HBO Max launch frustrations, how Alan Sugar got the gig on The Apprentice, and the shows you couldn’t make today...

Hello.

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Hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care journeys, wellness tips and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, you'll love this podcast as well. Because we go so much deeper than beauty. I talk to incredible and inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skin care experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for naked beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us.

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Hello and welcome to Insiders, a podcast all about the world of television with

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me, Peter Fincham and me, Jimmy Mulville.

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This is the podcast for people who love tv. I do want to know a bit more about what goes on behind the scenes.

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So what is it this week?

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Oh, well, we've a new series started this week, Jim by John Morton, written and directed By John. Yes, 2020.

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Oh, I want to watch that.

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I don't want to. This podcast is not for us to plug our own work, but I think it's brilliant and do watch it.

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And it's got the same.

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It's got Ian. Ian Fletcher, the character played by Hugh Bonneville.

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Brilliant.

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Who was previously the head of values at the BBC.

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Head of values at the BBC.

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Before that he. He launched the 2012 Olympics in London and now, of course, was a great success.

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Yeah.

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Now he's been recruited as the director of integrity for 2026, an event taking place with football in America. I'm choosing my words carefully.

1:35

Yeah.

1:45

Because we're not allowed to mention the organization behind it. He does. It's mentioned in. But continually with bleep. So you just hear the word F. You probably know the name of the horse.

1:45

Quite appropriate.

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Indeed. So we don't ever call it quite.

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And why aren't you allow did it for legal reasons.

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You make sure of legal and comic. I would say because it works quite well comically to avoid it. But. But you don't want to tangle with that organization legally.

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No.

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You know what's he called? Infantino.

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Yeah.

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That man.

2:14

Well, he's like a kind of mafia don.

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I don't think you want to come into the office in the morning and find a letter from his lawyers or

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wake up in your bed and find a horse's Head next to you.

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We might not even be able to say that on this podcast.

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Oh, it's a joke

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about him. There's no evidence so far that he's

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say this on the day of my daughter's wedding. I'm sure he's not.

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I'm sure he's.

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He's a perfectly nice man. He's not. I don't know why we're implying he's a member of the mat.

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I've got a horrible feeling he isn't a very nice man. But let's see.

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He's a very boring.

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He's the man. Hang on. He's the man who created. We can say the word now. Created a FIFA Peace Prize and gave it to Donald Trump.

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Yeah.

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Now, whatever satire John Morton comes up with, and he's a brilliant satirist, that's beyond satire.

2:56

Yeah. Will they give it every year?

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Will they give it back? Will Donald Trump have to give it back?

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They'll give it to Joey Barton next year.

3:07

Okay, goes. So that's on this week. And you got. By the way, I noticed I've Got News for you is running. So it started last week.

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Started last week.

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You've got Monty Don hosting this week.

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Yes.

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Interesting booking.

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Yeah.

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I'd love to know a bit about what conversations go on at Hat Trick about who is and isn't a good guest host, who. Who's not made the grade over the years or who have you regretted yet? Come on, give us some. Give us some color.

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No, we've had some really brilliant people. I mean, you know, we were forced to get the rotating hosts in, Peter, because.

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Oh, yeah, we don't need to go.

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We don't need to go down that road.

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Yes, when Angus Dean was badly represented,

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it was one of your clients at the time. And, yes, he was very badly represented by his agent. Um, so. But we had some, you know, really unexpected delights. We once got William Shatner on wow. And I'd heard on the Grapevine he'd do anything for $50,000. Literally anything. So we. We discovered he was in Berlin and we got hold of him. I don't know how we found out where he was staying. And anyway, he agreed to come and host the show that week. He had no idea where he was, what the show was.

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Never seen the show.

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He'd never seen the show.

4:20

Could he read an article?

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Yes. And, boy, he was great with the audience. I mean, he was great with. I think I've told this on the podcast before where he went on about. About Ilfracomb at one point, a story that was set in Ilfracomb and Paul Milton said, you never been to. You've got no idea where Ilfrakum is, have you? Of course I have. I know it very well. It's laced with prostitutes. And. And the following day we got a complaint from the MP for Ilfakrim, who said he's going to raise it in the House of Parliament, who cast aspersions on his town.

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So, you know, the most popularity of Crimson's had for decades.

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And. But we've never. I know, I mean. And also we can speed things up in the edit. So Neil Kinnick, God bless him, came on and it took a while because, you know, he. He likes to talk. But the edits, the editing process. Gordon. Gordon Ramsay came on and said, I've been told I'm going to make lots of mistakes tonight and not to worry about it, but if I can tell you, this is the whole audience, by the way, if I make one mistake tonight, you're all invited to one of my restaurants. So five minutes later, he made about 20 mistakes. And Paul Merton looked at his watch and said, well, I'm free on Thursday. And everyone laughed. And then he called Paul Merton a rude word. And then Gordon Ramsay swore. Gordon Ramsay swore. Yeah, I know, it's unbelievable.

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This goes against all we know about him.

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He.

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He went through the C ceiling. And, and, And Paul. Paul doesn't like bad language that much, actually. He said, listen, mush. He's called Gordon. He said, listen, mush, I don't come into your kitchen telling you how to knock up a stank kidney pie. Don't come on this show and start throwing your weight around. And I think Gordon Ramsay, if you spoke to him today, said it wasn't a very. I don't think he enjoyed. He was out of his comfort zone.

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Well, it's a gamble for a guest host, isn't it? To that point about editing, you remind me of the very early days of the Apprentice is slightly indiscreet story and, well, where it wasn't clear who was going to present it. In. In America, the Apprentice was presented by somebody called Donald Trump. Oh, yeah?

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What happened to him?

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Here in the uk, we need a, you know, big business figure. And as you. As you would expect, there was a lot of discussion with the BBC. Names were thrown around, kind of Richard Branson or whatever. Then the idea of Alan Sugar came up and BBC weren't very keen and they. One, they said, he's a bit of a. Has been from the 80s because he'd had Amstrad in the 80s, remember after that, all he'd done run Tottenham Hotspur.

6:17

Yeah. He made a fortune with Amsterdam.

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Yeah, no, no, he's a very, very successful businessman. Nobody's doubting that. But he wasn't very current at the time. But the other point after watching the audition tape that the BBC made was, well, he's, he's quite slow and he's not funny or witty. And a guy called Peter Moore, who was our exec who was on it, said simply said to the BBC, he'll edit. Well, I'll make him brilliant. He did, he did.

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And this is my editing.

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This is the beginning of the Apprentice when we were first doing it.

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But you, you produced that?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a tall paper, was it? Of course. Yeah, yeah. Oh, blimey, yeah. Came over from.

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Yeah, yeah.

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America was one of those things. Fremantle occasionally would buy a format in America that was a hit and then bring it to all. Not just to us in the uk, but all their other territories. Say, guys, you want to go out and sell it?

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Yeah.

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So in the case of the Apprentice, even though we made it quite different from the Donald Trump version, it was obviously a brilliant format, but it wasn't obvious who would present it. But, but Peter Moore was right. Yeah. Alan Sugar editing's a wonderful thing. You can make Alan Sugar look witty and quick witted.

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Yeah.

7:53

Neither. Which frankly, he really was. Then there was another one. The reason I mentioned the other one is we're actually making a series about it. At Expectation was a series that they bought in America called the Swan. Have you heard of this?

7:53

No.

8:07

Okay, so the Swan was a series where people competed to win plastic surgery because they want to have a, you know, new nose or plumped up lips or something.

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Right.

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That why they call it a swan?

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Not.

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Not well, because the duckling turns into the Swan. The ugly duckling turns into the Spot.

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Oh, nice.

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So it's called the Swan.

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You've got to do too much work to work that one out as a title.

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Well, you can probably do too much. The market, the marketing can deal with that.

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That's too much math.

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So Fremantle bought it and, and said kind of, you know, great news, guys. We bought the latest hit in America, the Swan and we looked at it. When I say we, it was me and my colleague at the time, Daisy Goodwin.

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Yes.

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We looked and said, we're not going to go and sell it. We don't want anything to do with it.

8:43

Yeah.

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It's repugnant.

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Yes.

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And Fremantle weren't Very pleased about this as well. It works. We buy things, you sell them. No, no, our reputation here in the UK rests with having some kind of judgment, some discretion as to what we can't sell. And this idea, the swan is a repugnant idea. But that, so we're, we expectation are making a series about it now which is kind of like the recent series about America's top model or another series we made a couple years ago about Miriam, the reality show with Miriam. Do you remember this one?

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No.

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This is the, this is the show where a kind of eight red blooded young men.

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Oh yeah.

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Peaked for the hand of this beautiful girl called Miriam. Except, you know, she's, she's, she's not a girl, she's trans, she's, she was born as a man.

9:27

Right.

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These are all examples of shows that at the time people thought, yeah, this is kind of at the edge of what you can do in a reality show. But in the culture of 2026, you look at and think, how could you have done that? You know, that's shocking. Yeah, shocking. Television and, you know, revisionism is going on all the time. There's a series being made, I think by 72 films who are very good about the X Factor and not that the X factor involved plastic surgery or.

9:37

Well, not on the contestants.

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I think there's a fair amount said about that.

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There's a fair amount of Botox going on on the panel, I would have thought.

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But yeah, I was, you know, pretty heavily involved in the X Factor, both running talkback tens who made it and then at ITV commissioned it and you know, the lens of 2026.

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Yeah.

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Shining, you know, looking at something from that era through a modern lens, looks a bit different.

10:28

Well, you know, as you're talking, I was thinking about that. I mean, remember when B Sky B launched, it was called B Sky B to begin with.

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Yes.

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And it became sky the great Paul Jackson who, you know, was the producer of the Young Ones and went on to great things. He, I think he was the first head of comedy or director of programs of it and they commissioned a sitcom called Heil Honey, I'm Home.

10:42

Oh yeah, I remember that.

10:59

About Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun moving in next door to a Jewish family.

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Was it even, was it tried by Jewish writers? Am I right in thinking that? I think that may have been a line of defense of it. But, but it never, it never aired.

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No, but I mean, imagine pitching that now.

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Yeah, no, you, you, you, you, you wouldn't. I mean that's a slightly different form of Unacceptable from a reality show that offers people plastic surgery as a prize, which feels so distasteful but in a completely different sort of way. And of course it's, it's inevitable and not even wrong that what looks right in one era will look wrong in another era. I mean, you wouldn't commission Till death has depart today. You wouldn't commission, which I think, I

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think is a shame.

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Well, you loot what you lose. You throw baby out with the bath water.

11:44

I think it's a shame.

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You lose a great comedy.

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Yeah.

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But certainly you need to be quite. You need to be our age and beyond to remember Till Death has to part that the central character Alf Garnet, played by Warren Mitchell, was a great, great sitcom character, but he was outwardly racist.

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He was a bigot.

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He was a bigot.

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But the people in the show laughed at him. They did laughed at him and they laughed at him. And he was, he was a prototype

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reform voter, wasn't he?

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Yeah, totally. And. But he was a figure of fun.

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It'd be interesting to see, you know, what programs today that people make and people enjoy. In 10, 15 years time, you'll think, oh, wow, can't believe they did that. Very hard to say. The nature of a changing culture is that you're. You don't see what's around the corner. I mean, if you take the. The X Factor, which after all ran until about five years ago and was in its heyday, what's wrong with that 10. Oh. I mean, if you turned up for an audition, an X Factor audition, and you sort of could sing, okay, you probably wouldn't make the cut. If you could sing like an angel, you make the cut. If you can't sing for toffee, you make the cut.

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So you mock them.

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And then Simon Cowell says something like, have you had professional singing lessons? And the person says, yes, and he says, you should ask for your money back. Goodbye. And the person goes off in tears.

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Yeah.

13:06

Until that was the stuff of the X Factor. And today it looks like bullying.

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Well, it's called punching down.

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Yeah. Yeah, it looks, it just looks like cruel and mean and all that. Kind of some cow.

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I found that hard to believe.

13:16

So there must be shows today that will one day be.

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Maybe. Maybe.

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I'm damned if I know what they are.

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Maybe our listeners can write in with a list.

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Yeah.

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And we can read them out.

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What do we, what do we love today that will one day think. I can't believe I watched that and enjoyed it. Now, something I want to talk about.

13:29

Yes.

13:37

And I'm just interested to know how your experience with this is over the last couple of weeks. We've had the launch of HBO Max. Yeah, exactly. Notice that.

13:37

Yeah.

13:44

And it crops up everywhere. I noticed if I order an Uber, I'm waiting for my Uber and there's advert for HBO Max, but when I can block that.

13:45

By the way, you know,

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I know you don't order your own Ubers to me, so this. This wouldn't be an.

13:55

I do now, actually.

13:58

Do you. Okay. You join the people. Yeah. So why. I don't know if you found this. There was a football match the other day that I needed to get onto at Max. Yeah. And then I suddenly find a thing. Yeah. So we're 20 minutes into the game and I'm still struggling with QR codes. And then it wants me to put in my login details for Discovery plus or something like that. Then I got a thing saying, you need to resubscribe.

13:59

Yes.

14:28

And I thought, I don't trust this because you mean I'm going to pay. Me paying you twice. And I somehow got there in the end, but I'd missed a couple of goals and it was very annoying.

14:28

Yeah, no, I had exactly. I. Exactly. Same.

14:38

If you're HBO Max, you have seen the launch of your service a mile off. You've been able to plan for it, and. And you should, you would think, make it very easy for the user to get on it. But can I explain something very confusing?

14:40

It's owned, obviously, by Warner Brothers Discovery. Right.

14:56

Indeed.

15:00

And they also own tnt, which is this big sports thing.

15:01

Yeah. Which TNT has. Yeah. And now subscribe to as well.

15:05

So I thought, oh, great. But. Oh, no, no, it's not that simple. Because the whole. The journey, my journey the other night of trying to get from TNT to HBO Max had me in.

15:08

Me shouting, you turning to. I've got it.

15:19

Me shouting at a television screen and my wife laughing at me.

15:22

So is it just you and me? Are you. You and I the only people among people who would like to watch HBO Max, who at the moment would feel. I'm not going to subscribe to your bloody service?

15:27

Have you watched the Pit on it yet?

15:37

No, I don't. I. My wife's watched it from beginning to end.

15:39

My wife has watched it, the whole thing.

15:42

I don't know about you, Jim, but medical dramas, I'm never down for medical dramas. No, they always make me think I've got those symptoms or, you know, I don't. I don't want to hear about Some obscure disease. Because I'll end up thinking you've got it.

15:44

Well, one, one episode was about a pregnancy, so I think you'd be safe, you'd be safe there.

15:56

I've watched Call the Midwife. That's a kind of medical drama. No, the pit people tell me the pit's brilliant.

16:01

It's brilliant.

16:05

But when I say people, I mean my wife.

16:06

It's a 15 hour. It's a. Is it 15 episodes? And each hour is a.

16:08

It's sort of, er, Modern age.

16:13

Yeah, but it's, it's in real time.

16:14

Okay.

16:16

I mean, it's.

16:17

I mean, is it a single shot?

16:17

No, no, it's not like Boiling Point, but it's basically a kind of. It's a high octane, you know, thriller set in an ER with Noel Wylie, who was in ER as a young man and now he's a grizzled middle age.

16:18

I know I won't get around to it because I just never deal with medical dramas. But just sticking on HBO Max for a minute. So HBO Max's cheapest package is priced at 4.99amonth, with ads undercutting rivals Netflix, Disney and Paramount by one pound. And I find that when I sort of consider this sort of thing, I find I have two totally contradictory thoughts. On the one hand, that's not very much money because, you know, 4.99amonth compared with the sky subscription really isn't very much. But on the other hand, how many of those are you willing to pay? And the nature of any subscription, and somebody wants to explain this to me, how do subscription based businesses, how do they thrive? Partly on inertia because you've pressed a button, subscribed, and then you forget you've subscribed. You go on paying this 4.99amonth, even though you might not watch it. But I'd be fascinated to know in this isn't really our expertise at all, but people in kind of pricing, marketing expertise. Are we reaching peak subscription demand, viewers? Well, I'm not saying rip off, because for your 499amonth, look at what you get.

16:35

You can watch Friends, you've got Harry

17:54

Potter, you've got one battle after another. You've got you. You've got HBO shows like the Sopranos, Band of Brothers, the Wire, Succession. I mean, for, you know, that'll keep me going for a long time. Yeah, but are we meeting? Are we reaching some peak in terms of the number of subscriptions? People are gonna.

17:55

But also I think that it's just The. I mean, when I, I sometimes go through my subscriptions on my phone, you know, you can, you can.

18:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

18:19

And then you see, why.

18:19

Why did I subscribe to National Geographic magazine?

18:21

Is that.

18:24

Yeah.

18:25

What even is that? You find out. It's some, it's some, you know, Bird Watching Monthly. It's a curation of all the best articles written, you know, this year or something. Which you're never going to read.

18:25

No, it's a good kind of spring cleaning thing to do.

18:35

I spoke, I spoke once to a marketing, a digital marketing guy who said

18:37

he lived a life.

18:41

No, no, he said. Yeah, it was really. It was really, really, really interesting conversation. And he said, we can boost people's revenues online now by putting a QR code in the corner of a screen when they're watching content they like. We can have a call to action on a QR code that they can actually get merchandising from that artist or from that piece of content.

18:42

Yes.

19:04

And he said, because people's brains are now so. Because we're creating millions and millions of people with neurodiversity and ADHD and lack of impulse control. Quote, he said, they, they click on the QR code even without thinking about it, and suddenly they're buying something they don't necessarily want because it's so easy. I think that's part of the.

19:04

Clothes are very clever on that. Yeah. You point your phone at the telly.

19:26

Yeah.

19:30

It seems to still be out of focus and about that large in the screen. And yet the thing comes up and, and I agree. QR code.

19:30

We sound like two monkeys in front of typewriters.

19:39

It's a well known fact that if you leave enough monkeys in front of a typewriter, it'll lead the typewriter. They'll write Shakespeare.

19:43

Oh, yeah. Okay. Good luck. Well, maybe, maybe Titus Andronicus, but. All right, so I do want to just. I know we talk about the BBC a bit.

19:50

Okay. Yes.

20:00

But I do want. No, I want to talk about the Executive Complaints Unit.

20:01

Right.

20:07

You were just talking about Hugh Bonneville playing the head of integrity or the head of values. Well, there is a. There is a whole department of the BBC called the Executive Complaints Unit, and they're there to adjudicate on whether a complaint made by one of the audience is to be upheld or not.

20:08

Who is in this unit? Is it just sort of BBC? Are there any independent outsiders? These are just BBC big.

20:26

They're a bit like ice. And they all wear masks because they can't have their identities known. Mainly because they'd be laughed at in the streets. Yeah, because this, I think, is a waste of license fee money. Because it's.

20:32

Well, hang on. We want the BBC to take complaints. Yes. But deal with them with a due process.

20:46

Well, then you could complain to the boss. Complain.

20:50

You know, can you complain about the Complaints Unit?

20:52

I think, you know, I think you're right. You need some kind of transparency. We've had thousands of complaints. But let's talk about the story this week. The story this week is the Executive Complaints Unit have just decided many, many, well, many, many weeks later that the racial slur that was inadvertently blurted out of the Baft Rewards by.

20:55

By the man with John Davison, who

21:17

suffers from Tourette's, who had no intention of doing so, but, you know, was forced to by his condition, to blurt out the racial slur. The Executive Complaints of the BBC has now said, yes, it was a mistake to do that. It breached BBC's editors, the editorial standards, and to leave it on the iplayer was a serious mistake.

21:19

Well, well, but we know that, Sherlock.

21:40

Exactly. And so how many hours were spent adjudicating on that? And, you know, recently we did a joke on have I Got News for you where we talked about David Beckham calling the honors committee in 2013. A bunch of C words. Yeah, a bunch.

21:43

I was gonna say a bunch of twins.

21:59

Oh, yeah.

22:00

And acceptable.

22:00

I think we. Maybe we can. It's a quote. And so we used it in the show as a quote. It was an email. Yes, he sent. And Maisie Adams said, then said something very funny, which got a big laugh. Katherine Ryan then said, I'm not sure we are allowed to say the C word on the BBC, but we did mention Victoria Beckham a little while ago, so we'll accept that. So it got a big laugh from the audience, and it went through all the editorial processes. But now, six months later, we're now talking to the people. I don't know whether we resolved it or not yet what I should be talking about it, but we're going back and forth, wasting a lot of time. Three complaints. We had three complaints. Six million people watched the show that week, and we had three complaints.

22:02

And still some press and still some.

22:42

Some person at the. At this, you know, I do.

22:44

I. I don't want to come out. Well, I don't mind coming out in sympathy with the BBC. I mean, it's one of those things. However you deal with complaints, you. You're right, you either look like a sledgehammer cracker, you overdo it. Or you underdo it. When I was the BBC, by the way, talking the T word, twat, there was a memo, famous memo, which obviously was known as the twat memo, explaining that depending on which part of the country you're in, that word is less

22:47

or something

23:15

from where I come from. But my memory is that Yorkshire's the place that you can't. I mean, in Yorkshire, possibly because there's a disproportionate number of twats. It's a particularly rude slur.

23:18

Yeah.

23:29

Just lost all our Yorkshire listeners.

23:30

Yeah. No, people are listening in Yorkshire, don't worry. Not to. Inside of the tv.

23:31

Whereas. Whereas in the south, it's quite a mild word that, you know, you might call somebody a twat just as a sort of. Right. Calling them idiot. Did you know that? What about Liverpool, Jim?

23:35

You're called a twat as well. No, we don't use bad language in Liverpool. It's a stereotype.

23:46

Yeah.

23:53

Which we're trying to shrug off. No, there was one, there was one complaint we had which was Paul Merton made a joke about Brian Blessed had hosted Haven't Got News to you the previous week and the following week Paul Merton said to the then host, I forget, maybe Alexander Armstrong. Oh, we had Brian Blessed on last week. He's quite, he's quite loud. Everyone laughed. He said, in fact, they found his family this week and they were in a dungeon underneath his house. Apparently they built it themselves. Right. So there was a kind of mild reference to that awful story of Fritzel. Of Fritzel. So we get, we the. A man in Belgium, who's this, who's watching the show illegally, complains to the BBC, Seriously. And the BBC passed it on to us.

23:53

So I apologize. It wasn't Belgian, he was Austrian.

24:36

I know, but this was a viewer European. Fritz wasn't complaining.

24:39

They keep families in their basement out there. It wasn't.

24:42

It wasn't. It wasn't Fritz complaining. It was some bloke in Belgium. So we write back and say, you know, clearly it wasn't a joke about that terrible story. It was a joke about Brian Blessed being very loud and his family wanting some peace and quiet. So that's the end of it. Oh, no, no, no, no. We get another call from BBC saying the man is now written to the Director General and the Director General would like you to apologize again. I thought, well, I've apologized once and the rule is you apologize and then you move on. So I wrote back to him again and I said, I'm enclosing the link to a very good hobbies website. I suggest you get a hobby. I got into terrible trouble with the BBC for that.

24:45

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26:23

so there's a couple more stories about BBC One is in the BBC Children's has promoted the head of digital media to the newly created role of head of YouTube. The road has been devised for BBC's landmark deal with YouTube which will see it create original content for the platform for the first time. Now I know you're big on this subject Jim, and on YouTube and it's, it's kind of fun enough. It was when I was at the BBC in the mid 2000s YouTube came into being.

26:54

Yeah, it did.

27:22

It's 20 years and everybody felt very threatened by it. But they absolutely wouldn't have foreseen a world in which the BBC would have had it record of YouTube. So one resin. But one reason being that people thought YouTube was forever in a day going to be about very short video clips. That was seen as the threat that people's attention span had shrunk to 90 seconds as it were. And the problem with television in the old sense of the word was that it was long things programs. But of course, you know, arguably YouTube has, has moved into that world and conquered all its rivals. It's an eye catching announcement and the BBC like other organizations always likes an eye catching announcement. Why are we talking about it? So they're going because they made a thing of it.

27:22

Yeah. So they're going, they're going to launch seven channels of content aimed at children.

28:10

Yes. Is this stuff, I mean so they're

28:15

going heavy in on the children.

28:17

Is this stuff you won't get to see on BBC iPlayer? Surely not. You must see it on beach.

28:18

No, it's not for the iplayer and in fact they're quite. We, I had a meeting with the, you know, really smart people in there and they said well actually we think YouTube content is different to produce content for TV and iPlayer. You don't want it to be overproduced.

28:24

Yeah, you don't. Yeah. But hang on, it shouldn't look like the use of license payers money here because you're then putting the money on YouTube. Are the BBC then going to try to get some revenue out of it on YouTube? I mean you'd think so, wouldn't you?

28:39

Or you can speak to, to this much better than me. Is the value for the BBC is not in, in terms of their broadcast, Although is this broadcast? Well it's not broadcast, it's digital. Is the value is in the eyeballs watching it? Not necessarily the money that they're making out of it. They make money BBC studios. But you're right. Can they sell advertising on that content? Will they sell advertising on that content? It strikes me that they should.

28:52

I, I think it's, it's a sign of, I mean this announcement is a sign of the times clearly. But is it the thin end of a very long wedge or is it the BBC smartly thinking a little bit ahead of the curve?

29:15

Good luck to them.

29:27

I genuinely not sure what I think.

29:29

Well there is money to be made on YouTube and I'm not here but

29:31

again to go back to what you were just saying. I'm not thinking in terms of money to be made, I'm thinking in terms of the value, the purpose of the BBC. Why? How it justifies the license of children

29:34

are watching things on.

29:45

So you think that bolsters the case for the license but what about that very familiar argument that the, the case of license feed rests on the BBC doing things that the market isn't doing and doing things that are distinctive and different.

29:46

Well it can still do that. It can still point cameras at the Senate of. Yeah, yeah, that's the balancing act isn't it? We're going to do stuff which are. Which gathers the community, the nation together for moments of national importance, but also we need to be entertaining and commercial and do things that ITV do, but do them in a different way. You know, like they've got gladiators on and they've got. You know, and then. And then they'll. They'll do Remembrance Sunday. So.

29:59

No, sure, It's.

30:25

I don't think it's either. Or is it?

30:26

No, no. Well, I mean. So the other story. We complain.

30:27

If the BBC wasn't actually looking at this.

30:29

I don't think we're complaining. I think we're. We're musing on it and reflecting on it. So if that's the story that's pointing to the future here, the other BBC story of the week is one that sort of points slightly in the other direction, which is that BBC studios events production is to have its headcount significantly reduced, or as the Times chose to put it in rather more emotive way. BBC to dismantle crown jewel of live British broadcasting.

30:31

Okay, let's.

30:58

Yeah, exactly.

30:59

Let's unpack that, because that's not entirely what the facts are. How many people are in this department, Peter?

31:00

It turns out there were six permanent roles.

31:08

Six?

31:10

Yeah.

31:10

And it's now down to one Claire Popplewell.

31:11

Yeah. And of course, they will still cover state, big state occasions, but they'll use freelancers. So. So it's, in a way, it's a story. It's a point that we've made in recent weeks on the podcast that it's very hard to get the headcount of the BBC down. This is a way you get the head count down. But then the same newspapers who will be complaining about the BBC being overstaffed and, you know, full of fat now lay into it and come up with a headline like, BBC to Dismantle Crown June of Live British Broadcasting. Now, they, to be fair, they, the Times, in this case, are aided and abetted than none other than David Dimbleby, you know, TV royalty by his standards, who's told the Times that the decision is catastrophic and an absolute disgrace. Dimble went and went on to say, it's a tiny group of people, it's true, who really know their business. I don't know what the savings are. I imagine they're minuscule. But whatever kind of bean counter has done this, I cannot imagine, because it's an own goal of such a really. A really. Such an obvious kind.

31:13

Okay, so can I just say. Yes, I Saw the interview on BBC News. For some reason I was watching BBC24 News, probably first time in my life. But it was on. It was on.

32:21

You're trying to get onto HBO Max.

32:34

I was.

32:35

You failed.

32:36

It was part of the journey.

32:37

Watch the football match. So you thought it was. I watched BBC News.

32:38

It was a stopping off point on the way to HBO Max and I. And he was banging on about this and I thought, he just doesn't know what he's talking about.

32:42

David Dimbleby, he sounded like he's a very orcast figure.

32:51

He's. Yeah, you know what? I just think that he served fantastically, served BBC really well at these state occasions. But he's retired.

32:55

He's become a bit more disinhibited in his.

33:04

And have a nice retirement. David.

33:07

Well, I don't know if he has retired. He still makes serious.

33:09

Oh, for goodness sake. But he comes back and he starts pronouncing all this in the most inaccurate way. Do you know these big events have been staffed by freelancers for years?

33:11

Well, you hang now, so you make the Proms, don't you?

33:20

Well, the company would.

33:23

Well, tell me how many permanent employees you have on the prom.

33:24

So Guy Freeman, who is your equivalent of Claire Popperwell, one of the BBC's, was one of the BBC studios most eminent producers. He was the last person to produce Eurovision for the BBC in 1998 and he's a brilliant live event. He does the Edinburgh Tattoo. He did a concert for Ukraine. He set up it in three weeks after the invasion at the nec. He's. I don't know how he does it because it's the most stressful things you can produce.

33:27

He.

33:56

When the BBC put the Proms out for Tender, he got the gig. So he Livewire. His company produced the Proms. It won a BAFTA last year, I think the first time the Proms has won the bafta. So he's very well equipped to do these shows. And the truth is, we did some research. We pitched for Eurovision when it was going to be in Liverpool. I thought, why not? You know, it's great. Liverpool. I'm from Liverpool. Guy wants to do it. Guy has produced the Eurovision. I approached the BBC to be told, oh, no, no, no. BBC studios are doing it. I said, oh. He said, yes, well, they've been working on it for 18 months now. I said, but you were only told. You're only told that Liverpool was doing it in the last month. How come? Oh, it's a cycle, It's a cycle. So I did some Research all these big events the last 10 years, you know, Platinum in the park, all these big concerts, Royal Family concerts, all done by BCC does never been farmed out to the independent sector. And the TR is that. I said it's a bit like the Freemasons. It's BBC Freemasonry, where the BBC studios gets the gig so they get the glory, they get the income from these big shows. But clearly people working on the shows are all freelancers, surely, so nothing's changed. So they got rid of five people.

33:56

But that's not good if you're one of those five people. But surely doing that weakens the case for keeping them as a BBC production monopoly going forward.

35:13

I agree.

35:24

You've no longer got the department so you could put them out to tender and hat trick you, you know, this is a wheat. This is not something we do at expectation that we haven't done. But you haven't put. You have Guy Freeman and Guy is a very, you know, very, very experienced person in this area. Did he say he does the Edinburgh Tattoo?

35:25

Yeah.

35:42

If he makes that entertaining, he must. He's a genius.

35:43

It's a laugh a minute.

35:47

It's cold up there.

35:49

Maybe that's one of those shows in the future we'll look back on and say,

35:50

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35:56

how

36:47

could they possibly make that show? That's colonialism gone mad. No, but I think that's where David Dimley got it wrong, is it's not about these freelancers won't have kind of expertise that the BBC Studios have. BBC Studios is populated. Every production, as you know, is populated by a lot of really good freelance people.

36:48

Yes.

37:07

And so when Guy does the proms, we set it up. We have brilliant people who do other things during the year when this proms is not on.

37:07

Yeah, I think. But I think the truth is, if you're the Times who wrote this story and put this headline out there, I don't think you really understand the difference between freelancers and people.

37:16

Yeah, they just want to slag off the BBC.

37:28

Yeah. I mean, I think Matt Britton, who's now about to start this is. This is a kind of a squall. This isn't a storm.

37:30

It's irrelevant.

37:40

These have come along every two or three weeks.

37:41

But, you know, Dimbleby uses words like catastrophic and absolute disgrace. You know, just go for a walk in the park, David.

37:43

It's, you know, I just like to say I know David Dumbo, a very nice man.

37:51

I'm sure he's very nice. He just.

37:55

In a very, very eminent broadcast.

37:56

Well, he made himself sound like a bit of an ass on this.

37:58

He's made himself maybe sound getting a bit old and out of touch and God knows you and I know about that.

38:01

Well, I think the idea of old men having opinions is. Is it should be banned.

38:05

We're going to stop soon, are we? On that bombshell? I think we've probably done enough, haven't we? All right, that's all for this week. Thanks very much for listening. Are there any questions about the world of television we've always wanted to ask? Send them our way. We'd love to hear from you.

38:10

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38:24

Even better yet, why not subscribe to our YouTube channel? Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please do follow Insiders, the TV podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

38:30