The Rest Is Entertainment - Gossip: The New Frontier Of The Culture War

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Is entertainment being weaponised as part of a culture war? Why aren’t we celebrating OnlyFans? The business is a massive UK success story. What can the way The Guardian asks for money tell us about subscriptions? With left and right politics now firmly established, how are the right deploying entertainment as a means to further their ideology? Who are the protagonists behind the discourse we’re being subjected to?

 OnlyFans was started by Tim Stokely in London in 2016 and has risen to be a billion dollar company but it is rarely spoken about. Is the platform’s core content the reason people seem hesitant to shout about a British success story? The Guardian now has well over a million paying ’supporters’. How has what could be framed a polite way to request support driven their success? The Rest Is Entertainment AAA Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to our Q&A episodes, ad-free listening, access to our exclusive newsletter archive, discount book prices on selected titles with our partners at Coles, early ticket access to future live events, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestisentertainment.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestisentertainment The Rest Is Entertainment is proudly presented by Sky. Sky is home to award-winning shows such as The White Lotus, Gangs of London and The Last of Us. Visit Sky.com to find out more For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Assistant Producer: Aaliyah AkudeVideo Editor: Kieron Leslie, Charlie Rodwell, Adam Thornton Producer: Joey McCarthySenior Producer: Neil FearnHead of Content: Tom WhiterExec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and it's highly likely he'll be backseat barbecuing all night. So be it. Impress even the toughest of critics with freshly prepared Canadian barbecue favorites from Sobeys. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osmond. Hello Marina. Hello Richard.

We're still apart but we're nearer. We are nearer. You are in Manchester. You are recording House of Games. Yes, I am. I've literally hot-footed it from recording five episodes. So if at any point I doze off, you have to forgive me. But we're doing a couple of episodes up here, I think. And one time, I think maybe I'll talk people through a day on House of Games, what goes on,

and all the little behind-the-scenes secrets. But I tell you now that, because I had to run straight from the studio, I'm wearing a jacket from wardrobe that Sharon very kindly lent me. Thank you, Sharon. By the way, snaps for Sharon because I really like that jacket.

Well, as I say, it's because I haven't dressed myself today. I've been dressed by a professional. The t-shirt, which looks messy, is very much my own. It's very much your model's own. Exactly, but the jacket, I'm even still wearing my makeup. Oh, I need some of that. They should have. But anyway, what are we talking about today? We're going to talk about, it's like entertainment gossip, the new culture war, because an enormous number of sort of right-wing influencers and so on are pouring into discussing the late, lively Justin Balan, the only case. We're going to talk about that and what that all means.

We are talking about the unbelievable rise and value of Oni fans, where it came from and where it's going. What next for Oni fans? And we're also going to talk about, because I said, are we allowed to talk about Atlas? I want to ask you about The Guardian and how it seems to be turning this thing of just asking readers politely for money into a real business plan. So I'm going to talk about whether that's a better idea than paywalls. There's an article I really want to talk about from the Telegraph this

week that was so clearly written by AI. And so we're just talking about the different ways in which newspapers have chosen to fund themselves and which might be a better long-term strategy. Well, I can definitely talk about that. Okay, well, let's kick off with is gossip going right wing or right? Just a very brief reminder if you've been hiding under a rock, Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, they were in a film together. Justin Baldoni was the director and possibly the writer. It was based on the Colleen Hoover novel. It ends with us. The one thing it has never done is end. It is never ending, this

court case. Blake Lively was the star of it. She went public alleging sort of sexist behavior on set, sort of abuse, but most crucially using the dark arts of PR to sort of drag her on the internet and to ruin her reputation and said that Justin Baldoni had kind of commissioned that via various publicists. He denied it. He's launched all kinds of counter suit against the New York Times where this was first aired. And it's, you know, as you know, it's a big old firestorm. So that we've spoken about, but you want to talk about a very specific thing that's happening. What I want to talk about is all these people who used to just talk about politics, sort

of people, I don't know, Megyn Kelly, she was a former Fox News anchor, she's now got a massive show on Sirius, a radio station, Candice Owens, who's a sort of alt-right influencer, there are lots and lots of these people, even Joe Rogan, people who used to talk about politics or kind of gossip and entertainment was kind of Infraday, you know, you hated Hollywood. Of course you did it was a degenerate suspect, etc But you didn't go on about it and you were certainly weren't interested in the nuts and bolts of individual stories that way It was just like it was a no-go zone really and it didn't do anything for them I'll give you a little vignette CPAC the, the Conservative Political Action Conference, which is a huge kind of big conservative event in the US every year. Also sounds like the name of a horse.

Also the name of a horse. Yes. See, it's Seabiscuit's slightly less pleasant brother. Megyn Kelly got on stage and she said, this is what she said to the crowd, have you heard about what's happening with the Blayte Lively versus Justin Baldoni case? Are you obsessed with this case? There are millions of people who are obsessed with this case. She then did 20 minutes on it. That is completely unthinkable at CPAC. That is just completely unthinkable a while ago.

If I was at CPAC, that's what I would do that. Oh my God, we'd love to talk about anything other than, yeah. I'd be talking about Ross Kemp's Bridge of Lies. That's what I'd be talking about, the CPAC. I'd do 20 minutes on that. Millions of people are obsessed with this, you'd say, from your podium. I'd say it's so play along. Yeah.

As I say, she's not the only one. Candice Owens, Joe Rogan, lots and lots of other people. There's a woman called Sage Steel. By the way, that is such a WeSolve murders name. Sage Steel. Or it sounds like a Delicatessen in Hoxton. You just put a little ampersand between the two of them. Yes, you're right. Some sort of okay. But it's interesting talking about why this is happening. By the way, these people are not sort of they've talked about it once, they've covered it on the show and they never would have covered it in previous times. They've covered it 25, 30

times. And the reason is, is because this type of gossip, this kind of culture, taking up entertainment story and turning it into a culture war is a massive audience driver for these people. It's a subscription driver. And it's also turned out to be, I think they've all realized that it's quite a sort of Trojan horse, because you think you're just listening to something about Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, just as you might have thought you were listening to something about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, and we're going to come to that particular case, which is a definite forerunner. But what you're actually doing is it's the gateway,

and you're suddenly starting to listen to their talking points and their material. It's becoming a pipeline to the alt-right for women. Because we know how the different gateways that men have, they have, I don't know, sports and supplements and self-care, that kind of whole self-optimization thing that men have that kind of eventually can... Thank you. You're welcome. We're allowed one thing for goodness sake.

You're welcome. I'm running out of ways to say it today. You look fabulous in that jacket. And there's that whole self-optimization thing that is a way of, and eventually we know from the various algorithms, drives people into the kind of Nietzschean arms of these kind of hardcore alt-right influences. Anyway, there are many more normies than there are people who are obsessed with right-wing politics and normies, water cooler people, whoever they are, people are very happy to talk about these big celebrity court cases and things like that. And as I say, traditionally, the alt-right, these kind of, or these fox anchors, or whoever they were, they stayed out of it. As I say, you have the founding principle that you hate Hollywood,

but that's enough to say it. But now they're becoming incredibly involved in it. And it's a sort of pushback on Me Too, which it's almost like all of those gains, whether or not you think they were gains or whatever it was, you can go all the way back and maybe further back. Every single one can be a battle in the culture to sort of re-win it. Candice Owens, who is, I mean, I don't know if you know Candice Owens. She's a woman of color. She's sort of young, attractive. She is an alt-right influencer, political commentator. I mean, she wore a White Lives Matter t-shirt with Kanye.

She says Bridget Macron is a man. Most recently, I think, was it a couple of weeks ago, she's really on a tear currently. She visits Harvey Weinstein in prison. Wow. Yeah, and says, you know, this is all wrong. It's all a big pushback on me too And of course, it's interesting how many of these influences are women

Of course, this means so much more coming from a woman to say that women are liars They're manipulators and feminism has gone too far, which is the drive of all these stories this You know the writer sphere has been You know is incredibly well developed now, has been going for a very, very long time. The last four years, of course, the fires have absolutely been stoked by the fact that they've had Democrats in the White House, and so they've had those enemies, and they've had Biden to attack, and they've had Hunter Biden to attack.

The politics of America now is that Donald Trump is in charge. So actually, it's quite hard to continue to be angry about politics, because the thing you wanted to happen has happened. So what is the gateway drug? It can't constantly be everything is wrong in America, because everything now has to be right in America. So it feels to me like this new focus on show business and on the Blake lives of this world is to say, listen, we're sorting out politics, that's okay. Now we just need to sort out the culture wars once and for all. And so it's because politics has completely disappeared as something that you can get clickbait on because you're in charge, you have to get your clickbait elsewhere and Hollywood serves it up in spades. You almost feel it could be any story. These celebrity trials in general are helpful. Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard, in some ways the case seemed similar. She alleged abuse and then he says he's actually the victim. There is a court case. We haven't had a court case with

Blayte Lively and Justin Baldoni. And by the way, let me tell you, I think Blayte Lively's attorneys will do anything to keep it out now, because I just don't think they could have understood what a level of a can of worms was being opened with it. It's too toxic now. It's unbelievable. But to go back to that Johnny Depp and Amber Heard one, as I say, in some ways similar, it begins with her alleging abuse.

He says he's the victim. It was really interesting when, and there were two different court cases with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, but the Tortoise media, they did an investigation and there were the two different court cases with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, but the Tortoise media, they did an investigation and there's an interesting podcast they did about it. And they found that so much of the negative content about Amber Heard was basically emanating from Saudi bot farms. And remember, Johnny Depp is deeply embedded with the Saudi regime. They've funded, I think, his last two films. He turns up at the Red Sea Festival. And it's a sort of similar ratio of for and

against Depp v. Herd and Baldoni v. Lively in that everyone basically is against Blake Lively. And in the old days, I think Blake Lively would quite obviously have won this one because she's much more powerful. She's much more famous, she's married to a much more famous person. Better PR. In the way we used to think of PR. Yeah. But now what's becoming so clear is that it's so difficult to deal with organized resistance, organized attack campaigns and how easy opinion is to manipulate to say she is a monster. It's really interesting because in so many ways Justin Baldoni would have, I mean someone like Megyn Kelly will kind of say, and he is the exact person they would hate. He positioned himself, Justin Baldoni, whatever the truth may be, who knows.

As you know, Mr. Woke, he's a male feminist, he's an ally. These are like all their trigger words, okay? They hate that they should hate this guy, but now he's their hero, he's a poor, counseled man. In this binary, they have to side with him, and it's slightly absurd that they would side with him because in every way, he's kind of what they would have previously hated.

One person I think is very interesting in this whole story and that we have to kind of keep an eye on him is Brian Friedman. Now Brian Friedman is an attorney, a litigator, a Hollywood lawyer. Nice guy. I mean, in a sea of animals, he is the most rabid. Okay, I think he's there. I think there are Hollywood lawyers. The sea of animals is just the sea. Yeah. Well, Hollywood lawyers, even they see some of his tactics and they have to push their hankies to their nose. It's extreme. And look, not to unveil my conspiracy theory wall and start linking everyone to Brian Friedman witharn. Having said that, he's a big sort of mega Republican. He's a very forward thinking person and he goes to places where other people

won't go. He's really acknowledged the importance of podcasters in this case. He's represented Megyn Kelly. Candice Owens, he hasn't represented her, but there are people like Perez Hilton. Do you remember him? He used to have a sort of horrid, he's now a YouTuber. Of course he is. Yeah. Another sort of sea creature. That's like the modern day version of I'm a film producer. No, but what's your actual job? Because it's free to put something on YouTube. Yeah. You can just put something on YouTube. That's not a job. That's like saying I'm a walker. These are all now kind of Brian Friedman's winged monkeys. He's helped them all. Sage Steel, who we talked about.

She's a big voice and she's got various outlets now. She's on the Daily Wire and things like that, which is a big conservative site. And all of these people are either Brian Friedman's former clients or current clients. They come as a pack. And I think it's very interesting that when, yet again, to say what does it

all mean, we're going to have to keep watching this case because as I say, in the old days, Blake Library, it would have been an open and shut one for her because she was just the more significant and she was just the more famous and she's going to open movies and he isn't. With Amber Heard, you felt like, okay, what is she? She's the girl in Aquaman. She's a sort of, you know, a B-movie actress. She's not such a big deal. If this can happen to an A-lister, I think everybody thinks we're dealing

with something totally different. All agents are thinking you're dealing with something totally different. This is like the Hollywood's golden couple. They're really losing this. They're losing this in the course of a public opinion. They're, you know, and that means they're losing this in the, you a public opinion. And that means they're losing this in the aisles of target, where I've said to you before, she's got her haircare range,

it's completely tanked that thing, which it shouldn't have done. But isn't it interesting when you say the court of public opinion, because public opinion used to mean what the public thinks, and now public opinion is something else, which is what is the current discourse around something. And that's the thing that the alt-right worked out very early on that they could control. Because actually the court of public opinion is 94% – I don't know who either of those people are – it's 4% – yeah, listen, it sounds like Blake Lively's got a point. And then it's like 2% – it's absolutely, you know, Mueller, Blake Lively. I mean, that's actual public opinion. But online discourse is a very, very difficultively. I mean, that's actual public opinion, but online discourse

is a very, very difficult thing and it's become a substitute. But I think online discourse has changed the opinion on her. By the way, the reason she could open a movie and she could get haircare contracts and that everyone sort of thought she was a slightly kind of golden person is because people liked her. I think many, many, many fewer people like her because of this than did a year ago. And I really think that's the thing, is that this sort of works. And then other people,

these kind of second string leeches as it were, come along like Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens and use it to funnel people who have become interested in the case, even though, as you say, quite honestly, they didn't care about Blayt Lively a year ago, and they are now using them to funnel people who have become interested in the case, even though, as you say, quite honestly, they didn't care about Blayt Lively a year ago, and they are now using them to funnel them into all sorts of different types of content. And I do think that something has definitely changed. There's been a big shift and the use of these entertainment stories

as a driver towards that stuff is different and it's new. And it's definitely something to keep an eye on. And it takes, you know, a lot of it's cues from sports, which is, you know, you're either us or you're not us. Yeah, you know, it's become so insanely binary now the world of politics. And because most people are not interested in politics, right? We know that very few people are actively engaged in politics, but everyone is interested in culture. Everyone is interested in what's around them. Everyone's interested in what's around them.

Everyone's interested in how other people are treated. Everybody is interested in that. And to make that the new political, to make that the new politics, which is what they've very successfully done, and to say, listen, you're either with us or you're against us. Make the choice. Here's a series of bits of information for you to help make that choice, which helpfully sort of support your own side anyway. It's absolutely, you know, if Fulham bought the most awful player in the world, of course I would be completely loyal to that person because it's your team. And turning culture into politics is what they've done.

As you say, no one is interested in politics. I know the people who are interested in politics are obsessed with politics in the same way that people who are interested in snooker are obsessed with snooker. But there are not many of them. It's a much smaller pool. Whereas everybody is interested, as you say, in health and fitness or in parenting or in Blake Lively, all of those things. And actually, so long as you say, oh, by the way, there's a pro and an anti side in politics for all of those things. It's super simple. If you come to our side, this is what we're for. If you come to the other side, that's what they're for. And it's a very, very, very clever way of getting non-politically

engaged people to vote the way you want them to vote. But it's also replicable from any side. It's not, you know, the right to it very successfully. It doesn't mean other people can't do it. It's a thing that you can do. It's a playbook. It's absolutely a playbook. And they've been absolutely open and honest that it's a playbook. You know, we know it's a playbook. We've seen the rules of it. And it's one of those ones that harder, probably, for progressive politics to follow because you know what it involves. But it's been enormously effective and it's going to get more and more effective. But I hadn't thought about it in terms of like the Blake Lively thing and stuff like that. But you get it with Russell Brand over here. You immediately see people that no one's interested in the court case. Everyone's already on a

team and the team has nothing to do with what actually happened. It's to do with are you on our side or are you on the other side? What happens next though do we think in this arena, which as you say is sort of newly opened? It's not newly opened, but it's suddenly really burst into the limelight. As I say, because they can no longer rail against the Democrats, they're now railing against people on the other side of the culture wars. Well, I think what happens is that agents, managers, whoever, anyone who deals with talent will be thinking hugely hard about whether ever to launch something, I mean, it's like lively launched. I think that, as I said, it will be a huge failing on the part of our lawyer if this case ever comes to court,

like it must not come to court. It would be beyond the circus. And I think, yes, I think you have to think about those sort of things all the time. And I think what we're already seeing is that people being afraid to say things, being afraid to speak up in all sorts of ways. And it's in so many ways a mirror image of what people have said over the last 10 years where, oh no, I was completely policed by the left. I wasn't able to say what I thought. I wasn't able to whatever. And now it's very quickly swung to a situation

where lots of people in the entertainment will think, but how's this really gonna play like out there? How could this be made to play? And in the end, I think it gives people pause and it will make people put their head above the parapet far, far less. And I'm talking about in professional situations like this. I mean, both of these cases that we've talked about today were legal cases alleging, you

know, either civil or criminal behavior and making real allegations. They weren't just saying, you know, I don't really like this person. So people will think very hard about whether or not to do that. Well, there's always a sense and everyone always has their finger in the air in show business, especially as you say, agents and people who run networks and things like that. And all they're thinking all the time is where is the cultural heartland? So this is the sort of Overton window of culture.

Where is the cultural heartland? And for a long time, it was felt to be slightly to the left of center. It has now been very successfully shifted to the right of centre, which has very real world consequences for what gets commissioned and what have you. And there will be an attempt to drag it even further and further and further right. So it will be fascinating to see. I have great faith in human beings, as you know, and I have great faith in actual human beings, and what they believe and what they see. And I have faith that people can see through a grift

from whichever side of the culture wars it comes. And it is a grift. We should be super clear. And listen, we're all grifters. We're all grifters. And everyone in show business is a grifter. And these people are in show business. They're not in politics. They're in show business, but it just so happens that they are now really influencing politics. But they're in show biz. Of course they are. And I think we're talking about something similar on our bonus episode this week, I think, talking of the grift. Talk about stars who've come into conflict with authority. Multi-stars.

The ongoing kneecap stories and all the ones in celebrity history before. All right then, should we go to a break? Yes, and also afterwards I want to sell you some vitamin pills. I'd buy them off you. This podcast is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch season three of And Just Like That, the next chapter in the Sex and the City story. What is Carrie Bred for up to now, Marina? Well, she has said goodbye to her beloved apartment. She's moved into a townhouse in Gramercy

Park. New chapter, new book. She is writing, you'll love this, she's writing Romanticie Richard. Yes, that genre we have already pretended to understand for this podcast. Just romance and fantasy. Listen, it's what I'm doing next. The Thursday Romanticie Club. Now Miranda's adjusting to post-Shea life, Charlotte is navigating family life while reliving her thirties alongside younger colleagues, and Carrie, she is still catastrophically allergic to stability, but trying. Watch the brand new season of And Just Like That, available 30th May on Sky. Welcome back everybody. Now we're going to talk about a British success story. We're going to talk about OnlyFans, which is the site that some of you will be familiar with,

certainly everyone will have heard of. It's a site that has largely been used by erotic or... Adult creators, but not exclusively. Not exclusively. It's an internet content subscription service, I guess. Yeah, there are lots of exceptions to that, but this week they're preparing for a sale and it's been valued at £8 billion, OnlyFans, and it's a British company, but £8 billion. Where does that valuation come from?

I don't want to get all the rest of this money on you, but where does that come from? Bear in mind it started honestly nine years ago by a guy called Tim Stokely. It's now owned by a guy called Leonid Radvinsky, but they're limited, which we'll get to, into who would buy something of their particular nature to a sort of specialist investment group, maybe Forest Road. But that eight billion is crucial. I think that's fascinating. Eight billion is the same as what Paramount is valued at for its current sale to start skydance Okay, and now that's an entire movie studio a broadcast network streaming service cable networks like MTV Nickelodeon Pluto TV

So eight billion valuation, you know, it's more way more than twice as big as ITV More than the New York Times. It's kind of, it's not a million miles off News Corp. And OnlyFans essentially at heart, it's a video sharing website where creators create their own content and they can charge people for, they can charge subscriptions, they can charge one-off fees, they can, whatever charging fees they want. And OnlyFans hosts it and takes 20% of the money off the... The creators keep 80% of the money which is a really good deal. I think their

revenue last year was sort of six or seven billion and the creators got almost five and a half of it and there are four million creators and 300 million registered users. Now that is absolutely huge. That's like a mainstream social network. Things like Substack, which is, I think, valued at 350 million. People talk about Substack all the time,

and like, oh, it's the new frontier, and it's becoming a, you know, might it become a full service platform for creators? All these sorts of things. OnlyFans have,.3 billion net revenue and they are absolutely enormous. But also it's a fascinating thing because it's not public facing. No. Because first you do have to subscribe to individual creators if you want to see their content and second you're not seeing clips of it elsewhere for obvious reasons.

It's like a stealth billion dollar company. I mean, it's absolutely, as you say, it was started by a British guy who borrowed some money from his dad who was an investment banker. He tried to do a couple of sites before and absolutely just flew and weirdly really, really took off like so many things during lockdown. When people discovered exactly what it is they do when they've got too much time on their hands. And a lot of people made a lot of money from that realization. They've had all sorts of investigative stories saying that there was non-consensual pornography, there were child sexual abuse material, maybe sex traffickers have used the platforms. Having

said that, they have continuedickers have used the platforms. Having said that, they have continued to grow all the way. Can I say in their defence, and there's lots of things that wouldn't be in their defence, every time they've been investigated, most of the investigations have said, of course they're the odd problem, but much less than on pretty much any other of the big websites. Their content moderation, in fact the woman who runs them at the moment, she came from the world of content moderation. So that's the thing they take the most seriously, even though their content is in the first place a great deal more explicit than most sites. Not all of it.

There are some sports stars as comedians, they've tried to deliberately invest in musicians, they did even do a reality show at one point, which I don't think they particularly repeated, but they've tried to sort of pick out musicians and say, you know, come to our platform and kind of build them up as things and give them grants and awards. And I know that Tim Stokely himself, the man who set it up, he sold out a few years ago. He only follows two OnlyFans accounts and they are the OnlyFans accounts of James Haskell and Chris Robshaw, the rugby players. So listen, there's non-port, I assume neither of those are pornographic. Guys, listen, tell me I'm wrong. But yeah, there's all

sorts of personal development coaches, there's all sorts of fitness stuff on there. There's cookery. It's a way to make money whatever business you're in, but it would be foolish to suggest that it would be anywhere up towards 8 billion if it weren't for more erotic content which people pay individually for. Which makes it interesting because of that content and because of the adult nature of it and the presence of porn, historically this would be just completely untouchable for investment banks. People have said, oh no, the due diligence will show things up and we don't want to get into that.

So I'd say that's been one of their challenges. The other challenges are regulatory because both the EU and the UK have given them trouble at various different points. I mean, Visa withdrew at one point. And then also content security, which if they had a problem with content security that would be a big thing, but they they haven't so far. It's interesting they had when Visa were going to put OnlyFans announced, I think this is in the early 2020s, they announced that they were going to ban all adult content on OnlyFans.

Do you know how long that ban lasted? Six days that ban lasted, six days and then some other bank went, you know, we'll take up the slack. We've seen your revenues, we will take up the slack. And that has not been threatened since. Well, that's the sort of thing, isn't it? Because I do think that they're at a sort of, you know, they're at a sort of big juncture or inflection point, whatever, because they do have this huge untapped potential, I suppose, because they've got all these things that they, there's lots of different ways, you know,

there's live streams, there's pay per view, there's all sorts of things like that. And these are recurring revenue streams. And there's not lots of churn because these things keep happening. And they've tried, as I say, they keep trying to make it more of a creative platform. They make these big pitches to entertainers.

Cardi B makes an absolute fortune. Unbelievable. Bella Thorne made an unbelievable amount of money when they got her onto it. I mean, Bella Thorne, who I was unaware of until this week, so she begins where pretty much every single showbiz story of the last 30 years has begun, on Disney's Mickey Mouse Club. And she launched her own, I think it has erotic pictures and things, but she is saying most of what I do, really what I want it to be for is like screenwriting tips and stuff like that. And she's making like $11 million a month.

That's a lot of people who want screenwriting tips. But equally, I think we have to say that a lot of people who are on these platforms or who do certain things on these platforms are there because of sort of the failure of conventional media and entertainment structures in some ways to be able to remunerate them. She's not on it as far as I know at the moment. I think she's come off it, Lily Allen, but she did say something quite extraordinary, which was she said, I've started posting pictures of my feet on OnlyFans and people said, oh, well, why are you doing that? Imagine doing that. And she said, well, imagine being an artist and having nearly 8 million monthly listeners on Spotify,

but earning more money from having a thousand people subscribe to pictures of your feet. Don't hate the player, hate the game. So there's a lot of that side of things where people feel, I've been cut out of revenue streams, I've made money for other people and that. Well listen, it's what you and I are doing now, which is a podcast and it's what all sorts of writers do with Patreon. If you can get rid of all of those layers of management between you and people who want the thing that you do, then why wouldn't you do that? I mean that's been the journey

that most creators have gone on. You know, when I'm in television, my goodness, if you have to make a television program, the amount of people who take a cut before you get your cut is insane. And that's, you know, channels and it's advertised and it's the people in between the channel and the advertisers and the people in between the channel

and the advertisers, everyone's got their cuts. If you're doing something like OnlyFans, you're filming whatever you want to film, you can reach out directly to an audience. Some of the biggest OnlyFans people in the world started with zero audience and have built it from scratch and are making millions and millions a month. You can build your audience and the company who's hosting you is taking 20% so you get it, right? I'm taking 80% of every single thing I do. But listen to this. This is a wild statistic They control 80% of the paid creator content market Wow, people don't really know about it unless you're in it and if you unless you're subscribing it

It's a sort of as you say, it's a kind of hidden multi-billion dollar company, but it is enormous. And I think it's really interesting whether banks and investors are going to continue to be sniffy about it, saying, oh, we couldn't possibly, or are you going to think this is really interesting? And yes, I accept it's got a huge adult element to it, but why wouldn't they make it more of a creative platform in all sorts of different ways? As I say, they've got comedians, they've got all sorts of different things, and they're desperately trying to grow in that way But it's already controls 80% of the paid creative content market And the the fascinating thing whenever big venture capital comes into a company like this they have one job and that's growth, right?

That's the thing. So, you know Tim Stokely and his brother I think and his dad I think a lot of the rest of the family, you know, they built this from the ground up fairly organically, you know, got money in fairly quickly, but they just did the thing that they wanted to do. Now, if you're a venture capital company and you see it time and time and time again when they buy big creative companies, they don't really understand what they're buying, but they're buying a big brand and they go, oh no, we're going to push for growth. And the only way really to push for growth in OnlyFans, you can't, as a venture capitalist, say more porn.

That's the thing we're going to do. We're going to get more porn. So what you say is more non-porn. That's what we want. We want more normal creators. You know, we want more musicians. We want more comedians, more writers, all those things. And the second you- things. More sports stars.

Small, more sports stars. The second you do that, you are really bumping against that secret thing that we're talking about, which is everyone gets to see what it is that your company does. And so I think it might be quite hard yards to build OnlyFans into something much more mainstream. But who knows? I feel there's a lot of growth left in it. I'm sorry. I think that I think that... Oh, no, I definitely think there's growth. But I do think the feel there's a lot of growth left in it. I'm sorry, I think that I think that... Oh no, I definitely think there's growth. But I do think the second there's growth in a non-erotic arena, I think that more of a light gets shone on what it is that they do.

And I think suddenly, you know, the reputational issues of owning that company would get harder. I think so I think really, really building that company massively is going to come across quite a big issue very early but listen if somebody wants to host your video and will only take 20% and you can charge what you want for who you want if you want to do quizzes if you want to do whatever it is and you're paying an admin fee essentially of 20% but you're not paying anybody else anything then for any creator that is a very very very good deal, especially creators who grew up in the era that we did where everybody takes a piece of every single thing you do.

I want you to do quizzes on OnlyFans. Can you imagine? Yeah, yeah I can. I mean it would be feet within three days. I'm like I'm not getting the numbers here. I know what I'm like. It would be within minutes. Okay. Well, let's just put a pin in that OnlyFans idea for you for now.

Well, let's see if Goalhanger make an offer for OnlyFans. Okay. In which case, you know, we may all have to pivot. Yeah. Now, talking of how we fund things, Marina, this is something I wanted to talk about. And I asked if it was okay with you, because it's about an organization that you work for And I just noticed that the Guardian now has over a million paying subscribers And the thing about the Guardian is you don't have to subscribe to it You know you can get every single thing they do For free and yet they built up over a million subscribers and the way they do that is every time you read something on The Guardian, as people who read things

on The Guardian will know, they will say this is what we do, these are the struggles we are having, if you would like to pay for some of our journalism it would really really help us and that business plan seems to be working. Yeah as you say I write my columns there. It's really interesting It's a really interesting thing because I'm gonna say they and I'm saying I say we I'm just gonna get a model of what I Say, but you're your own woman I know you're in a North Korean studio, but I am I'm being told what to say. We have 1.3

recurring digital members We have 1.3 recurring digital members. 1.3, I think 1.3 recurring million. Sorry, 1.3 million recurrent. Because that's not many. That's not enough to build a platform on, is it? Yeah. And to go right back to the basics, obviously journalism costs money, and there are many different ways, arguments on how to pay for that.

And the sort of, the historic cliché is that the price of a newspaper, remember those, was index linked almost to the price of a cup of coffee. And, you know, people would pay roughly about the same thing for one of those things. Now, people will pay three pounds a day for a cup of coffee or more. And if you said to them, do you want to pay 90 pounds a month for some news? Like, what? No, thanks. Crazy. pounds a month for some news like what? No thanks. Are you mental? So all sorts of different models emerged to deal with that coffee schism and pay there's paywall, soft paywalls that kick in after a while but the Guardians gone

with sort of contributions and membership models. Now that really relies to do that it really relies on trust and quality of brand and only certain institutions can get away with it. Not ones that feel transactional. You'll notice lots of museums do it, you know, a suggested donation. Yeah, or like lovely local restaurants where they say look pay what you think it was worth at the end and actually these these places if they are as you say if they are trusted and loved tend to make more money if they ask you how much you think you should pay than if they charge you.

Yeah I do think that's true I think there needs to be something about love and there needs to be a belief in the mission as it were and which is why that thing that you keep talking you talked about that thing at the you see at the bottom of Guardian Things that's called the epic that is at the bottom that's the same thing saying you know this is how we're owned. We don't have this kind of funding model. We rely on you, all those sort of things. And I would say that the no paywall model is currently the most effective business model we know. And it's also, there's a really strong belief in that free to air model. And that is, as I say, if you have

the Guardian app now,, once you go over a certain number of stories you have to pay, but if you just use it in a browser and you go on the Guardian website you can keep reading it free for good. Now what I do think is interesting about what the paper has done as it were or the news organization has done is the growth in the Anglosphere. Now I've tried, I mean, you know, a few times had conversations about going to someone like the New York Times and what they were doing when they were doing that is thinking, okay, I remember someone from the New York Times telling me they want to hit 7 million subscribers at a certain point and they think, you know, obviously our best

territories probably are, you know, the UK or Australia or anywhere in the Anglosphere. Oh, Anglosphere. I thought you were talking, genuinely I thought this was something I hadn't, like a fisherman type thing, like you're hooking people in. No, the Anglosphere. Anglosphere. So having a big presence in America, which the Guardian does, but it's not by any means a primary news brand yet, as they would say yet, in the US. They benefit from having, you know, Apple News is a big thing for The Guardian US in that Apple News referrals are really interesting. And if you look, as I say, The Guardian give

you all your analytics and you can see where your referrals have come from and where people go after they've read whatever they've read from you. So you can see, oh my goodness, there's so many people have come via Apple News. And that's a big deal in America because, as I said, not yet a primary news band, The Guardian. So you really benefit from this, you know, aggregation and discovery, i.e. getting your product in front of people who might not otherwise see it. And then it helps, by the way, if once you've done that, your product is not paywalled. Because sometimes you might see an article on Apple News and think, oh, hang on, that's from the Telegraph

and I didn't subscribe to it. That, I think, is the amazing thing about it. It shouldn't work as a business plan, but it really seems to be. Because there is something about that epic at the bottom of the page, which if you have read five articles and enjoyed them, and you can afford to pay for that journalism, most people will do. There's two groups of people who can't. If you can't afford it, that's great because you can just keep reading it forever. So you're still reading

great journalism and you don't have to feel a second's guilt because if you can't afford it, you can't afford it. If you can afford it and you choose not to, then that's a decision and that's on you. And there'll be plenty of people who do that. And that's okay. But it's certainly a question you have to ask yourself is why do you keep using this thing for free when other people are paying for it? They had an interesting thing that I noticed that they were doing last almost last couple of weeks which was can you help us get to 50k subscribers which I've never seen them do before as far as I know I was talking to people in the building I don't think they've done that before and you could see this little totalizer going up every literally at the bottom of every

garden article anyway they did get to 50k extra subscribers yeah the other big thing that's absolutely massive is emails and being able to email supporters even if you don't necessarily have take have money from them or whatever but it's that is absolutely huge because one of the big concerns currently in news at the moment is what is AI overview, what's AI mode going to do to click through. Everyone thinks it's going to drop traffic but if you have a direct connection with people who you know you like your product, maybe they don't pay for it, whatever, but via email then Google is not present in that interaction. Yeah it's direct to

consumer and it's an emotional connection rather than a transactional. Yeah you're building relationship and you can do it and you're doing that also via podcasts and newsletters Which is why for it, you know, even back 20, 30 years ago, magazines always, always, always wanted you to subscribe so it's lovely having your stuff on the newsstands and people picking it up, but every time someone subscribes, you know what your money is next year, you know what's coming in and that's incredibly important for any organization. And the reason that people do it is also very interesting,

because all the things we might talk about on this, or you might read about in trade publications, or whatever that you know, oh, ad revenue is really down, or Facebook no longer supports news, or Facebook's a block to news getting out there. No one cares about anything like that. They subscribe because they support the mission, as it were. They support quality and they support independence. Now, certain things have really helped. Do you remember when we talked about what's going to happen

after, you know, what does Trump's victory mean? Right after the election, we talked about that and I said it will be a big newspaper subscription driver, which it has been. And in America, I think it's something like 68% of people believe that you should pay for news in America, or are willing to, and 55 in the UK. So it's a bit more people there think you should. I mean, in America, they're very used to donating for political causes. If you believe in something, they're very, very used to donating to candidates, to donating to causes. So actually, if you're the Guardian, that's why more than half the subscribers of the Guardian are in America, because Americans, if you say to them, is this something you care about? Are you willing

to give up, give us some of your money? By and large, Americans will say yes, in a way that British people won't. And some of the stuff you have, you haven't had to do stuff, like last time, I think, this is not, I'm talking about all sorts of different organizations, did a sort of resistance thing once Trump won. Once he's won again, I don't think you want to cast yourself as the resistance anymore. You have to just say, this is who we are and you believe in this.

But they were very helped by things like, you'll notice so often in that epic, it talks about billionaire owners, which you might find goes on a bit, but you also might think, but hang on. So many people came when Bezos said to the Washington Post, oh, I'm going to sort of basically interfere in content now. I'm going to tell you what you should write or I'm going to tell you what's not acceptable on the pages anymore.

And the Washington Post lost unbelievable numbers of subscribers. I've seen estimates from sort of 75,000 to 250,000 in an incredibly short space of time. And a lot of them came to The Guardian. They go other places as well. Of course they do. But it's really interesting that that sort of thing, people will pay for independence and the people are moved to subscribe because they feel it's a sense of mission. And mission is that why I keep going back to that mission thing, but people feel they have to believe in it. And to some extent that's great because it keeps you honest because you think we've got to deliver on people's expectations of us here. Of course the counter would always be most people these

days want to read with things that they already agree with. So you do want to avoid and anyone who's involved in these kind of models wants to avoid sort of pandering or just you know giving people everything that they want because that's the best way to keep them paying you. And now, the reason I particularly wanted to ask you about this week is firstly, I'd seen those numbers and I thought they were extraordinary. And it was just a real world thing, because I'd seen that kind of epic so many times of saying, look, we've got no billionaire owners and so can you pay? And the fact that people did, I thought was very life affirming. But the reason I wanted to ask this week is there was another story this week,

which came from the Daily Telegraph. Now, the Daily Telegraph is paywalled. It's a different way of doing business. Absolutely. You can absolutely do it. But there was an article this week about an investment banker and his wife called Al and Ali. Al Moy. Al Moy and his wife and Ali. Al Moy. Al Moy and his wife Ali. And between them they earned £350,000 a year. But because of Keir Starmer's VAT on school fees,

they'd had to cut back from five holidays a year to one. And essentially their kids were losing out on all sorts of things. So we've seen this article a million times before. And the journalist Ian Fraser... That was the most extreme version of it, surely. Yeah, it was the most extreme version. Everyone was like, oh my god, these poor people who cut, you know, on 350 grand a year. And then I think the journalist Ian Fraser said, this is a stock photo from shutter stock

from 12 years ago. So he looked up Al and Ali Moy and he says there's absolutely no evidence of them anywhere. Al Moy. What would an investment banker be called? Let's call him Al Moy. Even better though because what does Al spell written down? AI. AI. And his wife is called Ali who is also AI and their daughter is also called Ali. So they've got AI, AI, AI. The next kid is

called Harry, fair enough, but then they've also got a two-year-old child called Barry. So you've got AI, AI, AI, Harry and Barry on this £345,000 a year. The journalist who wrote it, who's, I've got it here because they've, the telegraph has deleted it. Once it was pointed out that it was completely made up, not just completely made up, but clearly written by AI. It wasn't just sort of, I'm going to make up some quotes. But it had a real journalist name on it. Yes, it does.

He's a real person. Georgina Fuller, he's a real person who writes good articles for good people. So something is up here. And it's written, last summer, Almoy, 38, an investment banker and father of three received a letter from his daughter Ali's school Saying they're increasing their fees by 10,000 pound shortly afterwards fees for the school his son Harry went to went up for 5,000 pound Literally, this is a really long article lots of quotes from Al who as we know

Doesn't exist. So this is a quote from Al Moye. Both schools have excellent reputations and academic programs and our daughter is in an age where her peer group is everything. She's been at that school with the same group of friends since she was five so it would be a real wrench to move her. Moye who doesn't exist says, Moye he went to private school in Singapore he didn't go to private school in Singapore because he doesn't exist. He says he doesn't have much experience in the UK state school system, but he wants to give his children the best possible education he can. He feels a private

school is the best way to do that. The biggest cutback they have made on their outgoing is holidays. This is a quote from Al who doesn't exist. Before the VAT increase, we'd have gone on around five holidays a year, including several long haul trips, he says. In previous years, we've been to the US a few times and stayed in New York and traveled around visiting the Hamptons. But now it's mostly Europe and maybe one long whole trip a year instead. And it's written like a normal article. The pictures are not real. The people cannot be found anywhere. They've all got the name AI. And there was an article in the Chicago Sun Tribune this week as well, like best summer reads, what you should read over the summer. And four of the books did not exist. They

were entirely made up. They didn't exist. And this is in the Chicago Sun Tribune. And their excuse was they'd outsourced that article to a content provider who had done these works for them before and they hadn't checked it. No one had looked at it, no one had checked it over in the same way no one on the Telegraph has looked at that article, right? Because there are so many red flags in that article. So it's written by AI and there's a business plan in having AI news but there isn't a business plan in being a trusted media brand and having AI news which is not labelled as AI news and certainly if that article is an opinion piece which has a political slant,

that doesn't feel like the way to treat somebody who's paying their subscription. No, and I'm intrigued as to how they treated the journalist or didn't. I'm really fascinated by that side of it, I have to say, because I saw that she was out the traps again with a different article, so you'd think that if she'd done something wrong, they perhaps wouldn't use her again. So I'd really be fascinated to know how her name ended up on that story. I feel like there's lots more to come out there. Well, as I say, the Chicago Sun Tribune, I think, were labeling things that weren't theirs

as theirs. Maybe that's what other organizations do. They've now said anytime content comes from a third party we will make sure people know it's come from a third party. This third party who gave us these best summer reads, some of which just didn't exist, we're never using them again. But if you are behind a paywall and your job constantly is just to get people to click click click click, click, click, then there's a really cheap way of doing it. And that is AI. But I don't know if that's long-term, that's a good business plan. So I think the business plans of The Guardian, The New York Times, which is very different but relies on subscriptions to games and to recipes and all of

these things have become a big lifestyle brand. There are ways and means of making money in newspapers it seems to me and I hope that this isn't one of them. I'll show you a view. I still think the telegraph could be a much bigger, I still think something could be done big with the telegraph. I've sat next to so many people who've said to me, you know, I know somebody's buying the telegraph next week for about four years now. I mean honestly so maybe maybe one of them one of the people I sat next to will actually be telling me the truth. Perhaps they meant a copy of. Yeah maybe maybe. Right now have you any recommendations? I went with my family I bought these tickets ages ago as I

think I mentioned to you a comedy about spies the mischief theatre West End sort of brilliant farce about spies it was absolutely amazing. the way, I met people in the lobby who said, who loved this podcast, a couple who said, I'm here because of this podcast, because I've gone on about it. It was amazing. And at the end, the cast showed us their set and it was so incredible.

It is so incredible. It's an amazing fast set with, it's a hotel, you can imagine there's all sorts of things. But it was just extraordinary. It really is a brilliant set and it's a brilliant comic set. The script is incredible, written by Henry Shields and Henry Lewis, who are also in it. And I have to say, it'll go on for a while, but you should try and get any ticket if you can, because it's so funny. We also went to see Abba Voyage this week for the third anniversary which again, listen, a night out of these things is expensive. ABBA Voyage actually tries to price its tickets

quite reasonably and if it's a treat, honestly, if you love ABBA it's a really great night out. I went with somebody who will remain nameless who said he thought it was the single worst thing he'd ever seen in his life because because he felt it was it was AI taking over. That was not the mood in the rest of the hall. I'll say that it's it's an extraordinary experience and and well worth going I'd say but also if you like the idea of it being the worst thing you've ever seen then why not get a ticket? On that note, we have got a questions and answers episode coming for you on Thursday as always and we've got that bonus episode for our members. You can join the club at

therestisentertainment.com, that's on Friday. But if not, we will be there as usual on Thursday. See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. Well, that brings us to the end of another episode of the Rest is Entertainment brought to you by our friends at Sky. I have been catching up on The Last of Us recently, such a gripping watch. Absolutely right. The critics are fairly unanimous.

It's dark and intense, brilliantly done, they're all saying, especially on your Sky glass with its high quality screen. Yeah, even those very low lit scenes, every flicker, every detail, it really pulls you in. One minute you'll be stretched out on the sofa, the next you'll be gripping the cushion and that is not a euphemism. The picture quality really just brings everything to life from the comfort of your living room. It feels properly cinematic, like the room fades away and you're in the thick of it.

Until the clickers show up, then it feels a bit too real. That's when you reach for the blanket. The perfect night in. Couldn't agree more, so for anyone wanting to upgrade their screen time, head to Sky.com and check out Sky TV.