Have we hit peak TV? Plus, our debt to bees

Life and Art from FT Weekend

Forhecz Topher

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 601 Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, guest host Topher Forhecz is joined by Los Angeles bureau chief Chris Grimes to hear about the future of TV's streaming wars. Since the pandemic, streaming services have poured huge amounts of money into new content, but it's unclear how long this boom will last. Then, we talk to Nature Therapy columnist Jonathan Guthrie about bees. He's estimated that we owe bees nearly $160bn for their pollination services. What's at stake if we can't repay that debt?

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Want to stay in touch? We love hearing from you. Email us at [email protected]. We’re on Twitter @ftweekendpod, and Lilah is on Instagram and Twitter @lilahrap.

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Links and mentions from the episode:

– Chris Grimes’ piece on the peak of TV streaming: https://www.ft.com/content/0e95cf55-dda1-4f63-bb6b-bf475f974f30

– Jonathan Guthrie’s Nature Therapy column, ‘Our £135 bn debt to the humble bee’: https://www.ft.com/content/286dff35-9634-4fd7-9497-3d2de3a555a4

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Special offers for FT Weekend listeners can be found here: http://ft.com/weekendpodcast

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Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco

Clip from Prime Video.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Amazon debuted its new TV series,
0:06.9	The Lord of the Rings, the Rings of Power this week.
0:10.2	And the show looks, well, epic.
0:16.1	Evil does not sleep.
0:20.3	It winks. Beyond the darkness, 10. The devil does not sleep. It wins.
0:21.6	Beyond the darkness, tempting shadow, to barriers all beneath the mountain.
0:29.6	You can see just how much time and attention to detail was spent on it.
0:34.6	Even in the trailer, there are massive battle scenes, incredible costumes,
0:39.0	and stunning landscapes.
0:40.3	You have been told many lives of the middle earth.
0:51.3	And there's a very good reason why this show looks so good. It was extremely expensive to make.
0:57.3	So if you look at the two seasons that are planned for this so far, that's a billion-dollar show,
1:03.1	which I believe is a first. That's Chris Grimes. He's the FT's Los Angeles Bureau Chief
1:08.4	and covers all things Hollywood. Chris recently wrote about how Amazon isn't the only streaming service spending money like
1:14.9	crazy on their programming.
1:16.5	The new Game of Thrones season has just started on HBO Max, and that's a, you know,
1:23.0	that's a $200 million season for that show. And on and on, Disney's got a lot of big stuff coming out.
1:30.6	The Star Wars and Or series is coming out this autumn.
1:34.5	So it's going to be a big, big moment for consumers.
1:39.0	It's frankly extravagant budgets, which is kind of amazing.
1:44.7	But Chris says these boom times for show budgets may not last.
1:48.9	Theaters are producing big hits again, and a lot of streaming services aren't even getting
	...

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