America vs. the U.K.: Who Makes Better TV Shows?

This episode of The Town is presented by HBO Max. HBO Max presents the pit, nominated for 26 Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series. The staff of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, Juggle Personal Crisis, Workplace Politics, and High Emotions in this Emmy-winning drama series. Don't miss the series USA Today called The Absolute Best Show on TV. The pit is now streaming on HBO Max. It is Wednesday, August 26. I'm in Scotland at the Edinburgh TV Festival. That's the big international television business conference. Great opportunity to discuss a topic we don't talk enough about on The Town. Namely why the UK seems to consistently punch above its weight in the creation of hit TV shows and formats, particularly in the unscripted world. There's a reason for that it turns out, both culturally and from a business perspective, and I got a great taste of the United Kingdom market, and the hot issues there are in my panel this morning that I hosted. I had Patrick Holland. He's the head of Banja UK. That's now one of the world's largest production companies after it merged with all three media a couple months ago. And Patrick overseas now, everything from Black Mirror to Peaky Blinders, MasterChef, and Big Brother. I also had Jane Root. She's a veteran TV exec and producer, her company Neutopias, behind a lot of these celeb-driven docs like Pull to Pull with Will Smith, Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, World War II with Tom Hanks. I also had Demetri DeGonis. His company Raw is a top producer of documentaries for streamers like Netflix with the Tinder Swingler, Don't F With Cats. They do scripted stuff too. It was a great conversation. We got into the UK versus US question. How producers can own more of their shows, the YouTube of it all, and even Harry and Megan. Today it's the inside look at why TV is often better in the UK, live from Edinburgh. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town. Welcome to the panel. I want to get right into this because we were talking beforehand about the difference between UK and American television and production companies. And it struck me that there is an ecosystem in the UK that exists that for some reason leads to better formats and unscripted and interesting dramas. And I want your take on why that is. Why is the UK television better and why is the ecosystem here set up in such a way that it makes better programming? I don't know, I don't know that it's better, but I think the ecosystem is different. And because you've got these broadcasters where you've had specifically an unscripted and documentary, you've had those genres as part of mainstream schedules. So you've had documentaries, documentaries, series, unscripted series in the mainstream on the networks forever. There's been a production community that's grown up to service those. So you have in the UK in a way that you didn't have in the US, you've had people growing up coming into the industry as researchers, APs, sitting in edit suites, going on shoots, becoming producers, going on to direct, run shows, series producer becoming executives. And so you've got this kind of cohort that's grown up over the last 40-50 years, which have been steeped in the craft of unscripted television. And a certain kind of unscripted totally. And a certain kind of unscripted TV for it was to use it in America. There's documentaries and then there's trash or there's reality. Sorry, I may have said trash. And in the UK, there's a long history of nighttime documentaries that are in the middle and that is what is working on streamers right now. But I think there's also something about is the British audience, I think, has been trained almost like they're at school for 50 years by three of the five biggest networks, having a commitment to innovation in the core kind of rules of who they are, BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel Four. They have to innovate. And as a result, British audiences are completely unkeying to accept anything that feels like a copycat. They reject it like crazy. And they celebrate newness and difference. I think it's perhaps something to do with kind of eccentricity of the British persona or way of life or something. But British audiences leap into things that American audiences would find really hard. All three of us have been involved with shows, which initially people would be like, what is that? I was involved in the start of the British office. And nobody got it, but people slowly got into it. And it led to the phenomenon. You had the same with picky blinders. You can start, you can persuade people to be excited by innovation here. But there's a business aspect too. Well, that's one thing that I was going to just chip in with, which is that for me in 2003, the media act that came out in 2003 gave, if you were making a show for one of the PSBs, you retained your IP. And public service, public service broadcasters and has a mandate to serve the public interests as well as create entertainment. Not just public say there are some commercial broadcasters that have got public service licenses. So ITV, Channel Five, got public service licenses, Channel Four funds itself, but it is publicly owned. So it's all quite, you know, there's nothing simple. But they are public service broadcasters. Jane said they've got a mandate. They get a license from the government. But what also happened in 2003, terms of trade, gave producers the right to own their IP. So you own the IP, and it means that one of the shows that Banaget makes, and it's famous around the world, is MasterChef. MasterChef is now made in 70 different territories. It started off on the BBC. And it started off on the BBC. To Jane's point, it grew and sort of like developed. It wasn't a massive overnight smash, but it's grown into this, this, this huge IP monetization, machine undervalues the great creatives that are making it. But the, the point is that what happened with the Broadcasting Act is that producers like Demetri, like Jane, like all the producers in Banaget, suddenly they had skin in the game. And so that entrepreneurial creativity, which was already implicit within the UK, you know, the system at the time, was suddenly unleashed. And so we have got a cross scripted and unscripted, amazing great entrepreneurial creativity baked into our system. And I think that, sorry, Matt, I think there's a way of drawing those two threads together. So as Patrick says, the business of it means you're incentivized to innovate here. Because if you come up with something new, you can own a piece of it. And I think the, in terms of the audience, like one of the massive differences for me, going as a seller to the US is we had a very early on in our lives. We had a hit with a show called Locked Up Abroad. We went to the US and everyone was like, what's our version of Locked Up Abroad? Give us our version of Locked Up Abroad, or give us our version of Gold Rush or whatever it was. And whereas in the UK, no buyer would ever say that they'd say we've done that already. We don't want that. What else? How can you think of something different? And then just to reiterate, the government incentivizes creation here by giving you ownership of the shows that you create for public service broadcast. And that, if you ever wonder why the big reality formats seem to come from Europe and the UK, that is the reason. Because the innovation happens and because you as the producer can monetize around the world if you create a good show for this market. For those broadcasters, not for other broadcasters, internationally or streamers working. We'll get to that. Because it does, I think it does create an environment where if you have the right idea or the right format or you're willing to experiment, you come here. And that's, that's, I mean, one of the truisms on this show is that the way to get rich is ownership or backend. Yeah. And with the streamers, that's not the case. So how are the streamers impacting this market? Because it's really controversial right now. In the UK, the impact that the global streamers are having on this ecosystem that has given rise to the community that you guys have right now. I mean, one of the issues, there's all of the things that you painted as perfect, apart from money. Because if the broadcast of the PSB doesn't have enough money in terms of funding the original show, then you can't iterate, you can't grow, you can't monetize it. So at some point, someone needs to invest in a show that is, you know, is that means that it will get off the ground and it will be big enough and the audiences will come to it. And why should the government be, you know, subsidizing the creation of millionaires in the TV sector? And to be clear, they're not subsidizing it. There's a version of subsidy, though. What they're doing is creating a regulatory framework, which means, but they're not actually giving money. There's no public, there's no public money. But the public gives money to the broadcasts, which creates the environment that you can own what you create for that. Some of it, only to the BBC and the BBC isn't paying, isn't, you know, we're not getting any of that money. We're just getting ownership of the thing [BLANK_AUDIO] being made for that money. So it's, they're, they're for going passive subsidy. They're for going potential revenue, rather than direct. Yeah, the BBC, when they commission a show from, from a manager company or from any of us that, in the, based in the UK, that what they're doing is they pay a, a license for that show. They pay endless, so there's a tariff that we then make the show with. It's a scripted show. Then the BBC might put in, I don't think it's uncontroversial to say, you know, around a million pounds an hour. And then we would, the show that we then make something like SOS, Rogue Heroes, Steve Knight show, that that show costs an awful lot more than a million pounds an hour, that the deficit finance that is then put into that show means that the, the UK audience gets to see a show that was, is significantly better funded than it would have been, had their BBC not had that model. But they're giving you the seed. But we're giving the seed, we can then build it, we can then sell it around the world, and we can then offset the risk that we've taken by, by putting that investment into it. But there's not enough of those commissions from the public service process to keep us all going. And that's the controversy. And that's where they should be putting it. And that's where we come to the streamer question, which is where you started, right? So they're more than happy to step in where these commissions, you know, totally. And, and, and to own the whole thing, lock stock, and then to your earlier point, that only, you know, we don't then retain ownership of it. So I think there's been, there was this kind of almost like a gold rush with when the streamers first, and, and particularly kind of into an out of COVID, where suddenly there was loads of streamer money, there was this huge boom in UK production. And it was kind of, it was great for a short period of time, right? Because production budgets were higher. There's suddenly, when new entrants, new buyers entering the UK market that unleashed this kind of wave of productivity and talent. And, but obviously the problem is, you're then on a work for higher model. And if you're a producer or a production company, you make that show that year, the next year, you start at zero. You've got no rights retention, no, no passive income come in. And so you have to climb the same mountain every year. Unless you've got returning series. So it's a version of what happened in the US. Totally. The streamers came in and started buying out the top showrunners and saying, we'll give you a $200 million overall deal, create exclusively for us. Oh, yeah, we don't really pay back ends. It's all up front. Yeah. And the agents were more than happy to put their clients into these deals because they were getting paid now. Yeah. And yet we wake up as an industry 10 years after the fact. And it's a work for higher industry. No one has skin in the game. And then the business has been fundamentally changed forever. And then you have creators, producers, writers who look back on huge value that they have created and realized that upfront money for those overalls or whatever it was, or for the bigger production budgets, looks like cheap money. Well, yeah, you continue to do it. You make the tinnitus with there. We're running companies where we're all work for everybody. You know, you. Yeah, I get it. But like you your company in particular makes a lot of the top performing documentaries on Netflix. That's kind of each site and you and you don't own any piece of them. That is an endless source of pride and pain. So how do you change that? It would seem to me that there would be a market opportunity here for a streamer or someone else to come in and offer you that and take your talents down the street. I totally agree. And I think what's interesting, you think about the streamers were insurgents eight years ago, five years ago, even. Now they're the establishment. And so what does the next wave of insurgency look like? Because that's what always happens, right? It was cable networks launched. Then the streamers and so on. Right? So there'll be another wave. And I do think to your point about ownership and you show me the incentive. I'll show you the outcome. You can incentivize producers to work at the kind of scale that the Netflix, the Netflix is in the Disney's in the apples and the Amazon's allow you to but retain some ownership. You've just incentivized people in a completely different way. But they're not going to do it unless there's a competitor, right? No. I mean you can go to YouTube and own 100% of it. You can go to. But to be fair, Netflix is bringing you a pretty big audience of these types of programs. So someone told me that Tinder Swender would be watched by half a billion people, right? I don't know if that. I mean Netflix will know. There's no that you don't know is part of the problem, by the way. Well, there's a whole other, there's a whole other avenue we could dance down. But the, but but the notion that a documentary would be watched by 500 million people of any sort would have been unthinkable 15 years ago, probably even 10 years ago. That just did not happen, right? So there is no doubt that Netflix, particularly but the streams coming up behind Netflix also have transformed the opportunities for in unscripted. And I think scripted has a different dynamic and we are doing more and more scripted alongside our unscripted stuff, both in kind of film and television. But it is, they have created a market as well that we are benefiting from. So I don't want to sound too kind of bitter and twisted about it because there is no doubt that we have also had this extraordinary benefit. And that's the kind of pleasure of that. Yeah, sorry. No, I was just going to say that from a scripted perspective that what you have is, you have to have a diverse, you know, ideally you've got a diversified portfolio. You've got some shows for the BBC or Channel 4 and you retain the IP, you have some shows that you make for the streamer and that because writers want to write, producers want to produce. And as I said earlier, there aren't enough opportunities with the PSB's and they're not paying the big enough tariffs for the shows in order to make the shows of scale. So inevitably, if you're making a show like House of Guinness, that goes to, you know, Netflix developed that show. It's a bigger budget show than the model that I described before would allow. So, and Steve Knight is a writer who works across the world. So he has, to Demetri's point, got that ability to reach global audiences because of the platform that is Netflix. But you want that diversified portfolio. Just the point about IP and the streamers that they were so much sleeping IP that are in that light, those libraries now. And if you, one of the ways in which producers have been brilliant in the UK in terms of monetization is to take that IP and diversify it, you know, work out how you can make Netflix is not doing that. And because there are shows, not just Netflix, but there are shows that are sitting in streamer libraries that are just, you know, right at the bottom of the sump tank, no one's watching them. And if that show was, there is a secondary tape sale value. There is a, you know, there is a, there is a whole way in which you can, as a producer, make money from a show and would do if you were incentivised to do it. But it's in, we can't do it at the moment. But that's one of the reason the big new thing that at Utopia we're trying to do is to work with some of the big stars that we work with Will Smith, Trevor Noah, Jeff Goldblum, and work in partnership with them and make shows directly for YouTube and TikTok and everywhere else. And that's a big new thing that we're doing. And that leaves the broadcasters out. They won't be on the scale of some of the giant things that we make for Disney, but they will be their partnerships and that they will be brand-funded. And that for us is the bet that our answer to some of these conundrums, which is that we love working for Disney. We love working for Netflix. But everybody wants to have some skin in the game. And that includes the stars. They, the broadcaster notes the feeling that they don't get to do what they want to do that they're treated as, they are treated as work for hire. That's a big deal for them as well. And you can take advantage of that. This episode is brought to you by Disney. What does it take to build a world people never want to leave? In Disney World Builders, Academy Award and Emmy-nominated filmmaker Leslie Iwerks takes the audiences inside the creative journeys of some of Disney's most influential storytellers, featuring exclusive interviews with James Cameron, John Favreau, Kevin Feige, and more. This documentary reveals the imagination, innovation, and storytelling that continue to inspire generations and shape entertainment. Now streaming on Disney+. One of the other ways to combat the power of the streamers is for the production side to get bigger and bigger. And you, your company has been part of this ultra-media merger, which the justification for that was to have the scale in negotiation. So are you using that scale? You could say, listen, Amazon Netflix, Apple, the rest, you don't get any of our shows unless you change your model. Well, we like working with our partners, obviously. But then why have the scale? The gum to the head hasn't come out quite yet. But there's only been a few weeks. I think that you are, it is about working with your partners. You've got the scale, one of the things you've got with scale is that in terms of IP, from all three, from Banaget, that library, that sort of the catalogue, the licensing, in terms of licensing, in terms of tape sales, that that in terms of having regular income and when you think about diversification, you think about what Jane is doing with YouTube. We're all trying to find the new, but we're also trying to find some regularity of income. home. And when you've got a great tape library and you've got a great format library, then bringing manager in all three together really has got that scale that you can be, you are able to take these shows out and re-skin them or reinvent them or, but what you do want to have those conversations with streamers about things like, you know, the passive, the shows that are sitting passively there, because we can be better partners, you know, going back to, you know, big brother or, or, or, um, MasterChef, or recently as Studio Lambert have done with, with traitors, you take a piece of IP that sort of works somewhere else, and then you can turn it into something of true global, um, and financial significance. And so, I think if I was a streamer and I was sitting there, I would be thinking, how can we, we're not being as, as, as entrepreneurial as we could be as partners, and, and why don't we do more of those sorts of deals? Because there's an opportunity to grow content in a way that currently in that sort of, we take everything and then, um, it's up to us to decide what we do with it next is, is not in the best interest of the content. But Matt, to your point, then these, they're not going to do it in this they're forced to. Of course not. Because it is so, I'm sure they're sitting in the audience right now they're having. Yeah. So, in a way, I think it's, there's, that, that leaves me thinking there's two potential roots, and I'm sure there's more. But one is to make the, as, uh, exactly as Patrick's starting to do, you make a business case, which is, hey, look, there's, you're sitting on, you're, you're sleeping on money here. There's money left on the table. We can help you with that. Uh, and the second is, I've got something you really want. And you're not going to get it unless, and that's the only real leverage that I think we have. Hmm. Stars can be part of that. That, that goes to the something you really want, right? And yet, what you're talking about is taking those star-driven projects and then putting them on YouTube. Aren't those the very projects that could get you some leverage? That is exactly the idea. The idea is that we will start those projects on YouTube and that there will be secondary users. And we've already had a ton of conversations with people about, and when you say secondary uses, you mean launch it on YouTube and then use it as a test ground to sell it to a, and then take it off YouTube. That's, that's, that's all going to depend on how much money people pay, right? And what the deal is, all of those things are being discussed. But that idea of launch it on YouTube, own it with the, own it with the stars and then find secondary places for it. And also, that's one of those things what you can, we were talking this morning about how it, it's hard to really make something break through on YouTube and that you want things to grow in an organic way. But then if you find something big, if the Trevor Noah show that we're making right now becomes a really big thing, which I think it will, then it might well be that people around the world want to buy that. And you would own it. We would own it with Trevor. That's the advantage. And the other, the other version of that, that kind of non- YouTube group is, was certainly among my peers and kind of producers like us. There were so many conversations going on about how to, how to fund things outside of the streamers or the traditional work for higher networks and cable nets and then sell it. And so you think about something like this happens in the, in the movie context all the time, where you get outside financing and then you take the package out. So, so, so the conversation is that I'm having around movies, whether it's with, you know, fit season or any number of, or whip or any number of kind of equity, what effectively become equity partners. Actually, they're starting to look more and more at things like the 100-foot wave, which was produced independently and then sold and thinking, wait, there is, there's a model there. And that is something that sits inside the streamer kind of ecosystem and you get access to that audience, but you're starting off from a different position when it comes to how much leverage you've got in a right step. And do you find that the appetite for those types of shows at the streamers is lower because they don't own? I don't know if it's lower because they don't own, but I think there is a skepticism about something that they haven't bought into early enough and developed. And so they can then feel like a sense of kind of almost like creative ownership as much as, as much as kind of the ownership. We had David George from ITV on the show last week and he was talking about Shopping Love Island and a deal fell apart at MTV because they could know because it was an outside show. And you hear that a lot but they're just not going to do a show unless they have full rights or global or ownership and it seems like if the show is good enough, maybe they learn their lesson and maybe take it. Well, MTV probably wished they'd said yes, right, although I don't know, they don't really do any shows now, but yes, but they would probably like it for Paramount Plus. But there's another thing going on I think in our industry right now, which is the whole world of creators, causing a revolution in how we make shows. And I think that prices are coming down, but it's a different kind of quality. I think you're seeing documentary ways things flow back into the mainstream and I think there's a real, in the same way that Hollywood was transformed in the 1960s when people who made movies on the fly and didn't go by the whole studio system, I think you're seeing that going on with some of the creators coming into our worlds. Just making it cheaper or are they degrading the expectation that people once had around content? I think it's also about, I think it's different expectations because I think it's an expectation of community and directness and a feeling that, I mean, authenticity is a really overused word. But I think it's important in the kind of shows that we all make that you get out of some of the tropes of classic TV in a way, and that's going on. I think that's right. And we were talking earlier, one of the most interesting meetings I've had in the last year was I was lucky enough to go and see B Studios, I had signed the NDA, so I don't know how much I should say. Oh, nobody's listening. But you think about what Jimmy and that team have done, where they are not, don't come up from a traditional television craft background, nothing like that history in the UK PSP's that I laid out earlier, they just picked up cameras and did it themselves, right? And that DIY methodology and that DIY aesthetic allows an audience to feel a different level of relationship to Jimmy and has been phenomenally successful, right? So it's no, you know, he's the most followed man on the planet, 500 million. But he approaches his content as an engineering project where he knows exactly, it's data driven and he knows exactly which elements have the most engagement, which stuff people rewatch, and then he just engineers the content that way. Do you find that that is an effective way to make scripted and then scripted content for the premium streamers? I think that data is always interesting, but you have to go back to where we started, you have to have innovation and you have to have things that feel just crazy, but you have an instinct that is going to work. So you have to marry the two. I think pure data driven is never going to work long term, it can be an amazingly effective short term, but you have to match it up with that. They tell us you about things that have been before, right? And when you do something like the Tinder Swindler, Netflix probably says we want more. Netflix says you want more and everyone says we want more, but the danger with all of that data is you start having conversations with people where they say, well, we know these things work and that project doesn't have any of these things that we know work in. And often I'm turning around and saying, the elements you're pointing to, we're going to show that I made. And up until that point, that hadn't worked either. So you didn't know it had worked until it worked for the first time. So if you want something, and you can think about the big hits that have been on global streamers, you think about Squid Games, right? Squid Games doesn't have any of the elements that you think traditionally would make a show a hit, but it comes out of an effort. Don't have with cats either. Don't have with cats are the same, right? So data tells you about what's happened before and posits some potential reasons for it. It doesn't tell you about what will work in the future. And actually, I think it's a diminishing return. And there's a real, there is a danger that is great that PSBs are now look at data in the same way or in a similar way to the streamers or to a YouTube creator, but if you are purely data-led, then shows that truly come a log and surprise, like, you know, who would have thought that baby reindeer and adolescents, you know, their famous cases that worked across the globe. But you probably look at a show like that and think, who's going to watch that? Who's not doing any, it's not hitting any of the beats that you think that an audience would come to. I mean, obviously, you then look at it and actually think there are obvious reasons that trigger audiences at the beginning of Richard Gow's baby reindeer that go, wow, I'm in, you know. But so, with scriptage, you know, the one of the points you were asking whether content creators are driving prices down and innovation and storytelling different ways, with scriptage, obviously, they're barriers to entry, you know, you have to have a script, you have to have a crew, you have to have people of unions. Yeah. maybe less so, but I don't know, there was still a union of those, you know, back to in this country is still an important voice. But the what you have is that the inflation that's come post-COVID in the UK has meant that the prices in the in the scripted market here are still high. It's hard for the PSBs to catch up with that. It means that even though Disney, Amazon, Netflix are all leaning into UK scripted, that is a challenging time for the UK market. I mean, one of the things that you really want is for the PSBs to be as innovative as sometimes the streamers are. So that's the opposite of what we said before. Well, we said that we said that I think in the big sense the PSBs over time have absolutely contributed to that audiences being ready to receive innovation. But the PSBs are also laden down with government regulation, with rules. And it's hard. I think the people who work in those organizations are often really driven by innovation. But it's sometimes hard. But when it happens, that's the kind of holy grail of everything, because it means that the producers retain the IP, the audiences get surprised, and the whole thing continues. And the PSB gets a success. Traitors is an example of that. Those kind of things that you just think, wow, where did that come from? And so you do need the PSBs to really lean into innovating. Oh, in order to innovate, you need headroom, and to have headroom, you need to have money. And that's where we come back to the side. And innovation is risk, right? That you're taking swings. And so you, and by definition, you're going to miss. What does Netflix want to spend on a true crime documentary these days? Would they want to spend or what can we get them to? What is the range in the conversation that you guys have with them? I would say they want to spend, they don't want to spend more than 1.2, 1.5 million, and they sometimes will. They prefer to spend less. That's nothing compared to scripted. It's nothing. I mean, so like, you know, I think about the stuff we're developing scripted, space, and what it costs. And I think about the success that we, the audience, we can deliver with those big shows like The Crash, or like Tinder Swingler, or Don't Fight With Cats. And the benefit, you know, the return on investment is huge, and I can see why it, it works. I mean, I look, I monitor the top 10s pretty closely every week. There is at least a couple through crime documentaries in there. Yeah. Does any, do you find the market wants anything but that? Yeah. I do. But it is. Like what? What is the market looking for right now? Well, I think we did a series last summer called Trainwreck, which was a series of basically kind of pop culture stories. Oh, that's the poop cruise. Yeah. Oh, my favorite, the poop cruise. But that's a version of true crime. That is awful stuff happening to people. Well, if crime is awful stuff, if a pat needs people, then I think a lot, I mean, isn't most story awful stuff happening to people? Okay. I get it. But I'm saying something outside of that genre of, you know, bad things happening to good people. Yeah. So, so there's a whole load of these different kind of verticals you can think about. So you can think about celebrities, biographies, sports, so the untolds. Sure. Yeah. Type thing, right? So those directors still drive heard that the sports dark market is not as strong. It's definitely not as strong. And I, and so you see people moving it, so you see streamers moving into real sports because sports docs, I've got the finishing return. I've seen drive, I've drive to five amazing show. I'm not, I don't want to do anyone down. But so, yeah. So there's that. We're doing, at the moment, we're doing, I think I can talk about it because it's been announced. We're doing something for HBO on the story of the whale in real, in free willy, right? This amazing story of how they actually then tried to train this whale. That was captive. And they had to try and release it because they realized they might, they'd made this. And no murder is involved at all. No murder is involved. Not even, not even a trainer dies. Okay. I mean, I'm slightly disappointed by that. But yeah. So I think there are, there are other things. But again, it's for us to make that case. And often it's against headwind. Because again, we know this, they know that stuff works. You're looking at that top 10. Not as closely, I'm sure, in despite your diligence, as the executives at all of those streamers, right? Well, and more importantly, they see beyond the top 10. And they see the stuff that they try and doesn't work. Yeah. But it's also, there are other things like, we didn't kill Will Smith taking him from the Arctic to the Antarctic, but we as close call lots of times. The plenty of whales were snapped, were slapped. No trainers died. But you know, that's a really big success for Disney. And yet it took a lot of money. Yeah. Way more than a, a crime show. And it took a lot of time to make it. But that's, there's, Disney think there's an audience there. And they continue to make those kind of things. So you, there are things. It's not just true crime. Yeah. There's, there's a real interesting area that's growing up in the sports space that one of our company's work would be with Netflix, has got this live event commissioned for next year. So your American audience might not know. So Luke Littner is the global darts champion. Darts darts. Okay. That's a big thing here in the UK. Okay. And Luke is, I think he's 19 now. And so he was like a really 19 year old darts champion. Can't even go to bars. You can hear. That is really struggling with a lot of these cultural references. So the show is, the show is that if you're, and we've had thousands and thousands of people have applied to be an already, but it's beat, beat Luke Littner. Okay. So if you want to take part, you can come to the show and over the, you know, this live event, the audience will try and take on Luke Littner and try and beat him a darts. And so that is sports, is entertainment, and if it works, then obviously we were trying to do it with other, you know, you know. And I do think you get those. I mean, we did, we did the first three seasons of Stanley Tucci's 'Searching for Italy' show, right? And that, I think, no one really saw the success of that coming. It went back to back Emmys and did really well for CNN. And that wasn't something that I think was predictable, but there is often this, whether it's about the Will Smiths or the Stanley Tucci's or, or it's about the execution, there is still, if you can twist it in a certain way or innovate it or make it an audience feel like, oh, I haven't seen, oh, this is exciting. This is worth talking about, it's worth sharing. There's still opportunity there. So if Netflix wants to pay 1.5 million for a true crime doc, what does Disney want to pay for a celebrity driven show? I don't think I'm allowed to say. No, I'm feeling it. No, you can say it. He can say, you can say it. I mean, this is all, this is all what they want. It's not what Will Smith is getting paid. This is just what the budget might be for a show like that. I really, I think Disney is going to kill me. I just can't. I really can't. It's more than a true crime. I can tell you that. And how do those deals work? Is, I mean, obviously, you have to incentivize a celebrity to want to do this. They're putting their name out there. Do they, do you pay them a sort of percentage of what you get? Or is it just a fee that is negotiated as part of the global? It's different, different for different broadcasts. We've just done this giant 20-hour series of Tom Hanks about World War II. He worked directly. Good to see Tom Hanks getting into the World War II game. I really want to make sure that he has that cover. Who do you really, who do thought it? But yeah, people and people across the world are really interested in Tom Hanks doing World War II. But that was, that was a deal directly done by the History Channel. But sometimes we work with people, sometimes they work with people. There's no set, there's no set rules. Okay. In the film context, a lot of these production companies will try to get the talent involved and pay them better than they would get from going directly to the studio or a streamer. And that, in that way, they incentivize the talent to work with them. And then the talent ultimately makes more money because then when they take the package out fully formed, they can get a bigger price. Sometimes that can happen, yeah. I'm what you'll do again, coming back to the other model, which is if you've got a talent who, and you're doing a PSB show, then you can share the back end. You can share, you know, that you can do ways, there's other revenue streams for that talent to be incentivized to stay with the show. And that might not be available if you're doing a streamer show. How do you guys source ideas? Well, we've got an amazing development team. Like how big? Like 12 people between six and 12, depending on where we're at in different, the sucks of different things. And I think what's interesting about that is they start off, they're looking for a certain type of story for different. We think, oh, there's an opportunity here or there. But the thing that is really the most exciting part of my job is that people throw up a story because they think about a documentary. So I think one other ways in which this kind of issue of ownership and rights, we're trying to address and trying to find any wiggle room we can, is to think how can we take ideas from one place, execute them in another, create IP, use that IP to parlay it into another form. And fundamentally, for me, it's just about stories. There are great stories there. And if there's a great story that's kind of the alpha and the omega of it, then you find the best way to tell it, the best ways to tell it, and see what you can get for it in different forms. Getting upstream of the commissioning conversation so that what you're doing is, as Dimitri is saying, generate the IP up front, and you're bringing something that already is applied to it. And then you're controlling. And the, you know, with the question about development, with Banaget and all three together, there's over 40 production companies. Every single one of them has got a development team. And that might sound like really duplicative. It's like, why are you doing that? And but that foregrounding creativity, every producer is only as good as the ideas that they're pitching. So that's the most important thing that they have. And buyers are buying shows from that particular producer, whether it's scripted or unscripted, because of the name above the door. And that is then dependent on the quality of the ideas that are being pitched out. So that is the thing that you have to preserve and really push. And I think it's that you, we have a development team that's divided in two different ways, similar size to Dimitri's. But part of it is looking at what broadcasters wanting and that in conversations directly with a lot of people are buying. Another part of it is just looking at our own lives and looking at things that we find really interesting, just beginning things in a different way. And we often find that interesting things come when you just start talking about stuff. And so it's a much smaller group than the bigger development group, but you actually, that's the real green shoots beginnings of things sometimes. And I think for us, particularly I'm moving, thinking more about scripted, I guess, we don't have the firepower to compete with American studios or for, we can't pay half a million dollars for someone's rights or for book rights or whatever it is. We just don't have those, we don't have the coffers that are deep enough. And again, so just as we were saying before, and essentially becomes the mother of inventions, you're like, okay, how do I find a story that no one else is chasing? How do I find the thing that people haven't thought about yet? And original journalism is part of that, original research is part of that. And to Jane's point, it's actually sometimes just blue sky thinking, wouldn't it be cool out if no one's done a show about why there's no one. Isn't it interesting that there's that thing happening in the world that everybody's doing or thinking about, but no one's really, there's not, you know, what would you do with Harry and Megan? I, I, are you aware of the Polo show that they did? vaguely. They did a show about Polo. They've done a lot, they've done stuff that, clearly there. I mean, I had to sign an idea, I did have a cool with them, but anyway, the long time ago, I think they did a lot of those calls, and I don't feel special, Matt. No, no, no, no, but my point is, and I've said this on the show, they never found the product market fit. Stuff, something that they would be willing to do, that the public would want to see them in. But what do you think the public would want to see? Well, I know what the public would want to see them in. They would want to see them in the Osborne's, right? I mean, that's, that's what I said. That's what they want. But they, but they don't want that. But where is that happy medium where something they would be willing to do, that you think the public would be willing to watch? Travel log, they go into business together, like some, I think the business part of it, I don't think an audience wants to see that. Because I think the audience buys that. I just, and I think one of the things that Gold Rush taught us was that watching someone, you've got to have everything on the line in those business charts, right? I really think you do. And if you're a prince, then it doesn't work quite as much. How's it going? How's it going to carry you? The gym business is not what people say it is. But with Harry, actual physical jeopardy. Yeah, I think he was, he was a soldier. He was a guy, you know, is how to fly a helicopter. I was sending a war. I don't know about that. What was your line? I talked about what we did with Will Smith. I would say some of the stuff that you did in Limitless with Chris, we put him through hell. Yeah, and I think something like that, Harry will be really up for because I think he's genuinely wants to test himself physically. He's clearly interested in adventure and all of that kind of stuff. So I think you could get him on a journey of that sort. And it would be great. That is Graper, Harry and Megan. Just Harry. Just Harry. Oh, so you don't like Megan, Megan. She can, she can be part of it. You can find always find a role in the film. All right. Well, thank you to our panel. Thanks to everybody here. This has been a fun conversation. That's it.