Sky’s £16m SNL Bet

0:01Hello, welcome to the Media Club. I'm Matt Deegan. In the club today, SNL UK has landed with a£16 million budget and an extended run. A journalist, Alex Hudson, looks at why Sky is splashing the cash and what it might get for its investment. Also on the programme, Roku has been in the smart TV business for almost 20 years and it's showing no signs of slowing down. We speak to Roku's Tom Price about choice fatigue, fast channels and content discovery. All that plus Hugh Edwards attacks Channel 5. The new Director General is announced. And in the Audio Network Media Quiz, we tell it like it really isn't.

0:37That's all coming up in this edition of the Media Club. Come on in.

0:46Welcome back, Alex. You're an award-winning journalist, tech correspondent and AI expert, formerly of the BBC Newsweek and Metro, and now, amongst other things, presenting the Crashed podcast. who's getting your plus one this week? So speaking of AI, Jamie Bartlett is getting my membership into the media club this week. So he's also a podcaster, presenter, speaker, all sorts, but his podcast, Everything is Fake and Nobody Cares, is out on BBC Sounds. And he is all over my feed and everybody's feed. And he's got a new book out, I think, in a couple of weeks. So he is absolutely crashing through all manner of stuff at the minute, and he's doing a really, really great job.

1:20So what's in the pod? What's the story? It's kind of, it's as you see it, it's like nothing is really anymore. The rise of deep fakes, just how much AI is taking over and how actually the reality is that everyone's meant to be like, no, this is horrible. Fake news is disastrous. How do we fix it? And actually, it's kind of like this shrug. And it's his very BBC investigation into how that works. Do you think the population, the world has just shrugged? I think it is evening itself out. So if you look at the AI slot rates across, it's now hit 50 % on music networks. It's at 50 % on social posts and digital posts.

1:55And it's kind of flattened. so there is kind of a critical mass of slop so i think to an extent people are shrugging but then once you can't tell there has to be more there has to be more watermarking there has to be more of that stuff and that's when people will stick it stick in but only when it really starts affecting day to day is when people will care and just as the climate crisis probably a little bit too late i was at a conference this week uh radio days in riga and uh lots of chat about ai and how it affects the audio sector and one of the speakers said about AI slop is that there's been a lot of human slop for the last hundred years in media why should AI be be any different I think AI is a huge but particularly even in podcasts think about how long it would take you to edit this this program five years ago think about how long it takes now there is we've replaced Matt with a robot yeah think about how it sounds compared to how it sounds five years ago it's now sounds if you're doing it on a bus it can sound like you're in a radio studio it means that time is freed up to make better content it means that humans have to innovate in the sorts of things they're talking about not just how the hell do we make this sound fine and then you go to the thing you know google google can come up with that pretend podcast that went viral last year it doesn't matter people develop relationships with humans on these platforms and despite the fact that what is it one third of people using llms have had some sort of relationship with them or some sort of stat around that um but it's fascinating but eventually we will figure it out, just that people get more choice and some people keep making bad choices.

3:26Well, people always make bad choices. Maybe that's the most human thing about its connection with AI. No, there's a book around the relationships that start. No, that is no, no, not a good decision. Okay, and making his Media Club debut, it's the content and distribution director for Roku across Europe and Australia, which makes the man responsible for deciding what lands on your telly, well, some tellies. it's Tom Price, welcome Thank you, good to be here So now you've got your membership card, it's laminated and everything, who would you add as your plus one? Well I thought this week for a media club the big name we've welcomed into our media club is Matt Britton who's got the top job at the BBC a transfer from tech across to media and I mean it would feel wrong if he didn't have a membership wouldn't it?

4:14Well yes of course, he's very welcome to join We're going to talk a bit more about Matt a little bit later on. Have you had any relationship with him and come across him in your career up to now? I mean, tangentially. I know him well, but I think he's an interesting choice. And yeah, we can talk later. Yes. No time with him at the rowing club? No, I don't row. I had a moment where I think someone got me very drunk at university and convinced me that I should put my name on a sheet to row. and I in the morning I had a headache but I had enough sense to go and cross my name back off that list very wise any any rowing in your in your life I am nowhere near posh enough for row okay if you at home have rowed with Matt do get in touch we'd love to know he says he says that's a he learned more from rowing than he did from McKinsey do you think that's true does that say something about how much he learned to McKinsey I think it's probably about trying not to talk about the fact he was at McKinsey.

5:16More about Matt a little bit later on. Plus, we're going to talk about SNL UK too. We'll see you in a second. There's one place for the newest drops in wellness and performance and the biggest sale of the year. It's The Drop by GNC, curating the best of what's new, handpicked by the pros who know what works. And right now, get it all, buy one, get one, 50 % off during the semi-annual LiveWell sale. From crushing workouts to leveling up your nutrition and everything in between, get the best deals on the latest innovations. All the newness is all on sale right now during the LiveWell sale on The Drop by GNC.

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6:42Welcome back to the Media Club. We learned this week that each episode of SNL UK cost£2 million to make. Tom, they've got exclusive use of Studio One at TV Centre in Shepherd's Bush for the whole run, a run that they've extended from six to eight episodes. Do you think Sky's right to be confident about the show? I had a strange flashback because in a previous life before Roku, I set up BritBox, a streaming service in the US, and then the UK version. and in the UK version we rebooted Spitting Image, which was also a huge expense, a huge commitment. You hire people who you think are funny and you think a team that's going to do a good job.

7:18But then you're kind of sitting there each week going, what is actually going to come out? Because you're doing topical comedy. I mean, it wasn't quite live like SNL. But, you know, so I feel for the guys. I think it's great that Sky are taking a swing at this. And, you know, you just need one or two jokes to really land and sort of go on to sort of enter the culture and catch people's imagination. And that's what it'll take. So we'll see. It's pretty brave, isn't it, Alex, to take us on this. Is it brave? Well, it is brave. Brave to commission a US multi-generational comedy, the comedic thing that is an institution of the US.

7:57But Sky didn't need to do it. They could have picked something cheaper. They could have done something new where they didn't have the focus so much. They could have, but then how else would they break the UK jokes into the US market with their US presenter, with their US laughing track, with their US set, with their US presenters, with Michael Cera saying bollocks because it appeals to a US audience. If you looked at the overnights, it's what, 200 ,000, give or take? Yeah, I mean, for Sky One, best ever numbers on Sky One since three years. B Channel 4 in bar. That's not why it's there. It's there for YouTube brought to you in collaboration with eBay UK.

8:31And suddenly, wet legs getting half a million views by itself. I think it's now up to just over 5 million total across the major clips just on Sky YouTube platforms. And again, it's built, if you look at the way that it's framed, if you look at the way that it's formatted, it is as suitable in 916 as it is in 169. What a coincidence. Isn't that amazing? Linear TV. Isn't that fabulous? The fact that it's being called brave is correct. It is brave. Should it be brave that you're bringing back this monster of a format to a UK audience that are baying for some at least tangentially related satire in a huge market?

9:02That shouldn't be brave. or you're taking a bet on new comedians. That shouldn't be brave. But it is brave. Yeah, and that's terrifying, isn't it? The fact that you're in this TV sector that is shrinking as social takes over. And no matter which commentary you're thinking, you're like, oh, look at how brave this commission is. Getting some of the brightest, most brilliant, brilliant, funniest people into this difficult format to be funny should be the absolute bog-standard base level of where commissioning is. And the fact that it isn't, and the fact that this is being seen as brave, because it is, like you were saying, shouldn't be the way it's done.

9:32and if you're getting in Max Fosch to do like a chat on BBC2 as this brave commission no like you have to innovate and take a risk on new voices and some of it won't work and it's sunk costs and this should be the absolute tip of the iceberg of what Sky is trying because your overnights won't get anywhere near to covering the cost and the question will be will this make more people subscribe to Sky? I don't directly see that now but I think that's an interesting point I mean Tom obviously sits behind the paywall you need to be a Sky subscriber it's not on a a sky channel that says on free view now it's on now tv as well um where does it where does it sit for them is it about saying the sky package has value yeah i mean it's not about the overnight really as you say i mean it's about you know all the stuff they'll do on youtube but it's about you know getting sky noticed and sky noticed for sky i think especially in a week where hbo max has launched and sky want to stand on their own feet and say it's not just the hbo content sky creates content.

10:31I think it's, as you say, it's existing IP. It's a format. You could say it's not that brave like that. But, you know, the two things that people have constantly tried to remake for the British market that are huge in the US are SNL or version of SNL. And there have been other attempts at SNL-like things. And also late night, you know, the late, late show, all of that, late chat and comedy. And they're very, very sort of peculiar American things that have never quite managed to translate here. So, you know, we'll see. Yeah, Alex, I saw, I was looking at some of the comments on some of the Instagram videos and TikTok videos.

11:05And a lot of people saying, why isn't this on its own SNL channel rather than the Sky socials? I mean, they've clearly made the decision. No, we're going to use it to try and insert some of the Sky stuff into people's feeds. Well, that is depressingly no longer the way the algorithm works. It works in individual content pieces rather than homogenized. Or then is that just them going, hey, it doesn't matter. It doesn't need its own channel. I think it's standard that it shouldn't need its own channel I think as it develops so if you think about the way that The Office UK and The Office US had the first episodes of each were both identical because they thought they could break the US market with a UK humour and you could not because turns out Americans have a different sense of humour who knew but what The Office US became is one of the most successful things of all time because of its nuance to American markets and so with SNL UK if it is to work and you can already see the absolute chrysalis of like this tiny little green shoot of a gem of what the UK comedians can do to it It'll be drier.

11:56It'll be weird. It'll be satirical. It'll be darker if it is to work. And so that's the exciting thing of can it do that in eight episodes? That's a difficult challenge. And if it can't quite get there in just eight, will it be given a second season to take a full run at what it can be? Because like I was saying, it's brave. You're getting these young emerging voices and a brilliant writer's room. Can it do it in time before the amount of cost you talk about is justified or not justified? Originally it was scheduled to be six episodes and then it was sort of extended before it started for eight.

12:26It was always going to be eight, wasn't it? It was just a nice little bonus story. I mean, who knows? That sounds plausible. You're so jaded. You're so cynical. I'm jaded as cynical. I believed it. I believed it. I believed it was originally going to be six. I think just the amount of attention it's got meant that it ran a shift from six to eight. I didn't think it was necessarily a done deal. I mean, that's the thing. It has cut through. We're talking about it here. there is a sense that something is happening and that's hard to do on TV these days. Next up, and the Channel 5 drama about Hugh Edwards has arrived.

12:58But before a single viewer had watched it, Edwards himself had issued a statement attacking the producers. Alex, the drama pulled one and a half million viewers on Tuesday night and kind of puts SNL in perspective a bit. Channel 5's biggest show of 2026. Ben Frow at Channel 5 is quite a good scheduler. He's quite a clever scheduler. Is this some clever scheduling? or is it a good show? Both neither. I mean, it's Martin Clunes. It's Hugh Edwards. It is Channel 5. It is the easiest commission you will ever make. And so, like, it's this whole, it's the hangover from Mr. Vates versus the post office off.

13:36We can't really afford to do the hard news around it. So let's make a drama about it. So you had the Jimmy Savile one, you had the Prince Andrew one, you've now got this one, and you can see the pattern. And I was looking up the overnights and the fact that that's 1.5 million shows that in the exact opposite to SNL, its market is still watching linear telly and that market wants Martin Clunes and that market wants Hugh Edwards. I think it's a clever piece of commissioning. I think Channel 5 understands where it sits in the market. And if you look at the way that 5 News continues to maintain its audiences in linear ways, it knows where it's aiming at and with its commissioning, it is doing really good work in really pinpoint targeting that market and continuing to hit it.

14:13So I am not the target audience, unsurprisingly, for that piece of content, but it knows where its market is and it keeps doing it and that is a real testament to some of the people at five and the work they're doing uh tom linear is it's tough it's a changing market um uh as i said something like channel five uh it's pretty successful at keying on who knowing who its audience is i'd 100 echo that i think i think ben and team at channel five they really they identify that content you say it sounds obvious but they get out and they do it they often do it quickly they turn around these quick turnaround docks very quickly after news events you know they find things like this um i haven't seen it i confess so one should be careful talking about shows you haven't actually watched but you know from the press you know martin clunes looks strikingly like him uh and you know it's a it's a difficult subject uh but you know it's clearly one that you know you read about it you immediately know what it's going to be martin clunes was asked uh on a tv show whether it was too soon to do this drama.

15:13And he said, if you think it's too soon, just don't watch it. That was a good answer. It is a sad state of affairs that the news industry should be filling this in and doing the documentary and making it more difficult. And it is a false... People believe that they're going to be able to change people's minds with this drama. Like, people's minds on new enders are already made. And I think, so, Stuart Heritage and The Guardian wrote a really interesting thing about when future generations look back at the trends and microtrends that shape television, you have to assume they'll be quite surprised when they arrive at the glut of dramatizations that have been made about famous men caught up in sex scandals and i that i was like okay yeah but why is this happening now is it just that there is a market for it is that there is something sort of in the post me too age that there is that this they believe that this is accountability or is there something else going on i think people always like a fallen idol don't they you know he was at the the top of his game um people people love it when if they fly too close to the sun and fall to the ground?

16:08Yeah, maybe. Okay. Well, we've talked about him already, but the BBC's confirmed what everyone seemed to know for the last few weeks, that Matt Britton will be the 18th Director General of the BBC. He starts in May at a salary of£565 ,000. He's the former president of Google Amir, and before that was Strategy and Digital Director at Trinity Mirror, that we now know as Reach, and he's been on the boards of GMG and Sainsbury's. the reaction's been kind of carefully positive uh i thought in most places uh is this the honeymoon tom i think so i think it's a good appointment i think we you know everyone will want uh you know everyone wants the bbc to do well i think i mean maybe some people out there you know implacably opposed but in general people would like it to do well people have incredibly diverse opinions about what doing well and doing well for them should be and that's uh the job that matt's walking into where he'll have that level of scrutiny about everything you do.

17:08But, you know, running Google in Europe is not without scrutiny. He's done his, you know, select committees. And I think it does say something about what the BBC board or the committee feel they need from the next DG, that they've gone, they've not taken someone who's, you know, got a journalistic background editing, you know, Newsnight or the News at 10, or, you know, they've gone for someone from a very different world. he's been in newspapers he understands but you know someone who's really spent his career recently in the tech world and I think it's accepting what all tv companies know is that the big challenge is adapting to that tech world where do you collaborate where do you work with people where do you have to compete and I think that will be the sort of strategic stuff that Matt will be thinking about I suspect he will you know try and appoint an editorial deputy who can deal with some of the more program-making choices because it's not his background as much.

18:06Yes, and it tends to be what catches people out. Alex, what do you think of the appointment? I'm going to be controversial. I think it is neither one thing nor the other. So the BBC is obsessed with YouTube. It is obsessed with Google. It has spent so many million, well, a lot of money. I don't know exactly how much on research projects. Also, YouTube's quite big, isn't it? And everyone around BBC News particularly is running around going, how do we beat YouTube? How do we beat YouTube? And they came in and did speeches and about just how important YouTube was. And, oh, isn't it a surprise that this man from Google, the owners of YouTube, just happens to be appointed?

18:38Isn't that a surprise? And it feels like you're taking a... It is neither a safe bet of someone who's so steeped in news and so steeped in journalism, nor is it somebody from the world of AI who can really push BBC in new directions. It is that bit in the middle where it's somebody who used to do rowing. Was it a Cambridge that he was at? And he has come through and he's very much on all of the board and he's a non-exec director of The Guardian and he's on the board of Sainsbury's. And it's very beautiful. It's very, very carefully thought through and it's very good for the BBC. But it's a white man who understands how the world, the media world is now, not how the media world would be in five years.

19:11And the reaction from inside the BBC, so the people I've spoken to are split. So the more modernising, so Naya Nilsson, who was until recently the digital director, is very, very enthusiastically in favour of it. And then people like John Sargent, who was quoted in The Telegraph. If you haven't read that quote, go and read it. I have it if you want to info it. It's a fantastic bit of like, what are you talking about? He is unsurprisingly wholeheartedly against it, but it feels neither one thing nor the other. And the BBC has to take risks. And this is this from as being perceived in some spaces as taking a risk.

19:41It's not. I mean, he's very similar in style, kind of even down to marathons and things like that as Tim Davy. Sort of kind of continuity. Is he kind of a continuity candidate? Is it that we would like Tim Davy to continue so they've sort of found someone in his style? I don't think it's necessarily continuity, but I take the point he's cut from sort of the same, a little bit the same mold. But he's got a, I think he's, you know, spending time at Google. They've been at the front of AI. They've got a lot of AI stuff going on in London. So, you know, I think he's a man who's been in an organization which is looking further at the horizon and seeing what that looks like from that side.

20:25And I think he will help people at the BBC kind of look up a bit. he will also be hit by all of the things that hit you if you're director general of the bbc that has the bbc edited this show correctly or kept a live feed on here all of that and you know that i you know i think he'll have to you know there's a greater level of scrutiny you can be a senior exec at a very big company have a very large team have a lot of power a lot of responsibility and being dg is still going to be you know different suddenly you're dealing with the concert orchestra or something like that maybe the proof will be and if it does take that risky commissioning decision so in the way that we talked about sky they're taking those big risks bbc has been not risk averse but just unable to take those risks recently so actually if those risks are being taken if emerging voices do start coming through the bbc that will be i will then entirely retract the statement say is the best dg that has happened for quite some time in the statement they said they're going to have a deputy dg which has been talked about a lot sort of imagine that would be somebody in a more traditional bbc life i'm old i think i said last week that a lot of people were saying that rodney telph and davis who's the current interim will likely be that person um he's going to need someone like that isn't he alex to to do the bbc stuff whilst you get on whilst you just get on with trying to change the organization i of course you do but of course you that it can never be one person it is always about 15, 20, 30 people who hold at any given one time within the BBC so there's one for news, one for programme, one for sounds all of these different bits and they expand every time their new DJ arrives is the restructuring that happens and then three weeks later they begin their next restructure and no one's quite sure what the organogram is he needs to show partnership and needs to build a very quick partnership with the strongest voices and the strongest people in the BBC and that I assume coming from Google he would be well equipped in that sort of business-wide big conglomerate negotiations but he needs a sort of partnership with the willing really quickly if it's going to work uh just before the break uh harry versus the daily mail uh well it's hit another snag uh just days before the verdict um alex a key witness uh prime investigator gavin burrows has appeared via video link saying his own statement was forged are you following this i am it's so it's an active case so it's difficult to work out how much opinion there is.

22:44So there's a statement that he gave that essentially is the backbone of so many of these cases, whether it be Elton John, whether it be Prince Harry, whether it be the countless other number of people. So there's a bit that he sort of says he targeted hundreds, possibly thousands of people during his time working for Hendo, who's male on Sunday's investigations editor, Paul Henderson. So there wasn't a week that went by when I didn't have to hardwire tap on somebody or institution from Hendo, this male guy. and so it's the backbone of all these things and the point is that he accused um prosecution of tracing over the signatures which look entirely different so if you're doing tracing you're doing a terrible job um so between this statement which was i think in 2021 and this this most recent statement which was 2025 and so if this case finds that that evidence is to be thrown out it casts into doubt so many different um cases that are ongoing at the moment if this you'd assume that it would have come up before without wishing to prejudice the investigation that's by the by um if it turns out that it's being admitted then all of these cases continue and then questions are asked around the testimony um of this private investigator more wholesale uh it is a strange i mean whatever the truth is and i'm sure they'll they'll get to the bottom of it if you're if you're trying to make a judgment on it does somewhat muddy the waters I don't know it's so difficult without knowing the exact court transcript know exactly what's happening but it is it is remarkable and unusual and the reason we are talking about it here is because it's such a rare thing that doesn't happen that someone would not just recant on their evidence but say that it wasn't even them in the first place only four years after the fact well the case continues in a moment Tom Price on Roku fast channels and where the Curation is dead.

24:31See you after the break.

24:39Hello, Media Club listeners. Patrick here from Podcast Discovery, the podcast marketing company, where this week we've been thinking about video. Video is officially live on Apple Podcasts, and if it's anything like when Spotify brought the format to their platform, Apple will soon be pulling all of their editorial levers in favour of video shows. So, how do you even get started filming your podcast? Get in touch at podcastdiscovery.com That's podcastdiscovery.com Now that even the BBC's Director General comes from a tech background, it's clear that the future of media is being built in studios like this one.

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27:18Welcome back. Here's a few stories we've been talking about in the club this week. The Edinburgh TV Festival has shortlisted three cities to host the event from 2027. Edinburgh itself, Greater Manchester and Newcastle. Eight cities bid in total and a final decision is expected later in the year. Meaning that the festival that has called Edinburgh its home for 50 years could be leaving for the Tyne or the Irwell. Craig Hunter has been named Managing Director of Global Studios, the newly launched podcast and digital arm behind the news agents My Therapist, Ghosted Me and New F1 show Up to Speed.

27:54Hunter joins from STV Studios and was previously a BBC Commissioning Editor behind Blue Planet Live. He'll also oversee Global's partnerships with Gary Neville's Overlap and The Fellow Studios. And Ghost has become the most adapted scripted format of the last 18 months. That's according to K7 Media's report. presented this week at Series Mania in France, six countries and counting, a movie on the way, and the German version just renewed for a second series. I'm sure BBC Studios will be very, very happy. Links to all those stories are available on our sub stack. It's free to sign up. Just go to themediaclub.com.

28:31That's themediaclub.com. You'll also get our briefed newsletter as well. Okay, Tom, let's talk Roku. you've just launched five new fast channels in the uk with itv studios but first maybe tell me where roku kind of sits in the uk because some people might have heard it from the us i mean works like differently here doesn't it yeah i mean it's an interesting company and part of my part of my role here in in europe is is really telling the roku story um in the us we're super well known worldwide more than 90 million people use a roku device to stream tv every month the biggest amount of them are in the United States.

29:11So we have this very strong position in the US market. We are internationally in Canada, in Mexico, in all of Latin America, in the UK, in Germany, in Australia, and a little bit in Ireland and places like that around that are adjacent. So the history is interesting. I mean, Anthony Wood, who's still our CEO and founder, he's a kind of serial inventor entrepreneur. So he invented the DVR back in the day. That's a great thing to have been used to be. He took it to CES. Him and his company and TiVo at the same CES, you know, produced the first hard disk video recorder. He then went on, having sold that company and moved on, a new company, met Reed Hastings and basically went to work with how do we turn Netflix from DVDs, which it still was back then, really, to having streaming on television sets.

29:56And, you know, there was actually a kind of skunk work projects at Netflix where they then decided they weren't going to take that forward. they built some apps for Samsung and that but they were not going to build their own hardware so which I can't just said well can I take it and do it in my company and that was Roku we the company launched the what was really a Netflix player in 2008 so you know sort of ancient history by modern streaming standards and you know immediately soon started to add at the other apps had you know Prime Video and you know Sling and YouTube and other apps of the day and from that we've built up to this position where today some people still think of us because the heritage is in streaming sticks and products boxes and boxes and things really we think of ourselves now as a platform and as an operating system for tv so there's a about 15 different tv brands in the uk you could go out and buy and they would come with roku built in and you buy them in you know all the retailers you're familiar with uh lots of brands you also see us cropping up in you know sort of supermarkets and things like that so we're quite strong in those channels and the user of the smart tv os in in some of those yeah so we're the we're really what makes the smart tv smart you know smart tv has been used as a marketing term for years and the sort of dirty secret originally is lots of smart tvs were not that smart they were kind of clunky and difficult to use um roka has always had quite a strong focus on you know it's fast it's smooth that gets you to the apps you need.

31:21They launch, they're stable. We have a lot of work behind the scenes. A lot of engineers go into making that happen. And we now provide that as a service to people who make TVs. What I'm focused on in content deals is bringing all of the apps that users expect to see on our platform, doing the deals. So I deal with all the people we've been talking about, Sky and BBC and ITV for that. And you can come onto Roku as an app. uh in the uk now since uh october you can come on as a fast channel so fast channels are a again a slightly american thing i think people don't understand them as well here and the story in the us is kind of unique because all the networks were so locked in with the cable tv model and they all used to get paid this thing called retransmission which was the equivalent of the free channel still got paid for being which which never happened when i was at itv we used to say sky you should pay us and they're like no no we're not paying yeah in fact the channels pay the platforms in some cases for carriage yeah yeah i mean it's now pretty much neutral but you know in the u.s was that history and what that meant was when people cut the cord when people which is and they got rid of their cable they just went to sort of streaming services suddenly there was no basic channels unless you sort of had line of sight to the empire state building and nature appalls a vacuum actually linear channels are something that people really like uh and companies like Roku, you know, stormed into that space.

32:45And in the US, we now have hundreds of channels available on Roku and a really massive live TV offering. And the deal you've done is with ITV, so it uses quite a bit of their, it's basically their IP and Graham Norton, does Graham Norton channel and is it a Hell's Kitchen channel? Yeah. Why are they keen to kind of hop into this space with you? I mean, these are channels that they have available. We are bringing them to a big user base on Roku. We launched Fast back in the UK in October last year. And this is really our first big edition of local content this year. And that's something that I'm talking to a lot of people and we're going to continue through this year.

33:29The initial selection, the launch was quite global in terms of content. And what we want to do is really build out a mix of brands that people here recognize and are familiar with. because that's what we know will drive viewing. You sort of said what's happening in the US. There are potentially lots of fast channels, some more niche, some kind of broader and more mainstream. What's that kind of content discovery that sits there? How do you get this stuff in front of the right people at the right time? I mean, that comes down to discovery in the interface, and that's a lot of what the smart TV does.

34:02I mean, fast channels or otherwise, there is so much choice now. And that's a wonderful thing. in many ways no one wants to go back to a world where you sat down and you could only watch the thing that was scheduled at 9 p.m on one of five channels i mean no one would willingly go back to that but when you've got uh you know fast channels you've got huge libraries and streaming apps the challenge is when i sit down what am i gonna watch and how do i how do i sort of mentally shortcut that without sort of being an ai that can consider every uh you know every tv show ever made fast channels are they're kind of counterintuitive because who would have thought we'd be scheduling this stuff literally plays out at 6 6 37 you know different episodes the same show or different shows in the same genre uh but it turns out people like that that is a tool people use to make watching tv kind of easy right they just find something they like and have it played at them and that is a it's a lean back experience it's not it's not as actively involved as uh you know sort of i'm choosing the next thing but you know even if you look at uh sort of you know short form or social often people are just having the things scheduled for them and what a fast channel does is it lets someone schedule a particular set of content to you how do you then find the fast channel you want you know we have a traditional guide the channels are in order you can flick up the numbers and all of that sort of stuff but actually you know there's a lot we can do beyond that we have a live tv zone that you know curates using personalization and machine learning to find the sorts of channels we've got that would appeal to you based on channels you've watched so far and you know there's a lot of tools that we have to to help channel operators and app providers surface their content on it is a human doing is a human doing the fast channels or is it is that algorithmically generated in the first place when it comes to the scheduling of it so fast channels are scheduled by the people who provide fast channels in general roku schedule a few ourselves but you know these itv studios fast channels someone in itv studios is deciding you know which episodes can go out which ones are played in which order and i think it varies a little bit some fast channels are run by people who are kind of channel operators so they've got all of that scheduling you know people are used to schedule channels further down the sky epg and they can use all of the tricks about how you you know what you schedule for which times a day and all of that bring that to it others are you know if you look at a channel that's you know run by a sports league or someone like that they'll be looking again a bit at what time of day it is but there's normally a human in there i mean we don't control it so someone might be they might have a big computer that's you know analyzing their ratings and going actually please optimize the the channel but the channel owner decides how they want to schedule it it's so interesting in uh there being lots of choice and people wanting simpler lean back ways to consume content uh linear radio versus spotify streaming people who want to create playlists but who don't want to create playlists this sort of fits into that and and the kind of linear heritage of a lot of british consumption tiktok already solved it tiktok is the most lean back uh consumption platform there is but when it comes to hours consumed when it globally when it comes to the amount of different types of content with the amount of personalization that happens you scroll up it turns it turns it goes forward instagram has copied it uh youtube shorts has copied it it has solved that problem And that is the solution for algorithmically generated, knowing what you want to watch and letting you watch it.

37:23It will show you near enough whole episodes of Friends, whole episodes of How I Met Your Mother. It will show you rights allowing. It will show you sports events. And what you are seeing, if you look at the way that YouTube is spending, Netflix is spending, Amazon is spending, and into those things that can only happen live, what you will start to see is within those platforms, depending on what happens with US law, that will start to eke in. And depressingly, when it comes to choice, The algorithm will always choose better than a human It's been chosen so shown so many times that that's the case in effect.

37:52We're saying like tick tock's a single channel And it's it's it's it's deciding what it thinks you like And there's a pretty good job of matching it. I mean people's opting in to radio stream or to a to a fast channel isn't it them? Doing a bit of wanting a bit of control over that and saying like I want an it scratched right now there's a place for a whole bunch of ways yeah some people are going to just take the feed you know the netflix have experimented with autoplay and you know we we have stuff at roku where we can just you know recommend the next thing we think you should watch and sometimes people will watch it and sometimes they don't and then we the machine learns from that and tries to do better next time so and this is how this whole tiktok system works right you you swipe away and they go that was a negative we got that one wrong choose something different you've got to have a little bit of grit in the oyster what i've learned from our guys and who work in the the rex team you know you don't want to just show the most obvious thing all the time you've got to move it around a bit and then you learn from from what what comes in but there's people this is not my area this is there are people who are spending their entire you know entire team spending their entire jobs at reiki worrying about how we put better recommendations in front of people but it's not it's not the only option you know we will have recommendations driven by machines we will have sort of curated collections in the way that fast channels are we will have you know people's individual apps if you look at the discussion we had earlier about snl snl is an example of trying to sort of hijack that system and say right it's now saturday night and you should be watching this which is a very old-fashioned idea and maybe you'll mainly see it consumed in people's youtube feeds the next day but lots of content providers that i deal with their their big ask is how do i launch a show now in the old days if you were itv you go simple i'll put it out after coronation street at nine o 'clock on a you know on a big night of the week and it will get you should call it inheritance it'll get this audience just comes through that i mean they'll still do it i'm sure they did it for uh you know uh martin clunes earlier but it's not enough anymore and you need to have a off-platform marketing plan increasingly the tv screen so our home page is a great place to intercept someone as they sit down on the sofa as they look at the tv what am i going to watch tonight sometimes people just know what they're going to watch right they come down to watch the next episode of the show they're streaming and then you know your job as a tv platform is to make that as easy as possible sometimes they sit down and they're like oh what am i going to watch you know and then you want to put some choices in front of them a manageable amount of choices and we do that both with rex which is kind of algorithm and the other big placements we have are kind of more marketing placements which is you know buy the billboard on piccadilly circus the person who's bought that uh and you know we is likely to yeah have something that they think you should be interested in you might you might not we'll learn from that i think agentic then blows everything up again so the geo space and the agentic space is now if you if you so this is this is uh using ai to create something to go off and do some work for you in in its current in its current deploy yes it is it now acts as of yesterday or the day before it now acts as a person that can sit on your desk and act as the sort of it person coming and taking over your machine but what it means in practice is that you can feed it in everything you've ever watched and you can feed it in everything that you've ever been interested in you can send it your entire search history and through the new blockchain web3 stuff you can feed it into everything you've ever done online it will tell you what you want to watch and it will be right and if you and it will know what mood you're in it will be able to see what sort of stuff you you're engaging at certain times a day certain times of weeks and it will give you three options depending on your mood and that blows up the recommendation algorithm again and that means that there is more algorithm in it but what it means is tighter tighter tighter curation and then the difficulty is where's serendipity are you building that grit into the oyster is is that is that a good thing is that a bad thing is that neither is that tricky to understand because we we have no idea what's about to happen tom you're gonna have to build a user interface for all of our ai agents to uh say which shows sit on your platform and encourage people to watch it that way yeah i mean look rex machine learning is a form of like a form of ai it's not generative ai it's not like the the current agentic models but it it is using an optimized probabilistic computer to solve that problem people will continue to come up with better ways of solving that question and if that means you know even though with all of the power of rex i still see stuff recommended to me on like the biggest apps that have the best recs allegedly and i go i'm not interested in that you know so as it starts to understand better and you know that's where you know it's interesting having spent the first part of my career on the kind of broadcaster content owner side if you cut you know itv open it kind of bleeds advertising and bleeds content you know roku is an engineering culture it's a culture that's deeply embedded in tv we only do tv we're not a mobile platform we are passionate about tv but it is how can we use technology to make the experience better for our users and you know we'll use whichever technologies we can to do that okay just enough time for the audio network media quiz uh three media stories are connected by one theme and then shoehorned into a format of an existing media property this week it's called flip side it's a simple game a simple game of opposites.

43:20I'm going to describe the opposite of what actually happened in media this week. And you just tell me what really occurred. And once again, Alex Audio Network, the other Alex, has taken the most contradictory brief producer Matt has ever sent, the most dramatic underscore music in existence for the lightest quiz he could come up with. Okay, it's the best of three. And as we're doing opposites, why don't you buzz in with each other's names. So Alex, you will say. Tom. And Tom, you will say. Alex. This isn't going to work. Let's play. Absolute chaos. Let's play Flipside. A poorly regarded morning TV host has decided to stay in television and confirmed he has absolutely no plans to disappear into the world of Hobbits.

44:11Alex. Yes, Tom. this is a late night tv host yes he is just been to the world of hovers it's stephen colbert that's correct yes who is uh no longer in favor at cbs he's been sacked from cbs yeah uh and he's going to go off and write movies and specifically lord of the rings yes he's going to co-write a new lord of the rings film uh called shadow of the past with peter jackson um he finishes in may and then heading straight to Middle Earth. He's a huge Tolkien fan, so I think this is his sort of dream job. It's not bad to be able to write a movie, is it? It's not a bad gig. Have you got any films that you'd like to jump into, Alex?

44:58To write any... I think, well, Blade Runner is now coming back into this. It's becoming a full world, isn't it? It's now back again for the sort of extended series. That could be amazing. I don't think it will be. I think it will make them a lot of money. I don't think the sort of artistic and cultural importance and heritage of that film series might be maintained given the Blade Runner 2049 experiment. People have a bit of IP being rebooted. Well, the owners do, anyway. Okay, here's your second opposite to Decipher. There's a brand new radio adaptation of a fresh piece of IP. It features a loud unkempt man who visits a fancy dress shop and has no adventures whatsoever.

45:43Tom. Yes, Alex. I don't know the full story, but you're talking about Mr. Ben. I am talking about Mr. Ben. And there is now a live action Mr. Ben movie. That much I know. That is correct. You get the point. This is Kirk Jones, director of I Swear and Nanny McPhee, has been confirmed to write and direct. Jack Whitehall is producing and casting starts later this year.

46:11It's like really looking deep into the archives of IP to reboot. I mean, this is my era. I was going to say, Mr. Ben was on TV when I was little. Yeah, me too. I loved it. I think it's, I wish it well, but it's, I was surprised. I didn't, I did not see that coming. I mean, I guess, Alex, you could say, you could take Mr. Ben in quite a lot of freaky directions if you wanted. What sort of film are you making now? You've got someone dressing up. You've got adventures, trips. You could go quite crazy with it. It could be full Jumanji. That's cast the rock. Have done. Rock as Mr. Ben. Perfect casting.

46:50We're calling it here first. Okay, here's the last one. OpenAI is doubling up on AI video. Sam Altman announces an expanded Sora platform. New licensing deals. Yes. That one we talked about on Crash this week. They are shutting down Sora, the app that was a partner with Disney, that was their video version of the app, for at least a second before they relaunch it under a different name and try and integrate it into ChatGPT because video is a vital part of the marketing strategy of any AI company. So they're shutting it down, they're mothballing it. It is costing them$1 billion because Disney, according to The Hollywood Reporter at least, we haven't had it independently confirmed, they're withdrawing their money because they were sort of the test bed for Disney characters appearing in automated video.

47:36And it was going to become this sort of social AI app. And it turns out no one wants an app dedicated to AI slot. Tom, I mean, if you were the Disney strategy team and you thought you've done a great job aligning with open AI, sexy, fun, interesting video, and then they just ring you up and go, you know that deal we made, we're just not going to bother anymore. They must have been a bit annoyed. Well, maybe, but I mean, This is a world where no one quite knows what's coming next, right? So they've done the deal. They'll hope they've protected themselves against whatever outcome. They looked a pretty decent bet.

48:10As you say, I don't think it'll be the last thing that OpenAI do in video. The fact that the specific, you know, Sora brand may be not for this world. I guess that's the fact. It's the fork in the road. Is video AI going to be this premium product that you have to really pay for? So it becomes this darling of Hollywood and it makes really cool stuff. But it's not in the main everyday work of AI and LLMs, at least in the foreseeable future. And actually, people need it to come along and do their spreadsheets for them or do the number crunching. Or actually, is there enough demand in there to make it financially worthwhile?

48:45Because it is so expensive. It was costing OpenAI at$1.15 million a day just to run this stuff in losses. So it's that forking about, can they make any money from it? And if they can, is this the right way? Well, that makes you, Alex, our winner. good news it's a cash prize this week but bad news we're still playing opposite so if you can leave 20 quid on the table that will be great my thanks to Alex and Tom and thanks to the other Alex Audio Network for supplying today's music remember Audio Network can do this for you as well just head to audionetwork.com or click the link in our show notes so before we go Alex where can people keep up with you and your fine work if you search for crashed podcast wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube or well I know Now everyone gets their podcast on YouTube anyway.

49:31Or crashedcrash.substack.com. Excellent. And Tom, how can people find out about you and Roku? And Roku, well, Roku, you know, buy a Roku. Use it to watch your TV. They're really very good. If you want to see me next, the next thing I'm doing like this is I will be out in Lisbon for Stream TV Europe doing a panel out there. Excellent. And is LinkedIn your social network of choice? LinkedIn is my social network of choice. Excellent. You can find Tom there. And thank you for listening and watching. My name is Matt Deegan. The producer is Matt Hill. It was a Rethink Audio production with video support from Podcast Discovery.

50:04We'll see you next week.

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51:10All the newness is all on sale right now during the LiveWell sale on The Drop by GNC. So retrospectives, what historical events are we ticking off on this week's run of Today in History? On Monday, when Ricky Martin was living la vida loca. On Tuesday, how the women shut out of the Olympics began their own games. On Wednesday, fancy a biddon cake, the origins of one of England's most eccentric traditions. On Thursday, the anniversary of the day the Heaven's Gate cult made a controversial exit. And on Friday, Cleopatra Kamenaccha, courtesy of Julius Caesar. That's Today in History with the Retrospectors.

51:48Ten minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts.