Who are We Still Making Drama For? Reconnecting Storytelling and Audiences

Has the audience abandoned drama—or has drama abandoned the audience?
As younger generations spend less time with traditional television and increasingly discover stories through social platforms, creators and digitally native formats, the scripted industry faces a difficult question: can premium drama still command broad attention and remain culturally relevant?
This provocative conversation brings commissioners, producers, studios and new digital players into dialogue to examine how audience expectations, viewing habits and pathways to discovery are changing and what those changes mean for the stories we develop, commission and produce.
Social media, the creator economy and microdrama will be considered not as isolated trends or competing forms, but as signals of a deeper transformation in how stories enter people’s lives, build communities and become part of the cultural conversation. What can traditional drama learn from these new behaviours without sacrificing complexity, ambition or creative identity? And how can storytellers and audiences find their way back to one another?