Spada Podcast
Join industry practitioners as they discuss the role of the screen Producer, along with topics and issues from the broader screen sector in Aotearoa / New Zealand. Hosted by Screen Producers New Zealand - Spada.
Spada Podcast
Re-inventing Content for the Digital First Age (Live Recording)
Join Steve Crombie, CEO and Founder of Totem Global, and TVNZ’s Chief News and Content Officer, Nadia Tolich, for an engaging conversation on the strategies and steps needed to adapt, innovate, and thrive in a digital-first content landscape. Moderated by Natalie Apostolou (C21 Media Aus/NZ Editor).
Recrded live at the 2025 Spada Conference, held 20 & 21 November 2025 in Auckland, New Zealand.
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This discussion on Re-Inventing Content for the Digital-First Age features Steve Crombie Nadia Tolich and Moderator Natalie Apostolou. It was recorded live at the 2025 Spada Conference. So today we have, Steve Crombie, who is the CEO and founder of Totem Global, which is revolutionising content. I will say modestly, and we have Nadia Tolich who is the chief, the very freshly minted, Chief Content Officer. At TVNZ. And if we could have you on the stage, that would be wonderful. So we're playing things a little bit differently. Steve's got a mind blowing presentation that he's about to deliver. But first off, when I was researching these two guys, who are exceptional and really at the cutting edge of, I want to say, the future, but the future is now. We're already there. We're immersed in a digital has taken over everything. It's just a now about how to leverage audiences and strategy. And these guys are the, the Whisperers for this. And what's what is, in common with both of them is they both came from deeply content driven backgrounds, which were their passions. And I wanted them to just quickly give us the their wildly divergent origin stories because they're very interesting. Steve, let's start with you. Sure. Origin story. To be honest, I think I first started, filling up with content, due to old National Geographic magazines outside my bedroom door as a kid, when I left school, I joined a circus in Western Australia, and was just always obsessed with travel and adventure stories. Probably also the movie The Mission by Robert De Niro. Very great reason to go to South America and do various things there. But ultimately, I think it's just the art of storytelling and the different methodologies you can employ in order to tell stories and the extraordinary ways that now exist in this environment, that you can tell stories and how you can galvanize, I guess, the capabilities in this room to to go direct to audience. I mean, that's what I'm most excited about today. Definitely. Historically, my motivation to be here was I used to have to stand behind gatekeepers who were you had access to those audiences, and that became a very frustrating experience. So I had to identify ways to go around those gatekeepers in order to connect with those audiences and build different businesses and models. And off the back of that, now empowered to tell whatever story I want. So, yeah, I'm excited to be here. Brilliant. Nadia, you've you're deeply immersed from journalism, radio, print now television and digital. Tell us about that. All the things like, don't judge me. It's short attention span. Not just joking. Um, I - kia ora everybody My name is Nadia I am. Yes, this is a caveat, actually. I am the Chief News & Content Officer at TVNZ. I am seven weeks into this role, so this feels like a test, a giant test in front of a lot of people about what I know about my new employer. So that's really fun. So my origin story is quite similar. I literally wanted to be Judy Bailey. And for those of you who know who she is, because she's legendary. But when I was growing up, that's all I wanted to be, was Judy Bailey. And then April Ieremia that's all I wanted to be a journalist. So these were incredible female broadcasters on Television New Zealand, actually. And I knew that journalism was where I wanted to be. I wanted to talk to people. I wanted to know all the things, all the things, and share those stories with New Zealand. Really. So yeah, I, ended up in radio. I learned a lot about audiences in radio and connecting directly with audiences, and then started developing and working with talent. So I've worked with, many, many amazing New Zealand broadcasters from Paul Holmes, Paul Henry, Mike Hosking. Well, this is this is like the talent is incredible. Whether you like them or not is probably another question. I do get hit up quite a lot. But more recently Samantha Hayes, Simon Dallow, Melissa Stokes, Jack Tame. Lots and lots of incredible talent. So that's that's sort of my, my new passion is bringing together incredible teams, developing incredible talent and delivering for New Zealand and contributing, to be honest. Beautiful stuff. And you, you've already passed. It's OK. Thanks. Okay, without further ado, Steve, please take it away. All right. We'll go over here to get the clicker. All right. Hello, everybody. Thank you very much for having me here. It's a great pleasure to be in New Zealand. I actually first started working out here when YouTube launched out here. Our company Totem, helping launch it around 2014. So I got to travel across the country and really understand the media landscape out here. Off the back of that was able to work with Sky TV to help their develop their global digital strategy over a decade ago, and also got to work with the wonderful humans at Whitebait. Janine and the team. They are the most extraordinary people I've really probably ever met who actually ended up putting me up in their house within the first week of meeting them. I love those guys a lot. And so, you know, a little bit more about Totem so you understand where we come from. Totem. We are an audience first media company. So what we basically do is we design and pioneer, new models to help rapidly accelerate audience growth and monetization across, you know, for platforms, for media companies, legacy media and other and also for creators. And what we do, we actually have multiple times generated number one, leaders in the category in different in different areas. And you know, brought about some significant change. The way we came into this space, YouTube actually grew a lot of channels very quickly on YouTube and YouTube said no one else is doing that as fast as you are outside the US. Can you help us expand across APAC? And that's when Totem was born, and that person was the now CTO, and CPO of Disney globally, Adam Smith, who we still work with today. So it's a very exciting time to be here. One of the things that's really interesting about this space, I guess, for everyone here, is that, you know, you're all here to work out how to navigate what's happening in the future of our industry. And there's a lot of people who are trying to work out what happens next. And so we're going to be talking about is what's going on broadly in the broader industry. Also going to be just checking in with you around, making sure we're aligned around what our challenges are and then presenting to you five different case studies and examples and business models You can actually apply on Monday In order to get started and bring about change within your industry and help accelerate what you do well. So we’ve spent 15 years doing global consulting, platform partnerships and creator acceleration, for various organizations around the world. And so we can both design and operate these models in different industries. We've done this across four continents. Our team is in 12 different countries, and we love what we do. So we're fortunate, for example, with YouTube, we've helped build business models around the creators. They paid us to do that with Snapchat. We designed their global creator accelerator program and implement that for them to rapidly scale creators, with TikTok, where their internal social agency. So, for example, when they launched STEM, we designed the model to help, launch that STEM program. And our model was then rolled out worldwide because it was the most successful model. With creators, we work with a lot of the biggest creators in the world, such as Jessa, who is the number one basketball creator in the world. He would be one of the top ten sports, businesses in the world today. He has more viewership over the last 12 months than the NBA. And then of course, with, legacy media. So from networks, free to air pay TV distribution, music labels, we've designed models for these people too. it's a very fun space. And so we did this for a decade. And over this decade, we designed a lot of different models from starting off doing that strategy and then helping them implement that strategy by creating that content. And then a lot of these organizations across APAC, for example, which were all multi-billion dollar entities, didn't know how to integrate these models into their parent entities. So we ended up becoming hyper specialized in designing direct to consumer business models for the media entertainment space. And then but what one of the challenges was at the top of these organizations, a lot of people were unsure about what would happen next, and so we would design models that might have been worth 10 to $100 million, and they wouldn't implement those models. So we decided instead to put our money where our mouth is and build out those models. So alongside our consulting business and our next gen distribution business and digital rights business, we built out our own owned and operated network. And so over the last five years, we've generated 50 billion views. Generated 150 million followers, made 15,000 videos internally and generated 6,000,000,000,000 minutes of watch time. So this gives us a very different understanding of the landscape and rapidly testing, iterating and learning about what works and how to apply that in this environment across multiple areas. So one of the unique things about - am I going too quickly? sweet. Okay, so one of the unique positions that we have in this market is over the last 15 years, we have sat directly in this middle point between platforms. We know what they want to do next because we help them decide what to do next. With creators, because we help design business models around them and how they accelerate change. And with legacy media and content creators so an understanding how these three worlds, different, three different worlds intersect because they all speak very different languages. And within the center point there is an extraordinary number of business models that can be created at this moment in time that has leveled the playing field. And it's a very exciting time, I believe, to be alive in the media space. And I believe the next year will be the most significant year over the last ten or even 20 years. And in our space. So now is very much the time to make a change and decide what you're going to do next and how, as you can see, a bunch of different organizations we've worked with for context. So if YouTube is the new broadcast, what does the producer do on Monday? All right. That's what we're going to go through. Pondering I don't know who knows. Let's see. So first of all, quick question is, is YouTube the biggest broadcaster in the world who believes that's true? If you do put your hand up those with your hands down, you work for a network, I guess. I'm not sure. Joking. Sorry. So what is true about YouTube is they don't have separate issues around fragmentation, right? They have spent 20 years perfecting their craft. They have extraordinary technology. Right? They've had the best ad tech system. They are diversified. You can watch their content, on any device, any time you have extraordinary data to understand what your audience wants. Okay. So what we do know, they are the best platform to scale your business. They are the engine room of the many of the fastest growing media companies in the world. This is a fact. Is every person in this room navigating disruption in their industry? You have your hands up, have your hands down. If you don't put your hands up, put your hands up now, scaredy cats. So I look, what's true is this is definitely there’s a lot of disruption going on right now. And that comes to the operational structures of your organization, the culture of your business, your understanding of who your audience is, of how you fund content, of where that money comes from, of what these new models of content creation are and how to go about doing those things. Because in this new world order, you have to work out how to adapt, because this is not going to go away. This is the future, right? And this but this world does align with traditional media. It does align with with a bunch of TVNZ and other partners. It's very much a partnership. But you have to understand what to do. So what you do need is the right operational model, you know, on or social media. To accelerate your growth. You require an operational model. You need to understand what you're going to do. And I'm sure a lot of people in this room are like, but I don't know what to do yet. And that's a really hard thing to do. What you don't want to do is do nothing, right. You have to do something. You have to go about that quickly. You have to understand what it is you're going to do, what your unique capabilities are and how you're going to go to market. Okay. And I can talk about that later on don’t worry we're going to share some some examples with you. Cool. So how do I work with YouTube and social media? This is a common question. I'm sure you will hear a lot of people saying, hey, I know about YouTube. I'll help with like awesome, you know? Or do I just, you know, upload my video and it's going to be successful and that's great. You know, does that doesn't that work. You know, is YouTube a friend? Are they an enemy. Are they complementary to the business? Are they going to kill my business? I'm sure there's this sound like common things you think about. Yeah, right. And then do I do it myself? Do it internally or do it externally, you know. How do I go about this? So one of the greatest things about YouTube is any single person in this room, you can become a global leader in your category within 12 months. And I can show you, show that to you and prove that to you because we've done it. And we are a bootstrap business. We are a profitable business. We have no outside investment. We did it by making lots of mistakes and doing it again and testing, learning, iterating, testing, learning, iterating, creating 15,000 videos to understand exactly how different content performs in different environments. And there is nothing you cannot do in this space, right? So any person in this room is struggling. You have to lean in, you have to understand what's going on because it's not going to change. Another part just going back there. Oops, how do I get back is there is no one size fits all approach. Okay. So someone might say oh it's really easy. You've got to upload three times a week at this time in this platform. It worked for me. It's going to work for you. That's also not true. There was no one size fits all, right. You need to understand how old your audience is, where they are, what they like doing for living, what time of the day, what day of the week they want to engage. You know what triggers their enthusiasm? What drives watch time? What drives engagement, what drives retention? You don't want to do this just to drive awareness, but you can. You don't want to do this just to drive revenue, but you can. You want to do this to basically build an audience that is so passionate and enthusiastic about what you are giving to them. that they want to participate you in the real world, that you can move these businesses outside just the consumption of content and into other areas, whether that's to events, you know, whether that's a sell a product, whether it's a drive back to a platform. You also want to think about that in the future as well, not just about the content you're making, because you need to diversify your revenue streams as well. You're not going to survive just on ad revenue and funding to make your next show. Okay, so where the fuck do I start? Common question anyone? Anyone, gone through your head recently? Nobodies? It's gone through Nobody's. Oh, there you go. Thank you for being honest. This is obviously a hard thing to work out, right? So what you need to do, you need to start with your audience. You need to understand who your audience is. One of the hardest things, I guess approaching it from a traditional standpoint is the lack of data you get. Right? So, you know, you hear back from your broadcast and say, yeah, I went really well. It's good. Okay, we'll do it again. I think we will. Yeah, we will go, you know, a Fast platform. If anyone has Fast here, the data you get back sucks, right. It's very hard to read and understand what your audience wants. YouTube is extremely good at that. They have great data, Facebook, you know, Instagram and TikTok. They also have great data. But YouTube is definitely the best. This helps you understand your audience what they want. You will not do that unless you test, learn, and iterate in this space. You have to do this right and so you can spend a year or two years creating a great idea. But if it doesn't go anywhere, doesn't get funded, you've just wasted 1 or 2 years of your life. There are other ways to work in parallel and test and learn on this platform. But of course, the hard thing is you do it alone. Do you do it with someone else? Do you form a group? All the things you've got to work out. So how do I know if I'm on the right track? So if you're on the right track, it's very simple. You did a long term plan. If you are thinking short term, thinking about what's gonna happen next year or the year after, you are not going to succeed because the next year or two, everything's going to change. You're going to have a job, or you're not. You need to be thinking about what's going to happen in the next five years, and you need to prepare for that. You need to think what's going to happen if it's just you and your audience and these platforms and that's that's your whole world, that's a possibility. But with that world comes an extraordinary amount of opportunity. If you know how to go about that. So we'll look at five different business models to help scale your media business. If you're a creator, if you're a brand, if you're an agency, if you're a network, if you distributor, if you're a producer, this will apply to you, right? There's a different model for every person you know. It's not just about I'm going to put on YouTube. I'm going to generate some extra ad revenue. It's going to be great. You know, there are so many different ways to go about this space, and you want to think about how you're going to go about it and what makes the most sense to you. One, you can use it to drive awareness. That can be very powerful, which we'll talk about shortly. Two, you can use it to reinvent legacy IP, right? You can bring something back from the dead and extend the life of that IP by many years. Right. You get a lot of value in your back catalog. And what's very unique about this country is how your content is commissioned. Typically, from my understanding, you typically have global rights outside New Zealand. Right? That's amazing. That is so amazing. That gives you so much power and so much control over your future, because the future will be defined by the people who own their audiences and own their IP. Otherwise, you're just basically creating content as a fee for service. So you want to do that. You want to own your audience, and you need to work out how to do that, including in your existing deals. How to create digital first formats. There are ways to create content that works in a digital environment That can go back to linear, and you can use your linear or other content types to reimagine how things things work in a digital environment, which I'll talk about and how to generate new revenue. So again, off the platform and of course, how to collaborate with creators, because creators are one of the most extraordinary catalysts for change. If you find the right partnership with the creator and how to work with them, you can rapidly accelerate what you're doing and how. So? Anyone ever heard of ACTF? Put your hand up? Okay, cool. Anyone ever heard of Twisted Lunchbox? Put your hand up a little bit more. But I would have expected more. That's all right. So what I'm going to talk about here with ACTF is the Australian Children's Television Foundation. So they imagine them like an angel investor, government funded. They'll invest in kids content to help get it going. And they also have distribution arm. So they have a lot of content. Some of it really, really old, and they weren't really quite sure of the value or how they could work with it and how that might impact change. But they knew they needed to connect with their audiences. So we went into that business. We did an audit and strategy of their business. Yeah, identify what formats to create. We rebranded because no one knew who ACTF was, or cared because that's not the target audience, is kids and created the brand Twisted Lunchbox. And then we manage that page end to end. Right. The results of that. Within six months and the last six months, we moved them from 567,000 views a month to 125.6 million. Technically, views a month. Okay. Those views aren’t from India, they’re not in Pakistan, those views, as you can see in the bottom one there for the US, they went from 139,000 views a month to 60 million US views a month. So 150,000 roughly unique viewers to 12 million. You can imagine how this can transform a business's capabilities, right? They're growing ten times faster than the traditional broadcaster in this space. They are now the number one in the world in their category, which is scripted kids content. Right. So kids content notorious for nursery rhymes. No nursery rhymes, no animation. Right. This is just purely scripted kids content. They're bigger than Disney in this space for this type of channel. This is completely organic with no paid media. How you can utilize this to test your ideas, to test your concepts, to understand where your content could be sold, to understand what content to invest in and to develop right. You know, it's really important and it's extremely powerful. This will transform your business. They can grow their business panicked if they wanted to. They don't actually have permission to do certain things. There's certain things they can't do, but they can now help change. Use this channel to help transform the local Australian kids industry in Australia. Bondi Rescue, who’s heard of Bondi Rescue? sweet. Okay, so Bondi Rescue was a really interesting and interesting IP, right? This had been going for 15 years when we came across it. So around about 2020 the show was was sun-setting so it wasn't being made anymore. We got the global rights that show, and we reimagined that back catalog of about 200 episodes. So it was made for TV. But those TV episodes in their format didn't work so well on YouTube. So we started the algorithm. We understood what the audience wanted, and then we're reimagined that content for that environment. And from those 200 episodes, we've now created over 3500 videos, and growing up from 15 million views in total to over 3.5 billion views right off the back of that. That show is now, well, very successful. The first year we focus on scaling the audience to effective content strategy. The second year we expanded that audience and diversified the revenue. The third year we stabilized that revenue streams and trialed new business models. Now, what's interesting about this is the more rights you have, the more likely you are to bring about change. If you're limited in what you can do with that content, you can't necessarily extract the value that you require. If you're limited within the rights and scope of how you exploit that. You've only got AVOD. Or AVOD and TVOD and not SVOD or whatever else. You're also limited because you can't exploit it the way you need to in order to give the audience what they want, when they want it, where they want it. But if you can do that, you do have that freedom. You can do extraordinary things. So off the back of that, that show was recommissioned for three new seasons. And so you can imagine the value that's been generated. And so we've driven also six new revenue streams that didn't exist before. For this IP and it’s now the number one brand in its category. So for all of you who have a back catalog, you own your content. There are completely different ways to use that content to use that catalog to cost effectively. Build an audience. Right. You're like, where do I start? How do I do that? There are ways to do that. Maybe you don’t have enough. You need to partner with other people you know, who have similar content types. And obviously you need the right operational approach, but you can do something. Okay. Out Back Boys. So anyone heard of Black As? Cool. Some nods and hands. Great. Good start. They made three hours and 40 minutes of content in 2014 15/16 for TV. It was never made again. Off the back of this they put everything on onto social media, onto YouTube and Facebook. That's it. We came across that around 2021 we thought we could do something with it. We've got the global rights that show we then at the time it was getting 300,000 views a month. We then reimagined it. It was already on YouTube and Facebook. We re-edited everything and then manage the pages end to end. We got 60 million views in three months. That data we used to get the show recommissioned. We then executive produced and directed that show. Using the data and insight that we learned in this environment. We generated a billion views for that. And then we also identified as part of this Black As doesn't really work. The format doesn't work. We adjusted the format, changed the show type, and brought in a new brand. Right. So to clarify a very different change in approach, more of a creator approach. And now you have the world's biggest outdoor creator. Outdoor Boys wanted to come over and collaborate, right? That guy can't say how much it generates, but it's a very large sum of money per video, enough to buy a house. Seriously. So yeah, off the back of that huge viewership, huge engagement no longer made to being recommissioned, five new revenue streams. It is a number one First Nations brand in our country. You guys have extraordinary access and understanding and connection to your culture. You guys have amazing opportunities because you know how to tell those stories. And on YouTube or other platforms, no one's going to get in the way of how you want to tell that story, which means you might get better access, better engagement, and better connection to your audience. Sticky Lollies, I'll got quickly. Really interesting little lolly company who's heard of Sticky Lollies? Anyone cool? Some people. All right, all right, ladies, you get the, Check it out. It's good. So, you know, these guys, the little lolly company, they almost went bankrupt because of Covid. Because they do artisanal lollies, right? In this shop. No one to come in. They decided to try Facebook Live streams. It was going okay. When we found them, they were getting about 1.5 to 1.6 million views a month. But we knew what we needed to do. So we changed everything from their internet speeds, to the cameras to their mics to their formats to, you know, we edited every single video. We ran the page end to end. The results we moved them to from ranked 1703 in the world in the food and drink category on Facebook to number one in the world within 12 months, with no paid media. They were the number one food and drink brand in the world and top five brands in the world. For one of those months, there was Red bull, TikTok and sticky lollies, which is very exciting. Right off the back of that, they sold their lollies out in 40 minutes and ten x’d value of their business in 12 months. Now they're a Lollie company that makes videos. What they really need to be is a video company that makes lollies and you guys all have that power and capability, right? So there's different ways of thinking about this the value that you can generate with your skills. But just to prove I'm not lying that's Tubular stats that and you can see it but I'm just putting out it's very much true. Last bit here is talking about collaborating with creators. So creators are really interesting people. Very strange to work with. Sometimes they do speak a different language how they do contracts, how they how they do terms, how they create. But they’re very cost, time and resource effective. They have huge, huge audiences and they can rapidly accelerate the growth of the things that you might do in this space. Some simple examples that we've done - The Try Guys know they wanted to expand off YouTube into the traditional space. So we negotiated a deal with them and Samsung off the back of that, they're in 70 million new homes and have a whole new revenue stream. Snap Accelerator. I've already talked about that. We can apply those insights and how you work with creators in the traditional or legacy media space. The same approach applies. It's just a different way of going about it. Sony Music, you know, in order that was really struggling with revenue and streaming revenue. They were losing a lot of their revenue About a decade ago, they didn't know how to adapt to this new environment. So we rolled all of their credit across APAC into our network, and we built a YouTube verse music label. We trained their artists on how to create content. We integrated creators into their video clips, and we grew that business. 400% in 12 months and then rolled that whole network into VIVO. Right? So the creators are the ones that really helped galvanize that change as much as well as our training and and strategy. BBC Studios we relaunched Top Gear with how ridiculous and a bunch of other ones I won't talk about that again ran out of time, but that was one of the most successful globally for the BBC when they relaunched, with the new faces of Top Gear. So we've been doing this. This is a decade ago. We did this stuff right. It's been it's been in existence for a long time. Finally, in order to think differently about creators, which I mentioned earlier, Jesser, he is the number one basketball creator in the world. Top right there. There's the NBA, has 73 channels, just has three NBA in the last 12 months. Uploaded 44,500 videos. Just uploaded 147 engagement 55 million NBA 75 .3/4 million for Jesser and followers, you can see Jesser is bigger. He has bigger viewership. This is every single NBA team and the master brand rolled in together and Jesser is still bigger. You want to pay the NBA to do a brand deal or do some sort of engagement? Good luck. Wanna work with Jesser? It’s pretty easy or not that easy, but you know, you get the gist. So these are really important people to use in order to help build whatever happens next. I hope that was informative for you. I hope that helped you think a little bit differently about how and what you can do in the space, and I will end that there. Thank you. That's great. Come join us again. That was brilliant, Steve. I feel like we had a digital masterclass in 20 minutes. It's like it was incredible. I don't want to leave Nadia out of it, though. And I think we can agree that, it's no longer a binary war between old school broadcast and digital. It's it's merged collaborations here, and it's all about finding, growing and redefining audiences. So at TVNZ, you're in the first year of a five year plan to go digital first. Yeah. And in fact, I would love to say cool story, bro, but we've been doing it for a while. And what I mean by that is that in New Zealand, you know, TVNZ On Demand, for example, launched 17 years ago. So that was a digital platform in which we housed, you know, 300 odd programs and have slowly developed and iterated over time, incredible people doing incredible things to build out a new digital future for the business. The same can be said for Sky, Three, You know, our competitors in market because we all realize and appreciate that we have to progress into the future. And that goes with online too, as well as all of the digital pieces. I think that, coming back to, today's themes are actually that have been overwhelmingly clear to me. And quite comforting, actually, is that despite the platform, audiences are first and foremost everything we do and actually learning and understanding what our audiences want and need should be at the forefront of our mind. Regardless, regardless of the platform, we should be platform agnostic. What I think that digital allows us to do, especially big tech social platforms, is to test and learn. Absolutely. And even when we do that, which is really cool. But I think as you said, TVNZ is and in the midst of actually it's the second year, we're in the second year of a five year digital strategy. What the heck does it mean? That means we understand that we have to move from a broadcast centric business into a fully fledged digital business, and that means audiences are we are looking to double our audiences and triple our revenue. How am I doing on the all the talking points guys? Yeah, it's only been a few weeks just yet. So but it's pretty impressive, right? I've been in a lot of businesses that, talk a big game on strategy, talk a big game on priorities. And, you know, it's very difficult to ship big strategic priorities that absolutely, absolutely. You know, prepare the business for the future. So to see it in action, to see some of this work shipped, it's incredible. It puts audiences at the forefront. So digital, great digital environment, great user experience, incredible data and analytics and truly measuring data. And people who are watching not just one person through a profile but everybody on the couch. It's an amazing it's an amazing journey to be part of. It is. It actually is because it will allow us actually, once all of this is out there. So early next year or so, TVNZ will be launching, its TVNZ plus RE platform, and that will allow us to actually operate more as a digital first, big tech platform, if that's how you want to liken it. So you know, everything from personalization to actually, housing and promoting content that is of different formats, like, why wouldn't we, we should we. And so right now, experimenting in big tech land is sort of the right way to go about it to see what works, what doesn't. And with that, you, you know, a lot of people in this room or organizations like TVNZ, you wouldn't have the content and the rights. I mean, I think it's such an extraordinary thing in your country that, you know, you're able to sort of want to help fund this content. And obviously you have that, you know, that that regional need. But, it's sort of empowered a lot of people in this room to do very different things, which is not normal in other countries. Definitely. And I think with, big technology companies it is, and you will have heard this from many big media companies in New Zealand is that it's not an even playing field we employ as a business, you know, more than 500 New Zealanders or people living in New Zealand. You know, we pay tax, we deliver for the country, right? Big tech. No doesn't happen. So employ very few number of people, you know, don't contribute in a way that is truly meaningful, unlike other big media companies. And I think that's a really important point because we are bound by regulation and rules. And, we have to abide by, as Cam said earlier, you know, wait, we have a TVNZ Act that we have to deliver for this nation. And that's really important to us. Absolutely. It's pivotal to the fabric of our country. But equally, you know, it's not necessarily a safe environment out there. On those big tech platforms. And on that. But I'm not going to talk about quotas yet, but I don't think we're going to have time. But in Australia. We all agreed that we needed like three hours for this and probably two bottles of wine. In Australia, we are... days, weeks off implementing a new regime that will be banning, quite a lot of tech platforms for a very significant part of the population. The under sixteens. You're both coming at this from different perspectives. But what does something a piece of regulation like that, how does that affect your businesses? We had this conversation slightly earlier because Steve has a one year old and a four year old. Yep. So I probably felt like him about ten years ago. So I have a ten year old and a 12 year old, and I have completely changed the way I think about accessibility. For young kids, this is you might as well be giving my ten year old like a pack of cigs, right, with a phone. And what I mean by that is that, you know, we really need to be very, very careful about exposing, young people to content that is unvetted, unchecked. You know, that you're not necessarily even dealing with a human. I think that, you know, as far as TVNZ is concerned, every single thing that we put onto our platforms, whether it be broadcast or any of our channels right through to TVNZ plus or our website, we are very considered and deliberate. We have extraordinary, extraordinary commissioners in this room. You can go and see them tomorrow. And we have incredible platform, experts who choose and curate everything we do. But it really is vital to point out that it is a safe environment. You can watch a news item about, you know, a political person in America being shot and it be a safe, impartial, you know, news report. I can jump on TikTok and watch him being, you know, being shot through the neck, you know, within 30s. That is not, to me, a safe environment. And I think that's something that really does set New Zealand media apart from big tech. And I I'm, I'm very supportive. But I know that the company, TVNZ as an organization wants our young tamariki and rangatahi to be absolutely safe and we want to provide them kick ass content that is inspiring and ambitious and, you know, gets them excited about living here in Aotearoa. So I guess I think about it a bit differently. First of all, I guess as a business, we're very diversified. So, you know, directly to us, we're not we're not too affected. But also, I think it's so important for your kids to have access to to things that connect with them. And, you know, you can't necessarily always get that from from one environment. I think, you know, on YouTube. But it also it also gives your kids a tool or a capability to build their own business to wanted to to be aware of the world and how to how to exist in this world. I think that's really important to remove any dangerous content, for sure. I think the outright ban is not a good idea, but I think there are. But I think obviously protecting them from content that isn't good for them is a good thing. But I mean, yeah, there's you want to also, I guess the challenge is like, have your kids engage with content that’s relevant to your world, to your culture, to your values. And so it's very hard to do that purely through a broadcaster. And your kid's going to go wherever the hell they want to go in order to get the content. They want to engage with that means something to them that connects with them. And so, you know, media is a huge part of your identity. You know, when you think about today, how many of us refer to back to the Future or Teen Wolf or, you know, other things or The Goonies or the things that define who we are, they are defining moments in our lives. Right? And that's made us probably a lot of people. The reason why you're in this room today is because of your connection to media. So by also by taking that away or by taking away your ability to express themselves in a safe environment, I think you're also removing opportunity and you're also removing, you know, ways for them to think differently, to think more broadly and not be, you know, too isolated in the way that they see the world. So I think that should be a happy medium. I think outright blocking is not a good idea. But yeah, what is the perfect solution? I can't answer that. And it seems like it's trial and error. Like everything in the digital world. Like Jesser wouldn't exist. It was banned in his country. He wouldn't exist. Mr Beast wouldn't exist if it was banned in his country. They both. You know, he's built a multi-billion dollar business. It just wouldn't exist. Mark Rebel wouldn't exist. A lot of things wouldn't exist if you did this. And so in many ways, you're also removing opportunity. But equally, a lot of things do exist because Facebook allows it to be there. You know? So, I mean, you can argue it both ways. I. Think YouTube is the most safe. Facebook less so, TikTok less so, Snapchat less so. But YouTube is a very different story. We've been graced with all these amazing new technologies and platforms and tools and, data that allows us to cut through, but we still get assailed by the same issues that we've always had monetization and discoverability from both your perspectives. How are we moving forward on that? Well, as I spoke to earlier, we, on an enormous journey to ensure that we have a very, very strong future. And that absolutely is about ensuring we can effectively measure our audience, deliver advertising against that for our clients and, but also diversify our revenue streams. And you've seen all media companies do this. And so we announced earlier this year, which is so incredible because, by the way, it was just like a few weeks before I started. And then I found out that the kickass team at TVNZ had secured the rights to FIFA, the FIFA World Cup. And I was like, awesome. That's pretty cool. I know right? And as part of that, we will be launching a pay proposition. So that's really unique for our business. We know that it's a saturated market from a subscription point of view. But you know, what are the moments that New Zealanders will want to engage with? We've also experienced a huge boost in audience with things like cricket and whatnot. I do think we need to look at other opportunities regarding monetization. People often think that media is in decline. I have been in media myself for 25 years. I've never seen a more engaged and strong audience. So every single day a million people consume, one news at six, a million people, you know, and that's across platforms. That's incredible. And yet we somehow say that, you know, there's a lack of trust in news, for example, but not really because people are coming to view it equally for some of our most incredible programs, Country Calendar is still here, still legendary and still remarkable. Steve’s got it on his watch list because I was like, Shit have you seen this? It's gangsta. You need to get it bloody. It's still so bloody good. Right. And I think one thing that we don't do as well as we could be doing, it's probably just stealing a, you know, taking a leaf from your book, what is the ecosystem and how do we absolutely rinse that for ourselves and for all of our, the brands that we're creating or the content that we're creating? How do we look at every tiny little inch of of what that environment is and really sort of position positioning it in a way that has lots of, monetary value of a monetary value attached to it. And it's not sometimes money. That right. It could be the halo effect driving into new content. It could be investment in a new and a new project. I saw where Dan is in the, studio, one of the producers of Tinā, which is the most amazing film. And I know that was a small budget Hi Dan. And, you know, the reality is, look at that incredible slingshot now. And, well, this will probably be the last time we ever see him. He'll be, like, winning an Oscar and then living in America, right? No, but it's just like, you know, it's that kind of stuff that really kind of, drives and develops and grows. New Zealand as a global brand as well, sorry I've gone off piste a bit, but you get what I mean. So I think going back to the question about, you know, awareness and revenue, you know, domestically it makes absolute sense to partner with, with TVNZ because, you know, you're one of the best at, driving awareness in this country. Right. But you know, but also you have the rest of the world that you can engage with now, you know, on YouTube. So you want to be thinking parallel with these two things. You also want to be imagining that you guys have these brilliant ideas, these amazing capabilities. And essentially, you know, by going through broadcasters only, you're running a B2B business. But these days, the content and the creator economy is a B2C business, right. You want to be going directly to your customer, directly to consumer, directly to that audience. And so if you've got a great idea, you want to get it out there and you're waiting with the piece of paper, you know, to stand in line for a meeting with somebody, say, hey, this is a great idea. And all the stepping stones and all the processes to get there takes so long versus you can release one video and go from one to many people, that could be 100, could be a thousand, could be 10,000, could be a million per video. Who knows? But you're going to get a much better understanding of what works, what doesn't, and why, and how to rapidly scale and adjust your strategy in order to define what the successful outcome is, what character works, what genre works, what you know, what location works. And then the second part is, yeah, that's one aspect of it. There's many more we can go into, but not enough time is revenue. You know, the future of this space. As you know, your budgets are much lower than what they were. You know, it's much harder to, to grab money from, from these different places because brands aren’t spending that money on broadcast networks as much as they were moved more to digital first direct because they're getting a better or more measurable return on investment. And so, you know, therefore, you have to think about how else to generate revenue. It can't just be from funding, you know, what else can you do? What else can you pull out of of the values that you've created, you know, other than just ad revenue on these platforms? I've got a question which is we recently heard a statistic which is that 65% of the content viewed on YouTube is consumed by only 25% of its audience. What would you say to that? That's a really interesting stat. Is that just all like Trump followers, or what? I would say that’s someone who, probably doesn't have access to great data. Not me. No, I’m not saying that’s you. Sick burn. I just, I wherever I came from, you have great data. You have, you have a part in this. Sorry. That wasn't meant to be directed at you. It was the BBC. whoever created that that quotes. I was about to say this was collaboration in action. Yeah. French media intelligence. I'd be looking into who funded that, that report. And then you'd understand what their objective is and where that information comes from. We'll do this panel next year, right? Great. Okay. We'll break it down. This conference is very much themed around solutions because we're moving forward through issues. It strikes me that what you're bringing to to the world is an entrepreneurial vision of how to shake up a traditional broadcasting industry. How do we get that mindset infused in the industry in perpetuity? Great question. So, you know, on the strategic advisory side of our business, we do a lot of workshops with many different organizations all around the world. And one of the biggest ways to bring about this change is, you know, through culture, right? And your perception of what's right, what's wrong. And it has to come from the top. So I don't know how big your organizations are in this room, you know? But, you know, if you're a larger organization, you need to work out how to influence the person who makes those decisions to bring them in that decision making process. So often in a in a workshop environment, we know that one person doesn't really believe in it and they don't believe in it cos they don't understand it. That's why they're not educated. So they're afraid to make decisions, are afraid to say the wrong thing or sound stupid. So you want to find that person who does not understand, who does, who's afraid, and bring them deep into the conversation. Bring them into that workshop, educate them, inform them, inspire them because they'll become the catalyst for change. They'll be the person who wants to bring people, who wants to make a difference. And that's how you do it. And if you're an individual, then it's you. You have to make that change and you have to believe that this is possible. You have to educate yourself because that is the only way you going to go about this. And all the information is there and accessible for you to do. And Nadia you're very much the outlier in your organization in terms of being the - The newbie. Oh the Changeling. Well, I would actually just say that, New Zealand is already there. Everything from Halter to Peter Beck and Rocket Lab, like, we're pretty, pretty amazing, you know, in terms of what we do and how we operate as entrepreneurs. And I think that, TVNZ certainly, I mean, what attracted me to working for this organization is its belief in the future, and it is leading that pathway. And I truly believe that it is world class and setting a new standard for broadcasting. And when I say broadcasting, I mean, you know, video content businesses, and it's true in the traditional sense, and it is absolutely evolving. That hurts. I wrote down a note earlier, which was we're changing shape. Someone said it earlier, we're changing shape at the moment, which was a very good point. We, the media industry is going through enormous change, which hurts. And, you know, it's devastating to lose people from the business and contract. But we are changing shape. So what does it look like? It means becoming smaller and doing things in different ways. But I think that makes us more creative. The most creative I've ever been was when I've had absolutely no budget. But you got to make it happen. And I think that that's something that we really need to think about. Just a closing comment for me it is, you know, New Zealand is like Australians we share, you know, the underdog or, you know, punching above your weight. Right. New Zealand is so exceptional at that. Look at your football team they’re amazing humans. They are, really amazing. But I wish I was. One of them. And our NRL team’s good too. Yes. Well you yeah. You, you guys kick ass in all sports. But yeah, the point is, like, going alone is very difficult. But the only way you're really going to succeed is by governing, galvanizing change together, by unifying in how you're going to how you're going to approach. You're very good at pulling together as a team. You're very good as a country, you know, at unifying your beliefs. And, you know, your connection to culture is extraordinary. It’s some of the probably the best in the world? Really. So if you want to win in this space, you need to pull together. You need to help each other out because you're not competing with each other. You're competing with the world. And so that is the way that you will win. And I definitely believe a country like this and a culture like this can do that. And that is a beautiful way, a beautiful sentiment to end this session on and this day. Thank you both very much for your insights and wisdom. And I feel like the the future of media is bright and very safe in your hands. Thank you.