this is bbc world news, the headlines international travellers are streaming into china after it fully opened its borders for the first time since the start of the covid pandemic. people arriving in the country no longer need to quarantine and chinese citizens are allowed to go overseas. uk prime minister rishi sunak says he's willing to discuss the issue of pay with the nurses�* union to settle strikes. but he didn't make a firm commitment to increase salaries. the ukrainian military has rejected a russian claim that hundreds of ukrainian soldiers were killed in a russian attack on the city of kramatorsk. moscow said it was revenge for a strike on one of its own barracks. in his latest television interview, prince harry reveals that he felt guilty for being unable to show any emotion in public after the death of his mother, princess diana.

he says he only cried once. you're watching bbc news. now its time for the media show welcome to the media show. in a minute, we're going to talk about the christmas period and what it taught us about advertising, both about what ads are working and where companies are wanting to spend their money. we'll also talk to stephen lambert from studio lambert, which made the runaway hit for the bbc, the traitors. but before we do all of that, let's talk about channel 4 privatisation because it looks like it could be off. global�*s podcast the news agents broke this story. it's got hold of a letter from the culture secretary, michelle donelan, sent

to the prime minister, which appears to advise against privatisation, saying there are better ways to ensure channel 4's sustainability. let's bring in chris curtis, editor in chief of broadcast magazine. hiya, chris. good to have you back on the media show. so, is this the end of the matter? i think it's the end of the potential privatisation and the start of a whole series of new questions around the future of ca. it draws a line under the second attempt over the last six years to privatise the broadcaster. and it's interesting that, essentially, a change of government, a change of culture secretary, has brought a very different view in just a few months�* time. yes, and the former culture secretary, nadine dorries, who held the job under borisjohnson, has already tweeted her displeasure at what's happening. do we understand why there's been a change in tack from the conservatives?

look, it depends on what you believe the thrust for all this was over a year ago. channel 4... i think you could make a good case that channel 4 got caught up in a sort of culture wars moment, that it gave borisjohnson, nadine dorries, an opportunity to make a sort of political, cultural point about being seen to be sort of tough on liberal london elites, etc. and if you read the leaked letter that details the change of thinking, it's quite measured, it's quite sensible. and, actually, when there was a review into all of this, when the government took the views of industry, there was very little evidence that the sector

or the industry believed that selling channel 4 was a sensible idea in the first place. so, there is a view that common sense has prevailed. well, let's bring in one of the most important figures within the sector. we'rejoined by stephen lambert from studio lambert. we're going to talk to you in a minute, stephen, about the traitors, this huge hit you've had for the bbc, but i wonder what you make of this news on channel 4. i'm very pleased. as chris rightly said, this was driven by a personal venom byjohnson and dorries, whojust didn't like channel 4. principally, they didn't like channel 4 news, and johnson didn't like being replaced by a block of ice when he refused to take part in a debate about climate change. so, there was simply no support... but nadine dorries has again today refreshed the idea that this sale could have generated money that would then be reinvested back into the sector. did you not buy that idea?

it's a ludicrous idea. the most effective way of investing in the sector is to have a channel that invests by buying programmes from independent producers. the idea that you sell channel 4 for what would, in relative terms, be quite a small amount and then somehow invest it, i don't even know what she was talking about. "invest it" in the sense of...? there's only two ways of investing. you either invest by commissioning independents to make programmes, which is what channel 4 does, or you invest by owning parts of independent production companies. is that what the government was going to do? i mean, it was a crazy idea. well, you evidently weren't persuaded. it seems that the current culture secretary, the current government, isn't, though i should say we don't have any confirmation of this. a spokesperson for the department for digital, culture, media and sport has not confirmed a shift in policy. it says, "we do not comment on speculation. "the dcms secretary of state has been clear "that we are looking again at the business case "for the sale of channel 4. "we will announce more on our plans in due course." we should say, though,

no—one is contesting that this letter is indeed a letter that's been sent to the prime minister. stephen and chris, stay with us. let's bring in benjamin cohen, the ceo of pinknews. benjamin, we're going to talk about advertising in a whole range of issues relating to your business in a minute, but you used to work at channel 4. you were its tech correspondent on channel 4 news, so no doubt you've been following this one. yeah, totally. i mean, i worked for itn that made channel 4 news, - so i had the very weird task always | of, whilst reporting on channel 4,| which i often did on channel 4 news, of doing it from an outside _ perspective inside, - which was very strange. but my perspective on this, i think, as stephenjust said — _ selling channel 4 didn't really make business sense. - and so it's interesting that even in that statement - you were saying there, - "reexamining the business case" for what the previous previousj government was planning to do. it wasn't going to - raise that much money. and so channel 4 is a great institution and i think it's . a really important institution, but actually, as a commercialj

entity, if it was not doing what it i does now and was sold to whoever, private business, it's not really. going to be for that much money and it wouldn't make a real tangible difference to the economy. - some of the things that - nadine dorries has been tweeting just don't really make sense. and i'm reminded that when she went on... l it's ironic that this story was broken on global'sl podcast the news agents _ because nadine dorries went on lbc |when she was first trying to pitch| to sell channel 4 and she claimed that channel 5 was successfully privatised in the past. - of course, it was always a private company, and i think that really. i reflects how well she understood i the media ecosystem that she was trying to really disrupt... well, you're not convinced. she evidently is because she's been tweeting about it today, along with a range of other policies she feels the current government should be pursuing. her idea was to sell channel 4, to reinvest it, she said, in different parts of the country, to reinvigorate the creative industries. we're hearing some

scepticism about this plan. doesn't look like it will happen. we'll see what the outcome from dcms is. but chris curtis from broadcast, if it's not this, then does itjust mean channel 4 continues? or does this mean we're actually going into another period where there are question marks about what to do? look, i think it's really interesting. the leaked letter talks about a fresh package of measures to help channel 4 from a sustainability point of view. and you mentioned sort of devolution, levelling up — channel 4's already moved around 300 staff outside of london. this letter suggests that the broadcaster's agreed to double that, to get to 600. that will effectively mean two thirds of its staff are outside of london. that is an important cultural and business sort of change as an organisation. and the other thing, without getting too granular, is that the government appears to be opening the door to in—house

production at channel 4, which will be a thorny and contentious issue but one which ca will now need to grapple with, the extent to which, "can it get into in—house production without alienating "its core supply base?" well, let's ask one of its core supply base, stephen lambert from studio lambert. would you be worried if channel 4 started making its own shows? not if... ..those programmes were commissioned by a commissioning system that was not told they had to take those shows. i mean, the bbc and itv and many broadcasters buy shows, and sometimes they have the choice between choosing between the in—house production — say, bbc studios, in the case of the bbc — or an independent. and the people that make those decisions these days are completely free to decide between the two of them. so long as channel 4

was operating in that basis, i wouldn't have a big problem about it. it would only be if channel 4 were told, "you have to buy "these programmes," and that's always a mistake when you have in—house production being dictated to the people that buy the shows. well, for the moment, this remains an idea that's in a letter that's been leaked. we'll have to see what policies the government settles on. chris curtis from broadcast, thank you very much indeed forjoining us to talk about that. but, stephen, you're going to stay with us because we have to talk about the traitors. it's been this extraordinary success for the bbc — millions watched, it's been very heavily watched on iplayer as well as the word of this programme got around. tell me if i'm getting this wrong, but it's essentially a murder mystery game in which regular people take part, in which we watch. and there are three traitors amongst the group which we know about as the viewer, but the others taking part in this castle as the game plays out don't. did you know as soon as you read about this — or you saw a pilot —

that this was going to be this kind of success? this is a format that was created in holland by a company that is a cousin of ours. we're in a group of companies called allsmedia, and it was the dutch allsmedia company that came up with this idea. and it was a great success in holland. so when you know a show has worked in one territory, it means there's a good chance it will work elsewhere, but it's still hugely difficult to launch any new show. and it was a big gamble for bbc one to go in such a big way on the show. they ordered 12 episodes straight onto bbc one, and then they played them — it was partly affected by the world cup scheduling — they decided to play them three nights a week, over four weeks, which is very bold for bbc one. i can't recall them sort of being so prominent in the way in which they would put a show out. we didn't know how well it was going to do. it's only really once it starts airing that you know

whether it's catching fire. and although you have to take it with a big pinch of salt, twitter is a very good way of giving you a handle on how people are reacting. if you're getting thousands of very, very positive tweets every minute, you know that your viewers are engaged, the viewers are engaging with the show, so that was very encouraging. so twitter�*s a useful way of understanding how people are responding, and it's a useful way, i assume, of increasing the profile of the programme. but when you're making a programme like this, are you also thinking about clips that will work on social media? is that part of the calculation as you develop the format? not as you develop the format. you do that later when you've made the programme, in this case, and you've got the time to find those clips that you will service to social media. and as i understand it, i know there are a number of differences between the dutch and the uk version, but maybe the biggest difference is in the netherlands, it was celebrities.

in the version you're making for the us, it's celebrities. but in the uk, it wasn't. tell us about that decision and how you went about casting it, because i've been reading it took you a while. we decided along with the bbc, or, rather, the bbc, who's in charge about the decision as to whether or not to have celebrities or to have what we in the trade call civilians... laughs: civilians. i like that! is that what you call people who aren't celebrities? yeah. the bbc, without agreement, pushed for the idea of doing it with civilians and we were in favour of that. and i think one of the things that was so good about the cast... because the bbc and us wanted the show to appeal to a young audience, and the conventional wisdom is that so many young shows — or shows that are aimed at appealing to a young audience — have to have young people in them. and one of the things i love about the traitors is that it's such a wide range of people, and some of the most liked characters were at the older

end of the spectrum. we make gogglebox for channel 4, and, again, that's a very young appealing show, and, again, it has a very wide range of ages in the cast. so this idea that "if you want to get a young audience, you have to have a young cast" isn't actually true. and one other dimension of this that i'm interested to know about is intellectual property, because, as you alluded to, it was developed in one form in the netherlands. you've adapted it for the uk, you've adapted it again for the us. so how much of the ip does studio lambert own? and what happens when — and i'm sure this is happening right now — broadcasters around the world look at what's happened in the uk and start knocking on your door and saying, "we'd like to do this"? well, there's two parts to the value of a show like this. there is what's called the format, which is the idea that sets out how you make the show, and then there's the tape. because in this case, it was a dutch format, they're the people that

own the format and will benefit from format sales around the world. every time an episode is made anywhere in the world, a part of the budget is paid to the format owners. but the most valuable tape tends to be the british and american tape, and that tape will get sold all around the world. and obviously, as the makers of that tape, we will participate in the value of that. well, congratulations on such a success. i assume a second series has been ordered by the bbc or will be shortly? they're making the right noises. all right. we'll watch out for that. thanks forjoining us on the media show. we appreciate it, stephen. thanks for your time. that's stephen lambert, ceo of studio lambert. now, still with us is benjamin cohen, the ceo of pinknews. we're also joined by dino myers—lamptey, who set up his own advertising agency, the barber shop, and by sophie lewis, chief strategy officer from m&c saatchi. and we asked the three of you to join us on the media show because the christmas period is always crucial in us

understanding media consumption, but particularly advertising consumption — what's working, what's not working, what formats people respond to, what formats are potentially now going out of date. so, thanks to three of you for coming on to help us with this. let's start with you, sophie. what trends have you observed within the adverts you make and the demands from your clients in the last few months? well, it's obviously been a difficult time. so the run up to christmas is traditionally when a vast majority of our clients make considerable amounts of their revenue. certainly, the retailers rely on that time. but obviously it was approached with some degree of caution for lots of reasons. obviously, consumers have been struggling and prices have been rising. so it was a difficult one, i think, to call in terms of how people advertised, in terms of what was in advertising. i think we saw a degree, actually,

of caution in relation to the run up to christmas and advertisers trying to take an approach which wouldn't be seen as encouraging overspending and consumers needing to be kind of profligate and getting into debt. so we saw some nice entertainment and some approaches which took, i guess, kind of issues and ideas to their heart. so, retailers likejohn lewis thinking about foster care, for example, brands like asda going pure play entertainment, using the film elf. but i think it was a hard period to call. and whilst i understand things like tv growth was still there, it was obviously slowing in the second half of the year. and we've just been talking about the traitors, as you'll have heard. and here's a quote from mark gatiss, the actor and screenwriter. he said, "the traitors gave us proof that "linear

television is not dead." dino, would you agree with that? can you learn things from the success of certain tv formats, in informing how advertising will or won't perform? i mean, absolutely. i think that, you know, tv is definitely kind of here to stay. and i thinkjust before christmas, we saw quite a good test, with the likes of netflix and disney+ turning towards old—school, let's say, methods to attract income, looking at advertising—funded models as well, to keep their model sustainable. of course, tv — you know, the likes of channel 4 and bbc — they're competing with these global content brands, and we've got to include people like tiktok in that now as well. so, you know, consumption, particularly over the covid period, has only grown, as people have multitasked more and more, stayed at home a lot more and consumed a lot more content as well. so for advertisers, there are so many more places to reach people, but it's really important to think about where is grabbing the attention more so than anywhere else. and i think tv, in terms of how it's consumed,

the platform and the big screen, as such, is still a very, very powerful converter of attention in making people recall the adverts, which is the really important thing as well, and, importantly, act upon what they see as well. what about you, benjamin? you're a publisher. your business model in part rests on advertising. can you see different demands from both your readers, your consumers, but also the people who are buying your ad space? well, yeah, look, we are maybe different to some publishers - that are based here. the majority of our audience is in the us, so we're reallyl exposed to the us ad market and us . audience changes, and we were seeing different sorts of impacts bothl in the us and the uk during 04 of last year. so what's the... ? i mean, what's the difference? well, one thing — to be honest, i kind of missed this, _ until one of my team was pointing it out — why november was impacted. | there was the midterm elections . going on, and that actually impacts the distribution of some -

of our content, because most of our audience is reaching us. through social media platforms, who in many ways dialled down some of the news distribution _ because they were worried about fake news and things like that. _ there's changes in the way that advertisers spend in the us- when there's midterm elections, l because there's obviously a loti - of political advertising running, - which then means there's not as much space for some of the other ads. - that kind of can push up prices, - but then when that demand goes away, the prices go down. and the last election cycle that we had in the us - was purely during covid, - whereas this was the first time there was an election — - when it was the presidential election. ithis was the first election cyclel where we were in this new world, where some of the advertising spend that had sort of gone away— when everyone was working from home and sort of staying at home _ during lockdown has come back. and that has had an impact on. digital—first businesses like mine. but then...

anyways, i'm saying, lot of different things were impacting on what we're doing. what we definitely saw during this period, it re—emphasised - why we wanted to invest in our own platform, - our own app and our own website and getting users on that, - because our number one platform for distribution is snapchat - and our number two is twitter, j where we had traditionally sold a lot of video advertising. and during that same period, elon musk took over twitter, | started to change some of the rules... - how's that been for you? it's interesting, because we are seeing that some advertising i campaigns that were booked have been paused by agencies and brands - because they're uncomfortable - with some of the content that is now appearing and some of the people who had been banned _ who are coming back. what we're having to do at pinknews i — we reach 100 million people eachl month across all the differentl platforms — we're having to try and convince some of the advertisers |who were working with us on twitter| to reinvest that advertising spend

l either on other social platformsl or on our owned and operated platforms, like our apps. - so we're seeing an evolution in the experience of different social media platforms. dino, you've been emphasising that there are still some classic ad formats that clients very much want. sophie — in fact, all three of you — let me ask you about the prime energy drink, which became this phenomenon selling out in aldi, promoted by a number of influencers, including ksi, and with absolutely no classic advertising behind it as well. i guess i'd ask the same question as i did of the traitors, which is, how much, sophie, can you learn as an ad agency from a product like that landing in the market? oh, it's a tough one, that. i was watching some young men in mcdonald's the other day with their proudly bought bottles of prime. it's a difficult one. i mean, i think there have been conversations about whether influencers are dead. and i think the traditional influencer model is certainly

seeing some, i don't know, how shall i say, some less powerful influence. so we've looked at a number of different elements of the advertising experience — from benjamin's point of view as a publisher, from yours and from the agency side of things, in terms of where you place adverts. i'd also like to ask about the creative process. sophie, i know you were telling one of my colleagues that one of the things that made you want to work in advertising was the famous tango blackcurrant ad of quite a few years ago, which, for those of you listening, if you didn't see it, saw someone, in theory, from tango challenging a french exchange student to a fight on the cliffs of dover. i watched it earlier. it's quite a thing. but do you think that, creatively, because of the pressures from social media, the risks for brands of getting it wrong, that it's possible to be as creative and as risk—taking as perhaps you could have been 15,20 years ago? yeah, it's a great question, that. "i really hope so" is my answer. i feel like there is going to be...

i mean, i see often — and i worked obviously through the last recession — i think, often, these situations actually provide us with a sort of creative renaissance. i think difficult situations often force people to think more creatively. i think that perhaps blackcurrant tango might not make it in the current context, but i do think that the idea of... it's very different, actually, to what we were talking about with the traitors and about understanding ideas. i always look for ideas and like ideas that make me feel a little bit scared, usually because they're things that i hopefully haven't seen before... but do your clients... do brands feel as enthusiastic about being scared as you do? yes, it's often different and it's where lots of our interesting debates happen. but i think that it has been a time for caution, certainly over the last year, understandably so. but i think that the brands... dino mentioned it earlier — you have to cut through. people have to notice

you in the first place. if they don't notice you... they don't really care about brands and they don't really care about advertising, and so you have to get their attention. if you don't get their attention, then everything else is immaterial. so i think there has to be a degree of risk—taking... risk—taking's the wrong word. there has to be an attention to really getting people's attention... if i can say... yeah, of course you can. ..our biggest period of the year isn't actually christmas, - it's pride, because obviously we're lgbtq+ focused. - then, all the brands- are trying to reach and talk to the lgbtq+ community. and what we're having to do - is to work with agencies and brands, to help them think about something i original that can help cut through, i | but also try and convince them not| to do it the same thing as everyone else and spend at the same time as everyone else. - and it's an interesting phenomenon... - but, benjamin, isn't that interesting, though, that you as a business, as a content business, are actively working with advertisers on the kind of ads that they produce that you could carry? not all publishers would

would work in that way. it's because we also i help them produce it. so, like a lot of publishers, - we have our own creative production team, who will produce branded i content, working with influencers — even though we might not always want to work with influencers - because it's also - about sharing revenue. we would work with them to create something bespoke because it gets much higher engagement rates and much higher returns- for the advertiser. and it's also really important... because we're speaking - to a community, we're speaking to a particular community, a lot of our audience isn'tl necessarily lgbtq+ but really does | believe in the mission of pinknewsj to inform, inspire change _ and empower people to be themselves, we have to help advertisers make sure that the creatives _ that they are putting _ on are appropriate and won't appear tone deaf when they're starting to be looked . at by millions of people. and, finally, very interesting to say your business is focused around pride month as well as around christmas. but, dino, for you, when you're dealing with businesses which have

just been through this big push at christmas, is this a lull period? when�*s the next peak for the advertising industry? i think we're about to experience it. i think that what we've just seen through covid was a load of brands that learnt the hard way have been forced not to advertise. and i think a lot of people emerged realising that advertising is the secret power and the secret weapon, really. so i don't think the cuts will be as strong. i think that people are going to have to regenerate interest in the economy and get some spending happening. there's a thing called the lipstick effect. we know that people will be looking for little treats to kind of like, you know, brighten up their days and their worlds, so i think that, you know, most advertisers are going to start going pretty soon again. january is always a bit of a down period, but we're going to see an upturn pretty soon. dino, thank you. the lipstick effect — i've learnt something, a new phrase, today. i'll have to see if i can use that in future editions of the media show. thank you very much indeed to dino, to sophie, to benjamin, too. thanks as well to chris curtis from broadcast magazine and stephen lambert, whojoined us a little bit earlier.

that's it for this edition. as ever, we'll be back next week at the usual time. till then, bye—bye. good evening. we've had some rough seas today with gale force gust of winds in the far northwest of scotland. that is where we've had the sharpest of the showers. some of those will tend to linger along west facing coasts throughout the night. under clearer skies, eastern areas, eastern england and eastern scotland, should see those temperatures fall into low single figures. so, chilly start to monday morning. that is where we are likely to see the best of the dry, sunnier moments first thing. however, with low pressure centred to the northwest, and the winds driving those showers in along the west facing coasts, some of those showers will push little bit further east as we go through the day. the winds not quite as strong as sunday, but nevertheless they are pushing though showers

from west to east. temperatures, with wind direction from the northwesterly, a little bit cooler, highs of six to ten celsius. as we move out of monday into tuesday there is more wet and windy weather to come. that is how we stay throughout the week. milder at times, but not for all.

this is bbc news — welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. our top stories: there've been long queues and emotional scenes at airports in china, which has fully opened its borders for the first time since the start of the pandemic. the number of coded cases that simply cannot be controlled by the devo covid lockdown policy was almost so great that the change would have had to have come in the next couple of months anyway. would have had to have come in the next couple of months anyway. the uk prime minister rishi sunak says the government will discuss a pay deal that's "affordable" with the nurses' union to settle strikes. that's welcomed by the biggest nursing union as "a chink of optimism". when it comes to pay we've always said we want to talk about things that are reasonable, that are affordable and responsible

for the country.