Spotlight on Manchester

19:44All of those things we have to keep doing because the more that we can do that, we can earn customers' trust, we earn employees' trust, we earn a seat at that table. And I think that is really important.

19:56Will Bain:The other push, I suppose, it continues, Shelley, and then Russ, when it comes to companies as well, is about sort of firming up alternative pipelines, trade routes, trade partners, isn't it? I was listening to George Osborne and Ed Balls' podcast last night, obviously former Chancellor, former Shadow Chancellor, talking about exactly this because they were rounding up tariffs this week and George Osborne saying on there, Shelley, that now would be the time if you were in the government to go back to the European Union again and start talking about closer alignment and all those kind of things that we've talked about a lot of times on the programme as well.

20:31I think that's right. The US is the UK's single largest trading partner by country. But as a bloc, the EU is almost twice as large. And we've also seen some rebalancing of trade towards India, China and those types of countries as well. So there's definitely, you know, I think the government and probably businesses are looking at those alternative trading partners. The issue is that obviously there are a number of UK firms that have US linked supply chains. So they're not sort of directly importing final products and services into the US, but they do have US linked supply chains. within this global economy.

21:02And obviously they will also face higher costs if the US suppliers pass on their own import charges. So I don't think it's quite as simple as sort of diverting trade.

21:10Will Bain:Ross, what have some of those big companies, UK-listed companies, been saying about this and that? This week particularly, not so much because we've been going through sort of full-year results season. There's been more been talking about what they've seen for last year. And again, most companies I think at the moment feel they have enough of a handle on or enough preparation in place. But in the long run, and I did use the word yet very carefully when it came to corporate profits and inflation. We still do have protectionism on the rise, which we didn't have before, which to go back to your point on supply chains, could drive deglobalisation.

21:40And on the face of it, they both feel like they mean higher costs, higher prices, more inflation over time. It just hasn't come through yet.

21:48Will Bain:Yeah, that's going to be the thing to watch, isn't it, going forward as well there as well. One of the questions we were going to ask this morning, obviously seems perhaps slightly strange against the backdrop of what's just happened to the government in that by-election, But was this question that our economics editor, Faisal Islam, had been probing in an interview with the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, earlier on the week about whether, I guess, sort of the tide was turning a little bit for the UK economy. She was visiting Octopus Energy as the government announced a 7 % cut to the energy price cap from April.

22:18What I was able to do in the budget last year was take money off people's energy bills, freeze prescription charges and freeze train fares as well. All of that puts more money in people's pockets. So people have got more money to spend on the things they want to do, not just the essentials.

22:35Will Bain:And that, Shelley, kind of followed up with sort of, I guess, those better retail sales numbers from the ONS from the back end of last week. And also as well on this time last week as well, better borrowing figures. So the overall kind of borrowing from the government as well. Was there signs that there were sort of, you picked the cliche, green shoots turning corners, all that kind of stuff? No, I was trying to think yesterday about a single sentence to sum up the UK economy. And I don't think it was that simple. But I think it's sort of the UK economy is definitely, I think, I'm showing subdued momentum is probably where I ended up.

23:10And, you know, I think inflation is sort of reined in. As you said, the consumer spending figures are slightly better than expected. Global uncertainty, the sort of tariffs are maybe not having the impact that some people expected. There was some good news with also the budget surface, but I don't think it was quite as good as maybe people were saying. So a lot of that was from self-assessment and also capital gains receipts from investors disposing of assets ahead of the 2020, also October 24 increase in capital gains tax. So I think that's a one off bump. So I wouldn't wouldn't read too much into that.

23:39Obviously, you know, Rachel Reid is hoping that, you know, some of the investment plans, some of the infrastructure investments and planning reforms, some of those benefits are expected to come through from 2027. So you might sort of see growth as a result of that. But in the meantime, we are seeing an increase in unemployment and economic inactivity, particularly among young people. I know whenever I'm on your show, I always talk about that. But I think there's real concern around some of these sort of labour market issues, particularly around sort of younger people being unemployed or economic inactivity.

24:05And obviously you have got these sort of ongoing geopolitical issues. So I think there's, you know, subdued momentum is probably where I ended up.

24:12Will Bain:Yeah, we were talking about the unemployment figures this time last week, but this week we've had from the ONS as well, haven't we, data about what they call NEATs, people not in education, training, etc. as well. What did you take away from that? Yeah, and I just, you know, I find that personally really worrying. So if you look at, so you split needs into sort of unemployment and then economic inactivity and unemployment, I think the unemployment rates, I think it's about five times. I think actually, if you look across the country, I think the unemployment rate is about 5%. Among these young people, it's around 15%.

24:44And that's, I think, partly down to the national insurance increases, making it sort of more expensive to hire. But also, I know you'll be talking about this later, AI, for example, reducing the number of entry level jobs available. and the government's looking at sort of policies to turn that around. Economic inactivity is really hard. I think, you know, the levels in the UK since COVID, they just haven't returned to the pre-COVID levels and they have in other countries. And once people sort of don't find themselves in the workforce at this young age, it can lead to mental health problems, it leads to poor health outcomes, but also higher welfare bills, lower tax increases, and it's really hard to reverse.

25:18So once people become economically inactivity at this young age, it's really, really hard then to sort of get them back into employment. And I think it just shows some of the sort of wider sort of structural problems we have within the labour market in the UK. So that worries me more.

25:32Will Bain:Jo, what are you seeing? OK, I think it's really, really interesting. And again, you know, maybe the theme of this morning is about divergent and also about fragmented. I love your phrase around subdued momentum, because I actually think that is quite an interesting point. Because if I look at our data, our latest UK customer satisfaction index, that's over 60 ,000 customers responding across a whole range of 12 different industry sectors. We've started to see a positive movement in terms of customer satisfaction across all industry sectors. Now, the reason why that is important is in the longer term, there is a lag.

26:12But in the longer term, higher levels of customer satisfaction generally drive higher levels of economic activity and financial return. We can definitely see that link. So I think there are some reasons to be optimistic. And we've obviously touched on the points about lower inflation, talked about the fact that interest rates hopefully will be following that down. But of course, you know, there are some real issues. I talk to my members about this all the time, about managing cost base, about ensuring that we are really focused and laser sharp focused on our customers. And I do agree as well with the comment about getting, you know, needs back into employment, because that is critical for our future growth.

26:53So it's not just about what's happening today. It's about us being able to build that momentum and to be able to keep that focus on driving the UK going forward. And just one other thing I would say is, you know, all my data shows that where organizations have above average customer satisfaction and really focus on that for the longer term, they definitely see better financial returns, whether that's in profitability or indeed productivity. And we will talk about AI and the role that AI is doing in terms of driving some of that productivity, but also some of the things that we need to ensure that we keep our customers with us and don't alienate them as we go through.

27:33Yeah, I think, again, with my sort of financial markets hat on, I know that Rachel Reeves took a lot of brickbats from her own party about it being a budget for the bond market rather than for the party or for the people. But if that was the case, then at least she'll be pleased to see that government borrowing, that that sort of 10-year gilt, the amount of money the market's charged the government to borrow, that yield has come down. A year ago, we were talking about it being up near 5 % and looking pretty bad. Now it's at 4.3%. So in that respect, she'll feel she's done that part of the coin.

27:59She's helping to keep the interest bill down, which is a huge part of the overall government spending bill, and the pound's gone up a little bit. So the financial markets are looking on going, actually, not quite as bad as we thought it could have been. Thank you very much. Subdued momentum. Well, the truth is rarely pure and never simple, as Oscar Wilde once said. But I think at least in that respect, Rachel Reeves will take some satisfaction. She seems to have the financial markets on. So it's one less thing for her to worry about.

28:21Will Bain:Going to be a phrase I'm going to steal from now on as well. Shelley, thanks so much for your time this morning. Always really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Shelley and Horne, economic advisor there with us. this morning as part of our Friday economics panel. Plenty more from Russ and Joe in the second half of the program, whereas the guys say we're going to talk a bit of AI. We're going to talk about that big blockbuster deal in Hollywood. Looks like Paramount set to claim. Warner Brothers Discovering will have more on the Green Party winning the Gorton and Denton buy.

28:51Got a business problem? There's a TED Talk for that. Stay updated on everything business on TED Business, a podcast hosted by Columbia Business School professor Modupe Akinola. Every week, she'll introduce you to leaders with unique insights on work, answering questions like, how do four-day work weeks work? Do will a machine ever take my job? Get some surprising answers on TED Business wherever you listen to podcasts.

29:19Will Bain:Wake Up To Money with Will Bain. Morning. Welcome back to Wake Up To Money on Friday, the 27th of February, where our panel this morning are Joe Corson, the chief exec of the Institute of Customer Service. and the Investment Director at AJ Bell, Russ Mould, here in the studio with us this morning as well. Let's return then to that news we broke right at the top of the programme. The Green Party has won its fifth seat. They won the Gorton and Denton by-election in Greater Manchester. Our political reporter, Jack Fenwick, was at the count. The first Green Party MP in the north of England, the first time that the Greens have won a parliamentary by-election.

29:55And for me, the most astonishing thing about that result is that despite the fact we've been saying for much of the night that it was too close to call, it wasn't really close at all. She won by more than 4 ,000 votes. She was more than 5 ,000 votes ahead of the Labour candidate. This is a resounding victory for the Green Party and not the sort of thing that even their campaigners were saying they were expecting in recent days. Now, as we've talked about, there are different parts to this constituency. The Greens mainly targeted the part of the constituency where there is a large Muslim population, where there are lots of students.

30:30But interestingly enough, one Green Party source said to me yesterday that they'd gone into this campaign thinking that there would be very few people who were swing voters between reform and the Greens. But they said actually they'd been surprised at how many of potential reform voters were being won over by the Green Party's message on the cost of living.

30:54Will Bain:And just to put some numbers to what Jack was saying at the start there when he was saying it wasn't really that close Hannah Spencer who's won the seat for the Green Party got 14 ,980 votes Matthew Goodwin then in second for Reform UK 10 ,500 votes and Angelique Stogia for the Labour Party just over 9 ,000 there Professor Tim Bale joins us now Tim, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London Tim, morning, thanks for being with us Good morning Is it splintering on the left in the same way that we've seen splintering on the right of politics now then is that the kind of headline takeaway i think that is a fair assessment clearly labor since 2024 has bled a lot of votes to its left there's been a lot of media concentration on uh the number of votes it's lost to reform but actually the more serious problem i think for labor is exactly what happened last night and they're gonna have to think really hard about what to do about that i know that this is difficult in the kind of sort of what are we only an hour or so after the result but in terms of we heard jack fenwick their talk you know sort of reference about how ethnic diverse this constituency is so how much of it i suppose was a sort of gaza backlash how much of it do you think we can put down to just a general malaise with how the government is governing well i think as so often both factors actually have played a part in this i mean labor did lose a lot of the muslim community in 2024 due to gaza i think that effect is continuing.

32:18But it is also true, I think, that many people think that Labour coming in 2024 haven't changed as much as they promised that they might do. The cost of living is still a big issue, as you say. Inflation has come down clearly, but prices are still rising. A lot of people are feeling very squeezed. They don't feel at the moment anyway, that Labour is really on their side.

32:41Will Bain:And at what point does it sort of become self-fulfilling as well that um that the more green mps you've got the more it looks like that that isn't you know it's not a vote into the wind that you are going to get what you wanted i suppose around the country well i think that is possible but i would have to say looking back at by elections past over the last you know 30 40 years it is often the case that in midterm and i guess we can say we're in midterm at the moment that an unpopular government does lose a seat and yet by the time of the next general election. Even if they don't actually make it back into government, the party that lost the by-election actually regains it next time around.

33:21So we'll see. But clearly, you know, the Greens have got the wind in their sails. They've got a leader who is a fantastic communicator, whatever you think of his policies. And at the moment, Labour are, in the view of many Labour people, saddled with a prime minister who, you know, can't really connect with the public in the way that perhaps a prime minister needs to.

33:44Will Bain:Give us your assessment, Tim, then of the one party that we've not talked about yet out of all of these, because there was a lot of talk about, certainly early on when this by-election was called, about what reform might be able to do, but your assessment of their night? Well, obviously it will be a disappointment for them. I mean, I think what they must have been hoping was that the split vote between Labour and the Greens would have actually allowed them to come through the middle. It doesn't seem as if that has happened, clearly. It would have been quite a difficult constituency for them. I think very often we think that automatically people in the white working class will vote for reform.

34:22That isn't true. Obviously, people are concerned about migration, but they also, as you've already pointed out, are very concerned about the cost of living. And I think those concerns trumped any other kind of more sociocultural concerns, if you like. So it's a disappointing night for them, just as carefully in Wales is a disappointing night for them. So there's a lot of hype about reform in the media and, of course, in the polls as well. But at the moment, it doesn't seem as if they're able to actually deliver it on the ground. But we will see. They've got the local elections coming up in May.

34:52It's perfectly possible that they'll be able to turn in a better performance then.

34:56Will Bain:Well, take us to those now as well. Presumably they are now even more, not that they ever weren't, but even more in focus for the government as a result of what's happened overnight. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Labour, I think, must be worried about what might happen in London, for example, where the Greens are gaining in popularity there. I think reform still have a hope, certainly in other places, of gaining councils as well as councillors. I mean, I think there's one other point that we should make, which is the Conservatives probably suffered their worst by-election performance ever. I think they got 1.9%.

35:35They're going to get a shellacking as well in May. So we're going to find the leaders of both the two main parties under extreme pressure at that point.

35:43Will Bain:Tim, thanks so much for your time this morning. Tim Bale there, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London. Well, let's turn to, if that was the kind of big political, big domestic story overnight, then the big business one was certainly that just after sort of 11 o 'clock our time that Netflix stepped aside in its bidding to try and buy Warner Brothers Discovery. It paves the way for Paramount Skydance to take over. The maker of Harry Potter and the Batman franchise is$110 billion its deal is worth. Though there still could be challenges, of course, from regulators, not just in the US, but around the world too, to that bid.

36:22Will Bain:Guy Petty back with us on Wake Up to Money. Guy, former executive vice president at Paramount. Guy, evening to you, morning from us. Good morning. Did you see that twist coming? I thought, I wasn't expecting it to happen so quickly. That happened very, very quickly. Russ, come in on the shareholder side, on the Netflix side of it. Why the pressure? Well, I think that for the shareholders on Netflix, they're about to acquire essentially the lower margin businesses of Warner Brothers, which would have kind of dragged down their margins overall. Without that, we've watched the Netflix stock pop back up because Netflix is doing great without a Warner Brothers ownership.

37:16And they're still doing great. So this can go back to probably just the normal course of business. And they're doing very well. Russ in the studio come in. I think that's a really good point. If you look at, I mean, Netflix's stock had gone down by about a quarter during this big battle. So shareholders were subtly sending the message to Ted Saranis and Greg Peters. We're not totally happy about this. You're taking on debt, which increases risk. And you're doing an acquisition. An acquisitive growth is less highly valued by investors than organic growth. So they were saying, be very careful, don't get involved in an ego battle here and pay for an asset, overpay for an asset, just what you want it.

37:51So I've got to give credit to the two executives for walking away. And as Guy was saying, the share price of Netflix went up after that announcement. So investors have again given a very clear message as to what they thought.

38:00Will Bain:And Netflix in its statement, Ted Sarandos, who Russ just mentioned, saying, we believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Brothers' iconic brands. But this transaction was always a nice to have at the right price, but not a must have at any price. Guy, does that suggest that Paramount was hungrier for it, needed it more, or is need too strong a word? I think need too is probably the proper word. It's Netflix. Well, Netflix, it would have been great to have because it would have secured their long-term leadership in the streaming business. And on a global basis, which they already are the leader now.

38:37But for Paramount's guidance, they just need more scale. their peers are much bigger companies so i think this actually will help you know i think maybe the industry in in total i know we we lose a studio but we get a stronger entity over the long term and that can go toe-to-toe essentially with all the other larger players like netflix like amazon

39:04Will Bain:like disney can it i mean before we come to the regulatory challenges but can it i mean one of the things Ted Sarandos was saying to us here at the BBC at the start of the week was he was worried about the amount of debt, you know, when you get to the scale of the bid that Paramount's doing. Has it weakened itself so much that it can't actually do much with what it buys, that it's lost a lot of that financial muscle? Yeah, listen, they've lost some flexibility. There's no question there. They're going to have to figure out how to pay that debt down. So they may be going maybe a little bit sideways over the the next couple of years because they are weighed down.

39:39But I think over the long term, what I think everyone's looking for is we want a strong entertainment industry and we want strong players. And I think that's kind of the long term view I think the Ellison family has.

39:52Will Bain:Still significant challenges ahead, aren't there, Guy, though, now with regulators, not just at home, but here in the UK and Europe, all around the world? Absolutely. There are going to be issues. I mean, you're talking about a merger of essentially like companies. So there may be some areas just like when Disney acquired 20th Century Fox a number of years ago. There were some overlapping areas that needed to be addressed. And there might be some of those areas that show up. And it will vary by country. And a lot of people kind of in the industry flag that particular deal as one where they say the regulators got it wrong, actually, that they didn't put in enough guardrails for some of those things, that things were allowed to kind of drift within that deal.

40:36Will Bain:Does that make this challenge even more significant? Yeah, possibly, but the precedent's been set. So I don't know if they can move that needle or move that criteria backwards. We'll have to see. I mean, the world has also moved forward. You know, the streaming platforms are, there's more of them out there. You know, most of them don't have the market power that Netflix has, that YouTube has, that Disney has. But there are a lot more streaming platforms such as the ad-supported like Tubi and Roku. For our listeners then, Tim, what do you think it's going to do to prices as well? Presumably if you have to spend this much to acquire this content, you're going to expect people to pay up for it.

41:22I think the prices will likely be stable for a little while, especially in bundling. We'll have to find out what Paramount wants to do with HBO. Are they going to bundle the two? Are they going to integrate with Paramount Plus? That's kind of the unknown at the moment.

41:43Will Bain:Guy, I always appreciate your insight. Thanks so much for your time. Guy Patti there, former executive vice president at Paramount. But, Jo, that's one of the questions from a customer perspective, isn't it, as well? Price, but it's an interesting area, isn't it? How much competition is designed and regulators are in there for us to get the best deal most of the time, us as users. But sometimes you sort of wonder, don't you, whether less competition is actually a little bit better for us in terms of prices, the number of streaming services we have to have, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, totally.

42:18And I think, you know, it is interesting. And price as well is a word I find quite fascinating because, again, going back to our research, what we see is value. Now, you know, value is a combination of a fair price, a good overall experience and something that I think adds value to me. And I think when we are short of cash, when we have competing demands, we will spend money, but we want to make sure that we're getting value from that. And therefore, competition is really important. And having a market where I've got choice also helps with that. So regulation has pros and cons. I think the most important thing is that there's one about protection, but there's also about the opportunity to open that up.

43:06But it isn't just about price. It's about, as I said, the experience, the value that I am getting. And that sense of not being ripped off and therefore having choice is really important. Ross? I'll tell you who I think has got value out of this. Warner Brothers Discovery shareholders. Don't forget, a year ago, their share price was$8. If this deal goes through, they're going to get paid$31 in cash a share. They're the winners. Not Netflix, not Paramount Skydance. Warner Brothers Discovery shareholders. They're the winners.

43:37Will Bain:and something we've not talked about a lot in the regulatory environment because obviously it doesn't affect us here in the UK quite as much. But one of the things that this deal may well face is that Paramount, owner of CBS, one of the big news channels in the United States, and Warner Brothers Discovery, the owner of CNN, and neither are the president's favourite TV channels. What they choose to do with them, how they choose to bundle them, how they choose to go forward is going to be a massive question. It's going to be a massive, massive job for management. There are going to be egos involved, there are going to be empires involved, then it's going to take an awful lot of time to get this to be a cogent business.

44:09And as John Gapper pointed out in the Financial Times, everybody that's bought Time Warner or Warner Brothers has regretted it. AOL Time Warner was a failure. ATT Time Warner was a failure. Warner Brothers Discovery was about to break itself up. So whoever's bought this thing, whether they bought it in haste or not, they have regretted it over time. So it's going to be a really interesting challenge for Paramount Skydance if they can break that trend and make this deal work.

44:33Will Bain:And the challenge for both those companies, Netflix and Paramount Skydance, going forward now as well is obviously being thrown down externally by AI as well. So, Joe, take us to your research because it's really interesting. Just give us the kind of headline of what you were looking at and why. OK, so I think we always look at research from three other lenses, from the consumer lens, from business lens and from the operators inside of business. So the people that are delivering on that experience. And for me, the key findings are that actually, despite some of the conversations that we're hearing a lot, you know, hype versus reality, to date, most of the advancement has been incremental rather than transformational.

45:13But I think what we're not seeing, what I want to see in the next stage is AI being deployed across the whole customer journey, not just the front end.

45:29It's a big question around trust and ethics. And interestingly enough, I tend to trust my own personal deployment of AI to attract GPT more than I'm trusting organisations approach to that. So we come back to the honest dialogue and to the governance of that. Where we are seeing AI deployed from a business point of view is really around using it to the three areas really well. Analytics to monitor performance to enable better decision making. This will grow. I think this is really important. This is about making sure I've got the right stock in the right place. Am I doing better fraud detection?

46:09Is product availability where I need it to be? Then you've got direct customer interaction. So it's just chatbots, and that's what we often talk about, and email. And then also applications, equipping customer service employees, the agent, to get better and faster at answering our questions. So I think we've gone through phase one, and we're going to be starting to develop into phase two. And that's where it starts to get really interesting, where we're deploying that across the whole customer journey. But like everything, and like much of the conversation we've had at the moment, it's quite complex, it's emerging, and it's going very fast.

46:44Will Bain:Talks about it a lot, Russ, haven't we, about automating tasks and things like that within companies, but the customer service side of it, not kind of as much. But that's where it's being used a lot. There's a story on the BBC website overnight about Burger King using AI headsets for their staff and a chatbot called Patty. Believe it or not, I kid you not, which helps staff answer questions about how do I prepare this dish and tells them when they need to restock certain things. But it's also being used to monitor staff performance and staff behaviour, how often they say please and thank you and how polite they are to the customers.

47:13So there's a bit of big brother about it, you could argue. If you were taking a negative, dystopian view, a lot of it is also very positive, as Joe was saying, in terms of making a business more efficient, helping the customer get a better service, making it easy for the staff to provide that service. So there are still those two sides to that argument.

47:28Will Bain:Joe, what's the key to get it right then? I think really good communication. So from the staff point of view, we have seen where you are taking your colleagues on that journey, explaining how it's going to enhance the experience. You know, that is really critical from a customer point of view. And this comes back to really understanding what the customer wants. And it's not about deploying AI. It's what's the problem we're trying to solve. And, you know, most customers are looking, as we said, for better value, for understanding me, for greater connection, for the delivery of a really good product.

48:03And therefore, for me, coming from that lens, coming from the customer lens on what is the problem I'm trying to solve. not trying to get into the solution before we know what the issue is.

48:14Will Bain:Yeah, make sure they make your burger right as well, I suppose, too. Well, absolutely. Six minutes to six here on Wake Up To Money, 85058, the text number, if you want to get in touch and let us know what you make about all of that and the shifts and what Joe and the team are seeing there as well as it mirror up with what you're seeing too. Interesting research, wasn't it? Now, this weekend, big party heading to Manchester. The Brit Awards heading there. I'm in a place where don't be shy. Just come beat the man. Where the hell is my husband? What is taking him so long? To find you. It's the night and we belong together.

48:56Will Bain:Olivia Dean, Harry Styles, Ross Alia, among those who are going to be at the Brit Awards ceremony outside of London for the first time in some time as well. Dr. Joe Twist is with us, Chief Executive of the UK Record Labels Association, the BPI, home to the Brit Awards. Jo, morning. Thanks for being with us. Good morning. Is it excitement or is it nervousness at this point? I think it's a mix of everything. I am so looking forward to it. And you can't walk around the city in Manchester without seeing a poster for the Brit Awards and everyone's buzzing about it. And all over the tram and all that kind of stuff as well, isn't it?

49:32Will Bain:The decision to take it to the co-op live obviously had a slightly stumbling start as a venue. Was there ever any nervousness about that? Because I'm guessing these things were a long time in the pipeline. I think these things can always happen. And yes, you know, there's always challenges when you've got a new venue. It's always challenges when you're moving to a different venue, whether it's new or not. But they've been absolutely brilliant partners, as has Manchester City Council. So we're really looking forward to being in a really incredibly world-class arena. And the construction is, you know, looking good.

50:08And we're really looking forward to having a really fantastic evening with a great audience.

50:13Will Bain:Yeah, what does it allow you to do that previous venues haven't? Because it is super modern, isn't it, in terms of the inside and what you can do with the inside of the space? Yeah, I think the acoustics in the space are incredibly good. And that's going to be very interesting to see how that works. But also, you know, with a move and a new venue, you always want to inject a sense of new creativity, new staging, you know, a different way to do the staging. So, you know, we'll wait and the anticipation going so that you can all tune in on Saturday night on ITV. Well, what can you tease us? Any tricks up the sleeve?

50:51There will be some special surprises. we have Jack Whitehall hosting once more and he's a consummate professional so he'll keep us on the right track but we've got nine amazing performers lined up I mean I think it's one of our strongest lineups so far Olivia Dean, Ray was announced yesterday Harry Styles and we've also got Huntrex who will be in the arena being played out and Alex Warren, Wolf Alice we've got such an amazing line up I'm particularly looking forward to Mark Ronson as well, who's receiving outstanding contribution this year.

51:29Will Bain:And you've got a reward for Ozzy Osbourne as well, is that right? I couldn't possibly say anything more. Sorry, I had read that and I didn't realise it was a rumour. I thought that I was a press release. But we will see if that's a surprise there as well. There are always great rumours. I guess that it helps, you know, you're rattling off those artists there, that the UK music scene seems to be in such a good place at the moment. It really is. and we've come off a fantastic 12 months for British music. It's really hard. It's very competitive now on the global stage. And we've seen, obviously, the likes of Olivia Dean and Lola Young, who each have five nominations for this year's Brit Awards, but also Sky Newman, Breaking Through, Sleep Token, Breaking Through, you know, Breaking Through globally, which is really important.

52:13We are still the second biggest global exporter of music in the world, and we deliver$8 billion to the economy. so you know it's been a fantastic 12 months and obviously the the awards are all about that reflection of the commercial success of the 12 months in music in the UK but also just reflecting that cultural moment and what popular culture brings to us both in economic terms and just being happy.

52:38Will Bain:Well enjoy it hope it all goes off smoothly from an organiser's perspective as well thanks so much for speaking to us. Dr Joe Twist there chief executive of the UK Records Labels Association, the BPI, home of the Brit Awards. Big thanks to Joe Corson and to Russ Mould here in the studio and to all of you for listening to Wake Up To Money. Wake Up To Money with Will Bain. A new era of Formula One is about to dawn. I think the biggest step the sport has ever seen. There are new rules, new cars and a brand new team. In Formula One it's just absolute brutal pure competition. And the next generation of star drivers are taking us along for the ride too.

53:18I'm gonna go like a madman. If you want to make it, first of all you have to believe that you have what it takes. The biggest shake-up of F1's rulebook has been years in the making. Somebody's gonna get it right and somebody's gonna get it wrong. I'm Rosamund Pike and this is F1 Back at Base. A new era. Listen on BBC Sounds.

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