Inside Time Team’s Digital Reboot with Tim Taylor MBE

Recorded live at How to Make Money in Digital on April 20th 2026, this episode of TellyCast features Tim Taylor MBE, the creator of Time Team, in a candid conversation about bringing one of the UK’s most beloved factual formats into the digital-first era.

Tim shares the inside story of how Time Team moved from traditional broadcaster funding to a fan-supported model on Patreon, and what that shift has meant for production, audience relationships, and creative control. From building a global community of supporters to balancing YouTube reach with subscriber exclusivity, this is a rare, practical look at how legacy TV IP can be reimagined for today’s social video landscape.

The conversation also dives into the realities of scaling down production teams, the challenges of converting audience attention into paying fans, and why staying true to the core DNA of a format is critical when evolving it for digital platforms. Along the way, Tim reflects on what producers can learn from Time Team’s journey, including how to test ideas with audiences, monetise catalogue content, and navigate a world where data, community, and storytelling increasingly intersect.

If you’re a TV producer, content creator, or media executive looking to understand how established brands can survive—and thrive—in the digital-first production economy, this is essential listening.

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Transcript

Justin Crosby:  I've been really looking forward to this, Tim. Yeah, well, I think that, you know, one of the things that we've tried to do today is of course we've talked about sideman.

We've talked about various different other, um, digital first successes and, uh, some of the elements and components of that. But again, I want to return to a TV classic now that has been reimagined for the digital first space. So anybody that has a catalogue or a format or, something like that, that they're, thinking about ways to bring it back.

Then this is kind of the case study. And I'm delighted to be chatting with factual TV royalty, I would say, if that's, uh, is that all right?

You're 

Tim Taylor: not making me feel more relaxed here. 

Justin Crosby: Oh, no, I, I'm putting you on the spot. 

Tim Taylor: I'm just an old guy when I'm impressed by your energy out there, and I'm very glad to listen to any of you tell me what is going on with this stuff.

'cause I'm quite good in [00:01:00] trenches, I am, I'm slow archaeology, slow television, so I spend a lot of my time staring at a load of mud, hoping somebody will turn something up. And quite often it happened that they didn't, and that turned out to be one of our most popular programmes. When I went to channel four, originally I had an amazing meeting with Michael Grade.

And a lovely lady called Andrea, Andrea Fer. I told her what the idea was, three days with a bunch of crusty archaeologists and we are gonna be excavating and trying to find something, but we may not find anything. So she looked at the budget and said, so you're not gonna find anything? And I said, well, it's possibly, we'll hope to find something.

But you know, with all credit to Channel four, we had 20 odd years. My middle commissioning editor letter was Ben Frow, which was, a lovely experience. But that the energy that he bought was [00:02:00] amazing, but it meant that, you know, we were given them a proposition that was a bit iffy. And I would, I would encourage you that if you've got a brand to understand the brand well enough to know what you're not prepared to cross.

There should be certain lines if commissioning editors stay something suspicious, like we'd like to refresh the brand. Then head for the door. Uh, and luckily enough, we had a community around us who wanted time team back, and my issue was okay, if you want it back, how are we gonna pay for it? 

Justin Crosby: Yeah.

And that's, that's why when you said you're here to learn off everybody else, well, I think everybody can learn a lot from you in terms of the way that you've brought this classic brand, uh, in the factual space back back to life. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about the end of the time with channel four and your, what your thoughts were at that time and what drove the [00:03:00] decisions and the process to bringing it back as a fan funded project.

Tim Taylor: I think any of you will know that there's a sort of rather double-edged sword about broadcast budgets. You have this budget, which seems to go on for the next two years, and you think, my God, that's wonderful. You then have to do cost reports every month. You have to report back to cov commissioning attitudes under stress to produce the numbers that justify the budget.

So time team, by the time it finished, was quite expensive. And there was a sense in which I think at Channel four, which I, I agree with them, that they had to find new ideas. They wanted to put the money into something new. That was the new time team. And part of me thought, well, good for them really.

Although the other side of me was thinking, oh my God, where's that money gonna come from? And we were lucky enough, I think, to have an audience that were real fans and they began to contact [00:04:00] us and say, why don't you bring it back? And so we did a, I'm based in Cornwall, so I bought a lot of books about DIY crowdfunding and stuff like that, and did that and, and we went around various sites and we kind of landed by luck a lot of time.

Team has been luck on Patreon and Patreon had this quality that was both, yes, we'll back you, but we're also there to interact with the fans and I feel Patreon has done a good job in both giving us the funding so we can afford we, at times, we were doing 10 shows a year, 12 shows a year for 20 years, which was a hell of a thing.

Most of you will know the joys of strange hotel rooms and spending three days in the rain with a group of archaeologists who may or may not find something. So it had its stressful moments. But Paton were prepared to sort of [00:05:00] back us and we, it gave us a different relationship with the audience.

We have producer sessions where I talked to some of the fans. I have various time team had this classic base, which was very useful. We made over 220 programmes and those were 220 excavations. If you think about it, that's a lot. We were one of the prime funders of archaeology in the uk. I think we were second after English heritage, which is a, most people don't realise that about Cha time team that we were actually funding archaeology.

And I think we didn't really know how to exploit that. We were just enjoying making the programmes with a group of friends, but we kept the essence of that going so that in the transition we had people that people recognised, like Tony Robinson. Uh, za Stewart, John, these are friends of mine, [00:06:00] and we've done that change together.

So the audience saw that continuity happening, which worked very well. And I think Patreon felt like a place where you could have creative conversations, you could have, you could discuss with your fans about what they wanted. And I, I'm not sure we did it particularly efficiently or effectively, but we began to listen to what they wanted from the programme.

And it was a funny thing that they came up with after we've been back for five years now, somebody from BBC rang up last week and said, could they do breakfast on the sofa with Tony? Because they'd just heard time team was back. And I thought, my goodness, yeah, we surely need to talk to more PR people or more press people, because 

Justin Crosby: that's B, B, C for you 

Tim Taylor: is this.

Oh, bless them. Anyway uh, so that produced a sensation of having funding [00:07:00] and approximately speaking, we do about three to four shows each year. We've got a podcast going. They go out on YouTube, they go out on various other channels, which I can give you the numbers for if you're interested in numbers.

But it produced an enthusiasm. We thought, we'll see how it goes. And we got a thousand people signed up in the first two days and every time I set a ti a target, which was my limited managerial response to it, I said, uh, let's go for 5,000. We got that in the second week. Then we went to 10 and we're now on something like 11 and a half thousand, 17,000 if you include the people who signed on free for a coffee, as they call it.

So basically there's a, a largest group. My problem was, and I got a bit irritating about this with the rest of the team, I said, if we've got [00:08:00] 370,000 people on YouTube, I think that's the figure. Something like 370,000. Why have we only got that number on Patreon? I, it didn't sort of make sense to me, but people said, Patreon, we are the fourth highest Patreon person, group of people, subject programme you know, we're the fourth highest.

And they, they said, oh, you're doing wonderfully. And I kept saying, well, 350,000 here, and where are all those other people? And I think that's a question about we, we made this transition with very few people. I had an allergy to middle management staffing after I finished time team, because basically I looked around the office sometimes and there was like 60 people, and I never knew what they were doing.

A lot of the time it was like we had the, the whole researcher who suddenly becomes a co-producer. So what, how did that happen? You know? And, and, and I love that. I love encouraging people, but by the end, the, the wages bill [00:09:00] was alarming for time team. Uh, yes. 

Justin Crosby: Sorry. So let's, let's talk about that transition then.

Yeah. Because. Obviously when you have essentially a gatekeeper like a channel who they manage the relationship, if you like. Now, I wouldn't say manage the relationship, but they have the re relationship with their audience. So how did you how did you attract these patron subscribers and funders?

Because, you know, presumably, did you have databases to go to? Did you have social channels that you would, you reached out to? What was, tell us about, you know, the journey from the last show finishing and then the first first, uh, time team, uh, patron funded. 

Tim Taylor: We kept asking the question. I, I, I kept saying, if you want us back, what do you want to do about it?

What do you want? And they said, well, we want time team back. And because I watched it with my, I've had three people come back to me and say, I used to watch that with my grandfather. So [00:10:00] that's how far time team goes back and it had that longevity to it and it meant that people enjoyed the possibility.

There was a nostalgia for time team and I somewhat naively said, okay, we'll go on YouTube and we'll say you want it back. And they all said, is Phil coming back? It's the bane my life. I'm asking Phil. Phil Harding was a West country presenter with a very broad west accent. I once went over to the States, which was an interesting experience.

We had a time team in America and I went to HBO or whoever it was at the time, PBSI think it was. And we sat and watched. Some of their programmes, which featured six foot tall people with good teeth and nice hair. And I then showed them time team and I, my lot looked like they'd just come out of an overnight shelter.

And the American American guy just kept saying subtitles we can use subtitles 'cause Rosie I we [00:11:00] find about like that. And to me that was genuine stuff to them. It was alarming, but we kind of, we went past that stage. But for the Patreons, they love certain things, core things. And if you've got a brand, don't be afraid.

Stating the obvious to ask your fans what is it they enjoy. I asked paid, I frequently have sessions with patrons and my ongoing question is, what do you want? And I sort of think, what are they gonna say? And they don't say the arc of the covenant. They don't say, Indiana Jones, the loss, this, that, and the other of which there are many series trying to have a go at that.

What they said is, what we love about time team is it's an ordinary piece of land, an ordinary village, ordinary group of people. And what you're saying to people is maybe this could be existing in your neck of the woods, maybe under your field, maybe under [00:12:00] your allotment, maybe under your space. So it gave that aspect of, I think agency, because we were very keen on, we were very keen on people getting involved with the programme.

We wanted people to get out and do their own archaeology. So we have a sort of subtext of this, which is called Dig Village, which is part of time team now. And we go into a village, we get in three days and we dig hills all over the place and see what we can find. But the big thing was the community. And again and again.

And this is, alarmingly near the whole thing about wellness and all the rest of it. Well, everything's wellness nowadays. Well, turns out digging a hole with a trow can be very, very nice for your wellbeing. Um, surprisingly enough. And we've worked with a group of guys who, it's called Operation Nightingale.

They send people along and these guys are ex vets they had tough times in [00:13:00] Afghanistan and all the rest of it. And they put together the MOD put together a team of guys who would work with us to dig holes and find out about archaeology. And it turned out them digging with us on a time team, not necessarily 'cause it was time team gave them something back.

And that like reinforces your sense of, oh, we're probably up the right street here.

Justin Crosby: , So you basically, if you're a patron, you get to go on a dig, right? You get to get your hands dirty. 

Tim Taylor: Well, technically that was the thing for the last two years, I've been saying to the crews, can you shoot this so that somebody in America, we've got 6,000 people from the States on the Patreon channel who couldn't come to the dig.

Can you shoot it as though they might be on the dig? And making the reality of an excavation available to people is, is a big goal. It's been a big goal for me. For the last year, we've begun to learn lessons about AV and vr but ultimately I would [00:14:00] like people to be as near as they can to being that person with the trow on a site.

And the moment where something is absolutely discovered. And I think that's what we've tried to do more of and learn more about really. 

Justin Crosby: And, um, so let's talk about the back catalogue if you like, because, so you have Patreon, which is only subscribed, which is subscriber exclusive content. Yeah.

Yeah, this sits on Patreon. But you have a YouTube channel, a number of different social channels. But on the YouTube channel you said you've got about 350,000, 367,000 I think it says there subscribers. And not only is that new original content, you also have your back catalogue content on there.

Yeah. So talk a little bit about the the international success of of time team in terms of international sales. 

Tim Taylor: What we tried to do was have both. The reach that the classic catalogue gave us. So 66 countries worldwide take this. [00:15:00] But we also wanted to reserve some programmes that were exclusive to our sites.

So we balanced the two. And I think that was probably quite a good move. It meant that people knew that there were certain cl big documentary subjects we'd done that they could only see through the site. So that channelled people into watching that material at the same time as giving us the reach of all these countries who were watching it.

And it was a very good, it gave us a good YouTube revenue, I think because people knew about this. We also did deals with people like Foxtel. We do all three media and Little Dot are our distributors, and we did a deal, which I thought was remarkable at the time that Foxtel said they'd take it. For their, satellite base in Australia.

Justin Crosby: So that's your new original content funded by Patreon. You're now licencing it and 

Tim Taylor: classical stuff as well. 

And they would take that, but they would also let us push it out [00:16:00] on YouTube, which I thought that was a great combination because it kept our fans listening to us on YouTube, but opened up a new base of Aussie fans who are very enthusiastic, which is great.

Justin Crosby: Yeah. So let's talk about talent then. Yeah. 'cause obviously Tony Robinson for many years was the face of it. Is, is Tony still involved? And 

Tim Taylor: Tony is still involved and we, we drop him in at various times. Um, I think, like me, Tony didn't want to necessarily keep travelling all over the place and standing in a wet trench.

But bless him, he's sort of kept the contact and he's that recognisable name. However. What we are also doing is seeing what happens if you listen to the people talking in the trenches. You don't have a presenter. And we've, we've tried various programmes where we've had presenters and not had presenters.

And it seems to me that we're moving. If you want to see something really alarming, if you're a history documentary maker, I [00:17:00] dunno how many of you out there are history documentary makers, but there's a, there's a channel called Chloe versus History. Has anybody seen that? That's like a 10 tonne truck rolling down the road towards all history producers.

I mean, it's really quite an amazing thing to watch. It's this is off your question, but, uh, that's gonna happen I'm afraid. This is an AI created presenter, female presenter who's talking you through the great events of history. So she's walking backwards through Vesuvius explo exploding or Titanic sinking or some major event from the past.

And it's informed by somebody who clearly knows what they're doing with history and archaeology. But all you see a background of material, which is all AI produced. It's, and it's amazingly convincing. And I sit there thinking, well, how did they know that? How did they know the mosaic was there?

And my view [00:18:00] of that is I want to know what the evidence is based on. I sometimes think we're getting near to a kind of time travel, but time team is about grumpy. Archaeologists saying, how can you know that? Hang on a minute, once she has a goat that appears outta nowhere and there's various other things going on in the background, and you think, was that based on real research?

But it's so good, it's alarming, alarming, convincing. And we are looking at ways of. Getting more versions of time team out that may begin to go along because we've always had huge amounts of data. We record all the landscape, we record every find, and this is all data led. And in the past that stuff has ended up in boxes or files or what have you.

But suddenly we turn out to have a huge amount of data of the landscape, which means we can create a landscape as though you are on the site. We can create fines and see them through [00:19:00] Sketch Fab in 3D. And that's 

Justin Crosby: based on empirical evidence rather than the assumption that, oh, this happened in Vesuvius 

Tim Taylor: or, yeah, and somewhat, somewhat lately we've arrived at QR code, so we did Sutton Hill a while ago and we had various QR codes posted so people could go up.

I should try and get you one, but you can look it up on a time team site. You can get the QR code and you can wander around. An Anglo-Saxon bucket is a polite version of it, but it's basically a water vessel and you can travel around it and look inside it. And I think what we are looking is, is sort of trying to take on board what's happening with Chloe versus history and get the time team authenticity, because it plays to the whole edge over who the hell knows what's truth anymore.

You know, where, how can you tell if you're watching a history documentary that it's not some creative person's idea of the past? Where's the [00:20:00] evidence for that? And I feel like, you know, I'm slightly belong to the old school of saying I need to see that evidence, but I also have enough excitement and interest in media.

I want people to enjoy the damn thing and get excited by it and carried away. But at some point you have to say, how do you know that? What was the evidence for that background? I don't mean it in a critical sense. I mean in a sort of sharing sense. The other thing that you don't have there is what I would call process time team at its heart is being willing to watch somebody with a trow in the mud, in the rain, scraping away at a grotty piece of pottery.

I think Harry Hill did a whole series of SPOs on time team at which somebody would hold up something that looked like an old dog biscuit and everybody would get terribly excited and say, yes, that's clearly a Roman vase, or something like that. Of course, we didn't know that was the case but that proving the truth by [00:21:00] showing the evidence and sometimes getting it wrong, and this is a very old fashioned word, but time team played very strongly with the dire of jeopardy.

We may not find it by the end of three days. The scientific, uh, magazine called it Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In archaeology, we would have several different theories. We should dig here, we should dig here. Oh my God, we dug in the wrong place. We still had to do the archaeology of the wrong place before we could move on.

So you really didn't know what was going to happen. And, and it's a kind of credit to Channel four really, that they coped with that and said, God, just get on with it. We dunno what you're doing, but we like it. Just get on with it. 

Justin Crosby: That was down to trust, wasn't it? And trust in your process. And that's really what you've established by the time Team brand is a trusted brand in its own right.

So I'm sure that we hope 

Tim Taylor: so. Yeah. 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. So that, that the, any um, AI recreations that you can work on Will, will, obviously I'm [00:22:00] sure that will do very well. Yeah. Um, so talk about time Team. Let's talk about the production team now. Yeah. That that the Patreon funding supports then Yeah. Tell, tell us, you know, tell us about how the team has changed from the days of Channel four production to, uh, the team that's now producing the shows.

Tim Taylor: I think at the height with time team, we had about 60 people in the field, in the offices and working with us. But what we've done is we had a conversation, this is, it's less charming than it sounds in a way, but we talked to people and said. What do you want from your process? Because we'd all, various members of the team have been through the mill of making 10, 11, 12, 13 of these programmes a year, which was hard work.

We had three edits suites at one stage going in various parts of London, chasing around and finding how edits are going. The current team we've got is about 10 to 15 people maximum with a core of about [00:23:00] seven or eight who make, make the major choices. The producers, directors, researchers, and all of them wanted another life apart from time team.

You know, they wanted to stay with the family or they wanted to do something else. So we encouraged people who came and said, well, I don't want to do this full time. How does that work out? I mean, in practise they've all ended up doing it full time. But you know, it was kind of, that was the atmosphere of it.

And we make three shows, four shows a year. And that's enough to, to give the Patreon guys, the YouTube guys what they want. 

Justin Crosby: And, uh, so what does the future look like then for time team now? I mean, you talk about, you know, potentially moving into AI and, uh, ways to, uh, to create new content based upon real evidence.

But what, what, what else are 

Tim Taylor: you planning? There's the stuff we don't know about, I don't know about, but, uh, you, some of you guys will, I mean, somebody said to me in the meet one of the meeting rooms, [00:24:00] reversioning, why, what are you doing with Reversioning? And I thought, oh, I think I know what that is.

But basically he said, that ability to take what you've got and do something else with it. And I'm not sure how that balance is out for us. I'm not sure how if, if people always saying, why don't you go back to Channel five or go and see Ben, Ben is still at Channel five, I dunno. Or Channel four 

Justin Crosby: at the moment 

Tim Taylor: and say, you know, why don't you take it back to them?

And that appeals in some ways, but in other ways, if I take that to Channel four, there's somewhere else other than the sites that are gonna be able to watch it. So if you can only see it on YouTube or you can only see it on Paton, there's a kind of, I understand that relationship if it suddenly starts appearing, which would do partly the job of my frustration, that not everybody knows time team is back by at least getting it out there on a broadcast [00:25:00] channel.

The, the water cooler moment, the conversations they did, you see what they found. The other one I, about three days ago I got, we did a site called the Princely Burials. This is a bit of archaeology, so you can nod off if you like. Um, we found two burials, side by side, a teenager and a youngster.

And the youngster had an Anglo-Saxon sword with him. And there were various other fines and these two figures have been preserved in a field for, you know, since Anglo-Saxon Times. And when we got, we sent the DNA for these two figures off to the Crick Institute, and it turned out that this was a brother and sister.

You know, we deal with archaeology that matters, 

Justin Crosby: Yeah. So finally for the producers in the audience then I suppose it's a, it is, it is. Two questions in one. [00:26:00] How big does a brand need to be for it to be able to work on Patreon and what, what sort of subjects? Archaeology is obviously something that people are incredibly passionate about, and we are, we're talking about fandom here.

What do you think would be the other sort of genres that you think might work? From a fan funded perspective, 

Tim Taylor: I don't, I'm not sure I know the answer to that, but what I think can happen is that if you've got something you believe in, start small. Don't hire in large numbers of people and see if you can get it across.

See what happens when you drop it on Patreon. That will be your answer. And then let it develop from there, because really anything out there might be interesting. There could be a whole range of subjects, but it's sort of beginning to get that relationship. I think there's something about those guys who we dig with who find the basic process interesting, and I know about that process.

Other things [00:27:00] might work equally well. And I'm not, I think it's a question of try it, but be true to your format. Try and remember that, you know, you arrived here because you want to do it. I mean, you might have arrived here 'cause you wanna make money, but you know, if you've got something you really love doing or you've got a group of people who, look, my guys are now all sort of 65 ish or 60 ish anyway and we're still loving doing it when we do it.

The cameramen, the crew, they all want to know what's happening in trench three. You know, there's a sort of, there's that sort of thing and if you've got a bit of that going, then that is probably what someone on Paton's gonna want to see. 

Justin Crosby: Okay. Well, we're out of time now, Tim, but that was, uh, that was fantastic.

It was great to speak to you. Thank you for coming. Oh, thank you. Sharing that with us and please give a round of applause for Tim Taylor. 

Tim Taylor: Thank [00:28:00] you.