Carolyn McCall

All of television is engulfed in the great streaming battle, and McCall’s iTV certainly isn’t sitting it out. It’s entering the fight with a formidable ally in the BBC; the two broadcasters will launch a service called BritBox in the U.K. in the fourth quarter of 2019 with original series, as well as existing British programs like Broadchurch, Gavin & Stacey, and guilty pleasure Love Island. (The service is already available in the U.S. and Canada.) Despite the reputational heft behind BritBox, it’s unclear if the service can compete with the likes of Netflix and Disney—titans in their own right. The launch is intended to counter declining television consumption, online competition, and shrinking ad revenue, the last of which played into a gloomy forecast iTV issued in May. At a Fortune event in June, McCall heralded the current era as one when consumers are willing to pay for good content, a sea change from when McCall was CEO of Guardian Newspapers a decade ago.

Subscribe to The Broadsheet, our newsletter on the world’s most powerful women.