Welcome back to TV Reload. My name's Benjamin Norris, and on this podcast I'll be going behind the scenes with the biggest players in television today. On the show, I have broadcasting and senior management consultant Tim Kluchus, who has over forty years experience in the TV business. Some of his career highlights include his role as executive producer of the nineties TV series Sex, where he challenged Australian audiences with taboo topics that gave us the answers to questions
we felt too embarrassed to ask. Feeling confident about Sex led to a show called Money, a hugely successful show which gave millions of Australians control and confidence over their finances in a world where ignorance was preyed upon by the powerful and corrupt. It'd be hard not to talk about what he did next, As he said about making TV for a new century, Bringing Big Brother to Australia was groundbreaking television which paved the way for unscripted drama
that would change the face of TV forever. Dancing in some pretty impressive circles, Tim allowed us to feel a part of the programs you made, and reinvented ways in which Australia could feel enriched by the topics he covered. I'd like to welcome to the show, television mastermind, Tim Klucas.
This is the best job in the world. I'm making television today and welcome to money. You had most of the nations sitting down in front of the television every night, Marlin, are you going to speak? If you gave them good content, they gave you ratings. When it comes to a better sex life, wouldn't you rathers do it with a tend We certainly could have given the audience credit for being more intelligent, the.
Heaviest contestant in Biggest Loser history.
Yes, the storm was coming, but there was no one or two or three things we could have done. I don't believe.
How are you mate? Are you good?
I'm good. I'm good as good as a bloke can be at.
This age, with forty years in the business and a resume that proves that you have made such a monumental impact when it comes to working with television network, What does a career in television feel like for you at this stage?
Kind of looking back.
I got to say that, looking back, I feel that I had the best years of the television business. I don't know that for a lot of younger people in the mainstream television business, I don't believe that most of them can look forward to at limitless horizon, to exciting opportunities things like that. It may come, but it will be in very different forms to the way that I experienced the business. And so I've got to say, I think people of my generation probably did have the best
of times. Television was that little special box in the corner. There was no Internet, there was no streaming. You had most of the nations sitting down in front of the television every night, and so they were a willing, grateful audience. If you gave them good content, they gave you ratings. And that was a great time in television.
Interesting did you say that because people have turned away from freeedoware television, we're now celebrating shows that are making six hundred thousand, no longer celebrating shows that go over a million. What would you say, looking back at some of those key moments that people did look for other places to find story.
I think the writing was on the wall for a long time. All of us in television were saying Hey, look, there's going to be streaming services. The internet is going to be once you had decent broadband, people are going to just be able to watch content from anywhere in the world. They don't need to watch seven, nine, ten abcsps. We were all talking about it, and it was sort
of like we had a head in the sand. We all knew it was coming, but we just sort of pretended it wasn't And instead of setting about reinforcing the business, the networks are basically just tried to cannibalize the business, you know, fighting over viewers in a diminishing market. Maybe that's what they have to do for their business, but doesn't grow the market. It's not a common sense approach
to making your business successful into the future. You can get your ratings this week by putting a cooking show against a cooking show, or a renovation show against a renovation show. Yeah, you might win this week's ratings, but at the end of the day, you're losing the audience over a longer term.
You have been such an amazing contributor to storytelling. Are there moments now when you're sitting back and looking at it, we could have done something different.
I think hindsight is a wonderful things we all know, not a characteristic that anyone in television is blessed with again, and I think it's that driver for the ratings. Eight thirty tomorrow morning is much more important than five years down the track, ten years down the track. And so I couldn't point to any one moment or two or three moments in the business when we could have reversed the bus and gone down another road. Because it was
death thousand cuts. Yes, the storm was coming, but there was no one or two or three things we could have done. I don't believe we certainly could have given the audience credit for being more intelligent. They don't appreciate us saying the show finishes at eight thirty and then we keep it going to a quarter to nine. They don't appreciate us scheduling programs that are like each other against each other. They don't appreciate us doing obvious product
placement just to get money in the door. They resent all that, and they don't see that happening on their
streaming services. They don't see the streaming services just playing with start times to suit themselves or to suit their advertisers, or to suit their competitive instincts against another network, and so I think longer term, had we treated the audience with more respect, I don't think they would have been so happy to just abandon and pay each week every night for a US streaming services when there are twenty something free to wear channels that should offer everything possible,
but they don't, and so people are paying for television when it used to be free.
Is it too ridiculous to think that competitive television networks should have been programming things differently instead of doubling up on content that's too similar. Do you think it's too simplistic or it's too nice to think that they could have programmed things differently.
It's probably naive to think that, because the end of the day, they're competitive businesses, and if one network is doing a really good job with a show that's rating really well, well, another network will have to take that slot on with either a similar show to try and dilute the audience of the opposition, or an alternative show,
which then gives the audience that frustration. Well, now I like them both, and I can't watch them both because at the same time, and they're probably stripped shows, and so I can't record one and watch the other because I'll never catch up, and so I have to not watch that show, and that leaves that sort of resentment.
It's definitely diluted the audience because you know, you're looking at the moment, We've got Holly Molly married at first sight, an amazing race. All three shows reality shows stripped taking up people's minds, you know.
Yeah, look, we used to do a lot. I don't know how much research does actually go into audiences now because it's it seems to all be run by the advertisers rather than the networks. But we used to find you would put out your promos for a new series and survey companies would survey likelihood of watching, and you'll get amazing numbers. People will see a promo and they go, yeah, yeah,
I'll watch that, and then they didn't. And when you go back, they were saying, well, I was worried that if I liked it, I'd get hooked on it and then it would just take the next eight weeks of my nights out of the picture. And I didn't want to get hooked on it, so I didn't watch it. That is a funny situation to be in because that's good news for the network, meaning we got the show right.
Bad news is they're not going to watch it, and there's lots of examples of that, and I think again there are economic revenue reasons why the stripped reality shows, which I was molding right at the start, why the networks ran with those, but they also had a habit of killing the audience.
What is interesting about television from being my age is that it always felt aspirational to me, being the viewer at home. Do you think that the people sitting at home these days are less likely to want to be the people that they see on TV?
Oh? Sure, sure, And there's no doubt about that. And that's probably an evolution of our society too. I mean, in the days gone by, when the television was that magic box, people would look at Graham Kennedy or Burt Newton, Don Lane and look up to them. But that doesn't
necessarily bring your eyes. These days, you are more likely to get eyes, particularly within a younger audience, with road crash and so you're not going to successfully have married at first sight unless you have people brawling on it and look at it and look at you know, bachelor, Bachelorette you know those shows. They're all about the brawl, not about finding love or whatever.
I also think it's more accessible these days for people as well, because you can actually be on these shows. There's so many of them. So you sitting at home before couldn't be Daryl Summers because that was impossible. But then you could be Sarah Marie. You know, you could be Guy Sebastian. The idea of making television that way also probably diluted the audience's ability to go I'd love but it's out of reach.
Well yes and no. Yes, it makes it a platform for many people rather than few. But the fact is ninety nine point ninety nine nine percent of those people aren't a Daryl Somers, you know, they aren't. To Graham Kennedy, they are not performers. We always used to talk and when we'd be casting Australian Idol or X Factor or whatever, someone who get up on the stage and you could say, well, they've done a lot of singing into their brush in
the bathroom. Whereas those old timers like the Daryl Summers and the Graham Kennedy's, you know, they they were seasoned performers and they it was their life it was running in their blood. And that's different to watching something on the internet and thinking I could do that, or filming yourself in your living room and getting twenty followers and thinking, oh gee, I'm a star. That's not doing it in front of a thousand people live or anything like that.
I think for some people, they think that they're interesting when they're not, and that I've got friends who think that they're uninteresting and they're fascinating.
And like I say, that is the result of doing something in your bedroom and putting it on TikTok or whatever and people thinking you're really interesting, but you're not.
I think it's also really funny that TikTok has shown us that a five second piece of content and content creators making those shorter pieces are excelling. However, your stripped
shows are getting longer. You know, it was only probably eight years ago that they extended your regular reality shows from a sixty minute broadcast to now ninety minutes, and that it seems like these shows go longer, and you think, but the education and the knowledge that's out there is that people want to digest things in a shorter period of time.
Yeah, but that's simple economics. You know, you get a situation where stripped reality show A series one and two, the network twenty million dollars for fifty hours. They have to sit down some bean counter somewhere we'll go, We'll hang on. You know, twenty million dollars for fifty hours. Do the maths? What's that four hundred thousand an hour? I don't know. I've probably got that completely wrong. On the top of the head.
I'm not a mathematic.
Clearly I'm not either. But they're saying, well, that's we need better revenue per hour than that. The secret is go back to the production company. Okay, for series three, we're still only paying twenty million, but we want sixty hours next year. And so then they turn their sixty minute shows into ninety minute shows. They do this, they'd look for specials, they look for whatever they can do to milk more content, and stuff that should have gone
to the cutting room floor ends up on television. And that causes two problems. One, it's boring, and every editor and producers instinct was that's not gonna make it. But we've got to get it up to ninety minutes this week, so that's in. And then the solution to this is
really boring. Okay, let's promo the crap out of it and make it out to be how many times have you listened to network promos going unbelievable, never before seen events, You will not believe what happens on blah blah blah, and the audience goes, oh, well, this is good, but actually you've promoted the crap out of the dull bit because you're trying to justify its existence in the show the network. The audience watches that and goes, ah, that's
not so interesting. What's on the other channel? Flick flick flick, And the minute they're flicking, they're gone, and that's and it's.
Hard to get them back.
The other factor, maybe maybe not so much something like Holy Moly, but certainly the reality shows is that there's no way they can be flexible and respond to the audience from w wick like the original Big Brother could because the audience was telling you every night what was happening, and you could adjust your edits, your content, whatever. But
now the obsession with these reality shows is overproducing. They've got to be graded so they look like they've been shot by Bruce Beresford, and that doesn't happen overnight, So those things sit in the edit room being worked and worked. And then the other problem is if Billy Bloggs says, I think Rachel's a pain in the ass, we need now and go and find a shot of two other people turning their heads sharply not to what he said. It could have been a week ago, but we need
a reaction. So now we have got to overcut, an overcut, an overcut, and everything is changed in the edit. So these shows are shot six nine months in advance, and they spend so long in the edit suite to meet the network's expectations of the look, the grading, and it's got to be everything's got to have reaction. Everything's going to so there's no way you can reshoot something. Course it finished six months ago, that everyone's gone home or
everyone's gone off to do other things. So it's all in the in the edit suite, and that's taking away the flexibility. So shows can't respond they live or die or what they did, and so then they're going to go over the top just in case.
And you know, you know, and it's interesting that you say that, because what would you pick? Would you pick something that is absolutely cut and shot to be amazing or a human moment.
Yeah, yeah. And it also adds to the problem that the audience just starts to feel like we've seen this before. It was another series, it might have been another subject and another network, but it all seems familiar. So and so does this, so and so does that, and then the retrospective interview. The greatest crime against TV making in the business, and we started it on you know, when we took a one hour show out of America and
turned it into a strip called The Biggest Loser. And I've never forgotten the day we were in the edit suite and Paul Franklin was the supervising executive producer of the show. We were looking at the first cuts and it was a way in and a person was talking about it, and someone had recorded it in a sort of present tense, and Paul had intercut that with the way in, and it was like the people being weighed in were almost narrating their own way in, Like there
were sports announcers calling their own way in. And instead of saying I didn't know what to think when that happened, it became walking up to the days and I don't know what to think, what's going to happen Now this is recorded afterwards, we know he knew that person knows what happened. But and so that became a staple of all of these shows. Instead of letting the events happen, now they've got to intercap them all with retrospective interviews as o people. And not many people can do a
retrospective interview very well, let alone say it. So they become quite fake. And now it's the dance. The audience has seen this dance for fifteen years. Let's move on. Bob and I decided it was your best to split the group in two. Okay, Shannon, you take the guys, I'll take the girls.
They listen out train I thought, oh well, I'm a bit on easy.
Stay that attitude tooll be the first one to go on.
You know, let's maybe try telling a story differently. You know, maybe we don't open the reality show with two big doors at the end of a kitchen or a lego studio. What have two big doors opening and people running in excitedly. So you know, we have these producers, because they're being told not to mess with success, they make the same show every time, might be a different name, might be a different network, different subject matter, but it feels like I'm watching the same show all the time.
You Know what's really fascinating for me was I was watching what documentaries are doing at the moment, and I watched this documentary Don't Fuck with Cats, which evolved so quickly because and it was fascinating. Were they retelling something that had happened twenty years ago? Probably, but what they were doing was giving the audience what happens in real time with real technology as we were the investigators. Yea,
that is fascinating. You think about what you did in two thousand to two thousand and three, particularly revolutionized reality television, and yet I think people have now photocopied your ideas, not just yours. I know you collaborated, but then they haven't taken it to the modern day to watch these sows evolve in real time. And I think technology, you know, they're still making Big Brother and they haven't given them phones.
You know, they haven't given them technology or real life situations that brings the audience and the contestants into a modern day.
Is that a.
Mistake, Well, yes, although I don't think that would help that approach. I think the isolation, and that's true to the format. But the problem for Big Brother is that what I was talking about earlier, that need to grade the stuff so it looks beautiful on air, that need to find every little reaction and inter cut It is really hard. Out of twenty four hours. I don't care how long it takes, find me a shot of him looking sideways suddenly, because I want it to make it
look like he's reacted to what she just said. You can't do that in an overnight turnaround show like Big Brother. So what they've done, as you know, is they're just making Survivor in a house. Now. It's shot in advance, it's not live. It's cut to buggery. The audience doesn't have a say. The network that producers are in complete control. And the joy of Big Bra there was we weren't
in control. Big Brother wasn't in control. Those housemates were in control, and that's what made the show work because you didn't know what was going to happen. You just knew it was going to happen, and that was why it worked, and that's why the audience is like Big Brother, I've seen this before. I think it was on an island. Yeah, and they're in swimmers with coconuts. But I think I've
seen this before, and that's the problem. Making programs for the network and for the producers instead of for the audience is the slippery slope downhill.
I think you.
Flipped the switch a couple of times in your career, though, like I thought, Sex with Sophie Lee was really a fascinating moment because it was groundbreaking television. It was content that we hadn't seen. It was stuff that people felt it kind of like, I need to watch that by myself. But the topics that you were discussing in there, which would have been HIV and things like that, or people's
sexuality and gender. You were doing that show in the nineties, you know, it's still possible, I think, And I wondered whether you think to find those things that people truly want to know and the answers to you know, do those shows kind would they work now?
Well? A lot has been said and written about this because the magazine shows, particularly the Australian style magazine shows of the late eighties early nineties, were incredibly unique. We were doing them in primetime if the world was burying them in off air afternoons or on the weekends. We
were leading the way in terms of ratings. I mean, I've never forgotten that first year of Money because when I finished two years of seasons of Sex, the next show that I pitched was Money and it went to where in ninety three from memory And in that first year there was only I think we made twenty episodes half hour episodes of Money and seven weeks out of the fifty two weeks of the year, it was the
most watched nonsport, non news show on Australian television. But the story you're about to see tonight has got to be one of the most disturbing investment tales ever. You know, two point four two point five million people watching every episode. Now, that was a time when you didn't have the internet to just easily. I mean, yes there was the Internet, but it wasn't anywhere near as effective as it is
now in terms of researching stuff. But we did have this this family disintegration where I don't have my mum or my dad, or my granddad or anyone to ask, so how do I know what to do and how to do it? And I remember being asked by a journalist when we were launching money. I was asked, you, you've gone from doing sex now to doing money. They're so different, really, I said, no, they're identical because they're both subjects that people feel they should know lots about.
They don't know lots about, but they're embarrassed about revealing their lack of knowledge. So people won't ask someone else about, Hey, look, my husband wants me to do this in the bedroom. Do you think that's normal. They won't ask their friend that, and they won't ask their bank manager for a better interest rate.
Yeah, I fucking at my house loan.
Yeah, you know. They won't demand stuff in the bedroom, and they won't demand stuff in the bank manager's office. Or they use car salesfe because they don't feel they have the knowledge or the right to do it. So any show that came along and gave them a little bit of knowledge and our phrase was enough to bluff. If you could bluff your way through a session in the bedroom, you could bluff your way through a meeting
with the bank manager. Then it was valuable information and the audience lapped it up because we were giving them what they really really wanted and needed.
Interesting though that, you know, we talk about the Internet being that space that we can go to now to not feel so stupid, so we can gather that information. Are there programs that we should be still having on television like that though? There are there cornerstones that we can touch upon, or are there taboo subjects that can be told in real time that you think would be palatable on free to air? Yeah?
Ironically, I was talking about this with a friend not long ago, that the Internet and the availability information killed the magazine shows and so they morphed into so called factual based soap operas like The Block. You're not going to learn a thing about renovating watching The Block. It's all in the follow up on the go to the website you can find that. But it's a soap opera with renovation at its core, and that's how they get
an audience in. But those shows that sort of disappeared in information based shows that disappeared because of the Internet are probably just as important because now there is so much crap on the Internet that you'll get twenty five different opinions about what you should do with your bank, and so a Paul Clithoro coming along and telling you this is how you get a better deal in the bank manager's office probably is relevant now no network would buy it. Then.
It's interesting though that you say that, because I think about anytime I have something wrong with me, I would go to the internet. Maybe ten years ago I could probably diagnose myself on doctor Google, but these days you're absolutely right.
It's a conundrum. You know, it's too much.
Information and it's not the right information and you end up going away from it and being like, oh, you know, looking back though over your career, you know you've worked with so many people who have been facilitators have changed when it's come to making content. Who are some of the people that you've really collaborated with and it's clicked like, I know there's people like David Mott who you mentioned before, and Stephen Tank.
There's lots of people. Is there is there a.
Person in your mind that you go, Wow, that was a synergy between two people and we made good TV.
Well you mentioned David Mott, Yes, that time of Network ten in the early two thousands. I came back from working in Britain in two thousand and one and I got a three month gig at ten to talk about what was happening overseas in television and foreign programming trends, and it just happened to be at a time when they were looking at their business and saying what do we need to do? They were number three sixteen thirty nine and they were number three total people, and David
Mott was excited, enthusiastic. He's unique when he was in the programming business because he just loves the business and it runs in his veins. You know, He's been in the TV business since he left school, has never been out out of it, and he the idea of being a program at him was just like this, this is the best job in the world. I'm making television and people were watching it. And so the coincidence of him being programmer there, John Mcallipine and the CEO of ten
decided to get aggressive and chase an audience. Wanted us to identify what that audience it was and the emergence of fascinating new programming approaches overseas, and so I got to know David and eventually stayed there and became a head of factual for him. And one of the first things we talked about was Big Brother, and at the time Big Brother was doing well in Britain and obviously had already done well in Europe, and nine and seven
the networks were chasing it hard. They were sending people overseas and everything like that, and ten came to the
party quite late, but came with such enthusiasm. This we saw Big Brother as that pivotal show that could change everything for ten, because seven and nine were talking to End of Mill overseas about it being a show that was going to run nine point thirty at night, maybe a couple of times a week, and they were looking at it almost with game show producers, whereas we went hard and I've never forgotten that the meeting with the End of More people in Hilversum in their office in Hilveson,
this one guy comes in and he was a fairly lowly ranked character and he said, I'm not sure why you're here. Seven and nine have been talking to us for six months and.
You're late.
You're late, you haven't shown any interest in the show. Why should we be talking to you. It's rude. The others are clearly ahead of you. And I said, look, I know what they're pitching to you. We are the complete opposite. We make one of the world's most popular scripted soap operas. It's called Neighbors. We run it at six thirty at night till seven. And he said, yes,
I know, Neighbors. I said, we want to run the world's most popular non scripted soap opera straight after it at seven o'clock at night, five nights a week, with a Sunday night eviction, because we think Big Brother can be a family show. We don't think it's a late night slee show. We think it's compelling soap opera and it will work with us because we have a young audience that are ready for this show. Seven to nine, and you have to be lie in these things. Seven
nine have old audiences. They won't get this show and they'll just run it late at night. And he just looked at me, and I've never forgotten. He said, you stay here, and he went out, and about seven people in suits came in. We had to move to another room. And it turned out that they had been aching for someone to see this as not a late night show,
that this was exactly what they're talking about. What I was saying is what they envisaged, envisaged Big Brother being a daily soap opera, and it was almost almost impossible not to win the bid then, even though we'd come in late, because we saw the show the way they
saw the show, and that's the show we made. Yeah, it moved on after that first series, but it was a daytime sud and that neighbor's audience stayed straight through to Big Brother, and it brought other people, and so there are lots of other things we did that made it successful, but understanding the audience and what the audience
was craving was key to it. And that was a new time in television, was that younger audience wanted something that was theirs to a Big Brother became theirs to one because it was on the right network at the right time and in the right country and everything just it all came perfect storm for that show, There's no doubt about it.
And then, interestingly enough, it's now been on nine, it's been on seven, and they've all had a turn, you know, and it looks like, you know, different takes of that format. But ultimately, I think it never will go back to the purest form of that show. And it can't go back to the purest form of that show, and that's because the show became quite controversial in certain ways. I mean the turkey slap, that is one of the things that people talk about when they think about Channel ten's
big brother. But also I thought the Merlin eviction was so interesting to watch as well, because that was another opportunity for people to see something happening in real time that no one had control over, and it felt so real and you just think, how did that something like that happen? I mean, did Channel ten in any way do you think know that Merlin was going to do that?
Oh God no, no. In hindsight, we wouldn't have stopped it if we'd known it, But we would have had we known. And it was very it was brilliant. They all had their suitcases had to be inspected and people were looking for you know, drugs or alcohol or physical signs or something that they might No one opened all of their t shirts and folded them out to see if anything was stuck in there. And he sat on that all that time, And I mean, again, that's the
joy of a show like that. You didn't know what was coming, but something was coming, something was always coming, and you put that environment and you put a host like Gretel Colleen super intelligent quick on her feet, and you just ran with it.
We had a slide hiccup.
And then Merlin came out of the house.
As he was walking down the ramp towards the eviction stage, he took some black masking tape no War and put it over his mouth and held up a sign that said free the refugees, which is completely and ugly valid.
It's still one of my favorite moments to rewatch. I go back and watch it on YouTube to watch it all happen. And Gretel is so on brand on this show, like as in watching her think on her feet is amazing. Do you think in some ways though, that she got a little bit too close to big Brother? There seemed to have been a point where she either had enough or the maybe producers had enough of working with her. But essentially there was definitely a point where she walked away.
Well because you pointed out that the show could never be what it was in that first year, maybe the second year, and it became more of a program where to some extent, you were turning a sausage machine wheel. Every show does no matter what newsrooms, turn the sausage machine wheel. If there's no big news happening, and what excited Gretel about the show was the unpredictability, the intelligence
of the setup. What was possible watching these people unravel and then rebuild themselves all live on television in front of the nation in isolation. She I think it's sort of like got too boring. She wouldn't use the word, but it certainly wasn't the amazing experience of those first couple of years. And I would say that we were lucky to have Gretel for so many years, for as long as we did, because it didn't challenge her like
it did in those first few years. It didn't challenge anyone to that same extent because you were making it up as you went.
I think COVID would have been really an interesting thing to see reality shows done live, because I think we would have been able to see on television people reacting
the way that we did. And then there was so much shows being produced at the time that COVID hit Australia, and all of those reality shows were pre recorded, so we never got to see a real human moment, We never got to interact with something that unfolded as it unfolded for us, So that how we felt could be seen by other people on television discussing how they felt. And I think that's an element of television that's truly missing.
Oh and that was one of the great advantages of Big Brother, that total isolation. Because if they'd gone in there when no one knew about it and came out three months later with the world lockdown, no one allowed out of their houses in parts of the world, that would have been gold. That alone would have been worth doing the series again in the old way.
What do you think about now that you've worked on all of these shows that are getting rebooted essentially like you look at it now, like Celebrity Apprentices to being shot? Do you think that they have a place on TV? And if they do have a place on TV, what is it that you would do differently?
Yeah, I'm really torn by this. Instead of doing any let's just rehash the old stuff that worked. It work. They need to work now. And that's why you're looking at audiences are five hundred thousand, not you know, one million? You know, And it is part of that fear that networks feel of we're a diminishing business. How do we keep the money coming in the doors at least till we get to retirement and then someone else's problem. I think there are shows that are worth doing again.
Is Celebrity Apprentice one of them?
No, I don't think so. The audience I think is over the celebrity thing because we've seen them eat worms in South Africa, We've seen them run around the streets in Celebrity Apprentice. We know that if you get the right celebrities, there's nothing they won't do. And if you get the celebrities the network wants you to get because it makes a good promo, they won't do anything. You know, they won't get their hands dirty. So I think the audience is with.
That finishing the podcast. I always ask for, like a funny story or something you dust off to tell your friends over dinner conversation. Is there something that would surprise people from back in the day, maybe working on that show Sex with.
Sophie Lee, incredibly intelligent individual, like so intelligent it's frightening. I remember going to see her once in her dressing room in Melbourne and I walked in and she was sitting there in a dressing gown, waiting for makeup or something, reading the Asian Wall Street Journal, and I said what are you reading. I'm just reading what's going on in
business in pasi Ah. And you know that the ability to work with someone like that's so smart, such a good communicator, so aware of the medium and what it could do, and then and also so passionate about the subject matter. It was great to work with someone like that. And I wonder where those sorts of hosts are A host like that, like Sophie. Yes they're intelligent, and yes they're going to question what you're asking them to do,
and so they should. But that's hard. It'd be very easy to get someone who'll just agree to do whatever you tell them to do, but that's, you know, the downhill path.
Well, it's an absolutely a pleasure to have sat here and talked to you. I think you have still so many stories to tell, and I think you've got a lot to educate people, because I think you've got a lot to teach people. So thank you for taking the time today with me. And I think that other people out there that will be listening to this will have appreciated as well.
Soasu're talking to you