The Rest Is Entertainment - Why Do Gigs Cost So Much?

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

The American Department of Justice are seeking to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation to try and make gigs cheaper. How did Ticketmaster gain such a grip on the music industry, and if the DOJ are successful what could it mean for live music in the UK? Loaded magazine is back... Richard and Marina trace it's history and that of 'lad mags'. Is there a bloodline to today's toxic masculinity? Finally, we have our hands on the second viewing data dump from Netflix and it has sparked a possible billion-dollar idea from Richard! Twitter: @restisents Instagram: @restisentertainment YouTube: @therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Tom Whiter Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Recommendations: Marina - Mike Martin - How To Fight A War (Read) / The Fence (Read online) Richard - Race Across The World (iPlayer) / Ticket Masters: The Rise of the Concert Industry and How the Public Got Scalped (Read) 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another edition of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard, also on Hi Marina. Hello, Richard, how are you? Yes, I'm all right. You've sort of been on the tour of all the different politicians this week. Sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, I've been on the election trail. I've been around the country.

That will continue as we lurch or skip towards July the 8th. Sorry, I'm so sorry, July the 4th. It's sooner than I think. Thank God for that. But no politics on this podcast. Absolutely no. There's enough politics out there, isn't there? Yeah, we're going to mention the US Attorney General, but that's it.

Get-a-wise thing about ticketing. And honestly, we will talk about the US Attorney General for two hours, absolute max. Oh yeah. No more than that. I mean, big Merrick Garland fans on this show. Yes. So yeah, we're talking about Ticketmaster and their sort of near monopoly of ticket sales and why we pay so much for tickets and so on. Yes.

We're also talking about... The return of Loaded magazine in one form or another. Which would be nice for 80% of our audience will find out what Loaded is. Yes, absolutely. Then we talked right back when near at the start of this podcast, we talked about Netflix releasing their viewership data for the first time. And that was the first six months of last year. And they've just done the second six months of last year. So we'll have a look at what the first global TV channel, what we're all watching on it.

Start shall we with Ticketmaster? We'll start with Ticketmaster. The attorney general in the US Merrick Garland has... I love that guy. It's a great I love that guy... has launched a monopoly suit against Ticketmaster because they control everything and ticket prices are too high and it's in their interest to act for the consumer and there is in general a lot of anger about ticketing including in this country which we'll

also talk about because one of Labour's... oh sorry it's not a totally politics free zone is it? Because one of Labour's proposals for the election is to caps secondary ticketing, like resale basically, at 10% over face value, which they already do in some other European countries. Shall I say how Ticketmaster started? People I think are slightly confused as to what Ticketmaster do, how they make their money, why they make their money. They know they hate them, and they know they're paying them a lot of money. It was a sort of a genius business decision in the 1970s really. Theaters and concert halls used to sell their own tickets

because if you think about it, if there's a gig, you've got the band or the act and you've got the venue and those are the people you imagine are making you all the money. And the little stuff of paper in the middle, which is a ticket, that isn't anything. Yeah, it's a receipt essentially. And that's all it used to be.

Then a company called Ticketron started setting up little kiosks in major stores and they would sit at the theaters, you pay us 25 cents every time we set a ticket for you. And the theaters thought, okay, I can sort of see that, that kind of works for us. Someone else taking care of all that business and people would put their credit card details into machine and take the tickets out. Ticketmaster came along, a guy called Fred Olson, and it completely turned it on his head. He thought, I'm not gonna get the theaters to pay me. He said, I'm gonna pay the theaters.

I'm gonna say to the theaters, if you let me have absolute exclusive control of your ticketing, I will give you 50% of what I make, or 40% or 30%, depending on what the theater is. So he turned the whole thing around. The theaters went, well, this is great. We don't have to worry about the ticketing at all because that's a hassle. We're getting a bit of extra revenue as well. Of course we'll sign up with this company. So that's how Ticketmaster made their money.

That's how they continue to make their money. That's why they're the people in charge of pricing and that's why they're the people who pretty much any big gig or big theatre you go to, Ticketmaster the people you deal with. But then they went a step further. Oh this is in 2010 when they acquired Live Nation. Now, Live Nation sort of ran the venues and so basically what that meant was that Ticketmaster suddenly became this everything corporation where they control the entire entertainment supply chain. And in the US, they do a lot of secondary ticketing as well. And, you know, people obviously quite swiftly started to hate them for a number of reasons. But big flashpoint of course once again she is at the

centre of it when the Taylor Swift tickets were released last year and you could only get them through Ticketmaster. And by the way that's interesting because she's the most powerful woman in entertainment and even she and the AEG group of her promoters they could not get past this because all the biggest venues had exclusive deals with Ticketmaster. She couldn't book her tour without dealing with Ticketmaster. There would be no way for her to play. The Ticketmaster website crashed. People were in queues for sort of 10 or 12 hours. They took days off work to do it. But they also have discovered that there are bots that can do a thousand tickets. This is the trouble

you see. There's software that can... Scalping bots. Yeah, scalping bots. There's about 10 different varieties of these scalping box and then it's immediately like a 7,000% resale. The head of the FTC, Biden's Federal Trade Committee, is a woman called Lena Kahn and she said, this catastrophe converted more Gen Z-ers into anti-monopolists overnight than I ever could. But I think it is slightly more shaded, as always, as a story.

People like to hate for Ticketmaster and the artists love to say, oh, you've paid, I'm just, can I just come up with a random number? Say you've paid 50 pounds for a ticket, but why do I get to the end of it and discover I'm paying 100 pounds? When I've been on this website for hours and hours

trying to do this, and then at the end it's like, oh, we're not gonna take the ticket because it's all these fees. People are thinking, oh, that fee's going to Ticketmaster. By the way, we know that that fee goes in some part to the artist and the big artists. Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes, not okay. The big artists, right? Yeah, the big artists.

The big artists love having Ticketmaster there. It's a little bit like, reminds me a little bit like when Boris Johnson had people like Gavin Williamson in his cabinet. You love Gavin Williamson in the cabinet because if they're talking about Gavin, they're not talking about you. You know they're the lightning rod and they've taken all the hate. They actually say we make a tiny amount of money but yeah they don't and actually the way bits of their business make lots more and when they're saying we've made a tiny we make 1.4% or something they're foregrounding little bits of their business that they can say

that about which are lost leaders for the big stuff where they do make huge amounts. Sometimes they charge you £2.50 to print out your tickets at home. Yeah. That I've never worked out, like they're paying for the upkeep of my printer. Yes, well I get this in some sort of cheque in the post, will it come to me? This seems to be quite an election year play by the way, I'm sorry we're not, why are we talking about politics? But it is quite, but it's such a consumer facing thing like saying, oh poor you, you're

spending too much for all your fun stuff, we're going to do something about it. I don't believe that this will get passed on to consumers. Aspects of it may work better but if you're asking me whether that notional ticket I would just said will come down to 50 pounds no I don't think so. Well there are rivals to Ticketmaster and they pretty much charge the same amount each time as well. And some of those rivals may come in they may have to say you can't monopolize venues any longer you're gonna have to allow some of the rivals well because some of those rivals may come in they may have to say you can't monopolize venues any longer you're gonna have to allow some of the rivals to have some of the tickets etc but exactly it's listen

if the market is that tickets cost a certain amount and the big artists are selling out time after time after time which they are because there's huge demand now for live performances then there is nothing in anyone's interest really to reduce the price of those tickets apart from possibly the artists. So that's the only place you could go with that is for an artist to find a way to team up with a ticket retailer or a series of venues where they could suddenly charge an awful lot less because there's still money in it if you do charge. Taylor Swift can do this.

She could have been, it was fascinating even then. As a turbo capitalist, will she? I don't think so. I mean, secondary ticketing, which I have got some Taylor Swift tickets. I don't want to say what I paid for them. It was slightly more than the opening box office of Mad Max Furiosa, which by the way, opened very disappointingly as I predicted. Although again, a great film.

Do you think? Yes. Well, I loved it. Did you go and see it? I haven't seen it yet. I'll have to see it. What do you mean did I go and see it? Yeah, of course you did. No, do you know what? I haven't seen it yet. I'll have to see it. What do you mean, did I go and see it? Yeah, of course you did. I loved Fury Road. Yeah, Fury Road is amazing.

It's like Fury Road, but with a few bits in between where there's some dialogue. Right. And not bad dialogue either. But she's no Charlies, I'm sorry. Oh, I thought she was great. TV star. Anyway, we'll move on. Now, I got mine from VirgoGo, and we always stub up,

they kind of, they've got the whole thing sewn up. Labour are trying to bring the prices down, as I say, on resale, because I know lots of Americans, and Americans connected with the show that we've just finished making, are coming to Europe to watch Taylor Swift, because you can get a ticket in Madrid for, they've got a price cap on it.

London, you are allowed to sell it for a lot more than face value. I mean, huge amounts more than face value if you look at these websites and what it would cost. I'm not even in the same postcode as Taylor Swift by the way. I'm technically in Wembley Stadium but I'm really it's very unclear whether we will be able to see her even with the binoculars which we're taking. There's a lobbying group they're called the the campaign for ticketing fairness. Okay CTF.

They sound great, don't they? Yeah. They're run by Vigogo and StompHop. Oh, isn't that great? It's like, when you, the carbon footprint, that sounds interesting. Who came up with that? BP. Yeah, campaign for climate change. Yeah, yes, exactly. Lobbying is incredible, but that group has sort of formed a particular effort to take down this policy and there was a Guardian story about it last week where they come up with seventy three thousand pounds. Again lobbying is cheap at the price isn't it? Yeah isn't it just? Yeah cheap to put pressure on MPs to sort of drop to drop that policy. And make you millions upon millions for years after years. Americans by the way would never countenance this like this 10% cap even though I know

some Americans who are coming to Europe to watch Taylor Swift they would never countenance this. They kind of% cap, even though I know some Americans who are coming to Europe to watch Taylor Swift, they would never countenance this. They kind of feel like if you bought your tickets, it's your right to sell them on for whatever possible price you can get for them. And I just don't think that it's in their part of their birth right. It's socialism. Yeah, that is genuine socialism. But they also, their fees are much more, I mean, we think our fees are huge in the UK, but it's somewhere around 15,

20% here and it can be up to 40, 50%. By the way there's a terrific book called Ticket Masters which is by Dean Bundick and Josh Barron all about this. It's from a few years ago now so it hasn't got the last few years but it tells you all the kind of early stuff. The first gig that Ticket Masters ever did was EL in 1977. And they charged 25 cents on a $6.25 ticket. Which is kind of, it doesn't sound crazy. Again. We don't live in that world anymore. I'm not sure what you're doing,

but they can literally do what they want. And also they have dynamic pricing, much like Uber, which means that if tickets are going super quickly, they can, suddenly the prices go up and they've got an awful lot of ways that they can get more money out of you if They can see that the demand is growing and growing but the ticket scalpers is interesting, isn't it? Because the world in which Ticket scalpers might work with the resale sites. When you say scalpers, do you mean those people likes? Okay, the bots is fine

Viagogo and StubHub and you know One of the things I need is resale tickets and I need people to buy Taylor Swift tickets and give them to me, then there's not a lot of those people around other than if you are setting out to make a deliberate campaign to buy a lot of Taylor Swift tickets that you don't want. So I'm not saying there is complicity, but certainly it's something that helps. I'm saying a lot of things after I bought my Taylor Swift tickets. I'm saying a lot of things and I feel I'm entitled to. I feel I've paid for that right Richard. I think that there is some, it just doesn't seem to me possible that that many people want to get rid of those. I mean it's just it's clearly not possible that that many people, you can get tickets for any night you want anywhere and they are just at these insane resale places. You're not meeting anybody who said oh who yesterday who yesterday said great news, I've got four Taylor Swift tickets.

And then the day after, go, do you know what, actually I'm gonna sell them to StubHub. Actually now I think about it, my daughters I know really want to go, but you know, I just think StubHub, I worry about their margins. Where are those tickets coming from is very, very interesting.

Also, whether there's complicity of artists in that sometimes, which by the way, on almost all occasions there isn't. But you know, again, it's a good way of making some extra money, the resale value of tickets. Um, so yeah, there's, there's a lot going on, but the basic thing is Ticketmaster work by being exclusive to venues and exclusive to enough venues that, you know, you have to go with them.

And then, as you say, they did the clever thing of actually buying up loads of those venues anyway, so they can sort of charge what they want. And's Merrick Garland's point I think. Yes and that monopolies just saying sort of oh we do this better than anybody therefore what which is the argument of a lot of enormous and monopolies. Google we do search better than anybody yeah I still think it's quite bad what's and how it's ended up. So it's in everyone's interest to break these things down. Although I don't think Antitrust has a great record recently in the US. I don't I will be interested to see what it will take a long time to work through the system. This. Yeah, it feels like in a world in which, you know, that Taylor

Swift tour sold out everywhere and had all the problems we're talking about had the problems with buying the tickets had the problems of the prices of the tickets, it had the problems of the resales of the tickets and it had the problems that there weren't five different places you could buy them. And yet it sold out everywhere around the world. So we are complicit in all of this. But if we want to do something, I mean, I guess you could put a cap, as you say, in certain foreign countries, they do do that. And you know, I guess you could put a cap, as you say, in certain foreign countries, they do do that. And I guess it would help out. And acts do sometimes try and take Ticketmaster on Pearl Jam, famously did it in the 90s,

and it nearly bankrupted Pearl Jam. But they're super, super powerful. So I just thought it was an interesting thing to talk about because I know people, we tend to dialogue with Ticketmaster four or five times a year, most of us. And each time we're like, how on earth are they making money? Then we forget about it again. So I think it's useful to know how that money is made.

It's a trauma, it's like childbirth. Once you've got the end of 10 hours of it, you're like, I don't want to think about it again. Yeah, the same reason people would have a second child is the same reason they go back to Ticketmaster. Yeah, right. Should we go to a break now, Richard? Let's do that.

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Magazine was part of, I feel like this is 104, Loaded Magazine, this is Melbourne brag in our time. Loaded Magazine was part of the sort of lad culture that began in the 1990s and then we'll talk about what happened, we'll talk about the switcheroo, what happened to it. It was originally, I don't know if it was originally edited by James Brown, but the big kind of era of its pomp, it was edited by James Brown, it had terrific writing in, lots of sort of sexy women, kind of with some clothes on. They weren't totally naked. Anyway, they're bringing it back. It fell out of favor, as you can imagine. Most magazines have fallen out of favor.

Things do. The printed word has fallen out of favor. The printed word has fallen out of favor. The editor, who's now a woman called Dani Levy, the new editor, she's a 39 year old fitness influencer who lives in Spain, she says that the new version of Loaded's magazine goal is to bring back ogling for the 35 to 55 year old men who are being cheated out of society. When can men... Ogle. When are men going to be able to look at a naked person in our society is what I would

like to know. I mean there are so few opportunities. Someone should set up some sort of, I don't know, some sort of portal. Yeah, now if there was some way of transmitting it. Anyway, there's quite a lot of confusing stuff here. She says, whilst it was acceptable for women to be feminists, men don't have the equivalent freedom. There's a lot of PC gone mad stuff. She then says, a weird dichotomy has opened up in society where there's an attitude that no one can say or do anything but then when you open social media it's full of porn.

Loaded to see people taking to the middle ground and say it's okay to appreciate beautiful women. Men need to have a safe place to read stuff like that and secretly relate to it. She also says, now this is the key line for me, we are targeting the original loaded audience who are now living happily at home with their wife and kids but still reminisce about their night spent clubbing until 3 a.m. drinking

one-pound shots with a bedroom covered in posters of half-naked women. I mean doesn't feel like it's gonna do great. Well but it is and I don't think it will work because for reasons we'll come to but that is totally the Adam Sandler Netflix play isn't it? It's like all people used to go and see this guy in the movie theater and actually think, in their early 20s, the reason that guy's the biggest movie star in the whole world is because they are now living at home

with their wife and children. They're not getting, it's expensive to get a babysitter and Adam Sandler continues to make movies for them on this thing. And there is an element of that to this because the first cover star is Liz Hurley, brackets 59. Wow. There's no shame in it, certainly.

But yes, I don't know whether the photo is taken by her son Damien, who seems to do most of her photos. I've got a huge amount of time for that relationship, by the way. What's that? Tell me about that. Liz Hurley also has bikini ranges and things like that and promotes them via social media. Bikini ranges, is that like a firing range but for bikini? Yeah.

Yeah, she fires up bikinisinis like a t-shirt cannon but a bit sexier and they they um Damien Hassan now a film director will come to that in a second takes takes all the takes all the photos they're very sexy and it's one yeah wonderful he does all the pictures he's now directed her in a I think it's called Strictly Confidential Shoot Me If I'm Wrong uh with a with a bikini not an actual, with a bikini, not an actual bullet. With a bikini cannon. Shoot me with a bikini gun. None of my New US punk group.

And in which he had to direct his mother in a sex scene, but then they said, did you have an intimacy coordinator? No, we don't need any of that. I'm hugely here for their relationship, for everything about it. That sounds very healthy. It's hilarious. The whole thing is brilliant. I love it. Anyway, she's on the front of this magazine. So mean, she is an original sort of loaded cover girl going back. The cover lines are quite interesting. I'll tell you what the cover lines are because you've got to become a member, by the way, which I think tells its own story. And then they'll post

you the magazine. Sorry? It really is literally something. It's like the gratin catalog. If you become a member, I will post you the magazine. That's like I once became a member of the Howard Jones fan club and they posted me a magazine. It's virtually the Pony Express. I think that was 1981. Okay, you have to sign it, you have to be a member.

Yeah, I think so. Okay, obviously they're using the data for something different, but the cover lines are Iron Mike versus Jake Paul, obviously that's the Tyson YouTube inside Tyson's training camp. Yeah, we'll read. Bugsy Malone, the black brown behind the beats. Okay, he's a British music success actor, we'll read that. How It Works, the MP. Now that is an explainer culture,

which I think we are part. This podcast is part, so I can see why they've got that. But in a way more interesting, what has happened to the women? Actually, one of the things she said is, oh, I think there's no shame in men being able to ogle beautiful women again like Liz Hurley Melinda messenger or Pamela Anderson I'd Pamela Anderson is now sort of reinvented herself as a survivor of all this Yeah, sure. She doesn't necessarily want to do loaded again But the girls who are on it now women, you know, like Sarah Cox has got a great book club.

Yeah, yeah. Kat Dilley's doing This Morning, Sinkapriest on the School Run. Gail Porter, that ended much more sadly, that story. I don't say it ended, but she talks really moving about her time. I think FHM projected her famously looking over, she was totally naked looking over her shoulder and they projected her on the House of Parliament without permission. I think it's like that onion headline which is ironic porn viewing leads to an ironic masturbation and it's hard for for younger people listening to this to really overestimate how huge loaded was.

It sort of went off like a big bomb in 1994. This huge thing is a James Brown not the singer was the editor and he'd been at the NME and the press up to then had been sort of NME quite earnest, all those sorts of things. He said, I want to do this magazine. And there were, there's like GQ. So he said, look, there were Savile Row suits and people in Bentley's. And then there was, you know, people in duffle coats, but there was nothing in the middle,

which are the sort of men that he felt were being underserved. And But I it for the articles. Sorry, I know it sounds like a cliché, but the articles were brilliant. It was a good magazine. It was exuberant, it was kind of gonzo. Funny. We didn't really have that sort of, it was really, yeah, and for a bit. And also it seemed as though the girls could join in this culture. I think that's the key thing is, you know, it started off and, you know, it was for men who should know better, which you kind of get, you know, listen, I'm a good guy, but, you know, so I've got a bit of an edgy side as well. And it was like sport, music, tech and women, I think,

was the sort of, the kind of order of things. But women crept up and up that order as the years went by. And as you say, the likes of brilliant broadcasters and smart women like Sarah Cox and Zoe Ball and Gail Porter sort of had to make themselves complicit with this, because this was the culture. And I think it was run by white middle-class men who had kidded themselves that the problems of inequality were over.

I think we were in the era of the end of history and Blair coming in and we got rid of Thatcherism, we got rid of all this trouble. And the struggles of the 80s have paid off and suddenly we're living in this world where everyone was free and equal, which sounds stupid, but every generation is uniquely stupid in their own way and uniquely clever in their own way. I think that was a real blind spot for that generation. And so I think Loaded started, it had real energy, great ideas, full of great stuff. But yeah, I think it's, you know, that sort of celebration of Ladisness very slowly turned into misogyny and no one

noticed it happening. I totally agree with you. I remember when I first stopped being a secretary at The Sun, I went on to picture research for features and it was my job to be in contact with all of these magazines. And when they got their new issues came out each month, they would give you their best pictures and then you would have to run them with a tiny picture of the magazine covers and you suddenly saw that instead of being actually part of it the same thing oh dear it's happened again yeah i'm afraid sexism has happened again who could have predicted after so many millennia of it that it would happen again we'd honestly we thought we'd wiped down every surface and then it's come back i don't know how there's any of this left but here we are and you can see the

bloodline between that and the noughties where it becomes absolute where celebrity culture of the noughties is all the kind of absolute train wreck you know like a truly hateful form of toxicity for women you know a lot of those women who some of the ones we mentioned earlier, who so many are doing really interesting things, have taught really interestingly about how they felt and how, when they realized, oh hang on, I am not being allowed into the joke, I am in a way the joke. And the magazines themselves, I, you know, I'm trying to remember all their names, you know, Arena Sky, FHM, I mean, they all, and then of course the later ones which were very much more naughties which was Zoo and Nuts. Zoo and Nuts, which were, they were sort of weekly versions of Loaded and they very much

led on the women angle. Again, bizarre stories and you know, showbiz and stuff like that, but that was really, that's when you know, WH Smith and people started saying we can't actually put these magazines out, you're going to have to put them in a cover or stick them on the top shelf you know that's us that that's that's how it went. And Heat magazine which people thought was quite jolly and fun when it launched really quickly became that circle of shame you know where all female body parts were kind of circled and it's like you've got cellulite you've got the I don't know you've got sweat patches all these sort of things women became a sort of collection of circleable body parts. The sort of success stories and those late 90s things were OK Magazine and

Hello Magazine, well particularly OK Magazine where Richard Desmond just like was like let's do it like Hello Magazine but actually have it like who, I don't know who any of these Euro trash royals are, we don't want any of that. Let's just get footballers and people off the telly. Do you know that the receptionists at OK weren't allowed to say hello when they answered the phone? Weren't they? No.

Because you know, because it was a rival. Okay, so, but yeah, I mean, Richard Desmond obviously had certain issues with women as well. He ran a massive porn empire. So anyhow, but it's interesting the idea that this can be revived in. I thought the front, the way the cover looks actually, it doesn't look so kind of loud and explosive. It's a little bit like something like, I don't know, W Magazine or something like that. But that bloodline that we're talking about that came from these magazines to the kind of horribleness

of the noughties culture. It goes on, I think, through people like Neil Strauss. Do you know that guy who wrote a book called The Game? I think he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine. Neil Strauss heard about these people called the pick-up artist community, like people who could sort of teach you how to get with women that you felt were way out of your league.

And he ends up actually getting so deep into this that he ends up living in a house for them. And these people become a big, big thing. And a lot of it is by insulting women, nagging them, all this sort of stuff and actually lots of these people, lots of the sort of Trump supporters, lots of Andrew Tate come out of this world and so I do slightly think you could trace a not very difficult family tree down from all of this stuff. Yeah I mean I don't want to blame the people behind the launch edition that have loaded in 1994 for what's happening in our culture.

No way. But you can't. There is a... We've all done things that we didn't know where they'd lead. But as it's been described, I can't think it'll last very long, this thing, unless the data is used for something else and that's why it's been run as a membership thing. It's not really a ladsmag, it's like a dadsmag. It's a Generation X dadsmag.

Yeah, well lads are dads now. And lads are grandads now. Yes, and I don't know whether they would... will they spend money on this? You know, I don't say young people don't spend money on magazines because there's some amazing publications out there for young people. There's a really good one, by the way, which I want to give a plug for, but have a look at The Fence, which is terrific. It's written by young people, it's edited by... It's edited by young people. It's for young people. I'm sorry, but everything else is so gerontocratic. And they've come from nowhere,

they've created this thing and it's got really interesting, fun articles. It's got such an attitude. It's got a great newsletter that you can subscribe to. Anyway, I think that's brilliant. And people are buying that in print editions. that as we talked about before that people are buying things I don't think they're gonna buy this thing. It is fascinating and again lots of for a lot of people who were not around in the 90s it feels like once again we'll never see that thing again where you can launch a magazine happen with Viz in the 80s happen with with Loaded in the 90s. Again, there's similar DNA there, funnily enough. I love that Viz guys are my friends and I utterly love them.

100%. But in terms of the humor and in terms of, you know, where you could suddenly launch a magazine and it was selling half a million copies. By the way, the Viz story, which I think is Simon Donald wrote, is a great book. It's brilliant. And they're such great people. They could not be nicer. So it's, you know, it's weird when you think, I think back to Loaded and Gary Oldham was on the front cover, I'm sure I bought the first one. And now to be talking about it as a cultural artifact

and something that represents a culture which has disappeared in its own way but has been blown up in other ways, it's such a peculiar thing because it's the same lifetime, these two things happening, this incredible success of this magazine. And now-

And the same people on the front. Yeah, it was certainly a thing for a few years. And I imagine the people who launched it, you've got to give them credit and kudos for spotting a gap in the market and building a huge business. But it very, very quickly tailed off into what we see today.

But as I say, it is that thing where of, of, of a much of just trying to service that same older generation in the same way that Netflix has done, or when you look at the list of those top 10 movie stars and they're the sort of people who they're in their sixties and the cover star of this is nearly in her sixties. I don't think there's something that particularly healthy about culture when these are the new things being launched. That's where venture capital money is from. And it's our generation launching things that we think people will love

and brands we think people will love. And then you have to understand that almost every single person you walk past in the streets has never heard of it. The motto was for men who should know better. And the new motto is for men who know better. Wow. Wow, the moral certainty of the middle ages.

Yeah. By the way, if you want one three minute video for someone who wasn't around in the 90s, if you want to know what the 90s was, where it went and the exact moment it went wrong, I would say, three minutes you can watch and it's the video to Blur's country house. That's every single thing you need to know about what was happening in the 90s and when it tipped over the edge. Someone actually recommended me a book when we were on the election trail, a friend of mine Rhett said if you want to do Sandhurst, the Military Academy, but just do it in one book, there's a book called How to Fight a War by Mike Martin, which is apparently absolutely brilliant.

I have ordered this book and I am going to complete my advanced military training brilliant. I have ordered this book and I'm going to complete my advanced military training about the course of one book. But anyway, more three minute for YouTubes and books, which basically take in a three year course. Yeah, because you know, Alistair Campbell's got Roy Stewart by his side if there's a war. Yes. I need someone by my side if there's a war. Oh, I will be in your foxhole. You don't want me in your foxhole? I think you do. Foxhole, of course, was another one of those lads mags in the 90s, wasn't it?

Okay, shall we move on to something that isn't going to collapse in six months? Big prediction here. Netflix. Oh man, you're going to sound stupid at Christmas if it does. Yeah, I'm going to have some egg on my face. We'll play that back in our bloopers episode. Here's the hilarious moment when Marina failed to see the demise of Netflix. Now, Netflix have recently released their viewing figures for the second half of 2023. For years and years people wanted them to say how many people are watching and for various reasons namely that they didn't think it was that many they didn't release them and once it became like

by the way we've won the streaming wars levels of people they released them. So we've now got the figures for the second half of 2023 and that's for the movies that are on Netflix some of which they make and some of which they don't, and various TV shows. It is obviously the world's global TV channel, which makes it very interesting. Because one of the things that I was fascinated by is that these detective series that, you know, or crime series that come from the individual countries, who is Erin Carter, that's a British one, Lupin, the French one. In the old days, I suppose on the BBC or wherever, you might have had lots of different regional detective theories. In fact, Alan McProshtridge makes a joke about that one.

Spender. Yeah. Bergerac. Yeah, Bergerac. Spectamorce. But now you've got- Let's do that. Let's just name detectives. Yeah, let's just name for how long. But now you have regions that are basically Netflix territories and they do unbelievable numbers these shows. What do you want to start with? TV or movies and what people watch?

What do you want to start with? Should we start with TV because we were just talking about it? All right then, because we were just talking about it. Let's go. Those licensed titles, now these are things that Netflix didn't make, but suits the biggest TV show in the world starring forgotten actress Meghan Markle. Meghan Markle, what happened to her? Whatever happened to you, write in if you know. Things like Grey's Anatomy, Young Sheldon,

Gilmore Girls, I mean, some of these are quite ancient programs, not Young Sheldon, they're not so old, but things like Gilmore Girls. Gilmore Girls I've just been introduced to. Have you? It's great. Oh, you're so lucky. It's really wonderful, it's really wonderful, and it was so formative, you know, it's so formative for a lot of people. Well, it's gonna be formative for me, I think. It's really wonderful. It's really wonderful. And it was so formative,

you know, so formative for a lot of people. Well, it's going to be formative for me. Yes, it is. You can still have formative things happen to you now. Yeah, of course you can. Absolutely. So those shows do huge numbers for Netflix. I'm amazed actually that they've renewed that three body problem because as we talked about it on that show, that is so expensive. I don't think it did that well. We'll have to find out next year because they released it. One of the other things I thought was so fascinating

is that thing, I mean, one of the earliest things we talked about on this podcast was Squid Game the Challenge, which was very well made, but I found super bleak. A show that is essentially a critique of capitalism was in the most capitalistic way made into a game show. Well, I have egg on my face again because Squid Game the Challenge increased viewership for the original Squid Game by 34%, which bear in mind that Netflix is almost their biggest show. It's extraordinary

how it put that back into the Korean original. Yeah, the Squid universe. And it's, you know, that long tail thing is fascinating. When you talk about the three body problem, which didn't do enormous numbers and was very expensive, I think that they need the odd marquee thing just to bring people onto the site. But such a huge amount of the viewing. But why increasingly? Why do they?

I don't even understand why they do. When you see what makes all the things, you've got a bought in crime thing that doesn't have big stars in, isn't that expensive and has been watched you know 51 million times. Well because it's the same reason why you know shops don't put their white t-shirts in the shop window. No. Do they? But when you go in that's what you're buying. But I just want to clear past all the clear past for you buddy pardon but their their biggest titles of all time, which I think, which are Squid Game, Wednesday and Red Notice, this thing, the biggest show of TV, which I've never actually seen.

The biggest movie, yeah. It's their biggest movie of all time. But those people keep coming, they've got really long tales and people keep coming back to them and I guess they will even more when there are season twos of the, particularly of the TV, which there's definitely going to be. Well I think Red Notice is fascinating, that's Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds and it's one of those movies, it's Mawson Marshall Thurber who did Dodgeball, did various other things, Central Intelligence. So it's a movie, I was really thinking about Fall Guy when I was looking at Red Notice.

So Red Notice opened like a week in the cinemas, did not do great numbers, doesn't have great numbers on Rotten Tomatoes, but is the biggest movie of all time on Netflix. Now, if the Fall Guy had not opened in the cinemas, but had opened on Netflix instead and had done this, it would be seen as this enormous success. I think the Fall Guy would live forever and ever and ever on Netflix. It's absolutely,

it's perfect for that audience. Well it's going to stream, that's the thing about The Fall Guy, it's going to streaming three weeks after it's been in theatres because it's shut the bed. Yes it has. It's going to, no it's going to video on demand which is different so you have to pay to watch it. Yeah. But that's interesting. So with the Thursday Murder Club and which we're filming very soon and Netflix have put a lot of money into that, and so you never know if you're gonna have a theatrical release, right? Some things just don't get released theatrically, and every filmmaker and every actor wants to have a theatrical release. They want the film to be out in the cinemas, because that's

what we grew up with. That feels like the exciting thing, but if you're gonna open for a week, if you're gonna to be Mad Max Furiosa or The Fall Guy and make a great movie and then people say, oh God, I only made $25 million and it'd be seen as a flop, wouldn't you rather just open on Netflix and be Red Notice and be watched for the next three years and be their biggest movie ever? But we know why, well, yes, I would, but we know why they open theatrically because you can't be considered for the awards unless you've had a theatrical run. What I think is interesting as well from this data dump that they've done is that the so-called what I would consider their awards movies maybe because they were nominated for awards and they

were quite clearly made with awards in mind. Prestige stuff like Niyad, that one with Jodie Foster, The Swimmer, Maestro, Alcantara, all those things. Rustin which was Oscar nominated. No one really cares that much. No one on the platform really cares that much. They're not even close to the top 100. Society of the Snow did really well, the one about the Uruguayan plane crash. Last year, All Quiet on the Western Front performed brilliantly for them and was watched again and again and again and you know as a foreign language film, it's even bigger. But the really big movie is straight to Netflix and it's produced by a couple again, who I don't know what happened to them Barack and Michelle Obama. Oh yeah. Leave the World Behind. Now that had 121 million views that has not had a theatrical release. That was

good by the way. Yeah. And that's bleak. Yeah that is pretty bleak. Yeah. Adam Sandler, there he is, the banker, Leo, 96 million views. Yeah, Adam Sandler had two because he had the You're So Not Invited to My Bat-Mister. But also His Murder Mystery 2, which was released like two years ago, is still right up there as well. Well, that's why he, that's literally why they're paying the big bucks. Yeah, he's very bankable. But yeah, the fascinating thing with Netflix is that you have not heard of almost all of

the shows that are the biggest things on the platform. But why are they making the awards movies? I think as a loss leader, I think it's to say we are still a prestige brand. People, whatever company they run, they still want to be written about in the trades, right? They want to be written about in the New York Times, they want to be written about in the Sunday Times, and they are only going to write about your brand new thing with Benedict Cumberbatch in it. They are not going to write about the fact that you've bought a five-year-old's drama from ITV. Which is for streaming. Netflix, I mean, I think Ted Sarandos is going to get talked

about anyway. I wonder if there'll be a point where they think why are we doing this or whether they are able to sufficiently lobby the Academy and say why does there have to be theatrical release. Another thing that's interesting, the biggest bankers in the entire world of streaming are Hollywood Studio made, not made by Netflix, animated movies. They are a money hose. Okay, so the biggest ones they did last year, these are the top ten. Paw Patrol, Leo, Boss Baby, I mean how old is that? That's ancient. Minions Rise of Gru, Trolls Sing and Sing 2, Hotel Transylvania, Super Mario Brothers is only down there because it was right at the very end of the year and obviously it will go hugely bigger, Shrek

and Shrek 2. Now that is an eternal money spinner those things and so if now as they've I mean this week there's a movie, Garfield the movie that's open that my children are seeing today has only cost something like 60 million dollars. That's really cheap. Imagine when they're doing it with AI. I'm sorry that's a terrible thing to say but it is realistic, it's animation. It will be even cheaper and then it will continue to make money forever and ever and ever and ever. Well I mean years ago, 20 years ago, something that you know this idea of the long tail came out which is you know you create product that keeps making you money forever in the same way that's what Disney was exactly and publishing has always known

that Agatha Christie made money forever and ever and actually being in the television industry at that time you were slightly thinking I don't really see that because I don't see where this stuff is sitting I don't really see where we are going to be making our money in 20 years time and now of course you've got this incredible sort of streaming libraries where you go, oh of course we can make money forever and ever. Yeah exactly. So I was always, always obsessed with what are we doing next, what are we doing next. And the people who were building up libraries or programs, I was kind of, what are you doing? And of course they were the geniuses and I was just enjoying myself.

Christmas movies get, I mean they're slightly eclipsing Hallmark. Those millennial Christmas movies they make with people like Lindsay Lohan, I think they're quadrupling their output next year because even though everyone sort of clips these things and say, oh my God, this is the worst fear effects I've ever seen, you know, Lindsay Lohan suffering a sort of ski trauma, which means she forgets, loses her memory or whatever it is. That's a good film by the way. I worry about it I say sometimes.

It needs eggnog. If you have eggnog it's a great movie. So those movies, but they do huge numbers for them. They start their holiday season on whenever it is and it doesn't have to be particularly well made as evidenced. Marina I have an idea. I've literally, I've just made us both billionaires okay did this every way yeah we could see who he yeah doesn't seem to have happened yet does it yeah well next time next year we do

an animated Christmas character movie called eggnog voice by Lindsay Lauren voice by Lindsay Lauren god it's like it's a full quadrant movie Richard eggnog is sort of bit like it's one of's like, it's a four quadrant movie, Richard. Eggnog is sort of a bit like a... It's one of the quadrants. It's a bit like a minion. Yeah. An eggnog. Oh yes.

They're like little creatures at Christmas. Oh, well minions, that's probably the biggest movie of the year. Yeah. Next year we should go through all the movies at the start of the year and I will tell you which ones I think will be hits and flops because... Hold on, let me write that down. So at the start of next year... January.

January we're going to go through everything that's in the movie that comes out. The things that are coming out on the weekends. And you're going to tell us which is a hit. And then every now and again we'll check in. I'll have to keep looking at the tracking but yeah, whether it's going to... There's an awful lot of caveats to this statement you had. That was a very bold statement. Yeah, because it's a nuanced show. It's a nuanced show. I'm not just going to shout it out, like put it on a stone tablet and take... We're going to talk around these talk around your bit of the show is nuanced no you must mine isn't eggnogs a bit like minions but for Christmas Christmas minions Christmas okay that's a really

good idea that's a really good idea okay I'm gonna talk to Netflix okay you must do well we're on the subject of Netflix I just want to say one thing well we're sort of finishing this off because it's so interesting that there's been other Netflix news which we haven't ended up talking about because things that we've had lots of other things but Netflix recently said oh we're now gonna we think we're going to start paying creators on how successful their shows are because of course this is what happened when you made a show for a television network yeah Netflix in order to disrupt the market and get people creators to come

to them because no one really wanted to necessarily work for this tech firm. They paid these huge amounts of money and now they're like, yeah, we're not going to pay those anymore. Also, we're going to schedule things. Have you noticed that, you know, we're going to have some ads? Yeah, we're going to schedule things, we're going to have ads, we're going to pay you more if your show does better. You're starting to look so like something I dimly remember called a television channel. Oh, we're going to have sport as well, by the way. Yeah, we're going to have sport. We're going to have the sport, by the way, the sports adjacent stuff, the Beckham documentaries,

all things like that did really, really well. But yeah, it's interesting. The data dump is not in a particularly user-friendly way. It's an enormous 16,000 page Excel spreadsheet. Yeah, they literally want to hit you over the head with it. But it's out there if you want to see it. That's like when governments deliver bad news, they deliver it in a thousand page report

rather than a 20 page report. And the biggest TV show, and I haven't seen it, I'm gonna go straight home and watch it now, is One Piece, which is based on the manga series. And again, there's so much stuff out there, but because of the algorithm, because when you go on the front page of Netflix, you see a certain group of programs

which you think is Netflix, and it isn't. That's your Netflix. And other people's front pages are completely different to yours. And for most people in the world, One Piece is on the front page of their Netflix. And for me, I've never seen it, but it's the biggest show in the world. It's strange how it's actually managed that, on some of their big things like three-body problem You know you're being shown it even though you have no interest in this simply because they have spent that much money on it They always say they don't and it's only show you but yeah, you do though You do prove you don't come on the show and prove you don't because we have got a Christmas animation to pitch to you Yeah, someone at Netflix would be the greatest meeting ever. It's with an American. So yeah, just go Yeah, I love oh eggnogs. Oh, I love eggnogs. This is huge and then like in two years time

We go with Ted Sarandos when the yeah, he quit the business didn't he like the day after it's literally nothing Nothing, no eggnog movie. One of the questions actually that we coming up on our question of answers Episode is someone saying can you come up with your greatest near flop? I've got some ideas for it. Oh, have you? Great. And I will answer. Yeah. That was fun. We introduced a whole new generation to Loaded. Apologies for that. Apologies, apologies.

Netflix shows we've never heard of. Yes. And must go home and watch. And we've heard your Taylor Swift trauma. There'll be plenty more about that between now and June the 22nd. I look forward to it ever so much. Please join us again on Thursday. The address for questions is the rest is at what?

The address, if you could write in with a stamp, don't forget a stamped address envelope. An email address is an address. But it sounded very Blue Peter in a way that I liked. Yeah, sign it and I'll send you back your Howard Jones fanzine. Okay, the address, which is email, is therestisentertainment.gmail.com and please send us more of your brilliant questions and we will endeavour to answer them. And tomorrow I'm filming House of Games up in Manchester and in the studio next door it's the first election debate between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak so I'm going to try and sneak in.

Well you're the only person who's ever tried to sneak into an election debate. Well see you all on Thursday. Bye bye. Hello listeners, it's Anita Arnith here from the Goalhanger Sister Podcast Empire, which I host along with me, William Dalrymple, and we are here to tell you about our new series on the Founding Fathers, the men who made America. We wanted to look at the men who actually founded the country, who dreamt the dream, who wrote the words upon which a country would be born. What were they like? What made them do what they did? What did they actually believe in and how did they come to play the role

that they did in the American Revolution and the creation of America? What really interested me about this was the contradictions. I mean we expect these men to be great figures. We've seen the portraits in the galleries, we know the faces from the banknotes, but they're deeply complex figures. But in that, and in that blend of contradiction and intellectual power and writing genius and curiosity and raw ability, lies the nuance of complexity that allows us to understand them. And the United States is in many ways a reflection of their beliefs, their experiences. These are the men who wrote the constitution, these are the men who created the federal system. In every way they are totally

fundamental to what American politics looks like today. It all goes back to this extraordinary group of men. Yeah and they have rip-roaring yarns as well, let me tell you. So if you want to know why America is the way it is and who the men were who made it, you can listen by searching Empire wherever you get your podcasts.