The Rest Is Entertainment - The Death Of Click-Bait

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

It's Halloween so Richard and Marina explore horror and why it is the most bankable genre at the box office and continues to thrive. Reach is a huge media company you might not be familiar with, but you will see their content as they own over 240 local media titles. With that though comes a need for a lot of content. Does their reach mean even worse news for local journalism? Finally we need to mention the C-word... Christmas. Hallmark has announced a raft of new Christmas movies including a tie in with The Kansas City Chiefs.... aka the NFL team Taylor Swift's boyfriend plays for. Richard and Marina explain why this is another example of companies being clever with their content, and why Hallmark are so good at Christmas. *** The iconic Royal Albert Hall plays host to the first The Rest Is Entertainment Live on Wednesday 4th December! Get your tickets here. Expect Christmas treats, a live Q&A and more surprises *** Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for ad free listen and access to bonus episodes: www.therestisentertainment.com Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport As always we appreciate your feedback on The Rest Is Entertainment to help make the podcast better: https://forms.gle/GeDLCfbXwMSLHSUHA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hello Marina. Hello Richard, how are you? I'm very well. I'm supposed to have been writing for the last week for the new Thursday Motor Club book, but all I've been doing is looking at the graphic of the Royal Albert Hall and how many tickets are left. Literally all week. It's looking good, it's okay. In case you didn't hear this last week, we are doing a live show at the Royal Albert Hall, which is going to be super festive, have all sorts of games and delights and surprises.

Special guests. Special guests. Special prizes. And it's on December the 4th. I do want to say sorry, because some people tried to book tickets on the first possible day and got themselves into a whole thing because there was a mistake and people felt that they had to pay another £55 just to be a member of the Royal Albert Hall so I want to say very sorry to those people this issue is no longer occurring anyone you did pay that has been refunded but if you wished for a

smooth experience it is now available. Exactly I would do it this week though listen as Kanye said tell the promoter we need more seats we just sold out all the floor seats but yeah and also exclusive we're gonna give away a house against weally luggage just one of our prizes right well that's the stampede that's the end of the podcast no one's gonna listen after that but since you had I've done that all week instead of writing I suppose you're writing but I just keep clicking that thing and seeing the kind of colored dots disappear it's quite mesmerizing it

is mesmerizing okay but what are we going to talk about this week? Well, it's Halloween! So spooky, isn't it? It is so spooky. My house is very spooky. Are you a Halloween fan? I have to. I've got three children of that age. I have to be.

It's like the law. I mean, genuinely, I think it has been passed into law now. Anyway, we're going to take the fun out of Halloween by talking about the box office of horror and how it's the last great genre in filmmaking. And there have been some extraordinary success stories. On a less spooky note, we're talking about Hallmark. They've begun their countdown to Christmas, and we're going to talk about how that's going and what it entails.

And also Reach, which owns lots of local, it is the largest local news provider and also international news titles. The money saving expert, Martin Lewis, noticed, or his attention was drawn to the fact that he was the subject of about 40 reach stories in one day. And we're going to be talking about churnalism. Churnalism. So horror, hallmark and churnalism. Shall we start with, oh, it's so spooky. It is.

Halloween. Call yourself a pumpkin spice martini and settle down. Is that a thing? Yeah. No, I don't know. It will be a thing, by the way. That's why you like Halloween. I don't think I would like a pumpkin spice martini, I've got to say.

Plain mom, absolutely fine. We're going to talk about horror. It is horror, Hollywood's most successful genre, bar none, of the 50 most profitable movies in Hollywood history. That means made for the cheapest. Return on investment. A third of them are horror. Something like the Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity were going to come to Blumhouse, horror which made Paranormal Activity, but both of those you'll remember used found footage as it were. And so they

were made incredibly cheaply and the greatest return on investment in Hollywood history. But right back in the day certain sort of places were associated with horror like Universal founded by Carl Lemle. They started and they carved out a niche for themselves and they had you know Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Boris Karloff as Frankenstein and they were always known as the horror kind of studio and it's interesting that lots of these sort of horrors Blumhouse distributes still through Universal today. Blumhouse is run by a man called Blum. We're going to talk about him. But horror is thriving, really thriving. Now they've had 28

titles have gone into wide release in 2024 which is by far the most in the modern era. Audiences go to cinemas for horror. And young audiences particularly. Young audiences. Horror fans want to see stuff in theatres. The box office is very good this year. It has been better, but that's partly a function of there just being more films out there. So if you look at the low budget successes at the moment, there's been Long Legs, which has made... Have you seen that? I've seen this one. Nick Cage. Nicholas Cage.

Yeah, Nick Cage, he's like a cultist who murders families with young daughters. Oh does he? Yeah, classic Cage role. The substance, which is this body horror thing, Demi Moore stars and I'm not even joking. Wow. Then Terrifier 3, now this is a major success, that's just come out, the first one by the way didn't even go into cinemas, it did belatedly, but that was just made for absolutely no money. Well, the first one, yeah, it was made for like $38,000 or something.

Exactly. Now, Terrifier 3 cost, I think, two million and it opened at over 18 million in just one weekend. And it genuinely looks, it's a bit sort of saw-ish, like almost all these films are, it's about a clown, called Art the Clown, but genuinely, really, absolutely appalling. I mean, listen, except if you like that sort of thing, in which case, it's amazing. But yeah, made for two million, which I mean, that's an episode of a TV drama. Literally nothing.

It's nothing. And if you look at, I mean, this is really, Joke of Follyarder, which was, as we've talked about, has been a big flop and cost 200 million and they would have to spend at least 150 to market it. Terrifier 3 comes out at weekend two of Joker 2 and obviously should have been quite far down this, but beats it. First of all, for a third series of a franchise, as people always tell you, like, franchises get worse and blah blah blah, this one is built and built and it's becoming more and more successful. It is also, by the way, an amazing name for a film. Yeah.

Terrifier 3. You know what you're getting. Yeah, you really do though, don't you? And it has great audience scores, great critic reviews. Then the next weekend after that you had Smile 2 come out, which obviously lots of things come out in Halloween month. Now that was made for 28 million because it's more expensive, it's come from Paramount and it did very well the first one.

But in the first weekend it got 23 million. So that's again, you should say, oh, it's hard to sustain with a sequel, but these things really draw people back in the horror franchises, people go back and back in. And the interesting thing with Smile 2 as well, firstly, not a great name for a film, certainly a horror film, Smile 2, okay, I mean, that could be that could be Hallmark. But one of the stars of it is called Ray Nicholson, and you can see him with this sort of great big, here's Johnny type grin, and that's because he is Jack Nicholson's son. And they've got so much amazing kind of traction from him

being in that movie. But yes, it's a follow up to Smile 1, unbelievably. Yeah, it's made over 200 million worldwide already. I mean, that's a crazy number in a world where as you say, Joker's follyarder has done a Boris Johnson Unleashed and is absolutely tanked. Did very badly in week two, by the way, the Boris Johnson book. I know, I still people keep picking up your story. And then I saw somebody floating the conspiracy theory that bookshops have been telling people they haven't got it. Yeah. Yeah, that's what's happening. Yes, bookshops are always trying not to make money.

Yeah, exactly. They're really trying not to sell a £30 hardback on the lead up to Christmas. That they've got in stock. Speak No Evil, which has come out earlier this year, that cost £15 million. That's a Blumhouse film and it has, again, great scores, great credit reviews. That's already made £75 million. Now let's talk about Blumhouse. Blumhouse is a company which makes mostly horrors, not entirely, but mostly. Headed up by Jason Blum, who, by the way, he's really interesting and articulate and brash.

I hear a lot of people think he's a complete dick. Having said that, I find him quite compelling to listen to. You like a bad boy. Well, he's an interesting boy because I tell you what he's done is in that same way that lots of our listeners will be familiar with the story of Moneyball with Billy Bean, the general manager of the Oakland A's, who works at this baseball system and they've now obviously made Michael Lewis wrote a great book about it and became a film. Stats based creativity.

Yeah, who works a stats based system to kind of overperform for the amount of money in baseball. Now Jason Blum did something slightly similar, which is that he thought all those things that we said earlier, like horror is the best performing genre, you can make cheap horror. What I would say about horror is that like a not very good, a really quite good drama can still lose you money. And a really quite bad horror can still be an investment.

And he has worked out all of these sorts of things. Paranormal activity was a blumhouse one. Now that cost 15,000 pounds. And also with that, he found the template of how they were gonna market their films. They have even audience shots, reaction shots in the trailer. So they had like shots of people sort of like,

oh my God, this is terrifying. Because he understood that you could get people out to theaters because these young people want to go. That company has been incredibly ruthless and disciplined with budget. They do let creators and directors have their way, but they don't really ever want to go over 20 million. This has been a slightly substandard year for them

by comparison of recent years. 2023 they had Five Nights at Freddy's, Megan, Insidious Five, Exorcist Believer. Collectively, Blumhouse movies made 800 million dollars last year. That's amazing. And again, and they don't have huge stars in them. They don't worry about that.

You know, the idea itself is the star and the fright is the star. Culturally, people are happy to go out and see that. It's like horror in some ways is it's sort of like Nando's in that you go there if you're, you know, teenage boys will always go for the extra, extra, extra hot, you know, just to prove that they can do it, it's so hot. I'm lemon on her, isn't that terrible? Oh my God. Yeah, but I don't like horror either.

I'm, listen, I'm scared talking about it. But yeah, but Blumhouse, with the quality control over what they do, it's sort of a license to print money. It's like a wonker factory of horror. But the studios, you know, we have to say, This guy is showing you how it is possible to do this You don't have to spend these huge amounts of money It's relatively low risk if you're most of your films that successful and one that cost 12 13 14 goes wrong It doesn't really matter that much

So much of this is so basic. Yeah, but they don't want to hear it the studios They don't want to look back at their own annals and think the biggest banker really is horror. Also, all the things that we keep saying, it gets young people out to the cinema and they want to be in the cinema. What's really lovely about it is that it matters more and the feelings, the feels are more intense when you're in an audience. People want to be scared together and they want to have that theatre experience. That is lovely. Yeah, I think it's amazing and you know, again, you can lead these horses towards. Yeah, and by the way, if you want to be scared in a big crowd, Royal Albert Hall, December

the 4th. That will be ours. But it's, you know, sometimes we talk about budget, we think, oh, why are we talking about that? We want to talk about creativity. But I do think that think that in this genre particularly creativity and budget kind of go hand in hand it's almost a function of the genre in that we're scared of what we can't see which is both terrifying and inexpensive and anticipation is a terrifying thing POV the killer is often more scary in Hollywood than you see Michael Myers or whatever, but actually Michael Myers' point of view is more scary. It's the same thing that happens in Jaws where they can't get the shark working and Spielberg's having this absolute nightmare and it becomes the mother of invention and so in general they have to do all those amazing shots which

are so iconic and looking up from below are people swimming silhouetted against the light in the sky above and that is far more terrifying in many ways than... Never show the shark. Yeah. That's the key. But it is, we've talked a little bit recently in TV and in movies about talent and talent pay. And the other message, you know, and the other lesson to learn from horror is you don't need

to be spending 25 million on actors. No. People are going to come out to these movies. As you say, they're happy to come to the movies. People are going to come out to these movies, as you say, they're happy to come to the movies, they're happy to watch horror. They do not need Timothee Chalamet to be in your horror film. It's such a lesson for studios, which is people will come and see the films, people are not going out to see actors particularly most of the time. Occasionally it'll work with a rom-com and stuff like that. But again,

it's not a lesson that anybody ever seems to learn. It launches lots of young, brilliant people who become brilliant actors and who become much more successful. Lots of final girls, as they call it. You know, the last person not to be dead in a horror movie who has to face and fight the killer alone. Lots of great actors in Hollywood have been launched as kind of final girls in lots of these franchises. But you don't need to spend money. And I would also say that they have a long afterlife, as it were. Sorry.

My apologies. Yeah. Long afterlife 2 is one of my favorites. They have these streaming services like Shudder, Shout Factory, Screambox. Screambox? Screambox. Right, you must have made up at least one of those. No, I haven't.

Shudder, Shout Factory and Screen Box. People pay for them. They're really well subscribed to. People pay £5 a month for them just because they're horror fans and they want to get those dedicated channels. They're really committed and they want to experience things in the cinema and they will have the communal terror, the communal joy. These are all the things that we're supposed to still want to happen in moviemaking and we say don't happen anymore, but they do within horror. Yeah, and it's interesting because is that just because it's horror? I do think there are wider lessons to be learned. One is you start looking at the numbers and this idea

that young people don't go to the cinema, they do. Older people don't go to the cinema. They're the ones who got out of the habit of it because we used to go to the cinema and now suddenly everything's at home. And so for that's like oh my god. This is a novelty. This is extraordinary I can watch this big movie at home. I can just be in my house I don't have to get a babysitter. I don't have to stay out late. So for our generation, that's a huge thing for the younger generation It's the exact opposite which is they can sit at home watch everything they want by themselves and someone is then saying to them Oh, by the way, do you know this this sort of theme park? We can go and do this with loads of other people and you know this this sort of theme park where you can go and do this with loads

of other people and you know this snack you can get snacks and you can kind of scream with loads of people. And it doesn't have to be three hours ten minutes. It's really fine for it to be an hour 38. People are very happy with that. So that's that's a generation for whom cinema is an incredible novelty and we're the generation for whom home cinema is an incredible novelty. So A make films for those people. B, they don't really show much interest in who the stars of these things are. You know, that's not something that interests them particularly. And so if you do want to start making big hit movies, you know, just write great scripts that appeal to young people and don't put

loads of stars in it, it's going to save a fortune. Horror directors and writers, and many of them are directors and writers, really think about what the audience wants and what they wanted, and they really know the fan base, and they are the fan base. And I know we've talked, we talk so often about audience, and it's amazing how often people go into projects without actually considering what the audience for that project is. Whereas these people consider it all the time because they are it.

That's 100% right, and it's funny really, we talked about Mr Beast as well, and about how he absolutely understands audience for that project is. Whereas these people consider it all the time because they are it. There's a hundred percent right. And it's funny really, we talked about Mr. Beast as well and about how he absolutely understands every single aspect of his audience and understands exactly what thumbnail to use and understands exactly what wording to use. I think we're going to get onto something in that realm when we talk about reach as well.

But this is where I genuinely think that AI is going to come into things for the studios because AI would understand what you're talking about. For Hollywood it's hard culturally to understand that you can make a cheaper movie with fewer stars in it because it's not in their DNA. It's just not, you know, they're the star system. They're going to parties and, you know, they're putting people on pedestals. AI doesn't care about any of that. AI will take every bit of data you've got and say, no, this person is not worth 12 million.

This person is not worth 17 million. You can get someone for $100,000 to do this, and you wouldn't make a tiniest, tiniest bit of difference to your bottom line. And I do think the big high ups at the studio, I don't think they're particularly using AI for creative things. I think that's a busted flush slightly.

You can, you know, there's various bits of grunt work you can do. But using it for audience research and using it for the moneyballization of movies. Using it to take the studio executive's jobs. Yeah, exactly. If you will. If I was a studio executive, they're the ones who are most at risk in the studio system of AI. But yeah, I do think that that's such an obvious point, the horror thing and the lack of stars in it and the younger audience. It's such an obvious point, but the Hollywood

does not seem to be getting. But I tell you who would get that? A machine. A machine would understand that and would churn out not a script, but how about do a film like this with these sorts of people in it and release it at this time of year. That's an easy win. But it's interesting because we both sort of know and everyone listening knows that's sort of not what's going to happen. Of course the studio executives are not going to, they're going to be the last people sort of still hold up in the studios. And yet you look at it now and you think, well, that feels like the thing. Yeah, this isn't Hollywood, Richard. The villains are going to win.

And talking of AI and what have you, can we talk about Reach, which is this newspaper conglomerate, which owns some national newspapers and lots of regional ones as well. People will know Reach without knowing they know them. We'll explain why. They have the Express, the Star, the Mirror, but they also have absolutely tonnes of local titles. Match Driven News, Liverpool Echo, and loads and loads of kind of local titles. And you will be able to see you're on a Reach website, I want to say, because it's not loading properly. Honestly, this is where people will really know reach. You know, whenever you click on a story

and it is impossible to read on your phone and there are 50 different pop-ups and it's like, continue reading and then you've clicked on an Omaze advert and then, you know, suddenly you're on the train and it's like playing a loud advert and even though your phone is off and it's absolutely impossible to navigate in any way whatsoever, that's Reach. I'm afraid it is, and by the way, none of what follows is any shade whatsoever on Reach journalists, who I have nothing but sympathy for, and we will come to who I consider to be the various, I don't want to say, well, villains of the piece. It's been all about villains, hasn't it?

Yeah, it's all about... Reach 2. Yeah. Now, there was a slight sort of play on this got a bit of traction last week because Martin Lewis, someone pointed out to Martin Lewis that it was the subject of about 40 stories in a day on Reach websites, all of which were sort of saying the same variety of nothing. And also all taken from things that he had written himself. On his money saving exback.com.

It wasn't a journalist finding something out, it was a journalist looking at what he'd written and then putting that in a slightly different form of words, and 40 of them in one day. Exactly, and actually it ties in with something that we heard of a few weeks ago when it was discovered that reach journalists were being told they needed to try and hit eight stories a day. Now, as someone who's worked a very long time in journalism, eight stories a day, you're not doing any form of what anyone normal would consider journalism. You're just sitting in an office typing things. And they've lost 800 journalists this year at reach. I know they've like recently hard six or whatever, but they've got a really tricky situation. I'm not saying that local

news isn't hard. We'll come to some people who are doing brilliantly at local news in a bit, but they rely on ad revenue, which is why these websites, when you try and lower them, are completely broken and all this stuff kind of pops up. Then they also have relied on trying to get people to their content via social media.

And they've also got other liabilities. They've got a big pension deficit and they've got all these phone hacking claims that each year take a big sort of write down on those. Apart from that though. Apart from that. So the websites have so much on them because what they've gone for is quantity and not quality, this idea of churnalism and you know we were talking about those adapt, we've talked about Netflix trying to adapt the

thumbnail so that each is tailored to you. This is like a really weird lo-fi way of doing that, not a Mr. Beast way. If they're going to do a story about Martin Lewis and everyone's got one Martin Lewis story, they reckon, and they're just trying to find a way of getting that via the headline. And if you're sort of like, you know, and it results in local people who should be local news reporters sitting there in perhaps Liverpool perhaps someone and one of the other places where they own sort of big local news presences writing stories about what happened to Liam Payne and trying to write sort of 10 of them

a day because that's going to drive traffic. Now in my view this is a real death spiral in terms of like you're not you're not going to deal with the downturns in advertising by just chucking out more stuff. The CEO of Reach is some guy called Jim Mullen. I have heard say, I don't know, I haven't spoken to local journalists, but I've spoken to Mirror and Express journalists. He's not loved by them. And I imagine his appeal doesn't travel.

He used to run Ladbrokes. I mean, I've got a bet for him. I bet he thinks he's in the ad business and not in journalism. And I bet his strategy, this strategy is going to go tits up. I'm sorry, I just think it is. Recently he did some big speech about misinformation and the platforms and all this sort of stuff. The sort of thing that one feels one should do as a sort of publisher of news. It's like you're not a publisher of news. You seem to be in the ad business and you're failing at the ad business.

There's a movement abroad in the advertising industry at the moment that understands that, say for example you have 9,000 subscribers to a newsletter, you're of a great deal more value to the advertising industry than someone who might get half a million eyeballs on a series of stories. They have begun to really understand that return on investment on these journalism clickbait things is absolutely not worth it. There's no money in it. Nothing is having cut through. If you're doing 40 stories on Martin Lewis and people are clicking on different versions of them and then something pops up, it's an incredibly inefficient way of doing advertising. So you're 100% right. Reach are in the ad business, but they are like in the ad business of the 2010s, certainly not of, you know, 2024. 2024 it is highly targeted,

absolutely understanding the audience, absolutely appealing to a group of people, all of whom sort of share similar characteristics. So advertisers can absolutely target. That's the key thing for advertisers. And this feels like Death Spire is sort of right because it doesn't feel to me like there's a good way out of this. If ever a story comes from this, for example, and Sean Pryor does stuff, like I talked about that stuff, Nanogen that people put in their hair and that came up on. But you know, it's on like Gloucestershire Live and Birmingham Live and they have all the, you know, just, and the poor person having to type this up knowing that they're not helping the people of Birmingham. Yeah, the art sympathies are totally with these people. And also, you can see that what people

are doing now, if you're told to do it eight times a day, do you not think they're feeding into AI? Of course they are. They are self-mechanising because it's so completely disparaging to be a journalist and say, you need to do eight different stories about probably the same thing that Martin Lewis has said. If you don't think you're just feeding that into AI saying saying, write it again, but re-knows it on X, Y, or Z, it's completely pointless. But this, by the way, is not some new fly-by-night company who's set up to do this sort of thing. This is one of our great newspapers.

It's lots of our great newspapers. And it's what's really... It's interesting. Because I want to understand more about this, and I'm not brilliantly on the technical side, but someone who is, is at The Guardian, the head of editorial innovation, Chris Moran who's absolutely brilliant he joined in a really what he would describe as a very junior SEO role a long time ago. SEO is search engine optimization which is if you type in news his job is to get The Guardian to be

yeah and he said right from the very start when he was in that role he thought if I went into a commissioning meeting and said, this is trending now, we need to do some stories on it, people would look askance at him. He always understood that what The Guardian wanted to be about was responsible reach. So journalism we believe in that is read as widely as possible. So they kept looking at how to do lots of things better. And in 2016, they came to a really what I wish that Reach would come to this knowledge now, which was that there was just too much stuff on the Guardian website. And they looked at it and they pulled the data and they thought, God, about a third

of what we publish gets fewer than 5,000 page views, which is basically nothing. Just because the internet has intimate space, we can put everything here. And then you get problems because you think, oh, the sub doesn't have a headline, this story, because it's actually quite boring and vague and we don't really know why it's here. It's been commissioned because it might become important. You can't give it any prominence because you don't quite know what it is.

So they came up with a relatively simple plan, which is they said, we're not going to tell any of you what to write or what to commission, but could you please publish a third less? Could you just do exactly a third, because that's what the data is showing. So they gave them back the ability to say no to things, which is 50% of commissioning, and everything became much more curated and there was zero drop in

page views. This is not to say, oh it's so easy just do less, but lots of people did follow that. It is quite clear that if you do things like that you don't necessarily get a job in drop in pages. Also people can find the good stuff. It's ridiculous for the CEO to stand up and do speeches about misinformation or stuff like that. Yeah because you're just adding to the general sort of mulch of stuff on the internet and no one can sift through it to see what your important journalism is. There are important investigations in the Mirror, in the Express, all sorts of things but it's very difficult to find them if there are also 40 stories in one day about Martin Lewis or whatever it is

Now journalists they've taken an sort of their lead from MailOnline Which is a sort of brilliant product and changed everything in lots of different ways, but it's not local news This is internet and it built an international platform Journalism stories in tabloids used to be about a classic one. You'd have to write 10 paragraphs Maybe if you your story was getting a page lead or whatever, you might get 15 paragraphs. But now all stories are like 40 plus paragraphs because they're on one of those pages. If you look at mail online, they want to put all those pictures in and they want to divide up. So it's a very long thing. But really, when you...

Is that to make you spend more time on it? Yeah. To spend more time and also because you don't feel sort of cheated. Online people often feel cheated if they see a tiny... Well, if you see in a newspaper thing and you get a tiny little nib, or news in brief as it were, you understand the context. If you go to a webpage and there's like five paragraphs, you're like, what? Sorry, why have I come here? Why have you directed me here? People don't want to feel cheated, so they feel they need to get something. So that is a different thing. And it has been very, very successful for them. But if you're doing that and you're in a local newspaper, and also you're in no way serving your community.

So Reach, just to be clear, has a series of national newspapers, but also bought a whole load of regional newspapers. We know that regional press is in crisis, and actually it's never been more important, and people love local news and people love hyper local news, but they bought a series of local titles but are serving up by and large exactly the same as they're serving up, you know, Gloucestershire, Birmingham, the southwest the borders. Show me how it relates to Gloucestershire. They're all getting the same thing. Local news has never been more important but I'll tell you where all the great local news is happening now. It is happening on Substack and tell you where all the great local news is happening now, it is happening on Substack and individuals or very small collectives are writing it. Wales, which is supposedly served by Reach and Wales Online, Will Hayward who does a newsletter,

I mean he's now in content, he's won awards, he's in contention for awards, Joshi Herman who does the Manchester Mill, the Bristol Cable, that's a cooperative. These people are doing amazing local news. Jim Waterston who used to work at The Guardian, he's just started London-centric because he felt London is totally underserved. What is the evening standard? It ceased to be a proper local newspaper in such a long time ago. I mean, I personally remember, this is not something he said, but I remember George Osborne was the editor. The night of the Grenfell Tower fire, he went off somewhere else to do one of his other jobs. There was absolutely no investigation into that. It's like this

unbelievable crisis, terrible thing happened in the Capitol in the same postcode as your offices are, and you don't even do an investigation in all the years afterwards. I mean, what are you actually for? So whatever happened to the London Even Standard, it does not serve its local community in any way. So Jim's idea was like, I think I would just like to do some reporting about the city I live in, that lots of people would be interested in. Because the capital, you know, if you think of the huge budgets that the London mayoralty has, if you don't have people scrutinising that on a local level, what does that mean? What does it say about all sorts of things?

London is already a place where all sorts of corruption happens and where all sorts of people are there to help foreign interests kind of feather their nest or launder their money or whatever. If you don't have people reporting on your city and you're this big and there's this much going on, it's quite odd, isn't it? Yeah. And by the way, there are a number of regional centres that do have great print newspapers still, yeah if you do have

one of those then hold it dear because there are fewer and fewer and fewer of them. And we'll put a link to all of those in this week's newsletter. But it really is such an encouraging thing. I mean some brilliant journalism out there it really is and I feel utterly swamped by these absurd click on this thing just you know we're smart enough to understand, you know, if you're talking about, you know, Geri Haddwell makes shocking admission, you think, but she didn't. Otherwise it would be, you know what, if Geri Haddwell had made a shocking admission, it would be on the news.

You make 400 shocking admissions a week on Reach, I believe. I know, when I did Pointless, I was always having rounds with Zander. And he'd go, oh no, we just did a, sorry, that was a joke about the thing. And just so you know, Ossman blasts Zander. Again, if I blast Zander, I'll tell you about it. I absolutely promise. It isn't news. People know it isn't news.

People know what news is. News is what's happening in their community. That's what news is. And to every single journalist working on it, I wish you wonderful futures in this new world of hyper local news and local news and the stuff that people are happy to pay for. Talking of highly targeted ads, should we go to some? Please lads.

Welcome back everybody. By the way, thank you to everyone who signed up for ad free and all that stuff. Our first ever bonus episode is coming out this Friday for people who signed up to the club. If you don't sign up to the club, don't worry, we'll continue doing the podcast forever and ever and ever. But if you do want bonus things, and we were going to do a one-parter, it turned into a two-parter, what's it about? It's about the life and earth of Steven Seagal.

Yeah, it's a two-part, absolute in-depth. If you want those bonus episodes, sign up to the Wester's Entertainment Club. That's not a joke, it is actually-depth. If you want those bonus episodes, sign up to the Restless Entertainment Club. That's not a joke, it's actually about that. Yeah, it really is. Sorry, it may seem like I was being ironic. In some ways, it's an exercise in irony. It's essentially you talking with me sitting with my mouth agape as you tell me more and more things about Steven Seagal.

Enter our world. Enter our world. Now, talking of wholesome movie stars, the Hallmark Channel. Christmas is officially beginning. Emma Watson It is. Hallmark Media is, as you know, they started as a sort of gifts and merchandise thing and then they eventually got the Hallmark TV channel and they have become, you know, this sort of feel-good behemoth where, and their Christmas season countdown to Christmas where they have lots and lots of movies movies and they kind of dedicated Hallmark Channel stars star on them by the way 47 brand new movies leading up to Christmas

47 movies they've made experience magic this holidays The wider developments within Hallmark media they are very interesting There was a really interesting article in variety and there've been some other ones Detailing that sort of how they're moving into new areas, how they're trying to get new audiences, but most specifically the sort of experience market. Now lots of people are doing experience things and bricks and mortar things. Netflix have bought places, A24 have bought their own theatre. Taskmaster Live.

Taskmaster Live. Lots of, as we've talked about this before, they they decided they were going to do a Christmas cruise Okay, it's four day crew, you know from the US I know well it did sound like the best thing ever to many people because it's sold out in hours So they decided they better lay on a second boat that sold out even quicker They now have a 70,000 people waiting list and climbing to be part of this Hallmark cruise. What happens on the cruise? We don't know yet because it hasn't occurred.

So I'd be absolutely fascinated by the project. You can imagine there'll be all sorts of Hallmark events. Definitely have guest stars of the, you know, they have the repertory company of Hallmark players. They'll be on it. The other interesting deal they have done, and I find this the most fascinating in lots of ways. Hallmark are based in Kansas City, by the way.

That's their headquarters. The Kansas City Chiefs, who you may know as Super Bowl winners, but you may also know as, oh right, the team that Taylor Swift's boyfriend plays for, Travis Kelsey. Now, they have done a deal with the Hallmark channel, the Kansas City Chiefs, and they're going to have their first movie, it's called Holiday Touchdown, a Chiefs love story, that's coming out this Christmas, okay? It's the story of a chief super fan and the chief's director of fan engagement. I wonder if she cares a little bit less about her career by the end of it.

I wonder if she goes to a small town and is taught the true meaning of Christmas. Well that is really interesting though. The whole thing with Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift has been really interesting because nothing could make the NFL rate higher. It's impossible to overestimate. It's the great ratings behemoth of American Telly. American Telly sort of doesn't exist without the NFL. Except when Taylor Swift started turning up at Chiefs games, the ratings went even bigger because lots of young women were starting to watch just to see if they could see her. So the NFL has discovered that there are other ways to sort of grow the fan base. It's really interesting actually, I was thinking, I didn't tell you this, but I was going to say this. Last week I went to the Formula One exhibition, which is at the XL, okay?

And it's really interesting, there were loads of groups of young women at that exhibition. And I tell you why they are all there, they are all there because of Drive to Survive, which is the Netflix show about Formula One, right? In the old days, that would have been pure 100% male, all petrolheads. It was really interesting. So I was going around and I'm not actually that interested. You know, I know the story of Formula One, you know, seeing all these young women sitting there reading the story of Bernie Eccleston on the walls, I was like, oh my God, this is so mental. But anyway, so I know all those stories. So I saw more people watching in lots of ways There was a young woman went. Oh my god

They have the burned out car that remain Grosjean crashed in the then the Bahrain Grand Prix in 2020 And he was it's it's extraordinary, you know, and it's burning for 27 seconds He was he was and he walks out It's it's it which is extraordinary because everyone thought you know, he was a gon. One of these groups of young women went, oh my god, Man on Fire. And I thought, she's literally, that is the title of the Netflix episode of Drive to Survive about that incident. So she's like quoting back their talking points. And then I thought, this is really interesting.

So you see, this is why it makes lots of sense for Hallmark to reach out and to do a deal with the Chiefs because they think, oh, hang on,, well this could sort of bring more women fans into our sport. And equally for Hallmark, it's bringing more male fans into Hallmark. Well that's what I'm saying, do you think it is? Yeah, of course it is. Because in the same way, look sports, for me, has always been about characters. It's all about stories, soap opera. And the second you show people the characters in sport, it becomes much more interesting. There's empathy and you can get far more involved. But equally, you know, Hallmark Christmas movies, and becomes much more interesting. There's empathy and you can get far more involved.

But equally, you know, Hallmark Christmas movies, and we are going to go through a few of them, I absolutely love them. And you know, if we can find, I think Hallmark and the Kansas City Chiefs, maybe it's the future of humanity. Because maybe it is that thing of saying... Don't all men just want to sit down with an eggnog? Because they want an excuse to say, you know what, I'm home. I want to watch a Hallmark holiday movie.

I honestly think 65% of men do, yes. I agree. Yeah, and 35% of men don't. I'm just looking for an excuse. But they're the noisiest 35%, unfortunately. In the same way that there's a huge female audience for sports which is completely underserved and, you know, it comes via actually understanding what on earth is going on. It's like getting into EastEnders sort of 17 years in. You've got to watch a few episodes for you to understand who Ian Beale is. You know, that's the same with... And you don't want gatekeepers saying, yeah, but were you there when Arthur stole the Christmas card money? Because if you weren't, then go away.

Yeah, exactly. You don't want those... Yeah, when there was eight of us watching. Sorry, who was your favourite Fowler? No. No. Didn't even play on that side. Right, yeah. Shut up. Yeah, Robbie. So yeah, that hookup is is amazing Hallmark seems to be doing something that no one else is doing this We live in a world where all channels are sort of desperately trying to not lose money and you know sink into the sea and they have

absolutely because again, we're talking about that thing of of reach and Advertisers needing a real connection to a brand in order to advertise with them and Hallmark has a real understanding of its audience, a real understanding of how to grow its audience, really knows what they want, how they want it. You know for example these Christmas movies they're now doing a big reality show called Finding Mr. Christmas which is to find an actor for one of their Christmas movies so you know the viewers are empowered in order to choose one. The person who wins it on Saturday, December the 21st,

this movie is launched, it's called Happy Holidays. It stars Jessica Lounds, opposite the to-be announced winner of Finding Mr. Christmas. The synopsis is this, a webpage editor, you listening, Reach? A webpage editor spending the holiday alone is drawn into an unusual encounter

when she encounters a stray dog. Oh. Very much count me in. You know? I wonder if she'll care a little bit less about that web page by the end of it, Richard. Do you think? No, I think this might be one where she goes, actually, after a while, the dog runs off because dogs do, and she goes, I actually love my job at Reach.

And I'm going to go, actually, I am going to go in on Boxing Day because I do need to write about what Martin Lewis has to say about the interest rate mechanism. You've crossed the streams, Richard. You've crossed the streams. They got some amazing films coming out. They genuinely, listen, you know, we say all of this with love, the Hallmark Christmas movie stuff. Well, I mean, I'll sit and watch all of these. Following Yonder Star, when a scandal upends a famous TV mother's life ahead of the holiday, she heads to a luxury Vermont resort for Christmas. Upon arriving, a booking error leads her to a quaint B&B owned by an astronomy teacher.

She's going to care a lot less about her career at the end of it. I don't know. Yes, Richard. I don't know. That is what happens to the women in these things. Let's just be realistic. Yes, they realize that some things are more important than their jobs. I think she'll go, do you know what? Actually, I'm not interested in astronomy, it turns out. And what I actually love is my work. Operation Nutcracker. Okay. Operation Nutcracker.

She's a ball breaker from the big city. Steven Seagal. No. An event planner must partner up with the heir to a local family dynasty to track down an antique nutcracker that goes missing before a holiday charity auction. Oh my god, no computer could ever create such a scenario. Five Gold Rings. They must have been searching for a film for that title for a really long time. Imagine how many spec scripts they rejected called Five Gold Rings.

New York City painter Audrey Moss returns to her small hometown in Minnesota for the holidays and is met with an unexpected request from her beloved late grandmother. Find the owners of the mysterious gold rings and return them to their rightful homes before Christmas morning, only nine days away. Oh, I love it. Wow. The Christmas charade. A librarian's quiet life is turned upside down when she's forced to pose as the girlfriend

of an undercover FBI agent working to catch an art thief before they can strike at a Christmas Eve charity ball. We've all done it. Count me in. I think this might be my favourite. Santa Tell Me, which again, that's a good one. Olivia, she is a successful interior designer and she finds an old letter from Santa promising she'll meet the love of her life by Christmas Eve and that his name will be Nick. She then goes to her hometown and is stunned to meet

three guys named Nick. Whoa! Which Nick to pick. Okay, I love this. But to go back to that whole idea of Hallmark trying to reach out and go beyond, we were talking about the sport and bringing in new fans. This isn't something, by the way, that's just sort of limited to the NFL. It was quite a long time ago that I remember when Edward Wood was the chairman of Man United and he said his competition was Vin Diesel movies. I mean, these are people who slightly, you know, there is something quite end times and

soul crushing about this to some extent for lots of football fans, but these people who think that they're not in the football business they're in the content business And so Richard Arnold also former CEO of Man United said Richard Arnold not not the from Jim Not National Treasure GMT GMB Richard Arnold biggest TV show in the world Man United is the biggest TV show in the world So what they would sort of want to say is you know this thing that happens for 90 minutes on the pitch It's just a bit of it. But as a general principle, this is what we've seen in entertainment over the last few years, which is that if you're not growing and massively sort of increasing your audience in areas that you hadn't necessarily looked for them before, then you're actually in decline, even though it may not become

obvious at first. So all these things like F1 bringing in huge numbers of new fans via these kind of quite unusual ways, which are now seeming more usual, these ways of bringing people into sport via different forms of documentary content and so on. But the Kansas City Chiefs in Hallmark is set beyond even that, I think, to actually start using your name and being in Hallmark movies. They've let them use the stadium. They've got real life Chiefs staffs, you know, like general managers. Do you know what? I would hope they would let them use the stadium. They've got real life chief staff, you know, like general managers. Do you know what? I would hope they would let them use the stadium. Yeah, of course. But they've got the coaches, you know, people are making cameos all the

way through. So they're really trying to draw men into that Christmas content and then and hope it's reciprocal. And women into the NFL. It's that thing we've talked about before that everyone is trying to be a four quadrant business, which is older men, older women, younger men, younger women. And if you can appeal to all four of them, then you can make money forever and ever and ever. It's 57 days till Christmas, and there are 47 of these movies, and you've got to have the odd day off here and again,

you know, every now and again to watch some NFL. So it's, listen, there's a lot to pack in. Strap in. Any recommendations this week? I have, I am really enjoying Everyone Else Burns, the second season on Channel 4. It's a sort of set in a kind of doomsday cult. Simon Bird, Kate Flynn, Arshir Ali, they've got Sean Clifford in this season. It's really, really good.

It's written by Dylan Mapletoft and Ollie Taylor and it's very, very funny. It is a family sitcom, but in a very twisted sense and I'm enjoying the second season of that. And that is on Channel 4? Well, it'll be on all four which is of course that's the important thing. Lovely, thank you. Well shall we reconvene for a questions and answers thing on Thursday? Let's do that. See've got some very exciting news. On Tuesday the 5th of November, I'll be covering the US presidential election through the night, live in studio from New

York City, as part of The Rest Is Politics coverage. I'll be joined by Rory Stewart and Alistair Campbell from The Rest Is Politics, Dominic Sandbrook from The Rest Is History, and perhaps most excitingly, indeed certainly most excitingly for me, Antonis Garamucci from The Rest Is Politics US. We'll be live on YouTube from 8pm UK time on Tuesday evening and back again the following morning at 5am UK time. We'll be analysing all the events as they unfold and I'm sure there'll be plenty of time to dig into the impact of plutocrat everyman Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos on the soap opera that is US

presidential politics. The show will be incredibly interactive so you can ask us as many questions as you like. For more information just search The Rest is Politics. America decides on YouTube.