Can TV Copy the Music Industry? Sky’s Ad/Subscription Paradox & Latest BBC Cuts

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0:01

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

0:39

me, Jimmy Mulville and me, Peter Fincher.

0:44

This is the podcast for people who love television and want to find out a bit more about what goes on behind the curtain.

0:46

Peter I spotted a story in the Times which funny enough relates to a question from a listener that we got last week or a viewer or a viewer or review, we hope a listener because we really prefer the idea of people listening.

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We don't like people looking at us while we're talking.

1:05

No, we'd like to put a veil in front of us, but we're happy with the listener.

1:06

We sound younger than we look.

1:10

So chap called Adrian Fry. Right then, thank you for your. Your question, Adrian.

1:13

He says, please can you any relations you think to Adrian Mole,

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please can you talk more about the issues around using Deep Archive? Why isn't it better exploited? And what, why can't the admittedly small audience willing to pay premium rate have access to, say, all of the extant

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BBC archive, the mini BBC sit on a mountain of it?

1:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's funny that the agent should ask that question this week because there's a story in this Times that I spotted, I saw this about this company called Hypnosis, right? So this is an idea somebody's had to say, you know, what's going on in the music industry for the last decade or more, you know, longer than that of people, really big artists like the Rolling Stones or whatever or Bob Dylan or whatever, selling their song catalog for a ludicrous amount of money, or looks like a ludicrous amount of money to somebody who then controls the catalog and can license out, you know, blowing in the wind to some advert for whatever. Somebody's indeed, somebody's had the idea to do this in television and kind of you like roll up people's and actors, presenters, writers and so on and aggregate them into a big and powerful player.

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So buying people's Catalogs, buying people's catalogs, TV and film catalogs.

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So I've been working in the business quite a long time and so, you

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know, Hatrick's 40 years old.

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This caught my eye. That's caught.

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I've got a 40 year old catalog that's aching for a bit of attention.

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The company was born, it says here, after Chris Helm, who's the former finance chief at hypnosis, struck up a conversation with Mark Allen, a British TV and film executive. Do you know Mark Allen?

2:48

No, I'm afraid I don't have the pleasure.

3:02

No, I don't. But anyway, he was in the immigration queue at lax.

3:03

Oh, good luck with that.

3:08

Yeah. So he obviously had a long lot of time to film.

3:09

Oh, yes. Now you're there a while and then you're sent to a different queue.

3:12

You get to the end of it or you're sent to Salvador and have your head shaved.

3:16

By the way, don't engage them in any irony or humor. They don't like it in lax. They're very.

3:20

First time you and I ever went to America, we were only passing through America because if you're on our way. We were touring Australia, but we touched down in Honolulu Airport at 2 o'

3:25

clock in the morning.

3:36

Something like that.

3:37

Yeah.

3:37

And you had to say on your passport what you were. Well, I was the musical director.

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You're a musician.

3:42

I was a musician. I was a music director of An Evening without, which was the show, the ex Cambridge Footlight show that we were turning around Australia.

3:43

Exactly. So I put 1980. This was.

3:49

It was, yeah. So I put musician down on the form. I regret it. Yeah. I got taken into a little room.

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Yes.

3:57

Because they thought, Ruby's musician. He must be carrying drugs or whatever. And I kid you not, I, a bloke, ended up shining a torch at my

3:57

up where the sun don't shine

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and where the drugs weren't stashed either, because I was a very innocent young 20, 21 year old or whatever. But I did undergo.

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But you know, that gave us, I

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mean, very dignified thing.

4:19

You can imagine the mirth that created amongst Clive Anderson, Griff Reese Jones, I do remember Rory McGrath and myself. Actually, Griff wasn't there, but we were laughing our asses off as you were having yours inspected. But it gave us an idea a couple of years later for a sketch in a last Smith and Jones, which was.

4:20

I knew this.

4:40

Well, it's a sketch and it's a runner. So it occurs three times in the show and boy, we've Gone down a rabbit hole here. But I'm gonna tell the story.

4:40

Well, rabbit holes anyway.

4:49

So we're looking at it.

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I didn't have a rabbit up there either, I promise.

4:52

Well, you see, what happened was the character Griff is playing is going through customs and Mel is playing the customs officer and stops him and insists on doing a cavity search. So we don't see this. He bends over. I remember this sketch as a screen, right? And he puts his hand up there and he pulls out a little bag of white powder and goes, oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. And you cut away, go to a different sketch. You come back about five minutes later and you see that actually now he's pulled out 200 cigarettes and three bottles of whiskey from the same fundament. You then come back later and he's got a fridge, he's got a row of clothing that's drying. He's got white goods, he's got blows of bread. And then you go, it's got all

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this stuff stuck up his ass.

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Stuck up his ass and still managed

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to talk through it at times.

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And then at the end you come back and the character Mel play said, I think that's everything now. I've got everything out. And then you hear very faintly the tune of Slade's hit.

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Merry Christmas, everybody.

6:00

Merry Christmas, everybody. Thank you.

6:01

Here it is. Merry Christmas. Everybody's having fun, that one.

6:02

And he goes, oh, that's what happened to Slade. Because at the time, you remember, the graffiti was whatever happened to Slade?

6:05

Yes.

6:12

Anyway, you had to be there. You had to be there to enjoy that. Why have we got onto this?

6:12

We got onto this because this.

6:17

No, the immigration queue.

6:19

The immigration queue at lax. But the, The. The TV substance of this story is, could you do this? Could you accumulate intellectual property and rights in the way that has happened in the music industry, where essentially you're in investing in the future revenue streams of songs and of obviously songs that have, you know, we've lived through all our lifetime, you know, from the great artists of the 60s, 70s and 80s and more recent artists where you can perhaps predict their revenue streams. Is that the case in television and in the sort of thing that we do.

6:20

Well, just pick a song. I mean, compare. If you picked a song from. I mean, you know, didn't David Bowie sell his cafe?

6:57

He was one of the first to do it. He did it for what seemed like an unbelievable amount of money at the time and is not even that much compared with modern deals.

7:04

Compare Life on Mars with episode three, season two of, you know, Of a. Of a panel show that didn't quite work. I mean, I'm not sure there's the same kind of appetite or the same kind of longevity.

7:11

It's really. Is the. The same revenue? See, it's funny enough that you remind me as you say that a story, I can tell it's gonna sound a bit like name dropping, but I just

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warn you, Peter, you're not known as a name dropper, so go for it.

7:33

So this must be 25 years ago because it's about Peter Cook, the late. The late comedian. Yeah, yeah. Who I knew very well in the last five years of his life. A lovely man. We became really good friends and made a couple of series together. And I once went round to a party at his house in. In Hampstead.

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Good luck.

7:54

He liked the party.

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Yeah, he did.

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And also there were a couple of. Couple of other guys who like a party, which is two members of the Rolling Stones. Keith Richards and Ronnie woods, as you remember. And they'd flown in from.

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So you were just sitting there watching Songs of Prose, were you?

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I was just sitting there thinking, I cannot believe I'm breathing the same air as these godlike people.

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It's dangerous to breathe the same air as Ronnie, Keith Richards and Peter Cook.

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And I chatted to Peter and he said, oh, I love the. You know, the Stones are old friends of mine. But then he went off in a kind of riff which was about the fact that they'd written, you know, satisfaction back in 1964 and was still playing it to stadiums full of people and making money off the record sales and the rest of it and probably selling it, advertising for ridiculous amounts of money. Roughly the same time there's a very famous Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch that he wrote about the man with one leg. Oh, who wants to play Hamlet?

8:21

Tarzan? No, he. He comes in and goes, I'm auditioning for the part of Tarzan. Tarzan. I can't help noticing you've only got one leg. Oh, yes. Is that a problem? Well, I've got nothing against your left leg. Sadly, neither of you. It's that sketch.

8:54

It's that sketch.

9:13

Yeah. Hang on, listen. Hamlet. Tarzan. There is. They're interchangeable.

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See, Owen is busily.

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Owen's had a massive attack of his own. He's thinking, oh my God.

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Say is the one legged man.

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He's praying that you're right.

9:27

Or is it about Hamlet? Maybe there were different versions of it. This isn't really the point of the story.

9:28

No, it's not. Well, I'm glad you brought it up. Because I love correcting you. I know how much I love correct.

9:33

I know you do. The point is that Peter was basically saying what they did that probably took them an hour or so to write.

9:38

Yeah.

9:46

All those years ago is still. The money is rolling in. Yeah. But I don't make money or royalties. There's no money left for me in that sketch. All I can ever do is maybe occasionally perform it at an Amnesty International.

9:46

Yes. Which is what he did.

9:59

Which is what he did.

10:00

Yeah.

10:00

And still to great effect because.

10:01

Yeah, it was wonderful.

10:02

Classic and brilliant. So that point made By Peter Cook 25 years ago, 30 years ago, to party. Isn't that a point also to make about this story, that it's not as easy to monetize television content as it is music because it isn't something you can resell and resell.

10:03

But I think the distribution market.

10:20

Hang on, I want to just check with Owen because. Owen. Hamlet or Tarzan? It goes to Jimmy. It was Tarzan.

10:21

Yeah.

10:30

Why do I think it was Hamlet?

10:30

Because you're.

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Maybe they did an upmarket version.

10:32

Yeah.

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More discerning audiences. And I was one of those.

10:34

More probably they did an. An Evening where. Changed it to Hamlet for people who wanted it to be Hamlet.

10:37

Yeah. Because the third time you see a sketch, you want a bit of variety in it, by the way, in the modern world.

10:42

Yeah.

10:48

Being one legged person would be no barrier to you playing Hamlet, would it? In fact, I'm surprised we haven't seen that done because women have played Hamlet. I mean, basically the one thing you don't want playing Hamlet, if you're doing a sort of trendy new production at the Globe or the rsc.

10:48

To hop or not to hop.

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He's a perfectly straightforward two legged, straight white man.

11:08

Yeah.

11:12

I think that makes for a very dull production.

11:12

So reductive. I think Hamlet played by a biped.

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Peter Cook's sketch was well ahead of its time.

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I think so. But it's still.

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It's still. The point holds. There wasn't much more money to be made out of it.

11:24

No. And I think. I think I was trying to make a serious point when you hijacked me with the. With the one legged Hamlet nonsense. Although I did see. I did see Ian McKenn play Hamlet and he was 85 at the time.

11:28

Yes.

11:41

And he was. He. Honestly, he spoke it so beautifully.

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But I'll tell you another person who played it. Francis de la Tour.

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Yeah.

11:48

Well, you see, the thing is rising damp to Hamlet.

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I saw, I saw it was a Windsor. I Saw it was just after Covid, I took my three boys to go and see it. I mean, we went along and as I say, he spoke the verse beautifully. But I did catch myself thinking, are you supposed to be worried when Hamlet runs down the stairs? Anyway, so I was going to make the point that I think the global distribution market in TV anyway. I don't know about anything else, but in tv, I think it's going through a rough time. I think big companies are. Their revenues are being hit. So I think there's been a slowdown in the kind of vitality of that interchange between different countries selling each other programs. And I know that we have a distribution company and, you know, it gets harder and harder as the business changes. As we've spoken about it before, and the streamers come on board and they are commissioning stuff originally. They distribute from the get go. They are global. How to get to Heaven, we just launched last week. That goes global on day one. So there's no distribution market in that.

11:51

But isn't there a fundamental thing here which no business model can get away from when it comes to music? We're perfectly happy to sit down and listen to an album that was made 50 years ago. In fact, we might be inclined to listen to an album like 50 years ago because we sort of reach a point in life when we don't want to keep up with the latest trends and, you know, we don't want to hear Charlie XCX or whatever.

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I shower to goodbye, the other big pro this morning.

13:19

Well, exactly. We'll stick on an old Elton John album because it still sounds as good as it did in the 1970s. Fundamentally, that isn't the case with television. We're watching new things. Like I've been watching how to get to Heaven from Belfast. I have not been watching episodes of a drama or comedy drama from the 1970s.

13:21

You might watch an old comedy you're fond of, couple.

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Comedy lasts, I think, more so Peter Cook's point is ironic because comedy has a longer tail but only one leg.

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Yeah.

13:49

But comedy arguably does survive.

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That's right.

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And you sort of get over the production values. Like if you watch Fawlty Tails today, obviously the lighting and the sets look a bit 1970s, but within five minutes it doesn't matter because it's just.

13:53

And it's. And it has a new life on stage, as does the Fast show, as does Only Fools and Horses. So people do crave that nostalgia, I think.

14:04

But you're tending to watch new.

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I've always thought that the music and comedy have a similarity there that there's a yearning for it. It reminds you of when you were younger than a a nostalgic appeal to it.

14:13

No, I, I agree but I think

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it's a very interesting move. I like these kind of disruptors and

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they've got to Hang on a sec, we've got some details here. They've already got a fund of.

14:26

Well, they've got 300 million.

14:30

They got 300 million. I don't know. They've got your email address and they're

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suppliers and they're aiming for. I'm@hattrick.com if you want to get in

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touch and your bank details, I I've

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got those as well actually.

14:45

But not, not in a broadcast, not

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on memory and I certainly listen. I take I'll do cash.

14:48

This is Paige desorbo from Giggly Squad. Boost Mobile gives you the same network coverage, speed and service you're used to, just at a more affordable price. Why pay more if you don't have to? Offering reliable nationwide coverage backed by a 30 day money back guarantee. Love your service or get your money back, no questions asked. Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store or head to boostmobile.com to learn more. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers who cancel within 30 days of activation will have Boost service fees refunded, activation fees if applicable, and phone payments will not be refunded. Here's how to stay alive longer so you can enjoy Boost Mobile's unlimited plan with a price that never goes up. Do not mistake a wasp nest for a pinata. Stay alive and switch now at boost mobile. After 30 gigs, customers may experience lower speeds. Customers will pay 25amonth as long as they remain active on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. We got another question, this time from a correspondent who asked that they remain anonymous. Right, because sky do occasionally pay me money in exchange for work. So there's somebody who sometimes Is he a hitman? He might be running a production company. And this person, I don't know if he or she says really enjoying the podcast Your discussion about advertising premium subscriptions to streaming services reminded me of a question that's always puzzled me. Why do sky and TNT for that matter, have advertising on their premium channels? And why does nobody seem to complain about it? People happily shell out hundreds of pounds a year to watch their favorite sports teams, far more than for a BBC license fee or a Netflix subscription, and still have to sit through lengthy ad breaks. When I worked at sky, we were always told that the advertisers pay your wages. But surely the vast majority of Sky's income is from subscribers, not from advertisers. If sky was being launched today, would they be considering an ad free offering, do you think? By the way, I've got a great admiration for Sky. Brilliant organization.

15:02

Have you got a commissioning with them?

17:04

Making a couple of series for them at the moment.

17:05

Right, so.

17:07

But it's a very interesting point this, that Sky's a slight oddity in here because we're used to commercial broadcasters where we don't have to pay ITV to watch it, we don't have to pay Channel 4 to watch it, but we know we'll watch ads. That's the sort of unspoken contract. And then we're used to paying subscriptions like to Netflix and Disney, Apple plus and so on. And we think we're not going to see adverts here. With sky, you pay a subscription and you get adverts. It feels a bit like inheritance tax, where you're paying a second tax on money that you'd already paid tax on when you, you know, originally earned the money. So I do see the point, but it feels like one to me. It feels like one. We need somebody from sky to answer this question. Perhaps we should ask somebody from Sky. Do you know any from Sky?

17:08

No, I can never get them to return my emails.

17:54

That's what they've told me as well.

17:56

So you think they're double dipping?

17:58

Well, no, I mean, there's nothing creative double dipping, because the double dipping sounds if they're doing something improper.

18:00

That's what I was implying.

18:05

Yeah, but I'm not going to say that. No, because, you know, their business model is their business model. If they can persuade people to pay a subscription and then sit through advertising, then why shouldn't.

18:06

And there's nothing nefarious about. It was set up by Rupert Murdoch and, you know, there's nothing nefarious about him.

18:17

Well, I don't think we really answered our correspondence.

18:24

I think question. It's interesting that he's sitting there thinking, I've paid my subscription and now I've got to sit through two. So what sky will do next is they'll offer you an enhanced subscription to get rid of the adverts. Yeah. Because that's what you do on all four.

18:28

That's what you do. Spotify.

18:43

And then I discovered that's what you do. As you remember a few weeks ago, I. I declaimed how difficult it was to upgrade my Paramount going through the sky settings, which was a nightmare.

18:45

Oh, that's like Being in the immigration queue at LAX airport.

18:55

Yeah, I didn't talk to somebody. I had £300 million when I was trying to do it at the time. Just my wife laughing at me. As I grew more and more frustrated with sky settings. But that's the truth is that what happens is they say we're going to show you adverts. Oh, by the way, we don't need to show you these adverts, just give us some more money.

18:59

But they're kind of known for this because, you know, like if you ring up when your kids are growing up and say, I want to cancel my children's channel subscription, they say things like, but when your children miss the programming, do you think they might turn to drugs instead or whatever? Yes, that is.

19:14

And they start sending drugs around to your kids house.

19:28

But you have to watch adverts before you're allowed to use them. Well, it's interesting. I don't know.

19:32

I think sky will have a very, very coherent. I'm sure it's their business model.

19:38

Is there a wider issue here of. We're of a generation who've grown up thoroughly expecting to see adverts in television programs, expecting to last 30 seconds, 60 seconds. Sometimes that's rather annoying. Sometimes they've been really good, you know, advertising back.

19:42

Well, they used to be what little

19:58

work, Much, much bigger budgets.

20:00

Yes, they did.

20:02

But now here's a new world in which, for one thing, you expect to be able to skip ads after a few seconds, you know, whatever you might be doing if you're on the Internet or wherever, or just avoid them by paying a subscription. And maybe there's a new generation less willing to tolerate advertising, if you like. Now, I read another story the other day that there'd been another 25,000 redundancies in the advertising business. And with AI also fundamentally changing the nature of that business. The advertising business, which, you know, go back, let's say to the 80s, was a big. The era of Sarchi and Saatchi. A big powerful, you know, the guy, the Saatchi brothers became so kind of powerful they tried to buy a bank at one point. That's how central to the culture advertising agencies were. And now they're just not even a shadow of that today.

20:03

No, I know TV advertising was also a springboard for a lot of creative talent. Both Salman Rushdie, go to work on an egg.

21:00

You, you.

21:09

He came up with that. It's not his finest work,

21:10

it's his shortest work. I believe we have read some of

21:15

them, but it didn't look fair.

21:18

Some of the longer ones. It didn't go back to that.

21:19

He didn't get a fatwa for that.

21:22

He maybe should.

21:24

Maybe he should have done.

21:25

I just like to dissociate myself from my podcast partner here, making light of a fat.

21:27

I'm not making light of it.

21:36

You know, that's for others to judge. Jimmy.

21:37

I'm making light of the fact that he wrote a very compelling line.

21:40

Yeah.

21:45

But, you know, and my advice is to. To our listener or viewer is that what I do is I, I watch sky stuff. I'm watching a thing called Under Salt Marsh at the moment.

21:46

Oh, yeah, I've been watching that with Kelly O'Reilly. It was my Kelly Reilly.

21:58

Kelly Reilly.

22:02

She's.

22:04

She's from Surrey, you know, I wish she was O'Reilly.

22:04

Posh girl from Surrey.

22:07

She was in Yellowstone.

22:08

Yeah.

22:09

She played Beth and I fell in love with her. She is fantastic actor and I worked

22:10

with her about 20 years ago on a Stephen Polyakoff series.

22:15

Oh, she's wonderful. Face in Repose is extraordinary. I like it. I like it a lot. So I'm watching it.

22:17

I'm getting the idea.

22:24

I'm watching Under Salt Marsh with my wife.

22:26

Say what interesting plot. I love the scenery. And oh, look, there's a primary school teacher. Oh, my God, she looks like a rock star.

22:30

Yeah.

22:38

In a wind tunnel.

22:38

She really does. And. But what I do is I watch it on the, on the recording part of the, of the system.

22:39

So you can skip through the bit.

22:46

Just skip through with Kelly.

22:47

Right. The scenes haven't got Kelly Riley. You have no interest in third.

22:49

I do times speed times 30.

22:54

Oh, I know. I trained myself to absorb an advertising message at 30 times. But sometimes, as long as I can see the logo, I make a note to buy the product.

22:57

But sometimes I overrun and I've got to go back to get to the beginning of the second part. Yes. Do you do that?

23:04

Yep, yep.

23:11

It's a common thing.

23:12

Quite. I'm quite good though, with the, you

23:13

know, you're getting your timing right.

23:15

Quite trigger happy.

23:16

Because you never used to. But anyway.

23:17

Yes.

23:20

So I think, I think that's a good point he makes. What's next?

23:20

I think we're going to talk about the BBC. Oh. As we so often do. But there are always things to say about the BBC and I think it was only last week or maybe the week before that we were making the point. The BBC has employed roughly the same number of people for like the last 35 or 40 years. 21, 22,000 people. And it's possible that the BBC were listening to our podcast because Tim Davy, who, although the outgoing Director General, I actually thought he left, but it turns out he hasn't left. Tim Davy made a speech this week, or maybe last week, that there's further cuts of roughly 10% over the next three years. And these are cuts on top of cuts on top of the 150 million reductions that need to be found over the next couple of years as part of the previous round of BBC cost cutting.

23:23

Yeah. And he said. What did he say? He said over the next three years, like everybody in our sector, we will need to continue to find savings and move money to where we need it to remain relevant for our audiences. So hopefully that doesn't affect then content commissioning.

24:12

Well, he goes on to say, do not mistake this for a lack of appetite for us to make a case for the BBC to be invested in properly. We want more money, but you're much powerful in asking for more money if you are seen to really go at your cost base properly while protecting the journalism, content and audience. Often this is a delicate game and has to be fairly played. But the idea that we don't play it as a non starter going into Charter, it's quite a kind of mouthful of a rationale there. It's sort of kind of like revealing your workings there, isn't it? But having said that, of course it makes sense if you go into Charter and say to the government, give us more money, and they say, what efforts are you making to save money? Yeah. And you say, none. You've got a pretty weak case, haven't you?

24:29

And of course the government issued a green paper to discuss all these issues around the BBC around how to fund it, how to make it more, I suppose, more efficient and certainly with the recent, you know, kerfuffle around, the Trump thing about how making it more transparent and accountable and making the news more trustworthy, all that kind of stuff, it's. The whole thing is in there. And I started to read it. In fact, I got a reminder today from someone at the BBC who said, oh, please do fill in the online questionnaire, which they give.

25:14

Okay. Which basically you're ahead of me here. So tell us.

25:47

It takes about half an hour. Yeah, Anyone, anyone can fill it in. And it's basically, you know, do you strongly agree, agree, not agree, don't agree, it's those kind of questions.

25:50

So it's like a health question.

26:00

Yeah, very, very.

26:01

Are you suffering from any of the following ailments?

26:02

They're Very concentrated on news. They talk about BBC Verify, which I know we love and adore. Very little talked about. It's entertainment, it's. It's a lot about education and inform those wreathian.

26:04

So it's sort of like a plate of greens really. It's not, it's not green.

26:17

It's a green paper.

26:21

Okay.

26:22

It's not a meaty, meaty red paper. But anyway, I mean, clearly people at BBC want people, you know, in the industry to speak up on its behalf. As indeed we should. Because the last thing we need is a weaker BBC. By the way, what came up in my reading of the green paper as I had to drink about four cups of coffee to stay awake. It's such a boring read. They mentioned a thing called Freely. Have you ever heard of Freely?

26:23

No.

26:49

Okay.

26:50

Faintest idea what it means.

26:51

Freely apparently is a broadband service which collates material programs from BBC Channel 4, ITV and Channel 5. All the free two airs got together a few years ago and apparently you can access this like a streaming service. I've never heard of it.

26:52

Why have we never heard of it? Have they marketed it well?

27:13

Clearly not Freely or they should say anonymously. Anyway, the point I'm making is that the BBC are very anxious that people do respond in a positive way to this green paper and encourage the government to fund it. I think it's all about the funding really. And they'll put the license fee up in April. From April 1st it will go up to £180 a year. From 174.50. It's 174.50 a year. At the moment it's going up to 180, which is probably about what, 50p a day.

27:16

Yeah. So I know what you're about to say because I agree with you, which is that's really good value when you think of all the content that's on it.

27:52

Yeah.

27:58

But of course politically it's starting to get towards the 200 mark, which will feel like a moment. And when you're simultaneous questioning whether it should be a license fee funded organization at all, it becomes uncomfortable to start hitting, hitting these kind of targets. But I'm also struck in this by the fact that Tim is saying this, Tim Davies making this speech, what, two, three months after he announced that he was leaving.

27:58

Yeah.

28:26

And we, we talked about Elton John.

28:27

He keeps saying he's going, but he has these comeback tours.

28:29

Actually it's not fair on Elton John because I don't think he has done that. The Frank Sinatra is the right Is the correct.

28:33

John has been announcing his retirement for quite a while. Well, I think he's now has retired, but.

28:39

Okay, okay, he's done.

28:44

All right. He's like 94 or something.

28:45

I'm going to see Paul Simon in the. In May, I think in the.

28:48

Well performing.

28:52

Yeah, he retired. He retired about three years ago. And we got tickets courtesy of our very own producer, Owen Braban. He's sorted me out really, with some tickets. Very expensive. No, I was going to make a point because we made this point about Channel 4 before.

28:52

Yeah.

29:08

Where the. The world is changing fast, but these organizations are changing leadership very slow. So Tim Davy announced he was leaving in November. We're now in the second half of February.

29:08

Yeah.

29:20

And we don't know who's going to be running the BBC. We understand why it takes a long time.

29:20

Yeah.

29:24

But it means that you're in a kind of interregnum. And it seems strange for him, nearly three months or three months after he's announced he's leaving to be saying now we're going to make £500 million of cuts. But I also think there's another thing going on here and I don't know this is affecting the search for new Director General. It's becoming so hard to fill these roles without following in its wake. Difficult stuff about the person you put in charge with the role. And I say this because there's a story in the papers this week about a woman called Antonia Romeo. I don't know if you read this. So Antonio Romeo, the government want. I hope I've got this right. Want to make her the head of the Civil Service. They let it be known that they want to make.

29:25

Sounds like a password.

30:07

It does, very much. Antonio, Antonio, Antonio Romeo 597 or something. That's how you get into, wow, what a great name. But no, this is a serious issue though, because. So the government let it be known that. And obviously I know nothing about her at all because it's not the world we work in and what you gonna do to run the Civil Service. So it's a bit like being the head of the BBC, Very, very senior job. But now it's all going wrong because following in its wake are basically bullying claims about Antonio Romeo. People are saying, oh no, no, you can't appoint her because this is how she behaved to these people or whatever. And there's now a further story which is that the bullying claims about on Antonio Romeo have been covered up in order to try to push through her appointments as the head of the Civil

30:09

service, they're going to fire the people who did the covering up as well.

30:57

Well, so. So you. You sort of have a. A very tricky mixture of things here, whereby you can't ignore the people who made these claims about the individual, or that becomes a problem. And indeed, you have to find the people do the covering up. But unless a person being appointed to one of these, you know, public facing very prominent roles, you know, what's this going to be like in 20, 25 years when the person who might then be about to be the Director General of the BBC has an entire social media library of stuff that they said and did when they were a student. What you and I said and did when we were students is lost to the world. Not even remembered.

31:00

I remember it, Peter.

31:44

Yeah.

31:46

And I'm gonna write about it one day.

31:46

But.

31:51

But if you're a highly employable person and you could probably earn more money than working in the public sector, like running the BBC or running the civil service, why would you put yourself up thinking, well, I'm a human being. I've made mistakes in the past. Absolutely. Maybe I shouted at someone, I shouldn't have shouted at them. I think we've all done that. And I think that the truth is that you learn by your mistakes, but not anymore. Apparently, when you make a mistake, you're cast into the darkness forever. There's no redemption, which is a very sad world to live in.

31:52

I think. I agree.

32:21

What might be a good idea, Peter, is if we tried to get an XDG to come and talk to us about what the job is really like and what the problems really are when you're up against the coal face. Should we do that?

32:22

Let's do it. So one more story we might just touch on, because it's also about something that's happened slower than you might hope it would happen. Reuters reported that talks between ITV and Sky over Sky's proposed 1.6 billion pound takeover have slowed in recent weeks. Oh, good. Apparently, the main issues at the heart of the delay are the complications related to the spin out of ITV studios. Well, no shit, Sherlock. I mean, that turns out to be a very complicated thing. How do you divide the broadcast side of ITV and the studios, the production side of itv? It's not just like sort of, you know, drawing a line down a map. It's going to be absolutely fraught with issues. There's various things about this that struck me when I read this. One was that It's Sky's proposed 1.6 billion takeover of ITV broadcast Yeah, that's not how it was originally described. It was Comcast who were being. Who were buying itv. And they also do own sky, which is.

32:35

Which is what. What it would be.

33:36

Which is what it would be. But that sort of implies that sky is gonna, you know, the. ITV is gonna be the junior partner in a marriage with sky, which I don't think anybody said quite out loud. It may be the truth when he said it quite out loud. But the other is. Is normally this stuff doesn't get out in public, you know, because it's only a few years ago that ITV announced, unless I'm wrong, that they were going to merge their production arms of the other half of ITV with all three media. And then about two months later, they said, no, we, we're not, because we can't agree on the price.

33:37

Oh, because of the competition.

34:13

It feels like, you know, when you're. You're buying a house and you have a survey done and then you find out there's some dry, rotten. You try to get the price down and the owner says, no, this is the price or we won't sell it to you.

34:15

I've heard you're like that when you're

34:24

buying, but it's quite surprising to see this seeping out into public domain. I don't know. It's a very good question.

34:25

Do you think the buyer or the seller.

34:35

Well, I would have thought more likely to be the buyer.

34:36

Yes. Put the wind up ITV.

34:40

This is if. Imagine if you're ITV, if you're Carolyn McCall, who. Who's a CEO of ITV.

34:44

Yeah.

34:50

And you know, these things very sensitive if you're talking about public companies. You've announced it, you've told shareholders, investors, the City. This is what's happening. We are selling our broadcast arm to Comcast, stroke Sky, you know, spin off the production arm and see what happens.

34:50

And you've already had one failed attempt. Yeah, yeah.

35:05

You have to go back a few months later and say, well, when we got down to the small print, we couldn't actually agree the detail. There's no good news story to present to your shareholders and suddenly you look

35:08

like you're on the shelf a bit.

35:20

Yeah, yeah.

35:22

And you're out. It's kind of wanting to, you know, to. To sell at any cost.

35:22

The source who spoke to Reuters this might. With my answer your question about where this has come from. The source who spoke to Reuters said that separating out ITV Media and Entertainment, which comprises ITV's channels and streaming platform ITVX, was proving time consuming as content arrangements and allocating overheads were worked through, which is in turn making it difficult to value the broadcast unit.

35:27

What do you mean, time consuming? What else have they got to do? Well, I mean, they're M and A people. All they do is they sit around doing that.

35:51

I think they might have already done this before they make the initial announcement. Comcast.

35:57

I've got other things, too. I've got a. I've got a squash game in a minute.

36:02

But more. More clues. This is. This is coming from the Comcast side. Comcast, who owns sky, also apparently in no hurry, but is. They want to see how whoever ends up taking over Warner Brothers may change the media landscape. So that's interesting. So does that mean that it's like

36:06

a house chain, isn't it?

36:22

Well, it is a bit, yeah. So my house analogy turns out to be quite right. We're caught in a chain here.

36:23

Yeah. So you were right about that and wrong about Hamlet.

36:27

But if. I still. I still think they did a version of it, but if you're itv. So we're coming back to the same theme of waiting. Yeah. You are in a sort of suspended animation, aren't you? Which has gone on for months already since this. This story emerged and now feels if it might go on for months more as it slows down and everybody waits for Warner Brothers and. And for people working there.

36:30

It is slightly concerning, isn't it? Just that this. It creates uncertainty and uncertainty is always very unpleasant to live with.

36:58

Yes. And of course, you know, this is where, you know, we live in a different world and we like living in this world, even though it has its own challenges. The independent production sector, you're running a business. You're basically there just to make programs. All those people at ITV Studios, friends and former colleagues of ours who are making programs, oh, boy. You don't want this kind of white noise in the distance unsettling you for months on end.

37:05

I agree. All right, well, I think that's it. Next week, very excitingly, we've got a special guest. Should we tell him who it is?

37:33

I think we can, yeah.

37:40

It's none other than Lisa McGee, who is the brilliant writer not only of Derry Girls, but of the recently launched hit on Netflix called How to get

37:42

to Heaven from Made for Full Disclosure by Hat Trick Productions.

37:51

I wasn't going to mention that, Peter.

37:55

I was proud of it and it's a great success.

37:56

And Lisa's the number one in the

38:00

Netflix series chart, I noticed.

38:01

Yes, yes. No, that's good. And it's a. It is a great show and she's a great writer and she's a fan of the podcast. Yeah, she says she wants to meet Owen. Anyway, we'll see you next week.

38:03

That's all for this week. Thanks very much for listening. Are there any questions about the world of television you've always wanted to ask? Send them our way. We'd love to hear from you.

38:17

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38:25

Or even better yet, why not subscribe to our YouTube channel?

38:29

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38:33

Thanks for listening.

38:39

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