Can Tim Davie Save The BBC?

0:00At Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery. Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. Race the rudders. Race the sails. Race the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over. Roger. Wait, is that an enterprise sails solution? Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one.

0:40Get started today at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. I'm NFL linebacker TJ Watt, and this is my personal best. YPB by Abercrombie is the activewear I'm always wearing. That's why I reached out to co-design their latest drop. I work with designers to create high-performance activewear that holds up to my toughest workouts. shop YPB by Abercrombie in-store online and in the app because your personal best is greater than anything hello and welcome to another edition of the rest is entertainment with me Marina Hyde and me Richard Osmond and we're back in the same room as each other now we are thank goodness we didn't like our time apart did we we did not enjoy it at all we're not from that generation No, it's just simply not our chosen way of operating.

1:30That can do those things remotely. Now, we've got awful lot to talk about today. We're going to talk about the future of the BBC. Quite a chunky subject, but there's been all sorts going on this week. Tim Davey made a big speech, a panel who've been put together to decide the future of the licence fee as well. So it's a very, very, very big thing. So we will discuss that. We will have some light affair as well. Celebrity book clubs. That's light fair. Dakota Johnson, one of our faves, popped fave of this podcast has just launched one. So we're going to talk about celebrity book clubs. and what else?

1:59We talked last week about Bond and who's going to be the new Bond. There's actually a much, much bigger role up for grabs, which is Ralph Little has just left Death in Paradise, which for the last 13 years has been the biggest show on British TV. So they're looking for a new detective to go out to Guadeloupe and that will be seen by more people than will ever see James Bond. So we're going to talk about Death in Paradise. I'm going to drill down into that statistic with you, but okay. I'm sure you'll win, but I would like to, yes. If you think that 8 million people a week are watching James Bond, then I wish you all the best.

2:32Yeah, but the... Okay, well, we'll get on to it. We'll get on to it. Yeah, let's talk about the future of the BBC. Okay. We're talking about the future of the BBC because Tim Davey, the Director General of the BBC, made a speech last week at the Royal Television Society, which is about the future direction of the BBC and its role for the UK. But by the way, before we go any further in this discussion, I think I have to declare an interest because my husband works for the BBC. Oh, typical. Which, as you know, Richard. typical London lefty lovey I mean he didn't back when we met in the mid Mesozoic period it's a little bit like Chandler and Friends where I don't properly know exactly what he does so you can imagine how much we have to talk about all my jobs is he Pudsey Bear?

3:11he's not Pudsey Bear he is on the board of Children in Need however is he? yes he is that's not the main job though one of my favourite moments in telly I never took a photo of it but was just out the back of the studio in Elstree we were doing the Children in Need pointless I think and Pudsey Bear, head under his arm, smoking. I thought, oh, man. Oh, that's behind the magic, isn't it? You could ruin some childhoods there, couldn't you? Yeah, well, you just have. Listen, so long as there's no seven-year-olds listening to this, and if there are, they've got to learn at some point. Yes. The reason that Tim Davie has done this talk, it's sort of kicking off the charter process.

3:44And charter is the constitutional basis for the BBC. It comes up for renewal every 10 years. Now, it's not actually up for renewal until 2027. but what that means is that you need to have things out there in the marketplace to point to and say this is why we need this this is working this is whatever so it's important that they take control of the conversation and i have to say for someone who's a huge fan and defender and lover of the bbc this was so great because for how long have people said why doesn't the bbc go on the front foot why doesn't the bbc what it say what it's great at why doesn't the bbc actually defend statistically lots of the kind of distortions and complete misrepresentations about how people feel about the BBC, chiefly among them that it's polarising.

4:24We'll come to that it's the absolute opposite of polarising shortly. Pretty good to see him out there and say, saying this is what we're about and this is why we matter and this is why we matter more than ever. We're not an anachronism. It's going to be a fascinating time. As you say, in three years' time they're going to work out, you know, it's possible they'll get rid of the licence fee altogether and the BBC will be utterly unrecognisable. The government have put together a group of the great and good to talk about that, including my old boss, Sir Peter Bazalgette. That's in play, this idea that there'll be no more licence fee.

4:54And obviously that's been a huge thing over the last few years. We talked about Channel 4 being under threat, but the BBC has really, really been under threat. I mean, from the left, from the right, everybody hates the BBC publicly. What they have to do... Except they don't, which we'll again come to. Almost impossible to have an organisation that is more trusted. There's an issue at the heart of this, which is we pay a tax for the BBC. Okay, and so everyone is allowed to have an opinion on it. And also everyone's allowed to reject because they don't want to pay tax for something they don't like or something that doesn't represent their values.

5:23So that's always been the issue. And that tax is the licence fee. Certainly if the Tories had stayed in for another five years, I suspect it would have disappeared. I think let's assume Labour get back in. So it's safer. But listen, the BBC is not going to last forever. Certainly not in its current form. My most senior friends in television said, just pick a number out of the air. How long has the BBC as we know it now got left? And then I got three years, five years, seven years. I think that's nonsense. Sorry. We are not going to have the BBC as we know it now, which is, oh, we sit down and watch these linear television channels.

5:54And we've got Bargain Hunt on, and then we've got Pointless on, and then we've got The One Show on. You know, that cannot last. That dam cannot hold. But it's interesting that even now, it reaches 99 % of people in this country on a monthly basis and 90 % on a weekly basis. That is extraordinary. It's huge. I've always felt uncomfortable talking about the BBC because for the last 10, 15 years publicly, I've sort of been paid by them and you're always asked to sign letters supporting the BBC and this kind of stuff and there's very few things that I would sign letters for and that's one of them but I would never have done it because of course I want the BBC to succeed I'm being paid by them so what I think about it has been meaningless I do almost nothing for the BBC now I do House of Games and that's it and obviously I do lots of other things I feel like I'm more in a position to talk about it when we were running Endemol for many many years we were obviously operating in lots of different television territories in America, in Germany, Australia, everywhere around the world.

6:48And I felt that the infrastructure, the production infrastructure and the television infrastructure in Britain was healthier than anywhere else in the world. It was the single best television infrastructure anywhere. If you think British TV is bad, this is the best you're going to get anywhere in the world. And I thought one of the main reasons for that was the BBC and the way that BBC was funded and the things that BBC had to do and what that meant for the other channels as well. Because there's absolutely no doubt that... How it affects the wider market is such a crucial part of what it is. and a part that's often misunderstood by people.

7:17Exactly. And one of the reasons that Sky News is so good is because of BBC News. One of the reasons that ITV drama is so good is because of BBC drama. One of the reasons that Channel 4 make the programmes they do is because of the BBC. When people couldn't compete for funding, they competed for quality. That has been a really fantastic thing about our market. I think exactly that. It can't last because not enough young people are going to be watching linear television and not going to be watching the things that we know the BBC as being. So what Tim Davey has to do, and what I think he's rather good at doing, is saying, look, it's still very important creatively and culturally that we have a levy in this country that pays for something that belongs to us all, that pays for culture that belongs to us all.

7:57Yeah, the universality. That's one of the three big planks of his speech was universality. The others were creativity and impartiality. I'm not going to get into news because it's not my area. Oh my God, I look forward to that so much. In terms of the world of entertainment, you would not, starting from scratch, invent the BBC now and say, we're going to tax everyone£170 a year to have a television service. You just wouldn't do it. It wouldn't happen, which is why in lots of countries it doesn't happen. But this is what we have. I think we're enormously, enormously lucky to have it, is the truth.

8:28It's under huge threat because there's so many things that could sweep it away. I think that it's going to require enormous skill from Tim Davey to shepherd the BBC through and to get another license fee and to make the BBC relevant in the media landscape that's to come. But quite apart from asking these TV people how long they thought it would last, I said, well, do you think Tim Davey is the guy to shepherd this through? And every single one of them said absolutely unequivocally, yes. He is politically very astute. He is creatively, he just employs good people and leaves them alone because he understands in the next three years when this topic is raging he wants to have some hits on his channel he wants to make sure that you're sitting at home with your children watching gladiators and they absolutely love it he wants to make sure he's got great drama he wants to make sure that he's still got seven eight million people watching stuff because it makes every single other thing he does easier it's interesting they got 21 out of 30 rts awards this week you know genuinely they've got 30 less money than they had 10 years ago i'd take the unfashionable view that the BBC used to have too much money, but you can't say that out loud too much in television, but I believe that to be the case.

9:34I think there used to be an awful lot of wastage at the BBC. There are certainly not now, that's for sure. It's about the most cost-effective place you can make television. I mean, you know, they are really not overpaying for anything. And what do you think what they get for it? Because in terms of the total viewing of the BBC, British people spend more time with the BBC than with all the other streamers combined. and we think of the cost of everything on those platforms put together i mean to say it dwarfs the license fee settlement is ridiculous and also by the way the streamers are not making making an incredibly small amount of programs and an incredibly narrow amount of programs and not having to do any of the stuff that the bbc is having to do so so to have done what they've done i remember about 12 years ago something like that the bbc called lots of us in in the james Pennell era, people from radio, people from, you know, entertainment, people from drama, and said, we need to talk about the future of the BBC.

10:26We need to talk, you know, we need better PR. We need people to be out there fighting for us. So could you go around the table and say what the BBC means to you? And the entire thing was someone from Radio 6 saying, I think Radio 6 is the most important thing about the BBC because new bands are important. And drama going, I think drama is the most important thing for the BBC. And like the Saturday night ago, I think big primetime entertainment is the most important thing just every single person just saying that their bit of the BBC was the most important bit it's so easy to imagine a world in which the BBC literally disappears in the next three years five years seven years which is not by the way what these people are saying this thing is just going it's going to look different but the BBC could just disappear if it was badly run now it would it could just go it is a more positive time for it because as we've talked before about being under threat forever by the government which was the case was happened with Channel 4 it is a really bad environment to try and do the things you're best at in.

11:16It's not to say that a Labour government wouldn't cause problems with the BBC. Certainly the Blair government was often complete loggerheads with the BBC. To not actually be in the permanent crouch position every single day, it would be quite interesting to see what it can do. And I do think in terms of news, that is one of the really amazing things. If you look at the US, look at their news market, it's so polarised. There is trust and distrust really polarised for individual organizations. So, you know, some people will only trust Fox News. Some people will only trust, I don't know, the New York Times, but everything, all of those things are utterly polarized.

11:50And there is no single news organization in the United States that I think nothing gets more than like 25 % of like it's frequently consumed, okay, of the population. That is really small. Our market is so much better, much more trusted across the board, by the way, even though there are polarising titles, the Daily Mail might be a polarising title, the Guardian is a polarising title, but they are not so far poles apart. 60 % of people frequently consume BBC News in this country. 60%. It is so far out the other end of the scale compared to all the other things, all the other titles and many other newspaper titles who, by the way, are lined up against it every day and distort the idea that actually people really don't trust it and it's really polarising.

12:34It's not polarising. 60 % of people frequently consume it, that there is nothing like that in the world. And your point earlier about, well, maybe you wouldn't come up with it. My God, I mean, you would want to come up with it right now in a world that is increasingly polarised, increasingly atomised. 70 % of the world doesn't even have a free press. My God, if you could create this thing. And yet it's absolutely mad that has been attacked for so long because we've got three sort of big exports that we do really well and we're renowned for in this country, financial services, weapons and media and creative industries.

13:09You know, no shade on the other two industries. No shade on the old arms dealers. No shade on the weapons industry from us. Listen, if you want to advertise, there's some BAE systems. Raytheon, call us up, hit us up. I would say that as a piece of soft power, been in the most extraordinary backwaters in the middle of nowhere and people said, oh, we listen to BBC. No, because we don't have good media in our country. And it is incredible, the reach. and to attack something with that soft power when, let's face it, we're doing not brilliantly in a load of other areas as a country seems to me absolutely crazy.

13:40One specific issue is this. I get it if you are right-wing and you understand that... I get it if you're right-wing and you don't think taxation should pay for a media company. Absolutely 100 % allowed to think that. You can argue that all day long. Stop funding the world service as a government is genuine vandalism, genuinely dangerous, makes the world a worse place, they know that that's not the right thing to do. Tory government want to get rid of the BBC. I get it. You're allowed to think I completely disagree with you. I think it's crazy, but I get it. But they knew that defunding the World Service was making Britain a less safe, less prosperous place.

14:17They did it because they wanted to annoy the BBC. Genuinely, it was ideological. They knew it would hurt the BBC and they were cutting off their nose to spite their face. That's what you're up against, I think. The World Service, I think, is the one thing that really shows the true colours of the opposition to the BBC. I mean, nobody thinks it's a good idea to stop funding the World Service. There's no one sitting in a room thinking, I tell you what, to make this world a safer, happier place, let's stop funding the World Service. I mean, it's nonsensical. I do think you look at America and you look at that market, and why on earth would you wish to emulate that news media market?

14:53We've seen where it leads. It led to people crawling all over the capital, having been the lies that led them there being stoked by Rupert Murdoch. So every time I'm reading in the Times or wherever it is or the Sun, another checker on the BBC, then I'm thinking, well, who's going to take care of it? Are you? Because you're not. We've seen what you've done. Yeah, I think it's that. And listen, Tim Davey is smart enough to understand that the licence fee is a tricky thing and he needs to put things in place to make it more affordable for people who need it to be more affordable. And obviously, if you don't consume any BBC products at all, then you don't have to pay it.

15:27I do think it's one of those weird things. Capitalism doesn't like something that doesn't follow the market. And the BBC doesn't follow the market. It's a shelter from the market. It is the most extraordinarily weird edifice this country has created. And it's created it, by the way, because we're such a smart country and creatively we're brilliant and we're super kind and all of those things. That's why the BBC exists. And we were good at punching above our weight. I do feel I can take my gloves off now and so I've never felt able to stick up for it. From a business perspective, from running a big, big, big, multi-billion dollar company that works in every country in the world, my God, we have got the best media in the world.

16:07Huge problems everywhere. Of course there are. We have got the best television system in the world. And the BBC is just about the best media organization you could ever find. And if you think it isn't, then I'm afraid that I just don't think people know enough about the markets in the other countries or about the lack of free press or anything. and it is a pretty nice assumption to have that it's awful and polarising because let me tell you, it is not. It's changed an awful lot as well, the BBC. I do think you go there now and it understands. I think there was an era in the BBC, certainly 90s is when I first came across it, but before then, when they didn't really appreciate they were being paid for by taxpayers.

16:40That actually£170 is not nothing to most people in this country and so there's a responsibility to spend that money incredibly wisely. I can't think of an organisation that understands that more now, that really gets the every single penny that is spent is coming from people. And, you know, Tim Davie understands that BBC Studios has to get bigger and bigger and bigger and you've got to find new ways of making money. You know, Doctor Who is now being co-produced by Disney. So in the future, there are other ways that you're going to have to pay for BBC products and BBC can make money. But the heart of it has to be that license fee.

17:13And as I say, this panel of the great and good who are about to start talking about it, a lot of very savvy business people in there. someone from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in there as well. I think it's going to be hard for them to sit down and talk about the BBC and not understand what it is and how important it is and how unique it is in our ecosystem. I can be told I'm a left-wing lovie. All I like, all I know is from someone who ran a business, makes such a lot of money for Britain and makes the world a safer and better place. And also, top 10 websites in the UK, only one, the BBC, is British.

17:46Otherwise, it's all Silicon Valley or TikTok or whatever it is. So work out what you want and whether it's worth protecting. I find it absolutely extraordinary that they might not. Yeah, because if we get rid of the license fee, then maybe Musk will buy the BBC. So it's one or the other. I think the television ecosystem is better because of the BBC. I think its competitors and rivals are in a better industry because of the BBC. I think the same is true with radio. We've got an incredibly healthy radio sector with big, big companies. But because we're a country that understands great radio, and a lot of that is because of the BBC, I think the same is true with podcasts.

18:18I think the same is true with pretty much any media, that we are a better culture because of the BBC. And the people who are running commercial enterprises, I think, are making more profits because we have this weird little tax thing in the middle of our culture. No, I think you're right. And all the most popular programmes in the UK are on the public service broadcasters, and most of them, the majority from the BBC. You may not believe that if you read, to read many of the enemies of the BBC and the newspapers and beyond, but that is the case. Listen, it's going to be tricky for Tim Davy, that's for sure, because, you know, it's hard to keep running the size of this organisation on the money that he currently has.

18:57That's for sure. It's hard, of course, to keep running that organisation with the political issues about it. But I think he's done, genuinely, I think you do have to give people credit where it's due. He's done a pretty amazing job over the last five years in terms of the creativity of the BBC and in fighting off the government. But the next three years are absolutely crucial. In 2027, the futurists decided they could just get rid of the licence fee. He's smart enough, he's got enough smart people around him that we can stave it off. But it's not unhelpful if people make it known how much the BBC is valued.

19:28And with that, I think we shall go into a break. Different funding models for different organisations. And if ours is based on advertising, yeah, I get it. Then let's hear some. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to-do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

20:04This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold-out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org. Jack Daniels and Old No. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey, 40 % alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. From improving emergency response times to protecting against cyber attacks, local, state, and federal governments are innovating with Google AI.

20:45This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American Innovation.

20:56welcome back everybody we are now going to talk about celebrity book clubs because podcast fave dakota johnson has launched her own new book club um which is most of these things are done via instagram now and are sort of recommendations she says our book club is literary fiction it's not beach reads it's not silly but she joins obviously there was oprah the mother of them all who had Oprah's, she's been doing it since 1996. It's actually relatively, she's only done 104 books since 1996. So that's - Lazy. People say that about her actually. Notoriously. And it all used to be on TV. Richard and Judy had one that for a while was a huge market mover, but now it's mostly on Instagram.

21:38Reese Witherspoon had a mega one. Yeah, hers is super huge. Yes, it's interesting that, because the big question you want to ask is, is this good for books? By and large, the answer is no, not particularly. I would say it's almost entirely book neutral. Definitely good for the people running the book clubs. That's for sure. You know, whether it's just in terms of pure branding that suddenly they look smarter because they read books. Well, I think that is a big part of why they are doing it. A lot of these, and it's extraordinary, it is almost exclusive. In fact, it is, as far as I can work out, exclusively women who are doing them.

22:11you know, Dua Lipa, Emma Roberts, Emma Watson, Florence Welch. Oh, my goodness. Has Kaya Gerber got one? We'll come to the ones who are just pictured with books. It used to be done on television, these things, and people would, and Oprah's was obviously a television segment, but now exists as a sort of online thing. Oprah's really shifted books back in the day, which is the crucial thing. And there was a funny episode. Do you remember Jonathan Franzen, the novelist, was really annoyed that his novel, The Corrections, had been picked as Oprah's book club thing and said, oh no, I don't want to be because she picks really schmaltzy things and whatever.

22:46It's like, oh right, you don't, because sometimes she would sell them an extra sort of five million books. I was going to say, he sold five million copies of the corrections off the back of that. So I think he changed it to tune. Yeah, but he never did again. You'll not ever sell five million copies of any of your books ever again, I don't think, because everything has changed. Yeah, that was a really sort of snobby, snooty thing. I talked a bit about this before, almost with the authorship thing, the celebrity authors. It's an extension of the brand. Like I'm an intellectual in that same way that suddenly wearing much more edgy fashion on the red carpet, you can see that someone's maybe got new representation and they're being sort of made to look like a slightly different type of persona.

23:20So people think, oh, I see you could get smarter women roles or whatever it is. And I think with some of these people, which I probably won't go into specifics of who, some of these people have done that. Gives them an intellect and a heft and just a something. It makes them seem like a different type of persona than perhaps the one they started out with. Yeah, and I don't mind it, by the way, because anything that gets books out there is great. And if we're teaching a generation of kids that it's cool to read books, then that's fantastic as well. But yeah, as you say, back in the olden days, Oprah, Richard and Judy would shift a lot of books.

23:52I mean, a lot of books and being on the Richard and Judy list was a huge deal. Amanda Ross used to run that and would pick the books and now does between the covers. So it used to shift a lot back when we were quite monocultural. and if something was on TV, we all saw it. So these new ones do not really shift books. If you are on one of these things, your book might sort of go up the charts the next day or the next week. That will be it, really. So it's blips. It's the truth. It's blips. The people it's really, really good for are the people running them. So Reese Witherspoon, and fair play to her, actually, it's a very clever business model, that she had this book club.