Should The BBC Pay Trump? (And 101 Other Questions)

0:01Hello, welcome to the Media Club. I'm your host Matt Deegan. In the club today, it was one scandal too many for Tim Davey. Where does his departure leave the BBC at this crucial time? And which talented exec would dare take on the role? Former Chief Creative Officer for BBC TV, Patrick Young. And The Telegraph's media editor, James Warrington, whose paper broke the DG slaying story, joins us in the studio. Also on the show, ITV is up for sale. Well, at least the broadcasting arm is. Our panel discuss whether Sky is ready to snap it up. Plus, why a dispute between YouTube and Disney as frustrating US football fans?

0:38And in the Audio Network Media Quiz, we consume all the news that's fit to TikTok. That's all happening in this edition of the Media Club. Come on in. Nice to see you both. Patrick, welcome. And for the first time in person, which is good to see. James, your first time here. Welcome. Thank you. You're in. You've got your membership card. Who do you like to bring as your plus one today? Well, I think there's only one real choice for me this week, and that's my colleague, Gordon Rayner, who has broken the series of stories about the BBC that have been everywhere in the media, not just the media news, but the general news for the last week and a half.

1:18Both sides of the Atlantic. Both sides of the Atlantic. And regardless of your views on the BBC or how it's handled the issue, which I'm sure we'll cover, I mean, it's a real old-fashioned scoop and the fallout's only really just beginning, I think. So you've got to take your hats off to Gordon. It's definitely led the news. And Pat, who would you like to add as your plus one this week? I had a few frontrunners. Tim Davey, the ultimate faithful. Yes. Yeah, we might dissect what that banishment meeting looked like. Stephen Lambert, who's got another hit show with Celebrity Race Across the World off the back of Traitors.

1:57people forget 18 years ago he was ousted from his production company over a bbc editing scandal but the person i'll go with theresa wise ceo of rts who's just announced she's standing down done incredible things there especially the mini nba but also the work she's done to through bursaries to bring more people into the media so theresa wise i mean rts has a quite big impact on the tv industry i mean they they they do convene everybody in cambridge as well as in london um and the region the regional uh offices as well yeah and they are they are a safe space for most people to come and convene and discuss um but the work she's done especially to extend its reach to people that maybe not don't see that a career in television is for them and also helping those who are mid-career upskill and reskill i think will will stand the test of time Well, both very welcome in the club this week.

2:54Right. In a moment, it's BBC Crisis again. I'll see you in a second.

3:05Welcome back to the Media Club. So what can the BBC do to mollify Trump and defend its wider trust in journalism? Patrick you said this week that the BBC should apologise for the edit which they've sort of done in the letters to DCMS to the committee but not a lot else yet should they do anything else or is that it? No they shouldn't do anything else other than apologise they shouldn't pay that man a dime and there are some people in the BBC who think they're very clever and that they'll dress it up as a charity payment or will pay some fees, no they shouldn't pay him, legally he's not entitled to anything.

3:43And I also think sort of morally and editorially, he's not inclined to, he's not entitled to anything. And just because he's been able to shake down a number of US networks, if the BBC were to bend the knee on this one, they would lose all of their trust and credibility at home and abroad, and they would lose their staff. Trump is pretty good at shaking down media organisations in the US. We've seen payments from ABC and CBS. They've decided to be on the right side of him, should the BBC. It's true. I mean, there's quite a long history of legal action. I mean, I haven't crunched the numbers proportionately on how many have been successful.

4:18But certainly recently, as you say, ABC, CBS, just the head of the Paramount takeover. It's well known that he's a litigious man, Donald Trump. I think in a lot of circumstances and certainly in this case with the BBC, there's a lot of grandstanding to it. There's a lot of bluster. Is it a serious legal threat? I mean, I don't think so in this case. But then you could say that the ABC one wasn't a serious legal threat. Pretty much everything everybody said was very easily defendable. I think they're in a different situation. I mean, what US broadcasters do, I don't think it's a good idea for US broadcasters to be kowtowing or to be paying legal settlements with the president.

4:59But that is the US market where they're far more vulnerable to regulation through the FCC, which is led by Brendan Carr, who is a Trump acolyte. the BBC is not regulated in the US. I mean, it has operations there, is trying to expand there. And I think that's a very interesting point. But fundamentally, it's a British broadcaster, it's regulated by Ofcom. And I agree, Pat, I think that that's not something that they should be getting into. I think an apology is definitely required. But you go down a quite a slippery slope if you start making payments of whatever size to anyone who has an issue with your coverage.

5:36And I don't think they should do that. But Pat, if you're a BBC journalist in America, those White House hard passes may not last very long. Well, let's be honest. He is a bit of a baby and a bit of a bully. And if he can't sue them, he could do anything from taking away White House passes to declaring them enemies of the state and taking away their visas, to putting 10 % tariffs on all British goods. I mean, the man could do anything, but that's another reason why you don't appease him, because he'll only come back for more. So obviously this is the story that everyone's been talking about in the media this week and wider across the country and world.

6:15The BBC Director General and the Head of News resigning. James, was Tim right to go? Did he jump? Was he pushed? Where do we start with this? I mean, I think, I'll leave aside whether he was right. I think from what we're starting to hear, it sounds as if there was a lot of his own decision-making involved. It sounds as if he hadn't necessarily lost the backing of the board, but ultimately he decided that it just wasn't the position for him. He'd had enough. And let's be honest, it's a thankless task being BBC Director General. Really difficult. You're managing this massive organisation across news and entertainment in an incredibly fragmented world.

6:58You've got to be all things to all people in Britain. uh meanwhile you're having to justify you know the value of a license fee to to british taxpayers so um money's not great either no no that's also true well i mean relative to to other organizations i mean let's be honest he's not doing badly the director general doesn't do badly but you could easily have a much quieter uh much more lucrative lifestyle elsewhere um but no i I think there's probably a combination of factors in terms of him leaving. I think when you have a new story like the one or the new cycle like we've seen, where every day there is a new story, a new revelation, and it fills the media space, it's really difficult to come back from that.

7:45I think there's also questions which maybe we'll get on to, but about the BBC's response or lack of response. so no overall I think it was probably the right probably the right decision and there was probably a little bit of jumping as well as pushing yeah Pat I mean we're saying there that he didn't need to go why did he go then? why did he choose now's the time? I mean he's been through the washing machine already with Glastonbury all of those sorts of things every DG goes through them I do believe it would have been his own decision I know Tim well enough to know that if he says it's his decision you should take that at face value I do feel that and I still can't understand if the news board was ready to make an apology seven days earlier why that apology didn't happen who stopped it and why so this would be like the executives of the news division were happy to apologise the news division board said we should apologise, they wrote an apology but for some reason the board of the BBC wouldn't let them make it why they didn't let them make it and who was involved in stopping them from i mean the idea that deborah fernes who's as you know a significant and well-renumerated head of news can't make an apology on behalf of her division yeah uh and needs permission is bizarre she she then needs permission and it's not granted and it is only not granted that then there's this week-long vacuum um and you know if there was clarity about governance and management in the bbc it'd be easier to understand but there isn't so i don't know why she was blocked from making that apology.

9:16And that's something I hope the select committee will get to the bottom of. But then once they didn't make the apology, they all said, well, we're waiting for the comprehensive response to the committee. Well, I saw the response and the response is pretty comprehensive and it does address actually head on most of the points within the so-called secret dossier, which wasn't a dossier, wasn't that secret. But why did that take seven days to pull together? You know, I chair a university in Cardiff and we have to do everything bilingually and it wouldn't take us seven days to do that. So I do not understand why it took seven days to issue the comprehensive response.

9:53And so they left a vacuum into which all of these other actors stepped. And I think probably at the end of the day, if they were demanding Deborah's, because I think they probably were demanding Deborah's head. And apology isn't enough. There needs to be a head. and Debra was I imagine disinclined to offer her ahead and Tim may have said if she goes I go and so that led to a week of how do we get through this and in the end they both went that might be that's my guess it is a guess it is the sort of thing Tim would do he does stand up for his execs if he backs you if he backs you but for an edit in a film that had no complaints at the time was only discovered through the BBC's own editorial checks.

10:40To lose your DG and head of news is bizarre. James, why that week-long gap? Just panic or something else? That's the real question that I think people are trying to get to the bottom of now. There are issues, I think, in the governance of the BBC that we've discussed about the construction of the board and how easy it is to make decisions at that level. I think it was a fundamental issue. And I think it's hard to say whether, you know, had they come out on the first day and said something then, apologised then, whether it would have gone away. I think probably not, given there were many more stories to come out, but they could have got in front of it.

11:19They probably would have been able to control it a little bit better. In terms of what's gone on, there's been reports about a sort of boardroom saga, a rebellion. I find it quite difficult to believe. So there's many senses around the role of Robbie Gibb, a BBC board member. So he'd previously worked for the BBC. He then went to work for Theresa May's government. Yes. Has pretty strong views, which he's been happy to talk about. He bought the Jewish Chronicle, I think, as well. Founded at GB News. Yeah. And appointed by Boris Johnson to the BBC board. So you're definitely right wing flavoured.

12:01Yes, I think no one would dispute that, you know, his political position. I don't think he would either. I guess my scepticism would be around the fact that he individually would be able to control the direction of the BBC board as one person on that board of 10, 12 people. A very seemingly competent chairman in Samir Shah, who you would have thought would be able to kind of exert his influence there. but the pushback to that would be Samishar's new to the role Robbie had done pretty well in getting into the new subcommittee which had some staff members and advisors that were seemingly more of his ilk and that he appointed or got involvement with so he was managing to potentially create, so BBC supporters say he has created a narrative in that BBC news committee to constantly basically have this drumbeat to drive a view which he's talked about publicly about challenging the BBC's impartiality.

13:07I mean I think the other thing I would say to that is you know in a lot of these situations and I'd almost use the same argument to argue against the idea that there's institutional bias in the BBC I think with a lot of these situations the idea of some overarching conspiracy tends to be a little bit far-fetched and that the real world doesn't work like that it's a lot messier and people don't sit there scheming and coming up with ground plans but I mean another thing I'd say to that is we're now left in a situation where the entire structure of BBC's governance including its board is under quite intense scrutiny there There are calls from inside the BBC for Robbie Gibb to be removed from his position.

13:49You know, if that were to happen, if this had been his scheme the whole time, then I think you could say it had backfired somewhat. So that's why I'm sceptical about that. I mean, having not been in the room myself, I could not tell you what those discussions, what was going on in those discussions. I don't believe it could be Gibb on his own. Okay. So you said earlier that Tim Davey was the ultimate faithful. is Robbie give the ultimate traitor. I haven't played that personality game, actually, because I just don't believe that one man on his own can stymie a board. A board like that would always look, if it can, to achieve consensus.

14:27But on issue of this importance, if there was just one board member digging in, you know, I demand a head on the plate, I demand a head on the plate. As chair, a competent chair would deal with that. They'd put it to the vote, they'd close it down. Now, so I don't believe it could be Robbie on his own, but I don't understand how they got to the situation that they ended up with. I think it's very striking that Tim used the word weaponise in his farewell letter. Tim, he's a marketeer. He picks his words very carefully. That could have been his invitation to us to look at what's really going on at that level because if there is a constant drumbeat of editorial challenge from a particular perspective, which, you know, the incredible thing about Samir's response was that everything, I mean, where the telegraph were very clever was dropping a shoe every day.

15:23You know, today it's the Arabic service, tomorrow it's... The thing, the BBC response, which was comprehensive, and they did see the whole of the so-called dossier, responded to all of those points. and then you can get into an argument was the response robust enough or whatever but it was all there and if that had come out on day one or day two it would have taken the wind along with an apology about the trump editor it would have taken the wind totally out of the sails of everything the telegraph was then going to do but that didn't happen and that is a fundamental failure of governance and so that sits at samir's door and my concern is that this board which is clearly riven is now going to select the temporary dg and the new dg so we can't deal with the dysfunction before that happens there's every possibility it's going to happen again uh is the telegraph an impartial player in this or have they got an agenda as well your colleagues you know it's a it's a right of center paper yeah i think that's true i think um there has been this uh instinctive response um that you know this is politically motivated um i think there are always going to be people uh who want to have a go at the bbc for whatever reason i think with this story i think where it's come from is is the important thing this was a um a dossier or not a dossier depending on what we're going to call it a document drawn up by an advisor to their standards committee.

16:54And that is exactly the kind of, or exactly the person or one of the people that the BBC's leadership needs to be listening to. You know, this is not people shouting from the sidelines, simply, you know, trying to do the BBC down. This is people on the inside with genuine concerns. And I think on that basis, you know, it's absolutely not just a story, but a very important story. Can I challenge that just a little bit? Because he isn't on the inside. he was an advisor he's actually a pr hack runs a pr firm and has done 15 years there's a very very good piece by david aronovich uh which i think may have been in the observer and is now on his substat um about looking at the actual dossier because lots of people haven't seen the dossier because one of the things about this world we live in is it's behind a paywall so david actually is it now been published as part of the letter to the dcms so it might be public if you go and find it.

17:49David actually did a dissection of the dossier. You know, the impartial dossier, first of all, somebody's revealed today, actually edited the bits of Trump's speech that it complained that the BBC edited. So it said the BBC went from here to here when the very next line was the following. And actually, the very next line wasn't the following. The very next line was four lines of Trump talking about the need to fight and not having a country again. So he talks about the use of the expression reproductive rights in the BBC's American coverage as liberal leaning. You know, he promotes a group called History Reclaimed, who are right out there in the culture wars territory of there's too much discussion, not enough praise for the empire and too much discussion about slavery.

18:44So he's not a neutral figure. We shouldn't pretend that he was a neutral figure. And he didn't write a neutral report. But he was appointed by them to advise for a long time. If we get into that sort of discussion, then who can we trust? No, no. These judgments. I have no problem with the BBC saying, look, we need to be challenged. Maybe they should be challenged from the left as well as from the right. But we need to have people in who look at our output and challenge it. Fair enough. but they shouldn't then pretend that they don't have their own biases and that the idea i mean the telegraph didn't look at the report and say actually if you look at the report the use of the word lawfare well that's a definitely a trump talking point which the author has used as as it's just lingua franca so the telegraph didn't say actually when you look at the prescott report there are some things in here which are not you know telegraph took it at source and look the Telegraph is a right-leaning paper.

19:40And they didn't leak it to The Guardian, right? They leaked it to The Telegraph. So I take it for what it is. And, you know, there's little to be gained from arguing about the semantics of the report. Other than to say that this guy was not a neutral arbiter of truth. So that advises Michael Prescott. And we haven't really heard from him yet, but I think we're going to hear him at a select committee soon. And, of course, he is always welcome to come on the Media Club. So you talked earlier about the board appointing the next DG or an acting DG. Who would want to take this job and who should take this job?

20:18Who do you think? Well, I think there are probably a couple of ways of coming at it. The internal candidate might be, well, I say internal, that's not technically true, but Charlotte Moore, who left recently. Went to Left Bank Pictures. That's right. she was head of content um very well um respected figure um i think internally that there would be a lot of support uh for her uh i think you could look to other figures in the industry the likes of jane turton at all three media uh producer of the traitors she was until very recently linked with the channel for chief executive role and now is no longer which is interesting in itself there are a handful of other figures I mean you could look for example Alex Mahon who was Channel 4 previously although she's now gone into another job at Superstruck the festival's company not a sort of sexy broadcast job it probably pays pretty well but it's was maybe some people saw that as a bit of a surprise move for her yeah I think so and I think for all the reasons we've already discussed you have to be someone with a really passionate love for public service broadcasting, it is a difficult job and is a thankless job and you really need that.

21:31I think the other way of looking at it is sort of looking at this saga and saying, well, there needs to be more sort of news chops at the head of the BBC because news ultimately is what's brought down, I mean, most of the directors. So does it need more of an elevated position there? Which means, so Trevor Phillips is a name who's been raised. James Harding, obviously now tortoise and the observer, but previously... Some people talked about his McTaggart lecture being a little bit of a pitch for the job. Yeah, that's an interesting perspective. And then I suppose, before I let other people put their opinions across, the other argument there as well, does actually the role need to be split?

22:15Which I think is an interesting discussion because with one director general, you are overseeing everything. It's enormous business, it's enormous taxpayer funded business, but also commercial business, while also dealing with negotiations over future funding, the licence fee, that sort of thing. So should there be another role that's carved out that oversees editorial? That's an interesting question I think will be raised. You work with lots of bosses at your time there. Who'd be a good DG at this time? Mark Thompson was DG and he had Mark Byfield as deputy DG. And Mark Byfield, I think... With more of a news background.

22:55With much more of a news background. And then Mark Thompson himself was a news background. And one of the interesting things about how TV has evolved is that if you go all the way back to John Burt, these were people who started in news and then moved across to television and then moved into senior management. Greg Dyke, the same. Mark Thompson, the same. Now TV and news are almost two parallel tracks. so it's very rare that you get a candidate who's got experience of both at any significant level one person that has is jay hunt her name has been mentioned previously at channel four former editor of six o 'clock news ran channel four ran channel five people forget that um and now a big job at apple in um in europe um there's kevin backhurst former head one of the heads within BBC News, Ofcom for a number of years, and now DGRTE.

23:50I think a number of the other... I mean, I do think you need to have a Deputy Director General, and that person is probably either the Editor-in-Chief or who News reports into. And that was sort of lost kind of for money reasons, wasn't it? It was for money reasons and for delaying and all the rest of it. but I think there's been a cost because the DG job is enormous, you're running a$6 billion entity so and if you can create a structure where you have a Deputy Director General who's also Editor-in-Chief it allows you to have a Director General who can have a much broader range of skills and experiences and probably that's what the BBC will need going into this next era.

24:39Would you recommend someone take the job? Well, someone's got to do it. So what I'd recommend is that, you know, myself and like-minded people will support them. Because I think, you know, those jobs are very lonely, actually. And I think they need to know that people of good will, and that isn't, you know, that's on left and right. I think a lot of people see the value of the BBC. We'll support them. Well, before all of this, You've been working on the British Broadcasting Challenge as a way to sort of raise some questions for the government as part of license fee renewal. You sort of launched it at the time this has all happened.

25:17Is it the best time to launch something or the worst time? Yeah, we launched our document about renewing the BBC, a charter for the next period. We launched that about two weeks ago. And we're sitting there going, how are we going to get people to notice this? What are we going to do to make this current and real? And then this happened. And in some ways, I wish it wasn't, you know, the document itself wasn't so current. But fundamentally, we're at a very particular moment as we look at this charter renewal. The six richest men in the world own pretty much all of the platforms that we use to find, share, discover content.

25:55Elon Musk owns X to Twitter. larry ellison owns cbs and will be on the board of tiktok usa and oracle will be its data partner um mark zuckerberg owns or controls facebook into instagram and whatsapp um jeff bezos owns amazon amazon prime amazon web services which the bbc iplayer sits on and the washington post then you've got sergey brin and larry page and between them they own or control YouTube and Google. So all of the big platforms through which content is disseminated, shared, discovered, are owned by six American individuals, some of whom are MAGA, some of whom Zuckerberg, when Trump was elected, got rid of all moderation, for example, all content moderation.

26:46And Bezos reportedly paid$30 million to do a documentary on Melania Trump. so the BBC is the only bulwark that we have that stands against all of that because they're also consolidating into more traditional media you know CBS Ellison has bought CBS he's now trying to buy CNN Warner Brothers Discovery that owned CNN so there's a consolidation happening on the other side of the pond which is going to force and remake news content how it's made how it's shared, who can access it. The BBC stands apart from that as a publicly owned public service broadcaster at scale. And the at scale bit is also important because all the surveys show that even today, nearly 80 % of people engage with the BBC at least once a week, still the most trusted news provider in the UK, second most trusted news provider in the USA after the Weather Channel.

27:47so we need a strong BBC and this charter is a chance to do that our proposals were make the BBC first we'll give the BBC a forever charter the idea that every 10 years there's even a discussion about should the BBC continue or not is is really mad we don't do that with the NHS and other public national institutions so give the BBC a forever charter and instead spend time on a 10-year licensing agreement about what the BBC will do what services it will provide and what audiences it will speak to. Make fully independent the appointments process for people to the board of the BBC. So have an independent appointments process, just like we do with public service appointments.

28:32The parliamentary approval, the approval by the people to come through DCMS Select Committee, not the executive. So you insulate the BBC from the executive. At the moment, it's too close to the executive. If Nisan Andy and the Prime Minister puts people on the board of the BBC, well, that's got to stop if you want to protect the BBC for the long term. We believe it should be funded at scale. We don't have the intellectual firepower to work out what the funding mechanism should be, but it needs to retain the universal principle. It needs to be a universal broadcaster. It also needs to take on an obligation for dealing with misinformation.

29:10So that was our potpourri of things that the BBC need to do going forward. and we were sitting there thinking, how are we going to tell people about it? And boom, this happens. And many of the issues we talked about are writ large in this mess that we have now. James, do you think any government would give it true independence? It's always a difficult one, isn't it? And we see that in so many different media organisations and trying to kind of split up ownership from editorial control and these sort of firewalls that get put in place, but can be got around and things can be good on paper, but harder in practice.

29:45So, yeah, it'd be interesting to see kind of how that works, how that would work in practice. I agree with the principle, absolutely. Kind of keeping the BBC away from political interference, I think, can only be a good thing. I think in terms of sort of guaranteeing the long term future of the BBC, which I agree is a very important thing. I think there's a risk that it falls in, it becomes something of a sort of charity case almost. and that defenders of the BBC sort of get themselves into this situation where it is constantly sort of this defensive mindset of a bunker mentality of kind of like, oh, no, well, this is why the BBC is good.

30:29And I think the BBC needs to be able to prove to people, to show to people why it is good and why it is worth paying for. And I think trust is basically at the heart of that. You know, I think BBC does great things in terms of its news coverage, but if it loses public trust. And it's still one of the most trusted organisations. It is. It is. That's absolutely true. It still tops the rankings, but it's, you know, it's losing that. I mean, you can see it diminishing. But is that partly because in a modern media environment, digital media environment, the people who think it's dreadful are unreachable?

31:05You know, they sit in an ecosystem which, even with the BBC's sort of firepower and evidence of the impartiality that pretty much is across all programming, they can't communicate that. I think that's definitely to do with it, the sort of atomisation that we've seen that makes things so much more difficult and is actually a major driving force of why the BBC is struggling financially as well at the moment. But I think, and I don't have the answers on sort of how you fix it for BBC. If I did, I'd be going for that DGC myself. But I think there needs to be the... Young man. Son you had in the ring, that's it, for sure.

31:44But no, I just think that it needs to be a sort of positive, proactive campaign that proves the worth of the BBC and does not inadvertently, perhaps, put it in this position that it thinks, well, we need to prop up this organisation because it can't wash its own face. and that's the situation I don't think we want to get into. I understand that. I think the challenge of the 10-year charter is it forces people into the... First of all, we've got to keep it and then we can talk about what we're going to do with it. If we knew we were going to keep it, we could all talk about how it can be better.

32:21But it starts with a... I mean, I think one of the newspapers today said, will the BBC survive to the next charter? You know, I mean, the idea that that's even a question and it wasn't written rhetorically. and the person who really actually thought that um but no i mean you're right and we don't want the bbc also being sort of special measures tv you know we don't want the bbc doing the stuff that nobody else wants to do we also don't want the bbc to be like pbs in america when i worked in america running a cable network i remember the first telethon i saw on pbs wasn't to raise money for children in need it was to raise money for pbs so they can stay on air and i thought god you're the most advanced democracy in the world and this is what public broadcasting looks like so we have something really special here yet occasionally it cocks up and sometimes it cocks up really badly and it needs to get better at identifying the mistakes apologizing for the mistakes and not just apologizing making good and showing that they've learned but we lose a lot if the bbc is diminished because none of those tech pros give a monkeys about what's going on I mean, Elon Musk called for Keir Starmer to be overthrown the next election, said there's going to be a civil war and is paying Tommy Robinson's legal fees.

33:41You know, he probably has the most active, widely distributed media platform in the world. If that's what we want to succumb to, then we're all going to be diminished. OK, just before the break, in any normal week, this would be the top story. Sky is eyeing up buying ITV's broadcast arm. That's the channel's ITVX, basically the ad-funded part of the business. James, on Monday, ITV said that they expect its ad revenue this Christmas to be significantly down. The next day, this news break. So why does Sky want it? Well, that's an interesting question. And just to take a step back, I mean, the breakup of or potential breakup of ITV has been on the cards for a while now.

34:25and ITV Studios, its production division, has been seen as sort of, you know, the bright star. That's what people want. I mean, you can kind of look at the PLC side and basically all of the value can be attributed to the studios business and the broadcast business has sort of been valued at zero. Well, yeah, almost. I mean, I think that's certainly true that the growth area is ITV Studios. I mean, broadcasting and traditional advertising does still throw off quite a lot of cash, but it's a declining business and the growth of streaming is not yet offsetting this. So the question for the last 18 months, two years has been, well, we know people are interested in ITV studios, but who's going to want the rest of it?

35:04Sky is apparently the answer. And yeah, I think the idea there is to create a sort of UK streaming champion, is how I've heard it described. so bringing in ITVX's not insignificant user base into Sky you gain scale which in this media environment is so important when you're playing against these major US companies and then you essentially use ITV as what an industry is described as a shop window so you can put Sky programming onto ITV onto the free-to-air bit and then hopefully drive people into the paid subscription part of Sky's business and people... So ITV becomes a sort of skylight? In a way, I suppose.

35:51And they're keen to point out that, you know, that doesn't mean that they're going to put I'm a celebrity behind a paywall or anything like that. But yeah, it's sort of, it's the way of luring people in, I suppose. And sport is one area they point to. I mean, everyone knows Sky, sport is of huge significance to Sky. But ITV have the Euros, Six Nations, Rugby. so i think people see that as a potential area of overlap so i mean sky have found that a lot of the people who are their content providers that have done very well for them over the years in in movies uh in telly a lot of those are launching streaming services themselves so things like uh hbo and hbo max coming to coming to the uk you know historically that was all on sky you know is this part of them trying to think how do we develop our business i think so i mean there was a period in which sky were really positioning themselves as this aggregator um where the idea was that you know you'd have your subscription to netflix you'd have your amazon prime disney whatever it was but sky would be sort of the home and uh you go through their app and access those different things and um i mean i i wouldn't i wouldn't sit here and say that that's failed but i think it hasn't you know it hasn't quite worked out as the business a sort of sustainable business model for them so i think they're now yeah looking at new ways um to kind of reach and retain audiences and i think yeah the idea of a of a major uk commercial streaming player is is one that's quite appealing but owned by a us company owned by a us company um interesting pat when when i thought about this uh you know the murdoch owns sky taking over itv and that that was a an option a few years ago when sort of virgin media uh took over the cable networks um industry aghast quite a lot of the commentary i saw about this was like oh yeah maybe it needs it sort of a bit resigned to this is perhaps where itv should live should should itv be a part of sky let me declare an adjacent interest i was serving the board of itv studios as a non-exec until a year ago i've no inside information about any of this stuff going on but what i will say is that itv The ITV broadcaster, I'm an ITV PLC, led by Carolyn McCall, is a very well-run company.

38:06They know what business they're in. They do it very well. And it looks like they've driven, if the number in the papers is the number that the negotiations are in, it looks like they've driven, you know, they're involved in a very productive conversation. um i think we would maybe do better to talk about this as comcast rather than sky and where it fits in the comcast ecosystem so comcast own nbc in america it's not dissimilar to the sort of itv business yeah they're an nbc a free-to-air network in america they have peacock which is a sub scale streaming platform but you start to pull together sky peacock itvx you start to get some scale as a streaming product um it's true free-to-air audiences are diminishing but itv still has the biggest free-to-air audiences they probably delivered i think 90 at the top 100 audience events last year if you're launching a product still and it's day date time sensitive itv is sort of the place that you go to and that that has heft you can cross promote from your other platforms to itv when we get to iptv and everything's delivered through the web then what Sky can do there in terms of interfaces and prominence for ITV they'll have to give prominence to everybody but the ease at which ITV and Sky we even know you're moving between them maybe at times so I can see why Comcast would want to do it it would make sense globally those big entities are buying free-to-air networks I can see why ITV would would be interested in in using it as a mechanism to get to scale i know there are concerns about advertising so yeah so it would be probably 60 70 percent of the tv advertising market though i'm sure they would argue that that market is very is very broad now um also news provision is interesting comcast gave a commitment to sky news for a certain number of years which another two or three years left on but there'd be an interesting question about what would happen to itn yeah so itn is over 40 40 percent by itv um so not wholly owned but they are the driving force of Also, it's Channel 4 News, and they provide Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, ITV News, and Sky News.

40:20But in these arguments we're talking about, do you need a scaled provider? Are they a good competitive scale provider for the BBC? They would be. The only question would be, will there be enough diversity of voice with it and merged? Because News on 4 and ITV are very different in tone and take. And 5 do their news in a totally different way as well. So these are things that people are going to have to work through. The other thing from a producer point of view, there will be fewer buyers in the marketplace. And I think producers are worried, independent producers are worried, that there will just be fewer people that you can sell to.

40:55James, do you think the government would wave through a deal? I think on media plurality, I'm not sure where that would fall. I think there would have to be sort of commitments and that's a closely regulated market. I think the big issue would be with the CMA, the Competition Markets Authority, around, as we said, TV advertising. And would they say, right, we're going to redefine it and say, well, we're not just going to look at TV ads. We're going to look at you as a competitor to Google and Meta. And in that situation, you know, they're minnows, to be quite frank. The government's been making the right noises.

41:31It's already said that it's that it's sort of open to relaxing those rules. I think it was over the summer. um so i think there would be you know optimism and confidence that that would get through on a on competition grounds i think that's not to say there wouldn't be uh some backlash i think channel four would be the big sticking point um if we look at it from an from an ad sales perspective um itv have the biggest ad sales house in the uk um that's followed by sky so together as you said I think it'd be 69 % of the market. Channel 4 are in third place and that would leave them sort of high and dry.

42:09So would they push for concessions? Sky giving up some business. So Sky doesn't just sell its own ads, it sells ads for the likes of Warner Brothers and Paramount. Would it have to give those up? I think that's a question. Is that a big enough barrier to stop a deal? I think probably not. Well, the government probably wants to support Channel 4, the broadcaster that they also own. Well, yeah, there's that element to it as well, yeah. OK, when we return, YouTube and Disney are at loggerheads. See you in a sec.

42:41Hello, Media Club listeners. Patrick here from Podcast Discovery, the podcast marketing company, where this week we've been thinking about the future. I'm coming to you from the Savoy, where we've spent the day cooking up exciting new ideas for podcast promotion. Keen to find out what they are? Speak to us at podcastdiscovery.com. That's podcastdiscovery.com We've talked about BBC Studios and ITV Studios now Podshop Studios where we make our show every week thanks to our supporters here at Podshop and somewhere that you can record your podcast or your live stream as well they've just opened up four brand new studios in Shoreditch each one has its own distinct look and feel we're back in the library this week if you haven't seen it go on YouTube and have a look and I can just see on those library shelves 17 volumes of How to Fix the BBC.

43:33They're all professionally designed and fully equipped for broadcast quality video recording. Check it out at podshoponline.co.uk where they're offering 25 % off your first booking for Media Club viewers and listeners. So head to their website podshoponline and use the code media club for 25 % off. Welcome back. Here's some stories we've been talking about in the club this week. with over 11 million people watching in the Celebrity Traitors final live on Thursday. It was inevitable that the BBC would renew the show, which is what they revealed on Monday this week. Not that anyone was paying that much attention.

44:08Rumours that Sir Robbie Gibb will be lined up have so far been unconfirmed. Big talk. Netflix is looking to commission original video podcasts to support wider deals with Spotify. Bloomberg reports that the streamer has been reaching out to talent agencies about exclusive deals that once again will shut out YouTube. And speaking of YouTube, the platform's TV app has been stripped of Disney brands since the end of October, as the companies argue over carriage fees for ESPN and ABC. American football fans have already missed two big games since the dispute began. Who's going to hold out the longest?

44:44Remember, you can get all of the details of those stories on our free sub stack. Head to themediaclub.com to sign up, but you also get our free brief newsletter on a Monday morning, which reviews all of the topics that all of the other media podcasts, apparently there are some, have been talking about in the past week as well. Go sign up for free at themediaclub.com. Before we get to the quiz, just a quick one on YouTube. You obviously were in America negotiating cable deals and carriage deals. This one seems quite different. YouTube, you have YouTube TV in America. It's like a cable network. It's the fastest growing one.

45:20Disney, though, have got their own Hulu Plus TV, I think it's sort of a similar thing. They always say these carriage disputes, this is a big change and they always do a deal. Are they going to do a deal? I don't know. I mean, I've been in a carriage dispute when I was at Discovery. They're not pleasant on either side because as a network, you see your money, your ad income drifting away and people start trying other things. So when you come back, suddenly you've lost your audience. I mean, reading the statements from Disney, they put out a statement to all of their staff. They basically said that YouTube were offering terms which are below the current deal and below the market, and that YouTube were trying to push it all in the way of their model.

46:03YouTube respond and say that basically ABC, Disney are living in a past era, and the world has changed, and it's time for them to catch up and change with it. They're dug in. ABC is pushing people to ESPN +, which is their new streaming product, and also FUBU. I think they're pushing people to... Yeah, I think they've acquired the competitor sort of sport product. So ABC are pushing, and they can also push into ABC Free to Air. So ABC are pushing people to the platforms that they own. And at the moment, no one seems to be blinking. You get a lot of these carriage disputes, don't you? I think this is a particularly interesting one because of what it says about the power dynamics in the market and YouTube coming in and saying, well, you know, we're a player now.

46:47They've got, I think, 10 million subscribers. And growing fast. and they're growing fast. They're going to forecast to overtake some of the established players. So I think they're maybe trying to set down the gauntlet a little bit and say, well, they're trying to change the game. You've had this cheap up until now. Now you start paying. Yeah, well, we'll see what happens. Right, it's just enough time for the Audio Network Media Quiz.

47:10Strap in, let's see how much attention our guests have been paying to the other media news this week. And the game, well, the quiz is, it's called TikTok News. So three media stories connected by one theme and then shoehorned into the format of an existing media property. This time we're looking at three developments concerning TikTok, but I will convey the stories using the medium of TikTok itself. You just translate into something that 35 pluses will understand, who are the listeners to this. And once again, Alex Audio Network has taken that brief from producer Matt and created a playlist of TikTok inspired music to score today's game.

47:48it is a best of three so buzz in with your names if you know the story so pat you will say pat and james you will say james uh let's play tiktok news okay i'm looking at a split screen in the bottom half i can see some minecraft gameplay but in the top it's at mcpartlin laughing then deck and now they're on a british airways flight for some reason. James. Yes. Is this a deal between ITV and TikTok for advertising? So this is a partnership that will see ads run alongside official ITV clips on TikTok. And I guess, you know, the sell to brands is that this is a safe environment on the platform. And for ITV, it's a good way to sort of monetize the audiences there, which is obviously quite difficult.

48:43Sort of similar to their YouTube deal, it sounds like. Okay. TikTok news story number two. I'm seeing an ordinary looking bedroom. A teenager is performing a cover of a song I should know. It's had like 50 billion views or something. TikTok music. Pat. Pat, yes. This isn't the deal that they've done with Heart or iHeart. Yes, it is. to combine iHeart's sort of radio platform with a number of TikTok creators to create some sort of, is it 25? Yes, that's pretty good. They're making 25 podcasts with our creators. And they're going to have them at their events. And this is a parallel. I don't even have TikTok on my phone because I accepted the Chinese interference argument.

49:37This is like a parallel universe to me. I'm sure my 12-year-old could tell me. And I was going to launch some TikTok radio stations as well. Some of which actually exist in some other countries around the world. Linear. Everyone loves Linear after all, even TikTok. OK, one more to go. Right. It's someone doing their makeup. I'm literally getting ready with them. Oh, but she's also talking about a murder. There's a mirror on the desk, but it's not a normal desk. It's a true crime desk. James. Yes. So this is, I think, the Daily Mail talking about putting true crime at the front of their audio output.

50:15I think they've renamed, I can't remember what it to now, but they've renamed their TikTok account. And they're also putting it sort of front and centre for podcasts, which... It's called the Crime Desk. That's it, the Crime Desk. It's got some podcasts in there. And obviously the Mail, big fans of crime. Well, that's it, and have always been. I mean, you know, it was ever thus, crime selling newspapers. But more recently, I mean, the Daily Mail did the Lucy Let Be series, which was really popular. They're trying to drive more people to their subscription service. It makes sense. Everyone loves true crime.

50:46Well, James, congratulations. First time luck, obviously. You've won the quiz, and as a special prize, you get to create an independent body that looks at the media club to decide whether it's been truly impartial each week. So you can come back with reports on that. also thank you to Alex at Audio Network for scoring today's quiz remember Alex and Audio Network can do that for you just head to audionetwork.com before we go how can people keep up with your good work how can they find out about the British Broadcasting Challenge britishbroadcastingchallenge.com I also do some stuff for the British Broadcasting Challenge on my own Substack which is Pat Young on the Substack platform and we're involved at the moment in creating letters for members of the public to send to MPs to raise their concerns about the future of the BBC.

51:35So keep an eye on the website. And James, how can people find your good work? Well, they can go into the pages of The Telegraph. That'd be the main place. If not, I am still on Twitter slash X, so you can follow me there. Excellent. And thank you for listening and watching too. My name is Matt Deegan. The producer is Matt Hill. It was a Rethink Audio production with video support from Podcast Discovery. I'll see you next week.

52:02so retrospectors which historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of today in history on monday the anniversary of the day magic johnson made an announcement that shocked america on tuesday we discovered that in the early days tom and jerry were a cat and a dog on wednesday spend a penny at london's first public toilets for women on thursday the day malcolm x came to smetherg and on friday the cool true story behind cool runnings that's today in history with the retrospectors 10 minutes each weekday wherever you get your podcasts