Join us for an exclusive and empowering episode as the And I Thought Ladies sit down with Tawana Blassingame, visionary founder and CEO of Queen Size Magazine—a groundbreaking publication dedicated to plus-size fashion, body positivity, and women's empowerment.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Ladystelle Podcast. We have
a very interesting and unique viewpoint today. I mean, we've
done actors, we've done public we've done producers, we've done directors,
we've done cinematography, We've done a bunch of people. But
today we're talking to somebody who does like a technical magazine.
I think, I keep keep reading it and going it
has everything, Like everything I want to know was here.
(00:24):
So I had to ask, you know me, if I
read it, I'm gonna be like when I talk to
the person behind it, please please, I need to know more.
Anyway I will know. And I'm one of the Anti
I Thought ladies, and I'm gonna go ahead and introduce
my books and stuff. And then we're getting straight into
talking to this wonderful guest because I talked before to
him before, and oh my goodness, it is just so
much information. Let me harry out faster. You can find
(00:46):
out everything that you ladies are up to a www.
Dot Anti Thought Ladies dot com. You can also get
our seven books there. So this and I thought divorce
was bad and I thought being grown up was ez,
but only our me memoir in Verse Foreign Coffee Wittles Web,
Wittles debt. That's actually six, that's six audiobooks and you
can get the There are eleven books that we've written
on www. And I thought ladies dot com, which comes
to a grand total. Yes, you guys an American sign language.
(01:08):
It comes to a grand total of seventeen books. Wow,
now I feel like I'm done. I am definitely done.
But you and I here to hear about me. You're
here to hear about our wonderful guest. Wonderful guess. Would
you like to introduce yourself?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Hi? Hi, I'm Janie Bennett. I run I own a
magazine over the UK called Television, which has been going
for all cranky forty odd years, which is a long time,
and I've been running it for over thirty years and
I owned it for almost twenty years, which shows a
(01:43):
completely I can imagination and or ambition. However, I do
love what I do, which is which is a fantastic
thing to do because it touches on every single aspect
of television and film production in the UK, which is
a fascinating subject to me because it's so incredibly fast changing.
It's so fast moving, it changes all of the time
(02:06):
and at the moment is going through a period of
what one might describe as accelerated change with a number
of business imperatives which are always technology driven. So everything
starts with the technology. TV was only possible, film was
only possible with the technology, and technology is driving a
pace of change now through UK film and TV as
it is across the world, which is going to change
(02:28):
it yet again very rapidly in many ways I think
positively and in many ways possibly negatively as well. The
biggest single change is the advent of machine learning and
automation at the moment, which fits in inso far as
taking jobs and fulfilling jobs and processes that were fulfilled
(02:52):
by people. Many of those originally are labor and intensive
and repeat it, repetitive functions. And people didn't go in
TV and film to do labor intensive, repetitive functions. They
went in to do something creative. So initially it's going
to be something that I think is going to inspire
or is going to encourage creativity, and it is going
(03:13):
to encourage a boom in the short medium term by
which I mean three to five years, and encourage it
many many different ways. VFX artists are going to have
more of their VFX creation work done in an automated way.
Editors are going to get more of their editing done
in a fairly straightforward Directors are going to get a
lot more of their shots and their storyboards done in advance. However,
(03:37):
after five years, the question is to what degree is
human creativity hold up against machine and to what extent
to the studios, yes, fonds, the video on demand streaming
video and demand services, the broadcasters do they believe their
product is the fulfillment of human endeavor and creativity or
(03:59):
just a product. And if it is just a product,
it's entirely plausible that a machine learning, an automation or
AI some people like to artificial intelligence may very well
start being the beginning of the middle and the end
of content creation. That's probably ten years away, but it
could be a lot seener.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So I'm pretty sure that you're aware that there is
currently a strike going on here.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
I believe that is one of the center things of
the strike. I was just out in LA and everyone's
talking about the strike in Ani. So that's a viable fear. Now.
I'm not very happy. I was like, oh, this is
going to be able to take over human emotion as
I see now it's a viable fear. Good job on
you' all for going on a strike.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Well, it's a fascinating idea if I can't, because once
upon in a time we used to talk one of
the idages in media was that there are no new
ideas in media. There are just reinterpretations or the Samuel
Golden Mayer face this statement. But there are only being
seven plots, you know, there are only seven plots that
a film can pursue. Okay, So one point in time
we said that. Now we're very quickly backtracking on that idea,
(05:11):
and rightly so. The one thing that AI is not,
which humanity is, is both abstract and disruptive, and that
is what we've got in our favor. However, there are
true works of art, beautiful films, beautiful television programs which
are made, and they are beautiful and gorgeous, and they
(05:32):
are creative works of art, and they are an expression
of an individual as well as a group collaborative effort,
and they're wonderful, wonderful pieces. But the vast majority of
TV isn't necessarily the vast majority of TV is going
through the paces, going through the motions. Maybe not the
vast majority, but certainly a lot of it. And if
(05:53):
that's the case, then the idea that that's replicated bio
machines of depressing. But so as if you're an accountant,
your odds of having an accounting job in ten years
are pretty slim if you work in the law. In
legal profession, most legal professions about case history is about
(06:13):
looking at all legal cases that can be scanned almost
instantly by AI. That looks there'll still be jobs and
barristers and judges for the foreseeable future, but again or
all of those jobs will disappear. The irony of the
whole thing, if you wanted to really sort of start
thinking about it, The iron of the whole thing is
(06:35):
that the jobs that are going to go are ones
that are not physical labor but are desktop driven jobs.
You know, it's a fascinating idea, and just run with it,
playing with it. There's so many things that come off.
At One is the idea of how we tax people
based on income and whether that tax might better be
expressed as a wealth tax rather than as an income tax.
(06:57):
The current tax income portfolio investments and wealth hardly at all.
It's going to be a reversal in the future, potentially,
because where is the world going to come from if people,
if the so many people are no longer working, if
we have automation at such a great extent, the irony
is that the desktop jobs, there's middle class jobs will
(07:18):
go first. Middle classes are broadly loosely being defined as
jobs that happen in office. Loosely, not all middle class
jobs happen in office, lawyers doctors, for example, but then
the medical profession is also subject. The way I so
just idly think it's went through, revolution and cultural change
(07:40):
has almost always come around between a union of students
and middle classes. It's always in history it's been the
middle classes have affected history. If you go back in
time to feudal times, those middle classes we might have
been defined as being lords or dukes or els, but
they were the one and still making social change and
(08:02):
making political change. Fast forward. Almost all political revolutions have
involved in middle classes, those middle classes as financial classes,
going back in time as business classes, perhaps in the
French Revolution for example, and the English Revolution Civil War.
It was certainly the laws fast forward to much as
(08:27):
Lenin or Marx might not approve the Russian revolution was
fermented first and foremost in the universities before bringing labor
and particularly the military. So if you look at our history,
if you remove those middle classes, it's going to be
(08:48):
interesting to see who actually supports social change and progressive
politics as well. Is not what we're here to talk about,
but it's an interesting aside as an implication of AI.
It's an interesting aside as to where the challenges will
be which will be based on IP intellectual property as
(09:09):
instead of Internet protocol and intellectual property. There are class
actions being brought already against tech companies that using someone's
writing style or photographic style or artistic style is an
infringement of their IP. Be interesting to see how those
(09:29):
play out and if they do play out successfully. This
also links back to the writer's gold stripe. So from
the Writer's gold Stripe, the impact of that has already
been felt across America, and it's been felt in a
different way in the UK, but it is still there.
Last time around, it led to more reality and more
(09:51):
factual content being commissioned and created.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Which was cheaper to.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Make, which was cheaper to make. This time I are
slightly different. It's time round the TV industry has always
been an industry that so the adage goes is recession proof,
you know, so when there's a recession or a downturn economically,
the TV industry kind of carries through pretty well. This
(10:17):
time around is different because the new model with the
asphalts is about subscriptions, and subscriptions is consumer expenditure, and
the consumer expenditure is going to be under pressure that
people might choose not to renew their Netflix or their
Amazon or their Apple TV Plus or their Disney subscription
in preference to a meal for their children. That might
(10:37):
be the case, that's one aspect, but certainly in terms
of the idea of growing, or they might just slim
down on a number of subscriptions they've got because there's
so many to be had. Yeah, I'm sure we have
the same in America. And the other side of that
is that the commercial broadcasts are reliant on advertising revenue,
and in the UK that decline is between than twenty
(11:00):
percent in like for light figures before we take inflation,
which is running out over ten percent over the last
year in the majority of time, So in real terms,
that's a twenty five percent cut on revenue for the
commercial broadcast is what you call the network broadcasters. That
twenty five percent means this is twenty five percent less
money to go around. It's not just twenty five percent
(11:22):
less money for commissions. It's probably higher again because that's
third party expenditure rather than internal expenditure. So and in
the UK we also have the BBC, which you don't have,
and the BBC has a license fee. However, the BBC's
license fee has been set at a static rate irrespective
of inflation, so already is ten percent behind by virtual inflation.
(11:45):
And then on top of that we've had a rather
oddly We've had a funeral which saved up a lot
of money with Queen Elizabeth. We had a coronation with
the new King, and we had Eurovision, which is a
musical competition which was hosted in the UK, all of
which shut up that same funding. So the BBC again
(12:08):
has got a significant reduction in its commissioning budget. So
all and all, this year is going to be a
challenging year for UK film and TV. Last year people
got a little bit deluded, a little bit carried away.
There was a backclock of COVID work post COVID which
(12:29):
frozen in production. There was committed money and budgets and
annual budgets that had gone in. So last year was
this boom year, and everyone, and not everyone, A lot
of people saw that as being a continuous boom, as
being an exponential growth, and a lot of people in
the UK and a lot of people invested a lot
(12:49):
of money in studios, in their teams, and the salary
inflation and a hell of a lot of investment in
quickly film stages, but also in post production. And the
fear for me going back to last summer, and that
was kind of crystalized in the autumn, is that the
money just wasn't going to be going around. And independent
(13:11):
production companies in the UK are telling me the same
thing they have been since before, certainly in the autumn,
that that commissioning funding was not the same as the
previous year. And now it's got worse again. And now
on top of that you've got the rise it's going
to strike. So just like America has got a coal
on the back of the rioters guilt and on the
(13:32):
back of inflation, and on back of the fact that
the city no longer loves Netflix like it used to.
So Netflix has got financial pressure on it. It needs
to show a financial return, as as new tech companies
tend to any recession returns, rather than showing that it's
just growing mind share. That's great, that's just got numbers
(13:56):
which will turn into cash at some point in the
inde in the future. Now it's got to show a
profit and that puts a lot of pressure on Netflix too,
and that pressure then goes down to commissioning and gone.
Other days where Netflix would say to Woody, howson you
make that movie you've always wanted to make. We won't
(14:16):
look at it, we won't review it. Just go and
make that amazing movie he wants to make. That's gone.
And they've become more and more and more and more
fixed and rigid in their expectations and their degree to
which they want to intervene and out shape and coerce
and form content. So for most of all, they want
(14:38):
to reduce the amount of money they're spending. So it's
a bit of a difficult year around for film and
TV in the UK, just as it is in America.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
I just want to ask this questions. You have said
so much information. There have been so many questions that
I wanted to ask, and so many things I wanted
to say that I have thoroughly forgotten by now. So
this just brings me to the question that's on my
mind right now. I heard you say there are a
lot of independent production homes or the homes independent production
studios that are out there going the commission dollars aren't there.
(15:10):
But we now have the opportunity to start our own
streaming company on like Roku. So why not Why wouldn't
they do that?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Because they because there's a cost implication. So the big cost, yeah,
the big cost of being a broadcast, and there's so
many costs. The first is you've got to get down
to the EPG, the electronic program guide, and that costs money.
And then you've got to be in the right place
on the electronic program guide. So when you switch on
your smart TV at home, I'm guessing you you're faced
(15:40):
with a similar thing that we are here. You're faced
with probably first Netflix, probably second Amazon, probably third Apps.
If you scroll down, you might find Disney and Apple
TV as one of those big circles or logos on
that home on that homepage of your TV, But you
don't find a small independent production company with two hundred hours,
(16:06):
two thousand hours of material. It's not there. They had
to do deals. They had to make deals. You know,
if you want to know if you I would say,
as an independent production company, if you in this in
the UK, an independent production company used to before as
far before streaming, used to own its ip it's intellectual property.
(16:29):
So having made a program, it would license that program
to the VBC or to I TV or Channel four
Tele five to play or this guy play the program,
but it would retain the rights on that program, which
you could then sell over seats or it could then
sell again at a later date to the same broadcaster
because it had give it a window, gave it a
(16:51):
six month a year to play that content in and
after that content in after reverted back. One of the
opportunities that comes out with learning automation one to conjure
with in terms of what it's kind of due to
the TV industry is if you wanted to do localized
translated television, you can now automate it in a way
(17:11):
that you couldn't perform. So there's I've been retaken by
two products. One is called paper cup and paper cup
automate is like a Babel fish, so it translates what
has said. But then it adds an extra layer because
it also interprets the emotional delivery with the way that
it was said to give a more emotional foreign version,
(17:34):
and that's what was made it. The second is an
interesting story. There was a film, I think it's called
The Fall, about the two girls climbing the radio mast.
And they climb the radio mast and it's a kind
of B movie film. It's made by British director and
(17:55):
they made the film and unsurprising, these two ladies who
climb the radio mask get stuck up the radio mask.
It's it was on a netplix quite a while and
did very well. It's a good drama. But because they're
improvising funnily enough, they swear a lot, so rather than
so when they listen to it back that I have
to work. Oh rat, we are not going to get
(18:17):
a thirteen certificate for this. We're going to we can't
get a blow eighteen just because the sheer volume of
f's in the in the production. So what he did
was he talked to a technology friend of his techophile,
and between them they found a way of adjusting the
human face in an elastic way such that when the
(18:40):
protagonists used the F word instead of in, which looks
like in a certain way when you say it, they
could say freaking. So they say freaking a lot on
that show, you'll notice, And the reason is because that's
been translated that I've been changed in a dr that's
been synthesiz with a synthesized voice. In otherwise it wasn't redone.
It was designs as you can mimic a voice with
(19:03):
thirty to fifty words these days, and it's fairly convincing.
And they also change the facial expression so it looks
like they were saying the right work. If you watch it,
you really couldn't tell. But they've eliminated the fifty s.
And the point about that is that's also applicable to translations.
So what was once an expensive an expensive option to
(19:25):
get your archive translated and translated into a foreign language
to be played out in France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain,
wherever where they prefer to hear it in their mother tongue,
in the vernacular, they might hear it dubbed. Then they
prefer to hear it properly dubbed. Now I prefer to
hear it such the actors look like they're saying it,
(19:46):
and that technology has already been employed, not necessarily flaw
less AI dot AI, which is the second of those
two machine learning AI plug ins, but it's already happening,
and that opens up all of that IP, all that
(20:06):
old content, and it opens up to a new market.
My personal pet theory is that we will live in
an increasing an age of increasing hyper personalization in terms
of TV and film. What that means is it has
many aspects to it. One is that there'll be more
and more and more content, just like there is in
(20:27):
the music industry. If you want to listen to grime
or you want to listen to rap, you can listen
to twenty four to seven, and you can listen to
new artists all the time. Same will happen in film
and TV. It'll be more and more personalized to the
content that you want. If you want zombie movies, you
can have zombie movies zombie content twenty four to seven
if that's your thing, right. So hyper personalization will lead
(20:50):
to more and more shows that we directed towards you,
because there'll be less expensive to make by virtual of
machine learning automation, So there'll be more and more content.
The other aspects to that hyper personalization, which is more theoretical,
is that you can fine tune the content, not necessarily
in an interactive way where you choose one path after another.
(21:12):
Does our protagonist turn right? Does she turn left? But
rather that you have, rather that you can choose whether
you have a happy ending, an ambivun tending, or a
sad ending at the beginning or a show. Hyper Personalization
is the next big thing which will come on the
back machine learning automation, and we'll lead to a boom
in content creation over the next three to five years
(21:33):
and then within ten years. I don't know what that
looks like.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
I'm just going to say we already have a boom
in content creation. I mean I was part of that boom.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, boom.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
There's just so much content. There is no way in
the world that a person can like, you can watch
something different every day of your life and you've never
come close to finishing it. Of the content that's done
in the world.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Right, Yes, but how about if that content with the
content that you wanted to watch, how part of that
content was let's say you wanted to pick up Mexican cookery. Yeah,
quite specific right, how Man Mexican cooking shows are there
some it's not. Yeah. So then in the same way
(22:17):
that on YouTube you can find if you drill down
hard enough and deep enough and fast enough, you can
find more and more content that suits you, the same
way that you can do that on TikTok, and the
same way that you can Yeah, and the same kind
of idea will also apply to TV and film.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
I would actually love that. I feel like I'm not
gonna lie. I feel like there's too much hype of
personalization on all of my streaming because so many different tastes.
And then you go to someone else's house and they
have all these movies that you wanted to see, and
so you have to go home and then search for
the movie specifically because you didn't even know what was there,
and this is what you want to see. Excuse me,
(22:54):
my taste change. I need to be introduced to new
things at all times, not necessarily what I want to see,
but what other things.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
So when I was a kid. When I was a kid,
you know, there are only so many outlets that you
could listen to music through, and so when you listen
to music, you're constantly being introduced to new music that
you otherwise wouldn't listen at an age when we valued
music perhaps a little bit more than its value today,
you know, as as an expression of our identity, as
an expression of who we were and our ambitions and
(23:25):
who we want to be in life. And you you know,
as a child, as an adolescent, you'd find you change
those musical tastes and you'd be introduced to new musical tastes.
You weren't constantly just on one big cycle. You don't
have any choice. Likewise, with film and TV, there was
so limited horizons that you were introduced to content you
(23:46):
otherwise would never have watched. And you know, and not
not least documentary and news. You know. One of the
things I find slightly depressing is that a lot of
people not them without going down the fake news Donald
Trump route, you know, you know, but rather the reliability
(24:06):
and the credibility and the accountability of that news that's
consumed through the Internet is sometimes questionable, and sometimes that
spreads misinformation, and because it's hyper personalized, that misinformation then snowballs.
You know. So if you're if you I don't know,
let's say take something like you're in COVID denial COVID
(24:26):
doesn't exist. Covidn't then you could find more and more
and more content, you know, online that would support that
view a little bit like that potentially in terms of
where we go volun TV that it's going to be commodified,
and therefore that with that commodification will come this personalization.
And if we go down to that ultimate idea of
(24:48):
content being created entirely in a CG of VFX of
three D world, then at that point there you know
the idea content could be created very very quickly and
very specifically. It's kind of scary. It's kind of really scary.
(25:09):
It's like the Messa verse. I like that scary. What's
wrong with real life?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
We all have a life? Would lead I'm sure, I
mean it? What is the movie? I can't remember the movie?
Never mind, I'm not going to talk about it because
I specifically, I've covered all the trip points I really
wanted to cover except for one thing, and the one
thing that I have not covered is how did you
start your magazine and why is it important to the
broadcast world today?
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Very simply, I didn't start it. I unharrassed it. I
was a director of a big publishing company. I was
quite young, and I was provided way beyond my years,
and I didn't like being a director of a big
publishing company. Wasn't very good at it either. But why
is it important? It's important because just like TV and
(25:59):
film just talking just now, it's the idea of curation
of content. It's the idea that you come to you
go to a broadcaster, or you can come to a
magazine and there's an expectation of curator that the editor
and the editorial team would have thought about what's relevant,
what's important, and we'll have curated that. And I has
created a diet of content which is relevant either on
(26:24):
a benchmarking annual basis we do a lot of surveys,
or it can be thematic based on change. You know.
One of the things that I have a a particular
focus on which most business publishers don't need to be
publishers don't necessarily and I believe should is that idea
of change is that it's the so what principle If
(26:47):
you're reporting something that people has been doing for ages,
never in a day, that's not very interesting. What's interesting
is how is that changing? What does that mean? What
do you do to change it, and what are the
outcomes and the well of even the speed of that change,
accelerated change is just so rapid, so fast, it's changing everything.
(27:08):
And we're talking about learning aut question. I was giving
you some fairly you know, forward looking ideas as to
where I see it going, and I say three to
five years, it's going to create a boom. And the
question is what happens after that? And I don't know,
I really don't. But what I do know is that
it will look very, very different from what it does today,
and the content that we consume and the way that
(27:29):
we consume it will also be, I believe, very different
in a relatively short period of time. And it is
in the in the history of film and TV. It's
a very short period of time. It's going to change.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
I'm just going to say, well, I was alive. I
feel like the democratization of filmmaking is insane because if
you had told me that I was going to make films,
I had laughed at you and told you, maybe I'll
be in a film. But that's still funny. But I
definitely I write a book.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Oh look, everyone's a filmmaker exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, So it's that's interesting to me. And to feel
that it's going to become even more open, that's going
to be so weird. And then like the auto automization
and CGI being available to everyone, this is going to
be a very interesting, very interesting way to live life.
Although please do not hyper personalized. Please we'd like to
(28:29):
see I.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Would rather they didn't. I look, honestly, I would. I
think there's something wonderful about people gathering together to have
a common experience. I still love going to the cinema
and seeing an amazing movie where two hundred four hundred
one thousand people sit in a room. I remember you
started this by talking about Bollywood and I remember being
(28:52):
in India and seeing a film in an Indian cinema
against the local cinema and where there's socially ambitions were
completely different from the way that they are in the
UK or in America. In America they're slightly you know,
people are more engaged and more openly engaged in the
perhaps in the UK with the film, but in India,
they were standing up, they were dancing to the songs,
(29:14):
they were clapping, they were booing, they were hissing. It
was like you know it, it was a fantastic experience.
It was, you know, it was everyone was fully engaged
at a communal level and a piece of content. And
you know, that's a wonderful thing. And I think it
would be a shame to lose that. And we had
(29:34):
that as a historical past in our theater. In mystery
plays in people sitting around a campfire and listening to
the village elder or the villy bore tell their story
about hunting tigerts, you know, and it's we've had that
time more ever since we came down from the trees.
Its chimpanzees. So it's always been a shame I think
(29:55):
that our DNA didn't come from orangutans or maybe bonobos.
We came from chimpanzees, because when you watch a chimpanzee doc,
you always feel slightly in at ease because they're a
little bit too like us, you know what I mean,
They're a bit too They reveal the bits of us
we don't really want to reveal. But orangutans and orangutans
are just so unbelievably cool, you know, there's so much
(30:16):
better apes. Banobo's hugely sociable, maybe not in a way
that we all want to be sociable, but hugely sociable,
which is our second closest DNA, I believe is Bonobos.
But we're chimps in that collective experience. That that experience
that we get when we go to the cinema is
(30:37):
also replicated in part from a traditional broadcasting culture where
we compare notes about the content we've seen and it
isn't necessarily personal to us, and we say hyper personalized.
There is that sense that we're watching something which I
can talk to my mum about, all my son about,
and that's a pretty cool thing.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
I remember talking a while ago to We have of
thing that we do call the Production the Producers around table,
when we talk to producers in Hollywood about their visions
and have what they've seen. And one of the things
they said, it's very unusual today to get a hit.
Like back in the day, you would have a show
and then everyone had seen it, and then that's what
they talked about at the water cooler. Nowadays, what people
(31:20):
talk about at the water cooler is different according to
who they are. But then every once in a while,
every bloom, you get that one show that's just the
water cooler show and It's funny to me that even
though they are using algorithms to make sure that each
person gets what they want to see, we still have
one or two or five shows out there that are
(31:43):
just like, gotta see it. I agree, everyone has to
see it, which means those shows are connecting on the
basics of human emotion as a great story. I don't
want to be like that would be.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
A long made that can a long way that continue.
But you're right, there are less and less at those moments.
But at the same time as that, you know, at
a human level. You know, my friends, let alone with
my industry friends, with my friends who don't work in industry,
I do have some, but you know, there's those Even
then we do talk about what we haven't haven't seen
(32:18):
on TV. We do say, you know, and it was
at one point, what have you seen on Netflix? That's
kind of dissolved a little bit. It's Netflix is not
quite as wrong as it was. You know, Amazon, Amazon
certainly has a vision. If you break up the broadcasts,
it's quite interesting. I think Amazon and Apple TV plus
both have a vision of having content that does transcend
(32:40):
it or does move across audiences in it. Where's network Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
One of our friends was a director, mentioned that like
Apple TV plus actually that you do different because you know,
when you write scripts, it's like, oh, this is going
to be ninety this is going to be one hundred
and some pages. They're like, they let you do different
time limits so maybe thirty one, so maybe sixty something
or fifty seven or because it's according to how you
want the story told. I think that's amazing to have
(33:10):
that sort of freedom. But then you can see how
where Apple TV plus came up with the idea that
they wanted to tell stories using influencers that people knew
that we're going to influence society for the best. Yeah,
almost every Apple TV plus the show was a thinker, which.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Is which is which is an interesting idea. And I
earlier on, earlier on, before we started, you were talking
about America and America's sort of media footprint. Yeah, absolutely right.
You know, I'm on the one hand, I completely applaud
you know, I love the Jay Hunts. The break. The
commission from the BBC joined Apple TV over in the
UK fantastically where it happened.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
I missed that Jay Hunt She.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Was a BBC commissioner. She joined the Apple TV Plus
many years ago, and she's she's a fantastic commissioner and
she has real vision. And within Apple TV Plus you
have things like Prehistoric Planet one and two, which is
just incredible works of art as for storytelling about our
dinosaur and students and absolutely wonderful, wonderful, wonderful content. And
(34:19):
you know that Being You, which I thought was a
superb show about childhood, which is on Apple as well.
I thought absolutely beautiful, a really nice guy and I
made it a really good guy and it's just incredible
content and shot in a cinematic style into to have
a broader audience. But the point about it is is
these are broad, families, sit down shows, right, yeah, which
(34:44):
I think is rather wonderful. Now. The interesting thing is
you're suggesting, yeah, and we're back, so there is It's
an interesting idea because from one perspective, you know, you
(35:04):
could look at American media from the from the context
of cultural imperialism and the idea that American media has
shaped a certain and a very specific cultural mindset, you know, yeah,
(35:25):
which can be you know, which can be expressed and
not least self expression or self realization as as a
as a desirable and important imperative life imperative which could
be quite strongly disputed from the context of I don't know,
(35:48):
let's say, an Islamic viewpoint and the importance of family
and the importance of extended family, which is not just Islamic,
but also many Asian cultures, not least Hindu or seek
or Janist or or confusion, you know. And it's it's,
you know, the idea that that value system is not
(36:10):
as important as self realization. It's actually an American idea.
It's an American ideology, and it's borne out of, you know,
a frontier kind of spirit and mindset, and and it's
very specific. So yes, you're right, you know that that
(36:30):
American you know, that American media machine has been hugely
important over time, but it has a very specific liberal viewpoint.
It rarely deviates from that viewpoint. And that and that
liberal viewpoint in many ways has historically been very intolerant
of alternative thinking or sexuality or race or class or
(36:57):
anything else. In that it's been it's been quite specific,
and I don't know that's always necessarily desirable. I think
television has been true in the West to that American
ideology and true in the UK to a large extent
(37:19):
as well. And I think TV itself, though is under
is under extraordinary pressure from even more accelerated forms of
self realization and self promotion and presentation and self president
presentation which is found within social media where we are
(37:41):
all publishers or broadcasters, which is just.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
About to say that that's hard, you know. I was
talking to a m what is she development executive from
a production place that actually is owned by one of
the production homes in the UK, and they were I'm
talking to her at lunch and she happened to mention
that in the US there is still a very large
audience for network television, which was very surprising, happy because
(38:11):
I would love to get a show on network And
if anyone from the network is listening to this, please
might remember me. But she was in the Midwest watches TV. Yes,
the West Coast and the East Coast they stream, but
the Midwest watches TV. They get the whole family together
(38:32):
and they watch TV. And very very interesting.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
That's large. That's that's a mix of numerous things. One
is the idea that network TV is still something that
you can sit down as a family and watch. Secondly,
that fits that sits within. I wonder if that's true
at the Bible Belt in the South. I wond if
that's true in Louisiana, for example. I wonder if that's
true in Floria, for example. That'd be interesting. In South
(39:01):
Florida will be a really interesting case study. I bet
it's fifty to fifty there. But yes, absolutely, But if
you look at people in California or New York State,
or Washington State, or up in Maryland and down, I
should say, if you look at those states, isn't it
because you've got a lot of small apartments and small
(39:25):
and small groups of people in those departments. Partly to
explain it that you have increasingly divided families, and you know,
children who fled the nests in their twenties thirties, or
older people who just run that course and their children
fled the nest. In turn, I wonder if that's partly
to do with it. You know, in my home, I'm
(39:47):
an old dad. I've got a fourteen year old and
eleven year old, and neither of them watch much broadcast TV,
most of them watch, most of them watch streamed content still.
But my you know, my son, certainly, that's my daughter
increasingly watches social media TikTok dancing mainly. But she you know,
(40:07):
but that's incredibly It's more and more common that kids
watch less and less broadcast TV and more and more
YouTube or social media in different forms.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
The numbers for YouTube are falling off for the younger generation.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, absolutely right, just too long. It's too long.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Instagram and TikTok absolutely interesting. It has been only interesting.
But when you're watching these things like, it's what you
want to watch, it's who you want to watch, it's
the way you want to watch it. It's perfect. It's perfect.
It's just for you. Anyway, I'm pretty much done with
this conversation.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I'm better give you anything to think about too much
or too little. However, you have to do.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
One thing, which is what is the name of your
magazine so people can read it.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Televisual dot com is the website television and we get
and we even gave that word was given to the
to the dictionary. It did exist before, just but televisual,
as it sounds is now, you know, is me common parlance.
It wasn't when the magazine was first launched. It is
now so even kind of half not really because if
(41:21):
the word did exist, did it it? Who knows? But
you do actually have the expression to look at something
which is televisual, to describe something that comes from television.
So who knows. Who knows.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
I'm a writer and I didn't know that was a word.
This is the same.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Television distant viewing, televisual, distant image. You know, tele telekinesis telepathy, Yeah,
you know, telepathy, teleconesis moving things at a distance with
your mind, telepathy reading on other people's minds from a distance.
So tele television distant viewing. Literally than I'm.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Going to go ahead and wrap the show up for works.
You can find out more about and televisual at what
website again.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
At televisual dot com. It's a very easy run to
remember and think about. It is that I think, I
think we live in an extraordinarily fast changing, accelerated well
and I think that what we're doing and we have
a microcosm on what's happening in our broader while and
this idea of machine learning and automation we should be
looking at it. There was a very very and it's
(42:31):
not mine, but it's The Guardian in the UK, The
Guardian dot com. They had a very good piece by
Naomi Clin on machine learning and automation, which I urge
anyone to look up if you search Anami Clin, who
should be known to many of you, and you search
her up on the Guardian, it's a very good piece
(42:53):
about the implications behind and about the possibilities and futures
of and this links back to some of the points
which I wasn't expressing in detail because I wasn't time
about the idea. How actually, as part of this, we
need to rethink our taxation system. I need to rethink
our relationship with power very very quickly, because it's going
(43:20):
to consume us before we know it. Because you know
what it ultimately does is it gives increasing amounts of
control into a small number of people, such as their
their influence on and control of finance and money is perpetuated.
(43:43):
If you link that in with how AI has been
used in China, for example, forfacial recognition, we link that
in with cbdc's digital currencies which we're all going to
get very shortly, which are being sold to us as
I know why we would want to buy into them,
but they're being sold to us as a replacement for cash.
(44:05):
Most it's not using cash quite successfully using credit cards
or debit cards. So you know, but if you look
at what that does, it's all about the apparatus is
fast becoming stronger and stronger for a true and I
don't mean this in a conspiracy theory way either. I
mean it in a very literal way. And we are
(44:28):
putting more and more power and control towards what could
be an increasingly authoritarian state in a period of time.
We have an increasingly polarized right and progressive political division,
and where the justification for actions can be fed to
(44:48):
you very easily. I'm a student of history. I believe
in cock up rather than conspiracy. I'm not a conspiracy theorist.
I just believe that too much power and influence is
about to be put into two for a number of
people who will see it as their job to perpetuate
their power, their stranglehold, their control over us all. And
(45:11):
I think media is part of a much bigger picture.
And I think she learn your automation. It's going to
have a profound impact on us in the film and
TV industry, a profound impact on everyone. I think they're
sleepwalking into it.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
I want to thank you so much for being here.
I have learned so much about so much, like history
and an automation and governments.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
And it's been a flow of a flow of flow
of sound bites. My apologies. I'd be very happy to
pick up on any one of those and explain it
with more detail.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
I am not one of those people that edit, so
this entire thing is just going up the way it is. Oh,
I want to pick everyone in the audience for being
here today and for listening. And I'm going to go
ahead and like I'm all on one of the ends.
I thought, ladies, you can catch everything that your ladies
are doing at www. Dot and I thought, ladies dot com,
you can go down to the middle of the page
(46:05):
and see the charities that we probably support. We asked
that you give them a moment and support them as well,
and remember that wisdom is all around you if you're
open to finding it and accepting its. Peace in love
you guys from Monona and the Missing Jade. Oh yeah,
thanks for listening.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Ladystelle Podcast. We have
a very interesting and unique viewpoint today. I mean, we've
done actors, we've done public we've done producers, we've done directors,
we've done cinematography, We've done a bunch of people. But
today we're talking to somebody who does like a technical magazine.
I think, I keep keep reading it and going it
has everything, Like everything I want to know was here.
(00:24):
So I had to ask, you know me, if I
read it, I'm gonna be like when I talk to
the person behind it, please please, I need to know more.
Anyway I will know. And I'm one of the Anti
I Thought ladies, and I'm gonna go ahead and introduce
my books and stuff. And then we're getting straight into
talking to this wonderful guest because I talked before to
him before, and oh my goodness, it is just so
much information. Let me harry out faster. You can find
(00:46):
out everything that you ladies are up to a www.
Dot Anti Thought Ladies dot com. You can also get
our seven books there. So this and I thought divorce
was bad and I thought being grown up was ez,
but only our me memoir in Verse Foreign Coffee Wittles Web,
Wittles debt. That's actually six, that's six audiobooks and you
can get the There are eleven books that we've written
on www. And I thought ladies dot com, which comes
to a grand total. Yes, you guys an American sign language.
(01:08):
It comes to a grand total of seventeen books. Wow,
now I feel like I'm done. I am definitely done.
But you and I here to hear about me. You're
here to hear about our wonderful guest. Wonderful guess. Would
you like to introduce yourself?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Hi? Hi, I'm Janie Bennett. I run I own a
magazine over the UK called Television, which has been going
for all cranky forty odd years, which is a long time,
and I've been running it for over thirty years and
I owned it for almost twenty years, which shows a
(01:43):
completely I can imagination and or ambition. However, I do
love what I do, which is which is a fantastic
thing to do because it touches on every single aspect
of television and film production in the UK, which is
a fascinating subject to me because it's so incredibly fast changing.
It's so fast moving, it changes all of the time
(02:06):
and at the moment is going through a period of
what one might describe as accelerated change with a number
of business imperatives which are always technology driven. So everything
starts with the technology. TV was only possible, film was
only possible with the technology, and technology is driving a
pace of change now through UK film and TV as
it is across the world, which is going to change
(02:28):
it yet again very rapidly in many ways I think
positively and in many ways possibly negatively as well. The
biggest single change is the advent of machine learning and
automation at the moment, which fits in inso far as
taking jobs and fulfilling jobs and processes that were fulfilled
(02:52):
by people. Many of those originally are labor and intensive
and repeat it, repetitive functions. And people didn't go in
TV and film to do labor intensive, repetitive functions. They
went in to do something creative. So initially it's going
to be something that I think is going to inspire
or is going to encourage creativity, and it is going
(03:13):
to encourage a boom in the short medium term by
which I mean three to five years, and encourage it
many many different ways. VFX artists are going to have
more of their VFX creation work done in an automated way.
Editors are going to get more of their editing done
in a fairly straightforward Directors are going to get a
lot more of their shots and their storyboards done in advance. However,
(03:37):
after five years, the question is to what degree is
human creativity hold up against machine and to what extent
to the studios, yes, fonds, the video on demand streaming
video and demand services, the broadcasters do they believe their
product is the fulfillment of human endeavor and creativity or
(03:59):
just a product. And if it is just a product,
it's entirely plausible that a machine learning, an automation or
AI some people like to artificial intelligence may very well
start being the beginning of the middle and the end
of content creation. That's probably ten years away, but it
could be a lot seener.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So I'm pretty sure that you're aware that there is
currently a strike going on here.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
I believe that is one of the center things of
the strike. I was just out in LA and everyone's
talking about the strike in Ani. So that's a viable fear. Now.
I'm not very happy. I was like, oh, this is
going to be able to take over human emotion as
I see now it's a viable fear. Good job on
you' all for going on a strike.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Well, it's a fascinating idea if I can't, because once
upon in a time we used to talk one of
the idages in media was that there are no new
ideas in media. There are just reinterpretations or the Samuel
Golden Mayer face this statement. But there are only being
seven plots, you know, there are only seven plots that
a film can pursue. Okay, So one point in time
we said that. Now we're very quickly backtracking on that idea,
(05:11):
and rightly so. The one thing that AI is not,
which humanity is, is both abstract and disruptive, and that
is what we've got in our favor. However, there are
true works of art, beautiful films, beautiful television programs which
are made, and they are beautiful and gorgeous, and they
(05:32):
are creative works of art, and they are an expression
of an individual as well as a group collaborative effort,
and they're wonderful, wonderful pieces. But the vast majority of
TV isn't necessarily the vast majority of TV is going
through the paces, going through the motions. Maybe not the
vast majority, but certainly a lot of it. And if
(05:53):
that's the case, then the idea that that's replicated bio
machines of depressing. But so as if you're an accountant,
your odds of having an accounting job in ten years
are pretty slim if you work in the law. In
legal profession, most legal professions about case history is about
(06:13):
looking at all legal cases that can be scanned almost
instantly by AI. That looks there'll still be jobs and
barristers and judges for the foreseeable future, but again or
all of those jobs will disappear. The irony of the
whole thing, if you wanted to really sort of start
thinking about it, The iron of the whole thing is
(06:35):
that the jobs that are going to go are ones
that are not physical labor but are desktop driven jobs.
You know, it's a fascinating idea, and just run with it,
playing with it. There's so many things that come off.
At One is the idea of how we tax people
based on income and whether that tax might better be
expressed as a wealth tax rather than as an income tax.
(06:57):
The current tax income portfolio investments and wealth hardly at all.
It's going to be a reversal in the future, potentially,
because where is the world going to come from if people,
if the so many people are no longer working, if
we have automation at such a great extent, the irony
is that the desktop jobs, there's middle class jobs will
(07:18):
go first. Middle classes are broadly loosely being defined as
jobs that happen in office. Loosely, not all middle class
jobs happen in office, lawyers doctors, for example, but then
the medical profession is also subject. The way I so
just idly think it's went through, revolution and cultural change
(07:40):
has almost always come around between a union of students
and middle classes. It's always in history it's been the
middle classes have affected history. If you go back in
time to feudal times, those middle classes we might have
been defined as being lords or dukes or els, but
they were the one and still making social change and
(08:02):
making political change. Fast forward. Almost all political revolutions have
involved in middle classes, those middle classes as financial classes,
going back in time as business classes, perhaps in the
French Revolution for example, and the English Revolution Civil War.
It was certainly the laws fast forward to much as
(08:27):
Lenin or Marx might not approve the Russian revolution was
fermented first and foremost in the universities before bringing labor
and particularly the military. So if you look at our history,
if you remove those middle classes, it's going to be
(08:48):
interesting to see who actually supports social change and progressive
politics as well. Is not what we're here to talk about,
but it's an interesting aside as an implication of AI.
It's an interesting aside as to where the challenges will
be which will be based on IP intellectual property as
(09:09):
instead of Internet protocol and intellectual property. There are class
actions being brought already against tech companies that using someone's
writing style or photographic style or artistic style is an
infringement of their IP. Be interesting to see how those
(09:29):
play out and if they do play out successfully. This
also links back to the writer's gold stripe. So from
the Writer's gold Stripe, the impact of that has already
been felt across America, and it's been felt in a
different way in the UK, but it is still there.
Last time around, it led to more reality and more
(09:51):
factual content being commissioned and created.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Which was cheaper to.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Make, which was cheaper to make. This time I are
slightly different. It's time round the TV industry has always
been an industry that so the adage goes is recession proof,
you know, so when there's a recession or a downturn economically,
the TV industry kind of carries through pretty well. This
(10:17):
time around is different because the new model with the
asphalts is about subscriptions, and subscriptions is consumer expenditure, and
the consumer expenditure is going to be under pressure that
people might choose not to renew their Netflix or their
Amazon or their Apple TV Plus or their Disney subscription
in preference to a meal for their children. That might
(10:37):
be the case, that's one aspect, but certainly in terms
of the idea of growing, or they might just slim
down on a number of subscriptions they've got because there's
so many to be had. Yeah, I'm sure we have
the same in America. And the other side of that
is that the commercial broadcasts are reliant on advertising revenue,
and in the UK that decline is between than twenty
(11:00):
percent in like for light figures before we take inflation,
which is running out over ten percent over the last
year in the majority of time, So in real terms,
that's a twenty five percent cut on revenue for the
commercial broadcast is what you call the network broadcasters. That
twenty five percent means this is twenty five percent less
money to go around. It's not just twenty five percent
(11:22):
less money for commissions. It's probably higher again because that's
third party expenditure rather than internal expenditure. So and in
the UK we also have the BBC, which you don't have,
and the BBC has a license fee. However, the BBC's
license fee has been set at a static rate irrespective
of inflation, so already is ten percent behind by virtual inflation.
(11:45):
And then on top of that we've had a rather
oddly We've had a funeral which saved up a lot
of money with Queen Elizabeth. We had a coronation with
the new King, and we had Eurovision, which is a
musical competition which was hosted in the UK, all of
which shut up that same funding. So the BBC again
(12:08):
has got a significant reduction in its commissioning budget. So
all and all, this year is going to be a
challenging year for UK film and TV. Last year people
got a little bit deluded, a little bit carried away.
There was a backclock of COVID work post COVID which
(12:29):
frozen in production. There was committed money and budgets and
annual budgets that had gone in. So last year was
this boom year, and everyone, and not everyone, A lot
of people saw that as being a continuous boom, as
being an exponential growth, and a lot of people in
the UK and a lot of people invested a lot
(12:49):
of money in studios, in their teams, and the salary
inflation and a hell of a lot of investment in
quickly film stages, but also in post production. And the
fear for me going back to last summer, and that
was kind of crystalized in the autumn, is that the
money just wasn't going to be going around. And independent
(13:11):
production companies in the UK are telling me the same
thing they have been since before, certainly in the autumn,
that that commissioning funding was not the same as the
previous year. And now it's got worse again. And now
on top of that you've got the rise it's going
to strike. So just like America has got a coal
on the back of the rioters guilt and on the
(13:32):
back of inflation, and on back of the fact that
the city no longer loves Netflix like it used to.
So Netflix has got financial pressure on it. It needs
to show a financial return, as as new tech companies
tend to any recession returns, rather than showing that it's
just growing mind share. That's great, that's just got numbers
(13:56):
which will turn into cash at some point in the
inde in the future. Now it's got to show a
profit and that puts a lot of pressure on Netflix too,
and that pressure then goes down to commissioning and gone.
Other days where Netflix would say to Woody, howson you
make that movie you've always wanted to make. We won't
(14:16):
look at it, we won't review it. Just go and
make that amazing movie he wants to make. That's gone.
And they've become more and more and more and more
fixed and rigid in their expectations and their degree to
which they want to intervene and out shape and coerce
and form content. So for most of all, they want
(14:38):
to reduce the amount of money they're spending. So it's
a bit of a difficult year around for film and
TV in the UK, just as it is in America.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
I just want to ask this questions. You have said
so much information. There have been so many questions that
I wanted to ask, and so many things I wanted
to say that I have thoroughly forgotten by now. So
this just brings me to the question that's on my
mind right now. I heard you say there are a
lot of independent production homes or the homes independent production
studios that are out there going the commission dollars aren't there.
(15:10):
But we now have the opportunity to start our own
streaming company on like Roku. So why not Why wouldn't
they do that?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Because they because there's a cost implication. So the big cost, yeah,
the big cost of being a broadcast, and there's so
many costs. The first is you've got to get down
to the EPG, the electronic program guide, and that costs money.
And then you've got to be in the right place
on the electronic program guide. So when you switch on
your smart TV at home, I'm guessing you you're faced
(15:40):
with a similar thing that we are here. You're faced
with probably first Netflix, probably second Amazon, probably third Apps.
If you scroll down, you might find Disney and Apple
TV as one of those big circles or logos on
that home on that homepage of your TV, But you
don't find a small independent production company with two hundred hours,
(16:06):
two thousand hours of material. It's not there. They had
to do deals. They had to make deals. You know,
if you want to know if you I would say,
as an independent production company, if you in this in
the UK, an independent production company used to before as
far before streaming, used to own its ip it's intellectual property.
(16:29):
So having made a program, it would license that program
to the VBC or to I TV or Channel four
Tele five to play or this guy play the program,
but it would retain the rights on that program, which
you could then sell over seats or it could then
sell again at a later date to the same broadcaster
because it had give it a window, gave it a
(16:51):
six month a year to play that content in and
after that content in after reverted back. One of the
opportunities that comes out with learning automation one to conjure
with in terms of what it's kind of due to
the TV industry is if you wanted to do localized
translated television, you can now automate it in a way
(17:11):
that you couldn't perform. So there's I've been retaken by
two products. One is called paper cup and paper cup
automate is like a Babel fish, so it translates what
has said. But then it adds an extra layer because
it also interprets the emotional delivery with the way that
it was said to give a more emotional foreign version,
(17:34):
and that's what was made it. The second is an
interesting story. There was a film, I think it's called
The Fall, about the two girls climbing the radio mast.
And they climb the radio mast and it's a kind
of B movie film. It's made by British director and
(17:55):
they made the film and unsurprising, these two ladies who
climb the radio mask get stuck up the radio mask.
It's it was on a netplix quite a while and
did very well. It's a good drama. But because they're
improvising funnily enough, they swear a lot, so rather than
so when they listen to it back that I have
to work. Oh rat, we are not going to get
(18:17):
a thirteen certificate for this. We're going to we can't
get a blow eighteen just because the sheer volume of
f's in the in the production. So what he did
was he talked to a technology friend of his techophile,
and between them they found a way of adjusting the
human face in an elastic way such that when the
(18:40):
protagonists used the F word instead of in, which looks
like in a certain way when you say it, they
could say freaking. So they say freaking a lot on
that show, you'll notice, And the reason is because that's
been translated that I've been changed in a dr that's
been synthesiz with a synthesized voice. In otherwise it wasn't redone.
It was designs as you can mimic a voice with
(19:03):
thirty to fifty words these days, and it's fairly convincing.
And they also change the facial expression so it looks
like they were saying the right work. If you watch it,
you really couldn't tell. But they've eliminated the fifty s.
And the point about that is that's also applicable to translations.
So what was once an expensive an expensive option to
(19:25):
get your archive translated and translated into a foreign language
to be played out in France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain,
wherever where they prefer to hear it in their mother tongue,
in the vernacular, they might hear it dubbed. Then they
prefer to hear it properly dubbed. Now I prefer to
hear it such the actors look like they're saying it,
(19:46):
and that technology has already been employed, not necessarily flaw
less AI dot AI, which is the second of those
two machine learning AI plug ins, but it's already happening,
and that opens up all of that IP, all that
(20:06):
old content, and it opens up to a new market.
My personal pet theory is that we will live in
an increasing an age of increasing hyper personalization in terms
of TV and film. What that means is it has
many aspects to it. One is that there'll be more
and more and more content, just like there is in
(20:27):
the music industry. If you want to listen to grime
or you want to listen to rap, you can listen
to twenty four to seven, and you can listen to
new artists all the time. Same will happen in film
and TV. It'll be more and more personalized to the
content that you want. If you want zombie movies, you
can have zombie movies zombie content twenty four to seven
if that's your thing, right. So hyper personalization will lead
(20:50):
to more and more shows that we directed towards you,
because there'll be less expensive to make by virtual of
machine learning automation, So there'll be more and more content.
The other aspects to that hyper personalization, which is more theoretical,
is that you can fine tune the content, not necessarily
in an interactive way where you choose one path after another.
(21:12):
Does our protagonist turn right? Does she turn left? But
rather that you have, rather that you can choose whether
you have a happy ending, an ambivun tending, or a
sad ending at the beginning or a show. Hyper Personalization
is the next big thing which will come on the
back machine learning automation, and we'll lead to a boom
in content creation over the next three to five years
(21:33):
and then within ten years. I don't know what that
looks like.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
I'm just going to say we already have a boom
in content creation. I mean I was part of that boom.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yeah, boom.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
There's just so much content. There is no way in
the world that a person can like, you can watch
something different every day of your life and you've never
come close to finishing it. Of the content that's done
in the world.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Right, Yes, but how about if that content with the
content that you wanted to watch, how part of that
content was let's say you wanted to pick up Mexican cookery. Yeah,
quite specific right, how Man Mexican cooking shows are there
some it's not. Yeah. So then in the same way
(22:17):
that on YouTube you can find if you drill down
hard enough and deep enough and fast enough, you can
find more and more content that suits you, the same
way that you can do that on TikTok, and the
same way that you can Yeah, and the same kind
of idea will also apply to TV and film.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
I would actually love that. I feel like I'm not
gonna lie. I feel like there's too much hype of
personalization on all of my streaming because so many different tastes.
And then you go to someone else's house and they
have all these movies that you wanted to see, and
so you have to go home and then search for
the movie specifically because you didn't even know what was there,
and this is what you want to see. Excuse me,
(22:54):
my taste change. I need to be introduced to new
things at all times, not necessarily what I want to see,
but what other things.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
So when I was a kid. When I was a kid,
you know, there are only so many outlets that you
could listen to music through, and so when you listen
to music, you're constantly being introduced to new music that
you otherwise wouldn't listen at an age when we valued
music perhaps a little bit more than its value today,
you know, as as an expression of our identity, as
an expression of who we were and our ambitions and
(23:25):
who we want to be in life. And you you know,
as a child, as an adolescent, you'd find you change
those musical tastes and you'd be introduced to new musical tastes.
You weren't constantly just on one big cycle. You don't
have any choice. Likewise, with film and TV, there was
so limited horizons that you were introduced to content you
(23:46):
otherwise would never have watched. And you know, and not
not least documentary and news. You know. One of the
things I find slightly depressing is that a lot of
people not them without going down the fake news Donald
Trump route, you know, you know, but rather the reliability
(24:06):
and the credibility and the accountability of that news that's
consumed through the Internet is sometimes questionable, and sometimes that
spreads misinformation, and because it's hyper personalized, that misinformation then snowballs.
You know. So if you're if you I don't know,
let's say take something like you're in COVID denial COVID
(24:26):
doesn't exist. Covidn't then you could find more and more
and more content, you know, online that would support that
view a little bit like that potentially in terms of
where we go volun TV that it's going to be commodified,
and therefore that with that commodification will come this personalization.
And if we go down to that ultimate idea of
(24:48):
content being created entirely in a CG of VFX of
three D world, then at that point there you know
the idea content could be created very very quickly and
very specifically. It's kind of scary. It's kind of really scary.
(25:09):
It's like the Messa verse. I like that scary. What's
wrong with real life?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
We all have a life? Would lead I'm sure, I
mean it? What is the movie? I can't remember the movie?
Never mind, I'm not going to talk about it because
I specifically, I've covered all the trip points I really
wanted to cover except for one thing, and the one
thing that I have not covered is how did you
start your magazine and why is it important to the
broadcast world today?
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Very simply, I didn't start it. I unharrassed it. I
was a director of a big publishing company. I was
quite young, and I was provided way beyond my years,
and I didn't like being a director of a big
publishing company. Wasn't very good at it either. But why
is it important? It's important because just like TV and
(25:59):
film just talking just now, it's the idea of curation
of content. It's the idea that you come to you
go to a broadcaster, or you can come to a
magazine and there's an expectation of curator that the editor
and the editorial team would have thought about what's relevant,
what's important, and we'll have curated that. And I has
created a diet of content which is relevant either on
(26:24):
a benchmarking annual basis we do a lot of surveys,
or it can be thematic based on change. You know.
One of the things that I have a a particular
focus on which most business publishers don't need to be
publishers don't necessarily and I believe should is that idea
of change is that it's the so what principle If
(26:47):
you're reporting something that people has been doing for ages,
never in a day, that's not very interesting. What's interesting
is how is that changing? What does that mean? What
do you do to change it, and what are the
outcomes and the well of even the speed of that change,
accelerated change is just so rapid, so fast, it's changing everything.
(27:08):
And we're talking about learning aut question. I was giving
you some fairly you know, forward looking ideas as to
where I see it going, and I say three to
five years, it's going to create a boom. And the
question is what happens after that? And I don't know,
I really don't. But what I do know is that
it will look very, very different from what it does today,
and the content that we consume and the way that
(27:29):
we consume it will also be, I believe, very different
in a relatively short period of time. And it is
in the in the history of film and TV. It's
a very short period of time. It's going to change.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
I'm just going to say, well, I was alive. I
feel like the democratization of filmmaking is insane because if
you had told me that I was going to make films,
I had laughed at you and told you, maybe I'll
be in a film. But that's still funny. But I
definitely I write a book.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Oh look, everyone's a filmmaker exactly.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, So it's that's interesting to me. And to feel
that it's going to become even more open, that's going
to be so weird. And then like the auto automization
and CGI being available to everyone, this is going to
be a very interesting, very interesting way to live life.
Although please do not hyper personalized. Please we'd like to
(28:29):
see I.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Would rather they didn't. I look, honestly, I would. I
think there's something wonderful about people gathering together to have
a common experience. I still love going to the cinema
and seeing an amazing movie where two hundred four hundred
one thousand people sit in a room. I remember you
started this by talking about Bollywood and I remember being
(28:52):
in India and seeing a film in an Indian cinema
against the local cinema and where there's socially ambitions were
completely different from the way that they are in the
UK or in America. In America they're slightly you know,
people are more engaged and more openly engaged in the
perhaps in the UK with the film, but in India,
they were standing up, they were dancing to the songs,
(29:14):
they were clapping, they were booing, they were hissing. It
was like you know it, it was a fantastic experience.
It was, you know, it was everyone was fully engaged
at a communal level and a piece of content. And
you know, that's a wonderful thing. And I think it
would be a shame to lose that. And we had
(29:34):
that as a historical past in our theater. In mystery
plays in people sitting around a campfire and listening to
the village elder or the villy bore tell their story
about hunting tigerts, you know, and it's we've had that
time more ever since we came down from the trees.
Its chimpanzees. So it's always been a shame I think
(29:55):
that our DNA didn't come from orangutans or maybe bonobos.
We came from chimpanzees, because when you watch a chimpanzee doc,
you always feel slightly in at ease because they're a
little bit too like us, you know what I mean,
They're a bit too They reveal the bits of us
we don't really want to reveal. But orangutans and orangutans
are just so unbelievably cool, you know, there's so much
(30:16):
better apes. Banobo's hugely sociable, maybe not in a way
that we all want to be sociable, but hugely sociable,
which is our second closest DNA, I believe is Bonobos.
But we're chimps in that collective experience. That that experience
that we get when we go to the cinema is
(30:37):
also replicated in part from a traditional broadcasting culture where
we compare notes about the content we've seen and it
isn't necessarily personal to us, and we say hyper personalized.
There is that sense that we're watching something which I
can talk to my mum about, all my son about,
and that's a pretty cool thing.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
I remember talking a while ago to We have of
thing that we do call the Production the Producers around table,
when we talk to producers in Hollywood about their visions
and have what they've seen. And one of the things
they said, it's very unusual today to get a hit.
Like back in the day, you would have a show
and then everyone had seen it, and then that's what
they talked about at the water cooler. Nowadays, what people
(31:20):
talk about at the water cooler is different according to
who they are. But then every once in a while,
every bloom, you get that one show that's just the
water cooler show and It's funny to me that even
though they are using algorithms to make sure that each
person gets what they want to see, we still have
one or two or five shows out there that are
(31:43):
just like, gotta see it. I agree, everyone has to
see it, which means those shows are connecting on the
basics of human emotion as a great story. I don't
want to be like that would be.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
A long made that can a long way that continue.
But you're right, there are less and less at those moments.
But at the same time as that, you know, at
a human level. You know, my friends, let alone with
my industry friends, with my friends who don't work in industry,
I do have some, but you know, there's those Even
then we do talk about what we haven't haven't seen
(32:18):
on TV. We do say, you know, and it was
at one point, what have you seen on Netflix? That's
kind of dissolved a little bit. It's Netflix is not
quite as wrong as it was. You know, Amazon, Amazon
certainly has a vision. If you break up the broadcasts,
it's quite interesting. I think Amazon and Apple TV plus
both have a vision of having content that does transcend
(32:40):
it or does move across audiences in it. Where's network Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
One of our friends was a director, mentioned that like
Apple TV plus actually that you do different because you know,
when you write scripts, it's like, oh, this is going
to be ninety this is going to be one hundred
and some pages. They're like, they let you do different
time limits so maybe thirty one, so maybe sixty something
or fifty seven or because it's according to how you
want the story told. I think that's amazing to have
(33:10):
that sort of freedom. But then you can see how
where Apple TV plus came up with the idea that
they wanted to tell stories using influencers that people knew
that we're going to influence society for the best. Yeah,
almost every Apple TV plus the show was a thinker, which.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Is which is which is an interesting idea. And I
earlier on, earlier on, before we started, you were talking
about America and America's sort of media footprint. Yeah, absolutely right.
You know, I'm on the one hand, I completely applaud
you know, I love the Jay Hunts. The break. The
commission from the BBC joined Apple TV over in the
UK fantastically where it happened.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
I missed that Jay Hunt She.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Was a BBC commissioner. She joined the Apple TV Plus
many years ago, and she's she's a fantastic commissioner and
she has real vision. And within Apple TV Plus you
have things like Prehistoric Planet one and two, which is
just incredible works of art as for storytelling about our
dinosaur and students and absolutely wonderful, wonderful, wonderful content. And
(34:19):
you know that Being You, which I thought was a
superb show about childhood, which is on Apple as well.
I thought absolutely beautiful, a really nice guy and I
made it a really good guy and it's just incredible
content and shot in a cinematic style into to have
a broader audience. But the point about it is is
these are broad, families, sit down shows, right, yeah, which
(34:44):
I think is rather wonderful. Now. The interesting thing is
you're suggesting, yeah, and we're back, so there is It's
an interesting idea because from one perspective, you know, you
(35:04):
could look at American media from the from the context
of cultural imperialism and the idea that American media has
shaped a certain and a very specific cultural mindset, you know, yeah,
(35:25):
which can be you know, which can be expressed and
not least self expression or self realization as as a
as a desirable and important imperative life imperative which could
be quite strongly disputed from the context of I don't know,
(35:48):
let's say, an Islamic viewpoint and the importance of family
and the importance of extended family, which is not just Islamic,
but also many Asian cultures, not least Hindu or seek
or Janist or or confusion, you know. And it's it's,
you know, the idea that that value system is not
(36:10):
as important as self realization. It's actually an American idea.
It's an American ideology, and it's borne out of, you know,
a frontier kind of spirit and mindset, and and it's
very specific. So yes, you're right, you know that that
(36:30):
American you know, that American media machine has been hugely
important over time, but it has a very specific liberal viewpoint.
It rarely deviates from that viewpoint. And that and that
liberal viewpoint in many ways has historically been very intolerant
of alternative thinking or sexuality or race or class or
(36:57):
anything else. In that it's been it's been quite specific,
and I don't know that's always necessarily desirable. I think
television has been true in the West to that American
ideology and true in the UK to a large extent
(37:19):
as well. And I think TV itself, though is under
is under extraordinary pressure from even more accelerated forms of
self realization and self promotion and presentation and self president
presentation which is found within social media where we are
(37:41):
all publishers or broadcasters, which is just.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
About to say that that's hard, you know. I was
talking to a m what is she development executive from
a production place that actually is owned by one of
the production homes in the UK, and they were I'm
talking to her at lunch and she happened to mention
that in the US there is still a very large
audience for network television, which was very surprising, happy because
(38:11):
I would love to get a show on network And
if anyone from the network is listening to this, please
might remember me. But she was in the Midwest watches TV. Yes,
the West Coast and the East Coast they stream, but
the Midwest watches TV. They get the whole family together
(38:32):
and they watch TV. And very very interesting.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
That's large. That's that's a mix of numerous things. One
is the idea that network TV is still something that
you can sit down as a family and watch. Secondly,
that fits that sits within. I wonder if that's true
at the Bible Belt in the South. I wond if
that's true in Louisiana, for example. I wonder if that's
true in Floria, for example. That'd be interesting. In South
(39:01):
Florida will be a really interesting case study. I bet
it's fifty to fifty there. But yes, absolutely, But if
you look at people in California or New York State,
or Washington State, or up in Maryland and down, I
should say, if you look at those states, isn't it
because you've got a lot of small apartments and small
(39:25):
and small groups of people in those departments. Partly to
explain it that you have increasingly divided families, and you know,
children who fled the nests in their twenties thirties, or
older people who just run that course and their children
fled the nest. In turn, I wonder if that's partly
to do with it. You know, in my home, I'm
(39:47):
an old dad. I've got a fourteen year old and
eleven year old, and neither of them watch much broadcast TV,
most of them watch, most of them watch streamed content still.
But my you know, my son, certainly, that's my daughter
increasingly watches social media TikTok dancing mainly. But she you know,
(40:07):
but that's incredibly It's more and more common that kids
watch less and less broadcast TV and more and more
YouTube or social media in different forms.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
The numbers for YouTube are falling off for the younger generation.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, absolutely right, just too long. It's too long.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Instagram and TikTok absolutely interesting. It has been only interesting.
But when you're watching these things like, it's what you
want to watch, it's who you want to watch, it's
the way you want to watch it. It's perfect. It's perfect.
It's just for you. Anyway, I'm pretty much done with
this conversation.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I'm better give you anything to think about too much
or too little. However, you have to do.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
One thing, which is what is the name of your
magazine so people can read it.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
Televisual dot com is the website television and we get
and we even gave that word was given to the
to the dictionary. It did exist before, just but televisual,
as it sounds is now, you know, is me common parlance.
It wasn't when the magazine was first launched. It is
now so even kind of half not really because if
(41:21):
the word did exist, did it it? Who knows? But
you do actually have the expression to look at something
which is televisual, to describe something that comes from television.
So who knows. Who knows.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
I'm a writer and I didn't know that was a word.
This is the same.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Television distant viewing, televisual, distant image. You know, tele telekinesis telepathy, Yeah,
you know, telepathy, teleconesis moving things at a distance with
your mind, telepathy reading on other people's minds from a distance.
So tele television distant viewing. Literally than I'm.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Going to go ahead and wrap the show up for works.
You can find out more about and televisual at what
website again.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
At televisual dot com. It's a very easy run to
remember and think about. It is that I think, I
think we live in an extraordinarily fast changing, accelerated well
and I think that what we're doing and we have
a microcosm on what's happening in our broader while and
this idea of machine learning and automation we should be
looking at it. There was a very very and it's
(42:31):
not mine, but it's The Guardian in the UK, The
Guardian dot com. They had a very good piece by
Naomi Clin on machine learning and automation, which I urge
anyone to look up if you search Anami Clin, who
should be known to many of you, and you search
her up on the Guardian, it's a very good piece
(42:53):
about the implications behind and about the possibilities and futures
of and this links back to some of the points
which I wasn't expressing in detail because I wasn't time
about the idea. How actually, as part of this, we
need to rethink our taxation system. I need to rethink
our relationship with power very very quickly, because it's going
(43:20):
to consume us before we know it. Because you know
what it ultimately does is it gives increasing amounts of
control into a small number of people, such as their
their influence on and control of finance and money is perpetuated.
(43:43):
If you link that in with how AI has been
used in China, for example, forfacial recognition, we link that
in with cbdc's digital currencies which we're all going to
get very shortly, which are being sold to us as
I know why we would want to buy into them,
but they're being sold to us as a replacement for cash.
(44:05):
Most it's not using cash quite successfully using credit cards
or debit cards. So you know, but if you look
at what that does, it's all about the apparatus is
fast becoming stronger and stronger for a true and I
don't mean this in a conspiracy theory way either. I
mean it in a very literal way. And we are
(44:28):
putting more and more power and control towards what could
be an increasingly authoritarian state in a period of time.
We have an increasingly polarized right and progressive political division,
and where the justification for actions can be fed to
(44:48):
you very easily. I'm a student of history. I believe
in cock up rather than conspiracy. I'm not a conspiracy theorist.
I just believe that too much power and influence is
about to be put into two for a number of
people who will see it as their job to perpetuate
their power, their stranglehold, their control over us all. And
(45:11):
I think media is part of a much bigger picture.
And I think she learn your automation. It's going to
have a profound impact on us in the film and
TV industry, a profound impact on everyone. I think they're
sleepwalking into it.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
I want to thank you so much for being here.
I have learned so much about so much, like history
and an automation and governments.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
And it's been a flow of a flow of flow
of sound bites. My apologies. I'd be very happy to
pick up on any one of those and explain it
with more detail.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
I am not one of those people that edit, so
this entire thing is just going up the way it is. Oh,
I want to pick everyone in the audience for being
here today and for listening. And I'm going to go
ahead and like I'm all on one of the ends.
I thought, ladies, you can catch everything that your ladies
are doing at www. Dot and I thought, ladies dot com,
you can go down to the middle of the page
(46:05):
and see the charities that we probably support. We asked
that you give them a moment and support them as well,
and remember that wisdom is all around you if you're
open to finding it and accepting its. Peace in love
you guys from Monona and the Missing Jade. Oh yeah,
thanks for listening.
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