Favourite muppet, what is the fourth wall and will there be another Top Of The Pops?

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1:26Hello, and welcome to The Rest is Entertainment, the questions edition, with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond, once again, it's questions and answers. Yeah, sorry, I just should make that clear. Not just questions. But Richard, let's get right into it. Although the questions were more fun last week than the answers. Yes, and they always will be. And it'll be so much quicker. Right, Lisa Burns, Richard, would like to know, she says, you talk a lot about overnights, catch-up, streaming, different platforms, etc., and how well or not a show is doing in the ratings, but how are the numbers actually collected?

1:56This is a very good question. This is a good question, and it hasn't changed a lot for many, many years. Certainly when we talk about linear TV, so we talked about Gladiators getting 6.4 million on the other show this week. And it is a number of people have bar boxes in their home. Barb is the British Audience Research Board. Exactly right. You can already tell it's like from the 80s. Yeah. And they are attached to their television and essentially it can measure what you are watching. And you can then input if there's more than one person in your household watching a particular show. They can be attached to devices nowadays.

2:32They have an app that can do it. So it has kept pace with the modern era. Yeah. How many families or households have these boxes? I think it's... It's around 5 ,000, I think. Something around 5 ,000, which is... We'll get on to whether that's representative. Yeah, essentially, all that gets sent back to the Barb headquarters. And you have to say who was watching in your household. You have to be quite specific. You can't just... They can't think that the whole family were tuning into EG Gladiators if it's just one of you dreaming of Jet on your own. one of you dreaming of jet on your own is that a euphemism it is i'm afraid and those all get fed through and is aggregated and the next morning the overnights come through which is how many people were watching the night before these days you then a week later get the catch-up figures which is what everyone was watching on streaming as well and if you're netflix and people like that you have your own metrics to do it but the bar box is is the thing that's been the the heart of overnights for many many many years it has the odd inconsistency but not by much is the truth if a show starts big and creeps up a bit the next week it will always creep up a bit the next week and the next week i've never seen an actual problem where a show that lots of people watched looks like no one watched it or vice versa there was one week with channel four when they had a show it's a new panel show that they put on saturday nights and they they held great store by it and the ratings came through and it said it got 2.4 million and they suddenly went thank god we knew it we got ourselves a hit and then it came through there was a glitch in the data and it got something like 0.8 million uh but just for a day they thought they had a hit on their hands and they didn't so it used to rule everything the overnights i slightly love the barb the idea of the box it's like we think of you know it's like a nation of goggle boxes but it's this kind of 5 ,000 household strong panel it's unpaid you get vouchers you get paid in vouchers for sort of high street shops that could be popular for all ages which I think is there's something so homespun about it all I love the idea of it but also you know people say how can you tell the the viewing habits of a nation by from 5 ,000 people that's plenty enough any polling organization will tell you if you want a you know general election whatever it is 2 ,000 and above that's what you need 5 ,000 is not bad because there's lots of smaller channels now and occasionally the bar box can make a difference there i think there was someone was telling me a show i can't remember what was on not itv3 but one of the smaller channels and um the ratings would sort of go up and it would do well for a few weeks then it would do badly for a few weeks and they were it was all down to one guy who worked on the oil rigs who would who loved the show so when he was home he would watch it and when he went away he wouldn't watch it and he was the entire 80 000 viewership of that's incredible there's a button you press when which says i'm away i'm on holiday I'm away so that you can sort of put the closed sign on your barbed panel door.

5:23Someone I know has got a barbed box I've recently discovered. Someone's recently been added to the panel. I will keep that person's identity completely quiet. But that is immense prestige as far as I'm concerned. Can you imagine? How long have they been trying to get on the panel for? Oh, I don't think they've tried. I think it was random. Like jury service? Like jury service. I think it'll be one of the sugar babes. I think it just happens to you. But think of the pressure though every time you're watching something. I would really, really take my responsibilities incredibly seriously. It's television.

5:52It's huge, Richard. Like if I'm watching Gladiators, I'm like, but am I really, really enjoying it? Do I want to watch Anton Dex's Limitless Win instead? What do I actually think is a responsibility to the nation? Uneasy is the head that has the crown. Uneasy is the head that has a barbox. A heavy crown, yeah. Yeah, exactly. But so it is not perfect, but it's not bad, is the truth. It's a pretty accurate reflection of what people are watching and what people are not watching. and if ever something incredibly weird happens it's usually an hour later they go oh there was a mistake in the data so it's very very very trusted by all the channels and all the advertisers there's a question from jamie cowling he says one for marina please how do newspapers decide which columnists are right for them it seems baffling to me that particularly in an era when budgets are light and it's digital first some columnists have regular features yeah tell us about columnists and tell us about newspapers and their economic worth.

6:48Well it's interesting I think sort of columnists are slightly different I am obviously am a newspaper columnist I think as the columnist is slightly different from other areas in the paper I will say for The Guardian one thing that I really value is that they a few years ago started giving us our data so you can see the minute your piece is launched online you can see the numbers it's doing in real time where the referrals are coming from. Maybe they're coming from the front page of the website, because it happens to be there. Or maybe they're coming from Apple News or from Twitter or from Facebook or all sorts of other things.

7:22And you can see your numbers. That's going to make me sound as though I just think it's all a numbers game, which I don't, because there's lots of parts of a newspaper that are sort of, perhaps they're unloved. Perhaps it's a sort of kind of niche or foreign reporting that's really important. And it may not do huge numbers, but it's really important that it's covered. And it's really important that it's there. having said that i do think that columnists is probably i could be wrong about this i mean i'm not the employer i'm just the employed but columnists is a numbers game i think really you get people who you think are going to get large amounts of numbers you hope entertain people whatever it is people talk a lot about sort of hate watching or people you love to hate and you read like that and there are a lot of people you'll see that their columns might go viral and sometimes people are laughing at the columns and sometimes people just can't believe that that person said that thing and it becomes a sort of so you know they get a lot of numbers that way i would say that what they really really want what viewership or eyeballs to translate into subscriptions or donations in the case of the guardians membership model and therefore the hate watch thing you're not going to pay for people that you can't really you can't really stand or you just think that they've written some outrageous thing this week and you're going to scream about it on Twitter for a day.

8:40But I do think it's important to get the numbers. And I think probably as a columnist, you want to get high numbers or a specific type of deep engagement. One thing I really like about the way we have our data is that you can see how long it was read for, whether it was read right to the, you know, you can see it was read out of a percentage score of the people who read it. Did they read it to the end? Things like that. With your data, do you get to see other people's data as well? Yes, you do. And of course, it's important that my enemy should fail as well. So you get to see everyone's data? Yes.

9:11You can see the data of the articles. You can see any article. All the articles in the paper, really? Yeah, and whoever's written it, and I suppose you can see other people's numbers, yes. So you can see how long people read theirs for as well, so you can compare and contrast? There are certain things that affect that. Like if something gets referred from Apple News, because it's sort of global, you'll get these huge spikes in numbers, but they tend not to follow through with the same engagement because it doesn't get so deeply read. But it's really interesting and it's something that I personally pay a lot of attention to.

9:44And other papers may have completely different kind of... The Guardian, I'm sure, has much more sophisticated measuring than what we're even allowed to see. There are other papers who've been interested in hiring me at various points. People like the New York Times, other places like that have different ways of measuring and they have different things that they would want from you. They might want you to, I don't know, be a columnist for an American paper because they think that they want you to bring in an Anglophone audience. Everyone now is chasing the same sort of, it's a bit like, it's gone global.

10:11It's a bit like Netflix or whatever. You're chasing kind of global eyeballs. So they might feel that you can bring that in. Global eyeballs. Global eyeballs. Sorry, that's not a very good way of putting it. That's a good name for a podcast. Yeah, I know. I'm slightly, yeah, I am a writer, you know. I mean, really, global eyeballs. Anyway. But how true is that of the whole newspaper industry? So I always think this when you sort of look at some of the stuff that's thrown up by the algorithm, everything, everything is ruled by clicks, right? Or you have to have those clicks to do the other work.

10:42Yes, you do. But I think that there is a danger where you can just constantly have kind of ridiculous headlines to draw people in that or the clickbaity stuff or kind of absurd positions. Or in some cases, I've thought always sort of quite exploitative young people writing personal essays of one type or another. that I always advise people not to write if they're asking me, you know, how to get it started because they can get you a huge amount of attention for one day. But then I don't think the pastoral care is often there in terms of the people who commission these things and they can, you know, they blow up.

11:14You're not really looked after. You're not, you're suddenly at the center of a storm for writing something or you've written about some terrible thing that's happened to you. And then I think go back and write those stories when you've become more established as a writer. I really do feel that. This is, sorry, we've gone a bit tangentially off there, But you can get for those kind of personal first person things, which is why you see a lot more of that now. You can get big, big numbers. But it's getting people to stick around, to come back because they like the same thing every week. I personally think that that is the big thing to maintain numbers week after week.

11:48And also ideally to get people to subscribe to your publication or to donate to your publication or whatever, in whatever way keeps it going. Because, I mean, listen, you're not going to say it, but you are almost always top of the numbers for The Guardian. And you do insane numbers on social media as well. Can you see how much of that engagement does lead to donations as well? Is that something you can see? I can't see that actually within The Guardian. I wonder if I could ask. But you can talk to people who can tell you, roughly speaking, where you fit into how much translates to subscriptions.

12:21and I know on other papers you know they were at the time for a while on the Telegraph they were offering people a bonus for every person that said I've subscribed because of x. Well you'd like that wouldn't you? Yes I would. But in negotiations the numbers are brought up you're able to bring up those numbers if you are if you're talking about renewing a contract or something. Well I mean I don't yeah I don't know if I ought to talk about that but I do think about my numbers a lot and I think that you probably have to Yeah, I think you have to as well. You want to be making money for someone. You know, it's nice to be paid but you want to make sure that people who are paying you are getting a little bit extra on top because then everyone's happy.

12:59Yes, but equally you want to sometimes cash in the goodwill that you've got by telling lots of jokes about this or that and think, I would like to write a column about the post office this week back when perhaps it wasn't being covered in quite the way it is currently now. And you think you could do that. So I think in those terms it can be quite useful to have that sort of thing that if people are coming back week after week, then sometimes you can present something unexpected in the space. Yeah. Great question. Thank you, Richard. I'm much too embarrassed to talk about me anymore. Can we please move on?

13:28And I can say, this is a much better question. Steve McQueen says, who is your favourite Muppet? Oh, that's a good question, isn't it? I think probably Fozzie Bear. Oh, really? I think that would be my favourite because he's got that kind of old school vaudeville thing. Do you know why it's called Fozzie Bear? No. Frank Oz. Ah, really? Fozzie, yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah, there you go. He used to do the voice. Doesn't anymore, of course. Okay. How about yours? Mine would be Miss Piggy and Kermit. Just a couple on again, off again. I am here for all of their drama. I do actually have quite a lot of sympathy with Miss Piggy because I know she wears her heart on the sleeve and I know she's a handful, aren't we all?

14:09But I sometimes feel that Kermit is a little withholding. Yeah, I can live without Kermit. There's a South Park episode, actually, where Wendy keeps sending, Wendy's Stan's girlfriend, she keeps sending him really long texts and he just replies each time with a thumbs up emoji. I slightly feel that's the story of the Piggy and Kermit relationship. I think he should sort of step up. I like Stadler and Waldorf as well. Yeah, of course, with a critic. Yeah, exactly. What do you think at home? Favourite Muppet. Here is a question for you. Funny, we talked about this on the Q &A last week. Nettie Arimel says, what is the fourth wall?

14:48I've heard it referred to, however, I don't know what it really means. Is there also a first, second and third wall? Very good. She continues. Okay, well, the first, second and third wall would basically sort of be, the fourth wall is the sort of, it's the invisible wall that separates the audience from the actors. And most plays and things and most TV drama you see nowadays, almost all without exception it's almost like you're looking in through a window they're not acknowledging you your presence isn't being acknowledged I think Stanislavski called it invisible solitude these things are happening on the stage Stanislavski he has something for every occasion well yes I think he does really actually do you know what he was my favourite Muppet the proscenium arch in the theatre was originally you can imagine that that went over the stage and you answered the other part of your question the first, second and third walls are the side of the stage and the backs of the stage.

15:38But actually, the fourth wall is a really relatively recent invention in the whole of drama because it's obviously existed almost as long as humans have existed. And the actors were forever talking to the audience and involving them and there were choruses and there was an acknowledgement that this was an artifice, that this wasn't really happening. And it's only as things started to become more and more naturalistic, 16th, 17th, 18th centuries, that the idea that people on stage would stop acknowledging people in the audience. But you still now see it, obviously it was used to huge effect in Fleabag where she turns around.

16:11And what it gives you is that allows you, I guess, you as the audience know more than the characters, which is a sort of great position always to be in a drama. So the fourth wall on television is the screen? Is the screen, yeah. Essentially, and any time someone looks down the barrel at you directly in the middle of a drama, they're breaking the fourth wall. And it's very rare in television these days. and you go back to some of the things of the 80s which we were talking about, sort of something like House of Cards where Francis Urquhart, who later played by sort of Kevin Spacey in the US adaptation, will look out and speak to the audience.

16:44I was thinking that Robert Lindsay did it in GBH. Miranda does it in Miranda. Yes, yes. Mrs. Brown's Boys, they do it. That's why we mentioned it, wasn't it? Yeah, that's why we mentioned it. It's self-conscious and in some cases in those things like perhaps like in House of Cards and GBH, they're kind of reaching for a to some extent Shakespearean vibe you're thinking about these epic stories of downfalls and betrayals and there's something quite sort of Shakespearean and old-timey about that and so you might have the equivalent of a kind of chorus but in general it's rare and you really have to earn it I think because it takes you out of the world obviously so it has to be really important to make it work I quite like it they do it in books as well there's a you know when an author directly addresses you as a reader yeah and there's something about it I quite like as you say I think it takes people too much out of the world so it's not something I would particularly do myself but I like it when an author has the confidence to do it yeah like all those things you can once you know the rules you've got to be really good then you can break them and it can really work shall we take a pause and listen to some messages from our sponsors let's indeed do that no flipping 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.

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19:13Welcome back to the Rest of Zen Entertainment Questions Edition. I'm kicking off immediately with a hard hitter, Richard. Questions and answers edition. Oh, sorry. From Colin Evans. Let's just call it questions edition. Can we call it the questions edition? Yes, let's do that. Yes, I'm never going to get it right. I've got the synaptic connection now just won't make itself, so I'm always going to just call it the questions edition. Let's call it T-R-I-E-T-Q-E. Moving on. Colin Evans. Richard, which is worse, the House of Games or pointless board games? Both, of course, serious family breakdowns in this household due to the high hopes we held of being fans of both shows.

19:50Oh, goodness. That's such a good question. yes i'll say i will say this i'm not a fan of either i like both the shows um yeah i'm when there's all sorts of spin-offs that come when you make a tv show and board games are one of them they're not particularly lucrative for anybody there must be a bit otherwise you would have surely masterminded it and said i will take care of this well yeah you know uh so the pointless one is almost incomprehensible the one good thing about the pointless board game is it gives you loads of question cards. So I would say if you've got that board game, just take the question cards and make your own format, is what I would say.

20:29House of Games board game, I have not played. The House of Games books that Alan Connor writes, who's the chief question editor, they're pretty good because there's lots of questions from the show, but he also writes some new ones. And you can just go through that in any order you want to. But yeah, in general, I've never been across the board games it's the sort of thing that they sort of come to you right at the end of the process and say is this okay and of the 50 things you're doing that day you kind of go i mean no but what do you want me to do people always say when you do apps as well there's not really that much money in um in apps for tv shows i think that the program itself that's the wellspring of the uh of the thing that you try and take care of the books i think are good but yeah board games is one of those things that I've never I'd like to develop my own board game yeah but it's not I'm sorry I played a sort of traitor's one at the weekend and I you know I'm not in a Scottish castle sitting around a round table in a very very high stakes battle for my future and it's just not as fun doing it around my table and there's no real way that you can create the only similarity was Claudia was there yeah it's the only one it yeah I think board games board games are tricky because they're different to television shows and they have to it's tough for the board game companies i will give them that you know they want to do stuff with rules but honestly people just want the question cards i think and then they can you can you can play it however you want so we've got some house of games question cards the small set that is better okay because you then you do your own way yeah don't don't worry about the the formats and all that kind of stuff just play with the cards i would say i would love you to do a board game will you do a board game you surely will at some point uh i don't know it's a good question there's a it'd be a bit of fun wouldn't it yeah good question put me on the spot though that's you know that's uh that's tricky for me yes okay that's very personal to me the board game thing yes i know it really is hard yeah i used to on twitter every reply used to this board game is terrible but for pointless yeah i don't get it so much for house of games but the pointless board game i think was very disappointing for many christmases it's good you're not one of those people who sort of puts it in their biography i do not do the board games i had to eventually did you well i had to i had to do a tweet just saying Guys, I have nothing to do with the board game.

22:42I'm so sorry. Sorry I ruined Christmas. Oh, here's an interesting one from Duncan Smith. Thank you, Duncan. My question is, why do film and TV extras not get credited? They've been many hours on set, do an important job, but yet the carpenter's assistant's cousin twice removed makes it to the credits. It doesn't seem fair. Right. Well, on something like film or television, first of all, I have to, Duncan, take a slight issue that the carpenter's assistant cousin, or as you put it, I realise you're exaggerating for comic effect, but those jobs are hugely important. Those people get there at four in the morning and they'll probably be last to leave at light.

23:18The sparks, the grips, setting stuff up. And those jobs are massively important and they will be there for the whole shoot. And sometimes this can be for a year. And they'll have been there for six months before the shoot. Yeah, they have not turned up one day and been an extra in a street scene. Not to denigrate the work of those people, But if you've credited all of those people, you already look now on the credits for some, you know, a lot of kind of superhero franchise films or films with a lot of CGI in. And there are genuinely about, I don't know, six or seven hundred sort of animated post-production people.

23:51And their names are tiny, tiny, tiny. And they'll have been put in sort of run on paragraphs, basically, really at the back end of the credits. and they will have spent, I mean, months on it and they will have worked brutal hours under, you know, sort of crunch culture where there aren't really enough VFX houses now to do the work that is required of most of these things and people work kind of exhausting hours. So you can't, I don't think, put what's called background or supporting artists, different ways of describing the same things. You can't really necessarily credit all those people, not that they aren't valued.

24:24I mean, in those old films, things like Gandhi, they had something like 300 ,000 extras. Those would be long credits. On Lawrence of Arabia, I think the extras had a mutiny, like a genuine mutiny. You know, there can be situations in that where background or supporting artists feel they're being very badly treated. But there was a wonderful interview recently in The Guardian with a woman who's been an extra the most time. She holds a Guinness World Record for being an extra in the most things. And she had an absolutely sort of fascinating take on the sort of backgrounds eye view of the movie industry and who she was told never to make eye contact with, Tom Cruise.

24:56All the different things she's done over the years. and someone has tried to piece together all her little tiny momentary things. It was absolutely wonderful, so I recommend reading that. But in general, it's just not possible. The credits would go on for 15 years. It's a nice gig, that. But you're right, there's an awful lot of negotiation over credits, certainly in TV where credits do have to be a certain length. And not everyone can be credited on every episode. So if you're in wardrobe or makeup, you know, given you've got to fit them into 20 seconds sometimes and there's 100 people who are genuinely integral to the show.

25:26And as you say, by the way, the assistant to the carpenter is unbelievably integral to the show. The show doesn't work without all of that. One of the beauties about TV is there's behind the camera and the front of camera. And everyone does their job properly and everyone needs to do their job properly. But, yeah, you have to have big negotiations over who can get credited, who can be a producer. Oh, the crediting of writers is a huge. I mean, loads of people. I know so many people who've written a lot and spent, put a lot into shows on which they receive absolutely zero credit for. and that is a it's a very difficult thing to negotiate and it's a you go into being an extra knowing that that's the that's the gig and if you get a line you will be credited you'll be credited and paid an awful lot more money as well and paid so much more than you would otherwise just for saying a tiny thing one of the fun things to watch in TV is if there's a scene where there's only three people in it and one of them doesn't say anything throughout the whole scene you know it's because they don't want to pay that person they're literally there as ballast Always fun to watch those scenes and go, is that person an extra or are they going to say something?

26:30Oh, they didn't say anything at all. You think, oh, okay, you just got a day rate. Whereas if they said something, a couple of grand. Yeah, straight away. It's such a jump. Yeah. Lovely question, though. This is a question from Sam King, who says, I'd love to get your thoughts or insight into why the BBC has never thought to bring back Top of the Pops following its cancellation in 2006. Personally, I think it's crazy that a slot can't be found in either the BBC One or BBC Two show. for a weekly show that plays the most popular music of the time. Top of the Pops is how I discovered so much of the most important music of my life as a child teenager, and it feels a shame that the current generation don't have the same type of show.

27:04Even in this era of online content, there's surely a place for it on Terrestrial. You know what, it's a really good question, and I have a lot of sympathy with Sam, because I used to love Top of the Pops, and, you know, I still love the charts. I'll still look at the charts every week, and, you know, I'm a huge fan of current pop music. I think our generation is missing out on an awful lot of great music because we don't have Top of the Pops. I think the truth is the younger generation genuinely don't need Top of the Pops. Well, it was last time in 2006. So if you're 17, it's something that happened before you were born.

27:37So it's not a brand that has a great deal of purchase. And also, of course, you have a phone in your hand and you can watch the music you want whenever you want it. having said that one thing that as we talked a little bit about in other areas of this show things that are coming back are the idea curation the idea of playlists is huge and so think it's strangely you think oh you can just get there on your own device why do you ever need someone to put together a show for you weirdly people do including young people like things to be organized for them in this way because everyone likes to sit back a little bit and let something happen rather than having to do it all themselves and actually some of the trends more and more of the are going back in the direction of curation and the equivalent of playlists.