The Rest Is Entertainment - Biggest TV Complaints Of All Time

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

The 500th edition of Ofcom’s 'Broadcast Bulletin' - the place to find out about their work to uphold standards on TV and radio has been released, and we discovered the most complained about UK TV show. Taylor Swift's 'Eras' tour has completed this stage of it's UK dates and Marina was there at Wembley. She gives us the lowdown on the gig and the fandom of Swifites. 'Inside Out 2' has been a huge box office success but it wasn't predicted to be. What is tracking, and why is it failing Hollywood? Sign-up to The Rest Is Entertainment newsletter for more insights and recommendations - www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @restisents Instagram: @restisentertainment YouTube: @therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 🌏 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 this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde and me Richard Osmond. Good morning slash afternoon slash evening Marina. To whichever one you're celebrating currently. How are you? I'm really, really well. How are you? I'm very happy we're back in the studio together. It's nice isn't it? Yes. You've seen Taylor this week and I've celebrated Christmas on House of Games.

We might do an item about that one. Why we celebrate Christmas in June traditionally in television. And what else are we going to talk about? We're going to talk about a sort of tale of four movies. Inside Out 2, which is done brilliantly. The Donald Trump movie, The Apprentice, which can't find a US distributor. It's a shame. Coppola's movie, Megalopolis, his kind of giant passion slash vanity project, which has found a distributor.

And a very interesting AI written movie. More that later but also I think we're gonna talk a little bit about Taylor Swift because you went to the gigs I want to hear about it but be I think yeah it's become so ridiculously ubiquitous I think we need to talk about why yes is what's happening everybody what's happening with Taylor Swift yeah shall we talk first about complaints? Yes. Most complained about ever TV. Ofcom, the media regulator has released its top 10 most complained about TV events in its history. And they're quite interesting and the sort of trends they show and just the business of making complaints about television. Would you like me to do

the top 10 list? I would absolutely love you to do it. I hope you've got like a kind of Fluff Freeman type. I say Fluff Freeman, he was the Clara Ampho of his day for younger listeners. Yes, okay. The most complained about one was... Are you starting at number one? Wow. You've got to do... Okay, sorry. No, I'm not Richard. Of course I'm starting at number 10, because I'm learning from you every day. No, listen, you start where you want. If you have a way you want to do it, traditionally, you wouldn't go... Oh, you're doing it that way?

And then most excitingly of all, number 10. People listening go, well, I know what number one is. I have to keep listening, because I really need to know what number 10 was. Once again, you school me. Let's go to the coronation in 2023, because that is number 10. Oh, is it? Yes, it is. Now, this was when the Bridgerton actress, Jo Ando, said about the balcony that it looked terribly white.

So that was very complained about. In at number nine, this is going all the way back to 2005, by far the oldest complainer on the list, Jerry Springer, the opera. At number eight, it's Dan Wharton and Lawrence Fox on GB News when Lawrence Fox insulted the journalist Ava Evans. I'm a Celeb 2020. I think this was during the pandemic. By the way, people complained so much in the pandemic, which we'll come to.

I think that's about animals, non-invasive species being introduced to Wales via the medium of the Bush Tucker trial. 2021 Love Island, F phased behaviour towards Teddy. Oh no, hang on, I've missed out Julia Hartley-Brewer on TalkTV. A lot of people have missed that out. A lot of people have missed that out, sort of rating it 20,000 or something. Then there's Love Island phased behaviour towards Teddy. At number four, Britain's Got Talent 2020, diversity did a Black Lives Matter inspired performance.

The fourth most complained about in the TV history. And people thought it was racist towards white people, they thought it was unsuitable for family audience, and a number of other things that I can't be bothered to go into at this exact moment. We just had Jordan Banjo on House of Games, he was such an absolute delight. Oh was he? Oh my god, he was lovely. Anyway, listen, I digress because we're talking about complained about things. Celebrity Big Brother are the next two. They're at three and two.

2018 when Roxanne Pallett claimed that Ryan Thomas had sort of punched her, but it was like some play fight thing. That became a huge thing because people said that, yeah. 2007 Celebrity Big Brother is at number two for the Shilpa Shetty Race Row, which involved Daniel Lloyd, Jade Goody, very, I can't remember who else was involved in that. And the most complained about one is GMB, Piers Morgan saying he didn't believe Meghan Markle felt suicidal or whatever that was. What do we learn from this list, I wonder?

Well, one of the things which I've just said, which is that people complained a lot during the pandemic, they were stuck at home. But also things happened in 2020, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, George Floyd, all the reporting around that meant people were much more sensitive in general, people have become much more sensitive to making complaints, perceived racism, things like that. Things like swearing have fallen way back. Yes, no one minds, do they? No one. I'm told Ofcom would say that they still mind the C word and the MF word, as it is called. Now, 90% of complaints are about offence. They're not about bias, they're not about other regulatory things.

Also, most complaints between neighbours are about offence, aren't they? I think... Oh, Gus, I'm really sorry. Yeah. Never underestimate the capacity of the Great British Public to be offended by things. It is obviously miles and miles easier than it was to complain in the past, because of social media, because if everything is digitized it's very easy to email. But they did used to get big postcard campaigns, things like that. You'll be sure that even back

in 2005 where that was an orchestrated campaign, there are now a lot of orchestrated campaigns by people and it might be by newspapers. But then right back when it was Saxgate, the prank calls by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross to Andrew Sacks, only two people had heard that broadcast famously. And in the end, they ended up with more than 40,000 complaints because the Mail and the Express and various other people took it on board and ran a campaign, a campaign against the BBC to some extent against Russell Brand, whatever it was, it was just sort of trouble making. It doesn't sound like the Daily Mail.

It doesn't sound like it, but nowadays because of social media it's so much easier to disseminate that feeling of having been offended because lots of people are sharing clips anyway. We should also say that the broadcasters share a huge amount of clips for marketing and I don't know whether or not GMB for instance shared the clip of Piers Morgan saying I don't believe that Meghan Markle was suicidal but you can well see they've certainly shared clips like that and used them as a marketing tool. They think interestingly with Love Island, the way people complain about Love Island, although they have a sort of figure for how they're complaining, what they're really trying

to do is use it as a sort of proxy voting. They're complaining about a type of behaviour that never meets the threshold, but they feel like maybe I can sort of get that contestant out this other way. But also, yeah, if you've tweeted about how annoyed you are at a contestant and that hasn't worked, you go, well I'm going straight to Ofcom, because I think that was... This has become a regulatory issue. I think that was shady, I think you should have told her. Yeah. So yeah, I am going to, hold on, I've written to my MP, they don't appear to be sitting for some reason, I don't know, maybe there's an election on, now I'm going to write to Ofcom. And in general, one of the things that people say is that people have become so much more kind of politically and emotionally literate. So there are many, many more complaints about

potential harm to mental health of contestants, all those sorts of things, which you never heard complaints about in the past at all, because people didn't have the language for them in lots of ways and now that people can see that more and as I said people are much more literate and much more feel that they can see offense occurring. There were a lot of complaints during the pandemic about the coverage of vaccines which is a sort of bit of a canary for the fact that people thought that there was a coalescing movement against a much more coherent anti-vax movement because people were complaining that the broadcasters weren't properly covering vaccinations.

And actually what Ofcom would always say is they want the audience to tell them what they think. I mean, that's what they're there for. So there is no right not to be offended. So lots of things just don't meet the threshold for complaints and it doesn't matter if there've been 40,000 or four complaints. But one of the things that is interesting, lots of these complaints have had an effect on television. Reality TV has been hugely modified

and changed by complaints. After Showcare has become far better, post-transmission duty of care that that exists as a thing which it never used to. And you now see that broadcasters show they're working miles more in reality TV where they used to have the big far works because it was fun or you'd see someone behaving badly but then people now people complain about that and so you now see someone being brought into the diary room or whatever or the Bush Telegraph room or whatever to be

told off to be talked to about their behavior, they're shown apologizing, it's much more contextualized, it's hugely affected the sort of grammar of the programs because people know what to expect now. Ofcom did a duty of care participants review, they kind of tried to collate all of the best practice in the industry for dealing with all of these types of shows because obviously there are lots of very sad stories that have come out of reality tv and things have happened and it was generally realized that lots of things had to change but it was such a sort of wild west in a new form of television which you I'm sure know. Yeah I mean it's fascinating how complaints have really become sort of just a new wing

of the culture war. Yeah. As you say, it used to be blasphemy or swearing in the 70s or too much sex, and that would be the complaints. And the BBC used to have their duty log, which was just a person on a phone. And the next morning, there would be a type out, a printout of all the calls that had come in that night from people and it would be 90%, I can't believe Del Boy said, plonker and it would be 5%, oh I really, really enjoyed Antiques Roadshow. And every time there's

a nice one they'd send it on but they were also duty bound every time there was a complaint they would always send that on and it was 30, 40 things a night on the duty log and it would be the same people night after night after night and developing quite a nice relationship with the people who sat on that duty desk. And now, yeah, it's a sort of complaints industrial complex because it's very easy to complain in the same way that it's very easy to rig an online vote. I always remember, I remember the first time you think, okay, this internet is going to catch on was when Steps didn't win best newcomer at the Brits but Ben and Sebastian did. I think because Ben and Sebastian had

early adopter online fans and they were able to vote. I spoke to H from Steps about it when he came on the show because I thought I wonder if anyone's ever spoken to you about Ben and Sebastian and he was he was he we had a long chat about it he said I never heard of him. I said I know I was excited there when they won it I'm sorry H he's done all right for himself since but this idea now that if you're on any sort of Reddit forum or any sort of mailing list, that it's very, very easy to have a template and to complain via that template. And those numbers suddenly become meaningless. And it's difficult because definitely things happen on TV, which one should complain about. But you get to the

point where if every single time anything happens You're getting 30,000 complaints and they all come with the same form of words If you're offcom which for the BBC or ITV or if you're a production company When do you stop paying attention because you can't every morning go? Oh, we need to deal with every single one of these because you're aware that there's a campaign going on I always remember when Pointless is very rarely gets in the top five most complained about things at the BBC as you might imagine, but there was like a repeat that didn't go out in order. I cannot remember why. There was some genuinely boring bit of thing, something about one of the

contestants. I can't remember what it was. And it was a day when a jackpot was given away. And so they skipped over that day, went to the next day, and everyone was furious, rightly in my opinion. But so they all complained. And I looked at the list and it was in the top 10. We were number three, I think, with sort of 4,000 complaints. And number two was complaining that the BBC's news report was too biased towards Palestine and that had 8,000.

And number one was complaints that BBC's news report was too biased towards Israel and that was 8,100. And that was the top two. So there comes a point, it's quite hard amongst that noise to find the signal of complaints. Exactly, they have to not take the number into account. Because almost all of these top tens weren't upheld. No, the biggest ever fine issue to a broadcaster was for ITV for the phone line scandal, the phone- and I think that was 5.6 million pounds back in the day Of phone lines, I wasn't directly involved but suddenly I was near it That was a Wild West and it was seen for television as a new source of revenue

Yeah, of course the world of gambling is enormously well regulated I think television when they started doing those phone lines, they were going into gambling without quite realizing they were going into gambling. And so they had the slight slapdash thing of television, have we got to get the show on tomorrow? Let's make this the question. And it became apparent that actually, hundreds of thousands of people were phoning in, they were phoning in with their money.

So they were essentially running a bookmaker, and they weren't running a bookmaker in the way it should have been run. So there was a good six months of everyone messing that up. I don't think with bad intent, but it very soon became apparently, you think, oh yeah, I don't think this is a very good way of running a... And it was tied in with people not actually winning the competitions and giving it to people in the studio or some relative... It was, as you say, a complete wildfire.

Which radio has done forever. And Blue Peter, I think, wanted to name their cat and they had already decided they wanted to call it Sox. And whatever one, I can't remember what one, they decided to call it Sox anyway, so they got in huge trouble for that. In Blue Peter's defense, that was, again, there was a targeted campaign there by ravers who wanted to call the cat Cookie, which at the time was slang for ecstasy.

I don't remember ecstasy being called Cookie, but I'm willing to accept it. So they essentially wanted to have a drug reference in the Blue Peter cat and the Blue Peter people thought we're going to ignore this and we're going to call the cat Sox instead. In the end, they did bring in another cat and called it Cookie. And that was an Ecstasy reference because the BBC was run entirely by absolute hardcore

ravers. The keyboardist from Alternate used to be the exec producer. None of that is true, but that was such an outrage at the time. It seems more innocent times now. Yes. I actually have a resolved off-com complaint that someone well-known got me. It's in a frame in our house. Someone gave it to my husband once. Someone well-known has stolen it so I wouldn't say it is. And it's someone complaining to the BBC that a dog on CBBC said I'm a fucking dog. And the letter reply, it's really written in such a state language, you know,

contrary to your suggestion that the dog said I'm a fucking dog, he actually, the dog on CBBC said I'm a talking dog. And the whole, but it it's really it's so dispassionately written. That's fun. It's a real classic. I bet you know what? I bet he was both. Yeah. The dogs think that I spent enough time talking. Come on. The only time I ever complained to a TV show, we were making a show in the 90s. And I was watching Family Fortunes. And I love Family Fortunes about a very few people in my love of Family Fortunes and the format Family Fortunes. And they had the question we asked a hundred people to name a Spice Girl here are the top five answers and I was like no no no no no that's that's literally

who were the Spice Girls that's not the whole point of family fortunes is name something that you'd find in the bathroom and there's an infinite number of answers and we choose the top ones Spice Girls I mean that's just so no no I'm with you I would there's no way I'd fight you on this so we at work we in the early days. Spice Girls, I mean, that's just so... No, no, I'm with you. Who are the Spice Girls? There's no way I'd fight you on this one. So we at work, we in the early days of email, we sent off a complaint to Family Fortunes. We did not hear back. So some things have changed for the better. And the other thing they did, it was the same episode. That's why we complained because two things happened that we thought were outrageous. They said...

Yeah, you're not an animal. They said, name a word for tired. Yeah, yeah, good. That's a perfectly good family fortunes question because we can all think of loads. And this person said, knackered, right? And it went, you think, huh, that seems surprising. I would have thought that that would be in there. Then at the end, it came up and knackered wasn't there, but cream crackered was there. And we go, well, no way eight people saying cream crackered. Is this boring? No way eight people saying cream cracker is this boring no way eight people saying cream cracker then no one is saying knackered right what they've done is they said oh knackered is a bit rude so we'll put

cream cracker but then they accepted the answer so come on no not acceptable Spice Girls and cream cracker we complain to Family Fortunes to this day anyone who works at Family Fortunes we have yet to have a reply please dig through those archives like all the politicians on the chat, on the talk shows at the moment. So sorry you didn't get a reply. We'll be able to after this. It's a bit late now, she's done a big question on LBC saying you never replied to us. It's interesting, the complaints thing is the same as people say on My MP didn't get back to me. Anyone, if you look on Twitter, anybody who ever, any politician who ever tweets or the Gary

Linnecas of this world, they will have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, immediately hundreds of replies, essentially abusing them. To the extent you think, well, you know they're no longer looking at their replies, because as a human being, why would you? I mean, you'd be insane after the first two years of everyone calling you a bellend. You kind of get, you know what, I might just, I'll say the thing that I want to say about Rüdiger's tackle and then I'll move on with my day. And so when people say to, you know, Starmer or Sunit, oh you didn't reply, you think, yeah, of course I didn't.

I mean, that's at the point where you just think, I've been abused for so long that eventually you stop, you ignore people. And that's an issue for democracy I think the I agree the over complaining in general I have to say that politicians get a lot of criticism a huge amount of time is spent responding to these letters and going in at quite a high level like you know if you talk to people at the BBC their relations with people With MPs who are asking them things in order that they can get back to their constituents. These letters are actually taken very, very seriously in general. I think it's quite difficult with the case of party leaders where obviously they get so many, but actually your average MP is taking those things very seriously.

Much more seriously than you might anticipate. The BBC by its charter is duty-bound to reply to every single complaint. However ridiculous or however important, they have to give them equal weight. So they literally have to reply to every single complaint they ever get. It's a massive job. I mean, Ofcom, the job of even regulating was used to, at least now it's all digitised and they can find keywords and things like that, but it used to just be banks of VHSs trying to record all the different terrestrial and other offerings and then, particularly with the public service broadcasters which they're

regulating and then honestly just having to manually rewind try and find where in this morning. It's a bit like a sort of, it's a curse you can put on someone to say yeah it was on this morning but I'm not going to tell you where, you've got to watch the whole of this thing and try and find out when this little thing occurred in order that you can then make a judgment on whether or not it was, the complaint should be outheld. So what do we conclude from this? It's interesting that the world of complaints has completely changed, that there are now these campaigns where it becomes difficult to work out if people are really complaining or if they're jumping on one side or other of the culture

wars. Or wanting just to feel part of something. Wanting to feel part of it. But complaints are incredibly important. As you've hinted, it is the way we change media and it's the way we start saying certain things have gone beyond their sell-by date and certain things need to change. And television needs to take a different attitude.

As you say, reality TV is a perfect example. So they're incredibly important, but the role of the people who are having to police them is so hard because they're endlessly battling off millions and millions of sort of targeted campaigns that are experienced. Which existed in the past, there were orchestrated campaigns and you know the Christian Right organized very well and there were certain groups that always did but despite all of that they still really want to hear from people because it's

such an interesting view into changing currents in offence and they want to hear what people think about the television that is shown to them. I'll say one fascinating thing, when you look at the overnights, and every morning our friends at the overnight send us the overnights. Which we're so grateful for, thank you very much. Every single time someone says, right, we're having a boycott of this program because of something that happened in the program, we're going to boycott it, everyone I know is not going to watch it.

I have never in my entire career in television seen a single occasion where that's had any program, we're going to boycott it. Everyone I know is not going to watch it. I have never in my entire career in television seen a single occasion where that's had any effect, whatsoever. If anything, a boost. It goes up a little bit. And people are still saying, oh, people are still watching that. No one is watching Eurovision. Well, newsflash, a lot of people watch Eurovision.

Yeah, exactly. So sometimes when complaints and stuff like that come about, you think usually the ratings tell you what people think of a television program usually. And it's that by and large remains unchanged unless something very bad happens. Which is the case with so much of social media where you think okay, Twitter is not real life or Facebook is not or maybe face some people think Facebook is slightly more real life in

terms of what it indicates. But those are the places where that have become the big engines of complaint organizing. So it's doubly difficult to have to strip away what really matters. But in the end, you've got to adjudicate on something and there isn't a right not to be offended. And you've sort of got to adjudicate on whether they balanced it right. Also, the trouble is that people often on social media only see a tiny clip normally chopped to make it absolute, you know, and actually if you think over the whole 10 minutes of this segment or whatever it was or four minutes or whatever, this was far more contextualised and the broadcaster took care of it. By the way, where do you complain about podcasts? I don't think they're regulated, are they?

I probably aren't. This is a complete wild west as we've just evidenced. God, I might say something controversial. Yes. People who say Jaffa cakes are cakes are psychopaths. Okay. There you go. I want to say don't write in but of course we always wish to hear. Shall we do an advert? Yes, let's go to an advert. Welcome back everybody. Now Marina, you went to see Taylor Swift. So firstly, Dish, and secondly we're going to talk a little bit about what on earth is going on. It's like you can't move. And now we're talking about her as well. I mean, it's Taylor's world and we're just living in it.

It is extraordinarily true. I saw her on Saturday with my daughter, who is nine, but it was really interesting. I spoke to someone who went actually and was in Taylor's box the night before. This is a friend of mine called Graham, he's much older and his daughter is a friend of Taylor's and he said, what? Yeah. And that's why he was in Taylor's box. And he said, I've covered everyone for 50 years writing about music. This is like nothing else I've seen because every single word is sung back to her by every single person, and which is true. Everyone in the stadium sings every word.

And people really mind about the words of the songs. I think I read, maybe Julie Burch wrote this recently, saying that she's best understood Taylor Swift as a writer, she's a brilliant, brilliant writer, and the music is obviously great, but it's sort of a side issue to some, is then the words mean so much to people. That's the other thing that I find extraordinary that this woman who has got a completely irreplicable

lifestyle and she's got no peer group. You're in a category of one, you're like the main character of the planet, everything is filtered through you and yet for so many people she is the most relatable woman on earth and people just feel that she totally understands them and they totally understand her. So what is it because we've had superstars before we've had the Beatles we've had Jackson we've had Madonna we've had these absolute superstars she seems to have created a monoculture in a way where she is the star I think Bloomberg said Taylor Swift is the music business yeah she's done this incredible thing where she seems to have transcended all of those people and become as you say that the sort of

Certainly the cultural main story of the universe and her music by the way, which I love But there's plenty of people who make music that I love What is the combination of factors that's made everybody at the same time go? This is our moment. This is the person I think the New Yorker said you can't understand her in terms of Entertainment figures. She's like Julius Caesar or Napoleon. She's sort of a world striding colossus Yeah, I agree and I think that what's interesting is that people thought that you couldn't be a celebrity like this again because they felt that things were very siloed and people in their tribes and that you couldn't be as big as Michael Jackson or Madonna and I was

in their tribes and that you couldn't be as big as Michael Jackson or Madonna. And I was, I've reduced, Neil was asking me before this and saying, do you think she's bigger than those people? And I think she, she is, you had all the kind of weird stuff with Jackson, all the kind of like he sleeps in an oxygen chamber. He don't, you know, and he was obviously such an odd person for which we came to know quite how odd, but it wasn't the same as this. This is essentially quite a happy, mostly a happy story, but all her dramas, everyone feels that they are their own. And in an era when people hate billionaires and hate all these things,

to be able to sort of still be one of those things, but still be everyone's friend is very odd. I do think that part of her act, part of her shtick, or part of whatever you want to call it, all that sort of Easter egg stuff, these are the trends in cultures where people feel like if I really invest in this fandom, then things will be revealed to me that, you know, it's kind of like being a grinder. You've got it in gaming, you've got to, if you do that, then you'll get the Easter egg, you'll notice the connections. So it's a form of studies in a way. So you can dive as deep as you want because I'm very much skated along the surface of Taylor Swift and I'm very happy to and I listen to her on Spotify and my niece is an enormous Taylor Swift fan so I love where she sits in my life which is she releases some songs that I like but the deeper you want to go into you can.

The interesting thing about her I think so she's 18 years now into her recording career anyway. So that would put her essentially where the Beatles were in 1981. Okay, the Beatles is that, quite apart from Jaco and Madonna and stuff, I feel like the Beatles is the only real comparison in terms of going to a gig and every single word being screamed back at you. So she's 18 years in, and yet she seems to be going from strength to strength, and she has this very smart thing, reinvention is the hardest thing of all, isn't it? That's why, you know, the Beatles reinvented themselves and then eventually you fall apart, but you know, as a solo artist by and large you have much more longevity. So Bo you would reinvent himself, Madonna would reinvent herself, but they would reinvent themselves.

Beyoncé's reinvented herself many, many times. Exactly right, but so in the olden days you'd reinvent yourself by a series of images, you become a new character, so Bo would become a series of images, you become a new character. So Bowie would become a new character, Madonna would find a new character, and you would have that machine of a record company behind you, and it'd be understood how you would break an artist

and you'd spend your money on marketing and what have you. Taylor Swift seems to have these different eras, but the one thing that she has in common, she's always herself. I mean, she started on MySpace, right? So she started right at the beginning of this kind of online fandom. And she understood that she had to give of herself. She complete digital native to this type of celebrity.

And understanding that thing to do is I'm not going to dress up as a character and pretend I'm someone I'm going to show you who I am, to whatever extent, of course, she keeps parts of herself back. And then every couple of years, she'll become a slightly different version of herself. And she's very good with sharing her private life and these things. And so she has that incredibly intimate connection with an audience, which perhaps Madonna or Michael Jackson didn't outside of a very small group of people. She seems to be able to relate to. Yeah, it was much more as lots of things were in those years.

It was much more the stone tablets were handed down to you, the fans. There was not that interaction. And this has been the same across all sorts of, which is why she's such a sort of instinctive performer within what's happened to the media landscape. She, newspapers used to be like that too. And then you started thinking, okay, no, now we might get people to be members of newspapers. We might have comments, we might have all these things. So it becomes much more interactive. And she's obviously understood that right from the very start. There's a lot of talking in between the songs saying thank you for letting me reinvent myself. Thank you for letting me be different. Thank you for allowing me to evolve

because we all evolve, you know, and there's that sense that you have grown up with because she's obviously started so young that the fandom has grown up with her and you know you don't know what she'll do next. I was talking to my friend who came over from LA with his daughter to watch it in London because it was so crazy and he had frequent flyer and he said it was just so completely crazy the prices in LA that it was easier to come to London anyway. We were sort of saying I mean what next and he said I don't know I mean if I I think she's going to go off and you know know, maybe she'll have a family, maybe she'll go and do something, just take some time because how can you, what are you going to do another tour? Where else do you go? Yeah.

You know, there are no other planets that can subsist this sort of culture, can they? And that selfie you probably saw, there's a picture of Prince William, who took George and Charlotte, his two eldest children. And there is a picture of Taylor Swift doing a selfie of her, the children, and Prince William. They went sort of privately. Now, when you see that, you have to think, aha, there are two photographers involved here because there is Taylor doing the selfie, and then there is, I guess, Taylor's official photographer taking a photo of that moment happening and putting it out,

even though they've come in a private thing. Now you know the Royal Family, particularly the Wales, is so fussy about anything like that and they complain. You just feel like, yeah she's just bigger than them, so she's bigger than them, so they can't, what are they going to do, complain to Taylor Swift that she's put their photo out? I don't think so. I thought that was really significant because anyone else did that, if they went on a private visit somewhere there would be a huge backlash, it would be a big problem, but it's just a sort of like, I will bend the knee to you, Taylor.

Can I also say about that photograph though, listen, whatever one thinks about the Royals, the sheer joy on those two children's face and the dad's face about having the photo, I mean, it's literally like, it's rapture. It's genuinely like a religious experience. You see it, but all around us, for people having religious experiences and... And again, but I love the fact, yeah, in the papers they say it's religious experience. You see it all around us for people having religious experiences and, and again, and but I love the fact, yeah, in the papers, they say it's a selfie. You think what the picture you're showing us isn't a selfie. It's a picture you're showing us. Yeah, a photographer taking a really good photograph of Taylor Swift taking a photograph

of her and, and the British royal family for no pushback whatsoever. Yeah, it's it. I mean, it's Taylor. It's if we're going to have someone who bestrides the world like a cultural colossus, I'd rather For no pushback whatsoever. Yeah, it's... I mean... Not pushback against Taylor. It's... if we're going to have someone who bestrides the world like a cultural colossus, I'd rather it was Taylor than many other people. She seems to be a force for good. She seems to be a force for women, seems to be a force for, you know, teenage girls actually,

it seems to be a force for good as far as I can make out. I mean, like, her detractors would be like, she is the ultimate capitalist, like, who else would go in... but I guess... But in this society. So who else would, you know, go and receive her Grammy and say, in the acceptance speech, or by the way, I've got a new album coming and it's, you know, that's when she announced the Doctor of Poets department. She announced it in a Grammy's acceptance speech, which so many people were like, really? I mean, can't you just take the award and not have to tell us that? But the trouble is she creates so much, she's so prolific. and then it's coming out and by the way it's got

33 songs or whatever it's got on it always always always be closing yeah always everything is sales but you know I think it's fair enough that's the world she's living in what's she going to do bring down capitalism if anyone could at this stage it would be her but you know whilst you've you know been you've you know Been bought up within capitalism. You might as well take advantage of it Griel Marcus the the cultural theorist, I suppose Says of Taylor Swift says she represents America said she even has a face represents The American flag says she has red lips white skin and blue eyes I thought that's great, isn't it? But that's again, the interesting thing is we can project so much onto Taylor Swift. She leaves

enough of a blank space that we can project what it is we need to be or the problems that we have or the issues that we have. You know, I, as a 53 year old man can listen to an album she's written with The National and thought, oh, this is great because I love country music and I love The National and I'm great that this is being listened to by, you know, a different generation of people. But if you're a 13, 14 year old girl or a nine year old girl like your daughter, there are things that you can take and things that you want to be that you can see in Taylor Swift. It's an incredible mirror she holds up, but that's not by accident. It's done because she is a brilliant musician. She's brilliant songwriter she's a brilliant business person I think of her like you know when

you see Carlos Alcaraz or someone play tennis okay you've got you have got every single shot so nothing without the serve. You're an everything threat. The big serve is the music. Beneath everything there's great music if you don't like it doesn't matter it's absolutely fine you're allowed to not like things but it is, like the music is good. And then she can just, so she can do little drop shots, lobs, everything you want to do, backhand, forehand. She has absolutely got it all and it'd be fascinating to see where it goes next because there isn't anywhere else for it to go next. No.

I don't think she's dumb enough to become president. Oh no. Yeah. No. I can't imagine.'s dumb enough to become president. Oh no. Yeah. I can't imagine. I think that would be beneath her. President very juvenile personnel. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't think she is. It's interesting because if you're interested in music conversation, then she's in the middle of that. If you're interested in creativity writing conversation, she's in the middle

of that. If you're interested in a business conversation, she's in the middle of that. If you're interested in a celebrity gossip conversation, she's in the middle of that. If you're interested in a celebrity gossip conversation, she's in the middle of that. And now because of Travis, she's also in the middle of sports conversations as well. She's added kind of half a billion dollars to the, you know, the, the, the, the media take of the NFL Travis Kelsey's podcast is. Yeah. She's boosted the ratings for the biggest rated thing by million miles on American television, which is the NFL.

And she's contrived to boost ratings for it by lots of people just want to watch the Kansas City Chiefs games to see if they can catch sight of her in the box. And they do pant her quite a lot in the box because they realized she was making them more money. So yeah, it's quite extraordinary. We should get her on the show. No, we don't do interviews. Sorry, Taylor. Sorry. Sorry. We'd love to, but She can come and watch can I as a final coder to this? We touch she is genuinely the biggest star in the world and all that kind of stuff

It is worth saying because lots of people listening will be thinking that most people genuinely don't care Most people on most people are not interested but in the same way that most people are not interested in coca-cola Yeah, you know the biggest television show in the world Most people are not interested most people are not interested in everything But the group of people that are interested are hyper interested and the group of people that are interested is bigger Than the group of people interested in anyone else So if you're asking at home think I don't know what the fuss is all about you are genuinely in the majority far from alone Yeah, you're absolutely far from alone

but it's fascinating that even if you can take 15% of our culture and monetize it then you become a billionaire Which is of course what she did, but it was a good gig Um, it was it was unbelievable one for one for the lifetime memories. Um, gosh We've talked an awful lot about those two subjects. I do want to talk about films We were going to talk about lots of different ones the AI one and the Trump one Why don't we leave those to next week? it would be lovely to talk about inside out, because we talked a little bit about on the podcast this year about the box office of some films and everyone was worried about the future

of cinema, but cinema has been saved. Cinema has been saved by Inside Out 2. Which I saw on Saturday, which is terrific. It's a Pixar movie and it's saved lots of things because the May box office was sort of calamitous and tracking, which we might talk about in just a moment, but tracking is how the studios tell how well their movies are going to open. And tracking's been off for lots of things. It's been saying that lots of things have been open much bigger than they did and then lots of things have been a disappointment that they'd spent a lot of money on. Now Inside Out 2 is already the biggest movie of the year. It opened at 155 million domestic when it was predicted, this is how off the tracking was to only,

anyone else would kill for this, $90 million, right? And then last weekend, which we've just had when I saw it, it's really held up, it's taken another 100 million. It is, it is. Nothing, nothing does that sort of numbers in its second week. That's more than Barbie did in its second week. It's the biggest animation second week in history. It's made 750 million worldwide. It's going to be a billion dollar movie easily. And I just think it's an enormous relief to everybody in Hollywood.

Well, it's a big relief for Disney because remember they've got these four different labels. They've got Star Wars, they've got the legacy Disney stuff, all the, you know, all the things you might expect like, I don't know, Cinderella's and Enchanted's and Moana's and all of those sorts of things. They've got Marvel and they've got Pixar, which are made inside out too. Now all of those have been struggling at different points and Pixar particularly, people were saying, oh dear, is this the end of Pixar?

Or is that sort of bubble burst? Well, not at all. I haven't read the reviews of this. I don't know whether people think it's as good as the first one. For me, the concept is so amazing of Inside Out, where obviously there are the different emotions in this girl's head, Riley's head.

I think that that concept is so amazing. It is very hard to imagine, possibly, when you first heard it, how on earth is this gonna look? Sorry, explain to me how this isn't gonna be incredibly clunky, but it has such a light touch. I think it's absolutely, it's so well done. But also they've done something sensible, which is that she's now going through puberty.

So that's clever. When you take your audience with you in terms of the age, almost in the way that other movies that are opening, like, you know, like Despicable Me has allowed its audience to sort of grow with it. Harry Potter, weirdly. Yes, absolutely. And so when Inside Out 2 was announced

that they were going to do it, Amy Poehler, who's Joy, who's the most central to it, Disney offered her five million, I think, and various backend and inducements and things like that. Now, not returning this time round as Fear and Disgust are Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling, who were offered $100,000 to reprise their voices. Now, yes, everybody listeners, I get that $100,000 to reprise their voices. Now, yes, everybody listeners, I get that $100,000 we'd all be very thrilled with, et cetera, but these are show ponies. This is like talking about footballers' salaries

and saying, you know, their ways are not our ways. That is a ridiculous amount of money to offer to the cast to return. And they didn't go back because they were basically being offered 2% of Amy Poehler's salary but there's a slight sort of chilling thought to that which is that it didn't really matter. Yes I've always thought that with animation I think no one, kids don't know who these are and even me I would watch a whole thing I go I have to watch the end just so I can work out who that is and it'd be

someone I know very well you think but it's it's sort of just get a really good actor. Yeah I mean I would have thought that Mindy Kaling, she was so great as discussed, but I would have thought that she was a bit of a deal breaker, but Phyllis Smith, who voices sadness, who's got that, you know, Phyllis from the office, who's got that wonderful voice. She's gone, you know, she returned, but what they said, what they've effectively said is, well, we can replace you and we don't have to pay you even on something that was such a big hit

the first time around. So I think that is quite chilling. It's almost like the animators and the writers and the director are the talent there. I don't know. I really don't like to think of it like that because I do think voice artistry is an incredible thing. And I think that's a, I don't think,

I think that's slightly chilling for actors to be told that when something's been that big a hit to be offered that kind of money, which within the context of Hollywood is a tiny amount. But is it not less chilling for actors who don't already have names from sitcoms to say, actually, you could come in and be in the biggest movie of the year? Yeah. Anyway, why is the tracking of movies so often? What is tracking? Can I just talk a little bit about tracking? It is quite interesting. Tracking is basically a way for studios to

gauge how well their movie is going to open and in a sense like how well is your marketing working. Okay, yeah. Okay, so they, because you think you're taking hundreds of millions dollar bets sometimes and even so you're always taking tens of million dollar bet and nobody knows anything as we famously know about Hollywood. So could somebody tell me something? I would like to have some idea of what it's going to be. Like opinion polls for the election. Yes, which again I think is significant. They are also very off this year. People are not sure. You're getting different polls all on the US election. In our

own election in the UK, we are saying, you're seeing people say, we know it'll be a Labour win, but we don't know whether it'll be by 150 seats or will it be these huge numbers that we haven't really seen? So people are becoming harder to poll in lots of different ways and tracking, I think, is part of that. It's just a way of polling the movie audience. But how do they do it? There are people, I was listening to this really interesting

interview the other day with the park journalist, Matt Bellamy was interviewing this guy who has a sort of, he's got a very sophisticated neural network and he works with studios before they even cast their movies. So they say this is the concept and then he'll say this is how much your movie would be on tracking to make if it had no stars. And then they're like, okay, but what about we put one of the Stranger Things kids in his, and then he'll say, yeah, it's going to make even less. So you're basically paying one of the Stranger Things kids. He didn't say the Stranger thing kids. I'm just giving them as an example. You're paying them

$3 million to make your movie less attractive. Yeah. What if we had Bill Hader doing that same voice again? Well, yeah. So that's probably what happened is they thought it doesn't matter. We've realized it doesn't matter. So anyway, one of the things, once it's cast and it's happening, then they start tracking. Now, if more than six weeks out, something called unaided awareness, so they know someone knows your movie's coming out without prompting. Now my kid said to me for a long time, when's Inside Out 2 out? When's it out? They know about it. They're fully aware of it. And there'll be other movies coming this year, like Deadpool and Wolverine, Despicable Me 4, that everyone knows, or not everyone knows, but lots of people

who are interested know they're coming. If it's more than six weeks out and they know about it at all, that's part of what correlates to a strong opening box of this. Total awareness, do they have an idea of when it's opening? Now, if you think, oh, hang on, that's coming out on, I don't know, July the 24th, and that's amazing, you know, you can say that you might, you know, that's definite interest. They might see it, maybe not the day it comes out, but they'll see it around that time. First choice, this is a very good thing. They give you a smorgasbord of what movies are coming out.

And if you pick that one, one, then that again is a very positive thing. And then they sort all these answers by gender. So you've got age 25, by the way, it's a cutoff. So you've got females under 25, females over 25, males under 25, males over 25. Those are the four quadrants. So when we talk about a four quadrant movie, so you might say something in the MCU is a four quadrant movie,

it's got to appeal to all of those things. And by the way, if they're very expensive, it needs to be a four quadrant movie. I'm just going to start referring to myself as a male over 25. Yeah, I'm going to refer to you as a four quadrant presenter. Yeah. It's just the quadruple threat. And you can also track, weirdly, online ticket sales is still a thing. I mean, I do not pre-book things with a movie theatre when I'm not thinking, oh, I must be there on the first day of Deadpool and Wolverine. But people do actually still do this. And it is a thing, Joker, Follyard, which is coming out later in the year, which will be, you know, Beetlejuice, this is something that has very, very strong tracking. People love General Ortega, young people love General Ortega, and that IP, by the way, is

ancient. That's from when I was a little girl. Yeah, and it wasn't super massive. Some people loved it, but it wasn't big. No, it was a cult, sort of, you know, it's Tim Burton, it's Michael Keaton, it's just not, it's not, but that, because of General Ortega, is tracking really well, so that, I think, will do, will be one of those movies. To me, I keep thinking you're saying Jenna Ortega.

I think we're in Nicaragua. But I know Jenna Ortega is one of the new generation of huge stars. And not related to Manuel. So I think it was Noriega, wasn't it? But it sounds like Jenna Ortega. But the long and short of it is movies have been saved. They have been saved and it makes people feel positive about things that are coming up.

But what's interesting is that the tracking is so off. And I do think it's interesting and I do think you can see this in political polls as well, that people are becoming not necessarily more volatile, but harder to pull and harder to understand. And they're different, as I say, this person with this sophisticated neural network is a different way of looking at how things might do. But I think that the technology or the science of it is creaking a bit and that they're going to have to update their models and how they do it. There's an obsession now, isn't it, with knowing what's going to happen in the future.

Polls are that. Movies, of course, have that we're tracking. And movies, obsession now isn't it with knowing what's going to happen in the future. Polls are that, movies of course have that we're tracking and movies by the way it's understandable because any company that ever spends a lot of money on a launch of any product is desperately trying to find out how it's going to do before it does do. But you know that's why people like sport and things you just you just don't know what's gonna happen when it begins do you? You don't. So those other movie stories we have. But you know when it's on. Yes. And that's the thing. You see you're so lucky with sport because people know exactly when it's on. They know they're

not going to miss it. That is something that people care so much about. Whereas even people who would count themselves as kind of really big fans of certain movie franchises might not know the day they open. And you know, so it is different and you really need to kind of keep a track of that audience and make sure that your marketing that you spend Maybe more than the movies entire budget on is actually reaching them because if it's not something's going wrong Yeah, listen, I think we're probably out of time But next week we'll talk about this the Trump movie and the AI movie Which is a fascinating story and the Coppola movie as well. So they're all really good stories, but we are I think people's bored dogs

I've been over walked. Don't forget. We've got a questions and answers edition on Thursday, ask us all sorts of questions. The rest is entertainment at gmail.com is the address. Someone was asking about some summer read recommendations so maybe we'll do that and that'd be nice. That was loads of fun, I'm very jealous that you saw Taylor Swift. I'm going to talk more about my Christmas experience as well at some point. Oh yes please, can we do that next week? Of course we can. And we'll see everybody on Thursday. See you then.

Hi there, this is Cathy Kay from the Rest is Politics US. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. On Thursday, June the 27th, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are going head to head in the first presidential debate of this campaign. And some very exciting news, Cathy. We're going live on YouTube straight after the debate. We've got one candidate accusing his opponent of being senile, and the other saying his rival is a danger to democracy.

Yeah, for all of us politics nerds, it's gonna be a very exciting evening. And to get our instant reaction, just search The Rest Is Politics US on YouTube straight after the debate. Don't worry if you miss it. You can listen back to the episode on our regular podcast feed the next morning.

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