New BBC Chief, Cannes Lions and Netflix Goes Linear

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2:25Hello and welcome to the Media Club. I'm your host Matt Deegan. In the club today, Kate Phillips is announced as the BBC's all-powerful creative lead. Faraz Osman, founder of TV indie Goldwalla, takes a look at her in-tray. Also on the show, TV advertising gets the self-service treatment. Rebecca Cooney, Insight Editor at Broadcast, tells us why broadcasters are targeting small businesses. Plus, speaking of advertising, with the threat of AI ever present. How do creatives rate their chances of survival? Campaign's UK editor Maisie McCabe is down the line from Cannes. Of course she is. And in the Audio Network Media Quiz, we give three more stories a comedy treatment.

3:05That's all happening in this edition of the Media Club. Come on in. Hello to you both. Hello. Welcome back. So, Rebecca, who have you got to add to our club roles this week? I feel like I'm being thunderingly obvious, but also it would be, I would be amiss not to say Kate Phillips has had a fantastic week. She has, she has. And I'm sure we'll talk about that a bit more. So well liked in the sector? Really well liked. Like, yes, genuinely everybody says she's really lovely. She's very good at sort of managing different people, managing sort of talent, like really well respected, really genuinely well liked, I think internally and externally.

3:45Okay, we'll get into that in a bit. Very welcome. And obviously now she's been elevated, of course, makes the club even more showbiz. And for us, who would you like to get the membership card? So off the back of that, Angela Jane has just become the European supremo at Disney, which I think was a job that Charlotte Moore was, but Kate Phillips' predecessor was linked to, shall we say. So there's definitely a lot of movement that's going around at the top table of telly. And I think it's a massive appointment for her and she is really great as well. So I think it's a great get for Disney. Obviously, it'd be interesting to know who then is going to take her job at ITV Studios.

4:22Because that's a very big job as well. And as they're in the middle of a, I don't know if it's called a solar beauty parade. I don't know what you call it in the finance space. But obviously, they're out there. They have said that they are entertaining buyers, I think is the phrase. And so having the right person in the top job, because Studios is a big part of that sale, means that Angela is leaving a very big position open. It'd be interesting to see who goes there. So she's getting your plus one this week. Yeah, it'd be nice, wouldn't it? Yeah. But, you know, I mean, there's some brilliant TV people making some big moves.

4:52It's great. And movement is good. Well, let's talk about Kate. So this is the BBC. If you haven't worked it out, I've announced their new chief content officer. Most creative role at the BBC, but it's not just telly. It's across radio and online as well. Pretty much everything except news, I imagine. What's she got to do? What's she got to do now she's taking over? I mean, I think she's very much seen as the continuity candidate, which sounds like damning with faint praise right that sounds like oh god actually you know what charlotte moore was widely considered to be doing a very good job and as i say kate is really well liked so you know someone that's going to come and do more of the same and just keep putting out it's a tricky job right it's it's it's the bbc so there's always going to be some criticism from some quarters whatever you do but you know she's she's basically just got to keep doing what she's doing she is the exec that she previously led their unscripted commissioning and you know under that we've had the traitors we've had the return of gladiators both of which have been massive hits so you know she's in a good position i think uh were was there anybody else uh likely to get this was it always going to be an internal candidate because a lot of people turned it down so i'm not gonna there were definitely other people floated there were other runners and riders i think it's difficult to know who kind of got down to the last few um tom mcdonald at nat geo i think was kind of widely considered to be going for it initially in the early days patrick holland at Banerjee was kind of everyone sort of thought he would go for it and actually you know he came out and said no it's quite it's a lot of it's a great job yeah a lot of grief the money is all right yeah I wouldn't turn down we had this conversation in the office where it's like so Charlotte Moore because of it is the BBC she was on about 485 ,000 which like I wouldn't turn down but in TV terms for that job that's not actually a lot of money you can do you can do better definitely and she was being courted by Netflix that's sort of certainly something that kind of my colleagues at broadcast believe very firmly that she was being courted by netflix for their unscripted job and you can guarantee she would have been getting more money and perhaps less grief for that i think less grief yeah i um i ended up in a dinner with where charlotte moore was on the table and i made an obviously made a complete and utter arse of myself where i was when she had just come back from a trip or something and i was we ended up talking about we were talking about one thing which was like rocket ships and like whether or not we were getting a rocket ship because it would make international travel so much so much quicker and I went oh but it's you know obviously you know people atop of tv they all fly first class don't they so it's a bit like and Charlotte kind of looked at me goes well I don't fly first class I'm gonna be like yeah of course you don't Charlotte she'd be like I work for the BBC perhaps I do not fly first class we are public service and I was like oh okay she's being very serious so so I think that now she's gone to Sony you know I imagine her her air miles budget probably would have gone up slightly um and she'll be she'll be doing all right but you know what she has done a fantastic job like and and I think that with all of the criticism that the BBC gets levied at them when it comes to tv in particular but also radio and and how successful iPlayer has been when you compare it to other streaming services public service streaming services you know it is quite stable and Charlotte did a very very good job and I think Kate's got big shoes so if we argue the other way a little bit so she's BBC life as we've said been there 12 years I think good experience a lot of good tv shows not a lot of drama or comedy there not really radio or online?

8:08Well, I think the radio and online thing I think is quite important. So it's worth remembering that this job was by all reports created for Charlotte but she didn't get the DG job. And so all of these kind of content things got amalgamated and as you say, it seems to be everything that isn't news at the BBC. So that job was created for Charlotte and now Kate has inherited it. Will she be able to shape it for herself in her own guise? That's going to be really important. Yes. And for me, it's great that we have somebody that really understands and gets unscripted because that's the sort of content I make.

8:36but I if I was working in the radio side of things or the online side of things having already seen those two things get consumed by let's be honest a tv person and now that's going to continue I think that she's going to have to get up to speed and and make that community feel like they're going to be loved and and get the same amount of attention that the rest of the business is going to give it so those are the challenges I think she's she's certainly up for it she's she clearly is very smart she gets to BBC which is not an easy thing to get and she's made some big hits and kept people watching, well, certainly watching the channel, but hopefully she can get people clicking and listening.

9:11Is that right? That's the joke. Click, watch, listen. That's what you think. That's a catchphrase you can donate to her. Okay. Now, buying ads online has been a self-service affair for quite a long time, whether that's Facebook or even podcast networks like Acast. You can create your own advert, upload it, do the targeting, away you go. And now for us, that's coming to TV as well. Isn't it mad it's taken so long? Yeah, we were having a little pre-show chat, weren't we? And this seems a relatively obvious thing to have. So this is the story the commercial broadcasters are getting together to allow small, medium enterprises, SMEs, to upload and target their own ads.

9:51Yeah, and I think Sky were doing something very similar for a while. I don't know if it ever really took off, but I know that they had some sort of system that meant that you could regionally target advertising. And that maybe was the kind of precursor to this. But it is that whole revolution that happened with Facebook and Google where you could literally micro target ads and therefore the spend of the advertisement and also the kind of return you get because you were hyper targeting it was clearly the thing that kicked off the tech revolution. So it's wild that it's taken TV so long to catch up on this.

10:25I mean, Rebecca, the announcement was the big thing actually was everyone working together on this. Yeah, absolutely. There have been so many calls recently for PSBs to start working together. you know, I've just, I don't know if you've heard more and more recently, people are bringing back, bringing up the ghost of Project Kangaroo. The ghost of Kangaroo. Yeah, it just sounds like an anime. It does, isn't it? It just keeps getting mentioned. This was a project several years ago that there should be a joint streamer for all the PSBs. And it kind of fell by the wayside because it was a little bit ahead of its time.

10:53Yeah, then the Competition Commission at the time said actually you'd be anti-competitive. Yes. And I just put this out there, I think it's the biggest, that was the one single biggest issue when it comes to the reason that TV is in such crisis right now was that decision, which was clearly the wrong decision, where we are now. Sorry, but I've always felt that it's an important thing to everyone to remember we can't make that mistake again. Yeah, but it kind of feels like it's kind of gone by. But there's still, you know, Alex Mahon at the Channel 4 annual report, sort of big reveal a couple of weeks ago, was sort of, she was saying, well, people keep saying we're all going to merge, and that's kind of nonsense because we are supplying to different markets, we are offering different things, and we should keep doing that.

11:29But we should be working together more, and I think somewhere like advertising, it makes total sense particularly when you've got you know you're talking about the tech revolution the streamers you know particularly uh netflix and amazon are leaning more into the avod that advertise funding services um they are eating tv's lunch you know tv used to be the biggest kind of advertising spot and now it's digital and now it's these streamers um so this is this is them trying to kind of protect their territory trying to work together to as you say target the adverts more clearly and yeah have an offer that can compete with the big streamers i think this software that will have kind of existed for agencies anyway, particularly for the on-demand services.

12:07So adding another element of the waterfall, allowing SMEs to come in makes sense if you've got spare inventory. I don't imagine that many people uploading ads they've made on their phone. I imagine they still use production companies to make the creative Yes, yeah. Or AI. Yeah. Oh, God, yes, there is that. The other thing I thought was interesting was, is this a great product in a world of fast channels and spin-off services where all of these people suddenly far as have more of that more inventory to flock yeah i mean there is more space everywhere seemingly like you know there's television that like is trying to sell you you turn your tv on and and suddenly you see an advert before you even press the button to get into your um into your service be it netflix iplayer or terrestrial television now there's literally an advert everywhere you look so so the space is certainly there um and it is going to require more micro targeting because i think it must be quite i don't work in advertising but i think it must be increasingly complicated to figure out where do you put your advertising pounds in in certain spaces and and i think that everyone defaults back to micro targeting because they want to make sure that every pound they do spend is going to yield a return i mean you talk about ai i mean facebook announced uh last week that in effect they just want you to say i want to flog this product and it will make the creative it will it will do the targeting in lots of different formats and sizes and you know yeah i mean it again it makes sense as much as it sounds dystopian and horrific like why would you not do that i mean this is the thing when you're working in any level of content creation the biggest struggle that we've had and i would argue the last five ten years has been you create an asset and you have to create it for 15 different platforms in six different sizes um and and your kind of deliverables list has just got completely out of control this could add to that but the joining of of ai and of of this opportunity may mean that actually it can be quite efficient um and like you say if it means that there's more pounds being spent on uh on broadcast and then i can't see that being a bad thing so long as it doesn't go the other way which is people start cutting budgets because they cannot say that i mean rebecca is this bad news for the the tv sales exec i don't know is the honest answer I mean, I think, you know, like you were saying, the idea that there's more, you're bringing more potential customers in with these smaller businesses at a time when, you know, we've seen Channel 4 really struggle with ad revenue.

14:25We've seen ITV really struggle with ad revenue. That can only be a good thing in the long run that these channels will still be there and able to function and able to commission more content because they're being able to pay for it. So, yeah, in terms of the ad execs themselves, I'm not sure. But I think, you know, bringing more money into the system is not a bad thing at all. I think that what we may end up seeing is that the ad break, as it were, becomes, you know, of smaller companies, smaller quality. And then when it comes to kind of branded content and like the big hero advertiser for that TV show, that becomes a more prized thing.

14:56Because as we know, kind of ad skipping is becoming more and more of a thing. I think people are getting more and more frustrated with being interrupted with ads all the time. And it may have a bit of a brand devaluation if every time you're getting the content you're watching is getting interrupted by an ad. so I think that we may end up seeing kind of the premium big buyers go towards doing big hero products you know they did a crazy thing on Netflix recently where WhatsApp sponsored a documentary about Formula 1 and that was clearly branded content and I think we'll see more deals like that at the top level but then all of these kind of micro level means that there may be a bit of a rebalance as a result Speaking of the streamers in sort of hell freezes over news Netflix has announced a deal with a French broadcaster TF1 to stream their live channels as well as on-demand content too.

15:45Rebecca, is this Netflix going linear? Kind of. It's weird, isn't it? Like you say, it's just, oh, okay, that's happening. Particularly, so TF1 are kind of the French equivalent of ITV, right? They are the kind of the first and foremost sort of advertiser-funded channel on French TV. And they've recently, I was chatting to our international editor, John Elms, about this today. and he was saying they've actually put quite a bit of money and effort into, you know, boosting their own stream recently. In the same way that we've seen ITV do, in the same way that we've seen, you know, Fives recently done it.

16:19UK TV or UAND have all done it. So it's really interesting that they've then gone, yeah, but also you can do it. And the thing that's being quite nakedly kind of advertised or kind of put out in the press releases is Netflix saying you can do all this without leaving Netflix, without keeping you on that channel. So, I mean, there must be a lot of money involved. is the only bit that I can really see it making sense is that Netflix has just said, hey, we will give you a lot of money to have your content on as well. There's no way of saying it without sounding pejorative, but world domination by Netflix continues, right?

16:49Yeah, obviously TF1 have chosen this is a good way to either reach more viewers, get into their content more, I guess make more money from the ads or what the ad deal is. But it's sort of dancing with your competitor. It is, yeah. it's sort of it's going to where the viewers are right yeah is it giving up on on those viewers elsewhere maybe um be interested to see how it pans out and whether or not it paves the way for other countries yeah i mean for us it's hard it's hard for tf1 to go back on or if they did go sort of back all in on their own streaming service they'll be a little bit behind i mean i don't this seems like complete common sense to me and i think the thing is is that the way that netflix has built has you know obviously it started off basically licensing other people's content then it started making its own content and we were all like oh my god Netflix is making its own content why would it be doing that when it's got licensing other content and then it started doing live services you know it bought the rights to WWE it's been doing more and more stuff in in live broadcasting and everyone was a bit like oh my god Netflix is now doing live they've tried doing kind of like press a button and suddenly your content just plays this is Netflix they they experiment and they try different things and and if you look at it from the other side of the of of the window you look at platforms like sky or like apple tv you know all of those platforms you can watch netflix on their platform like in the other direction and for me this is just netflix going well in the same way that when they started doing advertising everyone's a bit like but how could netflix do advertising it's a bit like well actually they have clearly hit a plateau in the number of premium subscribers they can get so the next level down is to do advertising and the next level down from that is to kind of go well we want you to come here we're going to do advertising we want you to come here when we want to be able to sell those ads and if that means we bring in other broadcasters to do that and share the spoils of that then that that just makes complete complete sense to me it's it's worked for sky you know that's where they pivoted to it's i mean i say it's worked but that's been their strategy is this sort of bad news i mean sky want to be the front door um apple want to be the front door it wants to be the front door and netflix wants to be yeah yeah and and look the the fight for the hdmi one slot continues and that's that's what this is and it will be the consumers and the customers that choose what experience that they want and i think it hasn't done youtube any harm by being on every single different platform and youtube in america they have youtube tv and you can watch tv in america with the cable service exactly so i i think that the experimentation of form it still is clear that tv doesn't know how this is going to settle down and are consumers going to want to click netflix and then see everything are they going to want to click apple tv and see everything are they going to want to see everything through their legacy cable box is it going to be from the tv that they buy from the shop i think the bets are still off and they need everyone needs to be everywhere um and and eventually it you know it all comes back to the iphone right the iphone is every button you press on the iphone apple make money from it and because they control the app store they control the device they control the software and if the tv person tv company can do the same thing then they will win in that space rebecca it's like tv studios obviously have a lot shows on netflix uh is it a leap for them to put uh itv one on on on the channel too no i suppose not in that in that sense i mean i was just thinking when faraz was speaking like this is total kind of you know a possible future but one possible future could be maybe netflix starts doing the hardware right you're talking about the hdmi one slot like they don't have you know maybe we get the the netflix box um at some point in the future who knows um but yeah i mean in terms of ITV I do think it's possible yeah I think it's again it's that sort of getting your head around oh it could all work very differently but there is no reason it couldn't work differently as you say like I mean once upon a time they didn't make their own content exactly because the key to this is that now they're an advertising service and they're selling advertising they need to keep people on their platform for as long as humanly possible and if there's a breaking news story in France you're obviously going to turn off what's good you know you or simply they don't have enough cultural content for france it makes sense that they kind of go well let's just have the linear channel there because we can sell more advertising against that content um in france and and why would we not do that if we're now an advertising company and not a subscription-based company the only thing i would say is that that does clash in the uk a little bit with you know ann menser's kind of thing that she said at the um the broadcast summit recently was that like it isn't her job to make sure everyone likes everything on netflix it's her job to make sure everybody likes something on Netflix and you know okay so you widen out the content you're widening out what you can get on Netflix but that feels slightly different to trying to keep you to gluten network Netflix and having everything on Netflix doesn't it yeah but I just think that the you know they do games they you know they do they now do live services they now do now they're doing by the sounds of thing they're experimenting with terrestrial television it feels quite clear to me that like everybody else they want you to turn on a screen and press the Netflix button I thought was interesting that the person that did the deal was a brit she popped up in my linkedin this week and it's like oh that's interesting let's see if anything happens here well speaking france uh let's go to can uh where the annual awards gala and conference is underway a campaign's uk editor maizey mccabe uh is there for us maizey hello hi matt how you doing i'm very good not as good as you what a lovely backdrop uh of the beach there at can uh have you had number one a good time uh both yourself but also from a business perspective.

22:14Yeah, definitely. So Campaign comes to Cannes every year, but this year we had a sort of branded area which we entitled, imaginatively, Campaign House. We've been doing lots of round tables with commercial partners and then hosting editorial sessions as well. It's been a place for people to pick up wristbands for our famous party. And yeah, it's gone very well. We've seen some talks this afternoon in the conference centre as well, which was inspiring. So you have an inside as well, not just hanging out outside at all the parties. Yeah. Is it just me or has it become more of a thing recently? I've definitely seen on LinkedIn more of the content people that I follow are there.

22:56Historically, it's very advertising. Are the worlds just colliding a bit more? Yeah, I mean, I think there's been various stages of canon. I think there's always an old guard who are kind of a bit annoyed about the upstarts. obviously only gave film awards for many years. I think they've had tech companies for quite a long time but now the worlds of kind of I guess broader entertainment and sport are converging as well so the way it works is lots of conferences in Cannes. All the beaches down the front are kind of sponsored by big brands and it's quite telling about where the industry is in terms of where the money is um which you know who has there's a big pinterest beach big meta beach um x you know twitter as was used to have a beach doesn't anymore um so you can kind of see the plot the fortunes of businesses through like how much they spend on their activations here what's the big topic this year ai for a lot of people yes um although interestingly as someone said to me the other day there's not there's not actually been that much discussion about the ethics and the broader societal implications of all this technology and how quick things are moving.

24:08But a lot of the big holding companies are really keen to stress how quickly they're advancing, how they work. Unfortunately, that might mean for a lot of people that they lose their jobs. And then you have a lot of smaller outfits who are positioning themselves as a polarisation of the sector. They're going to be in the premium end offering real human creativity. I know we were talking earlier about ITVs or the kind of UK TV working together to do kind of self-service advertising it's likely AI is going to play a big part in that as well I imagine I mean Meta's sort of arguing that you just tell it what your product is and it will go away and make all make all the creative is that just Mark Zuckerberg's fanciful hope do you think or is that is that coming around the corner oh i'm sorry matt the waves are so noisy i missed that could you repeat it oh yes i was just i was just saying like mark zuckerberg i think said the other week that ads you just tell facebook what what you want to advertise and it'll do the creative and the targeting do you think that's coming around the corner um well no i guess i mean i think that I'd be very surprised if we enter a world where there's no humans.

25:27I mean, I know Meta is a company that has been trying to disintermediate agencies and whoever they can for a long time. I do think there's definitely going to be a place for that. But I did a roundtable yesterday, and one of the things that was about AI and media strategy. And one of the things someone said that I thought was quite interesting is that these technologies have all been sold badly because it's sort of been overhyped to such an extent that marketers don't understand quite how many humans you need, you know, to sort of deploy all the technology. So, you know, I think metal will give it a good go.

26:02They're obviously a great way for sort of small and medium-sized businesses to reach people. But I think, you know, there might be fewer humans. There might be humans doing different jobs. But hopefully there'll still be some of us around. Yeah, maybe we're safe for another couple of years just about. This isn't your only podcast this week, though. You've been doing your own too, I think. Yeah, so we did a podcast in advance. We recorded one yesterday, which will be on the campaign podcast feed shortly. And then we're going to do a sort of wrap up. We didn't do an everyday podcast this year, but a couple of my colleagues, Lucy Shelley and Charlotte Rawlings, did a five minute, five at five, so 5pm can time each day sort of a little wrap up so it'll be interesting to see how that goes I mean a lot of the content we do is sort of for the people here and then it's written up and obviously shared with our readers afterwards.

27:00And you can check that out whether you're listening to this podcast too. So Maisie when you're coming back to the UK do you have any time in can or are you straight back to the news desk? I'm straight back tomorrow morning hopefully in time to put my children up from school. Good. Maisie McCabe, thanks for joining us. When we return, we say goodbye to a giant of TV production. I'll see you in a sec.

27:25Hello, Media Club listeners. Patrick here from Podcast Discovery, the podcast marketing company, where this week we've been thinking about podcast advertising. Yes, that thing we're doing right now. How do you make sure you're targeting the right listeners on the right shows? What should you say to them when you get there? And what kind of data are you able to get out of the campaign to help you understand how successful you've been? For answers to all of these questions and anything else to do with podcast marketing, book in a call at podcastdiscovery.com. That's podcastdiscovery.com. Now, no matter who serves your ads or what platform it's consumed on, we know the most important thing is that your show looks and sounds great.

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28:46Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notifications screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of 10, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place, so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, wait, who talked to this customer last?

29:22And if you're worried about after-hours leads slipping through, Quo's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline. It's the number one rated business phone system on G2, and over 90 ,000 businesses already trust it to stay reachable. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus, get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash tech. That's Q-U-O dot com slash tech. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating.

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31:14Welcome back. Before we return to our guests, let's see what we've all been discussing in the media club this week. Well, after 25 years running the TV trade body pact, John McVeigh has announced he's stepping down. A lot in the sector has changed in that time, but McVeigh's biggest achievements will surely be the deal that broadcasters struck, allowing them to keep hold of their IP. From that came Super Indies, international investment and a production industry that's still the envy of the world. The Advertising Standards Authority has come down hard on advertisers that perpetuate offensive descriptions of older people.

31:51In a new report, the ASA says that all too often ads stereotype them as grouchy or immobile and fighting against the ageing process with beauty products. And the Edinburgh TV Festival is just two months away. The Media Club will be there. We have booked our Airbnb. And this week, the organisers have announced a small Indies bursary, which includes a free delegate pass and up to three nights complimentary accommodation. T's and C's apply, of course, and the deadline is the 27th of June. Links to that bursary and all of our stories are in our free sub stack. Go sign up at themediaclub.com. That's themediaclub.com.

32:30All free to do so you can get all of the links for what we've been talking about. Okay, Faraz and Rebecca are still with me. Faraz, going back to John McVay's tenure, the industry's changed so much, but he's been a pretty central character. I think he's been more than central. He's been, I think, like you said earlier, he's been an absolute giant in this sector. And I think that the indie community in particular have really relished the fact that we have someone like him fighting our corner. He's never, ever been afraid of shying away from the hard and big discussions. And also kind of cutting through some of the really wonky policy stuff that can be really challenging for, you know, people that are just trying to run a company like mine, but need to know that the tax credits and the PSBs and, you know, all of the qualifying indie stuff, which we all kind of understand, but not really.

33:15And, you know, along comes John and he kind of, you know, says all the right things in the right order. So, Rebecca, he loves to fight. He loves to fight. Not a man known to keep his opinions to himself, which is exactly what you want when somebody's leading a trade body, right? I mean, particularly when you're a journalist and you need to ring him up for quotes. you know he's going to say exactly what he's thinking um and you know and he was very good at kind of towing that line and going a bit beyond it but never kind of going too far he was a brilliant politician yeah he was very smart and like you say very good at explaining his point both to indies and i think to journalists as well and communicating like this is the problem with this um when you're sort of looking at this massive policy document going i don't know what what's wrong with this why why are you upset uh he was very very good at distilling that and yeah very good at um being very staunch in everything he believed and going out to fight for his members this is a worrying time though you know channel four are obviously talking about in-house production um no one really knows if there's going to be a cabinet reshuffle which means there'll be a new culture secretary and we don't know if dcms survives at all exactly you know the tv industry is in is in a bit of a tailspin and everyone's really worried about it um all of these things are kind of really big important you know we've spoke earlier about Kate Phillips and you know what changes she'll want to make I think that there is a bit of a worry from the indie sector is that we don't we kind of knew that Kate Phillips is is a real front runner to take over from Charlotte Moore I don't know who the front runner is to take over from from John and I think that that kind of rings a few alarm bells with everything that's going on perhaps going to need to find another heavy hitter aren't they they are indeed I thought you're suggesting that Rebecca should do it god yeah why not um yeah so yeah they've got until uh uh january to find somebody new and he said he's going to be there in a kind of caretaky sort of helpful position but yeah it's not really we've not really heard many names suggested actually to be honest so it is there is it is interesting and it's like you know i think like we said that there has been a lot of stability at the top of the tv industry in various points the top creative jobs the the top of the the membership body and it kind of is it's one of those things where it feels very surprising but also inevitable that the longer that goes on the more likely it is that everybody will all change at once, right?

35:23So, yeah, I think it is going to be an interesting time. Maybe they're propping the bar up at the media club. Somebody's giving the membership and they're a bit like, that's it, that's it, quick, Ken. Okay, just enough time for the Audio Network Media Quiz. Let's see how much attention our guests have been paying to the media news. This week, it's called With Hilarious Consequences. Inspired by three media stories, we've created three British sitcom treatments. Can you guess each story from these made-up shows? Right. Once again, Alex at Audio Network has defiantly taken on a wafer-thin brief and supplied a playlist of tracks to score our parody comedy quiz.

36:02Best of three, buzz in with your name if you know the answer. So Rebecca, you will say. Rebecca. And Faraz, you will say. Faraz. Let's play with hilarious consequences.

36:15Behind the scenes on a raunchy TV comedy, two intimacy coordinators have their hands full. When it transpires, no one in the cast has ever been intimate with hilarious consequences. Rebecca. Yes, Rebecca. This is the story that Jilly Cooper is quite confused about, the presence of intimacy coordinators on the set of Rivals, which I read that story and I sort of thought with all respect to the literary legend and brilliance that is Jilly Cooper absolutely love her of course Jilly Cooper is confused by the idea of intimacy coordinators like of course she is and that's fine um but you know I'd still staunchly argue they're a really good idea in the industry and you know um and I think the story was in the telegraph so of course they were quite surprised by intimacy coordinators I read the story and thought that it meant that Jilly Cooper was becoming an intimacy coordinator and I got I'm very confused.

37:04That's why I was confused about the confusion. Wow. Well, she said to the Times, perhaps the problem is that everyone is doing it less and are less practised because they're all jogging and doing lots of exercise instead. Incredible. I love this. It's the reverse version of young people think they invented sex. Old people think they invented sex and it was forgotten. OK, time for our second sitcom.

37:33Nine journalists working for an IT publication behind a charity shop in Atlanta discover they are part of an artificial simulation. But despite being computer generated, they still have to generate dozens of articles a day with hilarious consequences. I have no idea what this is. Rebecca, so this is, I think, was it called Leave It Up or Level Up or something? Yes, Level Act. Level Act. So this is a tech news site in America. And Press Gazette looked at it and they went, yeah, we can't actually find the two people that seem to be in charge of this publication. There is no evidence they exist. The story seems to be written by AI.

38:12There's a picture, and you look at this picture, and it is of the team. It's like nine people in the team. And it turns out it was a Photoshop, that they'd been Photoshopped into this office with the logo in the background. And they were a stock image. And you kind of went, yeah, they do look like a stock image. That's sort of perfectly diverse, but also exactly the same type of people somehow that you only get in stock images of office people. So yeah, it turns out this website, it just doesn't seem like it exists and like the editor's name is spelt wrong or like two different ways on the same page.

38:43And kind of the article from Press Gazette was saying like, oh, despite him saying he pays scrupulous level attention to detail. And I was like, yeah, but here amongst us has not sent out a CV that has a spelling error in it when we have a qualification in sub-editing. is that just me but yeah it does just seem these people are completely made up and it's I'm laughing but it's hilarious but it's also terrifying Would you like to be a shadowy figure popping up a whole new publication written by AI? No very much not I quite like being a very unshadowy figure in a team of real people it's fun But it's a snake in itself isn't it because that means that like AI is scraping AI generated new sources to create AI answers for AI problems Yeah Cool guys Maybe it's reassuring that this was spotted.

39:29I don't know. By what, AI? But also, with all AI things, this is the worst it's ever going to be. Yeah. It's only going to get better. Yeah, I did get, somebody sent me a comment piece the other week that was quite, just a bit rambly and it didn't really say much. And I did feed it into ChatGPT and say, is there a chance ChatGPT wrote this? And ChatGPT said, no, it's far too rambly. It doesn't make any sense. There was that amazing, sorry to derail the quiz, but there was that amazing story from Sam Coates, I don't know if you saw that, where he found out that he spoke to ChatGPT about one of his episodes of his podcast and ChatGPT just literally made up a podcast.

40:06Oh my gosh, yes. If you haven't seen it yet, it's a brilliant clip of him just kind of completely melting down about the fact that he was having an argument with a robot about the fact that something definitely didn't happen and he was being gaslit by an AI. It was very, very funny. Right, last question. For us, you should really try and get this one. It's too late, let's be honest. Question number three. Two radio DJs start a podcast to discuss things they can't say on air, also whilst trying to keep their very real jobs as the nation's biggest station and a hostile press with hilarious consequences.

40:39I do know this. This is about Joe Wiley and Sarah Cox. Sarah Cox? No. It's not Sarah Cox. Okay. Laura Laverne. Which one of them? Zoe Ball. There you go. I got there in the end. It was one of them. Yeah, they're doing a podcast together, aren't they? They are. Which actually feels like it makes sense. like you know yes I got those three names wrong but they are there is a kind of like era of female broadcasters who really did define like a whole generation of women and them getting together and doing a podcast it feels like it kind of makes sense I actually think it's a great idea and you can really already feel like you would love to hear about their stories and their conversations because my god they must have lived a life it's going to be another Persephone podcast I think it's going to have a good chance of success yeah definitely I think you know like Price said They've already got a following.

41:26They, you know, they're consummate professionals. They've never worked together, apparently, despite apparently being quite good friends. So that's quite nice as well. I will say I do also sort of, like, my brain will swap them around. And I've realised, you said Sarah Cox and I didn't even blink. Like, I was like, oh, yeah, she's in it as well. So, yes. But I think that's going to be really interesting. It's an independent show. It's not a BBC show. It's going to be something that's kind of theirs. Oh, interesting. So it's going to be completely launched in its own way. Yes. Yes. Which does mean they're probably going to have to be careful to not fall foul of the Gary Lineker pitfalls of having a job somewhere else and saying something you shouldn't.

42:04It'd be funny if they came out as massive right-wing influencers. That would be a lovely switch on the plan. That would be sad. But Makita and Lily Allen's show has done incredibly well. And so this does feel like it's a space that is ripe for... I was going to say exploiting, that sounds awful. But there is an audience in this place. and the fact that it's going to be a visualised podcast as well I'm just going to do a very quick plug that we've got in the edition of the magazine going to press tonight we've got a great piece by my colleague Ellie Kahn about the rise and rise of visualised podcasts and just you know why they are so popular they're just chat shows but there's more to it than that and I'm sure I'm obviously talking to the expert because we are in fact being here something I regularly forget yeah I realise I've come turned up dressed as Steve Irwin go and have a look online to see what for us looks like So congratulations, Rebecca.

42:54You win the quiz. You get to reinterpret the Media Club as a new lifestyle podcast, maybe in the Zoe Ball, Joe Wiley style. Sounds fun. Come back with your thoughts. And my thanks to Franz Osman and Rebecca Cooney. And of course, to Alex at Audio Network for this week's Suite of Music. You can build your own, license multiple platforms anywhere forever at audionetwork.com. That's audionetwork.com. And before we go, Rebecca, how can people keep up with your work and hear about that story. Yes, so you can find more of our work at broadcastnow.co.uk. I work like I'm the queen. I'm in the work of the broadcast team generally.

43:31And then you can find me on Blue Sky at Rebecca K Cooney and Instagram at Annie and Becky. And I'm on Twitter as Rebecca K Cooney if anyone's still using that, I guess. And Fraz, what's coming up for you guys? We've got some really fun projects that we're starting to deliver now and we're going to production of our new kids show, which I am ridiculously excited about. I can't wait for that to start coming together because we've got some fun stuff that we're doing. Anyway, you can catch all of that at gold underscore wallet pretty much everywhere. And then I'm on LinkedIn where I'm trying to do more and post more stuff because I think it's a fun little space to be right now.

44:05Yes, same. It's sort of become a new Twitter. Yeah, it has. Thank you both. And thanks to you for listening and watching as well. Remember, sign up to our sub stack. It's free at themediaclub.com. I'm Matt Deegan the producer was Olly Piertz with support from Matt Hill it's a Rethink Audio production with video support from Podcast Discovery I'll see you next week

44:33So retrospectors what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History? On Monday when the world met Monty Python On Tuesday Yes We Can Can opening night at the Moulin Rouge On Wednesday the politician who escaped the Prussian War in a hot air balloon. On Thursday, bang to rights, the tiny nation with the world's oldest constitution. And on Friday, we discover the first political assassination caught on camera. That's Today in History with The Retrospectors. Ten minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts.