Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] Who here listens or watch the podcast on a regular basis?
Okay, great. Thank you so much for coming. Our traditional open is me and Marion telling each other who we are, but we have a special guest here today.
So welcome to the Media Odyssey podcast, that is Martin Tricky.
Martin Trickey: And that is Evan Shapiro.
Evan Shapiro: Let's get into it. Martin, you work at a company called Zoo55?
Martin Trickey: I do.
Evan Shapiro: Which is part of ITV.
Martin Trickey: Yep.
Evan Shapiro: Which launched almost exactly a year ago.
Martin Trickey: Yeah, just over a year ago. Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: And so how's it going?
Martin Trickey: No.
Evan Shapiro: That good, huh?
Martin Trickey: No, it's going really well. It's just been quite hard work. I think I was just like, yeah, it was
Evan Shapiro: You thought it was gonna be easy?
Martin Trickey: No, I didn't think it was gonna be easy. I didn't, but [00:01:00] no one said it was gonna be this hard.
Evan Shapiro: I did, I told you it was gonna be.
Martin Trickey: No, it's just been a lot of hard work. But that's good. It's better to be busy. It's been full on, but utterly brilliant. I'm absolutely loving it. And I'm still here, which is a year on, which was you know, after,
Evan Shapiro: That's good news for them and you.
Martin Trickey: Yeah, definitely for me.
Evan Shapiro: So what the fuck is Zoo55?
Martin Trickey: Okay. Just the quick sales pitch. So Zoo55 is the digital distribution arm of ITV studios. So the studios fundamentally. But we work really closely with the network business as well.
And it's based on three main pillars. One is social video, which is YouTube, Facebook, putting up our archive, putting up content, putting up other people's content, and monetizing that on those platforms. But also, there's a job to be done around marketing of of the shows we have.
And the kind of interaction between the two because what's marketing and what's revenue? It's, it all gets quite blurry to be honest. But we're happy as long as there are eyeballs on our shows and our IP. So there's that [00:02:00] piece.
Then there's also the FAST world as well which was, I was quite new when I joined.
But that's been a real learning for me to look at the fast business, which is incredibly complicated with multiple different stakeholders.
Evan Shapiro: Yeah. It's not like you two where you just, you have to go around from OE em to OEM.
Martin Trickey: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of deals to, lots of people to meet, lots of conversation to have, but that's been absolutely fascinating.
And then the third part is the games business, which is brilliant as well. So this. There that split standards two bits. One is the games licensing business. So we take our intellectual property and license it out to games developers and they make games out of it.
So for example, the Love Island, which is like still huge. It was like the number eight most downloaded, game in the US last year, which is insane.
But there's also, we have, we now have a studio, Metavision Studio, which builds stuff in Roblox and Fortnite. So a couple of examples so that they do agency work. I love this. So you know Mentos?
Evan Shapiro: [00:03:00] Yeah. The stuff you put in Coke to make it explode.
Martin Trickey: That's exactly it. Yeah. Bbecause you, I said the sweet you eat. No, no one thinks that. It's the thing you put in the cola bar and it explodes.
Evan Shapiro: They do taste good.
Martin Trickey: Yeah. Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: This is more fun.
Martin Trickey: Totally. And if what if you are in Fortnite and you are Mento is, obviously what you're gonna day is make a Fizzooka, which is like a giant tube of Mentos attached to a giant tube of cola.
And you can go and blow shit up, really. So that was great. And also they take our IP and our shows and put it into Roblox. So Hell's Kitchen.
Evan Shapiro: It's crushing it in Roblox, isn't it?
Martin Trickey: Yeah, it's doing incredibly well,
Evan Shapiro: Which is really amazing. I don't, I talked to Ruth about this, Ruth Berry who runs it, TV Studio and I asked her like, did you expect Graham Norton to be a star in Roblox?
She's like, "Absolutely not."
Martin Trickey: Well you mean Gordon Ramsey.
Evan Shapiro: Gordon Ramsey. Sorry.
Martin Trickey: all right. Graham, I'm sure he would be a Roblox.
Evan Shapiro: Sorry.
Martin Trickey: That's okay.
Evan Shapiro: All the Brits look alike to me, but
Martin Trickey: Gordon, Graham, they all begin with G.
Evan Shapiro: Exactly. But did you expect that kind of reaction out of that IP on Roblox? Because in my mind, although Roblox [00:04:00] is aging up,
Martin Trickey: It is,
Evan Shapiro: It is still a young person's platform.
Martin Trickey: Yeah. Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: But he's a massive star there.
Martin Trickey: No, he is a massive star. I think especially in the states, see like season 25 of Hell's Kitchen is going out. So he is an incredibly well known person and celebrity.
But so that helps. But let's face it, it's quite good fun chopping, dicing, cooking, frying, and then trying to beat beat the competition. It's a fun game, fundamentally. And that's where it gets into it.
Evan Shapiro: So there's a lot I wanna unpack there. I wanna start with and I don't wanna spend too much time on Love Island because we're gonna be on stage together in Lisbon, Stream TV, we're gonna be doing a case study around Live Island called The Digital Primetime, right?
Martin Trickey: Yep.
Evan Shapiro: So come to Lisbon Stream TV in April to see that case study. But I wanna dig into something you said. I think the key word takeaway from the first sentence you spoke when you describe Zoo55 is the archive.
Martin Trickey: Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: There's been a lot made lately of a certain deal between two companies, YouTube and somebody who will go [00:05:00] nameless about producing original content for YouTube as opposed to putting up their archive.
But what I am finding with other people that I work with, and I'd love to hear what you think is, there's so much to be made of the existing archive for new audiences who haven't seen this stuff? Is that what you are finding?
Martin Trickey: Yeah, absolutely. There is a fantastic history of amazing television that's been made over the years and don't you want the opportunity for everybody to be able to go and discover it?
That the what, if you think back to I think back to my youth of I would watch
Evan Shapiro: Last year?
Martin Trickey: Yeah. So sometime in the late seventies.
Evan Shapiro: Oh my goodness.
Martin Trickey: Yeah. I'd be, you'd watch BBC2 and you'd watch Laurel and Hardy or some great classic black and white films. But they're not shown anymore.
And so you'd, but you always felt there was an opportunity. If you didn't see it now, you'd be able to watch the great stuff from time's gone by.
But the pressure of ratings, commercial pressures means that stuff doesn't necessarily rate anymore. And I, there are whole generations of people who are going, I don't even know it was there.
And when they watch it, they go, this [00:06:00] is fantastic. And it's not, we have a catalog of amazing films that we put in totality on YouTube, but old episodes of great shows like Hell's Kitchen or River Monster.
Evan Shapiro: And it's finding entirely new audiences, generations younger.
Martin Trickey: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Evan Shapiro: It's a real dramatic difference between your television and app audience and your YouTube audience, right?
Martin Trickey: No, totally. Let's face it, everybody's watching content on YouTube. It doesn't really matter what the age is, the assumption that you know so yes, there is a younger audience finding shows that they may never have seen.
Evan Shapiro: But also your older audiences are now starting to watch your content on YouTube too.
Martin Trickey: Totally. The biggest demo for Coronation Street, where you can watch full episodes, day and date on the Coronation Street channel is 65 plus on YouTube.
Evan Shapiro: Really?
Martin Trickey: Yep.
Evan Shapiro: And that, and I do believe you have analytics of what device they're watching on, right?
Martin Trickey: Yeah. That's mostly on the TV.
Evan Shapiro: Mostly on, yeah. What percentage of a Coronation street do you think is watched on TV?
Martin Trickey: Yeah, that you should go
Evan Shapiro: That's all right. But it's a size?
Martin Trickey: No, definitely. Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: Maybe even majority?
Martin Trickey: Yeah. Yeah. Without a doubt.
Evan Shapiro: [00:07:00] And so archive rediscovering new audiences on the television. Would you say that makes YouTube TV?
Martin Trickey: Well what is TV? Because a television is, I think is
Evan Shapiro: Forget the device, it's the lean back experience right?
Martin Trickey: Yeah. Yeah. Without a doubt. Now, yes. When you look at what people are watching on our channels, they're watching television.
Evan Shapiro: Exactly. They came there for Coronation Street, which is a television show.
Martin Trickey: Yeah. Absolutely.
Evan Shapiro: They're watching it on a television. Yeah. What are you finding? So I think crucially, another thing I wanna unpack is there was a decision to take this enterprise, this operation this effort out of the mothership of ITV and create its own thing.
Martin Trickey: Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: And part of that was the focus, but part of that was the ability to really become experts at audience building and community building.
Martin Trickey: Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: What's the difference between building a community on social video and building an audience on television?
It's a tough question. But what's your, you've done both, you have a very storied history in [00:08:00] both now. What's the, what are you finding makes the biggest difference?
Martin Trickey: You have to work a lot harder, I think.
Evan Shapiro: It is a lot harder, right?
Martin Trickey: Yeah. Because you are competing. You, if you put a show on in 1985 on BBC One at eight o'clock or ITV you'd get even more at the same time.
You'd get an audience. It didn't matter what it was because
Evan Shapiro: There was nothing else on.
Martin Trickey: There was nothing else on, you had no choice. And now there is, not infinite choice, but there's a, it's mind boggling. So to be able to cut through, to be the, the signal and not the noise is incredibly difficult.
And the way that you can do that is, first off, you've gotta have great content and then you have to, then you have to not, you have to do all of the things you can to make it stand out, be it a thumbnail or a title or a the metadata that sits behind it.
You have to make it discoverable because you, if you don't do that, you, come on. Those are the basics. It's just to go do everything you can to make it as discoverable as possible. But then on top of that, [00:09:00] you the content has to do the work and you have to engage with the super fans with the influencers, with mavens, that was a word from back in the,
Evan Shapiro: That was the last decade. Yeah.
Martin Trickey: Yeah. Sorry. I said I'm old.
Evan Shapiro: That's okay.
Martin Trickey: But all of the people who you know, who are out there.
Evan Shapiro: And so what do you find is working from discovery? Because you're right, it's, discovering something the average streaming audience member on streamers, on apps on TV are now, at least in the US, taking 20 minutes to find a piece of content.
Yeah. Yeah. And then you add the YouTube to it, which is literally every human on earth has a channel. Yeah. And is watching. What is working? What I know that it's a thousand little things like A/B testing thumbnails and all that other kind of, fonts and all that stuff.
But do you find, is there a larger theme building around how to build communities?
Martin Trickey: So I think the fonts probably quite low down. But let, if I take the example of a show that we have and a channel, we have, River Monsters.
Evan Shapiro: Right.
Martin Trickey: Which I think,
Evan Shapiro: My daughter's favorite show of all time.[00:10:00]
Martin Trickey: Thank you, I'll, I should pass that on.
Evan Shapiro: Does everybody in here know River Monsters. It's about monsters that live in the river.
Martin Trickey: Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: Get it now?
Martin Trickey: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's good.
Evan Shapiro: But it's a great show.
Martin Trickey: Yeah. And one, it's a great show because it has a great host that people can engage with.
Two, it's got a really exciting moment in it, yeah. Like they're really big kinda fish
Evan Shapiro: Catches.
Martin Trickey: Yeah and that's fantastic. But I think the key thing then is it's about fishing. Now if I give you that example, so my godson, he's mad keen for fishing and when he found out that River Monsters was one of the shows that you'd be working on, he was like, oh my God, that's so cool 'cause he loves fishing. And I was like what?
It's because within a community of people who love fishing, and fishing is huge, isn't it? It's one of the biggest recreational pastimes in the world. So people are already a community around that, and they pass that content around. So if you take the most the most popular video on River Monsters, the full [00:11:00] episode, which has this giant turtle in it, and it's had millions, hundreds of, millions of views. And then you look at it and you go where's the spike? And it isn't at the beginning.
Evan Shapiro: No.
Martin Trickey: It's in the middle. And the, and I couldn't believe that for bit, that is most shared. And I went to, I wonder what it's gonna be, it's gonna be like, ah.
It was a guy tying a knot on onto a hook.
Evan Shapiro: because they wanted, because everybody goes to it. How to tie that knot. Yeah. Yeah. That makes, every time I have to tie a windsor knot, I go on YouTube.
Martin Trickey: There you go.
Evan Shapiro: But that's, there are two really amazing points there, which is one in the old school days of push television, you put it on television, and if it didn't pop on night one or week two that was the end of it. It was a failure. You move on.
This is this concept, like you can put something up and months later, suddenly something catches fire. And that was the experience.
And by the way, how old was this episode that?
Martin Trickey: Oh, I dunno, it's, it was, it's gotta be 15, [00:12:00] 15, 20 years old, I couldn't tell.
Evan Shapiro: And when did you put it up? In the last year?
Martin Trickey: Oh, yeah. Yeah. In the last year.
Evan Shapiro: And it has hundreds of millions of views.
Martin Trickey: Yeah. Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: And so the idea that you can unlock new audience and new revenues
Martin Trickey: Oh, absolutely.
Evan Shapiro: From content that's basically sitting gathering dust on a shelf.
Martin Trickey: Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: That's one of the hugest takeaways. And you think about the public broadcasters in this market alone and how much content is just sitting on a shelf in that basement from Raiders of the Lost Arc, and how much value could be unlocked if they decided to all lean into it the way that the you guys are,
Martin Trickey: The value's massive but it is more, it's more complicated than that in as much as because of the unique way that TV is made in the UK, the rights for those shows may well sit with the producers who did it in the first place.
Evan Shapiro: That's a big problem. Yeah.
Martin Trickey: It's also a problem, but it's also an opportunity for people if they've got the rights to the shows and nobody's selling it because nobody's acquiring it or it's not getting recommissioned, then it's a whole new opportunity to get that, those fantastic [00:13:00] shows that you sweated hours on getting commissioned and then producing and then putting out there. And then it gets shown once on, a channel that's way down the EPG and you go.
Evan Shapiro: That's, yeah, that was a waste of my time.
Martin Trickey: It would, it, there's an opportunity to bring it back to life without a doubt.
But also that within that archive, if you do, if you are sitting a big, not all archive content is equal. Some things haven't aged well.
Evan Shapiro: Our president for...
Martin Trickey: Some things haven't aged well, and yeah I it.
Evan Shapiro: So in your archive, there is content that you would not resurface because it does not fit the context of the time.
Martin Trickey: Yeah, no, without a doubt it's because it's a, you actually look at it and you go, God, that's offensive. It's not oh, maybe I need to put a little disclaimer at the top to go, maybe this is, this was made at a time when it was acceptable to do these things. You're looking Okay, Jesus Christ.
But equally, I, and I'm not gonna name names, but people can come up to me, ask me and guess is there is some content that when you look at our content ID, [00:14:00] i,e. the bits that people are uploading and other people are watching, and then we're taking down. Is some of that content as well.
So there is actually a demand for the stuff that, but it's, it should just stay in the archive.
Evan Shapiro: Yeah. For everybody's. Yeah.
But, so let's get to monetization 'cause that was another part that I wanted to unpack there. It's not a one for one, so you're not gonna necessarily trade out the advertising you're losing on the broadcast 'cause viewership is going down for the same amount on YouTube. It's just not how that platform works.
Plus you have the split with YouTube which is typically 45%, but there are economics there and it feels like you're discovering what those are on a regular basis. So you are a part, you're in the partner sales program.
Yeah. So you guys sell your own inventory?
Martin Trickey: We do.
Evan Shapiro: As opposed to exclusively allowing YouTube to do that. So A, how, when did you get into the partners program? How did that work? How did that process go for you and what's happened on the other side of that?
Because I think there, [00:15:00] sorry. I think most people do still do not, and I don't I have said this directly to YouTube, I don't think they explain the partners program all that well. And so I would love to hear it from a partner who went through this process.
Martin Trickey: So when you put a video on YouTube and you're in a position to be able to monetize it, 'cause let's face it, you, when you start off and you're just on your own, but you don't make any money out of it at all. If you get to a certain scale and you can monetize, that's great. But Google is doing all of the sales for you and they're filling in that inventory. And every view you've got the opportunity to put in ads.
Partner sales is whereby you've reached a scale. And you have a CMS, a content management system with multiple different channels in it. And it's reached a scale where they go, do you wanna be part of the partner sales program?
But in order to do that, you need a sales team. And that's for most people, you go, that's a difficult thing to do. You're trying to sell your program. You don't wanna actually sell the advertising around it as well.
Fortunately, because ITV Studios is, works [00:16:00] hand in glove with ITV Media and Entertainment, the network business, they have a sales team.
Evan Shapiro: For now, anyway.
Martin Trickey: The, no comment.
They have been selling advertising since year dot and for them, it was not a heavy lift. I think, there was some learning to do and they,
Evan Shapiro: To package the two together, yeah?
Martin Trickey: To do a brilliant job. Because also for the brands out there, the advertisers, they're going, whoa, so we can be on ITV One, we can be around the six nations. We can be around the World Cup. We can be around Coronation Street. We can be around, I'm a Celebrity, but also we can be on YouTube as well. And it was like, that's just a win-win.
And what happens there is that they sell that and they have to sell it for more money than Google. Were going to do it. And Google still take their share because Google always take their share.
Evan Shapiro: You gotta pay the toll to get across the bridge.
Martin Trickey: Yeah, exactly. But it's, they do, they've done a brilliant job from a standing start to making significant revenues.
And the great thing I think is there is that there are a few places around that can do that, but you [00:17:00] do need a fair amount of scale. So we're fortunate to be able to do that.
Evan Shapiro: So today and there are a couple of different reasons why you can sell it for a higher premium than YouTube can. The number one reason is they're not selling your channel, they're selling audience.
Martin Trickey: Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: So they are, YouTube sells across a total aggregated audience across their entire field.
And there are things you can stay away from certain channels and be on certain channels, but they can't say, Hey, you wanna buy ITV's channels because they're not allowed to do that. You can say you can be on Coronation Street channel or the River Monsters channel and you can charge a higher premium as you would anyway.
And that's, yeah.
Martin Trickey: Or you can bundle them together. There's lots of different ways.
Evan Shapiro: And bundle it with ITV proper too. The ITVX and the channel as well. And it's been good for you guys.
Martin Trickey: Yeah. No it's been a good business.
Evan Shapiro: But do you imagine, but it's primarily still programmatic? Correct? Do you feel like there's a time where you'll get more into a brand direct?
Martin Trickey: Without a doubt. I think 2026 will be the year that we're starting to look at that much, much more closely because the opportunity there to be able to create, to do a number of things, either to get brands across existing [00:18:00] archive, which has great value, has great nostalgia, and you can give a specific audience going, this reaches this audience in this location, do you want to be a part of it?
That's great. But then also to go, do you wanna own the content? Do you wanna be part of making this with us? Because we have a wonderful track record of making great shows and we can do that with you and then we can put it onto our network of social video channels.
Not just YouTube and Facebook where you can monetize but the whole suite, because for them, it's not just they'll then, obviously if they're a brand they don't really care about the other advertisers. What they care about is eyeballs. And if we can provide that reach out there then I think it's a really great opportunity.
So the more that we can do that in the future, the better.
Evan Shapiro: And to a certain extent, there's numerous opportunities there. First of all, if you're putting a brand into a program, like you're hardwiring it into the show itself. Sorry, YouTube, YouTube doesn't get any of that money.
Martin Trickey: No.
Evan Shapiro: To a certain extent.
Martin Trickey: Yeah. But they've got the dynamic brand insertion [00:19:00] could be coming soon soon.
Evan Shapiro: That I understand is probably gonna launch this year. Yeah. Right now, if you did a dynamic brand, if you did a brand spot, it's hardwired onto that show. And if you have, if that deal runs out and you wanna put a new sponsor into that same show, you have to take down the show, lose all that traffic, and then re-upload it.
What's gonna happen, I believe, in the second half of this year, is those spots are now gonna be dynamically insertable. So creators who do branded spots with people in videos, they'll be able to upload a brand new branded spot without having to take down the whole video. And again, they keep a larger share of that revenue.
So that's gonna be a, that's gonna be a seminal moment in YouTube ad sales, I think.
Martin Trickey: But I think the more exciting part is for brands to be part of the story and rather going, this is brought to you by, which is like on the nose and common words.
Evan Shapiro: No, you, yeah.
Martin Trickey: But you want to, in the conversations that you're having, it's, there's not a sense of you want massive product placement. It wants to be a part of it, but it's all about aligning brand values.
Evan Shapiro: The Mentos Coca-Cola example you gave.
Martin Trickey: Absolutely.
Evan Shapiro: Is a really good one. And there are things that are just endemic [00:20:00] to the content that you're making.
Martin Trickey: Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: All right. What do you think I, if you had to project out a year for Zoo55. So year two on your second birthday.
Martin Trickey: Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: Are there any big wins you are hoping to have between now and then?
Martin Trickey: I think the partner sales bit is really interesting, but obviously a big part of our audience is in the States because we're a global play. So content works in English language.
Evan Shapiro: Crucially Love Island. I don't know if you know this, Love island was the most streamed season of television last year.
Martin Trickey: Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: Which is super impressive when you think it was on Peacock and no one has Peacock.
Martin Trickey: I've actually had it tattooed on.
Evan Shapiro: But it's a, it has half the install base of any other streamer in the US and it still was the most streamed show. It's really impressive.
So you, there is a massive opportunity for you guys in the states there.
Martin Trickey: Absolutely. And I think we wanna be able to do more in terms of owning that inventory, those, the sales opportunity in that, which is interesting and working more closely with those partners to try to maximize the value.
So I think for us the states [00:21:00] is a big a big growth area for us because there's, because again, the UK audience, the UK environment, and you're probably gonna touch on this this evening.
Evan Shapiro: Later. Yeah, it's later today.
Martin Trickey: It's quite different to the states.
Evan Shapiro: Yeah it's, and they're super fucking old to begin with. From a generational standpoint, but yeah. There's so much free television here that it's a completely different ecosystem.
Martin Trickey: Totally. So we, but we need to learn how that works in the states and we obviously got a great, we have a good run at making great shows there, but we need to work with Fox and NBC and all of those partners to work out how we can do a better job for everybody.
Evan Shapiro: How do you, okay, so let's take off your Zoo55 hat for a second. And then put on your student of the industry hat, right? Because I, we've known each other.
Martin Trickey: The big pointy one with the D on the front.
Evan Shapiro: The Dunce. Yeah. No, you're you're, I think I consider you a learned person in the art of television. You used to work for Disco Bros, now you work for ITV.
Take a snapshot of where the UK TV ecosystem is. I wrote a piece this week, which was
Martin Trickey: You did, cherry.
Evan Shapiro: Which was basically [00:22:00] a diagnosis, which was not so great.
Martin Trickey: Yeah.
Evan Shapiro: What were your thoughts on that piece? So I basically said, this is the year to change or you will get left in the dust bin of history.
What did you think of that? What did you think of that take?
Martin Trickey: I,
Evan Shapiro: And you don't have to compliment me, 'cause Marion always comes at me hard on these podcasts.
Martin Trickey: I think, it's, it was quite depressing from a being inside the industry point of view, but there's still an opportunity to change.
I think the direction of travel is pretty obvious. As all of your lovely charts show that the rise of the streamers, but also crucially the rise of YouTube, TikTok, et cetera. They're taking up everybody's attention and for the broadcast industry to remain relevant, it has to continue to create great content, which it does brilliantly well, but also look at the models by which it distributes it and monetizes it.
And I suspect it's gonna be a, it's gonna be a mixed bag of things that, that plays out in the end because you've gotta lay a number of different bets, but if you focus, [00:23:00] if you put all of your eggs into one basket, that isn't gonna work.
The monopolies that free-to-air broadcasters had in the sixties and seventies and eighties is gone, that's never gonna come back again unless the only way that can happen is if there's some new technology which brings in something that only they can do.
Because let's face it, the broadcast is a thing that is a blip in history. Peer to peer and social is the way that people have communicated and told stories since cave painting.
Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Broadcast was a moment in time.
Martin Trickey: Broadcast was a moment in time. And I think that's that that, that moment is gone and we are back to kind of people telling stories to each other in whichever way they can.
And if you have stories you want to tell and you wanna make a living out of doing that, then you have to find the right medium in which to do it. And that might mean that you tell the stories and you make it for a certain amount of money that is only in certain categories, but be cognizant of that fact and then make make the content that will fit into your business model.
And if you are, [00:24:00] if you're in the pure broadcast model, then I think that well ITV PLC has done that. They went, we've got these amazingly successful linear channels, but we've also got an OTT streamer, and then we're gonna go into YouTube. So like we run all the channels for the, for the network side of things as well.
So they've gone that and it's been incremental audience. It's really worked. Embrace it. Go for it. Because if you don't, then it's probably not gonna work so well.
Evan Shapiro: the premise the piece had, and I'll be talking about this at five o'clock today right here on this stage, is that I think everybody thought that streaming would replace television. That it would be a one-to-one swap and 55% of the British population are millennials and younger. They did not grow up with the same broadcast habits of their parents and their grandparents. And for them, the time that we grew up with spending on television has been replaced by a combination of streaming and social video. It is not just streaming.
In fact, they watch less streaming than the older generations. [00:25:00] And so the this idea that you can get a hundred percent of the audience that you used to get on streaming is not true.
Martin Trickey: No.
Evan Shapiro: Or television, it's not true. You need to also get into social video. So with the minute or so we have left so you're also, you do this for ITV, but you're also you're white labeling your services now for other partners too as well.
Martin Trickey: Yeah. No, absolutely. As I said we've created a load of channels. You could go back through the archive and then just create channels out of the stuff that you've got.
But as I mentioned it's not there. There's some stuff that just isn't as good, people don't want, don't have the rights to, so within the channels we've got like history and true crime and documentary. We're, actively out there going can we work with partners who've got shows with catalogs that we can bring in.
Evan Shapiro: So production companies and other studios who may not have a digital arm.
Martin Trickey: Exactly. And it's a scale. And then you also go, we can work and we can do the ad sales on the top of it. So we like adding value as well.
I think for us to be able to continue to grow, we need to be able to get more great content and build strategic partnerships. It's not [00:26:00] just a kind of it's a, it's not why labeling exactly. It's just going, look we've got these output, we've got these channels, we want your shows as if we were running, an old school linear channel. It's the same thing. We want great content.
Evan Shapiro: It's pretty similar operation. It's a different set of mechanics, but the concepts
Martin Trickey: absolutely
Evan Shapiro: very similar.
Martin Trickey: No, there's some similarities.
Evan Shapiro: Yesterday we saw Tony on stage here from Goalhanger. He used to work at ITV founded this really immensely possible pop popular podcasting company that's crushing it all over the world. You come from traditional television and now you're in the digital world.
What do you think the key to evolving your mind? Because you're not, we're not young people, but we still managed to somehow keep up. What is your secret to continuing to be relevant and ahead of that curve?
Martin Trickey: To be fair, I only ever made one TV show, maybe two. So I mostly spent my time bashing my, I've worked with in broadcasters my whole time and just been bashing my head against the wall. And then I decided to stop doing that.
So I think if you want to carry on thinking and learning, stopping [00:27:00] hurting yourself is quite good.
Evan Shapiro: Choose your right arguments.
Martin Trickey: Exactly. Pick your battles.
Evan Shapiro: But I mean it's really nice to see a company like ITV or an organization like ITV decide to really get out ahead on the curve.
Martin Trickey: That's brilliant. It's so exciting.
Evan Shapiro: I, you're enjoying it there?
Martin Trickey: Yeah. Love it.
Evan Shapiro: And you're gonna join us on stage in Lisbon to do the Digital Primetime Love Island case study.
Martin Trickey: Yes. Looking forward to it.
Evan Shapiro: We'll see you in Lisbon in April.
Martin Trickey: Thank you very much,
Evan Shapiro: Thank you all for tuning in. Thank you for being here.
This is the Media podcast. We'll see you next time. Thanks so much.
