How Brands Become Broadcasters: Joe Churchill on Branded Entertainment, Creators and the Future of Social Video

In this episode of TellyCast, Justin Crosby is joined by Joe Churchill, former Digital Commissioning Editor for Branded Content at Channel 4 and now co-founder of Fan Club, a digital-first agency built around brands, creators and premium social video.

Joe breaks down what it really means for brands to behave like broadcasters, why owning audiences now matters more than owning formats, and how branded entertainment has moved far beyond interruptive advertising. Drawing on his experience inside Channel 4 and now on the agency side, he explains how brands are developing long-term IP, building native formats for YouTube and social video, and working more strategically with creators.

The conversation covers the realities of talent costs, the role of creators versus legacy talent, and why audiences are far more comfortable with brand-funded content than the industry often assumes. Joe also shares his predictions for 2026, including YouTube’s collaboration tools, the rise of brand-backed micro drama, consolidation between broadcasters and digital studios, and why audience ownership is replacing IP as the most valuable asset in the production economy.

Topics include branded entertainment, social video strategy, creators and talent economics, micro drama, YouTube’s evolution, audience growth, and what comes next for digital-first studios.

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Transcript

Justin Crosby: [00:00:00] Hi, I am Justin Crosby and welcome to another TellyCast on this week's show. I'm joined by Joe Churchill, former digital commissioning editor for branded content at Channel four, and now co-founder of Fan Club, an agency that's built itself around brands, creators, and premium content. And it's become one of the clearest examples of what a modern digital first business looks like in 2026.

Fan club helps brands behave like broadcasters and develops formats that feel native to social video rather than retrofitted from tv. Joe's got front row seats to the shifts coming down the track in branded entertainment. So let's get into it. Hey Joe. 

Joe Churchill: Hello. Thank you. That's a more succinct, uh, encapsulation of what we do than I've ever been able to come up with.

Brilliant. So, yeah. Okay. I'll use that. 

Justin Crosby: Feel free please. Yeah, yeah. Just, just do it into AI and, uh, it'll work as a reminder, welcome to the show. Great to see you. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Last time I saw you we were in a very sunny can, weren't we? 

Joe Churchill: I know. I almost wore my [00:01:00] winter version of my big yellow shirt.

Your big yellow shirt. Yeah. Which is great. I thought I would just start to look like, uh, that was all I had in my wardrobe. Well, 

Justin Crosby: you would've been on brand, which, uh, you know, I kinda quite like that. But, um, so tell us about Fan Club then. I mean, you, we, you, we talked a little bit, but for anybody who hasn't seen that show and listen, listened to the compilation shows.

So we had around mip com. Um, just give us a refresher about what Fan Club is as a business. 

Joe Churchill: Yeah, great. Well, so Fan Club is a digital agency and we have an express mission, which is we turn brands into broadcasters, uh, which is, you know. It can be broken down in lots of different ways, but e effectively what that means is we're like a plugin media partner for a brand.

So we can help them through their social channels and through YouTube to act like a broadcaster, to connect directly with an audience and to grow an audience on their own and operated channels. So in the same way that brands traditionally partner with media owners, whether that's like, print publishers like Conde Nast or broadcasters like Channel four.

[00:02:00] Or digital publishers like Lad, Bible and Buzzfeed. We offer everything that those, uh, partners offer, but we plug into the brand and we do it all for them on their channels. And I guess our USP or our kind of point of difference is that we ultimately grow them audiences. So when they work with us, they get something that's lasting value that lives beyond that campaign or that contract.

Justin Crosby: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's much more around entertainment becoming entertaining entertainment brands in their own right. Yeah. As opposed to just advertisers and, uh, who are interrupting, you know, whatever content you're watching on whatever channel it is. 

Joe Churchill: Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, randomly, I was talking to somebody, uh, in a shot on the way here who asked what I did, and when I talked about brands becoming like broadcasters, she was like, oh, yeah.

I've followed a lot of brands this year, and it's great to see what they're doing. And she was like, is it a good thing that brands are starting to make content like this? And it actually made me reflect for a moment, and I was like, is it a good thing? I was like, yeah, no, I think it is a good thing. Um, which you would hope.

Right? But, um, and the affirmation of your own business. That's good. Yeah. [00:03:00] Yeah. Uh, well, as you, not often you get a chance to properly reflect, but Yeah. You know, I think for me personally, as someone who is on these platforms myself. I prefer it when brands aren't trying to shove ads down my throat.

Yeah. But when they're just making something that's entertaining, that's good, that's useful, or that just has something of value to me. Yeah. And I think, you know, the more brands are leaning into that space, the more they're gonna get, genuine, sentiment, um, like build community around their brands and ultimately kind of create an audience of like micro ambassadors who really care about what your brand has to say and what you are doing.

Justin Crosby: Yeah. Yeah, it's inter, I mean the, the we've covered branded entertainment and brand funded programming, branded content, and all these different phrases that we can use for this sort of sector. Over the years, and it seems like brands becoming, publishers become their own publishers or broadcasters, if you like, seems to be just a much more efficient and effective way for brands to communicate with their audiences and own their own audiences [00:04:00] as well.

Than perhaps other, other developments in this space Because the, there's the, another area that's been developing is this unbranded content where brands are not involved or not, not they're funding the content, but they might, might be exploiting it in different ways, whereas the content, you couldn't tell they were involved.

So it's this, that's this very different approach, isn't it? And I suppose there's different, uh, different approaches for different brands might, might work, but. To me, the, the brands' broadcasters approach seems to be a lot of companies that are doing very well for the asylum, for example.

And, uh, and there's many, many, many examples of that. I mean, where, where do you know how when you speak to a brand who are. Interested in partic in social media and creating their own channels and, and becoming, moving into this area. What's, what's the biggest hurdles? What, what, is there any real convincing you need to do, or they've already made the, their mind that this is something that they want to do?

Joe Churchill: Yeah, I would say, I mean, every [00:05:00] brand is different and every brand is on a different stage of their journey. I would say it kind of goes, traditional advertising on the size of buses, on tv, things like that through to. Working with, with publishers and partners where you are renting their audiences because you're kind of dipping your toe in that world of branded entertainment and we're kind of the next phase on that journey, I think, where it's like, this is about owning your own audience.

I think brands who, who've never done brand partnerships before. That takes a lot more convincing of why it's valuable and why they should be doing it themselves. You're trying to convince 'em kind of two things at once. 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. 

Joe Churchill: A why you should do brand entertainment at all, and then why you should be doing it on your own channels.

Uh, whereas brands who have kind of done the brand partnerships thing a little bit, or maybe they've worked with creators or they've done influencer partnerships, if. It's less of a stretch to then say, actually you should be really making a virtue of this. Yeah. And, and being proud of the fact that you are doing it, and so doing it on your own channels.

But I would say like the, there are lots of different hurdles as well. Sometimes it is, you know, [00:06:00] we've obviously been doing a big kind of road show and education piece around media agencies, creative agencies and brands themselves and just. Telling them about our offering and, and, and, how we do what we do and why we think it's valuable.

And, understandably for some media agencies, the question they have is like, well, hang on. We're a media agency. Why are we gonna buy media through you when we could just do it ourselves? And then again, it's it for some media agencies that might be a bit of a, a, a hurdle that we have to get over, but it's about un understanding or kind of working with them to help show.

Where we can be really in the weeds of the content, the distribution reading the data and then feeding that back into the content and adjusting the media plan accordingly so that we are working every asset and every bit of media as hard as PO possible, all optimized towards audience growth. And you know, there's lots of great kind of champions out there who are really excited by this prospect, but you've gotta convince them, then you've gotta convince their brands on their roster.

Justin Crosby: Yeah. It's interesting you said that. I mean, because if [00:07:00] you are a media agency and you make your money outta selling media and then your offer is actually create your own media or build your own media, isn't that just cutting them outta the, the equation? Well, no, we are finding 

Joe Churchill: that actually they're really good people to be talking to because, because they.

They have the partnerships budgets. Essentially they're working with their clients. A lot of media agencies are already really well invested in branded entertainment and they wanna be the ones helping push this forward. Um, so we absolutely see them as a partner on this journey because they understand the clients.

They're very good kind of long-term working relationships with them. They can help bring them on this journey. And also they can kind of. Educate us on the client on what they need to get out of this, and then we can, figure out the best way to build a media plan around that. Absolutely, I would say they are, they're a partner that we work with rather than someone we cut out.

So. But of course there are certain brands that, that we would go to directly. Maybe they don't have a media agency. And we, [00:08:00] we absolutely work in that way as well. And yeah, we what's really encouraging is that we are finding that we're having really fruitful conversations in, in both the director brand and the, the via kind of media agency model.

Justin Crosby: And do you think, I mean we, we've seen a, you know, a few categories in particular, which is, you know, such as sportswear, leisure wear, et cetera, that Yeah. That has sort of been blazing the trail for this, uh, uh, for this kind of approach. Are we seeing many other categories sort of adopting this then in terms of other brands moving into this space?

Joe Churchill: Yeah, and I think that's a really, really good point because until now I think everyone thinks brands doing it themselves and they think foot asylum, JD Sports. Pretty little thing. Boohoo, man. It's very much one brand category and one niche of content as well. The dish I think we can point to as like the gold standard in branded entertainment that is mass market and, broad in its audience, uh, that, that it's building.

And then it's really interesting to see people at m and [00:09:00] s going into that space. They just launched a series on YouTube called Love That which is. I think, trying to do similar job to what the dish has managed to do, um, but with a bit more of a kind of magazine format, which is interesting.

But then, you know, there are brands that are really surprising, like QuickBooks doing a load of kind of creator content on their own channels. Mm. Which, you know, you would think accountancy software might be the last brand that you would approach with something like that, but actually it. It really works.

And they've also found some quite fun formats as well. Like Max Foosh explaining how he carves up his income and how it works is like, that's genuinely something that I think an audience really cares about. Yeah. And wants to know, especially a young generation of people who that's what they aspire to now is becoming creators.

Mm-hmm. You know, I think all of that is starting to show that. We're, we are just at that tipping point where it's starting to transition from youth culture brands to really, every brand should be in this space. And there was a great stat that came out like last week, I think that Evan Shapiro jumped on, which is the [00:10:00] highest, uh, the fastest growing, sorry, demographic on YouTube is the over 50 fives at the moment.

And, you know, that's not just my dad looking at people doing up old cars like that is across the board, so you know, whoever the brand is. Whoever they want to reach. The most effective way to do it is through these platforms. So I think we're gonna just see a lot of momentum from more brands getting in there.

And well, obviously I'm hoping very much to be kind of yeah, driving that momentum as much as possible as the forefront of that. 

Justin Crosby: And so you're six months old, right? As a business? Just six, seven, just about. Yeah. Yeah. And can you tell us any, any brands, any campaigns that you're working on? 

Joe Churchill: Yes, we've got our first two campaigns, which are in both in pre-production at the moment.

The first I can't mention the brand 'cause it's not been announced yet, but it's, it's a, it's a kind of appliance brand. And that is, that will be going live in March next year. Okay. And then, uh, we are in pre-production with a beer brand We'll be going live with a series with them in January, uh, which is called the local Cookoff.

a low calorie beer brand. Right. That's their [00:11:00] USP. And so January feels like the perfect time for them to be getting into the content space. Certainly does. We're all hitting the gym, you know, we're all trying to lose a few pounds. Yeah. But their, you know, their, their, their kind of energy is all about it's beer, but better.

It's like, don't just try and like go yo-yo dieting or, or be really abstemious, but you know. Find ways to be healthier, make better choices, but without sacrificing the flavor or the fun. And, uh, yeah, we've got a really exciting show. I think that kind of really encapsulates that. 

Justin Crosby: Excellent. Okay.

And, and do, do all of your shows, do they feature creators as talent then, or what, you know, how do, obviously there's two campaigns that you, that you're working on at the moment. I mean, do creators need to be baked into, into these sort of shows to make them work or. Is that not necessarily the case, 

Joe Churchill: not exclusively so, yeah, like naturally we work a lot with creators and, you know, have a lot of good relationships there also, they do obviously work really well on those platforms.

Mm-hmm. So it'd be remiss of us if we just [00:12:00] like totally discounted them. Yeah. But I would say there's quite a broad range. And at the moment, I mean, it's early days, but I would say it's roughly a 50 50 mix in the, in the briefs that we're talking about between more traditional kind of legacy talent, but in the social space and those kind of digital native creators.

What I always found at channel four, and we tried to do quite a lot is, is have a almost a combination in each series where you. Someone that is really speaking to that YouTube first audience, and then someone who's, who was a bit more channel four in that case. Mm. But I think that that kind of chemistry works quite well when you bring somebody who's not known for YouTube into the YouTube space.

Mm. But partner, partner them with someone who really kind of knows that. Dynamic and that vernacular. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Joe Churchill: But yeah, it's yeah. The, one of the projects that we're doing at the moment is very much creator led and the other one, it has a more kind of legacy talent at the heart of it. Okay. And I think the thing that really dictates that is, is the brand and the audience they wanna reach and, you know, 

Justin Crosby: yeah.

Joe Churchill: All it's, [00:13:00] it's all really kind of built around that. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. 2026, you know, looks set to be really exciting time for your sector. I mean, for. Certainly for digital first studios and for, you know, there's lots of opportunity around the World Cup and major events that are happening next year. What's your outlook?

I mean, I'm, I'm gonna ask you for some predictions then for 2026. I mean. Clearly you are gonna predict that, that brands as broadcast is gonna broadcast, gonna be a big thing. That's the only thing that's gonna happen. But but we will come back to that. But what, what are the sort of key trends that are you sort of expecting to sort of, uh, pop off in 2026?

Joe Churchill: I think the co CoLab posting on YouTube is gonna make a change. Like, I think that's really exciting because I think it's ways of sharing audiences.

Mm-hmm. Whereas obviously that's been going on on the short form platforms for quite a while and it's a really good way of you know, migrating audiences across from. A creator's channel to the, to a brand's channel or from a [00:14:00] broadcaster's channel. And I think being able to do that on YouTube, which is the platform where brands can behave the most like broadcasters.

Yeah. Offers all sorts of opportunities. Because I think especially where, creators, if a brand wants to be on a creator's own channel, they'll understandably be very protective of that because that is their, you know, that's their identity, that's what they're known for. And so brands can only really.

They'll kind of give them over a budget and then it's like you do your thing with it, but there's not really any kind of input the brand can have. Mm. And being able to colab post on YouTube, I think will make a lot of difference in, in that you'll be able to get creators to appear on stuff that is.

Brand owned content, but you might, you may be able to negotiate that they cross post it to their YouTube, even on their YouTube short, and it, it allows you to kind of access their audience without it being tied into like, it has to be exactly. Your editorial throughout the whole episode. Yeah. So I think that could be a really exciting development.

Justin Crosby: And that's a relatively recent [00:15:00] development on YouTube, isn't it? For long form content in particular? 

Joe Churchill: Yes. Yeah, exactly. I think that's the, in the last kind of month or two that's happened. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. Yeah. 

Joe Churchill: So yeah, we're, we're really hoping to be able to use that 

Justin Crosby: and for, for people don't, don't necessarily understand what a collab post is, that is essentially bringing your content, allowing your content to, to be surfaced on, on your collaborating partners feed, essentially.

Joe Churchill: Yeah. And like there's a lot of great creators that are already doing it, where previously it might be like KSI is gonna appear in a video on Nico e Milan's channel. 

But that will only appear on his channel. Whereas now, if they do that, that will get posted on both of their channels. So the creators both get.

The value of the video, but they also get that shared audience, so it's a really mutually beneficial thing. Yeah. Yeah, I, I can see why they've made that change, and I think it really benefits the creators and we'll definitely have a play around with how, how we can make it work for brands as well.

Justin Crosby: Yeah. Well certainly for brands, you know, they're looking at creators with, you know, two and a half million followers or a huge audience. It's like, that's our audience. How do we get [00:16:00] to them? Yeah. This is a. It's a, a relatively neat answer to that, to that issue, isn't it? Yeah. 

Joe Churchill: Yeah, absolutely. 

Justin Crosby: And, uh, and what else now, I mean, you, you've been, obviously before fan club, you were at Channel four for a number of years.

Uh, as commissioner on the branded content side of things. In general, how do you see the branded entertainment industry moving forward in 2026, particularly in the, in the digital space? 

Joe Churchill: Yeah, so I think it's. So I, I feel like, uh, in the last couple of years we've had some really big milestones of massive, like YouTube shows that have then gone on to become streaming shows.

Like Inside is the kind of prime example of that. Yeah. I think the next kind of milestone in is in branded Entertainment is in a big branded show that's a digital hit becoming a linear or streaming show. 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. 

Joe Churchill: Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the dish ended up on channel four. Yeah. Or ITV.

Me neither. Yeah. I think, you know, and I think that would be amazing and they would kill for, [00:17:00] you know Yeah. The kind of audiences that they're getting. Mm-hmm. Um, so I think when that happens, that will be a real kind of shift, I think, in the mindset of. A lot of the kind of legacy industry people.

Um, and what I, what I really hope happens is I, I think a lot of, the old guard, I guess of broadcast hold their nose about branded a little bit. Um, they still 

Justin Crosby: do, don't they? They still do. I mean, it, it, it drew that used to drive me mad. What it used to drive me when I was a PR before I started TellyCast, whenever I was working with a, with a production company client who said, oh, you know, we've just made a show for.

Red Bull or whatever, you know, the TV trades wouldn't touch it 'cause it's like, it and it was that overall industry kind of looking down the nose of branded and, uh, entertainment branded content. It's like, well, why, what, what, what does that? And it's like, well there's this is, there was this sort of sense that it.

It wasn't pure entertainment in some way, you know, it was like sullied by the brand being involved in it, which I could never get my [00:18:00] head around but you, I mean you do. Does that still exist? Yeah, well look 

Joe Churchill: and no shade to Channel four, which, you know, got a lot of love for that place still and all the people there.

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Joe Churchill: But I, I think there was a slightly, an undertone definitely of snobbery towards branded entertainment. Yes. I would say that that is changing, like there's definitely a shift underway and they had. Uh, the cancer Doctors with cancer research that came out recently. It's the, it's basically like the, the people who are finding the cures.

It was like a series about that, that was branded entertainment. They threw their weight behind it. It did really well. It got a load of press like that. That's great. But I think my slight bug bear is that I think. People can tie themselves in knots a little bit when they're trying to hide the fact that it's branded entertainment.

Mm-hmm. And what I think creators have shown, and a lot of brands in the digital space have shown, is that audiences are way ahead of that when it comes to brands. Audiences are used to all day, every day being, bombarded with stuff from brands. Yeah. When they see a [00:19:00] brand putting out a piece of entertainment, if they go, this is from JD Sports, or this is from Ray, they're like.

Of course it is. Happy days. Yeah. And then you move on and as long as you're showing with something entertainment entertaining, they'll, they'll stick around. Yeah. Uh, and creators are brilliant at that. They have like an ad read message, but they make sure they put it in, in a way that's funny. Like a lot of the time it elevates the content.

Yeah. Rather than disrupting it or distracting the audience. And I think it, it means that there's a, you are actually building trust there. 'cause it feels like you're not. Trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Mm-hmm. And I've, I think occasionally, and we definitely came up against this at Channel four, we would have to find very, kind of subtle ways of shoehorning in a brand or like getting it in, in a way that's, editorially justified.

When, if we'd have just gone, we are here with Dulux. It'd been like, Dulux is happy, we're happy now let's get on with the show and you don't have to worry about the rest of it. Yeah, yeah. Um, so yeah, I, I think, as I say, I think that's changing. 

Justin Crosby: That wasn't, that was pure, that was from an [00:20:00] editorial per point of view, wasn't it?

That wasn't from a. Regulatory point of view. 

Joe Churchill: Uh, yeah. And, and not to get, you know, too diverted into technicalities of that. Won't, we won't, we won't go too much 

Justin Crosby: into the weeds on that promise. Yeah. 

Joe Churchill: But, um, but no, it, channel four applies the spirit ofcom to all social branded entertainment. And the Ofcom guidelines for branded entertainment are like their guidelines for linear first and foremost, but also I think they are Yeah.

Quite outdated, which means that. Then they're nowhere near keeping up with the stuff that's going on in the platforms. Right. Which, when you are commissioning for digital Yeah. Does make it a bit tricky because you are having to do stuff and you the platform would be fine, would be fine with it. The audience would be fine with it, but because we're working in a quite a TV way, there's some guidelines that wouldn't be fine with it.

Mm. So, and I totally understand the rationale behind having that, but it feels like. The way the world has moved. Moved on from there. Yeah. Um, but yeah, as I say, I, I think that is shifting. I think it's shifting at ITV is [00:21:00] definitely shifting at channel four, and so I, you know, I think we're, we're on a kind of good trajectory with Yeah.

Okay. So we, that's my, that's my way of not putting any dig digs in. I saw that. Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was, yeah, that was very, 

Justin Crosby: very dely done way. So we've just seen Angry Ginge. Yeah. When I'm a celebrity, get me out of here. We've seen, you know, the rise of creative talent over the last, you know, two, three years and, uh, it's really exciting time.

I mean, we've also seen, we've see lots of agencies and the and talent fees rising massively as well. Yeah. How do you square that circle then when it comes to working with brands and creators? 'cause obviously you have definitive you know, you have definitive budgets, you know that you can't move.

Yeah. On from, I mean, are you finding there is a squeeze on talent costs at the moment in this space? 

Joe Churchill: What I am finding is that, yes, in it's kind [00:22:00] of, in some ways I think. Yes, it is a little bit the wild West still. Um, because talent fees, yes, they've absolutely gone up over the last few years in a kind of meteoric way, but also in a way that it's very difficult to, to track and to kind of keep across.

Mm-hmm. So what I've been doing a lot more proactively is, is building relationships with agents. Really kind of understanding where they are with their, with their talent and, you know, having a kind of. A bit of a kind of spreadsheet, not an a literal spreadsheet, but like in my head of like who the talent are that we really like and really wanna be working with.

Mm. And roughly what their fees are. Mm-hmm. So that when we're working on briefs, essentially we are never putting anybody forward that we dunno, we could get Yes. Them or someone kind of equivalent to them. 

Justin Crosby: Yes. 

Joe Churchill: So I think, yeah it is tricky, but I think the way to navigate that really is to keep on top of it and, and have agency relationships.

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Joe Churchill: Which was never, you know. In my, with my old Channel four hat on, it wasn't as crucial because that was the indies [00:23:00] having those relationships. Mm-hmm. Um, so it was a slightly more indirect thing. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Joe Churchill: But yeah, you know, and I think, I think it's kind of fair enough as well, they know their value, um, yeah.

And they know their audience. And so, you know, I think it's impossible. It's important not to. 

Justin Crosby: Well, that's the thing. You, you, the difference is you're buying their audience as well or you're buying access to their audience, should I say? Yes. Yeah. So, so that's a sort of a slightly different way of quantifying it, isn't it, rather than just having some talent on telly.

Yeah. And just one final thing on, on talent as well. I mean, do you, when brands are involved, some of the more partnership driven talent formats might be, you know, the, the creator. Because of the low production costs, they may be cut in as a deal. There might be a sort of a yeah, a deal, which makes sense, you know, that yeah.

Uh, creator's gonna give x amount of their time, but obviously they wanna work with a company that's gonna build that brand and they can all, be successful going forward. And, and, and we've seen more and more of that happening. Does that tend to work in [00:24:00] the, in the branded space, or is it much more of a case of a much more simple kind of transactional.

Discussion. 

Joe Churchill: Yeah. I mean, it can work in that way. There, there's definitely a bit of a distinction between, some creators are very used to just being given a budget and be like, you're promoting this brand, do your thing, post it on your channel, and it's a kind of lump sum. Yeah, and what we are doing is obviously it's a bit more of an involved production.

It's more kind of formatted, it's, it's like broadcast adjacent entertainment. And so then it's about negotiating. This is an appearance fee, like it's for your time and we're not contracting you to post about it, which is why it might not be quite as much in your pocket because we're doing all of the production and all this other stuff around it.

But ultimately then what, what we're building is affinity between that brand and that creator that could then and often does like blossom into either like an ambassadorship or further stuff that they do, where they do something direct with them, you know, on [00:25:00] their own channels. So there's lots of different ways that it could work.

There are also obviously, you know, there's really like great players in this space, in the kind of vodcast space. Mm-hmm. Which is definitely having a bit of a moment, and I'm sure that's gonna increase in the next year. Uh, you know, people like platform who are doing very interesting things where they're building kind of IP around a talent and then bringing brands to that.

And I'm sure there's gonna be, you know, in the future there might be talent and a brand launch channel together. Like I could definitely see. That that's something we'd be definitely interested in doing. I'm sure everyone else is kind of thinking in that space as well. So Yeah, it's, you know, it's that, you know, talent's never not gonna be an important part of it.

Speaker 3: Yeah. 

Joe Churchill: And yeah. Yeah. Like, and there's, it's never gonna be really straightforward. Like there's just a list of rates and you're just like, that's them for a day. Yeah, yeah, of 

Justin Crosby: course. So looking again forward to 2026, I mean, one of the biggest. Developments in this space in the space of [00:26:00] social video has been micro drama over the last year or two years.

Certainly, and I'm talking, you know, the awareness of this is in the industry, in the uk, whereas other parts of the world, it's obviously already hugely successful and, and established businesses. Could you see a brand funded micro drama, becoming successful in 2026? 

Joe Churchill: Uh, I, yes I can. I'm working on one in fact.

Ah, okay. Yeah, 'cause STV are the partner who invested in fan club. They're obviously traditional broadcaster and traditional broadcast studios. Um, what's great about that is I, I, you know, I'm in the same building as all these indies who are absolute genre specialists. 

Speaker 3: Mm. 

Joe Churchill: So with one of those production companies, we're developing up Ara a micro drama series with a view to take it out to brands it, and what we really wanna do, because they are, you know, they're making shows for Netflix.

They want to, they're, they're interested in micro drama, but their issue is like, it's quite like. Soap Operay and tele naval, which like, I, you [00:27:00] know, and I get why it is like that, but what we'd like to do is try and find a way to like really elevate it and turn it into something, that could win awards that, hopefully we will, we'll get a big name star involved in.

Yeah. And I think you know that, so, yeah. Yes. I think that that will definitely happen. I hope we're the ones to do it. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it feels like, it feels like the next step, doesn't it? In many ways. Yeah. We've seen, um, Fox Entertainment investing in Holy Water, and, and they've already said that, AAA talent from Fox is gonna be coming into some of their micro dramas over the next year.

So yeah, it feels like a real, you know, one of these is gonna really pop off and, you know, but potentially create another sort of subset of this whole exciting developing Yeah. Genre. So just thinking about what brands are asking for now that they perhaps weren't asking for a couple of years ago. I mean, obviously you're gonna say, but you know, we want our own channel.

Joe Churchill: Yeah. Um, they're all asking that, [00:28:00] all of the banging 

Justin Crosby: on my 

Joe Churchill: door. 

Justin Crosby: So thinking about 2026 and how brands are approaching this whole space, is there anything that you'd specifically highlight that they're looking for now? That they might not have been looking for, say a couple of years ago. 

Joe Churchill: Yeah, I think there's, there's a couple of things.

I think particularly when brands are interested in branded entertainment, they want to know beyond social, beyond this series, what can this become? So we talk a lot about we're creating IP here. How then can that IP become like super valuable beyond the campaign window? Ah, the rights. The rights question.

Yeah. So, does it become a live event? Could it be experiential? Could we, you know, turn it into. Some merchandise or a book or like, so with pretty much all of our pitches that we put together now, we always think like long term, where could this go and what could this be? And I think that's something that, yeah, brands are more alive to than ever.

Justin Crosby: Um, again, coming [00:29:00] back to predictions for 2026, you recently wrote in the drop that you are looking at potential, a lot of mergers, a lot of broadcasters buying up digital studios, potentially. What do you, I mean, is that, could you expand on that a little bit in terms of what, you know, what you expect to happen from a corporate perspective in 2026?

Joe Churchill: Yeah. So I mean, I think we can see it like. If you look macro at the industry, you look at Netflix and Warner Brothers, like there's a huge mass consolidation happening across the board, and I think that's kind of trickling down to, to our industry. And I think there's also a lot of big players in the TV space.

We're clearly looking at digital, getting into digital. Whether it's by hiring people to lead the charge or buying studios like Global, just bought the fellow studios. So I think it's clearly, you can see anecdotally all of these different examples. I think what's gonna be really interesting is [00:30:00] who has the patience to really stick with it and kind of commit to something that is sustainable, long-term growth.

'cause I think there's lots of ways that you can. Short circuit your way to an audience and to a, you know, you know, whether it's buying channels, whether it's, you know, betting big on massive talent. But I think a lot of those things, they can be very costly. Whether they're costly upfront or they're costly down the road.

As creators become more expensive. But you know, anyone who's kind of in this, in this world knows that the key to success is. High quality consistency and really being in it for the long game and just like committing to that audience, building that audience. And that's why we're, doing what we are doing, which is taking that approach to brands and saying like, look, if you commit to this, that the sky's the limit.

This can really become huge. And I, I think the thing that. The thing that I see with speaking about ip. IP absolutely still has a place in the media landscape, but I don't think it's any [00:31:00] longer the most important currency. You know, this used to be the thing that everyone valued above. Above all. Uh, but now I think audiences have replaced that, you know, with the distribution of of, sorry.

With the democratization of distribution, anyone can build an audience and that is the thing that people can commercialize on their channels. Yeah. Your format is very difficult to protect when. Anyone can kind of copycat it or make a few changes. Yes. But no one can steal your audience. Yeah. So I think there haven't 

Justin Crosby: been that many really original formats coming through have there, that have really, I mean a lot of them have been relatively similar to large TV brands that we've seen, you know, really pop off in the last kind of couple of years.

Joe Churchill: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And like with a different tone of voice and different kind of energy to it and like feel a lit a lot more anarchic, which is great. Um, but yeah. I think the studios and the big players who really understand the audience is the new currency. They'll be the ones that win in this new space.

And anyone who's really thinking like, no, actually this is all about [00:32:00] clinging onto ip, I think. I think they might come across a 

Justin Crosby: That's interest but you're still saying digital studios, you might find the bigger distribution companies. Taking a shortcut and looking at the buying up these digital specialists, we might see a bit more of that in 2026.

Joe Churchill: Yes. Yeah, I think so. I think so. Yeah. Buy, yeah, buying studios and buying channels I think will be the way. Okay. 

Justin Crosby: And now it's time for Story of the Week where my guest gets to nominate the content industry news story that's caught their eye in the past few days. Joe, what's your story of the week? 

Joe Churchill: Well, it's the AI bubble that everyone's talking about, which I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole on.

I think it's really interesting. I mean, obviously AI. I, it is, it's like the internet. It's not going away, but I think there clearly is a bubble and so there's gonna be a massive correction. And I've been reading a lot about, um, the amazing graph that someone did that shows that all of the big players are kind of buying each other's stocks, shares, and wares in a kind of economic, uh, [00:33:00] virtuous circle.

Interesting. Which is massively inflating the value of those companies. Yeah. They're basically investing in each other and then. You know, the company that makes all the chips is selling all the chips to the people who make all the data centers Yeah. Who are selling their data to open ai who are buying all of the shares in the chip company.

And it kind of goes round and round. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I'm quite. Yeah, I'm just quite interested in what that's, what's gonna happen in the fallout from that. Yeah. 

Justin Crosby: Well, I mean, it's, it's just from a, from a product perspective, I mean, it seems to be me every week that there's a new, I mean the new Gemini nano banana, I think it is that, that, that launched like last week.

So many experts. I mean, there's a lot of AI experts on LinkedIn, right? So it's like a whole new subsection. Do you mean, do you mean 

Joe Churchill: the ai they're experts who are actually AI or they're experts in ai? Well, 

Justin Crosby: they're experts in AI that are probably using ai. It's a post. But but I'm seeing that, you know, it's almost like a, a horse race when, you know, a [00:34:00] new version gets released, uh, whether it's, uh, 5.1 of chat GPT and then nano banana, you know, they, they're leapfrogging each other.

Yeah. You know, on an enormous weekly basis. So it's, uh, it's really interesting to see. Is to think how anybody can actually compete with Google when you've got Gemini baked into it. Yeah and I think chat GBT has sort of stone a lot of the headlines over the last few years, but it now seems to me that their AI game seems to be mo moving ahead in many ways.

But of course, you know, that might be better at reasoning or a better image generation to chat. GPT. That's a saying. We're probably best speaking to an AI expert about that. But, but, um, but it, it seems so fluid, this market and fast moving, obviously. Mm-hmm. That it's very difficult to sort of know if you were to buy shares in one of those companies.

How the hell do you devalue that? And who do you stick your bets on? Well, 

Joe Churchill: and when's it gonna be profitable? 'cause at the [00:35:00] moment yeah, they, you would, we would all have to be paying like thousands of pounds a month in subscriptions for it, for them to be even breaking even. Yeah. And so they're losing money handover fist, but also they with things like the internet.

The more advanced it got, the cheaper the technology got. Mm-hmm. But so far with ai, the more advanced it gets, the more expensive it gets. Mm-hmm. So it'll be really interesting to see, like, at what point does the price come down? Yeah. 'cause at the moment it's just like. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah, it's 

Joe Churchill: crazy. 

Justin Crosby: I think it, yeah, I get the, I get the sense that if, you know, you Google and Microsoft, you'll be kind of all right.

Yeah, yeah. Uh, but too big to 

Joe Churchill: fail, right? Too big to fail. Yeah. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. Okay. Well, uh, um, and what about hero of your week then? Uh, have you got a person that you can sort of, uh. Give a, a light glazing too. 

Joe Churchill: Yeah. Uh, uh, my hero of the week is Zora Mandani, the new mayor of New York, because not only 'cause he's like an incredibly charismatic, like, has some amazing policies, but [00:36:00] his rise was in no small part down to his social game.

Uh, he had like incredible videos. His wife did all of his branding and like the logos were amazing, but like they, they really understood how to use those platforms and to like, build buzz and like get people excited and I thought it was like, that was really impressive. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. Yeah. It seems to me to be a politician.

So your social game needs to be on point there, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. 

Joe Churchill: Absolutely. 

Justin Crosby: And, uh, well, talking about politicians who or what. Do you want to throw in the bin this week? 

Joe Churchill: Not a politician, but Right. Probably an aspiring politician. Grok, grok can get in the bin. Oh, gr Right. Okay. We're back to the ai, right?

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Uh, I mean, just the fact that it's so kind of clearly tooled up. To be like ultra, like right wing and terrifying, but also just the hilarious ways that crock, no matter what you ask it about Elon Musk. Elon Musk always comes out on top. So someone asked who was the, who [00:37:00] was uh, who was funnier?

Jerry Seinfeld or Elon Musk who crock was like. Well, whilst Jerry Seinfeld's very good at observational comedy, Elon Musk really takes the biscuit for his like crazy disruptive meme led comedy. And you're like, okay, grok, you know, there's a, let's get you 

Justin Crosby: to bed. There's a room somewhere dedicated to making sure that grok, you know, it speaks well at Elon Musk and Tesla and, uh, all his other interests.

Yeah. Alright. Rock's going in the bin. Joe, thank you very much for coming on TellyCast. It's been brilliant to see you. 

Joe Churchill: Yeah, you too. 

Justin Crosby: Thanks for having me. And, and, uh, wish you all the best with those two. Campaigns. You said coming out in January. Local Cal, uh, lagger. I'll, uh, I might be, uh, on the phone to see, request a couple of samples there and good luck with your other campaign as well, so, uh, great.

And indeed with the order of 2026. 

Joe Churchill: Cool. Thanks very much, Justin. 

Justin Crosby: That's about it for this week's show. TellyCast was produced by Spirit Studios and recorded in London. We'll be back very soon with a special 2026 prediction show for the world of social video. So watch out for [00:38:00] that one. In the meantime, stay safe.