Trump TV, Talent Reboots & Who Loves The Ads?

0:01Hello and welcome to the Media Club. I'm Matt Deegan. In the club today, where do people actually want to see your adverts and where would they rather you just didn't? Kantar's global media director Gonca Bubani gives us an early look at the Media Reactions Report 2026. Also on the show, the White House launches its own TV channel and the BBC blows the final whistle on its sports bulletins. Talent agent Alex Segal on the latest challenges to broadcast supremacy. all that plus piers morgan gets an apology the new strictly lineup gets a baptism of fire and in the audio network media quiz we learn how to get rich quick that's all happening in this edition of the media club come on in

0:46uh joining me two members to talk through the week's biggest media stories and it's a welcome back to alex siegel md of talent agency intertalent and author of dealmakers his sub stack on the realities of life as an agent and with some good numbers this week did i see i'm very happy it's good it's not always often that an agent is happy but um representing vinnie jones the gentleman has done very good stuff on netflix and then obviously grand tour um number one on amazon so i can't complain that's good that's good uh and you do you find doing the sub stack is a way to to focus your own mind or what do you use it for for you i sort of treat it as a client where i've got to like dedicate time but um no i really enjoy it i'm so passionate about what i do and there's no guidebook there's no degree and so for me i'm like i'm gonna sort of solve that thing that i didn't have when i was a junior and just sort of talking about what this crazy world of agency means most people think it's a bit like uh jerry maguire or something so i need to you know debunk some myths and um just explain a bit about what agents actually do do you look at the stats i always look at this so insult my favorite thing about sub stack is when you go in you can see the people that basically forwarded your message to other people yes i have had a there's a very very successful one of the most successful agents in london who does read it and there was one article that i saw that he'd forwarded 18 times and that freaked me out because that either means he's forwarding it to his team going haha look at this guy or obviously it could be that it could be a good thing but like 18 times so um i try not to look at those stats i try not to look at uh anything too deeply but you've got to keep your eye on the data you do uh so uh who's had a good week in the media this week who are you adding as your club membership it's not often agents get in the limelight in a week so i thought i would pick an agent who is in the limelight this week which is ari emmanuel whose memoir has come out this week i've got it um i've just started it i read a review that said he's basically just screaming at you for 400 pages isn't that what he does normally to his clients the first word of the book is rage that is the first word of the book so obviously he um is the boss of wme and the ufc and wwe and he's obviously the inspiration for the ari gold character and entourage so you can't not read it and he's been on tv everywhere promoting this book and i have a feeling he's going to reveal some pretty interesting stories so um Yeah, for me, Ari Emanuel, with his new memoir, is definitely going in the club this week.

3:19He would be a fun, noisy member to the club. Oh, yeah, he's going to shake things up for sure. And making her media club debut, Gonja Babani, global media director at Kantar, whose job it is to find out what the world really thinks about media brands. Is that fair? Correct, yeah. We generally, as Kantar, what we do is help brands grow. So my angle is going to be that. So a bit less fun than Alex's. But basically what I do is I look at whether media brands grow and whether the brands that do campaigns, advertising campaigns, you know, is it good? Are they doing a good job? Are they going in the right place?

4:00Well, we'll talk about your report a bit later on. Do you think there's a lot of velocity, a lot of change? Do you think it's changing faster, going up and down faster than they have previously with changing nature of the sector? Always. I think one of the most boring things we say in the sector is that media landscape is always changing. It's just because it genuinely is. And you'll know from your angle as well, Alex. But I think from our side, we have to look at the whole landscape. And we have to think about like, currently, the fragmentation is crazy. You know, if you think about this, obviously, AI has been a big power.

4:37but also things like creators kind of how that's an ecosystem of its own and there is a lot of streaming platforms and this and that so there's just so much that's moving really fast so it's always a i would say it's always a bit of a fun problem for marketers to kind of stay on top of yes um but also it can be a little bit overwhelming i think so you're now a member of the media club are welcome so you can you can bring someone with you a plus one who are you going to bring along with you this week um i'm actually going to bring along someone a little um less relevant to what i do i thought like it'd be a bit fun um nigella lawson um obviously she made her debut on the bake-off and i feel like people generally tend to like um people who bring more drama to these kind of things but she's elegant you know her criticism isn't harsh which I really love that um but she still really fits like the character of what is a national treasure show really so I think um perfect casting and also we just we see we saw that across like media that people loved her so yeah we watched it last night at home uh I thought she did a good job it's hard isn't it for for uh tv shows to replace someone and Prue did a great job too yeah and that shows how important to channel four it's trying to pick that right person and get them to say yes obviously a channel starts with a list of targets and you have your top target and there's a million reasons why you can't get your top target and you work down two three four and you find somebody and you hope that it works out well in this scenario i have no doubt that nigella was the top target and the fact they managed to get her is quite iconic really and um just her name alone you're going there you're going there and it's probably giving it a new lease of life okay in a moment who's ready for trump tv Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.

6:33A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notifications screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of ten, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. The business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place, so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, wait, who talked to this customer last? And if you're worried about after-hours leads slipping through, Quo's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline.

7:14It's the number one rated business phone system on G2, and over 90 ,000 businesses already trust it to stay reachable. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free. Plus, get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash tech. That's Q-U-O dot com slash tech. Hello, this is Chris Winterbauer from What Went Wrong? TCM and Criterion joined forces for the plot thickens Stanley. This season's podcast traces Stanley Kubrick's journey from a curious Bronx teenager, first inspired by a camera gifted to him by his father, to a revolutionary filmmaker who rewrote the rules.

7:52Featuring a never-before-heard audio interview with Kubrick himself, go behind the camera with some of Kubrick's closest friends and collaborators to examine his legacy, including Katerina Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Sofia Coppola, Matthew Modine, and many more. Available starting now, wherever you get your podcasts.

8:17Welcome back to the Media Club. In the early hours of Thursday morning, a federal judge ordered the White House to let CNN, MS Now and Politico back in less than a week after Donald Trump banned all three. Gonja, there's always a bit of Trump media action. He wasn't very happy with those three broadcasters. No, he wasn't, was he? No. What really struck me the most about that is how basically the American broadcasters come together to put this pool together where they then can follow the president on any outing he is on and cut costs. And that goes to everybody else. Yeah, exactly. But basically that's dissolved now because everybody's standing in solidarity.

9:04And I thought that was really interesting because, you know, it's not just CNN that's on there or like people who would be placed against Trump, but also Fox News is in there. So I really love that. I think it says a lot about, you know, the real freedom of speech. But also it's interesting because he is then, you know, gone on to, what did he do? He made his own YouTube channel, which, you know, very, I guess it's expected from him. The digital and social media, people don't actually trust it as much as we would hope. um so when we looked at this year's results as well on on my upcoming study media reactions what we saw that um basically on average none of these big global digital social brands really stand out as trustworthy um as far at least as far as their ads go but that i think says quite a bit as well um but what people actually trust is news outlets so in the u.s for example the number one most trusted brand is New York Times.

10:16I thought it was interesting. Trump, he needs an enemy. He likes having an enemy. It's good TV. It's good box office. He can drive the conversation. The media need him because he is good box office. He's definitely an entertainer. And generates a lot of consumption. But he's got to be careful with distribution. Now he can distribute his own channel and the new Trump TV, The Essential Station, it went live on the YouTube channel that evening um but doesn't always give you distribution does it no i think what he'd done was he'd seen the holly willoughby show and he thought i need a bit of that um i was surprised that we didn't already have trump tv in a weird way i was lying this is about 10 years too late i mean there's a lot of talk in the beginning of trump too that this would that they would be launching their own thing for sure because obviously put a lot of effort in his his campaign to social media and and youtube and everything else and obviously he is a tv star and i don't know i think um it's just a lot of propaganda it's just it's just another another way to to do what he wants to do he's never played by the rules uh he didn't this week or you know last week and he'll continue to not play by the rules um but he walks that fine line he crosses that fine line and he always gets away with it so this is just another round uh until the next time yeah so instantly as it happens he sort of said oh the judge will throw it out and i'll have to be forced to let them back in he sort of knew what the story was going to be for him everything is about i mean he's obviously like the ultimate pr guru i mean everything is about headlines and his pr and whatever that means in terms of the story he doesn't ever let the truth get in the way of a good story so um we've come to expect that from yeah also there's something interesting about that i was talking to someone about the u.s politics and for for the trump's and republicans as well they only really have to think about the next 24 hours there's no desire they'll need to think further than that the story always changes your job is to keep the story changing and it's provided another week of distraction uh for him uh moving on and back this side of the atlantic andy burnham used his first address to the un to announce a new national center for information defense uh gondra its job is to detect attribute and disrupt attacks we're talking about trust there um is this different do you think what the bbc do or is it just good that we have more people trying to bat away disinformation yeah well definitely yes the intention is absolutely noble and good um and i think it's very important for there to be like we were talking about earlier the trustworthy news outlets for a nation to look to but you can't just look to one place.

12:56You can't rely on one source for news. And I think BBC can absolutely do more on its own. But this type of initiative is key because it brings together social platforms and law enforcement. But at the same time, I think there is a reason why there are people who choose to go to social media for news, right? So it's not, this information is not something new that came with this age. It was a thing with traditional media as well. So I think it's kind of really important, like in that news story, what really struck me was Burnham actually mentioning, like we need to get people into jobs, into education, increase, the quality of life, because to me, that is the key point.

13:56I think it's very important that we get people thinking, educated, like questioning themselves. Then having multiple sources muddled by AI as well is not going to be a problem because people aren't sheep. In media reactions, one of the actually most interesting things I saw was that they do think that AI could lead to misinformation, scams, election problems. And this is all relevant to this, of course. So people know to question, but obviously there's still a lot to be done. I mean, it's difficult, Alex. You've got a growing distrust of institutions and they've sort of rested on their laurels or thought that their brand position would kind of always take them forward.

14:50And you can you can watch social media. I always seem to get shots on X of BBC. What looks like BBC newsrooms with like some crazy thing that has never happened. and that can run as ads um also you have disinformation from from russia you know re-editing this material i mean trying to get especially young people to to trust institutions is pretty tough it's it's really hard yeah a hundred percent and also um people aren't cheap but it is really difficult nowadays to work out fact from fiction we have a situation you know we we represent um all different types of talent and we've started to see their content whatever whoever they are not just creators tv presenters actors being either misused in a way that it wasn't intended um or you know in terms of uh deep fakes or things like that being used completely in a wrong way forget forget um the theft of ip which is a big thing for our clients as well but just seeing your client uh being put in a scenario that is not accurate and people believing it and we're trying to figure out the best ways we talk to a lot of companies there are a lot of companies that do this now to prevent this because it's so easy now for your clients work to be used in a really inappropriate way for somebody else's gains and somebody and and i know people aren't sheep but the technology now is such that it's really hard to distinguish so it is a nervous time for everyone and i think even this step um as you said it's noble it's an important step to It's an important position to take, at least, but there's a lot of hard work to do.

16:29Next, BBC is axing the sport bulletins on its news channel. The lunchtime and overnight updates are going with compulsory redundancies in BBC Sport after not enough staff took up voluntary redundancy. It's part of the corporation's plans to save£500 million by 2028. There's been a lot of chat about BBC Sport. This is sort of initially a few jobs going as they make cuts. there's probably far more to come. I thought, to me, it seemed like concentrating less on live and linear and more on demand. And I think the head of BBC Sports has been known to face that direction. I mean, he's right that that is the way to go, but it's a bumpy road to get there.

17:15100%. I think football content in general has changed so much in the past few years. A lot of our sports division are football content creators, and that's where people get their information from. They're the opinions that people want to hear. They don't really actually want to hear opinions of ex-professionals. They want to hear opinions of just people, men and women that they've grown to love online. There's so much opinion around. You can now watch football. The first time you see a goal go in isn't match of the day anymore. You can see it hours earlier on Sky and elsewhere. and that all these changes have happened so quickly um where i would say the fastest growing type of content is football content so it doesn't it's sad it doesn't surprise me that they're scaling down because a lot of people are now getting their facts their opinions their goals their their reactions straight from tiktok straight from instagram from people they watch day in day out is there a danger that um that's the right thing to do but if you're an older audience and that's an audience bbc appeal to um who probably aren't watching latest goals on tiktok that suddenly this starts to disappear from their from their media diet well i would say first of all you know the fastest growing age demographic to youtube is i think over 55 that is so i think they're catching up um it is scary and we do worry about match of the day and things like that we don't want that to go but we have to i think that to be fair to them whilst no you don't ever want to see job losses the truth is things have changed and maybe i guess the bbc haven't quite caught up to that and the the shows they were putting out and and the different things they were putting out out weren't as relevant culturally to audiences as what is coming on tiktok so i think it's difficult the last thing we want is to see football disappear entirely from channels so they are going to have to work out how to balance that going forward i'm not the biggest football fan in the world uh and i i went on and had a look at it and the content is stuff that you could have maybe seen on a bbc channel um shot in a similar way um okay some of its content's a bit more podcasty in style but i i think it's very different to footballer creator content i mean there's a danger there that they're trying to do the same thing but on a well the other thing is that it's a very oversaturated market and and the truth is there's a lot of people talking about football and you know to to break through no matter what platform you're on is harder than ever especially in in sport and so i just think when they probably looked at the data after all this said and done and they just looked at the facts it obviously wasn't adding up sadly and they're going to have to work as i just said nobody wants to see the end of match the day for example we've seen the end of football focus they're going to have to work really hard to ensure that there doesn't come a time where they look at the facts and go well we have you know we have to so i think football content on the bbc still remains really important they're going to have to go back to the drawing board i think and just work out how to reinvent what they're doing and it doesn't mean that new shows can't come through but they're going to have to be really relevant to do so I think what you said, Matt, about, well, does this content actually go here is really key because when we talk about like social media and ad placements or content placement, whatever you call it there, we always talk about authenticity.

20:42You can't, it's just such a basic learning from the last decade or so that you can't take, you know, content from the TV and put it on even, you know, now older, more established platforms like Facebook and YouTube. You can't. Even if YouTube is doing a similar of a job, it's still not going to work in the same way. People are able to skip, you know, people will click away, look at other things. It just doesn't work in the same way. Just in style and those first minutes and thumbnails and all of that world is very different to a structured half hour show. And football fans are very passionate, which means they want to see passionate content.

21:23And you're going to get that on YouTube and you're not quite going to get that on the BBC. You're going to get more measured content on the BBC and they're not going to hammer whoever. And a lot of football fans want to go in that direction. And now they have it. It's going to be hard to go back. OK, just before the break, every year Kantar asks consumers and marketers around the world, pretty much the same question where do you actually want to see advertising and every year the answers that these two groups provide don't always don't always match up do they media reactions 2026 launches on tuesday um you're here for a bit of a sneak preview um for new people who uses this or or where does it sort of sit in in media research yeah so basically like i said we help brands grow so what that means is brands need to know how to communicate with the public.

22:12And a part of that is advertising, you know, there are other touch points they might have. But it's, it's really important that they, you know, before they go out putting ads out, or even any like creator content, whatever you say, it that they know the fundamentals of the media landscape. So things like, you know, what kind of content I put on YouTube, what works there. And so to me, it's very to think that an institution like BBC doesn't get that right. It shows the need for, you know, this type of material. So what we look at here is where people welcome advertising from consumers point of view and from marketers point of view.

22:57It's about where they prefer placing advertising. So do they match? What are the results say this year? So previously, we concentrated very much on just consumer preference versus marketer preference. And that didn't quite match. And it still doesn't quite match. But this year, we're also looking at it a bit differently because we want it to be more actionable for marketers, right? Like when they look at the ranking, is it just academic curiosity or they can actually use it? So we put in usage of platforms. So whether people are actually there as well. So that changed things a bit. It got closer to what marketers actually prefer.

23:39So that tells me that they do consider more than one thing. It's not just, you know, preference or what I like or what I trust, but also where people are. So number one is Google. From which? From consumer side. So that's a place they sort of expect advertising and comfortable with advertising. Exactly. And they are there. Consumers are there. Marketers are there. Everybody's there. and for marketers the most preferred is youtube okay um so that comes a lot with trust marketers tend to trust you know um platforms that they can measure they can see that they get their investment back um so it's and youtube obviously has been around for so long that it can provide all that um it's interesting because their rankings don't change much on the marketers that they always like like the more established platforms um but we do have a bit of a difference this year um as a little teasers um tiktok is now in their top five um of most trusted and it wasn't until now so it kind of goes to show that the more you invest in these kind of things you know you can provide these experiences um that you you can get there you do you think marketers uh obviously when you log into a dashboard you can you can see the clicks and you can see the views and And you can see intent sometimes from that as well.

24:58Does that get in the way of like good brand advertising or platforms like cinema or television to a certain degree where it's not as easy to measure, but it has real value for brands? Well, it absolutely does. And not just because of that. It's because some of those metrics don't genuinely matter. If you think about like a metric like click through rate, it's just it's just such a specific thing. Like it's not going to tell you whether a brand's actually like being preferred is being considered anything like that. But it is a easy metric to measure and it will get marketers maybe some budget on something signed off.

25:38So it's like you said, there's just some things are much harder to measure, but actually they are what we must aim for. whether a brand has long-term value, things like that. And those can be hard to get together. But in the end, if you don't have like an objective for what your campaign wants to do, or a general strategy for what your brand is, what you're trying to put out there to consumers, you're really not going to get like anything right anyway. So it's the first step is to know what you want to measure in the first place not just go through the metrics that are available readily so ai is affecting um all sectors and all different industries um are we seeing ai effects what advertisers and how they want to spend their money yes definitely so um one of our headliners this year in media reactions um is that a majority of marketers are actually planning to increase their investment in AI assistance.

26:43That's visibility in any way. So it can be like answers or ads, paid ads. And it's interesting to me because consumers do use AI assistance. Basically, three quarters or so say that they are using it now. But they don't necessarily trust the recommendations they get there. Only a quarter trusts the recommendations. So that kind of says to me, like, we're at the beginning stages of this. It's not that, you know, AI is useless. Forget about it. No, absolutely. It's changing everything. It's, you know, being integrated into all systems. But the fact is there that consumers aren't fully there yet.

27:28I think it's good for marketers to plan ahead. Brands need to know, you know, where they should go with it, how they should engage with it. but they they need to be a bit cautious because yeah like how do you show up there that's important okay when we return when you've lost the biggest break for show in australia what do you do next i'll see you in a minute

27:55hello media club listeners patrick here from podcast discovery the podcast marketing company where this week we've been thinking about data spending money and spending it smartly aren't necessarily the same thing. At Podcast Discovery, we're determined to make sure every pound spent on marketing is learned from, with campaigns designed to collect concrete information, not vibes. Sound dull? Get us to do it. Get in touch at podcastdiscovery.com. That's podcastdiscovery.com. If this week's news tells you anything, it's that where you're seen matters just as much as what you say, which is why we choose to be seen here at Podshop Studios.

28:33So that's where we record the Media Club each week. Each studio has its own distinct look and feel, professionally designed and fully equipped for broadcast quality video recording. You can check out the whole range at podshoponline.co.uk and they're offering Media Club listeners 25 % off their first booking if you use the code Media Club. That's Media Club at podshoponline.co.uk. Hello, this is Chris Winterbauer from What Went Wrong? TCM and Criterion joined forces for the plot thickens Stanley. This season's podcast traces Stanley Kubrick's journey from a curious Bronx teenager, first inspired by a camera gifted to him by his father, to a revolutionary filmmaker who rewrote the rules.

29:14Featuring a never-before-heard audio interview with Kubrick himself, go behind the camera with some of Kubrick's closest friends and collaborators to examine his legacy, including Katerina Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Sofia Coppola, Matthew Modine, and many more. Available starting now, wherever you get your podcasts. Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. A missed call doesn't feel like anything. No red flag, no notifications screaming at you. It just disappears into your call log. And nine times out of ten, that was someone ready to hand you money. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O.

29:51The business phone system built so you never miss a call. Here's what I like about it. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place, so anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. No more, wait, who talked to this customer last? And if you're worried about after-hours leads slipping through, Quo's optional built-in AI agent can answer questions and even book appointments while your team's offline. It's the number one rated business phone system on G2, and over 90 ,000 businesses already trust it to stay reachable. Money is on the line. Always say hello with Quo.

30:27Try Quo for free. Plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash tech. That's Q-U-O dot com slash tech. Business is booming. Is your fulfillment ready for peak season? Switch to ShipStation now and handle more volume with confidence when it counts. ShipStation connects Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop, and over 200 more integrations with one platform that does it all. You can manage orders, sync inventory, track returns all automatically. Everything your operation needs, all in one place. Right now, qualified shippers get a real dedicated person to get you set up and switched over for free.

31:00So when peak season hits, you're ready to go. Switch today at ShipStation.com, code audio.

31:09Welcome back. Here's a few things we've been talking about in the club this week. Piers Morgan has received an apology from Earl Spencer, Diana's brother, over a passage in his new book, linking Morgan to papped photos of Diana at the gym. These were published nearly two years before Morgan joined the Mirror. Piers says he's still pursuing legal action against Spencer and publisher Penguin. Radio Days Europe has booked Kyle of the Kyle and Jackie O show for its keynote in Palmer next year. The session asks what happens when a radio star decides he doesn't need a radio station? They should probably also ask, will ARN get their money back?

31:44Deadline revealed this week that MIP London won't return for a third year. The market moved into the Savoy after MIPTV and Cannes folded in 2024. Now RxFrance is replacing it with MIP Talks, a two-day conference alongside the London Book Fair at Excel next March. It's not the only conference heading that way. The Children's Media Conference is leading Sheffield for the first time for the Book Fair too. But don't cancel the Riviera just yet. MIP.com still takes over Cannes on the 12th of October. Links to all of our stories are available on our weekly sub-stack. sign up there at themediaclub.com that's themediaclub.com it's all free Alex and Gonja are still with me so Alex Kyle big Australian star we've talked about him on the show before Australia was on hosted Australia's biggest breakfast show and they had some issues like all good breakfast shows there are some issues and he's launched his own subscription app when you've got like a really an audience that's so loyal to talent how do you weigh up about whether you stick with a broadcaster and you're guaranteed cash or go it low i think um we're in the era of super fans and i think there there's a lot of talent yearning to do that obviously we've seen a few in in the uk do it uh piers does it obviously um but there is a real distinction between those that can and those that wouldn't be able to get that over the line and i do think it comes down to super fans because we talk a lot about subscription fatigue i'm sure people have come on this show and spoken a lot about that in the past and it's true and it is there and there's another it's another model to pay for or to go ad free or you know when you thought you were ad free in the first place um so to ask somebody to to pay for specifically one person they need to be super fans and i think that where we are seeing people thrive is when they have a really authentic dedicated fan base that will go wherever they go and i think that if you have that and you have that at scale i mean how many years was he hosting that show a long time you can feel pretty confident that you're going to make a good return on that investment um he's also somebody who's got something to say of course he's not he's not a shrinking violet um but as an agent from my point of view i'm going to be looking at the data to go before we go head first into something like this how concrete can we be that this is going to work you know it's all well and good saying you have x amount on instagram x amount on tiktok that doesn't always translate you have to be so sure that because the last thing you want especially from an agent or from a client is to fail when you go and launch your own thing it's hard to come back from that because what it means is is that the fan base isn't really there and so he would have had to have been extremely sure that this would have worked and it will and it is um everyone wants to do it not everyone has the bravery to do it not everyone has the fan base to do it uh also it means talent kind of backing themselves i mean this is there's no one writing a check uh there's no cash up front yeah and um a lot of people talk a good game um but when push comes to shove you know it's a big decision i i do think the more people do it the more it becomes accessible to others and and more people will try i think it takes a few big hitters to start you know from a uk point of view i do think you know people can have their different opinions on on holly willoughby's show but the truth is like she's done it and i think a lot of other talent will take a lot of positivity from that and really start thinking about what they do next i mean when No, look, Holly's had, she's been knocked quite a lot for her YouTube channel.

35:29And I'm sure they'll learn what's good and bad about what they're doing. I think unfairly, from my point of view. Yeah, no, I think it's unfair. And she's clearly signed a long-term deal with a partner. Yeah. And that's, they're going to see a return over a longer period of time. And she's got to sort of stick with it and iterate it to keep, to understand what it is that her audience want from her in that place. we can't treat you know we've got into this place with tv shows where if it doesn't land within one episode three episodes one series it gets canned you know i wish you know it's a really bad place that we've got to that we don't let things breathe and i think this is no different it's a completely new thing there's going to be teething problems there's going to be things that just absolutely don't look good don't work she'll look back and go we should never have done that but that's that's every youtuber but also that's anybody i get that she has a lot more eyeballs on her than others and i get that he will too and amol will and piers obviously does and and anyone else but look i i think you have to sort of ignore this echo chamber of judgment and just and just persevere you know for me what i always say to our clients is the thing that's going to get you to the other end is consistency you know it's not about a quick viral hit it's not about that dopamine hit of a first episode are you still going to be here with the same passion doing it in two three five years time because i think the difference between people with success and those that aren't uh is consistency um so it's important uh gonja like for for consumers they've got a lot of different media choices and on youtube particularly where they're finding creators that really scratch their itch that they connect to they can leave broadcasters behind and people that package content for them and they can just find these people direct can't they yeah um that's definitely true but i think what alex was saying also brought to me like um from from the angle of like from my angle of media and brand um creators or any like the line between creators and celebrity is blurring quite a bit right so we you know we always kind of thought about it from the angle of creator becoming more famous and becoming a celebrity but really like um when we ask in media reactions to consumers who's your favorite um creator sometimes they answer with a celebrity last year us's number one was cristiano ronaldo you might say like why why um but you know celebrities do creator things creators do celebrity things and i can say we have this weird thing where our creators are on tv i think more than our tv stars who are now moving to youtube exactly exactly so that line is really blurring um and i think it's like like you were saying, Alex, it's like very understandable that someone who's, maybe I'll be a little mean about this, maybe felt like shackled by like traditional media, wanting to be free, right?

38:17Of course, there is quite a bit of like risk associated with it. But what's actually interesting to me is that maybe there's a bit of a momentum that's happening at the same time right now where marketers are actually starting to respect creators more as storytelling partners so they're giving them more freedom they're they majority think they shouldn't be controlling them just you know brief and let them do their work so that type of new dynamic might also be i feel like um enticing you know what we would normally call celebrities or traditional broadcasters to actually think okay there is you know i can do more in this space now um so it's interesting to to see how it falls yeah you mentioned him earlier francois bourgeois now on um the grand tour i mean that's a crazy media career that's um individual social media breakout hit content creator tv person is he really like that is it a broad version of his personality all of these things like he's a very complex character yeah that's an interesting journey um amazed by him on the grand tour because you see him in a certain way on his own socials and to see him in this i guess hyper and extreme version of of the show with the with you know james and thomas um who we also work with i think you see him in a whole different world um he's got an engineering background you know that's his passion his passion is not just trains it is cars and it is spaceships and it's everything else um and you feel that you when you watch it doesn't matter if you're watching him with trains or cars in fact he gets to do both in the grand tour you you can't fault that passion and i think that um he's just very entertaining he's very sincere he's very watchable and he's very authentic and i think that um you know you get that on his socials and you get that on on tv i think what you don't want to see is somebody that feels authentic on their own stuff and then you put them in TV and you go what what are they doing absolutely where's this come from um it just works we talked a bit earlier about Nigella and Bake Off and I thought it was interesting comparing Grand Tour to say the Top Gear reboots which seemed much more constructed whereas they've picked some people that aren't the most obvious people for for the Grand Tour but they all hang together well and hey we'll see we'll see if that works they weren't going for kind of premier league talent straight away and it's trying to grow it was an interesting starting point because uh throttle house james and thomas are a duo you know they have over three million subscribers on youtube and they've been an incredible like their stuff is insane if you haven't seen it's amazing an incredible duo for so long so it's weird that you're the three of them are it's unlike strictly where it's one there's three individuals coming together this is a double act coming together an individual and i guess that is a new um environment to manage and i think the boys have been so giving to have francis join them and i think it just really works as a as a three um but also you can't replace clarkson may and hammond you just you can't go like for like i think top gear in the past have tried to go a bit like for like they've gone full 180 um freshened it up gone more youthful and i'm biased but i would say it's paid off i thought it was a good connections with the original three they did they did if you haven't seen it they did a very nice crossover with the original people so it was in the right style as well the blessing is there from jeremy yeah okay just enough time for the audio network media quiz

41:59three media stories hidden within a different media property uh this week it's passive income so social media is full of young men in rented supercars promising to make you rich by friday or at least mine is so i'll pitch you three coded media stories in the style of a get rich quick guru you just tell me what the story is and once again alex audio network has taken that brief from producer matt and served up some high tempo trap to score today's game it's a best of three so you buzz in with your names when you know the story so alex you will say alex and gonja you will say let's play passive income bro three years of going backwards cancel that energy here's the blueprint trim 84 people off the payroll stack a million subscribers and flip a five million loss into profit yes it's hearst um going back up on revenue yes that's correct yeah this is hearst UK has returned to revenue growth after three years of decline with a million pound pre-tax profit and paid subscriptions past a million.

43:06So Gonja, good housekeeping, doubled its online audience in two years, while Digital Spy with no print title or subscriptions behind it fell 37%. Is there a lesson about established media brands or what the right market for these things is? It's interesting. I mean, you would expect a digital brand called Digital Spy to be only digital. So I wouldn't say that that's their downfall. There's probably something else behind that. But it is interesting news to me as well that they are, you know, back up on their feet. Because when I look at my data, I'm just looking at in general in channels, right?

43:48Newspapers, magazines, marketers are really not willing to invest in them anymore, whether online or offline. um so it's i think superb to see that specific brands can actually um come back um so it must be something more than that i feel like more than just being you know on both sides i often think like magazines are sort of the original subscription business that's something they should definitely reclaim in the in the digital world uh okay get rich quick scheme number two here's the side hustle nobody's talking about take something your audience already gets for free they charge them 9.99 a month to take out the boring bits keep the hosts keep the hits lose yes alex this is going to be a battery um it's gonna be um radio plus i think yes um that they They now offer a subscription without ads, even for live content, apparently.

44:47Yes, this is Global, launching Radio Plus, ad-free listening across its UK music stations on Global Player. At a tenner a month or£100 a year, or if you just want a single brand, it's a five-er a month. So if you just like hearts, just like heart 80s, you can get that from Global as well. I thought it was interesting. Bauer did this quite a few years ago. It's£3.99, you get all of the Bauer stations. i thought interesting and probably much kind of better thing to do charge more money for it a tenor for those radio stations yeah i think there's a bit of i've been seeing on my algorithm actually a lot of pushback from people going sorry i have to pay now what that i have i thought i was paying for this originally it's really um but as soon as you go ad free on something you can't go back and i did that recently with youtube i was at youtube premium i did it uh i was like i'll just try this for a month i'm not giving that up like the idea that i've got to sit through 20 seconds of ads suddenly life has changed um that's the problem is they know they get you because as soon as you do go ad free uh which i do on spotify as well um you yeah it's like what they say when you turn left on the plane to go business class you can't go the other way afterwards this is exactly like that for marketers are they concerned about subscription ad-free um environments or is there just always enough uh ad space for them to for them to fill yeah i think there is to be honest um and it's making up for a lot of things as well this is a bit of an old topic but it's not like you know when there wasn't subscription on these platforms people were actually sitting you know to watch the ad anyway they were looking away in whatever way they could find there were ad blockers or just you just go and do something else for a while look at another window so i think um there is definitely value in the subscriptions like alex was saying once you go there you can ask what do brands think of this because obviously they're spending a lot of money to be present and now you can just pay to get rid of them how do how do brands feel about the fact that you can just get rid of all of their all of their stuff well it's not really a one-way street is it so i think you know we always talk about okay you know we're getting rid of ads here but really some brands that didn't come with ads bring ads into their platforms as well so um just the newest thing is ai assistants having paid ads as well so it's um i think it's like a back and forth it's not going just one in one direction.

47:21So there is always space for brands. And I think for brands, what matters is being in, you know, premium platforms as well. So as long as you have that space, you're not really in a clutter. You don't want to be a clutter. You have that premium spot, then you can you can communicate well. And and to add to that, you know, paid advertising isn't the only way you communicate with your um with your consumers with your customers right because it's just i keep saying this media landscape is changing so much but one of the ways this changes is that brands don't just talk at people anymore so you have to basically have an interactive experience you talk with your um customers so okay one more to go go on it's all yours take it home Giz rule on a monetization never leave money on the table premium subscribers sell them ads anyway live match cut to the break 15 minutes from full time I've got zero idea go on it's Disney cutting into the women's champions league match with an ad break yes I know it when Gonja says the answers then I remember and I know it yes a Disney plus cuts a three minute ad break with about 15 minutes left to play on Arsenal's Women's Champions League win on Tuesday.

48:43Disney says it was an unscheduled technical issue. Someone just accidentally hit that button. Yeah, I mean, as a Spurs fan, I was quite happy with that. And I'm assuming there was a Spurs fan in the control room. It's a shame it wasn't the whole game. It's just obviously an accidental error. Did they miss anything decent? I don't think they did. No goals. No. I think we can all get over it, I would say. on that note congratulations Gonja winner today you get to explore taking the media club into lots of different environments for subscription ad free all the different elements come back and tell us how you go okay also thanks to Alex Audio Network for supplying today's music remember Audio Network can do that for you as well just head to audionetwork.com and there's a link in the show notes as well before we go tell our listeners and viewers how they can keep up with your good work.

49:38Alex, your Substack? Yeah, Dealmakers on Substacks. If you go to dealmakers.substack.com, I write multiple times a week about being a talent agent in the entertainment industry. Get about 20 ,000 views a month at the moment, so I'm very, very happy. Good, good, good. And Intertalent, what's next? A lot, really. We're growing now, and we've got about 10 different divisions, so it's been a very busy time. Lots of great successes this year, but look we've got a last few months the rest of the year so we've got a lot of uh a lot of clients who need a lot of jobs uh yes absolutely uh and gonja how can people keep up with the the report yes so um it's launching on tuesday um very simple kantar.com slash media reactions um also you can watch the webinar but there is going to be other materials as well and also you can just directly follow me on linkedin if you want uh very easy uh thank you both uh and thank you to you for watching and listening.

50:34My 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.

50:50Business is booming. Is your fulfillment ready for peak season? Switch to ShipStation now and handle more volume with confidence when it counts. ShipStation connects Shopify, Amazon, TikTok shop and over 200 more integrations with one platform that does it all. You can manage orders, sync inventory, track returns all automatically. Everything your operation needs all in one place. Right now, qualified shippers get a real dedicated person to get you set up and switched over for free. So when peak season hits, you're ready to go. Switch today at ShipStation.com, code audio. Real talent is defined by what people can do, not where they learn to do it.

51:25So by stopping at the education section of a resume, you might throw away the perfect tire. Skills First hiring helps you see talent others miss Like more than 70 million stars Skilled through alternative routes Let their story unfold and gain a competitive advantage Because hiring managers who start with skills Are 60 % more likely to find a successful hire Hire Skills First Learn why at tearthepaperceiling.org Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council So retrospectors, what historical events are we ticking off On this week's run of Today in History? On Monday, going once, going twice, the man who bought Stonehenge.

52:02On Tuesday, how 10 Downing Street became Britain's prime address. On Wednesday, the origins of Nintendo in the 1800s. On Thursday, oh Mr Darcy, when the BBC sexed up Pride and Prejudice. And on Friday, praise be, how Billy Graham became the Elvis of the Evangelical Church. That's Today in History with The Retrospectors. 10 minutes each weekday, wherever you get your podcasts.