunities for her clients. She does, however, have a word of warning for broadcasters seeking the next generation of Angry Ginges to bedeck the small screen.

“Angry Ginge is quick, charismatic and funny and I can see why he has done well in that live environment, but he also has the benefit of huge Twitch numbers that not every other [digital] talent has,” she adds. “I really hope there will be other metrics of talent discovery. In the TV and film world you have ratings but you also have critics and tastemakers saying, ‘I think this stuff is really good and I’m advocating for it.’ Talent who create on the internet don’t always have that benefit.”

Monahan’s focus on reinventing IP for the YouTube generation is a new demand that is being met head on by Nicole Finnan, the former Peaky Blinders exec who now runs a consultancy, Jaeger Media, and was one of the many who contacted Beason after her RTS Cambridge appearance. Jaeger Media is working with start-up and small-to-mid-size producers, artists and influencers to help them maximize commercial opportunities and protect their IP. The idea came after Finnan spotted the potential to take a “360 approach” on Peaky Blinders, which has seen clips of Steven Knight’s smash hit re-versioned for social via a number of “Best Ofs” that have delivered hunderds of thousands of views. She and Beason are now working with Frank Beddor, author of The Looking Glass novels, in a bid turn his franchise “360” in a similar vein to Peaky.

“I decided the market is in absolute chaos and I love building something,” says Finnan. “Social media is very complex but if you have a pre-existing brand then that is something to build on.”

Finnan’s firmly held belief is that it is “dangerous to ignore the older demographic” when it comes to this particular digital revolution, as she cites multiple studies finding that people of all ages are watching longform creator content on smart TVs. Streaming platforms have responded to this trend by partnering with influencers such as 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 biggest myth known to man,” adds Finnan. “My mum watches YouTube and she is 82.”

Finnan and Beason are working on plenty upcoming projects together and in a sense they neatly represent how the content creator revolution is happening across all parts of the industry.

Beason is quietly confident that those in charge are truly catching on and can save TV from “extinction,” as Chawawa terms it.

“I just think if we can do this with our smart phones then we can help incredibly talented, experienced people with all the resources they have,” she adds. “I don’t think it’s too late.”