TellyCast: The content industry podcast

Justin Crosby
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TellyCast is the leading podcast exploring the future of television, YouTube, the creator economy and digital-first production. Hosted by Justin Crosby, each episode features conversations with the people shaping the future of content. 🎧 New episodes every week.

  1. 4d ago ·  Video

    Why Brands Are the New TV Commissioners, with Studio Fawkes CEO Lucy Smith

    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", and why she believes the old-school TV model is "totally dead and wildly unsustainable". She describes how a L'Oréal-sponsored podcast with creator Paige Lewin led to a haircare line that sold out almost instantly, with a 50/50 split on format and merchandise sales. She also explains why every Studio Fawkes idea starts with a long-tail commercial goal. www.Vuulr.com Sign up for The Drop newsletter Enrol on the TellyCast Digital Bootcamp Buy tickets for the Digital Content Forum Subscribe to the TellyCast YouTube channel for exclusive TV industry videos Follow us on LinkedIn Connect with Justin on LinkedIN TellyCast videos on YouTube TellyCast website TellyCast insta TellyCast Twitter TellyCast TikTok

    Why Brands Are the New TV Commissioners, with Studio Fawkes CEO Lucy Smith

  2. Oct 1 ·  Video

    Have UK Indies Lost Their Nerve?

    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 year on year, why so much post-Edinburgh talk about YouTube has not turned into investment, and how indies can use development budgets, existing shoots and in-house editors to build audiences and IP of their own. Rob also explains why creators now refer to TV as "legacy media", and why trained TV storytellers are better placed than most to succeed on YouTube. www.Vuulr.com Sign up for The Drop newsletter Enrol on the TellyCast Digital Bootcamp Buy tickets for the Digital Content Forum Subscribe to the TellyCast YouTube channel for exclusive TV industry videos Follow us on LinkedIn Connect with Justin on LinkedIN TellyCast videos on YouTube TellyCast website TellyCast insta TellyCast Twitter TellyCast TikTok

    Have UK Indies Lost Their Nerve?

  3. Sep 25 ·  Video

    How to Go Viral With YouTube Strategist Seb Losardo

    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 test, and why he tells creators not to be led by their most vocal fans. He sets out his 40/30/30 rule for dividing effort between packaging, the intro and the rest of the video, an approach that turns traditional TV workflow on its head. The conversation also covers why preamble costs viewers, how gaps between sections cause audiences to drop off, how YouTube editing differs from TV, and why brands spending heavily on talent still end up with videos nobody watches. Seb will be speaking at the Digital Content Forum on 5 November at BFI Southbank. TellyCast is produced by Spirit Studios and recorded in London. www.Vuulr.com Sign up for The Drop newsletter Enrol on the TellyCast Digital Bootcamp Buy tickets for the Digital Content Forum Subscribe to the TellyCast YouTube channel for exclusive TV industry videos Follow us on LinkedIn Connect with Justin on LinkedIN TellyCast videos on YouTube TellyCast website TellyCast insta TellyCast Twitter TellyCast TikTok

    How to Go Viral With YouTube Strategist Seb Losardo

  4. Sep 18

    The Sidemen's guide to creating superstar formats

    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 rule that governs every idea, and the decision to test Inside on a second YouTube channel before committing serious money. He explains why the company deliberately avoids hiring format specialists at the ideation stage, how a 30-day pre-production sprint led to 55 million views in ten days, and what happened when Netflix came calling. The conversation also covers the tension between YouTube instinct and traditional TV development, and why Victor believes reintroducing fun to the commissioning process is the industry's biggest missed opportunity. This is a candid look at how a digital-first creator business out-developed the TV industry at its own game. Sign up for The Drop newsletter Enrol on the TellyCast Digital Bootcamp Buy tickets for the Digital Content Forum Subscribe to the TellyCast YouTube channel for exclusive TV industry videos Follow us on LinkedIn Connect with Justin on LinkedIN TellyCast videos on YouTube TellyCast website TellyCast insta TellyCast Twitter TellyCast TikTok

    The Sidemen's guide to creating superstar formats

  5. Sep 10 ·  Video

    Jungle Creations: how social brands become real world businesses

    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, most recently, Sporf. She joins Justin Crosby to explain how the company reduced its dependence on platform revenue, why publishing revenue grew 32% year on year, and how a viral PepsiCo recipe video turned into a retail product that has sold more than a million units. The conversation covers the strategy Jungle calls URL to IRL: Twisted now operates more than 130 delivery-only restaurants, a cookbook, supermarket ranges and pop-ups, and the new Twisted Labs division has formalised the route from social hit to physical product. McDade argues that the threshold for taking a brand into the real world has nothing to do with follower count and everything to do with the depth of the community behind it. www.Vuulr.com Sign up for The Drop newsletter Enrol on the TellyCast Digital Bootcamp Buy tickets for the Digital Content Forum Subscribe to the TellyCast YouTube channel for exclusive TV industry videos Follow us on LinkedIn Connect with Justin on LinkedIN TellyCast videos on YouTube TellyCast website TellyCast insta TellyCast Twitter TellyCast TikTok

    Jungle Creations: how social brands become real world businesses

  6. Sep 3 ·  Video

    Andy Wilman on Rebooting The Grand Tour

    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 mechanical engineer Francis Bourgeois. Wilman talks through the casting logic that ruled out famous faces, the mechanics of testing on-screen chemistry before a series is greenlit, and why he believes the format's biggest moments were never planned, only discovered. He also reflects candidly on the show's origins as a rushed response to a punishing Amazon contract, the eye-watering costs behind its biggest stunts, and why he now sits as a consultant rather than the hands-on producer he was for two decades. The conversation closes with a look at Clarkson's Farm's demanding edit process, and a wider question for the industry: would Top Gear have worked as a YouTube-native show, or did it need the BBC to kick against? Plus this week's Story of the Week, Hero of the Week, and Get in the Bin. 00:00 Introduction and welcome01:00 Casting the new presenting trio06:00 Why chemistry with the audience can't be faked17:00 The chaotic origins of The Grand Tour format22:00 Wilman's role as consultant, not "brains behind"35:00 Budgets, crew growth and the cost of the format's biggest stunts37:00 Clarkson's Farm and why its edit is harder than The Grand Tour's48:00 Would Top Gear have worked as a YouTube show?54:00 Story of the Week, Hero of the Week, Get in the Bin www.Vuulr.com Sign up for The Drop newsletter Enrol on the TellyCast Digital Bootcamp Buy tickets for the Digital Content Forum Subscribe to the TellyCast YouTube channel for exclusive TV industry videos Follow us on LinkedIn Connect with Justin on LinkedIN TellyCast videos on YouTube TellyCast website TellyCast insta TellyCast Twitter TellyCast TikTok

    Andy Wilman on Rebooting The Grand Tour

  7. Aug 27

    Factual Futures: Who Owns the Audience?

    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 Originals) and Jamie MacDonald (head of originals, After Party Studios). The panel gets into what actually separates people who own audience from people who own IP, and why that distinction now shapes how factual programming gets funded, made and sold. Kemming explains why Quintus deliberately built its own YouTube audience rather than staying a pure distributor, and how that audience now replaces two or three pre-sale partners on a co-production. Benoit and MacDonald discuss splitting IP between production companies and creators, using Don't Get Catfish as a case study, and why "collaborate or evaporate" is becoming the operating principle for factual production. Other topics covered: patchwork financing and moving beyond broadcaster-only development; which factual genres actually monetise well and why territory affects CPM; using digital platforms to trial and prove IP cheaply before scaling budget; the risk of creator talent not porting successfully across platforms; and what traditional broadcasters stand to lose by not competing in this space. Recorded at BFI Southbank as part of the TellyCast Digital Content Forum 2025. www.Vuulr.com Sign up for The Drop newsletter Enrol on the TellyCast Digital Bootcamp Buy tickets for the Digital Content Forum Subscribe to the TellyCast YouTube channel for exclusive TV industry videos Follow us on LinkedIn Connect with Justin on LinkedIN TellyCast videos on YouTube TellyCast website TellyCast insta TellyCast Twitter TellyCast TikTok

    Factual Futures: Who Owns the Audience?

  8. Aug 21

    Money Talks: Inside the New Wave of Social Video Investment

    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 institutional capital has replaced vanity investing in this space, what makes a YouTube-first business investible, how valuations are actually calculated, why the "thousand true fans" model has overtaken subscriber count as the metric that matters, and what founders need in place before they raise. Watch the panel session Recorded live at the TellyCast Digital Content Forum 2025. www.Vuulr.com Sign up for The Drop newsletter Enrol on the TellyCast Digital Bootcamp Buy tickets for the Digital Content Forum Subscribe to the TellyCast YouTube channel for exclusive TV industry videos Follow us on LinkedIn Connect with Justin on LinkedIN TellyCast videos on YouTube TellyCast website TellyCast insta TellyCast Twitter TellyCast TikTok

    Money Talks: Inside the New Wave of Social Video Investment
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TellyCast is the leading podcast exploring the future of television, YouTube, the creator economy and digital-first production. Hosted by Justin Crosby, each episode features conversations with the people shaping the future of content. 🎧 New episodes every week.

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