The Rest Is Entertainment - Goodbye Dolly: Musician, Megastar, Mogul

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

Is Dolly Parton’s greatest song actually a resignation letter? Is any internet hype real because of clipping culture? Who will take over the wheel for the Top Gear reboot? Tributes are rolling in for Queen of Country Dolly Parton, who sadly passed away last week. Marina and Richard discuss her legacy as an entertainment mogul and businesswoman.  Shorter clips of long-form content are everywhere at the moment. Is anything on your feed actually popular, or is it just stealth marketing? Top Gear is back, Blind Date has a new host, and the Rooneys have their own documentary series. Richard gives you the ultimate rundown of the shows hitting your screens this autumn.  The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Sponsored by Lloyds. Looking for extra value from your spending? You can bank on Lloyds to help your money go further. Search Lloyds Rewards in your app. Summer sale is here: get an annual membership for a third off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com  Video Editor: Adam Thornton & Louis Mealing Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott  Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy  Social Producer: Emma Jackson Exec Producer: Ami Bennett Filmed at www.westdigitalstudios.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, entertainment loves keeping business in the family. Yeah, it's no secret that that's traditionally been an easier route, perhaps, into show businesses. It's not necessarily the only way to get into the business. However, there are lots and lots of examples where it really has worked for people. The Coppola's stretch out beyond film, into music. Nicholas Cage, though, changed his surname from Coppola. He's Francisville's nephew, and he changed his surname just so that he could, you know, just be Nicholas.

But one assumes that in LA they didn't know that he was a copular. He stands alone for me. I always think Stedarskaard is an interesting one because lots of his children became very, very famous and he always calls himself a nepo dad because as his children got more and more famous, people started to come to him more for roles. That's a nice way around. So entertainment has some remarkable family machinery, but however useful the surname, it isn't always the only way in.

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Don't miss Buick's employee pricing for you event. Visit buick.ca for more details. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Resters Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hello everyone. Hi, Marina. Hello, Richard. I'm sorry we are parted. I know it's because you've been on holiday the whole summer. Well, that's not strictly true, as you know, but I am currently not away. Yes. Perhaps you're not on holiday. Perhaps you're on a mission.

Yeah. Who knows? I never like to ask. No. Do you want to know my big news this week? I would love to know your big news, Richard. Yeah. I have had to abandon my fantasy football team.

You know, I dipped back in this year, but it's too stressful. You know you're not allowed to play. I know. I thought this year, my brother-in-law was over and he's got a team. I thought, do you know what? What harm can it do? I just put a little team in. And it's ruined every football match I watch.

So you have to know your. self, don't you? So I am out. That's great. Just every day as it comes and just get back on that wagon, because I know you can't do this. I know you, I know, you just can't control yourself. I want to thank you for your support in this issue. As always. Thank you. As always. Yeah, this week we are talking about Dolly Parton, a total, total icon. And it's sort of been amazing since she so sadly died. But there have been so many stories. And I guess we both have a lot to say about her as a kind of entertainment legend. We do indeed. Yeah, we can't, we can't not speak about her. I'm also going to be talking

about, I've been up in Edinburgh, so I'm going to talk about all the big new shows that have been announced and all the rumors of shows as well, some really, really interesting ones. So just a little kind of update on what's coming our way in the next six months to a year. And we're also going to talk about long-form things on TV being cut down into much shorter things, almost like microdramas, and just clipping culture in general. Is anything that you see on your feed actually real? Now, talking of real, it doesn't get any realer than Dolly Parton. She died last week.

We wanted to talk about it. We know it's been a little while, but we felt that, you know, there's so many amazing stories about her. And she's such an icon and is such an important person, I think, in the culture that's been and the culture that's going to come. So we wanted just to pay our own tribute. There have been so many tributes to her sort of amazing. artistic career and I endorse all of them and have read them all. But I'm also interested in her

as a sort of brilliant entertainment business personality and particularly a sort of philanthropic brain. And she was just incredibly funny, incredibly witty. She always made the joke that you, if you were going to denigrate her, she always made the joke before you. She said, on surgery, she said, I'm a self-made woman and I have the doctor bills to prove it. When they said, would you ever sue the tabloid. She said, yes, for printing lies about me in the middle of the magazine and not on the cover. A great summation of her is when she was a big advocate for gay rights, and she was a real advocate for gay people getting married. And she said her reason was, why shouldn't they suffer like the rest of us? I mean, that's the way to do it.

I mean, it's been amazing reading all the stuff because her story was obviously so incredible and she came from such complete poverty. She always said she had like three passions, God, music and sex. But she said the order would change without her knowing. And I think all of those things, she also said that she, I look like a woman, but I think like a man. And I think as a sort of entertainment business figure, as well as an entertainer, which she was more than anything,

she was sort of fascinating in that regard. Because we talk a lot, don't we, about icons of today and the way they control their image and the things that they have to do. And she was way ahead of the curve on all of that. She really took control of her own career and told people who she was before they could tell her who she was, which is a head of a skill, if you can put it off.

Yeah, it's insanely hard to be that sort of uncompromising. A lot of her songs all through her career were not played on the radio. because she refused to compromise but she kept all the rights to all her songs which again is incredibly way before Taylor's version way before any of those things

she understood that there was the story that Elvis wanted to record I would always love you who wouldn't want to record I would always love you and she was desperate for Elvis to record it for obvious reasons I mean it financially would but also you just what I'm honoured to have Elvis

cover one of your songs but Colonel Tom Parker Elvis's manager wanted 50% of the publishing rights in return for Elvis covering that song, which is something he did quite a lot because obviously Elvis covers your song. It's a big deal. So Colonel Tom would try and take that money. And she said it broke my heart, but I had to say no. And that is a decision that paid off because she's made $60, $70 million out of that one song.

And 30 to $35 million of that did not go to Colonel Tom Parker. So we missed Elvis singing it. But a lot of money was raised for. for Dolly and a lot of money of a lot of that money was spent on very good things. I wanted to talk about a very specific part of her career, which is the Porter Waggoner show, because I think it tells you such a lot about who she was, why she was important, what sort of a human being she was. And so she turned up at Nashville the day after she graduated high school, made a name for

herself. And the Porta Waggoner show was a big TV show at that time. And Porter Waggner was a big star. So, you know, he was the big name in this relationship. I've said before I'm sure that my brother once showed me a photo of Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley and said, what's strange about this photo? And I didn't know. He said Elvis wasn't famous when that photo was taken.

So that was Elvis having his photo taken with Johnny Cash. And so it was with Dolly Parton and Porter Waggoner. She's very much the junior partner there. He'd already had a partner on that show called Norma Lee. And the first few times Dolly turns up on the show and starts singing. She gets booed by the audience because they miss Norma Lee so much. And they're like, who's this upstart? He's never going to amount to anything.

And Porter Wagoner, to his credit, said, okay, for the next few shows, we're going to do duets because they won't boo me. Okay, so Porter, from the beginning we think, oh, okay, we have some sympathy for Porter. Anyway, quickly becomes apparent that Dolly is the star of this thing. So he's with the show seven years in the end, but is writing songs, is recording songs. It's trying to get a career outside of the Porter Wagoner show. a restrictive contract and all that stuff. Eventually she leaves and Porter Waggoner sues her for $3 million. You're not allowed to leave.

She says, I'm going to leave. Sues it for $3 million. Dottie at that point, of course, does not have $3 million. But gets out of the contract anyway, it settles with him and says, okay, I will pay you a million dollars to leave this show. So firstly, we're told, we know, we see immediately, because this is a big hit show. She's been perfectly well. I think her first salary on this show is $60,000 a year,

so more money than her father made in a lifetime. So she's on good money, but she sees a different future out of there. So she buys herself out of that contract for a million dollars. And assiduously, over the next four or five years, pays it back bit by bit. She said, she said, Porter Wagoner got the first million dollars I ever made. So it absolutely buys herself out of that contract, becomes free.

And from that moment on, she's making money. Now later on, Porter Waggoner is in trouble. So he's got this money. Obviously, he's been a huge star, but he has tax issues and all sorts of things. And he ends up owing the taxman half a million dollars and is about to go bankrupt. Now, this is a guy, don't forget, who's just sued, you know, who sued her for $3 million. But there's also a guy who, in the very early days of the show, said, I'll do duets with you so you won't get booed. So what Dolly does is she buys his publishing company.

for exactly the amount of money that he owes half a million dollars, buys it off him, he gets the money, pays off his tax bill, she then hands the company back to him so it could be left to his children. So, you know, she's worked her socks off to pay this man back half a million dollars and still has a big enough heart and a kind enough heart to buy back that, to buy his company for half a million dollars just so his kids have something to inherit. I mean, it's quite classy.

The relationship with him is fascinating. because I Will Always Love You is about breaking up with him, not as a romance, but about she felt like when she was trying to get out of this contract, that she couldn't explain it all to him. So she wrote that song. So I Will Always Love You is about the breakup of a professional relationship. And she then walked into his office and played it to him. And he said, oh, it's the prettiest song I ever heard. Obviously he did still sue her.

But it's sort of amazing that it's the most sort of perfect, perfect song for people's breakups and then, and yet it was really about their relationship. Yeah, and it goes to show where creativity comes from, which is all sorts of different places. There is an urban legend that she wrote, I Would Always Love You and Jolene on the same day, which is not the case. But in fairly quick succession, and in fact, funnily enough, one of the reasons that she left Porter in the end, one of the many reasons, she didn't need another one of the last. one I don't think, was he didn't want her to play the guitar part on Jolene.

He had that sort of level of control. So he bought in two male session musicians to play the guitar part on Jolene. And neither of them could do it. Neither of them could do the thing that Dolly had written. So Dolly does do it herself in the end. But again, I think it's one of those things where she was like, maybe just leave me in charge of my own career. She absolutely grew up at a time where there were people trying to take money from you,

almost always men and there were people who wanted to control you and tell you who you were. You just see from so early on, she was like, I absolutely back myself. I back my talents. I back my songwriting. I back my personality. I back my business now. And that struggle, it's still a struggle for female artists. But imagine that struggle back in that era and the sort of guts that it took to overcome that.

And the thing I love most about Dolly really is, is she was. wasn't particularly an angel. She had, you know, she could sort of set herself up as one. And obviously the incredible work she did with books for young children and stuff, you know, she, she certainly wears a halo. But she's so mischievous. She's so tough. She's so her own person. She took zero nonsense from anyone at any point. And yet she became, and this wasn't always the case, she became universally beloved. And, I think more importantly, so it's amazing that she existed, amazing what she did, amazing the stuff that she left us, amazing what she showed us with her philanthropy and stuff like that. But that's lasted for her whole life. But it now continues, and this is the point, you cannot be what you cannot see, right? And there's a new generation of female stars and male stars now who see what it is that Dolly did with her money. Now, Dolly wasn't a billionaire because she gave away an awful lot of her money,

but made enough money to be a billionaire. And there are other people in that situation right now. And if you don't have Dolly as an example, then you're sitting down thinking, oh, what should I do? You know, do I owe the world anything? You know, what's my legacy? They can look at Dolly. I'm thinking of Taylor Swift, but there are other examples.

They can look at Dolly, see what she did. And that's a course for them to follow. So that legacy continues. And then, by the way, there will be another generation of artists who will see what Taylor Swift did because she copied Dolly. And that sort of thing, it just passes down the years. It's almost like being Abraham Lincoln and saying things that pass down generation to generation because people see you, they want to be you, they want to do the thing that you did.

And that's what she's given the word. And she's done it in such a way without ever being a goody-to-shoes as well with always being funny, always being cheeky and always being herself. I mean, it's like Bowie multiplied by Prince, right? Yeah. The giving is very interesting because like everything she did, it's incredibly strategic. And as you say, there are people like, or people like J.K. Rowling who have thought really carefully about how to disperse their money. I remember the first time, remember for a long time, Jeff Bezos gave absolutely no money away.

And the first time he, he, I remember being really annoyed about this, the first time that he gave a lot away, he gave $100 million. At the time, by the way, he earned $205 million a day. So this is like, I remember working this out. This was like somebody on the UK median salary donating £34.56 to charity. Plus gift aid. Yeah. Which actually a lot of people have done. But they don't get a big gala about it.

But anyway, what he did was he created this award called the Courage and Civility Award, which he gave to Dolly Parton. And I remember thinking, yes, she understands how to do it. Why don't you understand how to do it? Why can't you work out how to do it? But she, the whole time which she was doing that, she was still, I think kind of just how sexy she was is sort of amazing. Because she said such, I mean, I suppose people would call them inappropriate things. She said she became aware of her magnetism during her baptism when she was 12 because her white cotton dress like clung to her breast.

She's so sort of full on. Dolly, you're in church. I know. Well, she said she always felt horny in church. She said, but that's the thing, she said, that's the great thing about a sense of humor and a sex drive. You can't wait to share it with everyone else. And to be able to be like that and to remain, I think it's just really very, very difficult. And there are people who are kind of sexual icons like May West who also had this incredible sort of strength and wit, but nothing on this scale really to be a sort of brilliant business person. And so much of the philanthropy was quiet. It wasn't. like a Jeff Bezos gala where I'm going to give my special award of £34.56 to somebody today. Exactly. It's like Dollywood, which is a perfect example of the nakedly commercial bit of Dolly Parton, which you'll be shocked to learn I admire. Anybody who worked at Dollywood who wanted to go into further education, she would pay their fees.

Anyone who wanted to do it. That was incredibly important to her. And that sort of, again, you really, really, really don't have to do that. You know, back when with the Industrial Revolution, there were religious industrialists who would set up, you know, model towns and ideal towns and build, you know, places for people to live. It's possible to make an absolute truckload of money to constantly want more money and to constantly build things and look after people. And that's something that she did. And that's something, a lesson that hopefully, I think certainly artists, will learn from her because they have a certain type of sensibility. But the billionaires of the world today, you just think it's okay.

It's okay to want all that money and to have these valuations. But my God, you could do some good with this money that isn't just, I wonder if we could build a colony on Mars. You know, there's plenty of things on Earth you could be spending that money on right now and leave a legacy that isn't, oh, that weirdo who wants to go to Mars back in the 21st century. Yeah, we remember him. That's the way to leave a legacy.

Dolly will be remembered a long time. I could lose him to Mars, Richard, though. You know, please, you know, we don't have to retain him. If, God forbid, he establishes a colony there, then maybe we should just let it happen. But yes, if he also gave 300 million books to children, that would be great. Can you imagine that first colony on Mars? Imagine the people who want to be there. That's going to be a mood.

Yeah, he's got a version of it happening down where is it in Arizona or he's got the compound with the 15 baby mothers. So yes, I think, you know, he's trying to build that out. It is fascinating because, you know, if people can see an example of something, it does change to them. There's an amazing quote from Lily Tomlin, who was on 9 to 5 with Dolly. And Lily Tomlin said to Dolly, she took her aside on the third day of shooting 9 to 5 and said, you know, you make it really hard for a person to be a hateful old grouch around you.

Could you at least hold back on the perkiness, say till at least 10 or so? And it's true, you know what? If you sit there in the middle of culture and radiate positivity and radiate good things, then it's impossible not to be positive and not to think good things around that person. You know, it's a real power, and she used it well. And, yeah, honestly, the best thing about her is, you know, in price, she, you know, she, of course was calculating. of course as ambitions. She, of course, you know, used her image in incredibly clever ways. But what she did is sit right in the middle of popular culture as a funny, talented, brilliant woman.

But there's lots of weird little entertainment facts. There's quite a lot of these people. In that way that I think I've talked about before, how Lucille Ball is key to Star Trek, because it was Desilu, it was a Desilu production Star Trek, and it wouldn't have happened without her as this kind of amazing behind the scenes, kind of overarching executive figure. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dolly was an uncredited producer because it was her company, Sand Dollar, was one of the ones who made the show.

And Buffy has, there's little Easter eggs in it, like Buffy has the same birthday as Dolly. And Sarah Michelle Geller said that she was sent them presents at Christmas and they were all very, very nice. But when Dolly found out that Gail Bergman, who was the only female executive at the production company, was getting a lower cut of the royalties than all her male counterparts behind the scenes. She took her out to lunch and then she wrote a check to cover the difference.

You know, listen, we're lucky she existed. We're lucky she wrote the things that she wrote. We're lucky that she was that presence in the middle of culture. But it is just, and it's such an important lesson to learn right now, which is you can be incredibly tough, incredibly ambitious, make as much money as you want. But you can also leave the world a better place, than you found it.

Not everybody can say that, but Dolly Parton definitely left the world a better place than she found it, right? She was an amazing entertainer, but also, and it's so unlikely when you look at the exterior, a brilliant strategic brain. RIP, Dolly Parton, shall we go for a break with plenty more to talk about after this. Let's. This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's rewards. Now, a big mistake that people make is leaving the cinema as soon as the credits roll, because there might be a bonus scene. right at the end.

There might be one in the middle. Yeah, you never know. In Marvel ones, there used to be a mid-credit scene and then there'd be an end-credit scene. I remember the first one I really remember, well, too, I remember Ferris Bueller's day off where he tells you to go home at the end, but also smoking in the bandit with Bert Reynolds where they would do bloopers. It just feels like a secret little glimpse into a different world. And it doesn't quite have to be over.

Yeah, exactly. And it's just a lovely little added bonus. You've done everything. You've made your show. You've given everyone everything. It's just a lovely little extra. Which is also the idea behind Lloyd's rewards, extra value appearing inside something you were already doing anyway,

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Now, Marina, you said you're going to be. to talk about this idea of cut down culture, of taking things and cutting them down. My Instagram feed is almost non-stop little 10-second clips of the office, peep show, friends, almost always with a thing underneath saying, this line was completely improvised. You can see the other actors, can't believe it when this was said. Now, this is, it feels like, oh, these are just fan sites or something, but this is the business now in Hollywood and the business of anyone who won't. owns a big back catalogue, right?

These cutdowns. Yes. And it's very hard to know, as you say, whether someone has just found that wonderful little moment from friends they want to put out there or whether this is a sort of remorseless militarised campaign. It's really hard. The more I looked into this,

the more I thought was any of this real? Was Barbenheimer real? Anyway, we'll get onto that sort of clipping in a minute. But Deloitte did a survey last year and they found out that 53% of Gen Zed and millennials, They prefer to be recommended shows to watch, not by the streaming service algorithm, which I think they probably think is for old people, but by social media on their feeds. So the streamers know this, and they kind of are constantly cutting down.

Remember, library is like 80% or more of what is actually watched on these services. Library simply means, you know, the back catalogue of every TV company, every studio, you know, every, it's just the stuff that is just sitting there. You've already made it. It's already paid out. So it's just sitting there. What do you do with it? How do you make people rediscover it?

How can you monetise it in and of itself? It's a huge deal. Well, all the streamers have now realized that this is a way to get people into this content. And so they're all suddenly, really quickly, over the last six months, they've all added their own kind of clip feeds. Disney's got a vertical feed called VIRTS. Netflix has got one called Clips on its app. Prime has got one that's, I think, also called clip feeds. clips, HBO Max has shorts, Paramat has one, they're all driving people into it.

Can I ask whether any of these clips, shorts, stuff, end with a Z, or do they use the S at the end? Amazingly, they all have an S, Richard, currently. So they're maybe trying to not be super cringe and actually put off the young people who like to get in this way. But they also paying creators to do those because they want, so there's two things. First of all, that they see a way, it is a way of getting people into the library. And second of all, and this is a bit people are worried about for culture, is they see those things as destinations in themselves because some people don't want to watch the whole Sopranos.

And there are people who will just watch one arc, like maybe I'll watch Christopher's arc, and someone has just cut that down into effectively a microdrama. And they'll watch it on TikTok and they'll experience the content that way. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers. The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. When we talk about beating cancer, we often focus a lot on survival, and that can mean overlooking impacts that last long after treatment ends. Yeah, for example, take cancers in children and young people. The treatments themselves can be incredibly harsh.

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The streamers say this is driving people into watching the long-form versions of our things. We want to have them for a bit. You know, there's lots of times in the day where you can't sit down for an hour and you might just want three minutes or something and that you're constantly keeping this stuff in people's minds. And they think it will drive long-form engagement.

But it does. You know, the ones that we know about are things like friends or suits or Grey's Anatomy. Suits is particularly interesting. The guy who created that said, there's mad suits arcs that you can watch all the way through. the guy who created it said before it went on, do you know, remember it went massive on Netflix.

And it's bizarre, like all my children's friends have seen the whole of suits. I don't know why. And he thought this was really odd because he said there was a TikTok clip of two of the characters in an interview scene. And before it started airing on Netflix, it was discovered by teens and it sort of blew up. So that's when he knew that something quite odd was happening. And then, of course, it became this huge thing.

But as I say, the short form versions of content of all types are becoming a destination themselves. Like it's interesting, you know, now I see that at The Guardian, they often cut down my column into slides for Instagram. And it's a shorter version of it. And it does really well. Just constantly chopping what you already have in all kinds of different ways. It's become such enormous business. You should just write it shorter. Yeah, no, I know.

Give them a helping hand. You're right. I could just do it as a tweet. But there's obviously a lot of children's content like that. But I saw that there'd been a guy in Edinburgh at the TV festival talking about acquiring the rights to old films so he can cut them down into micro dramas, which are compelling for today's audiences.

He's done Hitchcock's The Lodger. It's an app. It's called Tattle TV. They don't have the UK or the EU rights, but they want to chop everything down because otherwise they think, oh, you know, people won't get into these things. things. I don't know whether that's true or not. We can see from letterbox that young people do get into

these things. Having said that, a lot of people don't. They need a way in, right? They need a way in, yeah. Yeah. And so, listen, if he's cutting down the birds and making it the bird, then, you know, good luck to him, I guess. But it's a fascinating business. And every single TV production company now has a, has a department, which sits with their library and churns out clips. A really simple examples would be, would I lie to you and taskmaster? where you're constantly seeing cut down versions. They're both perfect shows for that because they have these individual kind of segments. So constant, you know, here's this lie from Lee,

here's this truth from, you know, guest X. And they've got all the rights to do that, by the way. Anytime as a guest you sign a contract, they earn the rights, you know, in perpetuity, which you never think about 10 years ago when you're signing that contract. And now it's all over everywhere. And they'll do, you know, Lee's top five best lies

and lots of guests and stuff. So they can monetize those. literally by putting them out because the amount of people watching them stick about on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. So they're monetizing them, you know, for what they are. Certainly not costing them anything. But also it's driving people towards the main product, which is that program. And, you know, if you go to the States now, you go anywhere now, everybody, everybody has seen Would I Lie to You and Taskmaster. Whether they've all seen full episodes of What I Lie to You and Taskmaster, I wouldn't know.

But they all know what it is. They all know the idea of it. They all know, Rob Lee and David. And it's a great business. And I like seeing funny clips. As I say, the stuff I don't like is when they're showing clips of the office and saying, this entire scene was improvised. And you go, it's funny because the cameras are in exactly the right place the whole way through. And every reply is, oh my God, it's so funny. It's even funny. It's even funny when you know it's improvised. And there's be about two people in 400 thinking, guys, this is definitely not improvised. I mean, this is so dumb if you think this is improvised. But it's a huge business. These things get, you know, so many clips, but every company now, every single film library, every single TV company,

has people whose job it is all day, every day to cut things down and put them out in a form which is going to be entertaining for 10 seconds up to a minute and a half. Great business. But it's also quite a dark and stealth business, as it well, because I want to fold into this, the idea of clipping in general. And the question, if really anything on your feed, is authentically popular or whether that popularity has to some extent. extent been synthesized. When you get that thing where it's like, why is this thing in my feed? And everyone's like, oh, this person's blowing up or this song's blowing up. It's, the more I read, the more I think that almost all of this now is a result of a form

of astroturfing, these kind of stealth marketing campaigns. It is absolutely massive. People, and I'm going to get onto which people, hire companies clipping shops. and some of these are doing 65,000 clips a day, and then the algorithms pick them up. The platform algorithms pick them up. It's very hard to tell whether they're real or whether they're not. There was a really interesting article called The Feed is Fake a few months ago in New York magazine and talking about this kind of trend simulation,

how you can effectively sort of, it's very cheap. If you were buying an advert on... Are you talking about pretending that something has gone, viral. Yeah, or that a song is good or that who's this band or that, but I'm going to go and see Barbie in Oppenheimer. I'm not, it's very hard, you know, or the news season of the night, the night agent is amazing. The guy who wrote it looked into lots of these things and concluded that almost all of these things contained a very significant amount of synthesized. Oh, wow. So, so essentially people being paid to promote something, but doing it in such a way

that it looks native and it doesn't look like they're being paid to promote it. It's really cheap. You know, if you, it might cost you a dollar for a thousand views to do that. But it's $10 per thousand views if you buy a sponsored ad. And it also has to say sponsored and it doesn't feel authentic. And we all know that everyone just cares about authenticity. So now they're discovering that the talent agencies are doing it themselves. If you don't like the campaign for some film because your particular actor,

hasn't got like a huge amount in the trailer, then why would you not just pay, because it's very cheap, people to create things saying, oh, this person's actually great in this, and it's your client. We've seen the definitely, the dark side of it was being alleged

with the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, think that there are all these accounts who can kind of create an authentic, supposedly, backlash against somebody or not. The platforms are obviously legally supposed to identify sponsored content, because there is legislation.

And yet the politicians are doing it too. Politicians are doing this as well. They are also synthesizing clips and synthesizing kind of popularity in viral moments. So it's really weird. Like how much can you believe that's on your feed? Eventually you have a reckoning with reality and it's been pretty interesting to see people who supposedly are like,

oh my God, Jalo's massive, she's blown out, you know, she's got all these viral moments. she had to cancel her tour because actually when push comes to shove and when people are actually required to buy the ticket, lots of, there's quite a few music stars who have had this, that the tours have been cancelled. If you've seen a rash of stories about kind of canceled tours,

then I think a lot of it grows out of this where it seems that bands or individual artists are really, really popular, or it seems that they're kind of suddenly blowing up and that they're everywhere. But actually when it comes to people, having to part with money and get to a venue and do it, then they don't. And I'm really increasingly positive that more and more of it is rooted in this stuff. Also, Manosphere

influences, how popular is clavicular really? I'm pretty sure he'll be using stuff like this to look important. And it's become that flywheel thing where because you know that your rivals or your enemies or other people are doing it or people are doing it for another actor in that film, then you've got to do it for yours. we're getting to a sort of stage where you're thinking, is anything popular really real? Well, I always find that a fascinating thing, you know, because it happened in politics a long time ago. And as you say, there are these farms where, you know, you just put these things out. And, you know, if you looked on social media, you think that everyone in the world was terrified to come to London.

And then you actually look at the number of people come to London and you look at crime rates in London and you go, oh, all of that was nonsense. You know, you can tell it's a lie in the same way that you can tell the Jennifer Lopez stuff is a lie because the second, you know, the second you have to buy a concert ticket or the second there's a political vote, you see the truth of the thing. But it's, again, for us, for our generation, this is a real sort of motif of things we talk about. For our generation, it's sort of terrifying because what's real, what's not real, for the generation coming along, they're just, they're native to all of it. You know, it's absolutely washes off them. And, you know, they have, which is why it's as an industry, it's sort of, it terrifies us. It

completely terrifies us and we feel like it's out of control. But the next generation have got it in control, I think, a lot more. It's just, you know, I was remember years ago, you know, if the band had an album out, they would buy billboard posters and they would put them at the ends of the streets where the band lived. Yeah. Right. And that's very much the analog version of what they do now, which is because J-Lo wants to think that she's gone viral as well. So, you know, it's, they want to be able to go into a meeting with J-Lo's people and say, look at the number she's doing. This is incredible. But unfortunately, it does lead to those things where you go, oh, okay, but hold on, no one's buying the tickets. And no one's actually buying the tickets, I think it's probably a

very, very good way of looking at any of these viral things. Is anyone spending money on this? Is anyone actually backing this up with bums on seats or whatever it is? And you can try and make a film go viral. But what's the box office? What's the box office? Who are people voting for? who are people going to see? And it cuts through all of that nonsense. But it is, you know, if I often think it's a mystery to us sometimes how our Instagram or TikTok works, but it's worth remembering there is a probably now a multi-billion dollar industry in putting things on our feed and there's always a reason for it. I agree. I mean, I don't think you can believe hardly any of it, as you say, until you get the reckoning with reality.

Yeah. Now, Richard, you've been up in Edinburgh at the TV festival. and lots of fun things seem to come out of it this year. Yes, well, it's the place where all of the TV companies announce the things that are coming up. So there's always, you know, there's lots of talks and, you know, a couple of things I will say. Firstly, the TV festival seemed healthy than it has done for many years.

I think people have really found their footing in the new economy, worked out the new ways of making money. And I think that terror that maybe struck TV five years ago has turned into something else, and people are really making money and doing interesting things again. And by the way, the same goes for the fringe. I've talked about it a bit on the Q&A last week. But there's a real energy at the Comedy Festival, real energy.

Funnily enough, a lot of which has come through Saturday Night Live and some of the people on those shows. So it was really, really a great time up there and maybe feel very good about lots and lots of things. But I just want to go through some edited highlights of what people have announced. The BBC have announced there. rebooting top gear

once again which is an interesting one. They've rebooted it a number of times. I mean, what we think of

as top gear, the Clarkson bit was a reboot. You know, top gear was, you know, Noel Edmonds and Angela Rippen

and all sorts of people. And yeah, Clarkson era was a reboot. Bought it back with Chris Evans. Matt LeBlanc has done it. Of course, we had the Freddie Flintoff

incident where he got a huge payout from the BBC for for an accident. He thought, Maybe that might be the end of top gear because it's, you know, it was obviously very, very, very traumatic for him. And I think a much worse accident than we were first led to believe. And, you know, it's taken a long time for the fallout of that to really settle. But no, they're bringing it back.

Ed Havard, who is sort of one of the heads of BBC content, so they're bringing it back. There's all sorts of people in the frame for hosting it. Jimmy Carr was the first person named. But maybe just because his surname is Carr. I don't know if that's true. If Hugh Lorry and Van Morrison are the next two hosts, or Mini Driver, we'll know it's like, but they are definitely bringing it back.

I would watch that line up so hard. Yeah, Van Morrison, Hugh Lorry and Jimmy Carr. Yeah. And Mini Driver. But they are definitely bringing it back and they're talking to people at the moment that nobody has signed up as yet. Also no one has signed up to what exactly it is going to be.

It will be a reboot, but it might become something quite interesting and quite different. But it's a huge brand for the BBC and for BBC studios. So it's, it was going to come back at some point because it's a really big money spinner. And people love it. And it is that thing of,

it has a male skew and, you know, all the channels that strutely struggle on things with the male skew. So that's a fun one. Talking of reboots, Disney Plus, bring about Blind Date. I assume you approve of their host choice.

You know I approve of Mora Higgins. She is, by the way, can I just say, she, Moira was on Love Island, then she had a really good run on the US Traitors. She's now doing Dancing with the Stars. Well done, her agent. She is really doing the playbilt. I think she's with, like, Intertalent and CAA, but, like, they really, they really got the assignment, and they're building something very good for her. There's something about that show. I would love to watch Blind Date again, because dating has become such an unbelievable.

because since the apps, dating has taken over everything, there's a, the state of dating TV somehow mirrors the darkness people feel about the apps and all of that in real life where, you know, it's become this unbelievable multibillion-dollar businesses and people have intense antipathy really towards the apps, but don't feel any way out. The state of dating TV in a way, there's a darkness to all those Chris Coden shows that we talked about before, sort of married at first sight, love is blind, perfect match. I would quite like to see more presiding over a format with the wall and the three suitors, you know. Just quite gentle.

It's quite gentle. It's what people want to get back to. I think it's like it's a moment in time and people, and it will be very, very clippable. People will like that, I think, because I think it speaks to a feeling that people have in general about the kind of toxicity of dating and all of that in general. So I'm pleased they're doing that. It's, you know, you could frame it as, you know, a reaction to married at first sight and things like that and the toxicity of that. Yeah. Something much simpler.

Listen, there will be bells and whistles for sure. But, yeah, more Higgins blind date on Disney Plus. Behind the scenes with footballers, is this the new sports docs? Because the crouches are doing one and the real Roonies. And they're both, I've read all the, you know, summaries for both of them. And it's both like, you know, or they have to go through lots of big family events and a house renovation. and some really amazing holidays. Like, is this, is this the new sports dogs?

Yeah, I think so. So Disney Plus, again, who are doing Blind Date with Mora, announced the real Roonies. And you sort of think, I mean, I would watch it because, you know, because you get two for the price of one there, don't you? Because you get Wayne, who has become something of a cult figure after the World Cup.

A revelation. Yeah, people are growing into him. And then you've got Kaleen as well, who's been on I'm a celebrity, but obviously has been right at the heart of our culture. And yeah, you do sort of wonder what their day-to-day relationship is like. We are obviously not going to find out via this docusoep, but at least we'll have, you know, will be adjacent to it.

And yeah, the Crouches who have done all sorts of things before, they are doing theirs on Amazon Prime. And again, you get two for the price of one there. You know, Peter Crouch is very funny. You know, he's, again, does a lot of adverts. And, you know, Abby Clancy as well. So you can absolutely see why they've been chosen. And there's a four-part documentary on Gary Lick on Amazon Prime as well.

Yeah, so football appears to be the new, whatever the last thing was. Yeah, well, sports stocks are underperforming a little bit at the moment. Yes. Whereas these are not sports stocks. These are not, no, so this is lifestyle sport. Yeah, exactly. Netflix had some very interesting ones. They paid a huge amount of money for the Roll Dahl estate.

Netflix. And at the time I thought, God, that's a good idea. Because you have a huge amount of kids things, of course. You've got all of those books, all of which can be adapted. But the first thing they are doing, well, the first thing they're doing is a reality show called the Golden Ticket, sort of set inside Wonka's Factory. And that's sort of a placeholder because drama takes a bit longer. So they're doing that. That's out in September. But the first dull adaptation they're doing is actually an adaptation of some of his adult short stories. It doesn't have a title yet, but it's written by Danny Brocklehurst, who's loads of things. He does lots of the Harlan Coburn adaptations. He's super smart. It's got a great cast, Nicola Cochlanders in it,

Amelda Staunton, Toby Jones. And so the money they have spent on it, and they're really throwing a lot of lot at it, and they've thrown some really good people at it as well. And this is going to be the first iteration of how they make their money back, but it's going be followed by an awful lot more dull material. That's dull, not dull material. But this sounds great. It's taking those of the short stories and putting them all in one seaside town. And so sort of peopling it with characters from the different short stories and making a drama out of all of it. So I'm very, very excited about that. They've also got adolescents with such an enormous hit for them. So they've got a new Jack Thorne drama coming up as well, which is Kate

Winslet and Maxine Peake as sisters in a sort of crimey type drama. They think, yes, please. They also announced beat Luke Littler, which I talked about recently. And when I talked about it, by the way, I was not going to be hosting it. And now I am, well, I'm sort of an analyst with it, and Gary Linnaker is hosting that. And I had such a good chat about it yesterday, because I'm interested in the numbers. So 20 amateurs come and play Lute Littler, and if you beat him over one leg of 501, you win. 500 and 1,000 pound.

Obviously he's the best player in the world so people think, oh yeah, but it's going to be how are you going to beat him? Well firstly, the people they're going for, they are going to be good dance players. You can't be a pro, but these are good players. And we were looking at all the numbers and you think like in any given leg,

Luther's got like an 85% chance of beating a player at that standard. And so, you know, any given leg, of course he's going to win. But 20 legs, I think he's got a 15% chance of winning all 20. which means an 85% chance of giving away £500,000 to an amateur dance player. Either way, it's going to be a load of fun.

I mean, it's, I think I'm very excited to be involved in it. As I say, I only say yes to things where I think, oh my God, I would love to do that. So I'm excited about that. Amazon Prime, last one, laughing, new lineup has been announced, which is great. Catherine Ryan is in it. John Richardson is in it. Catherine Parkinson is in it. Rohing Connety finally gets to get off that sofa next to Jimmy

and she is going into the... Oh, is she? Yeah, yeah, so she's going to... So I think Mel Gedroich is the psychic on this one. Harry Hill is in it. There's a comic called Josh Jones. I think that show often introduces people. So I think Sam Campbell, a lot of people didn't know before last term,

even though he's been on Taskmaster and stuff. But Josh Jones is on this one, and Josh Jones has got one of those very, very infectious senses of humor, I would think. So I think he could be a big breakout. star of that. And talking of Taskmaster, they're doing a new spin-off called Your Time Starts Now, which is Taskmaster for families at home, which weirdly Alex Horn did on the BBC a few years ago called The Button. But now it's on Channel 4 so you can give away a bigger prize. But it's

branded as part of the Taskmaster universe, which means they're now going to have, I think, 29 weeks of Taskmaster a year on Channel 4. Channel 5 are doing the same company who did the Hugh Edwards drama with Martin Clunes as Hugh Edwards have you heard what they are what they're doing now? Tell me. They are doing the drama of Nicola Sturgeon and her husband.

Yeah, yeah, that would be good. How much fun is that going to be? I would love to write that. Just, I'd all work on the props. Exactly. Or, yeah, take home the motorhome and Wonderhood made both of those shows. ITV, they've got the final,

final, ever 70 up is coming back. The final episode of Seven Up is coming back. So there's loads and those are really interesting things. I mean, even more interesting, I thought Matt Britton, I thought, did an amazing session, the new Director General, talking about how all of our culture is now run by six companies in America and China and how we have the opportunity to turn the BBC into almost like a sovereign cultural force. And now is the time to do it and to have this sort of home for, you know, news and entertainment, which is not driven by an algorithm and is not there to make billionaires money and perhaps there is space for that somewhere and doing it via the medium of the eye player

and bringing things into the eye player. But it was, I think really, he's super bright. I think they have to build out another platform really to, that doesn't have. Yes, but it will feel like, yeah, it'll come via that. But, you know, he thinks such a smart an interesting way. And, you know, it's an argument that speaks to the heart and to the business brain at the same time. And now is probably the time to do it because, you know, I think that we probably have a window of about three or four years to really kick this into gear. But it would, I think, make a huge amount of money for Britain and it would secure the future of the BBC. So if anyone can do it, I suspect he can. I was very impressed with the way he spoke. But in general,

I thought Edinburgh was very exciting. I know I've talked about reboots and stuff like that, but that's because they're the kind of headline ones, but there's loads and loads of interesting original stuff coming up. Loads of broadcasters working with different content creators and making stuff ready for YouTube. Everybody just on board with where culture is going, how we make good things for it and how we make money out of that.

So I was very, very encouraged by the atmosphere of it and the confidence of it. Loads and loads of challenges still, of course, are. But, you know, it feels like the beginning of the beginning of something new. And, you know, if it gave us nothing else, it gives us more Higgins as the new host of Blind Date. Very much here for it. Any recommendations? Yes. I went to see this film we spoke about it years ago, Coyote versus Acme, which was, it's based, it's all based on it on a humorous New Yorker article for many years ago, imagining

what would have happened if Wiley Coyote sued Acme for all of the defective products that he uses to try and kill Roadrunner. Warners, of course, have their rights because they have all of those characters. They made this film. Will Forte is in it. They made it.

Everyone was happy with it. And then they wrote it off as a tax loss. They just did not put it out. It's now been bought by an indie and has been distributed. They obviously don't have the money of Warner. So it's a worthwhile thing to support. And I went to see it and it's really funny

It's you know The idea of it is funny It mixes animation and With your life You can go watch it with your kids It's a really really charming silly ridiculous Funny film

So I really really enjoyed that And also I think it's something It'd be nice to support Because someone did take a punt To take this thing that Warner said literally And it's one of the most disgusting things That's happened in culture I mean just

Yeah All these you know People have made this film It's a really great film and they just said, oh no, just for our tax bill, we're just not going to show anything. Oh, come on. So someone has put the money in, ketchup,

and then it's the name of the company, they put the money in. And I think it's really worth supporting because it's very funny. And you can watch it with very young kids. Right. That about wraps us up. We will be back tomorrow

with a special bonus episode for our members. Our Bond series, we've got to the filming of Dr. No, which is a very storied shoot and very exciting. And thank you, by the way, for all your incredible feedback on that series. I've had so many people come up to me talking about it. It really is a lot of fun.

But thank you. We really appreciate how lovely everyone's been about it. There's plenty more to come. There is plenty more to come. If you want to join for ad-free listening and bonus episodes, it's the rest isentatement.com. Otherwise, we'll see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday.