The Future of Television: Alex Mahon's Vision for Transforming Media

Announcer:

Today on Building the Open Metaverse.

Alex Mahon:

How can people find sources where they do trust the news? They do trust fact? Have they got brand loyalty there? I think those are really important questions for public service broadcasters, where arguably public service broadcasting is more important in that world rather than less.

There's still big businesses, so to be interested in this environment, you've got to love change and be looking at the crossover.

Announcer:

Welcome to Building the Open Metaverse where technology experts discuss how the community is building the open metaverse together, hosted by Patrick Cozzi and Marc Petit.

Marc Petit:

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Building the Open Metaverse, season six, the podcast that showcases the community of artists, developers, researchers, executives, and entrepreneurs who are building the internet of tomorrow. My name is Marc Petit and my co-host is Patrick Cozzi. Patrick is still on the other side of the planet running his company, so I'll be on my own today.

I have the immense pleasure to welcome Alex Mahon, a true pioneer, and catalyst for change in the media industry. Before I welcome Alex, I want to give a little bit of a background. Alex made history as the first female CEO of both the VFX software company, The Foundry, that we all know very well, and the UK broadcaster Channel 4.

At The Foundry, Alex helped drive innovations like virtual production, and we know how important that is, and that is reshaping how movies and TV shows are created. Then at Channel 4, Alex led a major digital transformation while expanding the national presence of the broadcaster. All of this to help hold its unique public service mission.

Those who know Alex describe her as having the sharpest intellect and the boldest vision to embrace reinvention. She leads with passion, purpose, progressiveness, and an ability to unite diverse perspectives. I wrote that because I've experienced this, and I believe it. She's a self-described agent of change. Her impact across the technology and media landscape has been pivotal, and it's a fantastic honor to have her joining us today to discuss the future of television in the era of special computing and social gaming. Alex, welcome to the show.

Alex Mahon:

Thank you very much, Marc; you've made me sound so good in that introduction. I think we should just stop the show here.

Marc Petit:

Look, this is going to get even better, and it's a pleasure to see you again. As you know, our listeners like to know who are those people who are building the future. Can we go over your background? I remember that you have a PhD in Medical Physics from the Imperial College of London.

First of all, can you remind us what Medical Physics is?

Alex Mahon:

Well, medical physics is kind of the application of physics to medicine, so that's kind of obvious, isn't it? But it's looking inside bodies, normally, sometimes smaller bits of bodies using scanners. Medical physicists build things that do diagnostic imaging, so nuclear medicine, radiation technology.

If you think of the machines when you go into a hospital, x-ray machine, ultrasound machine, magnetic resonance imaging machine, computer tomography scanners. It's kind of like taking physics, which is obviously the best science, and then applying it to medicine to look inside the body in ways that we simply couldn't before it existed.

Marc Petit:

So, you're a real nerd.

Alex Mahon:

Yeah, I am a nerd. I'm not ashamed on this podcast to say I'm a nerd.

Marc Petit:

How did you end up in television production, producing TV shows and RTL, Free Mental Media? Ultimately, you led one of the bigger TV production companies called the Shine Group for nine years. 

How did you transition from Medical Physics to television?

Alex Mahon:

I did a physics PhD, and then it was the nineties. Do you remember when the internet was big the first time? Actually, the way I hopped from science to business and media was because, at that time, they really needed people who knew about the internet, businesses didn't know about the internet, media businesses really didn't know about the internet, and they were all trying to transition. I kind of used my knowledge of that to get into business.

I love television. I have always loved television. I love watching TV; I love watching films. Once I found that I was in that industry and that it was a real job, I kind of adored it. I also like change, as you said in your intro. I like the digital change that is happening in our industry, even though, of course, sometimes it's very scary. It's changing fast, but I like the combination of those things.

Marc Petit:

Can you remind us of the kind of TV shows that the Shine Group was producing under your leadership? These are major household names, right?

Alex Mahon:

The most global show would be MasterChef because everyone watches that. That's made in 70 countries. That's a classic television show, cooking show, but really a competitive format. Before that, I worked at a company that made things like Price Is Right and Idol and Got Talent. Later at Shine we made shows like The Bridge in Scandinavia, those kind of big Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish dramas that traveled the world, all kinds of things.

Now at Channel 4, we make shows like The Great British Bake Off, shows that are a bit more fun like Naked Attraction, and then we make lots of films as well. We just were at the Oscars and we won six Oscars for Zone Of Interest and for Poor Things. There's a real range of things. Obviously this job in Channel 4 is UK, but lots of what I've done has been global.

Marc Petit:

Let's go back to 2015 when we met; you became the CEO of The Foundry, a well-known leading visual effects software company. What attracted you there?

Alex Mahon:

Before I got asked about going there, I’d just read Ready Player One. That kind of opened my mind hugely to thinking about a world that I hadn't known about before, kind of that computer vision 3D game engine world, and how that digital world might blend with some of the real-world normal television and film that I'd been doing before.

I suppose because I'd read that novel... The film wasn't as good as the novel in my view. Because I'd read that, I kind of had my mind a lot more alive to the possibilities of what 3D might mean and what that digital world might mean. I was fascinated to go to it because it was sort of back to my roots of being a physicist, a scientist, obviously, it was all computer vision. What amazed me was the concept that there was another sector of creativity in the market.

The VFX and software business also saw itself as the most important part of creativity in our industry, just as directors do, or writers do, that concept that there's another part of the value chain where people are just as passionate about the work they do, and it makes just as much difference on screen to what the viewers see. So, it was a different part of the business, but obviously, there are many parallels to the kind of creative work I've been doing before.

Marc Petit:

How did your experience at The Foundry shape your perspectives on the role of technology in the future of media?

Alex Mahon:

I suppose what it really made me realize and pay much more attention to was how the world was changing from a consumer perspective in terms of what people wanted to watch and were prepared to watch.

In the UK, and globally, but in the UK, people watch about five hours of video a day. But it's fundamentally different for young people than it is for the average person, whether that's gaming or whether that's short form. For me, it was about the realization that with more and more free time, the amount of time that people were prepared to spend watching video and playing games was only going up and that there was huge passion for that. It was not all about live action.

For the young, in a modern nowadays environment, that had really, really changed to, say, 20 or 30 years ago when I grew up, when gaming was a much smaller segment of society.

Marc Petit:

You are one of the few women CEOs in the media tech industry. What were some of the challenges or opportunities that you encountered in that role?

Alex Mahon:

The opportunities are there, right? There are great things, like you stand out, and everyone remembers you, for good or bad; there's good stuff. There's really good stuff with that. The challenges can be complex, but I got to say that in tech particularly, my experience has not been hugely negative.

I'm quite lucky because I came from a physics background. If you've done seven or eight years of physics, people tend to accept that as a legitimate qualification. That really, really helps. Because they assume that you can add up, they assume you've got some competence, and therefore, it's not really sexism against you. Also, the media industry has a lot of women in it compared to physics, maybe not compared to some other sectors, but I have not found that to be a massive blocker. I've been fortunate that I've been very senior for a long time. I got quite senior quite young, and I'm quite outspoken. If I think someone's misbehaving, I've tended to be able to call it out, and I've had the power to do that, and that power is a big advantage.

Marc Petit:

A few years later, your home industry called you back, and you became the first female CEO of Channel 4.

When you joined Channel 4, what were the core priorities in terms of digital transformation and keeping up with the changes that you started to talk about?

Alex Mahon:

Channel 4 is a network; there are about 12 television channels. It's a group of networks. It's the second commercial player in the market in the UK, but like all networks globally, it has the same challenge, broadly technology and the internet and change. If you think that in the past 10, 15 years, what we've seen from a consumer perspective is two huge changes.

One has been really the rise of Netflix and then other streamers that came after it. The second thing has been the rise of YouTube. Since we had the iPhone in 2006, 2007, that fundamentally changed the creator economy and YouTube. Both of those things, streamers, subscription video on demand, and YouTube have fundamentally changed the consumer picture. What networks need to do sounds obvious, but it's super difficult; they need to switch from the traditional business, which is linear or live television broadcasting, and they need to switch to digital and streaming because the consumer, you, me, everyone we know wants to watch what they want, when they want, ideally for free, often on their own.

If you want to watch your iPad in bed at night and not speak to anyone, that's normal. That means a change of business model, means you have to change how you market things, you have to change what you make, you need to change how you make money. It's the same as the internet 20 years ago for retailers, but it doesn't mean that it's easy to do. It's easy to end up turning into Kodak and ignoring digital, and that's what many networks are doing. That was the big challenge: how do you switch the business model from the old business, which, if you've been doing it for 30 or 40 years, it's got quite easy, to the new business before it's too late?

We are now leading the world as Channel 4 because about 30% of our money is from digital advertising, and only now about 60% is from linear or traditional advertising. That's way ahead of the market because we're not a subscription video on demand business. We're transferring that viewing to streaming and digital and then making money from it in the streaming and digital landscape, all from advertising.

It's hard to do, though, because you have to change everyone's historic behaviors. But it's obvious that that's the right answer because that's how consumers want to watch.

Marc Petit:

You talked about the shifting of habits. We, I know, have a little bit of perspective back on the pandemic, were there real shifts of behaviors through the pandemic?

Alex Mahon:

Yeah, the pandemic was horrendous in Britain because we were legally mandated not to move more than two miles from our house, and we weren't allowed to be outside. In every country, it was the same, but everyone was locked inside watching television. We had this very peculiar situation as a business where there was no advertising; what would you advertise as an advertiser?

There was no ability to make shows because we couldn't get large groups of people together. We couldn't shoot anything. But all that people wanted to do was watch television. We did the opposite to some people. We started spending money on really experimental ways of working, making television. 

We made a daily cooking show where we had the chef filming himself at home on his iPhone with his children helping him cook, Jamie Oliver, one of the most famous chefs here. We did a real estate show where we sent dogs equipped with 3D cameras through people's homes to do little tours. We made all kinds of things, some dreadful, some desperate things. We did lots of stuff to provide fresh content to the audiences.

It was interesting because viewing went up; people cared about television and saw it. Suddenly, television became the only place to get information, to get truth-validated information on the news. News ratings went off the charts. But after about two years of the pandemic peak, business returned to normal. In fact, advertising's been really hard here for the past couple of years because it turns out we had a post-pandemic peak in the market, and now we're back to normal times.

Marc Petit:

Even the video gaming industry is now going through that.

Alex Mahon:

Well, it's a kind of correction, isn't it? Because I don't think anyone knew. We didn't realize at the time that post-pandemic, we were in a little bubble where people were spending the money they hadn't spent.

Marc Petit:

Let's go back to a bit of technology. What immersive or interactive technology have you seen as most viable to integrate traditional TV and the new world of video content?

Alex Mahon:

I've got to admit, and you know it, I haven't seen a lot that has blown me away yet. I'm still a strong believer that there will be a metaverse and that we will end up with the technology and the payment systems in place that allow for that, I do believe that.

I suppose I believe it because all I see is that people love watching video, and they love being more immersed in it, that they love great sound, that they love big screens, and that they love playing games with headphones on, with wraparound screens.

Logically, that leads me to think people will want to spend more time in those worlds. There are device challenges until we get to a place where that's easy to do. If we talk about design or creativity, I haven't yet seen formats that really work and are designed for those worlds.

We saw, of course, The Last of Us is the biggest TV show. But the thing is, for me, it's a great show. The Last of Us is like IP marketing, isn't it? It could be Barbie, it could be Lego. Hopefully, your fans don't care that I've made Last of Us like Barbie or Lego, but it's a traditional licensing of a piece of IP; really well done, really well done. It's not a fundamental crossover that changes how you think about the medium. 

Maybe Epic and Disney will do that with their new deal, and maybe once we really change things with generative AI for video, that will change things as well. My prediction would be that once that gets easy to use, we will see a leap up in the kind of content created in the same way that we did with YouTube when the iPhone made it really easy for people to create and edit.

I haven't seen anything that's fundamentally made me think that's different, have you?

Marc Petit:

It's actually interesting to see that social watching did not take off, either.

Alex Mahon:

I'm not surprised by that because that's like when people invented loads of second screen applications. It's like if we're doing something on a second screen, we're doing something different.

Marc Petit:

During the pandemic, I ran with Karen Dufilho, an animation festival in Fortnite, and we realized that even though we had no original content, we had a very fair amount of viewership, 8 million people to see pieces of animation they already knew. The thing is, Fortnite would allow a little bit of co-experience because you emote and you could chat. You had the chat, and then you had this notion of emoting and reacting. It's not the full co-presence, which is some of the promises of the metaverse that you and I would feel in the same room watching the same thing.

Actually, I've seen some pretty interesting Apple Vision Pro demos recently of people doing things together. I think it will take that layer of co-experience for the social element to take off.

Alex Mahon:

I think that's a really good question about whether co-experience is simultaneous or not. What we're seeing in television is two things, so there's too much supply, there's too many shows. There's too many shows to even remember what you're meant to watch. What happens is people get decision paralysis, they get fear of missing out, and they revert to simpler choices because the anxiety of making the wrong choice becomes overwhelming.

That's why you get things like people watching Friends again and again and again, or people watching Suits, which is clearly not that good, but they know what the payoff is. When you're faced with, "I could pick these 10 things, but I don't know if any of them are any good, I don't want to waste my time," you revert to here's a known payoff even if it's a lower payoff than what I might get.

You also get people wanting to try new things, and then you get these new phenomena that are waves, and 10 million people watch. When they're going to get the new things, or the exciting things, or the big drops, Wednesday on Netflix, or something, people don't need to watch it at the same time. They just need to watch it in a period that feels semi-simultaneous. You just want to be on that trend at a similar time to people.

I think about that in the future metaverse; I'm not sure that people need to be doing something together in that, but maybe they need to be able to comment on it in a similar time period. I can see that if you were in a game and you had significant scripted chunks of the game that had been created with video generative AI and that with their own sort of scripted storylines, more like an adventure game used to be, that would be really attractive.

You're going off, you're in game, or you're in the game IP, and you're watching something for 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes, and other people can have those journeys. I can see that working. I don't think you need to be watching that together with someone else at the same time. If you had a format like a physical game show where you could use your skills to win something and you are immersed in it, so a much more modern version of a farming game or a jumping game or what does Wii Fit become in that environment where your skills matter, your gaming skills matter, where you can ladder up or go up a leaderboard. I can see that working. Like a Zelda, but you're physically doing it more.

That would work, wouldn't it? Why wouldn't you play that? Why wouldn't that be exciting?

Maybe there, the simultaneity would be a leaderboard like traditional gaming. That's like a better version of Jeopardy or The Price Is Right or something. I can see those things working. But I'm not sure that the answer will be a festival or those kinds of music pop-up stunts where there's a concert in Minecraft or in Roblox. Because I'm not sure that that version of doing it is better than just watching the concert on a straight television.

I'm always thinking, "What's the use case where it's better to be in that world and do it?"

Marc Petit:

We had talked about co-experience, co-presence, I think gamification. We are all used now to having leaderboards and progression and getting rewards for doing things. We haven't seen the streamers do; you watch half of The Mandalorian and you get a skin to play, you get a Grogu skin to play with. It actually could be part of the basis of the Epic Disney relationship, like unifying and getting progression across Disney+ theme parks.

It's pure speculation. I left Epic some time ago, so I can't talk about it because I don't have that information. But unifying the theme park experience, the streaming experience, and the gaming experience into one account with progression, leaderboard, keeping your friends and your social graph along with you.

Alex Mahon:

It's really interesting, isn't it? That concept of fandom; I was in the Disney parks last week in Florida. I went to the Hollywood Park, and you go to the Star Wars area and it's like the ultimate combination of fandom, right? You've got Disney fans, Star Wars fans, and I was just thinking, "Wow, there's lots of people here who just come here to be dressed up and to be in this environment."

It's almost like the physical embodiment of a game when you see those fans who are there. The concept that people might want to unify those worlds is really interesting, isn't it? I don't know if people are different people in the real world versus how they are in-game, but it's an interesting thought of whether people want to bring those together.

Marc Petit:

I think this digital world is teaching us that we can have multiple personas and that we behave differently on different platforms.

Alex Mahon:

Identity is different in those environments.

Marc Petit:

This must be fascinating because we talk about this convergence, so much technology, and yet broadcasting is a relatively conservative industry; maybe public broadcasting in the UK is even more conservative.

How did you approach transforming and changing those organizations? In hindsight, can you share some insight about what worked and did not work in terms of driving some pretty intense transformation of the way people need to think about video.

Alex Mahon:

We are not conservative on air; we're like a super risky brand. We're known for being really noisy, really troublemaking, quite on the edge on air. That's what we're famous for. I therefore thought that the company would be much more innovative internally, and they are in terms of creativity, we are in terms of creativity. But when it came to that question of, "How do you make the digital leap?" When I arrived, which is now six or seven years ago, I was quite surprised because it's very normal for a broadcaster to just look at your traditional broadcast competition.

I would say, "Show me the chart of market share. How are we doing?" And I'd see the chart, and it would say, "We're just fine." And then I would go, "Oh, but Netflix isn't on this chart." They'd say, "No, we don't look at it like that."

I'd go, "But what about YouTube?" "No, we don't look at it like that." So that's very common if you're in organizations that are, Channel 4 is now 40 years old, it's really young for a broadcaster, but it's quite an old organization. You start to look at things like they are for the company, not like they are for the consumer.

The hard thing was getting people to mentally switch to, "Okay, but we need to start looking at it like that." Maybe the breakthrough was to say, "Well, does everyone believe if we look at streaming hours and the percentage of the day people spend doing things, does everyone believe that at some point this will be 50/50, 50% traditional, 50% digital streaming?" And then, if you say, "What about you? What about you? Oh yeah, okay, okay."

Everyone believes it'll be 50/50, yes, so it will tip, yes. Okay, so now we're only arguing about the year, right? You all think it's going to happen. You can say it's going to be 2030, 2040. The truth is it's this year; this year it tips to 51/49 for the average UK consumer. Six years ago the fight, if you like, or our battle, was to persuade people that it was going to tip.

Now, then, you go, how do we change our behavior as an organization to be ready for that? It's hard because it's scary for people because it involves moving away from your old business model to a new, unknown business model, which, by definition, tends to be harder.

It's the same with companies that needed to move to SaaS, isn't it? It's the same way in gaming, where people need to move to download, not hardware. That's the crossover and the breakthrough. But that was the difficult bit. As usual, I underestimated how much work that would take, but I'm very pleased that we've done it now and that that's been the big switch.

Marc Petit:

You seem to be still fighting the fight at the level of industry. You very publicly recently talked very directly about the generational time bomb and said that broadcasters are fighting for their business lives.

Alex Mahon:

Yeah, that didn't make me that popular.

Marc Petit:

Well, you know. I think you were right. I think it's probably something that's happening. We'll ask you to take your crystal ball out.

How do you envision immersive media experiences and how they would blend with the traditional world and broadcasters?

Alex Mahon:

I'm quite focused on the question of if you're a teenager now, how complex are things? Particularly with social media and the complexity of real-world meetups versus online only. If you look at young people, about 45% of the content they're viewing is short form. A significant portion of that is algorithmically served. What does it mean for the human mind when everything you're viewing is served to you, not chosen? That is a significant difference. How do people feel?

We did a big kind of survey about how people feel about that kind of content. How do they emotionally feel after they've been watching it? That kind of endless doom scroll actually makes people feel vacuous. They feel quite empty, they feel disappointed. Even if they originally chose to go on the platform, and that's mainly Instagram and TikTok. It's not all of their content, but it's mainly that.

It's interesting to me that young people can recognize that, and that they are now beginning to recognize that feeling, and that the dopamine hit fades very, very fast; they're left feeling negative. About 19% of young people have, at least temporarily, switched off social media to try and reduce that impact.

Alongside that, you've got the other phenomenon of people wanting trust of anything, the battle now being for trust. How can people find sources where they do trust the news? They do trust facts? Have they got brand loyalty there? Do they know how to source that? I think those are really important questions for public service broadcasters, where arguably public service broadcasting is more important in that world rather than less.

Even though there's so much choice, to be in a world where you are providing trusted information, fact-checked information, is possibly a more important role in society than in the past when there weren't so many dangerous sources. Though, to make the switch to making content in those worlds, you need to partner. Because in general, I don't see lots of people in traditional film or television or networks who are interested in how you make content that works in that environment. You'll know that from this, most people you talk to probably aren't from those traditional backgrounds. They're still big businesses, so to be interested in this environment, you've got to love change and be looking at the crossover.

I think we'll need to partner to do that, my industry will need to partner. Certainly for us, a lot of what we did was we were the first to partner with Snap, we were the first to partner with TikTok.

We're the only broadcaster that I know of putting out long-form content on YouTube and partnering with them. You have to go to the platforms where people are spending time, not think that you can magically solve that without them. They know how consumers consume on their platforms and why they work for them. So, I think the change will come from partnerships like that. I don't believe broadcasters will do it on their own.

Marc Petit:

Television used to be that window into a shared reality. If you don't watch television, you don't have a shared reality with the rest of your constituents. It used to be, up until now, a very fundamental role to create that common reality.

Alex Mahon:

I think people still look to broadcasters for that in the key national moments. If something really bad happens or if there's a really big piece of news, you switch on the television. But I think the truth is that people get their news now from so many places. Now, it might not be what you and I define as traditional news, it's certainly not what our parents would've said of buying the newspaper, but there's no evidence that younger people will revert to traditional media consumption. For them, news is ambient. Their entire world is news. Constant alerts and knowledge.

The definition of news for them is much wider. It's not what we might refer to as comms and media and politics, and that's a societal choice; who am I to say whether that's better or worse news? I think you raise an interesting point of what is knitting a nation together. Co-viewing is actually on the decline.

Co-viewing together as a family or as a group is dramatically reducing because we all have our own screens. I still think there's a desire, maybe a stronger desire, to be on trend and to be doing the same things as other people. It's just that the window has expanded a bit from being live and immediate.

Marc Petit:

The fragmentation of the window, I think you touched base on this, there is an issue of trust, not all sources are equally trustworthy. As a parent, for example, I find it difficult.

Alex Mahon:

Trust is the major issue. In fact, Edelman does this Trust Barometer every year; I think they've done it for 30 years. Trust in governments has declined, and trust in NGOs has declined. Trust in the media has declined. At the moment, this year, trust in business is higher than those things, but that's only because trust everywhere else is so low and that's causing issues. That's causing issues of, of course, echo chambers, and it's causing issues of democratic disengagement because people haven't seen democracy work.

On the positive, younger people have good knowledge about how to fact check. They don't always use it, but they do know not to trust all sources of information.

Marc Petit:

Switch gear a little bit. We touched base on generative AI. You mentioned that creativity was one of the pillars of the people at Channel 4. So, as we see more technology, how do we keep humans and human creativity at the center of the content creation process to retain that quality of storytelling, that quality of content creation?

Alex Mahon:

If you watch that sort of latest Sora output of all those movies or little snippets, which are amazing, I watched them all. I'm not sure that any of them I needed, or any of them will remain with me. They're incredible work. But will I really go away thinking, "Oh, the man with the balloon as his head fundamentally changed my life in terms of its story?"

I still think that you need humans to do those stories because I think that's where it comes from, is a creative brain of new things being put together, not necessarily a reconfiguration of existing things. I think the audience tends to switch over time. We have lots and lots of scripted, and then a new thing comes; we have lots of game shows, and then a new thing comes. I tend to believe that that's what we look for is the next wave of human creativity. Maybe I'm just a sort of pathetic optimist who thinks that that's how it will be, but that's what I've seen so far. Those things come just as you're not expecting them.

Marc Petit:

Yeah. No, that Sora video was surprising in quality, but as you said, it's building up on a very simple idea.

Alex Mahon:

It's amazing tech, but the man with the balloon head–great. But I didn't spend the day thinking, "Wow, that story really touched me." I thought, "This was technically incredible."

Marc Petit:

Yeah, I think it's changed the productivity equation of content creation, and certainly the economics; it will allow people to create more user-generated content.

Alex Mahon:

But to your point, it changes the economics and it changes the productivity, but we already have too much content. The content that's going to cut through. We have already too much. We can't watch it all. The content that’s going to cut through is something that's super well-marketed or catches a trend.

Of course, that's the simultaneity point. We all end up watching things that aren't that good because other people are watching them. Fine, that's normal. Or the things that are fundamentally a step change in terms of storytelling. So I think that continues to win out. If anything, you've got to be better because it's so much money to make content.

I tend to think it'll be the best things. In the old adage, nobody knows anything. Nobody knows what's going to work. Those things, like this year, the movies we saw at the Oscars were completely different from the movies we saw the year before; that's what will tend to happen. Now, I think productivity will mean that when we have a metaverse, the content there can be created by different kinds of people. 

Maybe that's the interesting thing is that you unlock video creators in a really different way.

Marc Petit:

I also want to touch base on a topic that I know is very near and dear to your heart: diversity and sustainability. You've been a very, very vocal advocate, but you've also made them a priority in your leadership roles. Tell us about how you have approached initiatives and the kind of commitment you made to increasing diversity on Channel 4, both on screen and behind the scenes.

Alex Mahon:

I'm lucky in that it's a big part of what Channel 4 seems to do, and I already cared about this. That's good. Haven't come new to the party. As an organization, we're about 60% female. We're about 20% people of color, 21% disability, and high representation LGBT, well above the population, so about 12%. That's great. The big change I've made, I suppose, is to make that the same throughout the organization, to measure what we are as the top 100, so 100 people, most highly paid, and make sure that we had that representation there, not just at the lower end of the company.

That took me about five years of fighting for, actually, because it involves a lot of change in terms of how we recruit, how we measure and publish that to staff, what kind of targets we want to set ourselves, how we long list jobs, how we shortlist jobs, who recruits for us, and whether we're just recruiting from our own network of known people, which is, of course, the easy thing to do.

That's made a big difference and it's made a big difference to talk about it. It's made a big difference with what we've done on air. We've made this huge range of shows about menopause, which has really changed older women's working possibilities in the UK. Now, 50,000 other employees across the UK have had those policies rolled out to them. That's made a big difference. It's made a big difference to people on air.

HRT, which is the medication for menopause, has gone off the charts through sales in the UK because we made these shows, done a whole day of black programming. We're most famous in the world for broadcasting the Paralympics. We're the biggest broadcaster of the Paralympics in the year in the world. That's a big deal because we get to do those things where representation matters, and we get to make a difference because the public watch it, as well as what we can do in our own organization.

But it comes with risks. We had an alternative Christmas broadcast about the rise of antisemitism in this country, which has been huge since Israel-Gaza began. But obviously, those are difficult topics. They're difficult topics to speak out on. We've made a set of different programs about trans and what are some of the questions we should be asking as a society. Neither pro or anti, but just what are some of the things we need to think about? They're not easy spaces to be in. And I would say, understandably, most people shy away from them rather than plow headlong into them.

It takes a bit of editorial knowledge and a brave team.

Marc Petit:

Can you also discuss some of Channel 4's environmental initiatives and your philosophy on the industry's role in climate action?

Alex Mahon:

For us, look, the biggest changes we can make are twofold. One is what we call the scope three emissions, which are our suppliers, like the vast majority of emissions we cause are through our suppliers. People who make shows for us. That is really pushing now to do things like, "Where does the energy on set come from? How are you fueling the generators?" The basics of when you go on a set to shoot something. "How are people traveling to set?" Which actually goes to, "Where are you hiring your crews from? Are you traveling people across the world to do that, or across the nation?"

There's sort of the basics of breaking down what our business is into, what are the practical differences you can take to reduce emissions. It's easy to do that in the building, right? It's easy to do that with stuff. The difficult thing is when people are making things on set. That's a big commitment for us.

And the other big thing is what we can do on air. Making shows that make it simpler for the public to make a difference. We just had a show with a broadcaster here called Chris Packham of Is It Time to Break the Law? Is it time now, with the climate, to go out and break the law in terms of protest? That gets us in a bit of trouble.

We made a big advertising campaign for that set of shows where we had politicians soiling themselves, saying, "We're all worried about our carbon footprint, but are they worried about their carbon skid mark?" That got me into a lot of trouble because our point was the consumer can make some difference, but the real people that can make a difference are politicians and big business people. That's where the decisions can be made that are systemic, that will change things for us. And we're trying now to work on what's the simple messaging for all of us as consumers that this is about.

It's about how you heat your house, it's about what you eat, it's about what you throw away, and it's about how you get to and from work. Those are the decisions that we can all make differently that might make an impact. We're approaching it from a few different angles, but I think we're trying to put that at the heart of our communication strategy because some of this stuff isn't that complicated, but yet it's quite hard to decipher as a consumer. What can we do to make that a bit simpler?

Marc Petit:

Well, another act of bravery.

Alex Mahon:

Yeah, let's see. I got in trouble for the carbon skid mark. But it was fun trouble.

Marc Petit:

I still have to think through this concept.

Alex Mahon:

A brave team. Yeah, it's not pleasant.

Marc Petit:

Look, we're at the end now, and we usually ask the same question to close the conversation, which is, is there a person, an institution, or an organization that you would like to give a shout-out to today?

Alex Mahon:

My teams at Channel 4 are brave, clever, dedicated, and smart. Everything I do is possible because of them, and they deliver incredible things to the audience. So, for me, that's a gratitude to other people who do most of the work.

Marc Petit:

Alex, I want to thank you again for joining us today. Your candor and insights have been invaluable. As a pioneering woman, CEO, you clearly aren't afraid to speak up and tackle social issues head-on, whether it's striving for change at major media companies or advocating for diversity and sustainability. You have a bold vision and principled leadership to every challenge, and your ability to convince people, ask hard questions, and find innovative solutions is really inspiring.

Thank you for being with us today. The media industry is very lucky to have a trailblazer and an agent of change like yourself. Thanks for sharing your journey and perspective with us and we'll wish you best of luck.

Thank you also to our listeners, our ever-growing audience. We'd like to hear from you. You can hit us on socials, our LinkedIn page, and on our website buildingtheopenmetaverse.org.

Thank you very much, and we'll see you on the next episode of the podcast.

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