TellyCast: The content industry podcast

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

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 descri...

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 ho...

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...

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 committi...