Married At First Sight: Tip Of The Iceberg?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Entertainment

Episode: Married At First Sight: Tip Of The Iceberg?
Date: May 25, 2026
Hosts: Richard Osman & Marina Hyde

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Rest Is Entertainment is a deep dive into the explosive recent scandals enveloping Married At First Sight (MAFS), the wider reality TV landscape, and the ethical dilemmas facing the industry. Marina Hyde and Richard Osman break down the fallout from abuse allegations on MAFS, trace how reality TV’s “duty of care” crisis is unfolding, and discuss what this might mean for the genre as a whole. The hosts also analyze the bizarre debut of the Enhanced Games—a sporting event that explicitly encourages doping—and the future of American late-night TV following Stephen Colbert’s final episode.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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[03:14] Married At First Sight: Scandal, Duty of Care & Reality TV's Reckoning

• Context & Scandal

  • MAFS, Channel 4’s blockbuster reality show, is engulfed in controversy following BBC Panorama’s investigation into abuse on set.
  • Multiple women allege rape and non-consensual acts by on-screen partners; claims of violence and inadequate welfare support have arisen.
  • Channel 4 pulled every single episode, CPL (production company) is under review, and sponsors like Tuohy have backed out.
  • “This is just the tip of the iceberg. Once people start coming forward, more will join for all these shows.” (Marina Hyde, 09:57)

• Industry Response

  • Channel 4 commissions a split review: legal handling of allegations, and a detailed probe into welfare protocol.
  • Discussion of “duty of care”—the responsibility networks have to reality TV contestants.
  • Noted how these protocols have shifted since reality TV’s “wild west” era (Big Brother/Love Island), but modern formats push boundaries with less oversight.

• A Runaway Format

  • Chris Coelen, MAFS’s American creator, maintains the show is “story-driven, not format driven”—a claim the hosts view as disingenuous.
  • “You’re not turning a camera on and just seeing what happens. He’s not David Attenborough.” (Richard Osman, 14:31)
  • The show’s design removes contestants from their usual support networks, making aftercare reactive (not proactive).
  • “When you’re in a big immersive world and isolated, it’s only afterwards you realize how undesirable a situation was.” (Marina Hyde, 15:42)

• The Class Divide in Reality TV

  • Top-tier celebrity reality TV (e.g., Strictly, Traitors) offers safety/narrative control, while “cattle market” dating formats like MAFS, Love Island, and Love is Blind chase ever-bigger ratings by constructing ever-riskier environments.
  • Contestants are lured by fleeting fame, the promise of influencer careers, or as a last-ditch solution to “dating app fatigue.”
  • “Why not get married to someone I’ve never met before on TV? Everything else has failed.” (Richard Osman, 19:08)

• Predictions & Cultural Impact

  • The hosts foresee more allegations emerging across reality formats, especially as less-regulated platforms (YouTube) launch their own shows for profit.
  • “This is going to get much, much, much, much worse, because broadcast television’s protocols will not apply to this new generation of program makers.” (Richard Osman, 21:37)
  • Viewers, networks, and producers all share responsibility for escalating risks.
  • The real-time response to increasing allegations will serve as a yardstick for the culture, the networks, and us as audiences.

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[25:49] The Enhanced Games: Performance, Ethics, and the Future of Sport

• What Are the Enhanced Games?

  • A new sporting event encouraging the use of performance-enhancing drugs—described as the “Olympics on steroids.”
  • Funded by tech billionaires and “biohacker” venture capitalists; the event is heavily marketed and livestreamed from Las Vegas.

• Motivations & Athlete Realities

  • Prizes: Up to $1M for world records, $250,000 for wins.
  • Many elite athletes struggle to earn a living—a factor that makes such “dubious” competitions attractive.
  • “46% of elite athletes earn under $15,000 a year.” (Marina Hyde, 30:26)

• Ethical Quagmire

  • The Games are outright branded as a “marketing tool” for peptide and supplement companies, not a pure sports contest.
  • Some athletes, such as Fred Curley and Hunter Armstrong, bizarrely participated “clean” and won, undermining the premise.
  • “As a spectacle, it wasn’t amazing. They didn’t break any records… But as a sign of things to come? Be wary.” (Richard Osman, 40:52)

• Historical Parallels and Social Commentary

  • Hosts compare this to boxing or contact sports, where bodily harm is routine for entertainment.
  • Suggest this is just a step further, with “duty of care” and transparency entirely abandoned for hype, profit, and spectacle.
  • “They’re sort of telling the truth about it. That’s their narrative...When you look at it, at first sight, it looks absolutely appalling. And when you pull back the covers, you go: this is what’s always been happening.” (Richard Osman, 34:23)
  • Concerns raised that YouTube and streaming platforms will further erode oversight and standards as new “sports” formats emerge.

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[40:52] End of an Era: Stephen Colbert’s Last Late Show, and the Future of Late Night

• Colbert’s Farewell and TV’s Shifting Sands

  • The final Late Show aired after CBS axed it, primarily for financial reasons (costing $100M/year, making $60M).
  • Surge in viewership for final episodes reflects nostalgia, but highlights the decline of the old “monoculture.”
  • “The clips are bigger than the shows. The opening monologue gets huge views, but the old shared monoculture is dead.” (Marina Hyde, 44:18)

• What Happens Now?

  • Colbert moved to community-access TV (Only in Monroe) as a symbolic, democratized next step—his first new venture is now on YouTube.
  • “He can make a show for $20 million a year, and literally 15 of that will be profit. He can take 10 people from The Late Show and do it.” (Marina Hyde, 50:33)
  • Other hosts (Kimmel, Meyers) persist, but networks are replacing costly prestige programming with syndicated or “leashed” comedy.

• The Inevitable Rise of Independent Platforms

  • With the shift to YouTube and podcasting, networks lose the “levers” of control over dissent or satire.
  • “They’re shooting themselves in the foot. Late night, they have levers to pull; YouTube, they don’t. Colbert will make more money from it. CBS will make more money. Everyone wins except the old monoculture.” (Richard Osman, 51:37)
  • Democratization of media: Anyone (especially established stars) can reach millions without corporate interference.

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Notable Quotes & Key Moments

• On Duty of Care in Reality TV:
  "The moment someone becomes properly famous, they stop travelling as a person and start travelling as a situation—and yes, I am talking about the world of entourages."
  – Marina Hyde [00:00]

• On MAFS’ Unreality:
  "You are married, but you are divorced from reality by design.”
  – Marina Hyde [15:42]

• On Cultural Complicity:
  “It is very easy as a broadcaster, a program maker, and as a viewer, to step away from the reality of the thing. But now, with the knowledge we have, that's probably too far.”
  – Richard Osman [19:31]

• On Sport’s Eternal Morality Play:
  “Morally, it's a very, very thin line between the Enhanced Games and what sport is anyway.”
  – Richard Osman [33:05]

• On Where the Media Is Headed:
  "If [the regulators] can't control Stephen Colbert on YouTube, there's just a massive democratized thing out there. He will be a hit—and good people will come there, and no one will control them."
  – Marina Hyde [51:13]

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[52:25] Recommendations

• Marina Hyde:

  • Dear England (James Graham’s play, expanded for TV; explores Gareth Southgate’s era and national identity).
  • Recent select committee appearance with Graham, discussing local stories and big-populist themes.

• Richard Osman:

  • Three Netflix documentaries:
    • Jamie Vardy: Untold (the unlikely football career)
    • The Miracle of Istanbul (Liverpool’s comeback Champions League triumph)
    • Kylie (Minogue’s music documentary)

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[55:50] Plus & Member Content

• Marina Hyde’s exclusive members’ series, including interviews with pollster James Kanagasooriam, and explorations of high culture’s reach.

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Timestamps Index

• 03:14 – 22:47: Married At First Sight—abuse scandal, “duty of care,” how reality TV lost control, and predictions for the industry.
• 25:49 – 40:52: The Enhanced Games—drugs in sport, tech funding, blurring lines between advertising and athletic achievement.
• 40:52 – 52:08: Late night TV’s future—Colbert’s farewell, the death of monoculture, rise of democratized media, where stars and networks go next.
• 52:25 – 56:25: Recommendations & bonus content.

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In Summary

This episode pulls no punches in scrutinizing the ethics, economics, and psychology at play in both reality television and contemporary sports/entertainment culture. Hyde and Osman warn that systemic issues in “duty of care” are only just coming to light, predicting more scandals and more complex problems as the internet decentralizes both surveillance and accountability.

For viewers and listeners, the message is clear:
Consider your complicity, demand transparency, and prepare for more seismic shifts as technology continues to disrupt what is “entertainment,” who profits, and at what cost.

Transcript

[Marina Hyde]

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[Richard Osman]

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[Marina Hyde]

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[Richard Osman]

So Octopus Energy, you know, anytime, ever, ring any company, you start from scratch right from the beginning. Again, with Octopus Energy, they recognize your number and that goes through to a very, very small team of around 10 people who are there to deal with you. So you will almost certainly be dealing with someone who you have dealt with before. That's the Octopus Energy entourage that they have built around you.

[Marina Hyde]

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[Marina Hyde]

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[Richard Osman]

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[Marina Hyde]

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[Richard Osman]

Hyde and me, Richard Osman. Hello, Marina.

[Marina Hyde]

Hello, Richard. How are you?

[Richard Osman]

I'm quite hot.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah. But we're in a new studio.

[Richard Osman]

We are in a new studio and

[Marina Hyde]

it's fancy and it's air conditioned.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah.

[Marina Hyde]

And it's. Yeah. So I mean, all's right with the world.

[Richard Osman]

Although it's easier to get to. This is not anyone else's concern but ours. No, but it is.

[Marina Hyde]

The reason you're looking a little bit upset is because our producer Joey has just shown us that more of our audience had heard a few phenotypes than had heard of popular entertainment format. Big break.

[Richard Osman]

Yes, we polled our members. That's correct. Right I'm gonna, we're gonna do some repo polling on that just to see

[Marina Hyde]

how it's not Family Fortunes. I'm not saying that would be the case on the high street but among

[Richard Osman]

our audience 63% of people have heard of. You say phenotypes, I say phenotypes. Let's call the whole thing off. And just over 50% had heard of Big Break. I don't buy that. No one's, you know what members, I love you though. I do define it.

[Marina Hyde]

No, they are right. They are right.

[Richard Osman]

Anyhow, I bet all of those 53% of people could define what Big Break is. Could those 60 odd percent of people define what they heard it because they

[Marina Hyde]

listened to entertainment format.

[Richard Osman]

They literally heard it. Cause they listened to the episode.

[Marina Hyde]

Listen, I knew what both were. So you should be glad.

[Richard Osman]

Anyway, lovely to be in a new studio.

[Marina Hyde]

We got a lot to talk about this week. We are, we are talking about Married at First Sight which as everyone knows has blown up over the last week with all sorts of allegations to contestants alleging they and further allegations are continuing to come. And we'll. So we'll be talking about that.

[Richard Osman]

We're going to talk about. There was a big event this weekend which combines a number of our bugbears on this show which is the Enhanced Games which is essentially Tech Bros meets Abuse of sport.

[Marina Hyde]

And we're also going to talk Stephen Colbert's final show. A little bit of a goodbye to all that and what's next for both him and perhaps even Late Night.

[Richard Osman]

Exactly that. And also we are looking for your questions please for following our Paul McCartney interview and the Tom Hanks one coming up we're talking to Steven Spielberg. That's fun, isn't it?

[Marina Hyde]

Mr. Spielberg.

[Richard Osman]

Mr. Spielberg. We don't come up with the questions. You do you know how that works? So please send any questions you have to thereisters entertainmentolhanger.com anything you've ever wanted to ask Steven Spielberg and we will put your questions to you.

[Marina Hyde]

I'm dying for it. So much. So excited about that one.

[Richard Osman]

Shall we start with Married at First Sight?

[Marina Hyde]

Married at First Sight which is a Channel 4 show here it's made by CPL Productions, Channel 4's biggest show.

[Richard Osman]

Oh by, by quite some way.

[Marina Hyde]

It's enormous. I mean even things like Bake off. If you look at what the streaming figures, it's unbelievable. It's a million miles ahead of it. The Panorama investigation. Former contestants, two women say they were raped by their on screen partners. Another said there was a Non consensual sex act. Some say that actual violence has taken the men who have been at the center of the allegations so far deny the allegations. CPL have pushed back and say that they have sort of higher standards of welfare on this program. Channel 4 have removed every single episode of it from their service. Tuohy have ended their sponsorship of it having initially paused it. This is a show that has is created by the sort of high priest of modern reality dating shows. A guy called Chris Colin in the US and there's a lot of stuff of him talking about which I think will be interesting and we will get to. But they even have a new series in the UK that's yet to be aired.

[Richard Osman]

There is and in the same way we talked a while ago about the Bachelor in the States that they've had to can. I wonder if this is where that's going to end up with this being canned. I can't see a world in which that isn't where this ends up.

[Marina Hyde]

Well let's talk a little bit because also Noor Nanji who did the BBC Panorama investigations talked a bit about how the investigation. It's always interesting when people sort of take you a bit behind the scenes and that's become quite a feature of.

[Richard Osman]

She also did the Greg Wallace investigation. In fact she talks about it. She says I think cause she's a culture correspondent she says I sometimes think people think that that's it's sort of quite a lightweight area. And she says I hope I'm sort of proving that it isn't that actually a lot of what's going on in this world, you know you can look at via culture. So I think full marks to Nor and Angie. What an incredible job.

[Marina Hyde]

The premise of married at first sight. Sorry if anyone isn't aware of it you are matched with someone. You meet them for the first time on your wedding day. Actually as you know my for a long time which was my anxiety dream you meet the person you're getting married to on the wedding day and then you sort of live together and see where it goes.

[Richard Osman]

It's sort of like a marriage backwards.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah, yeah. Anyway a woman who'd been a bridesmaid at one of these sort of confected weddings at the beginning came into the BBC and she sort of said there's made allegations of sexual misconduct and raised welfare concerns. Noor Nandi says that one of that when they started approaching the men one of the men's legal firms told the BBC that their fees were being paid by cpl which is the production company, which she thought was odd because the women felt somewhat unsupported for obvious reasons. The morning of the Panorama broadcast, Nornanji says cpl, the production company, emailed participants warning against talking to the press.

[Richard Osman]

Well, I think even the week before they were essentially, they were calling the allegations wholly uncorroborated and disputed.

[Marina Hyde]

They've got a new chief executive at Channel 4, Priya Dogra. first she didn't apologize and she. She felt sympathy. She has now apologized. Channel 4 have said that based on the knowledge they had at the time, they made the right decisions in proceeding with the welfare. And they did in the way that they did and with broadcast in the way that they did. Which to me suggests that the strategy for this is evolving quite erratically, or they would probably say pragmatically. But they haven't been aware of these allegations since April because that's when the BBC first went to them and we are in late May. So I would say it's quite interesting how they're handling it. What they have hastily now announced, now it's all become public, Channel 4, is that they've commissioned a review in two halves. So there's one in which a legal firm will look at how Channel 4 handles the allegations and allegations within the show, and one which will look at welfare provisions and protocols, which is the

[Richard Osman]

key duty of care, we would always have called it, on TV reality shows, which is the responsibility you have to anyone who's a participant in a program that you've created and you've essentially put them on.

[Marina Hyde]

Yes. So that's. That's the background. And I think it's interesting because there is a sort of sense that reality TV had sort of reformed after what is popularly regarded as the kind of Wild west of, you know, 20 years or a bit more ago. And for me, I think reality has become very sort of class demarcated, that you've got the. The biggest shows and the most prestigious shows on television are reality TV and they're celebrity reality and they're things like traitors or strictly. Or whatever it is.

[Richard Osman]

It depends what you mean by reality tv, but essentially we're talking about that kind of unscripted game shows that have members of the public, celebrities taking part in some form of artificial reality.

[Marina Hyde]

Yes. And you look at. Or a bubbled world or whatever it may be, and which I think is relevant here, what happens with those sort of shows is that you'll get like some of the biggest stars in the world saying, oh, yeah, I'll do it. For 40 grand. You know, I'll go to a castle in Scotland for 40 grand. So you've got that. Then you've got a sort of middle class. Things like Bake off and things like that. But then there is this giant underclass of shows that are very, very popular. Married Percell. I would include Love island. You know, there's Love Is Blind and other Chris Colon formats.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah. And by the way, those three shows for their respective broadcasters and in lots of territories are three of the biggest shows in the world. They are huge moneymakers. So Love Is Blind, Love Island, Married At First Sight, enormous franchises. The money they are minting for the people behind them is absolutely off the scale. It's just worth remembering that Married First

[Marina Hyde]

Sight In, I think, 33 countries, maybe definitely above 30. I mean, all of them are. And they are hugely successful. I definitely think this will be the first of a lot of stories in this area. And so does. I saw one of the lawyers for one of them saying, oh, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Lots more people, once they see people coming forward about these things, will come forward for all those shows. I mean, we already know that there are always concerns about those things. You know, there have been a number of suicides in the wake of Love Island. There have been all sorts of things and people we know there in the us, which we'll get onto. I mean, there are numbers of complaints against these shows, particularly against these CHRIS Colon reality dating formats. If you're a UK production company and a UK public service broadcaster, as Channel 4 is running one of these things, you must be expecting this to happen because you can look around the world and see that it happens everywhere, that people eventually start complaining. And I think this is a bit like TV faker. We're going to see lots of stuff coming out now.

[Richard Osman]

I think that's right. And it's interesting to think what CPL are thinking, what Channel 4 are thinking, and it's very, very easy to get swept along on a tide of what's new in television and to understand that something like Married at First Sight is a phenomenon around the world and to kind of say, oh, there's a new generation who grew up with reality tv and when you put them on it, they really understand what it is they are doing. It's not like, you know, the first series of Big Brother when everyone was walking into a situation they didn't understand. I think people think, oh, no, it's. They think this generation of cool. I think they understand it more than we do. I think, you know, so that's handy. Yeah, isn't it handy. And I think that when reality TV started, duty of care is a very interesting thing because as you say, it has, it's always been there. There's always psych tests, everyone that always undergoes, you know, criminal records checks and all those types of things. And it's been tightened and tightened and tightened over the years. And you know, follow up kind of interviews with people have got more and more and more. But what has really changed is the, the form that reality TV is taking. When you look at that early reality tv, Big Brother, even, you know, the early series of Love Island, Survivor, it is a closed world. It's a closed set. And as producers, which also includes, by the way, psychologists and people, you know, involved in the duty of care, you have some at least illusion of control over what's happening because you have an entire world and every single inch of that world is covered because you have a camera on every single thing. The only time that something isn't covered is if someone is under a sheet. You know, that's literally. But every single thing, you've got every single bit of footage, every single interaction between everybody throughout. So there's a world in which you can spot things very, very quickly. There's a world in which you can kind of convince yourself that you can be the master of that world. However, now reality shows are far more out in the real world. And married at first sight, it's much less of a precinct. You know, it expands outwards. The sense you're in a bubble for the participants absolutely does. But the sense they are in a bubble for the producers does not. And that's the worst combination of all because people still have that Stockholm syndrome. People still think they have to do what the cameras want. People still understand that there is fame to be got from either being lovable on a show or being dramatic on a show. All those things still exist, but the producers have less control over the real world aspects of it. And I think that that's what's playing out here. And I think the avalanche begins now.

[Marina Hyde]

I want to talk about Chris Colin shows particularly, because I think he's wrenching. He's talked a lot about this type of thing because they have had lots of lawsuits against their shows in the US he's created these shows where you can't quite believe the premise. Like Married at first sight. Obviously, you know.

[Richard Osman]

Well, you can't believe the premise cause it's not real because they're not really getting married.

[Marina Hyde]

But it's sort of so extreme compared to what we used to see on in. And he does all of that. It's all dating. You know, there's Love is Blind, you know, when they're sort of dating through a wall. Perfect Match, which is. I don't think anyone's looking for long term love there, but that's quite interesting. He calls it the summer fling to these other shows. Then the ultimatum. The spouse has all of these things. The reason he says he's really obsessed with dating shows is because he thinks the stakes are so high. And he that married at first sight is not format driven. It is story driven. He says, you know what the shows are sort of asking is how does attraction work? How can you tell if people are really in love? Can you fake? Can you manage it? Can you create it? Chris Cohen will always say, oh, it's all a choice. You know, I'm making a documentary. That's what he loves to say. It's not a format. No, you're not making a documentary.

[Richard Osman]

You're aware of the fibrility. Is that a word? Something that's febrile of the situation you're putting people in and you are ratcheting that up time and time and time again because that gets ratings and ratings equals money. Which by the way is. That's the age old story of television. You want ratings and you want money and that's what he's doing. But it's disingenuous to say anything other than that he's not turning a camera on and just seeing what happens. You know, he's not David Attenborough.

[Marina Hyde]

The producers have always had an unbelievable amount of control within these environments.

[Richard Osman]

And, and by the way, when people say that. Cause people sometimes say, just to be clear, oh, all these things are scripted. You know, the edit is X, Y and Z. Really what the technique is to throw in a mechanic that changes everything and then sit back and see what happens. It's not, oh, we're gonna do this and then we're gonna do that and then we're gonna do that and then we'll film that and that's gonna make that story genuinely. The idea is like on any TV show, like on a panel show is we have this structure. We do this, we ask this question, we press, we pull this lever and then we just see what happens. That's the thing that they want to do until the point where that runs out of steam and then we put another lever, which by the way, they don't really do in documentaries.

[Marina Hyde]

No. What's Gone wrong here is really a function of the idea itself in a way, because it is all so unreal. You are. You may be married, but you are divorced from reality by design. Any welfare is reactive. I read a lot of people this week talking about it, former contestants in these types of shows. There's an interesting article by someone who is in Love island who said all the welfare and duty of care stuff is reactive and not proactive. And the fact is that when you are removed from everything and you're in a bubble, as I, you know, it's a bit like Karen in Goodfellas saying, after a while it gets to feel normal and a lot of people don't under. When you're in a big immersive world and you're isolated from your friends, your families, maybe even your phone, from all sorts of things, it's often that we already know this about sexual assault or alleged sexual assault or anything. It's only afterwards that you realize what really happened and how undesirable a situation was. And it's. That happens anyway. In cases of sexual assault, we understand far more about it than we ever did before. Never mind. When you're in a sort of bubble and you really have almost all of your kind of normal checks and balances removed from you, you then also have a welfare team who work for and are paid by the production.

[Richard Osman]

Would not accuse a single one of them, by the way of entering into this with any sort of ill intent. I think people are trying to make a great television program. And this is the. So, you know, there's a big hit around the world, I think started in Denmark, but, you know, Australia was the one where Britain really fell in love with this format. So, of course you're gonna make it. And Channel four excited and they go, we'll make it. But we do have to understand that there are lots of issues here and we have to be very careful with it. And the producers would have taken that very, very seriously. It got so huge, such a huge show. So the, you know, the marriage is sort of meaningless in a way. It's what it leads to and the fame it leads to and the Instagram followers that it leads to. And it becomes such a juggernaut that the people, I think, who commission it and produce it do not have the capability. And these are very capable people. They do not have the capability to control the thing that has been unleashed. They have created something that feels like the sort of cutesy reality experience we used to do and becomes a real world thing and becomes an incredibly Complex and difficult real world thing. And it's not appropriate for that to be run by the people who are.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah. There is something else that Chris Colin says that he aspires for his shows to teach empathy and so on, but also that the conversations around the shows evolve with and reflect the culture. And one thing that I've just been thinking about this all week and. Cause I've been thinking about it before and I know I've talked to you about this before, but there's a sort of wider point about how toxic dating is in contemporary culture. And obviously the premise is absolutely crazy. You get married to someone and you've never met them. Only in a world where already everyone is being sort of matched by machines.

[Richard Osman]

Yes.

[Marina Hyde]

And people are completely exhausted and twisted by the apps. How much you hear about app fatigue and all of this, what used to be an organic human connection has become a sort of algorithmically controlled market. It's an aspect of platform capitalism. It's twisted in its best sense, you know, as it. Not in its best sense, but you know, your real world, if you're not on one of these shows or not on anything, even that experience for people is kind of miserable and awful.

[Richard Osman]

Why not get married to someone I've never met before on tv? Because everything else has failed.

[Marina Hyde]

Well, only against that general real world backdrop that everyone is going through can these kind of bizarre, weird, artificial premises seem somehow, maybe it's more real, maybe it's more desirable than just many of the kind of tech mediated alternatives.

[Richard Osman]

And it's, you know, sitting around a table thinking up TV shows is something I did for many, many years. And it's a, it's a fun thing to do. And it seems that we're at stage now where you think, well, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Yeah, but it's, you know, it's hard not to. When people listen. We have to talk about the complicity of everyone here, which is the program makers, which are the channels and the viewers. It is one of those things where it's built and built and built and you know, we've seen different versions of this, different iterations of it. We love the drama watching the drama of it. And it is very easy as a broadcaster, as a program maker and as a viewer to step away from the reality of the thing. You think, no, no, hold on. We're in a very, very, very toxic culture at the moment. We are putting young people on television who absolutely are digital natives. But perhaps they're not, you know, emotional natives. Perhaps they you know, they don't have absolute control over their place in the world. And the moment something like this happens, you have to stop and go, yeah, do you know what? That's probably too far. That was probably enough. And I think that that's what I can't imagine they're gonna show the next series of Married. At first sight. I just can't see it. Cause I just don't think it feels an appropriate thing to put people through with the knowledge we now all definitely have. That was always at the back of our brains, but wasn't at the pleasure center at the front of our brains. One thing it does tell you about our culture is at least take these things seriously. Firstly, brilliant work from Noor and Angie for putting this whole thing together. And the real measure of our culture is what happens next. Yes, I think it's. Yeah, it's a horrific story. And it's not just on the channels and the producers, it's on us viewers as well. So we all have to, I think, kind of get around the table and just go, what is okay and what isn't okay. And this feels like maybe it's on the other side of the line of what is okay. And here's the real issue that's gonna happen is, you know, we're in a situation now where CPL have duty of care and Channel 4 have duty of care. And we as viewers are, you know, part of a long lineage of reality TV shows. But if we think it's the Wild west now, all of this stuff is now starting on YouTube. All of these new formats are starting on YouTube where there is not that oversight. The money you can get for making a reality show on YouTube now is absolutely immense. The sort of personalities you could run these sort of shows are as well. So we are going to get an awful lot of experiments in the next two, three, five years along these lines, which we have almost no oversight over, whatever. So the whole situation is going to get much, much, much, much worse because all of these protocols that broadcast television has had to develop over the years, they do not apply to this new generation of program makers and they will make new mistakes. Talking about the fall of civilization after these adverts, we're going to be talking about the Enhanced Games, which was on Sunday. And I would say it's quite a spectacle, but perhaps not in the way that the organisers were hoping.

[Marina Hyde]

This is the athletic competition where all competitors are allowed and in fact encouraged to take performance enhancing drugs.

[Richard Osman]

The.

[Marina Hyde]

This episode is brought to you by Lloyds Now I love it when characters are part of a club. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, Richard?

[Richard Osman]

Thursday Murder Club in some ways reminds me of the A team.

[Marina Hyde]

I would now like to map each of those characters onto the A team and feel I probably could. I mean, Elizabeth is Hannibal and it's not even close.

[Richard Osman]

That's exactly right. And Ron is howling Mad Murdoch.

[Marina Hyde]

Well, there are definite perks to being in a club. Just ask the members of Club Lloyds, because with Club Lloyd you can bank on Lloyds to give you more wherever

[Richard Osman]

you are, if you jo Club Lloyds, there's all sorts of benefits you can choose between. There's for example, six free cinema tickets.

[Marina Hyde]

They've got an annual coffee club and Gourmet society membership, which would be mine

[Richard Osman]

and also something that the Thursday Motor Club would enjoy very, very much indeed. To top it all off, you have fee free spending abroad, which means wherever you are, you won't be charged by Lloyds to use your debit card when you're traveling. Now, joining this club costs five pound per month, but that is refunded in any month that you pay 2,000 pound into your account.

[Marina Hyde]

Now that is a club that's worth being part of. Check out Club Lloyds today. You'll need UK resident and aged 18 or over to apply. Hello, it's Marina Hyde from the Wrestlers Entertainment. Now, Tom, it's fair to say there isn't normally a huge amount of crossover between our podcasts.

[Richard Osman]

Well, Marina, I know that we have both on our respective podcasts discussed Vin Diesel's ambition to play Hannibal, so I've always thought that perhaps there is potential

[Marina Hyde]

here for the rest is history and

[Richard Osman]

the rest is entertainment. To combine and produce something beautiful.

[Marina Hyde]

Yes, in a crossover nobody saw coming, the worlds of reality TV and historical heist society collide live on the south bank center stage.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah, the Real Housewives of Regency England will see us cast a TV reality show eye onto the women of the early 19th century. And when we say the women of the early 19th century, we are talking about some of the most extraordinary, most charismatic, most scandalous women in the whole of British history.

[Marina Hyde]

Exactly. Think Lady Hamilton, Jane Austen and my chaotic queen, Caroline Lamb. Yeah. So Marina and I are planning to

[Richard Osman]

pull out all the stops for a reality TV tour of Regency London, complete with superb dramatic recreations and unbelievably exciting, a special celebrity guest from the world of the real Real Housewives.

[Marina Hyde]

The Rest Is Fest is running from the 4th to 6th of September at London's South Bank Centre. Members of the Rest is history and

[Richard Osman]

the rest is entertainment. Can get tickets on 28th May.

[Marina Hyde]

General sale goes live on 2nd June at 10am Visit bankcentre.co.uk to find out more. Welcome back, everybody. Now, the Enhanced Games. Richard. Swimming, sprinting and weight lifting. I believe 42 athletes.

[Richard Osman]

I was gonna say, not as you know it, but maybe as you know it because everyone's on drugs. It's described as the Olympics on steroids, but in this case, literally. And it happened on Sunday. You'll be shocked to learn where it happened. Actually, there's two places it might have happened. One was Riyadh. It wasn't there. The other was Las Vegas and it was there. Perhaps next year it'll be in Riyadh. And it is a competition where athletes, some of whom are genuine Olympians in the swimming, sprints and in weightlifting, attempt to break world records by using performance enhancing drugs. It's run by a guy called Christian Angermeier, who made a fortune from cytocybin tablets, magic mushrooms.

[Marina Hyde]

He's like AI Psychedelics and crypto.

[Richard Osman]

Yes.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah. Absolute perfect.

[Richard Osman]

Although the more I read about it, the more I liked him. I'll say that. Yeah, we will get.

[Marina Hyde]

It's also backed by Peter Thiel, Donald

[Richard Osman]

Trump Jr's venture capitalist firm are investors as well. Now, it's called the Enhanced Games and not because, oh, it's, you know, Games, but it's Enhanced. It's called Enhanced because it is sponsored by a company called Enhanced and that is Christian Angermeier's company. And they would essentially sell you peptides and testosterone and all of these things. All of these things that we've spoken about before when we talked about looks, maxing and all that stuff. This world in America that seems to be getting less and less regulated, especially with the rise of rfk, where you can improve who you are.

[Marina Hyde]

All the biohacking, all the self optimization, all the longevity, particularly that these guys are heavily invested in. And the event was connected to a platform where you can.

[Richard Osman]

The event was connected to a shop. Yeah, let's call it what it is.

[Marina Hyde]

I mean, when it first came out, Sebco, he was chairman of. Of World Athletics at the time, said, oh, this is all bollocks. I don't get sleepless nights over it. No one's gonna watch it, no one's gonna. People thought no one would screen it. It's like, have you looked at the media over the last few years? Don't worry, someone will. And it was actually on Roku's YouTube channel.

[Richard Osman]

Yes. Which is not nothing, by the way, these days. No, no, no, not at all.

[Marina Hyde]

We live in a completely different media landscape. And so, as we've just talked about before the break, don't think that no one will screen it. Cause someone will always screen it. They had it last night, but they had a training camp a few months ago in Abu Dhabi.

[Richard Osman]

That was in Abu Dhabi.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah. And again, it's all like. I don't know where the stage of this is, but it will obviously, because it hasn't come out yet, because they will obviously have to take in the Games itself. But really, Scott's company was gonna make a documentary about it and it was gonna be Produced by Rob McElhenney, obviously. Welcome to Wrexham. It's all still just content, isn't it? It's all.

[Richard Osman]

Well, it's not even just content, it's an advert. And so it's. And it's fascinating. We talk a lot about how sport is the only game left in town, really, on broadcast television. Cause you have to watch it live. And because it has this sort of genuine drama. But, you know, if you look at so en, which had. Had an IPO and is worth over a billion dollars, this company that will sell you peptides and all sorts of things, you know, in their entry to the securities Exchange, when they had their ipo, they described the Enhanced Games as simply a marketing tool. This, this, this. This is not their company. They're not building this thing. You know, this is literally a marketing thing. And, you know, they've encouraged all these sports people to come and do it and they put it on on Sunday and lots of people watched it. Now, now the interesting thing about it is the sports people who were doing it. And there's all sorts of people who did it. Fred Curley, he was an Olympic 100 metre medalist, he did it clean. Weirdly, there's a few athletes in this. Hunter Armstrong, the swimmer as well, who competed clean.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah, I saw him beat everyone clean,

[Richard Osman]

which we will get to. Literally the only clean athlete in the.

[Marina Hyde]

You've ruined the advert.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah, you've ruined our advert, Hunter. Whether they are clean or not, because they can't dope test them.

[Marina Hyde]

That would be good to get to the basics of. For how many years have people have said about the Olympics? Oh, I don't know why they don't just let them all take drugs and get on with it? Well, okay, firstly, because it's dangerous. And also it's ethically bankrupt, et cetera.

[Richard Osman]

This is a more interesting thing than it first seems. Because at first sight, it seems like a circus. And you think, oh, great. The Tech Bros, of course, are pumping people full of drugs and then, you know, winding them up like toys and looking to see if they can break world records. But actually, you look at someone like Ben Proud, who's the British swimmer, who's a silver medalist in the Olympics, I mean, that's about as good as you can get in any. You know, lots of people swim. It's really difficult. And he's one of the very, very best in the entire world. And you know, he says, I don't make any money out of it. So I don't make any money out of it. Someone has said to me, I'll give you a million dollars if you break a world record.

[Marina Hyde]

That's. The prizes at this games were extraordinary. Really, like really big money.

[Richard Osman]

Someone has also said, I'll give you £250,000 if you win the race. And there's only four people in the race, by the way. He says, well, that's 13 years of national championships that, you know, I would get the same money.

[Marina Hyde]

I saw 46% of elite athletes earn under $15,000 a year.

[Richard Osman]

There's track and field and swimming and weightlifting that they've chosen very, very wisely. Cause these things are high profile. But you don't make an awful lot of money. If you're Usain Bolt, you make a lot of money. Most people do not make a lot of money. So there is this group of people who are incredible athletes who, by the way, throughout their entire career have been at the absolute cutting edge of how to train. You know, the cutting edge of this is a new way to do it. A cutting edge of. Perhaps you can take this powder. The cutting edge of seeing people who they're in a dorm with, taking something illegal and not getting caught. This is the world that they've grown up with. They have grown up in a world where they absolutely are sort of put through the wringer, physically and mentally, for the entertainment of other people, but for not very much money. So when someone says to them, what we will do, we will take you to Abu Dhabi, we will give you a series of chemical interventions, all of which are legal in the real world. And then you come to Vegas and if you win a race against three other people, I'll give you 250, 000 pound. And if you break the world record, I'll give you a million pound. Very, very hard to imagine what, other than some internal morals would stop you doing that. As an Athlete, because how else are you making the money? Ben Proud would have been training since he was a child, you know, just all day, every day, putting his body through extraordinary things. Now, Ben Proud will be aware that there will be children watching this happening, and they might be tempted to follow him, and that's on his conscience. But everything else involved, you think, well, I sort of get it. How long. How much longer have you got in this sport? Five years, six years? You want to finally make some money. And so that's what he's doing. So I understand why the athlete's doing it. And Wada, quite rightly is saying, look, we don't know what these drugs do. And he said, yeah, but these. These people, they're like Formula one cars. You know, they've been put through, like, unbelievable training regimes which are absolutely not natural and which bodies are not supposed

[Marina Hyde]

to always harmed themselves. You know, what the. From the Coliseum and probably before, we've

[Richard Osman]

always voluntary the Coliseum, but we've watched

[Marina Hyde]

people harm themselves from our sporting entertainment. What about boxing? What about what we know now about contact sports and degenerative disease? I mean, we know all these things, and in some cases, people are trying really slowly to find out because they don't want to stop watching those contact sports or they don't want to have to change the rules of those contact sports, because maybe it's just a blip or maybe it's this or that. We know this. We already know that people are being made to do extraordinary and awful things to their bodies in the cause of our sporting entertainment.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah, that USYK fight over the weekend, which ended very controversially, do you think? So that sport. So that sport, that's okay, and this thing in Vegas is not okay. All I'm saying is, morally, it's a very, very thin line between the enhanced games and what sport is. Anyway, the one thing you definitely don't want is to encourage the massive amounts of putting drugs together in untested ways. You know, so all the doctors are saying, we don't know what's gonna happen. And of course you don't know what's gonna happen.

[Marina Hyde]

But is it like that scorpion fight in Jarhead? But they just like, you'll watch anything and you'll bet on anything, and it's just sport attainment.

[Richard Osman]

And I think, you know, most sport, most sports governing bodies, the absolute key thing they understand and really know is people want what they're watching to be fair. That's. That is.

[Marina Hyde]

But also most sports governing bodies are some of the worst people, of course, they are, of course, they do it very, very badly. And they have mismanaged their sports for so long that now other opportunities are suggesting themselves. I'm not saying that that's necessarily this, but many, many other things. And you can see, like, all sorts of breakaway things will happen because people will feel like, I'm sick of this, you run it badly and I get no cut of it. And there's all sorts of different ways in which these kind of hegemonism monopolies are going to break up. Now that you won't ever say, oh, well, who'd screen it?

[Richard Osman]

Yeah, now that, you know, there's, There's. There's so many sporting billionaires now that there are people in lots and lots of sports who are going to start saying, I mean, I might just do this myself. I might just find a way to make this slightly more interesting for me, because the sports people are the ones who are drawing the crowds, not the sports administrators. And I think that if I was an administrator in pretty much any sport, I think people have got a lot better. I think that's definitely true. But this feels like, when you look at it, at first sight, it looks absolutely appalling. And when you actually pull back the covers, you go, this is sort of what's always been happening. But they are being very. They're sort of telling the truth about it. That's their narrative. And if James Magnussen, the Australian swimmer, I'm sure that his body can probably take more than, say, mine, you know, and if I was on the same regime as James Magnussen, who, by the way, came fourth in both of his races, I think you can take two lessons. One, the sport has always been very, very, very dodgy. And this is almost no less dodgy than most sport has always been. But on the other side, the reason that sport makes so much money is people love it. And when people love it, you have that phrase again, a duty of care to the people who are watching. And if you're enhanced this company, then you sell these products anyway, and so obviously you believe them to be positive, then, you know, you have to have a little look in the mirror and not just be thinking, God, I look young RFK is about to. Is about to sanction more and more peptides and more and more of these things. So that, you know, lots of these things are going to be legal in America doesn't mean they should be legal. And this is an advert for that. So sport on this side, I think it's fascinating what this says about sport and how actually, as a sporting thing, I kind of go, we've always done that. On the other side, it's, my God, what sort of a society are we becoming?

[Marina Hyde]

I agree. The one thing I would say as a positive was I don't think it played that well for them in some ways. Because the thing that you and I adore almost above all things in sport is its complete unpredictability, disability and the fact that some of the people who've taken the most drugs were far behind and clean athletes won. You can never fully control this thing. And I sort of loved that you couldn't control it.

[Richard Osman]

It didn't work the way they wanted to. The first thing they had was one of the women's weightlifting. They had two events they were fairly sure they were going to get a world record in, so I think they must have done in training. One was the women's weightlifting, which didn't quite come down to a world record. And the other was Christian Column in the swimming. Cause he'd already broken a world record on drugs. He'd already been given a million dollars last year as part of their marketing push. And he was the only one who broke a world record. So he's now made $2 million out of this, which is quite something. But, you know, Ben Proud won one of his races, so he's got a quarter of a million dollars. You know, I sort of get it. But as you say, Hunter Armstrong wasn't on drugs, he was winning. Fred Curley, the sprinter, he wasn't on drugs. He won the 100 meters in, I was gonna say a slow time, like, I can run 9, 7, but you know, he run 9.97 or something like that, which is, I mean, it's competitive. It would have put him last in the Olympic final, but, you know, he beat all the drugged up athletes.

[Marina Hyde]

But they reminded me of advertisers, particularly the organizers, because beforehand they kept saying, oh, you're gonna see so many world records broken. A bit like when I look at an advert for some face cream, you're going to X, Y, Z. It's like, yeah, no you're not. Okay. It's all a.

[Richard Osman]

Listen, I'm gonna buy it anyway.

[Marina Hyde]

I'm gonna buy. But it's all a big load of hype. And when it actually happens, I'm not seeing exact. I'm not seeing the thing you told me, which is really what happens with all of these things.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah. And also, you know, a lot of the swimmers are wearing the speed suits, which are illegal as well. I mean they show the interesting thing is the regime they have been on had made very, very, very little difference to their performance. I don't know if that's always gonna be the case because what we want to think is, oh my God, if you don't did take all of these things then suddenly, you know, you'd be running 9.4 or something.

[Marina Hyde]

It's just like any old retail in the sort of health of beauties.

[Richard Osman]

You know, in five years time if they keep doing, I'm sure they're going to beat world records because also more and more and more people are going to do it because as I say, if you are an athlete and suddenly it's happened this first time and you know the world didn't end and you haven't made very much money in your career, but you do feel that your body has been abused and you've been pushed to do things you don't really want to do and you feel like you've been running against people who are doped up and all of those things through your career. I don'. Know why athletes in their kind of early 30s wouldn't be going, oh, do you know what, next year I'll do enhanced games, you know, we'll go to Abu Dhabi, there's doctors there. I get it. It's all supervised. It feels like more and more athletes would do it.

[Marina Hyde]

It feels like where you go, I can't name the particular football club but it feels like where you go, where they have the special medicine and the special doctors. There's a football, not in our country where people used to go towards in their twilights and do very well somet and maybe it will be a sort of twilight staging post.

[Richard Osman]

Yes, like the senior snooker, which I

[Marina Hyde]

want to say it's clean, it's drug free. There's no drugs in that sport.

[Richard Osman]

There are no beta blockers. They used to have beta blockers and you know, that's poor. Old Bill Werbenjk had to drink 16 pints before a match because he wasn't allowed beta blockers. Now the organizer, they didn't release individual athletes regimens, but they revealed that 91% of the athletes use testosterone, 79% used human growth hormone, 62% use stimulants such as Adderall, 50% use metabolic modulations. Great band. 41% used EPO and 29% used an anabolic steroid agent such as Deco and Durabolin. So these are all the things that people have been banned for over the years, lots of which are perfectly legal in lots of places, but they're sort of finding different combinations of these things. And that's what. We don't know what happens when you combine all of these things. I thought it's. Listen, as a spectacle, it wasn't amazing. They didn't break any records. I think it's a fascinating sign of things to come, though. But as parents or as, you know, just human beings, be wary of the huge amounts of money that are going in now to marketing peptides to you and marketing things to make you look younger, train harder, essentially. That whole thing in Vegas was an advert treated as such.

[Marina Hyde]

Right. Well, the last episode of the Late show with Stephen Colbert, and indeed the Late show at all, has gone out. Remember that CBS axed it in the midst of the Paramount Sky Dance deal, which they needed approval from the Trump administration from, and ended up getting it. Stephen Colbert said it was an honor and a privilege. You know, the honor of my life to be here is in that sort of very goodbye to all that way. The President Trump, needless to say, posted about it in very, very derogatory ways. Like, he's talentless, he's whatever. I mean, and it's all gone. The end of a huge era, not just his era. So in some ways, I can't really say the sun is setting on late night, but you know what I mean?

[Richard Osman]

Yeah, but I think the, the really interesting thing about it is, is when this first happened and Colbert was taken off air, it was absolutely seen as a, as a harbinger of, oh, okay, now we have state control media, and this is straight out of a, of a, of a playbook that we're very familiar with. And then, you know, when Kimmel was suspended as well, we think, oh, here we go. The whole of late night is being dismantled. Satire is being dismantled. We know this playbook. We've seen this a million times before. But actually in the time between them announcing that Colbert is coming off air and now Kimmel is still there, if anything, he's, you know, got more powerful. Seth Meyers is still there. You know, everything else is still going. It feels like, you know, the fcc, who were Trump's lapdogs in this, as in so many other things, seem to have lost some of their bite. You know, they tried to have a go at the View and the View bit back. So it feels like it's unfortunate for Stephen Colbert, of course, but it feels like this was the wake up call perhaps that the American media industry needed.

[Marina Hyde]

Yeah, it's interesting. The last series I saw got 3 times its normal audience. Because, you know, if you say to people, you're not gonna have this thing anymore. And this is why people actually showed up for it in the way that after Kimmel came back off his suspension, there was a huge sort of surge of viewers. But we have to accept equally, by the way, I don't think you can stop any of these things because as we said earlier in this very episode, there are many, many places that will screen things nowadays. And we will definitely get to that in a minute. We have to say that Late Night itself used to be massive. And even though it was incredibly expensive to produce, you've got huge writing staffs, you've got big production, you've got all sorts of other things like that. It was profitable and you had sponsors and you had lots of ad revenue because people watched it in a linear way. And when you look at all the wars, the late night wars of the 80s, but most particularly the 90s, even then, though, these shows were mega expensive. And it's a little bit like buying sporting rights or something like that. You kind of want to have. Have it going through your pipes or you want to have it show in your channels, but does because it's. And it's also. It's something that's always been there. You know, some people will say now to. To you about comedy commissioning. Why am I commissioning a comedy? I mean, just because we always commission comedies, why am I doing that? Because actually, people aren't watching them. And definitely the point at which I think the Late show had got to. It cost $100 million a year to make, and it made 60 million. So you can see that it is.

[Richard Osman]

It's just there for prestige Y.

[Marina Hyde]

And also it's there because we've always had things like this. It's interesting. All the other rival shows ran reruns sort of out of respect.

[Richard Osman]

Against this last episode, against this last

[Marina Hyde]

episode, you know, you can see what's happened. The clips are bigger than the shows. I mean, the clips get huge amounts of the opening monologue or some funny sort of moment or vignette from that night show. But they are also part of the old monoculture that is dead. In the old days, obviously, you know, you would, to put it in the most crude terms terms red and blue state, or, you know, Republicans, Democrats, all watch these shows. They were part of the shared monoculture. Now all of these shows are seen to be kind of hotbeds of kind of Democratic degeneracy or whatever it is. And all of them, they are part of one complete siloed side of things, which was extraordinary and never existed in the old days. There is not a shared monoculture anymore that these shows sat at a sort of. Of broad center of. It doesn't exist anymore. And yeah, as I say, yeah, it was hallowed and whatever. It's interesting what he did next, Stephen Colbert. And I find this really interesting because he did this. He popped up on public access tv, which as you know, is like mega lo fi. And back in the old days, we thought, oh, my gosh, I can't believe America has this thing where like, almost anyone can make TV in Wayne's World. Like Wayne's World. And it's now like, all right, we live in a culture where almost everyone makes TV all the time, you know, whether you're putting on TikTok or YouTube or whatever. And he hosted Only in Monroe, which is a community access program. It's a town of Monroe, Michigan is a town of, I think 20,000 people. And he did this actually the night before or just before he took up the reins at the Late show back in 2015. And on his last night in the actual Late show chair, he said, the last thing I did before I took up this job was I hosted this public access TV show called Only in Monroe. And 12 people watched. And show business being what it is, that's probably where you'll next see me. Indeed, 23 hours later, he was hosting Only in Monroe. He made it really incredible. He interviewed the two women who are the usual hosts. This is a town of 20,000 people, Monroe. It's a tiny. And when you see that, I mean, this is very sophisticated. They don't have a sophisticated setup as this that we're sitting in our podcast studio. They have some sort of chairs and a little pot plant in the middle. But he got Jack White to do the music off a stereo and a reel to reel. He got Eminem came on. It's kind of like, you know, they called Byron Allen and talked about what he was doing. Jeff Daniel was there, Steve Buscemi. They happened to find it. There was somewhere in Monroe called Buscemi's Pizza or something like that. Steve Buscemi, 0Relation, did an advert for them. So they had all sorts of fun things. And obviously he can create something wonderful. But it is the first thing that's on his new YouTube channel. There is now one thing on Stephen Colbert's newly minted YouTube channel, and it is his appearance hosting Only in Monroe. It's sort of interesting. Lots of people are Wondering what he'll do. We do know he will be writing with his son a Lord of the Rings movie.

[Richard Osman]

Yes. That's crazy, isn't it?

[Marina Hyde]

That is nuts. Yeah. Some sort of like small section of something from the Fellowship of the Ring. So I'm sort of imagining something a bit like Rogue One. It's kind of a Star wars story and it sits within the whole law. But anyway. But then why would you not go and do a show if you felt

[Richard Osman]

like it on YouTube, leaving aside the political side of it for now. And that's, you know, why I precise this by saying that all these other shows are still on and there's quite a lot of them. They don't really need that many. It's the truth. But as you say, that's.

[Marina Hyde]

There are only three daily Ones. And then John Oliver's a totally different thing. It's just. Just like a. One night a week.

[Richard Osman]

But it's still a lot. Yeah, yeah. This was. Didn't make any money all for CBS. Stephen Colbert was obviously paid. Now, there is zero way that Stephen Colbert is going to earn less money next year than he earned on that CBS contract because of his name and because of YouTube and because he can directly get paid, you know, the advertising money. He will be making more money. He will be making much more money.

[Marina Hyde]

But the show itself will be profitable if you. Because, because everything has become. We're on one now. You're on a form of TV chat show now. You're on a screened visual chat show now.

[Richard Osman]

So he will make a fortune in the same way that Conan makes a fortune from his show. CBS are not only saving that $40 million, they're making a lot more. Cause the thing that's replacing Colbert and the Daily Show I think is very, very interesting, which is Byron Allen, who's this amazing guy. He started as a gag writer for stand ups at 40, Byron Allen, and then he did a bit of stand up and he just absolutely loved tv. He's now a multi. Multi. He's a billionaire. His company, which is Entertainment Studios, it's worth over $4 billion. He has always run this show called Comics Unleashed, which to us would be like a panel show really, but it's comics doing a monologue and it's sort of lightly kind of tied together. He also does another show called Funny youy Should Ask, which is very similar to Celebrity Squares. So he's run those two shows for years and years and years. Byron Allen with loads of different comics. And if you want to know, by the way, how Satirical, they are. Norm MacDonald once said about Comics Unleashed, I think it would be impossible to be more leashed. So, you know, and Byron Allen will always say, don't do anything topical, because I want these to run and run and run. I want to be able to repeat these whenever I want to do them. So he does these two shows, and they've been going out after the Late show, funnily enough. And now, now he said to cbs, I will pay you for that slot. I will give you money for that slot. I will buy that slot from you if you let me keep the advertising. Which he was doing years ago. Byron Allen, he's really fascinating. He's made a load of money by always having smarter ideas than anyone else. So now, instead of Colbert, you will have Comics Unleashed or Comics Leashed. And funny you should ask. Just all day, every day, CBS is saying, we're doing this until we can work out how to replace the Late Show. But I don't know why you would not just keep doing it. Because they're getting paid for it. You know, Byron Allen is taking all the risk. He's keeping the advertising money. He thinks he can find a way of doing it. He can run that without making a $14 million loss that CBS was making. So that's what's replacing it. Which is hugely more vanilla, for sure. It is hugely more vanilla. But does America really, really need another show that's costing an absolute fortune and not paying its way, that does the same thing as other shows? Because Stephen Colbert can go and do that, because he will be doing that elsewhere. It feels like everyone wins.

[Marina Hyde]

Yes. He can make a show for, I don't know, for $20 million a year, and literally 15 of that will be profit. And he can take 10 people or whatever it is from the Late show and they can do it. And we already know that fun viral TV does not have to be as we've always thought of it. But the other thing is, that show can't be controlled by anybody.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah.

[Marina Hyde]

Even if Brendan Carr and the FCC and all these people want to play sort of whack a mole with, you know, people getting out of line or people speaking against the Great dictator, so what? Okay? There is a massive democratized thing out there that anyone can be a hit on. And you can be sure if he decides to be a hit Stephen Colbert on it, he will be.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah.

[Marina Hyde]

And really good people will come there, and then no one will control them. And they won't get to YouTube and they won't stop. Because if he can't possibly control any of that because otherwise, I mean, it's impossible for him to do that. So against legacy, old fashioned things, he might be able to exact, you know, a measure of revenge or whatever, but you are just growing a whole load of other rebels and as well as dispatching the rebel to someone, you just can't be controlled at all.

[Richard Osman]

Yeah, that's the irony of the thing. They're shooting themselves in their foot by releasing these people from late night because late night they do. They have levers that they can pull, right? YouTube, they don't have those. They don't have the levers. So I think cold Colbert is going to make more money from it. CBS is going to make more money from it. The shows that are competitors to the Daily show are stronger than they were at the time when Colbert was taken off the air. So, you know, watch this space. But Colbert is going nowhere.

[Marina Hyde]

You won't be able to keep these people down.

[Richard Osman]

Of course you can't.

[Marina Hyde]

And that I think is very, very positive.

[Richard Osman]

Conan has never been bigger or richer than he is now. Your reminder that we'll be talking to Steven Spielberg soon. Any questions you've ever wanted to ask Steven Spielberg if you send them to the rest of his entertainmentolhanger.com and we will ask him the best or the most interesting. Any recommendations?

[Marina Hyde]

I really want to recommend Dear England, which is the new James Graham Show. It's based on his play but it's expanded beyond the Gareth Southgate verse into the Thomas Tuchel era. And I actually appeared on in front of a select committee last week.

[Richard Osman]

We haven't talked about that.

[Marina Hyde]

We haven't talked about it. I know.

[Richard Osman]

Well, how was it?

[Marina Hyde]

It was. It was really interesting in lots of ways but it was an absolute privilege to sit next to James. I think it's so fascinating. He's so interested. He talked a lot about local stories and he talked a lot about doing stuff in Nottingham, doing stuff with Sherwood. But he's also interested in these kind of very popular populist kind of national stories and to write something about the England football manager just as when he did that play Quiz which became a brilliant TV series about the millionaire coughing scandal. He just does things that people are. And I think he is the most fascinating and interesting person and it was a privilege to sit next to him. Dear England about the Gareth Southgate era and beyond as part of, you know, the start of World cup programming.

[Richard Osman]

Can I say. Cause I watched the whole of that committee. I thought you were terrific. But all the way through. And he was great. He had made lots of very, very good points. But he did keep saying, and as Dear England, which is on BBC on Sunday, you never once plugged the Population podcast. I couldn't believe it. You could have just said, and by the way, we're talking to Steven Spielberg if you have.

[Marina Hyde]

Okay, I don't want to talk about only on In Monroe and what it normally gets as public access television, but I can assure you that committee hearing would have got considerably fewer viewers than that. So I'm sorry I didn't plug the podcast.

[Richard Osman]

You'd save your ammunition.

[Marina Hyde]

Okay. I, I actually didn't think it was necessary to do that if they always. I didn't want to use any of my time that I could have been giving them useful statistics to plug our podcast. Richard. And I have to say that I don't think it is a huge audience that particular livestream.

[Richard Osman]

Abc. Always be closing. Always be closing. I'm going to recommend three different documentaries. They're all on Netflix and two of them have something in common. The Jamie Vardy documentary, which is part of the untold story that I watch. All of the American untold, which are just sort of smaller stories from sport. Anyway, they've told the Jamie Vardy's career. It's not, you know, Waikatha Christie or anything like that. It's. It's just this extraordinary story of him going from non league and, you know, really becoming a pro at like 25 and what happened. And then Leicester City is really, really great. And also the Miracle of Istanbul, which is about the Liverpool Champions League triumph as well, is in the same series. That's great. And the Kylie documentary, which is wonderful. It's so great. Both that though actually the Vardy one and the Kylie one again. How many times do we have to see this? The tabloid press were scum. They were scum. They were the worst of the worst. Every time you look into what they did, you're like, wow, there must have been people there. You think, how on earth are you sleeping?

[Marina Hyde]

Oh, yeah.

[Richard Osman]

I mean, the Jamie Vardy one, they do something so unnecessary and so cruel that is. It boggles the mind. And Kylie as well. I mean, it boggles the mind. Anyway, that aside, those three documentaries, I enjoyed them all very much. They're all on Netflix now for our members. Marina, you've just started this incredible series at last week's one on Tradwise I absolutely love, but you have. Which was free to everyone, but now it's for members only. And this week's one is about.

[Marina Hyde]

I'm talking to the brilliant pollster James Kanagasorim, who's plugged into masses of currents in a much more technical way of our times than I am just doing it all on vibes. And this one is talking about, you know, was Chalamet. Timothee Chalamet.

[Richard Osman]

Right.

[Marina Hyde]

The at about ballet and opera. And we get into whole like, is classical music a dead art form where actually people listen to it? They don't really realize they're listening to it.

[Richard Osman]

And stats based really. He's got everyone's name.

[Marina Hyde]

It's so fascinating. Anyway, so that is for our members. If you want to join for ad free listening and bonus episodes, it's thereesticentertainment.com otherwise, we will see you on Thursday.

[Richard Osman]

See you on Thursday. Sam.