One of the largest television companies in the world announced on Thursday that it would broadcast on free-to-air television in the UK for the first time – and in doing so rejected the internet as a source of income for content producers.

“We have opted not to put a lot of our content on to the web,” said David Zaslav, president and chief executive of the US-based Discovery . “There is not a very strong economic model, number one, and, number two, from a viewership perspective, despite how aggressively others have gone on to the web, the take-up rate is not that strong.”