K-Pop & Billionaire Weddings

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1:22Hello and welcome to this edition of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. How are you, Marina? How's your week been? Well, it's involved a lot of sport. One piece I won't be discussing, which occurred on Sunday evening. But I went to Lourdes and I went to Wimbledon. Wow. Yes. So on that basis, it's been absolutely terrific. How about you? I went down to the set of the Thirsty Murder Club movie. That was very, very exciting. Terrific fun. And I've shared a few pictures, but we won't bang on about that because we've got an awful lot to talk about. We have got a lot to get through.

1:51We are going to talk about this big wedding in India. And we're going to talk particularly about the idea of musicians doing private gigs. And how much they get paid. How much you get paid. Spoiler. It's quite a lot. Yeah, for selling your magic. Yeah. For selling your magic. Also, what else are we going to talk about? We are going to talk about a little bit about K-pop because there's a reality show that's about to come out and we're going to talk about what K-pop is, the K-pop idol industry. And I've been doing a deep statistical dive. If anything is going to make people turn off, it is that.

2:22I've done some original research into something I think is quite interesting at the end of that. I suspect most people will disagree with me. Should we start with TV schedules and why our favourite shows are taking so long to come back now? Oh, my goodness. This is becoming an increasingly vocal complaint. Last week, we learned that Euphoria, which is the HBO show, Sam Levinson is the showrunner on that, that is going to be pushed back again. Now, that makes it at least three years between seasons. They say there's going to be a time jump. It's like, yeah, I should think so. They're going to be in their 30s by the end of this.

2:51Stranger Things, there's going to be at least three and more years between season four and season five. Yeah, and people keep saying, oh, the pandemic and the writers. We're not talking about the pandemic anymore. and the writer's strike is not enough to account for that. What's the reason behind that? Well, the reason, obviously certain shows have always had this issue. HBO used to have this issue quite a lot with Game of Thrones because it was very high production value. It's a huge thing to produce, many episodes. But now it seems like every single show at all, even things with simple one sets or effectively one set, you know, it's a police station or whatever it is, they've got an 18-month turnaround at minimum.

3:27The reason it's particularly pissing people off is because lots of these are American shows. We come from a culture where, you know, it's fine to have six half hours in a sitcom and that is normal. But you expect it to come back in timely fashion. You don't want two and a half years between the seasons. Because what's happening now is people are feeling like, oh, my God, I mean, I can't even remember it. I've got to rewatch the whole of that season. American TV used to do 35, 40 episodes of something a year. It sort of settled around 22, 26, somewhere around that mark in a season. You would start in September and you would finish in May.

3:59But since we've gone into the world of streaming, the gaps have been getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And there are various reasons for that. First of all, one of the reasons, this is a sort of side reason, and then I'm going to do a full rundown on how you get one of these prestige shows from Greenlight to when you are actually able to watch it. One thing is that a lot of these showrunners will have their other pet projects that they have been quite indulgently allowed to do. And I'm not saying that's what's happened at all with Sam Levinson, who is the showrunner of Euphoria, but he went off to do The Idol with the thing with The Weeknd and Lily Rose Dad.

4:30Did he? That would hold you up. Yeah, that really held a lot of things up. But Zendaya, Sidney Sweeney, people who are in Euphoria, their careers blow up. They become movie stars. So what's happening in the old days, you used to have TV stars would be a TV star. Now people like to be in TV and it's prestige, but they also like to go and make their movies. So you've got scheduling confidence. So in the old days, famously, if you signed up to do The American Office, you were signed up for seven seasons. Hugh Laurie signs up for House and he signs up to do it. he's committed if it continues to go it continues to go so if you want in your three months off to go and do a movie that's on you but it's got to fit in then and that is not the case with something like euphoria and the streamers those network contracts are not the same and millie bobby brown is she's got lots of other projects that she wants to do and you can't have stranger things without 11 so there's lots of waiting around writer's rooms can also go on a lot longer writer availability may also change but let's have a look at the theoretical timeline this is why it It takes so unbelievably long.

5:24Okay. Let's imagine we pitched a big hit show. I have talked to people whose job it is to get big prestige TV over the line. And thank you very much for the assistance. So we've pitched a show called Dogs on Mars. Dogs on Mars. Where a dog accidentally, two dogs accidentally get stranded on Mars and start a world. And then they develop consciousness. And we've solved it. Yeah, I love it. Season one drops. All the episodes drop at once. In the old days, they would drop once a week. And you'd be able to see by about week three, people love Dogs on Mars. They absolutely love it. Yes, they've gone crazy.

5:53And they've gone crazy for this. They're barking mad. Let's get started. Let's put stuff in place for season two. They're barking mad. Thanks. But now they drop it all and then they wait six to eight weeks and that's when they make their pickup decision. So then we're already two months after that first season of Dogs on Mars has dropped. Yeah. So then you get a green light and they say, well, we've had a look at this, but it's going to take a month to get the writers room starting all over again. You hope that they've got deals for season two. Let's say they have got it all organized. So that's three months now after it's dropped.

6:24So you haven't even started. And Dogs on Mars, the writer's room season two has not even begun. It begins. Meanwhile, the stars of Dogs on Mars have gone absolutely stellar. I mean, they're doing the chat shows and all sorts of things. Oh, yeah. And they're being offered all sorts of other things. They want to have a tequila brand and a makeup line. Yes, perfect. Tequila for dogs. Hold on. Tequila for dogs. This is a prestige show. It goes without saying it's a prestige show. It's a one hour prestige show, Dogs on Mars. Say you're getting an eight episode order. Yeah. And a lot of people are not happy.

6:51they think that's too little but it's an eight episode order so you will want at least a 20 week writer's room for that then you'll got to think well dogs on mars it's pretty vx heavy we're on mars you know might involve some location work and they're dogs yeah and they're dogs and you know these are show dogs yeah anyway so then you've got to get them all starting to prep it all so we're now six months after season one job and it has dropped and they're just trying to say right what are the locations what you're going to jupiter as well this time okay that's a whole other thing we've got to rebuild so then and wait sorry i'm just looking in the notes from the writer's room you say there are cats now yeah and we're like yeah yeah the enemies and the cats availability is complicated to cast blah blah so the shoot will only begin nine months after the first season of dogs on mars has done it it's 15 days per episode because this is a prestige show yes uh so that's 120 days and in dog days that's almost 90 yeah so i mean it's like you know they'll Talk about the Euphoricast being in their 30s.

7:46These guys are going to get really old during the actual shoot. They really are. And then you've got to add additional days. The company moves from Mars to Jupiter, whatever it is. So you're looking at a seven-month shoot. 16 months after Dogs on Mars Season 1 dropped, you're now having to start post-production, all the VFX. So this could take six or eight months very easily. You've then got to do this thing that they now, because everyone does worldwide day and date release now, which you'll notice. In the old days, it used to come out in America and we'd hope that Channel 4 boss it or something like that so that we'd be able to see it.

8:18And it didn't matter. Now everything has to be got ready for day and date in all the territories. So that means the dubbing, the language, the subtitles, and that takes a long time. That takes you already, if this process runs totally smoothly, to an 18-month thing between season one and season two job. This is a real nightmare. Viewer engagement is sort of falling off because people can't remember it. There's so much TV around, they don't have time to re-watch it. the season recaps at the start of some of these things are about 40 minutes while you try and remember everything and also by the way it's very much like an episode of grand designs in that you can say look with all the wood in the world this is going to take us 18 months but just like in grand designs when the the glass hasn't arrived from holland there will be one of the stars has hurt themselves or is in a theater thing and so suddenly you've got to knock it back six weeks there and then the dop is not is doing something another job but you have to have that dop and And so that's another month.

9:09You're adding months and months and months just for tiny little things for absolute key cast and crew. Locations suddenly become unavailable. There's always something that shifts you back. Which will massively shift it. And all of those moving parts, the knock-on is huge. Lost, the series Lost has recently dropped on Netflix in the US. You can watch it on Disney Plus in the UK. But there's been a lot of talk about it because when one of these series comes back on, everyone's like, oh, I remember that. And other people discover it. But Lost was a network show. Now, it came back year after year in the same slot and they made many, many, many episodes of it.

9:42Fans are annoyed and think, this is possible. You're insulting me. And they are dropping off. In terms of what can be done to change it, it's really hard to give a season two green light before season one has dropped because you just don't... You never know. You never know. And if it hasn't hit, it's so expensive. This stuff is, you know, prestige dogs on Mars. It's an expensive show. But also, from personal experience, you do not want to be doing a second series of something where the first series hasn't worked. It is not fun for anybody. It's almost always unsavailable. Unless you come up with a really, really smart reinvention of it, no one is having fun doing that.

10:15Yeah, but also you're doing it all for eight episodes and that's just not enough for a lot of people. They're just thinking, we didn't used to have it like this and why do we have to have it now? So some people think that what you could do is try and go 12 to 16 episodes and then you divide them in half and you do have a sort of hiatus and then you can see how the first half does and maybe you can get the writer's room. You can say, okay, we want to order the scripts. we get the writers room going we may not proceed that's less expensive but more but it's still expensive it's still expensive but more episodes put over the season obviously amortises the spending over the season and it really helps you hear so many more complaints about this people are not really that willing to stand for it or they just fall away as viewers of the show just think I'm giving up I'm not honestly waiting three years between seasons yeah and also by the way something else comes up there's constant churn yes and also I mean if you're actually selling you know licensing things it's going to help if we have more episodes of lots of these shows.

11:08But something like Lost coming on, which is a big moment this month, and lots of people will discover that series for the first time, and people will think, why can't we have more like this? Why can't we have more? And it appear in a timely fashion. And I think that that's going to become a bigger and bigger deal. But I think that there will be a tighter schedule. Otherwise, it's such an investment to watch fans fall away. And also, I mean, season four of Stranger Things, some of the episodes were so long. They're no longer an hour. They're like an hour and 40 minutes or whatever they are. This is not a shade on the Duffer Brothers at all because people love the show.

11:40But some creators, some showrunners have been indulged in all sorts of different things. And I think you're going to see a return to something more regimented with delivery dates that have to happen. Well, that's another reason behind it, I think, because there are now far more customers. In the olden days when you were just working for the networks, there weren't very many other places you can go. So you sort of fit in. And if the networks need 22 episodes a year, you're like, do you know what? That's my job. And I'm going to do it. And the fans want 22, so that's what I'll do. Now, Netflix, Amazon, they need to give you something to entice you from the networks.

12:13And what they gave people was freedom. And what they gave people was if you do this, you can do another show. It's gone now, by the way, all of that. They're far more sort of going back to what the networks were doing. But that was the way that they got showrunners. And showrunners are creative people. And, of course, they want to spend a bit more time doing stuff. and of course they want to indulge another passion. And so they've been allowed to let things slide. And what used to be sort of a factory, and even the most creative people understood they worked in a factory and were happy to work in a factory.

12:40They haven't had to for the last 10 years. It's become an artist studio. And it's going to have to return to more of a factory setting. Season three of Dogs on Mars is set in a factory. With Dogs on Mars, we would find a way that we would have episodes every year. I wouldn't allow it. I wouldn't allow 18 months. Well, I was about to say, your schedule. I write a book a year because, and I write a book a year. What's everyone else doing, Richard? What's everyone else doing? Well, lots of people do. Lee Child does a book a year, and that's what I like to do because, firstly, it's doable. No. Plenty of people do it.

13:08And secondly, an audience wants a book a year, and we aren't anything without an audience. It doesn't, we don't really exist without an audience. So an audience wants a book a year, so I'll write a book a year for as long as I can. Lee Child's done, he did like 24 years, and then his brother took over. but there's so much stuff now there are so many tv shows there are so many books and i do one a year and people still say can you can you not do more because i'm you know it's been a year since the last one you go no that i can't do a year is about i'm at capacity now i am absolutely at capacity but i do think if you work in a certain industry and you understand what the industry is then it's important to put stuff there's always reasons why people can't do it but if you can do it i think it's a really great i agree to do in some ways this is this story of what's happened in um television or what i think what i think will happen is sort of like what happens at the end of the 70s in hollywood where you have this decade where these creators are given huge amounts of money and sometimes they make amazing films and then sometimes they nearly collapse studios and sometimes they do collapse studios and then suddenly the people who win at the end of that are people like george lucas steven spielberg who deliver who don't cause chaos and who do what they say they're going to do and yes of course there are some delays built into that but nothing unreasonable and they actually become you know they are bankable for that reason and by the way make amazing films that's the key yeah i mean that i'm not saying that these people aren't making amazing television shows it's just taking too long and yeah and as we say that kind of contraction in the market it's like you're going to actually have to conform more to schedules that we want rather than you just being able to go and do anything with all our money yeah and netflix as well because i suspect that you know they are now far more in the market for precinct shows that run and run and run and run those older contracts with that again actors would go yeah i'll come to netflix because you'll pay me for a you know one-off series and i don't have to sign these ridiculous contracts i used to sign at the networks i suspect they may have to start signing some of the ridiculous contracts yeah they used to sign at networks and um it's uh yeah it means everything the shows are going to be scheduled week after week there's an ad tier yeah as we say you disrupted an entire market and now you one making yourself look very like that previous market.

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17:24Welcome back everybody What is up next please Richard? K-pop, K is for Korea I don't know why they don't call it soul music but it's called K-pop The BBC have commissioned a reality show called Made in Korea The K-pop Experience from a very experienced team who did X-Faction, all sorts of things, Nigel Hall, and lots of other great producers. So I suspect it'll be great, but it essentially follows the process of how a K-pop band is formed, which in and of itself is fascinating. The world of K-pop has absolutely transformed the world of music and culture. I mean, it's huge. BTS and all these groups are absolutely massive.

18:02We should say that in this show, they're going to take five UK boys and transplant them to Seoul. And transplant them to soul. To go through the process. Yeah, the idol process, which is, we think we understand how to put a boy band together. And, you know, you take that together from an advert in the stage. And, you know, they do a couple of dancing auditions and they can all sing together and off you go. The K-pop thing is that on just, it is almost impossible to overestimate how many steroids that process would be on to get the K-pop process. They get hundreds of thousands of applicants. We should say they're big management companies.

18:38who you audition for them. And it's almost like if you get in, then you're going to military school. It really is almost like military school. And there's SM Entertainment, which is the one that the BBC are doing this show, the JYP as well. You come and live with these people. You are put through rigorous training, singing training, dancing training. But sometimes for two years, three years, they can spend millions and millions turning you into what they want you to be. You sign a contract. And if you leave during the contract, you have to pay back any money that's been spent on not just your board and lodging while you're in the process, but also whatever they deem the value of your training to be.

19:15And those contracts, by the way, can be 10 years. You sign away an awful lot. They are in charge of your diet. They're in charge of your look, of your image. They're in charge of your social media output. These are all things that are very, very carefully controlled. That said, some of these kids end up in massive multi-million pound bands and make a fortune. What's wrong with indentured poppitude? What is wrong with indentured poppitude? You're quite right. But it's an extraordinary system. So this reality show will be a very, very interesting thing to watch, I think, because it goes slightly beyond what we imagine.

19:48It's like the army, but for pop music. I mean, Nigel Hall, who's one of the producers, was very instrumental behind the scenes with One Direction via the X Factor. It's billed as they're going to go there and experience the culture. I wonder how much of it you'll be able to see because it is totally brutal. Some people, as they say, they never, these ones will because they're going to be chosen and very carefully, but they call it your, you don't debut. So if you don't, you could never be launched onto the K-pop scene at all, having gone through all of this. And then you have to, you have to graduate essentially.

20:19Yeah. But it's interesting. They said, which is SM Entertainment, one of the big agencies, which is the one doing this particular one said, this collaboration signifies our first footprint in Europe. our expansion blueprint will continue to expand you know expand across North America but you can see why they want to do it because they want to bring people along who haven't necessarily been brought along in these processes they need to give you the behind the music because otherwise it can seem like obviously not for lots of young people and not for children who feel like instinctively part of this world and understand it but in order to get other people along who are going to buy the singles or you know download you millions and millions and millions of times you've got to have the story behind it all it's like the next generation of those type of programs.

21:01We see, you know, that go back to Pop Idol and The X Factor and all those things miles away. Yeah, it's like Drive to Survive but for Pop Idol. And as you say, yeah, it's not an elimination show. It's five people. So it's sort of like an ob-doc observational documentary about this process. Obviously, they're going to have to leave a lot of things out, I think, because it is a brutal process. The personal freedoms that you have to give up, I think, is not something that's going to... It remains a BBC show. So it's going to... Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how that works on a compliance front anyway but it's a fascinating world it's a fascinating culture and quite apart from this thing of the the almost military regime and the drills is the way that they connect with fans and that's a very particular thing in k-pop is you have to be available to your fans it's a sort of parasocial relationship between the bands and the fans there's an awful lot of philanthropy in the world of k-pop there are an awful lot of you know mental health programs and charities that are set up there's a huge amount of social media output so it's a whole world i mean it all comes from the fact that career itself is not big enough to make billions and billions in because as a country and so it's this expansion across the world and social media knows no barriers and there's no boundaries so they're incredibly targeted and incredibly forensic about the way they use social media all of the bands have quite a lot of members and here's the fun thing if you're take that and you lose a couple of members that's tricky you know if you're BTS you lose a member 17 you've got seven other of them BTS by the way who are the hugest hugest of the K-pop bands and you know Phil Wembley are huge in America four number one albums in America they are all apart from one of them who's just finished they're all on compulsory national service at the moment national military service so they've had to give up for a couple of years so they'll be back in the middle of 2025 because in Korea you have to do military service and that sort of gives you a clue I suppose to how this system continues because if you're going to be doing that for a couple of years anyway you might as well be doing it in the service of dancing and singing and making yourself a millionaire I sort of get it but you know given that I think famously in the UK we don't have national service so close it's been mentioned you know what's so close yeah if only you guys had believed and we had Rishi in we'd have national service now and imagine what it would have done to our music industry in five years time so I think it's going to be a fascinating look behind the scenes i think people are in the situation especially if you've got kids where you understand what k-pop is and the music is great by the way if you like a bit of hip-hop a bit of dance you know it's good stuff but it will show you quite what this system i think it's interesting if you have kids like so many of them look over to seoul as a huge primary influence and just don't see america in the same way that you or i did when we were growing up which was without any question the center of the cultural universe and i'm really hoping to go to soul i so want to go because at the same time what we know about it and much of the culture that's come out of it is really dystopian and you look at things like i don't know parasite or squid game it tells stories about the you know a very turbo capitalist society and yet it feels for many young people like a place of possibility which i think is quite interesting it's a real contradiction they had a fantastic exhibition at the vna um i think a couple of years ago called halyu which means the korean wave and something i hadn't realized at that time was just how many um of their K-dramas come from what are called webtoons.

24:21People make these really basic kind of lo-fi stories. You can just look at it on your phone and so much of it is allied to the technology in which they are sort of world leaders. And then what you want is your webtoon to get bought up and then to get made into a K-drama itself. But it just feels like a younger place where more can happen for a young person. In some ways, you know, when you look at, I don't know, central London where no one young can afford to live anymore, where young people and creative minds are pushed out to deep outskirts of the city. It doesn't feel like that. Yes, at the same time, clearly it's a contradiction because it is nonetheless still a very patriarchal society and there are all these kind of old-fashioned things.

25:01There was an amazing photo that I saw in that exhibition where kind of gleaming tower boxes are just starting to be put up. But in the foreground of the picture is a guy ploughing the earth with an oxen with a wooden yoke across its back. And then in the background, these things are being put up. That white heat of modernization really accelerates a culture, doesn't it? And it really accelerates pride in a country. And it makes you want to show the world what you've got. I do think that's fascinating, that idea. And I've seen that over and over again. We've seen that younger people are not interested in America and in American culture or in going to America.

25:35It's impossible to overestimate what America was to us in our sort of teen years. It was like an impossible dream. and now it is absolutely we've been I often think there's not a huge amount of differences between the generations I think that is a huge one I agree in that young generations have turned away from love of America and towards love of South Korea and Japan culturally seems to be a huge thing can I go on a sidebar very very briefly on this because when I was thinking about these bands and the success of BTS and Stray Kids and Blackpink and these huge bands I was talking to my niece who went to see Stray Kids at the weekend in Hyde Park which apparently was absolute bedlam and I'm old enough I keep calling them the Stray Cats because I remember the Stray Cats the rockabilly band from the 80s who you only now see on Top of the Pops 2 on BBC 4 so anyway went to see Stray Kids and I said what's taught me through the appeal of K-pop and we had a long chat about all the things we talked about about this social media thing and how good you know how you know they're very good at individualising the people within a collective and how you Did they have the light sticks?

26:32I always find those amazing They had all the yeah like everything you could have That you connect with the people on stage but you feel the connection in a physical sense with these light sticks. And amazing light shows, amazing videos, the whole thing, a real piece of work. But one of the things she said was, oh, I like it because there aren't any bands anywhere else. And I was like, do you know what? Yeah, of course there aren't any bands anymore. So I've done a little deep dive. There's a thing in the papers last week about there's no British acts have had a number one this year. And that's a slight red herring because they had the previous years and Beyonce and Sabrina Carpenter have really dominated.

27:04But what has happened that is utterly extraordinary in the charts is the complete disappearance of bands. And so soloists and duos and collaborations of soloists, Dave and Central Sea, all this sort of thing, are so dominant. I'll tell you how dominant they are. We've had half a decade, roughly, so far. The first half of the 2020s. So I looked at the first half of the 1980s. And in the first half of the 1980s, there were 146 weeks when bands were number one. 146 weeks. You had Dexies, you've got UB40, KC and the Sunshine Band, Duran Duran, culture club pretenders spandau ballet adam and the outs loads and loads and loads 146 the first half of the 90s there were 141 weeks when bands were number one new kids on the block wet wet erasure take that loads and loads so we've got 146 141 in the first five years of this decade so number one's by bands so it's not solo artists it's not collaborations to solo artists not duos i've left duos out as well so it's just bands as we would recognize them three weeks no we've had three number one weeks one of which was the Radio 1 Live Lounge All Stars most of whom were soloists anyway one of which was The Beatles when they had the lovely comeback single and one of which was Little Mix and that's the only kind of official band who've had a single week at number one in this entire decade isn't that crazy is it sort of a hyper individualisation of things nowadays and you see it in comedy as well, we talked before about why you don't really see very many sketch shows and stand Roundup is such a sort of magnetic thing, sort of the individual gladiator, as it were.

28:42I think 100%. I think also, you know, there are various cultural things in that, you know, if you come from the London grime scene, then it's very individualized. So people will collaborate an awful lot, but you wouldn't collaborate necessarily in a band. So there's lots of little reasons. But essentially, if you look at all of those names and the bands who are around and, you know, everyone was in a band, no one is in a band anymore apart from all these Korean bands. Even this week's top 40, there is not a single band formed in this century in the top 40 of the singles charts or the album charts this week.