Fremantle makes Got Talent, X Factor, The Price Is Right and Baywatch. But behind those formats sits one of the most extraordinary broadcast archives ever assembled, stretching back over 100 years and spanning drama, documentaries, news and entertainment across every continent. Gordon Craig has spent nearly two decades at Fremantle overseeing archive licensing, home entertainment and in-flight sales. In this episode he opens the vault on how a commercial TV archive at this scale actually works: the reality of digitising tens of thousands of tapes, why a production's rushes policy can make or break a licensing deal years later, what it takes to clear talent across global format shows, and why Gordon once uploaded 28,000 clips to YouTube simply because there was no search engine. We get into the Thames Television archive, running since 1968, which contains news footage, landmark documentaries and celebrity interviews that still sell around the world today. We talk about the Take That Netflix documentary, the Angela Davis jail interview, the remastering of The Sweeney and Baywatch, and the complicated rights picture facing anyone licensing a clip from a modern co-production. Gordon also shares his take on fast channels, AI and whether authentic archival footage can hold its ground. Gordon Craig leads sales, marketing and operations at Fremantle Archive, covering global archive licensing, home entertainment and in-flight distribution. So, welcome to the Archive Room. My name is Dominic Dare and this is my co-host, Sandra Coelho Hello, how are ya today? Good, good, good. Now today we are talking all things Fremantle. We're joined by Gordon Craig, who is a seasoned sales and archive executive whose career spans oil and gas. We'll get into that. Media and some of the world's largest rights businesses. Gordon now leads sales, marketing and operations at Fremantle Archive, overseeing global archive licensing, home entertainment and international distribution. So Gordon, welcome to the archive room. Thanks Dom, good to be here. I'm not quite sure I stretch international distribution, maybe in-flight, internationally. I think my boss might be going, hang on a minute, I'm in charge of that. You don't do any of that. But thanks, I appreciate the upscale. in flight. Well, let's present. We're making you look good. make you look good. So listen, today I think the idea is to kind of open up what Fremantle is. So for somebody who works outside the TV industry, can you just describe what Fremantle is and does? Was this my elevator pitch? So Fremantle is one of the world's biggest television and now film producers. biggest television producer and distributor. So full length programs been sold to broadcasters, streamers, produced and distributed to them. And then you've got into my area of the business, which is an archive, I home ent Yeah. and in flight. But essentially, it's just one of the, you know, we have production labels. So production offices all over the world, you know, from LA to London to Europe to Australia. We've got production offices, not just sales offices or satellite offices. There's been quite an expansion over the last few years, I think, we've tried to really grow the main business but you know my remit it's really focused on the archive I oversee the in-flight and the home-ent stuff now too. Over a couple of years ago I think I took that one. so you've got production outfits across the world, right? The strength of the business, as I understand it from the outside is, or has been, correct me if I'm wrong, has been kind of these amazing formats. So you've had things like Got Talent and X Factor. Do those drive the business? Is that the primary focus or is Fremantle much more than that? Oh, it's much more than that. mean, weird. So I think if you went back probably, I I came here in 2007. I think at that time, the primary drivers of Fremantle, certainly, and like so if I can split Fremantle in half. So I worked for Commercial International, which is the distribution sales arm, if you like. And then you've got production, which is the other half. So. They were made, so in America, so FMNA in America, it's game shows, right? And it's the talent shows. But they do, The Price is Right, they do Family Feud, they do Password, they do all these game shows, because we own the rights to, aside from Jeopardy, pretty much everything, you know? So the game show network, for example, plays a lot of our stuff, and we are very good partners with them. But on the commercial and international side, think if you went back to like 2010, just roughly, know, the main drivers were the talent shows, across the board. The talent shows drove a lot of it in the game shows too. And then you had a whole merchandising and licensing division spun out of that in the early days. Laterally, was narrowed down and we got rid of the sort of retail side of that, if you like. So you wouldn't be able to go into Well, Woolworths doesn't exist, but you wouldn't be able to go onto Amazon and buy a X Factor branded or American Idol branded, you know, guitar or something. But back in the early days, you could do all that sort of stuff. It was a massive, massive business. that was also, that retail bit was shut down and we concentrated solely on sponsorships, brand partnerships. So we are watching these shows and you've got, you know, the drinks manufacturer on the desk. these are the kind of brand partnerships. So that carried on. Now, strategically, think Fremantle went right. Game shows, talent shows, great. That's part of core business. Got to absolutely maintain them and carry on. But let's go back. What's our roots? We're a TV producer, right? We make dramas. You know, we make document, well, especially now we're making a lot of documentaries. Right. So there was a refocus back to let's drive really, really good content, right? And let's diversify the portfolio, so to speak. So now if you looked at the world or the overall revenue streams, whether production or distribution, a lot of it's from drama. You know, a lot of it's, I was watching Sandokan, the pirate prince last night for the first time. That's a Fremantle production. Really. And that's done, I think, with Lux, Vied and RAI I think is, in Italy. And they are Fremantle production companies. Right. Gordon, can you just give us an idea of basically who the production companies are? Maybe there's some programs that we would know. the big, big break into dramas when we produced American Gods, and that was FM &A, I think, who did that one. I mean, obviously, we've got the old Baywatch, which has now been commissioned again, you know? gonna diverse into Baywatch here, because there's a little bit of a story there, and I'm... Ha ha ha. I'm pleased for anyone from America watching this. We are filming on Venice Beach. This is an LA production, one of only five that are scheduled for this year in LA. So, but that's a whole different podcast on the state of the industry in LA, right? Yes. No way, really. Amazing. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's insane. Well, that totally is, but Fantastic. Haha Well, there was a really, really big push from Fremantle, we want this to be filmed in LA. This is its birthplace and this is where it should be. Because there's obviously tax advantages and all sorts that push productions outside of there. But as I say, that's a whole different story altogether. look, the old stuff, Neighbours, the bill which in the UK It's Baywatch. Yeah. I've mentioned the game shows earlier. I've mentioned American God, which is our first big foray into drama. The Young Pope, the New Pope, that was us. The Iris Affair, that's us. Dublin Murders, I think, was us. Night Sleeper, that was us. These are mainly the ones I know because they're produced out, mainly produced out of Europe, UK or Europe. And then the Sandokan I got the, you know, the game shows are massive, you know. And then all the talent shows, like Got Talent. the idols worldwide and X Factor of course. I'm the apprentice, is that yours? the apprentice. Well, interesting. the apprentice is ours, The apprentice is produced here in the UK by Fremantle UK. It is the US apprentice. think the... Yes, it's ours, but the archive rights, which is what we're here to talk about, don't sit with us on apprentice is an interesting one because... It's really hard to get an approval on that, right? Because it's a current or returning series. Every clip sale has to go through to the exec producer for an approval. And they're very, very protective on that. So in current productions, we do all the legwork, right? The clients don't have to do that, right? We do all the internal running about trying to get permissions, whether that's from the exec producer or the CEO sometimes. So. for people that don't necessarily know our world as well. So you've got all these amazing formats that are sent around the world. It's amazing production. How and where does that come to you? So is there a repository? Is there a single archive? Is it all digitized? Is there an internal processes for all these disparate companies to get this content back to you so you can be on top of it? How does that physically work? Well, that's a very topical question at the moment. Fremantle's production is pretty huge, right? So we have the production, in short, the production offices have their own production libraries, right? Because the amount of stuff that they have to create to get this thing broadcast is huge, right? So they look after and manage their own. production libraries. So we've got the library in LA, there's library in Australia, Germany, France, the Nordics, the UK, and each one has a head as a production library manager. Now what we do in archive licensing is we work with these guys, right? So, you know, when someone asks me for a clip of the price is right, I don't have a full library. Because why would you duplicate all that? The cost would be astronomical. So I work with the library in the States or the team will work with them and they'll do a lot of the research. They'll do, I mean, everything that's digitized, we've got access to internally. So we can do so much, but the knowledge in the heads of the people who work the libraries is far greater than anything else. Right. You you go. Yeah. You you ask them and you go, oh, listen, do you know who was in? And within about five minutes, they go, oh, yeah, it was 1984. was series, whatever, and episodes. You know, you're like, what? They just know it because, you know, they spend their life looking after the library. So. Yeah. And that's. But, but, but, but, but, but, the last couple of years we have, I think it's called the Digital Transformation Project, right? So we've gone into this and we're gone in a big way. that, and the goal is one digital repository for all assets accessed by all productions. So anything that gets made in, we even make Armenia's Got Talent, right? So. that would go into the repository, or it will go into the MAM system, and anyone who's got access will be able to access it. Now for me, selling clips, this is gold dust type stuff. Although I did present this in the 2007's part of my interview, but never mind. It will just be massive, because I mean, I don't think it's going to take anyone away, because the complexity of it all, and they still have to manage their libraries. Hahaha Thanks, Daytime. that will be transformational in terms of clip sales. A lot of it is still manual, even if it is digitized. Digitized is great. Where's your metadata? What metadata is available? What can you pull out of the system to fill that metadata gap? And that's where the team comes in. That's where you're Elliot and Wayne and Alex who work in clip sales, their expertise and their knowledge of the archive is... critical. Yeah, so it's relationships with those production libraries. It's your centralized system that you're bringing in. When does it start? Fremantle, if productions go back over 100 years, okay? Now that's when you start looking at the expanded Fremantle, right? So you've got Grundy UFA for example. So UFA in Germany is massive, right? It's huge. And they'll do their own clip licensing right enough, but we can access it if need be. Grundy from Australia, you know, goes back a long way. Fremantle UK and Fremantle US, which is what we mainly concentrate on. Thames Television started in the very end of 1968. Now, most of that's available digitally. There's a fair bit that's not, but we did a lot of work on that. The big piece that's missing probably is in Thames News 19. 70s but from 79 onwards it's all digitized So Thames Television was the London-based producer and broadcaster of what was now called ITV. And then so it would switch off at some point on Friday night. Then it became London Weekend Television, right, LWT. television is like a, what do they call it? Full spectrum broadcaster. So, name a genre and it's in there, right? We've got news, we've got documentaries, we've got drama, we've got entertainment. The only bit we don't have is children's. Yeah. because we sold that to a company called Bolt Rocker a few years ago. So no more do we get to license Rainbow and Danger Mouse. But to be fair, you know, the bulk of requests I split here is threefold. Or maybe it's four. Right, you've got the game show, talent shows, call that as one. Talent shows, game shows, Thames Television. That's the core, right? Okay. So that makes up the vast majority. And with Thames Television, what are we licensing? We're licensing the docs, we're licensing the news, we're licensing the celebrities. It is a wash with celebrity interviews, right? And then you've got these sort of outliers. We also represent things like renowned pictures. So that goes back to like 40. maybe even earlier than that, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s. And they've actually recently taken on the Rapido Library. things like Eurotrash and stuff like that now gets licensed through us. But what's interesting, having a look at that, and it's really early days for us, because it just happened at the end of, well, it probably just about a week before FootageFest or something. there's a lot of, I think... Yeah, interesting. There looks to be a lot of music interviews in there with music bands and stuff, right? So we just need to get to grips with that before we can talk more. They've also got the Danziger brothers, which is two US brothers who've got quite a good archive of British TV and film. And then for the US stuff, well, this is actually more wide stuff, but there's, I think he came from All American Fremantle. Wow. Okay. which historically Fremantle probably took his name from. A guy called Sid Vinnage, who's a bit of a legend out there. And I think he came from Reeves Entertainment. Yeah, so now we're back. We had a slight glitch there with the, I think we're going to call it the Fremantle Firewall. But anyway, Gordon's back and we're going to pick up again with, what were we talking about Gordon? think it was rushes. Portrait, I was talking about Portrait of a Legend specifically because it's just such a great series and it's lot of like, it's kind of one these ones that, know, when they've done the interviews, they just kept the camera rolling for the day, know, and it's stacked. And I was using it as an example of Fremantle is not just about talent shows and game shows. We've got an amazing breadth of documentaries and stuff, but But I like this because it's The people who are in it are interesting. Having the rushes is gold dust, right? And not every producer, not every production label that we've got has the same idea of what to keep. Now, if it's up to me, you keep the whole shooting match, right? Because you just never know. The Take That that documentary that's on Netflix at the moment. We sold a huge amount of stuff into that, all from rushes. Because whoever produced the program a few years ago, or of course I say a few, it's probably 15, 20, who knows. But they kept all the rushes, right? So without that, you know, and it was quite a big... I think it was quite a big deal to them. Without that policy of keeping the rushes as much as possible, that wouldn't have happened. We wouldn't have been to the good on that one. So I'm always for keeping rushes. Then again, you've to... Are there archives? I'm quite a big believer in... You've got to do what's right for your own archive, your own type of content. Now, what suits a TV archive... as opposed to a stock footage archive might be entirely different. Right, so yes, we do sell stock shots. I mean, we still selling stock footage from Wish You Were Here, a travel program from the 70s or 80s and 90s type of stuff. Right, and it sells like there's no business. Guess what? Got the rushes, you know, or we've got the production tapes. So because interestingly, laterally, I think, all right, one period of time, presenter like to sit themselves in front of the beautiful views of wherever they were showing off. Every time we see that we groan. Nobody wants to buy the stock shot of the TV presenter going, look at what a lovely sunrise. They just want the sunrise on Crete or wherever it was. It's all around the world, that one. So you never know what you're to do. Gordon, just really quickly, how much does the archive influence productions in keeping their rushes now? Or is that something you don't get involved with? No, no, very much involved with it. Joe Maher who's the UK Production Library Manager, Head of Library, so he and I have been working on quite a big project to do more digitization, right? And part of that coupled with the digital transformation project, we are rewriting the rushes policy. That's quite an interesting debate because... from a production library point of view, they want to keep as much as they can from an archive sales or a clip licensing point of view, you want to keep it all, right? From accountants point of view, how much does this cost to store, right? It's like, well, if we digitize it, we then scrap the tapes or scrap, know, which I'm very much against because although they say it's all safe and everything we've done, I've had LTO, like a whole series of LTO tapes and the backups both being corrupted. Now thankfully we we had hard drives as well, because, you but we could have lost that whole lot if, and if I had junked the tapes just because I digitized it. Yeah. From a library's point of view is, don't risk losing it. we're currently just trying to figure out what is a rushes policy. But the caveat is, it depends what kind of production it is. What kind of footage does that production produce? Are they interviewing celebrities in it? If so, keep it rushes Are they making establishing shots? Are they making general views? Stuff that can lend itself? The rushes policy There is one, and we try and keep as much as we can, but you have to be commercially minded. We're not a public broadcaster. And this is another thing that I think is credit. As a commercial archive run by a non-public broadcaster, we have to live within our means. So we need money to maintain the archive. We need money to digitize the archive. We need money. We need to make money is what I'm trying to say. If everyone goes away and fair use is the whole lot, very soon that archive is just not available. It's a self-defeating thing. might, you know, in my mind, it's like, you know, if we can't monetize the archive, then it just becomes a resource for Fremantle. it's interesting because I think, the value of back catalogs has changed in the last few years and there is a huge amount more opportunity to revisit older shows. And I think you guys have been very successful at that at Fremantle in terms of what you've done on YouTube. Can you talk a little about that, the streaming side of things, because, you know, a lot of archives are... migrating to digital and figuring out ways they can make money from YouTube and so forth. But you guys have been in it for a long, for quite a long time, obviously with very kind of premium brands as well. So yeah, just tell us a little bit about that strategy and how that's developed. Yeah, I mean like YouTube for us is absolutely massive. Now, to the point, there's a team, the digital team, and they have... I don't know, 12, 16 staff, right? And then a great part of it is also the third party is involved with us too. But that is us exploiting. I mean, also represent other people's content, you know, and we manage their YouTube or their digital environments too and stuff. It's a whole different ballgame, purely from the archives point of view. I like this story because this is me back in... 2008 going right so that there's no that does that the archive is analog it's all in takes and stuff production won't move to digital what the hell we're going to do there's no website here there's no search engine at Fremantle archive you know so we took a punt originally we went to so there's two YouTube channels for anyone to there's Thames TV and there's Thames News a separate one where we just uploaded 28,000 clips from Thames News and let the chips fall away. And then we tidied up some at once, the rubbish fell to the bottom. And we did that in conjunction with But the original idea was YouTube was full of Thames Television content. So was like, let's just create a channel and then we'll tag it all and it'll port it into a defacto website. Didn't work, right? And we had to take it seriously. and then we had to digitise. So over the last few years, don't know how many thousands of hours we've digitised, 12,000 or something. I mean, probably more than that, was 12,000 tapes I think we sent off and got all done and slowly we're going through the film as well. This time it's filmed, 16mm film from 60s, 70s, it wasn't until the 80s, or one inch or whatever. mean, formats, crikey. I've got... Name a format, I've got it. And I've got it in bulk. know, D3, M2, U-Matics high band, low band, one inch, two inch, well, two inches are at the National Film Archive. So let's talk about where those physical assets held, Gordon. So where is the archive when you talk about those take formats? Where do you store it? Thames television, I keep referring to Thames television, but that's the dual in our credit, right? That is what keeps us going. It's the gold dust stuff. That's held out at Heath, at UVNS. Might have been on your podcast earlier. So that's good scenario for us, right? Yes. So the physical archive is held out there. The digital archive is basically, it's probably AWS. The cloud storage is there. Although I do have a little gizmo for the 10 stuff. And we also use Box. We also use Object Matrix. And that gives me access to screeners and masters, like thousands of them. So our service level is pretty good. in terms of speed that way. Sorry, back to YouTube. So we created those channels in lieu of a search engine. It was just commercial decision. thought, well, let's just do it this way. It's the best, biggest search engine in the world. So we went down that route much to a lot of people's surprise that we didn't have a search engine. But it works for us. It really does work for us and instead of out, we're receiving it. So it keeps the accountants happy. Yeah. I So do you do you get involved with say, I don't know, let's say a movie wants to use that, I don't know, a set from Britain's Got Talent. Do you get involved in licensing out that format? Or is it just the clips? How does that work if they want to kind fictionalize a property of Freemantle? We do get involved with that. think there's been a... Well, there's different ways to do this. There's a few times where we have licensed the clip, allowed the studios to insert, into the footage their characters. Now they would build that set probably, right? Or part of that set. who they're acting there or green screen it or whatever. And that would insert into the other way is we write to recreate the state. That's done in conjunction production because they've got talent. That changes. It's not exactly the same, you know, so or with the game shows, certainly it can change. So you have to get production involved. It's not just a straightforward license. If someone create the set because they go well do we want them to have the old set or do we want them to have the set from 1984 it all depends how it all stacks up and what the clip is that they want I mean the game shows you like with a Fremantle a way to do it ultimately if it doesn't fit with production or for reason that might decline it but in terms of there's no I want to say we'll do everything we can get things done I mean we've even licensed a clip for Moons Got Talent right Right. Nice clip of Simon Cowell, right? And at first we thought, no, I think there wasn't even the right budget for it. And then we just thought, you know what, let's just get this done. So we talked to production and we got all the clearances caught it lined up internally. And then we went back to the client and said, you know what, we just want to do this because we think it's cool. So a clip of Cowell. If there's a will, there's a way in this business. hahahahah Yeah. And that's interesting. You mentioned there about clearances. if you're working with production, you're working more closely with them in terms of what they're shooting. Does that align as well with clearances of people within your shows do you get the make those clearances if there's personnel within a show for clips or do you pass that on to the client? How does that work for you? Okay, it's normally passed on to the client, right? But again, you've got to take, sometimes we do it because we've got the relationship, but it depends on the size of the deal. And it depends, if it's for a commercial deal, like if we're selling, particularly for the big branded shows, if we're selling a clip for an advert, not into TV or into film, but for an advert, know, it's a different ecosphere, so the budgets are quite That makes it worthwhile for me to go to the talent manager and say, listen, what's the situation? Or the rights department. We've got a massive rights department that gives us what we can license, what needs cleared. So you can go to the talent manager and say, actually, he's completely bought out. You can do what you want. But I will talk to him and I will smooth the road so I can then license that clip. to the advert and they're be happy knowing that they're not gonna get sued by the talent, right? Now we don't do that if something's licensed in a clip for a daytime chat show, not a chat show, for Good Morning Britain or something like that or whatever. If it's a decision that's worthwhile, we can do the talent clearances I think Orden and It's on the responsibility of the licensee. Yep. And just to really, just to give us an idea, what does in-flight mean? What what... Alright, well, sure, sorry. In-flight is basically the TV shows that you watch on an airplane when you're flying to America. So, in-flight is licensing for... So this is not archived now. This is just another... what I've got. So Jess does this. She's the sales manager for that. Her main job is to license full programs. Bye. Yep. to airlines, which is in-flight, but within that, you might have cruise ships, might have hotels, stuff like that, other non-theatric viewings. And that's what in-flight is. So it's just the sale of the whole programs. Fast channels, that's a massive thing in America, think, fast channels. It's really taken off. Not sure it's quite taken off in the same as it has in the in Europe, maybe because what it's up against is the way that the cable networks work in the States. But in the States it's huge. But again, you've got to the right content. Game shows, fantastic. Jamie Oliver, fantastic. That's the kind of stuff that works really well for us. I'm sure there's others, but Laura Florence runs that whole division. And it's big. And they do a fantastic job. Yeah. Again, that creates more digital content for me as well to add in, but it's not really my area, but it is massive. Gordon, what works at 35,000 feet that doesn't work on normal TV? I mean, how does that work? Well, Inflight works. It's interesting because all the airlines have agents, right? And it's the agents who license in the content and maybe because they actually operate the technical systems. I'm not quite sure, but that's who you're dealing with. like, it's not companies you've heard of, but you're not dealing with Emirates Airlines directly or Qantas or anything like that. You're actually dealing... with intermediaries. Now, drama for us isn't a big seller, right? We sell, and this is where it's more towards the new, the current productions rather than the old. like we've got a feature doc on Bridget Bardot, so that's selling. We've done, you know... Is it one of Jackie Kennedy that sold well? mean some dramas do. Night Sleeper did really well last year. That was one in the UK. the factuals for the non-scripted stuff sells more for us than some of the dramas. think, so I don't know. But what's interesting, sometimes they take episode one, two and three only. And then they have another cycle. three months later, then they take episodes four, five and six. It's kind of interesting how they do it. And then sometimes they go, I'll take the whole lot. That's a belter. So, but I have yet to find the pattern. So it's kind of like no rhyme nor reason yet, you know. So I think, I mean, the way I thought of it was if it's Qantas Airlines, they're going to take neighbors. Is that not how it works? No, well, I mean maybe they do. I think they probably look for things that's new to the territory rather than something that's already in it, you know, so. But it's not old stuff, it's new stuff. mean, IT crowd is old, the comedy that we've got, right? It still sells on Inflate. Why? Because it's quality and everybody should go and watch it. Bye. Thank Yeah. I will have the next flight. I know you're kind of home entertainment as well as part of your remit, right? what is that nowadays? Yeah. Hahaha Well, there's regional differences actually, but home entertainment is technically, it's Blu-ray, it's DVD releases, hard copy, right? It's also download to own though, right? And we used to have quite a big division here, retail, we used to do it ourselves, we used to represent other people. And we would manufacture and put out their content. It's now a licensing model. So we will license the rights out to our content to other people. Now, so new things are coming out, new productions, current productions, anything you see, we will license someone the right to do it physically and digitally. Now, in America, it's still quite a big chunk of business, right? In the UK, really, it's so reduced now. talked to some of younger ones at work and they were like, I don't even have a DVD player, I don't have a Blu-ray player, they're just uninterested. So it's morphed into a sort of collectors and a box set. Not always just box sets, but it's a collectors market if you like. So Old Gold Media have just released in the UK a remastered version of The Sweeney. which is the all-time classic cop drama from Thames. Now, that's going in Blu-ray now. And that's been a project that's taken a few years to fully remaster for a variety of reasons. Homicide Life on the Street was a massive, you know, the original before the wire and all that sort of stuff. That was remastered by us in conjunction with the US broadcaster. And of course we remastered Baywatch a few years ago. And in terms of rights, clearances, that's quite an interesting one because when Baywatch was first made, was, they used commercial music. Because in America you license the track individually. In the UK when you do TV production you rely on blankets. So a blanket agreement is a situation so it's quite expensive to ask someone to put out again. All the pop music that was in the chart music taken out and we replaced it with the same mood and everything and we fully own that. You mean, I was actually angry to kind of hear about what was happening with that kind of DVD, Blu-ray market and back catalogs. so it basically you're choosing carefully what you remaster based on collectors. And that's still a market. And that's interesting. And that's hopeful for people. Well, it's. Yes, I turn to it's remastered like the scale and the size of the whole market on the eight. Well, I guess remastered dictates whether it's worth releasing the television. How far how many countries? I mean this Netflix and say Amazon is, you know that will dictate whether we would remaster it. I mean it's got to be commercially safe, right? So it needs volume. You know, needs a lot of series to make it worthwhile, which arguably makes it a lot more expensive to remaster. you know, it's a... think a few mills went into remastering something if you know you're going to get tens of scenes out the other end type of thing. So we wouldn't ream... I don't think we would remaster it. But what I do think the strength of the Thames Telecom cast is illustrated by the fact that we still license Yeah, yeah. that as a whole, the whole mint market, the sort of output deal. They just take 50 titles from that or the whole lot, right? And do that in the UK, Australia, different team. And I think just with that market, know, Germany's not too bad, it's got the, I think it's still got red brick. And by that I mean it's actually got a video store. There's no odd HMV which would back in the UK. There's nothing left, right? Right. Yeah. For me it's dead interesting because I get to work with full program sales and get to work with current productions a lot more. It's not just about the back catalogue, So let's move on. Let's move on to the lightning round, I think, because we've put Gordon on the spot. No passes allowed. Yeah. Haas! Okay. Yeah. So Gordon, this is the lightning round. Quick questions, fast answers, and say what comes into your head. Number one, first Fremantle title you think of. Yeah. God, God talent. But that's because it was my biggest ever deal. Okay, tape, file or cloud? Biggest headache. So what was that? Tape, file or cloud, biggest headache. tape. Just older tape formats that you can't find a player for to digitise it, Particularly E3s. Yeah. cha... Fast channels, future or fad. regional, that's what I'd say for that. okay archive content line putting your archive digitally so it's viewable or keeping it behind so you can do your research yourselves. Wow, viewable, really. But it's a mix. The reality is it's a mix. This is not very fast. Because, sorry. Okay. Okay, rights or delivery, boogest stress. rights. Definitely rights. TV Archive definitely rights. You know. Okay. Okay, the biggest the biggest myth about TV archives biggest myth about TV archives. Yeah. crikey. That's a great question! I could give you about a hundred different answers for this, right? The thing is, it should be free, I don't know. Okay. Hahaha. The biggest myth is it doesn't cost much to keep, right? That's the biggest myth. One word to describe managing a TV, decades of TV. Interesting. This is great. Well done Gordon, you did really well. I feel like I'm probably the slowest fast round answer ever. Yeah. Very good. Very good. So, you know, we're going to just scoot forward a bit now and just kind of get your thoughts before we wrap on on the future. Gordon, the kind of idea behind the podcast is to open up these archives. And I think we've done quite a bit to learn a little bit about what Fremantle is, how you operate, the complexity, the breadth of the archive. I think that's come out. Is there anything left from your end that you feel that's misconceived by people No, at all. The biggest misconception is Fremantle as talent shows and that's just so much more. I mean that is probably 20 % of our sales, 35 % is maybe talent shows. As I said earlier, the Thames TV and others. mean there's thousands of documentaries there, right? You know, this week in TVI were a series, there's hundreds of documentaries in each and they were the flagship documentaries, Emmy award-winning, you name it. Lots of them had embedded film crews before that was even a thing. And because it was the new boys in the street, they got access where the likes of maybe the BBC didn't. Take Angela Davis for our US people if they're listening. Peter Taylor who's still producing and directing now. But back when Angela Davis was locked up in the jail, Hmm. He got an interview with her in the jail just by rocking up and knocking on the door. And it closed. There's actually a documentary on the life of Peter Taylor to be made. That man's done an awful lot. mean, anyone in the UK will know who he is. you know, I think, well, actually he did do something recently because he spent a lot of time in Northern Ireland. And so he did a sort of look back over his career and we licensed a lot of stuff to him. to him on that one. I think the BBC made that funnily enough. But that was an interesting one. Licensing has produced and directed content back to him 30 years. Our message and our mantra has always been, listen, give us, we're so much more than just a talent show, a talent show archive. Yeah, yeah, full circle. Yeah. Sure, yeah. And so, and what's, you know, for the future, how does things look in five, 10 years for the archive? for 10 years for this archive or the industry as a whole, you know. for just your view for the future, whether that's for Fremantle or the whole industry. Well, TV, there's no doubt TV has taken a bit of a challenge in the last couple of years. That's across the board, not just archives, like production, broadcast, where is it heading? Is it at an inflection point? Is there a seismic shift going on? What's happening? Because I don't think the streamers have been commissioning as much as they used to. The budgets have changed, the financing of how programs are being produced has changed, right? I hear that internally. I'm not an expert in it, but I hear it that, for an archive though, that means the rights are more complicated. So it gets on current, you know, when people in 50 years time are licensing this decade's TV programs for the next five years, they're gonna be scratching their heads going, it's so complicated, more complicated than it currently is because Hmm. You might have five different production companies, a streamer and a broadcaster, a venture capital, know, somebody filling in the gap, the financing gap, just to get something over the line. Now, and then you've got, you might have a streamer in America and a broadcaster in say, France, Germany, they carve up all the rights. So when comes to license, the clip is complicated. You might have only certain territories, certain... certain rights within each territory, it becomes, it gets more complicated. look, in general, I think, I think last year was toughest year I think I've seen And last year was tough. know, haven't seen it so the last months was the slowest. The last six months were really good because of optimism for the way forward, the way ahead. But there's a lot of stuff to put in that's going to affect that future. Yep. we've seen this picture before in that, right, let's go down. They start hitting the documentaries again or the feature docs again and that builds it up. That's good for archives, right? And look, it's nice to be in movies and it's nice to be in these big feature docs about famous celebrities stuff. the bread and butter and the bones of this business is documentary filmmaking. That's what I think. We've regularly licensed Hollywood movies, we regularly license dramas, I'd say the vast majority is to documentaries. I mean that's another myth of the industry. Archive is only good for compilation shows. give me a break. It's lovely to have because you can generate a lot of dosh. you but sometimes they're really fun to work on. But no way is that the bulk of the industry. So what I'm trying to say is there are reasons for optimism. If you ignore the political world at the moment, which seems to have gone mad. it's like, I think the TV industry, you know. Yeah. When there's still creative people out there, they'll make stuff. And when there's still somebody interested, they'll make stuff. And if you've got an archive that can lend into that. And in the AI stuff, like a lot of it, what becomes acceptable is what's going to rule that, right? Once the data, I mean, I hope it doesn't go this way because, Yeah. A licensed clip is an authentic clip, this is an accurate clip, right, which is a real clip, which is historical clip. know, an AI clip is... you know, it's... But if the viewer then accepts it, that poses a danger to archive clip licensing, you know. You when they... You know, and that's a... You got a podcast and just AI and it... Absolutely. Yeah. That's another podcast completely. it'll be interesting to see, I think, from my perspective, where we sit, I agree with you, it's a cyclical process. And you have these ups and downs. It's usually a seven year cycle, I think, where it's good. then a couple of years off, like you say, but time will tell. And if we're still doing this and talking about it in 10 years time, we'll be very happy. So Gordon, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time, your expertise. We'll look forward to having you on again. Please do note to reach out to Gordon and Elliot of Fremantle and delve into their breadth of their archive if you're new to this game. And we'll post some details in the YouTube links of where to contact people. And so thank you very much. No, thank you very much. Great talking.