betweenjake paul and mike tyson tells us about the future of the media. we're also going to talk about crosswords and puzzles, and how they've become a key business strategy for newspapers. and the rise of bluesky. it's the social media platform growing rapidly as some users quit elon musk�*s x. we'll ask where it goes next. that's all coming up on the media show. now, last week, mike tyson, a former heavyweight boxing champion, who's aged 58, foughtjake paul, a youtuber who's 27. the fight was funded and broadcast by netflix. it cost tens of millions of dollars, and netflix says it reached 60 million households globally. this is no ordinary fight. this isjake "el gallo" paul...

..versus mike tyson. and before we go any further, we should remind ourselves of howjake paul came to be in the middle of this media moment. well, he's a huge character in digital media. he's a youtuber, has over 20 million subscribers. he posts videos on a whole range of subjects, has done for years, and now, remarkably, in recent years, he's made himself one of the world's highest—paid athletes through a series of boxing bouts, which have tapped into this vast online reach that he has. and after the sums generated in this fight against tyson, we can definitely expect more fights from him. now, whatever you think of the sporting merits of this contest, it was undoubtedly a moment for the media, and our first guest on this is media analyst, evan shapiro, who says thatjust as the us election highlighted how the influence of mainstream news outlets has fallen, the jake paul fight, he says, shows how the mainstream media is now far less relevant. jake paul — a youtuber

who is famous only for being famous on youtube, right, and his entire life has been spent being famous on youtube, first vine, then youtube — got $40 million, was paid $40 million to dance around a ring and do absolutely nothing in a fight that drew so many people to this mainstream television network that it broke the network. so you have joe rogan breaking the election on podcasting and on youtube. he has a massive audience on youtube. and then days later, jake paul breaks popular culture, and then reverts back to his home base, which is youtube. and i think what's demonstrated between that...those two ends of that continuum is that the mainstream media no longer is the centre of cultural relevance. the centre of cultural relevance is the creator economy — the jake pauls, the mr beasts, the emma chamberlains, the taylor

swifts, the cristiano ronaldos. but when you look at the number of people who looked at this fight, surely by most measures, that's a media success story. the reason why so many people showed up was not netflix, nor mike tyson, but mostly jake paul, who is a massive internet personality, for good or bad, depending on how you look at it. and his audience showed up to watch. they, i don't think, were terribly pleased with the service or the entertainment value of the fight itself. and what's going to happen is they're going to revert back to his youtube channel, where they're all going to commiserate and complain about, you know, what happened. so, ultimately, i think you're right. it was a success story, in that a whole bunch of people showed up. but if a whole bunch of people showed up and aren't happy, is that truly a success story? you know, ithink, ultimately, i take netflix to task for a lot of different things. i think they will succeed. they're the biggest and most successful television channel in the world. but at the end of the day,

being a television channel is not ultimately going to be the best business in the world. i'm very interested in how you are describing netflix. you described the old—school media industrial complex, which might be interesting to some of our listeners who see netflix as the new arrival on the scene versus some of the legacy tv channels which they have a more long—term relationship with. yeah, i mean, ithink you have to look at the long history of entertainment. television killed radio, and then cable killed broadcast and then streaming killed cable. this is mostly an american point of view. we are now in the era where streaming, mainstream streaming, is being undercut and will ultimately lose share of voice by the creator economy. and so, yes, netflix, in that context, is part of the old guard, and they're all struggling. and the only one who is

profitable is netflix. they are the most innovative of all of the old guard of television, but mark my words, they are the old guard of television. they are acting like it. they are programming more and more like that on a daily basis. they are now desperately trying to get into the advertising game, and so suddenly they went from being this on—demand, ad—free, innovative television or streaming video product to being, you know, basicallyjust a tv channel. and that's ultimately going to be good for them for a while. but as the jake paul of it all demonstrates, there is a massive shift happening towards the creator economy, where consumers. . . if you look at netflix in your market alone, netflix's viewership in the uk

is flat for three years, flat for three years, and going down with younger consumers. 0k, well, that was evan shapiro talking to ros earlier. i'm delighted to bring in oliver brown, chief sports writer at the daily telegraph, who's here. there's a lot to unpack there, ithink, 0liver, but let'sjust start with you as chief sports writer. what was your take on this match? well, i didn't think it had any intrinsic sporting - merit whatsoever, really. i mean, this was an occasion which was reduced from 12 l rounds to eight, from - three—minute rounds to two. you have a 27—year—old fighting a 58—year—old.| i think some people - caricatured it as elder abuse. and it was that kind i of ghoulish fascination which i do feel drew - an awful lot of people in. and so as a purist and as i somebody who loves sport on its own terms, i found it all pretty sordid. - but you were getting your... maybe a sport you love. i don't know if you love or don't love boxing, but it was getting a sport seen by millions of people. what's wrong with that? well, i thought it was quite instructive, eddie hearn's i

reaction. i mean, eddie hearn... one of the promoters. one of the promoters _ who was promoting katie taylor, the fight beforehand, i styles himself as a real hustler for a pound note, will promote anything. i and even he — who was in dallas, in the stadium — l wasn't watching the fight, - because he said that he wanted to preserve the memory- of mike tyson as he was at his destructive best in the '80s i and '90s, and not this terribly diminished, rather sad figure. and what's your broader take on the streamers like netflix moving into sport? yeah, i think it's _ a fascinating development. i mean, obviously you have - amazon getting heavily involved as well, and i think netflix . are going to be showing some nfl football matches i around christmas—time. yeah, i mean, it's the rise . of the influencer, and netflix are clearly riding in| on the back of that. and it's something that we definitely can't ignore. - i agree with a lot of the - points that evan made there. i mean, the numbers, - the sheer numbers of people tuning into these things.

i mean, i had never heard of ksi and logan paul- when they first came _ onto the scene a few years ago. the sidemen. yeah, exactly. and i think, you know, l just in the last few days, noah lyles, the olympic- 100—metre champion, has been racing somebody called - ishowspeed who has 33 million subscribers on youtube, - and apparently that did huge numbers as well. i mean, i suppose it'sjust a new world, isn't it? we're not arguing, are we, that this is anything other than an extra ? it's not a rival to what you might say is the more professional side of boxing, for example. no, although you do wonder if it might cannibalise even. that side of things, too. i mean, it'll be interesting. in december when tyson fury fights 0leksandr usyk again in december. i that is about as good a fight as could possibly be made . in the heavyweight division.

it'll be interesting to see howl those viewing figures measure up against mikel tyson/jake paul. and, 0liver, i also wanted to ask you about a separate boxing story, which is that the boxing magazine the ring is being sold to saudi buyers. for people who aren't boxing fans, just explain that the ring isn't a regular magazine. this is a magazine that has a particular place in the sport. yeah, it's a magazine that - actually bestows championship belts. it's...you know, it's a revered part of the boxing landscape, | and it's fallen _ somewhat on hard times. it doesn't even have a print product as it stands - at the moment, but it's been revived by the saudis. - but is it still a journalistic enterprise which you would respect, that stands for something within the sport? not particularly givenl what's happened now, because it's got the backing of turki alalshikh, - who is the member of the saudi court behind this complete - annexation of boxing by the saudis. - and he made a tweet a few days ago promising that the ring - magazine would be fully independent. i i mean, that statement isjust risible. - i mean, given where

saudi arabia standsl on the world press freedom index, to think that - you could write a critical- piece about his involvement in boxing in the ring - magazine is just fanciful. but that feels like it's part of a broader media trend where people creating sporting content will also have some degree of control or influence over the media that covers that sporting content. yeah. they've become one and the same, almost. yeah, well, this is something| that happened to me a couple of months ago - at wembley stadium. i wrote something critical- of wembley being branded part of riyadh season for - the anthonyjoshua fight. the saudi prs didn't- like it, and lo and behold, my accreditation was withdrawn. and so that side of. things does worry me. and, for example, with the ring magazine case, i mean, - are you going to get ring magazine only giving - championship belts to people who are...to boxers - who are involved with the saudis? i think that's - a genuine possibility. we'll have to see. on, by the way, the event at wembley, eddie hearn,

one of the promoters of that event, said at the time that the telegraph had other journalists at the event and that accreditation wasn't something the saudi organisers were involved in. one last question for you. whether you like it or not, presumably you accept that this type of crossover between sport and entertainment and media is not going anywhere. no, no, i think it's - very much here to stay, and it's proliferating| everywhere you see. and, i mean, evan mentioned cristiano ronaldo. _ i mean, he has, what, 600' million instagram followers. he has influencers- following him in the stands at major tournaments. i think you're going to see it in every conceivable sport. i that was 0liver brown, chief sports writer at the daily telegraph. now, if you think newspaper crosswords and puzzles are mere pastimes, you're very wrong, because games are now a key part of the business strategy for big newspaper companies. and the new york times is really leading the way on this. we've been speaking to zoe bell. she's the executive producer for games at the new york times. her team is responsible

for games like wordle, spelling bee. i'm sure some of you watching will play them, and she's been telling us how they come up with games. so, we run a whole green—light process on our game development, and we try to start with the widest funnel possible. and one of the things we do to get as many ideas into the top of that funnel is we run a game jam once a year for our whole team. we take two days and everybody on the team pitches ideas of new games that we might want to make. we try to funnel it a little bit with prompts or, like, "let's think about trivia or this or whatever." and then we try to... so we try to funnel it towards, like, business—appropriate games. but sometimes we get crazy games too, and it's really fun. and that's really the first step of the process, and then we kind of narrow it down, give more game design, and then develop prototypes and eventually do beta tests. so, what sorts of wonderful and weird ideas do you get, then? we get all...all sorts. one of the things we do often get is some kind of audio game,

which we've yet to figure out how to actually implement, where maybe you're rearranging little snippets of music into a complete song that's recognisable. that's one we get a fair amount, and then we get fun little visual puzzles that sometimes involve famous works of art, or, you know, it's justm _ we're always exploring new and different ideas. it sounds really fun, i have to say, but how do you...? so, you get these ideas, you brainstorm, how do you then develop and test the games? because i think you're in the final round now of testing a new york times game called zorse. or is that how i pronounce it? maybe not. yes, zorse. a zebra plus a horse is a zorse. it's a phrase mashup game where we combine two phrases and you have to guess what the phrase is. and we're testing that right now, actually, in canada. why canada ? lucky canadians.

yeah, why canada? they're particularly good at word mashups? yeah... she chuckles. they're. .. it's a pretty similar market to the us market, towards...to the sort of overall global market when we look at it. so we... but it's smaller, and so we don't want to test the beta game in such a large market, and then suddenly it's really not a beta. so we're trying to keep it a little bit smaller this time. erm, so we do... we work a lot on game design and refining. after we have our concept, we write up a bunch of game design documents. erm, and then we have a small prototype team, and they build out a prototype and we start playing it and we start iterating on it, and we do some user testing, just kind of with five or six people from outside of the company. and then we are like, "0k, is this fun?" and we all kind of look at each other, "it seems fun. "this is fun. "all right, let's test it."

and then we test it and we start looking at what we're doing now in canada. we really start looking at the "how often do people come back to the game?" is it fun enough that they would come back day after day? hi, zoe, it's ros here. and, of course, the process that you're describing is a very, very keen interest of the people at the top of the new york times, because puzzles and games are a really important part of the new york times's subscription strategy. just explain the role that games play in that. yeah, so we have a bundle of products at the new york times. we have our games, we have our news, of course, and then we have cooking, and wirecutter, the athletic. so we have lots of different products that you can subscribe to. and you can choose to just subscribe to games orjust subscribe to cooking, but you get a lot more bang for your buck if you subscribe to the bundle of products, and then you can use all of them. and what we've found is that if you subscribe to, you know, games and news and you use both of those, you're much more likely to retain than if you just subscribe to one of them. so really, gamesjust helps, you know, all of the engagement with our products. and in terms of your overall popularity as the new york times, as a games destination,

how crucial is wordle? wordle is definitely a key part in it. it's a big game, it's our biggest game. it brings in a huge audience, it brings in an international audience, because it's only five—letter words, it's not crossword clues that are sometimes very american centric. so it does bring in this bigger international audience. it brings in people of all generations, which is great. you know, you've got ten—year—olds playing with their 90—year—old grandparents in the same text chain, which i absolutely love. yes, i must say, my children do it with their great—grandmother, who's 97 this week. well, there you go. right, exactly. and we get stories like that all the time, and ijust love that. and in the studio with katie and me is katie martin, a columnist for the ft. and, katie, we're going to be talking a bit later about x and bluesky, and i actually posted on bluesky earlier saying that zoe was going to be coming on to talk about the new york times game, and one person replied saying, "make sure she talks...we ask her about us spellings," and i know this is something you want to get into too, is that right? i feel quite strongly about this, yeah. i this is your chance to put it direct to the head of games at the new york times. yeah, the days when they go for american spellings- of things are dark, dark days.

agree, i'm with you, i'm with you. yeah. yeah, it's no good at all, i because it is really addictive and it is something that again, you know, like katie _ was saying, she doesn't... like, herfamily doesl it across generations, ours does, too. and they're learning the wrong spellings. exactly. well, zoe is here for her right of reply. zoe, what do you say to people listening in the uk who are frustrated with american spellings on wordle? i will pass that along to the wordle editor, tracy, she's great. she picks the words every week. she spends a couple hours thinking about the, arm... ..what words are going to be in each day and how the pattern goes throughout the week. are they all hard, or not? i'll pass it along to tracy. we have gotten this feedback before and we're definitely aware of it, but we also have to pick spellings, so we try to balance it. so hopefully you don't have, like, three american spellings all in the same week. 0k, well, we'll believe you. thanks, zoe. thanks so much. of course, it's notjust in the us where puzzles have been important for the media. think of sudoku in the times, and, of course, the crosswords that feature in many broadsheets.

so let's bring in our crossword setter, john halpern. john sets crosswords for the guardian, the telegraph, the times and the independent. john, how did you first get into crossword setting? well, i mean, we used to... my dad would love puns and, arm, make little jokes around the table, and both my mum and dad did cryptic crosswords, and i had no idea what they were. and, actually, one day i—i... ..i looked at the finished times crossword on the kitchen table and learnt all the answers and went and bought another copy of the times, then went to a football match in the afternoon in brighton, and stood on the north stand, and five minutes before kick—off, i pulled out the times crossword and finished it, because i'd learned all the answers. i'm amazed i didn't get beaten up. they were really impressed. people were really impressed, i imagine. i probably deserved to be, but it was... it was the start of something, and i'd kind of started to fall in love with wordplay and how all this...how all this worked. erm... er, later on...later on, i went off to college to study maths and music, and

i...while i was there, i kind of was getting more interested in words. but also, i'd just had a couple of tragedies in the family, because my father had died, and my brother, paul, unfortunately, we lost him in a car accident, and i was... so sorry. as i say, i was getting more into puzzles, and puzzle setters have pseudonyms, and i thought, "ijust "want to be one of those." and it occurred to me to call myself paul, erm... after your brother. ..and the guardian inspired me to work really, really hard. and i'm really, really... i mean, i get to mention his name right now. how lovely. he died a long time ago, but i get to mention his name, and he was a really lovely guy. and every time i get published in the guardian, erm... you think of paul. ..i see his name. so it's... and we will now... we will think of him now, too. thank you. how lovely. take us through the process, then, of creating a crossword. how do you select the words? first of all, it's words that are fun. erm, actually, every time i meet someone, i'm kind of looking

at their names and seeing if i can see patterns in their names and things like that. katie, you're... obviously, it's like an anagram of "i take," erm... 0bviously! your surname's quite difficult, so i might not use... i might not use your surname. "razzall" would be quite hard, i think. however... i know! exactly. however, erm, ros... "roslyn atkins" seems to be quite nice anagrams, and it... and i thought to myself, actually, ros, what i understand is you're a dj, and i thought that i've probably got a nice dj name for you, so i think an anagram of your name, dj snaky nostril is quite nice. come on, i can see it at glastonbury next year, ros, come on. i'll see if they can fit that onto the flyers. well, exactly, that or narky tonsils, one of the two. john, thank you very much indeed. we appreciate you joining us. thank you. that's john halpern, who sets crosswords. katie martin from the ft is still here. are crosswords, are games, a central part of the ft? well, i'm really terrible at cryptic crosswords. l ijust do not understand how they work. - you and me both. so ijust don't get it. but, i mean, people- are really into them, though.

and, like, news organisations| are not desperate, but they're super keen to find ways - to connect with their readers on a somewhat deeper. level, make them a part of their everyday life. so they're all looking for ways to really connect with peoplel through puzzles, i think. well, katie, you're here actually to talk about something else, because we want to look, just before we end, at the platform, a platform that's been making the news this week, it's called bluesky. it was set up by jack dorsey in 2019. he's the man behind twitter, originally, and bluesky is being seen as an alternative to elon musk�*s x. and, ros, this is part of a longer—term trend. there appears to have been a tipping point where a lot of people have said, because of the way that musk used x in a political way, and used his platform to support donald trump, perhaps they wanted to go elsewhere, and we're seeing quite a marked shift now. yeah, there's been a massive shift in the past few weeks. l i think the ceo was saying that they're adding about a millionl new users a week at the moment. imean, it's... or it may even be - more rapid than that. so... are you on it?

i'm on it, yeah. i gave up with x a long time ago, because, you know, i for me, social media - is supposed to be a bit of fun, and it's supposed to be - informative, and at a certain point in the summer of 2023, ijust thought, i'm getting - neither of these things any i more from x, so it'sjust not for me, so... you had 100,000 followers on x, i think. yeah. and you swapped it for zero? i swapped it for zero, yeah. and, like, it was fine. didn't hurt at all, _ so if that's worrying people, then i suggest. you give it a go. erm... is there a risk, though, that this story, which has been covered quite extensively, the uptick in...in users on bluesky, is being overstated, because at the moment it has an estimated 20 million accounts, which is, of course a significant number, but though we don't have confirmed numbers for x, we think it's in the hundreds of millions? oh, yeah. and so still x is very much a big beast compared with bluesky. no, absolutely. like, x is much, much bigger. but again, it's what - you're there for, right? and if you are there for a bit of fun, and if you're - there to scoop information

out of the internet, - then you've got to decide where to do that. - erm, you know, it's a somewhat different equation for news - organisations as such, - because they need and want to reach as many people as they possibly can. - but for individuals, - it's a different equation, i think. the guardian made a splash by saying it wasn't going to be posting on x any more, and it's on bluesky as well as other platforms too. does the ft have internal discussions about which of this plethora of options you use? because i know on a personal basis, you know, i'm posting on linkedin, on instagram, on threads, on facebook, sometimes on x, on bluesky. you know, there are quite a few options, arguably too many for individualjournalists or media professionals or organisations. yeah, you're doing a lot of posting there, ros. l he is. i need to get out more, right? he needs to get that sorted. you could streamline your life a little bit. i i mean, look, there's... the financial times has been on bluesky for actually quite i a long time, since i the summer of 2023. i think there is a really good argument that, you know, l to the extent that x has gotl quite a lot of misinformation

and disinformation, _ it is worth some reliable news organisations staying on board, but it's up to them. _ but isn't there another aspect for the media at least, which is that twitter was about building networks, often creative networks, to help the media make things, and that...do you feel that has been lost or can be replicated elsewhere easily? for me, it's definitely. starting to be replicated on bluesky. so, when i first got- there, it was tumbleweed. you know, it was really crickets out there. - you were just posting and there was nothing coming back. "hello? is there anybody out there?" "anybody out there?" but now it's getting quite lively and it's getting - quite fun again. you know, there's banter, - there's kind of back and forth. there's chat about the news and that's kind of what i'm i there for. it's... i'm there so that i can look. like i'm working when actually i'm just mucking about online. but elon musk might say, "well, this is just a certain type "of media professional talking

to themselves "while the real world is on x or elsewhere." i mean, there's definitely- the echo chamber argument, but my view on this is, look, i all media is an echo chamber. you choose what newspaper to read, you choose - what television to watch, i what podcasts to listen to. they're all broadly aligned i with your worldview, right? everything is an echo chamber, | so just pick your echo chamber. i don't see what - difference it makes. that was katie martin from the financial times. do you think you're going to stick on bluesky? i think so, yeah. for the moment, i'm there. i'm definitely there, but i'm also in lots of other places. it's turning into a kind of second job maintaining them all. but, yeah, i think i'm on bluesky for the foreseeable future. 0k. that's it for this week. thank you all so much for your company. goodbye. bye— bye. and if you'd like to hear a longer version of today's show, search "bbc the media show" wherever you get your bbc podcasts. hello, there. storm conall was named by the dutch weather service. we won't get the really strong winds from that, but we're already seeing some rain coming into england and wales. that rain has followed what was a generally dry and sunny picture for many places on tuesday.

but this is the developing storm moving up from the south west, bringing cloud and outbreaks of rain. the heaviest of the rain, overnight and into wednesday morning, will be in the far southeast of england. further north, there will be some rain, but no great amounts, but any more rain, given all the flooding, will not be particularly good news, and further north still, into the far north of england — scotland in particular, and northern ireland — some frost around here early on wednesday, some mist and fog patches, too. but further south, it looks pretty cloudy. the rain should've cleared wales and the south west by the morning, and that heavy rain clearing the southeast of england by late morning. eventually, this rain does move away from lincolnshire and east anglia, where it will turn quite windy as the rain clears. and the winds will bring in a few showers along the east coast of scotland and the northeast of england. 0therwise, many northern areas seeing some sunshine. a chillier day, though, than it was on tuesday, particularly if any of that fog lingers in northern ireland. this is storm conall —

it's really developing as it leaves our shores, hence the strongest of the winds are likely to be in the netherlands, and following on from that, a ridge of high pressure will build across the uk — that's bringing light winds, clear skies — and that's pointing to a widespread frost by thursday morning. there may be some mist and fog patches around, as well, which will slowly lift. could be a little grey for a while in the south—east of england. many places, though, will be dry with some sunshine, but towards the far south—west of england and wales, a little rain coming in here and pushing into northern ireland later on in the day. here, the winds are strengthening, lifting the temperatures somewhat, but elsewhere, where it's dry with some sunshine, it'll be another chilly day on thursday. things will change, though, towards the end of the week — that high pressure gets pushed away. a weather front may well bring some rain into the far north and west, but we'll find, with low pressure to the west of the uk, high pressure to the east, we see a southerly wind picking up, and that will lift the temperatures, as well. so, stronger winds by the end of the week and into the start of the weekend. a lot of cloud around, mind you.

it won't be as cold at night, we're losing the frosty conditions, and it should be turning mild by day, as well. bye for now.

live from singapore, this is bbc news. a ceasefire deal between israel and lebanon to end the fighting with hezbollah has just come into effect. these are live pictures

of southern beirut where we are now watching and waiting to see if it holds. the deal was brokered by the united states, withjoe biden confirming the terms in a speech at the white house. the fighting across the lebanese israeli border well end, will end. welcome to newsday, i'm steve lai. it's 4am in israel and lebanon where a ceasefire deal has just, in the last few moments, come into place. this is the scene live in southern beirut. for weeks, we have seen explosions across this skyline, with israel missiles flattening dozens of buildings in their bid to dismantle hezbollah. even in the past few hours, there have been evacuation

warnings for people to leave areas inside beirut.