TellyCast: The content industry podcast

In the second part of our MIPCOM 2026 special, Justin Crosby talks to two studio leaders who come to the creator economy from opposite directions. Tanya Cohen spent her career representing film stars and directors at WME and Range Media Partners. In April she left that business to become co-CEO of Made By Us Studios, the LA studio she runs with creator-economy pioneer Leanne Perice. She explains w...

In the first of two TellyCast specials recorded in Cannes at MIPCOM 2026, Justin Crosby talks to the producers, studio founders and agency leaders working out where scripted, social video and brand-funded content meet. Steven Moffat and Sue Vertue of Hartswood Films open the show with Number 10, their new Channel 4 comedy drama set behind the most famous door in Britain. They explain why Downing S...

Lucy Smith left TV development two and a half years ago to launch Fawkes Digital. The company has just rebranded as Studio Fawkes. It has landed its first linear commission, with street-dating format Date Me Right Now heading to MTV. And Lucy says revenues have tripled in the last six months. In this episode she explains why Studio Fawkes treats brands as broadcasters rather than "a money pot...

Rob Rawlings spent 25 years in premium factual TV before co-founding Full Slate Media, a production studio and boutique agency working with creators, brands and digital publishers across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. His recent LinkedIn post asked whether UK indies have lost their nerve, and he joins Justin Crosby to make the case. They discuss why the old commission-and-sell model is shrinking y...

Our interview with former Top Gear boss Andy Wilman has passed 200,000 views on YouTube and around 400,000 elsewhere. Justin Crosby asks YouTube strategist Seb Losardo, who has helped grow John Nellis's channel from 600,000 to 16 million subscribers, to explain why, and how to repeat it. Seb explains how to find outlier guests, why an AI-generated thumbnail beat our usual design in an A/B tes...

Victor Bengtsson runs production at Sidemen Entertainment. In this episode, recorded at the TellyCast Digital Content Forum 2025, he explains how the company built Inside, a Big Brother-style format developed with no TV experience and no format experts in the room, and turned it into a Netflix number one. Victor takes us through Sidemen's Core Missions structure, the single-sentence pitch rul...

Jungle Creations built an audience of 145 million followers across a portfolio of social-first media brands. The harder question, and the one Siobhan McDade has spent the past few years answering, is what you do with that audience once the platforms stop paying for it. Siobhan is Chief Publishing Officer at Jungle Creations, the London business behind Twisted, VT, Four Nine, Level Fitness and, mos...

This week Justin Crosby is joined by Andy Wilman, the producer behind Top Gear, The Grand Tour and Clarkson's Farm, for a conversation about handing the format to a new generation. The Grand Tour returns to Prime Video on 4 September with a presenting trio built from digital-first talent: Thomas Holland and James Engelsman of the YouTube channel Throttle House, and trainspotter and qualified...

Is uploading a documentary to YouTube really a route to serious money? At the TellyCast Digital Content Forum 2025, Lucy Smith (Fawkes Digital) chairs a panel of factual specialists working across the creator economy: Gerrit Kemming (founder and MD, Quintus Studios), Marvin Benoit (founder, Baker's Dozen Studios, former commissioning editor at Sky Originals and creative executive at YouTube O...

Ahead of the TellyCast Digital Content Forum returning to BFI Southbank on 5 November, we're revisiting one of last year's standout sessions. Daniel Winner chairs a conversation with three of the most active investors in creator and social video businesses in the UK: Indi Sunner of Lunar X, Jason Kingston-Brown of Viewture, and Claire Geddie of Electrify Video Partners. They discuss why...

Emma Walker founded Curly Media in January 2022, after deciding she did not want to spend her career in a television industry that was contracting around her. Three and a half years on, the agency has made Spotify's Wrapped campaign in the UK, Sky's Danny Dyer lookalike contest, video podcasts for Netflix and work for Nike and BBC Studios. She joins Justin Crosby to explain the commercia...

Three years after ex-LADbible executives Ben Powell-Jones and Thom Gulseven launched Strong Watch Studios with backing from Hat Trick Productions' Jimmy Mulville, the digital-first studio is delivering for Channel 4, the BBC and Netflix - and has just hired two senior TV executives to help it do more.  This week on TellyCast, Justin Crosby is joined by co-founder Ben Powell-Jones for his firs...

Recorded on the ground at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, this Cannes special closes the current series of TellyCast before the summer break. Host Justin Crosby meets three guests working at the point where advertising, entertainment and technology now converge. Jason Day, Head of EMEA at Luma AI, explains how the company is unifying multiple video and image models into a si...

What does it take to build one of the UK’s most successful branded entertainment franchises? This week on TellyCast, Justin Crosby is joined by Mark Rivers, co-founder of Cold Glass Productions, the company behind the award-winning Dish from Waitrose podcast and video series. Mark shares the remarkable story behind the show’s growth from a bold business plan into a billion-view entertainment brand...

What does it really take to build a production company for the creator economy? This week on TellyCast, Justin Crosby is joined by production strategist Bryony Hopkins , founder of BRYONY Ink , whose career spans the BBC, LADbible Group, Strong Watch Studios and FlightStory. Bryony has spent years designing production systems for creator businesses, broadcasters and digital-first studios, helping...

This week on TellyCast, Justin Crosby is joined by Peter White, Executive Editor at  Deadline⁠, for a wide-ranging conversation covering the biggest issues facing the global content business. Peter shares his perspective from Los Angeles on the changing fortunes of Hollywood, the impact of YouTube on traditional television, the future of late-night programming following Stephen Colbert’s departure...

What happens when two experienced television producers decide to leave the traditional TV industry and build a digital-first business from scratch? In this episode of TellyCast, Justin Crosby sits down with Pete Campion, Co-Founder of IndyStudios, to explore how he and former BBC producer Matt Ramsden have made the leap from broadcast television into the creator economy. Pete spent more than two d...

This week on TellyCast, Justin Crosby is joined by Naomi Channell, Head of Podcasts at Curve Media and creator of some of the UK’s fastest-growing true crime podcasts. Naomi shares her journey from a 20-year career in television production to building a portfolio of hit podcast brands that now attract more than a million monthly listeners across audio and video platforms. The conversation explores...

This week on TellyCast, Justin Crosby is joined by Andrew Eastel, Managing Director of Middlechild Productions, for a fascinating conversation about how traditional TV production companies can adapt to the digital-first production economy. Andrew explains how Middlechild launched the hugely successful Gardening With Alan Titchmarsh YouTube channel, why factual producers may be better placed for so...

Spotify is no longer just an audio platform. Video podcasts are now at the centre of its growth strategy — and according to Spotify’s Rowan Collinson, they are rapidly becoming one of the most important opportunities in the digital-first production economy.   In this episode of TellyCast, Justin Crosby speaks to Rowan Collinson, Audience Lead at Spotify, about why video podcasts are exploding, how...

Recorded live at How to Make Money in Digital on April 20th 2026, this episode of TellyCast features Tim Taylor MBE, the creator of Time Team , in a candid conversation about bringing one of the UK’s most beloved factual formats into the digital-first era. Tim shares the inside story of how Time Team moved from traditional broadcaster funding to a fan-supported model on Patreon, and what that shif...

This week on TellyCast, Justin Crosby speaks to Timothy Oh from COL Group, one of the biggest players in the booming micro drama business. As the company behind platforms including ReelShort, Timothy explains why short-form, vertical storytelling has exploded in China and the US, why it is now starting to spread across Europe, and what it could mean for broadcasters, producers and content business...

This week on TellyCast, Justin Crosby sits down with Matt Campion, co-founder of Spirit Studios, for a deep dive into how one of the UK’s most established digital-first production companies is building for the future. Matt explains how Spirit evolved from an early digital production business into a multi-strand content company spanning originals, podcasts, branded content, YouTube channel manageme...

The TV industry is changing fast, and traditional production models are no longer enough. In this episode of TellyCast, recorded live at How to Make Money in Digital, Anjdy Fry digs into what the digital-first production economy really looks like in 2026. From YouTube and social video to new studio models, monetisation strategies and creator-led IP, this conversation explores how TV producers, exe...

Justin Crosby speaks to Chinese micro-drama expert Wenwen Han , founder and CEO of the Short Drama Alliance , about how China built the world’s most advanced short-form drama economy. The conversation explores platform ecosystems on Douyin and WeChat, in-app payments versus ad-funded viewing, the rise of AI-generated “motion comics,” and what Western producers keep getting wrong about vertical dra...