April 12, 2024 • 16 mins
Bluey, the Australian animated TV show about a family of Blue Heeler dogs, is worth $2 billion. But is Bluey worth that without the show’s auteur Joe Brumm in the picture? The release of a special extended episode coming this weekend is sparking rumors about the smash-hit sensation.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s Devin Leonard and Reyhan Harmanci join host David Gura to talk about the beloved program, the secret to its broad appeal, and the challenge of managing Bluey’s commercial success. Featuring some of our youngest listeners.
Further reading: How Bluey Became a $2 Billion Smash Hit—With an Uncertain Future
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Louis a family fand it is a dad, and Chili
is the mom, and Bingo's the younger sister, Louie's oldest sister.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
It's a little blue dog healer dog h ee ei okay,
And they have like adventures around their house and there's
like a problem and then they like solve it. Oh yeah,
so they like snash philia.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
The kids are talking about Blue. That is the hit
Australian animated TV show that premiered in twenty eighteen. It
has millions of fans worldwide, and those fans are children, yes,
but also grown ups. There are Reddit threads about if
it's okay for childless adults to watch it. The answer,
by the way, is a resounding yes. There are too
(00:57):
many fan blocks to count, and articles and pages of
vocal adult fans on TikTok. Blue is a big business.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
It's a behemoth. It was the number two most stream
show in the US behind Suits Full Stop.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
That's Rayhan Hermancy. She's a senior editor at Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
I have two kids, four and six, and like over
the past year, I couldn't help but notice they were
coming home from school with Bluey mimeographed coloring pages. Every
birthday party has some element of blue We have blue
Cops in our house that I swear to God we
didn't buy. So like it has permeated like young kids'
lives in a really big way. So it felt like
(01:37):
the financial and the scale of viewership was really extreme.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
I contacted Brand Finance, was just a company that does
evaluations for brands.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Devin Leonard is a senior writer on the global business team, and.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
They said it's worth as much as two billion dollars,
but they also said that potentially it keeps on going,
it could be worth as much as pepper Pig, which
was sold to has Bro. I think it was twenty
nineteen for a four billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
In twenty twenty three, Americans watched seven hundred and thirty
one million hours of blue That is more than Ncis
Cray's Anatomy, Gilmore, Girls or Friends, and each episode of
the show is only seven minutes long. Now, you could
chalk up the success of Bluey to its popular appeal
to lucrative distribution deals, but it is also because of
its creator. It's Joe Brumm. He is the soul of
(02:25):
the show.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
He's his verice of earnest, kind of since a very
funny guy. He just sort of imbused the show with
all of that, and he wants everything to be perfect,
you know, because he's kind of a perfectionist. It's his
aesthetic and you know, reflection of his life.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
This episode of The Big Take is called Bluey's Big Business.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
How a kids show about a family of dogs became
an international sensation And what's at stake for blue fans
and its financial stakeholders as Joe Brum decides whether it's
time to call it quits. What is it about the
show that your kids like so much and that you
(03:05):
like as well well?
Speaker 4 (03:06):
So it really isn't about them. They are at best
indifferent to Bluey. But I during the Pandemic, we start
watching Blue and you know from the jump it is
like visually delightful and has a kind of it's like
operating on a bunch of levels at once. I think
that one of the things that makes it so appealing
(03:28):
is that Bandit and Chili's daughter is Blue and Bingo.
They're not gendered in the way that like a lot
of children's entertainment is gender to like kind of pink
unicorns and like Marvel Action figures, they play across a
lot of different sphirits and they're very physical, and I
think that it makes it really easy to watch and
not really think about, like if you're a boy watching Blue,
(03:52):
Like I'm watching a girls show, which I think can
be a big deal for kids, and you know, it's
like sweet and related in the kind of kids plot.
And then the parents in it are pretty remarkable. They're
just built for this age of parenting. I think they
immediately start doing imagine or play with the kids, especially bandit.
(04:13):
The dad and I bought this statue today from a
shop and it turned out to be magic. Yeah. And
it's both aspirational and also very real. The parents get frustrated,
the kids get frustrated, and I think that that representation
(04:34):
is very interesting and also feels of its time.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
There are a lot of episodes we could pull from here.
I wonder what your favorite one is.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Well, I have like a sentimental favorite, because you know,
there's a whole lot that I really like. But there's
an episode called the Beach in season one. The Healers
go to the beach and then Chili, you know Blue's mom,
She wants to go to take a walk by herself,
and I don't know it just it might be my
wife just wanting to get feet away from the rest
of us. But to me, it's sort of said the show,
(05:04):
you know, it was about a little more than's just
the kids.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
It struck me watching the beach, how much compressed wonder.
There isn't a lot of these episodes. I mean, yes,
they're seven minutes long. They never drag, and it seems
like there's a lot in there.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Oh yeah, I mean there's a lot of moments where
they very true to life, pivot quickly from like boredom
and anger to wonder. It really captures, I think, the
feeling of a parent, just like trying to grapple with
all of these big feelings and also the banality of
it all.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Do you have a favorite?
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Yeah, I mean, well, sleepy Time. I feel like I'm
going to get emotional talking about sleepy Dinner.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
I want to do a big ghost late to night.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I'll wake up in my own bank.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Sleepy Time is the episode where Bingo, the younger sister,
starts having trouble falling asleep.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
You do your best, Toney, but remember I'm always here.
If you need me.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Okay, weet drains you. Now.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
From Chili's perspective, it's just kind of like, oh God,
Like the kid keeps getting up and getting into my bed,
and so you're there with them in this, and then
it changes and becomes about the dreaming. In your dream,
she sees her mother as the sun and she's orbiting
around and she's like holding like a little stuffy and
it's just like, I just think it captures how as
(06:20):
a parent you don't even know what's going on in
your kid's head, and so it's like both so big
and so small. And what's amazing is that there's almost
no steaks in this whole episode, and a lot of
Bluey the steaks could not be lower. A lot of
other animated shows use animation to just go to crazy
places and like show extreme situations, and Bluey is very restrained.
(06:44):
And how it.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Approaches that, like that wonderful interplay between that the kind
of cosmic dream and then what's happening in the bed,
which is like punching and kicking, and you see how
she's processing it. But also the parents are kind of
living through this as well.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
So yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's why Sleepy
Time has really stood out because it really just encapsates
the whole experience.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
And also to the music of Gustav Holtz the Planet.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yes Yes, years before Joe Brum and his team weave
the Planets by Gustav Holst into this ambitious and critically
acclaimed episode Sleepy Time. Brum started Bluey with a clip
capturing a simpler parenting scene.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
He and another animator they do this little clip Bandit
takes Bluey to the playground, you know. Bandit's playing Fruit
and Ninch on his phone while he's pushing Bluie on
the swing and then blue goes around the swing set
and comes down and clung them on the head. And
he shows it to these guys, the founders of Luda Studio,
which is a sort of small sort of TV production
operation in Brisbane, and they like it, but they but
(07:51):
they shop it around and they're able to raise some
money from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to do a five
minute pilot.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Brum took that I let to a big gathering of
TV executives and it was a hit. Soon the production
company had a deal with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and
BBC Studios and some Australian government agencies. BBC Studios now
manages Bluey's licensing rights outside of Australia.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Last year, the BBC's revenues topped two billion pounds for
the first time, and they're saying a lot of that
had to do with the sale of Bluey consumer products.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
It seems pretty clear that, you know, when the BBC
says they want to double revenue by twenty twenty eight,
a big chunk of that has to be in part
due to Bluey.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
And it goes beyond Bluey the show. There are Bluey
themed books, live shows, toys, pajamas and in twenty nineteen,
Disney won a bid to stream Bluey on Disney Plus.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Disney tested the show in American kids. They love the accents.
And then along with that, as Joe put a Disney
you know, put into gazumping offer that blew away all
the other of the other contenders.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
If we look at this as a pie, BBC's obviously
gotten a lot out of this. I watched it on
this Plus. How does that giant entertainment company fit into
all of this? And how much of that pie are
they are they getting?
Speaker 4 (09:07):
I mean, We've been joking that Bluie ends up being kids'
first lests and intellectual property because for American audiences it's
a Disney show. Like when they go to Disney theme
parks and they can't see Bluey like, they get upset.
But Disney has benefited greatly from this show, and.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
They're just licensing this. They're just licensing it.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
They do take a piece of the merchandising, so they're
not wholly cut out. But I do think it creates
a little bit of friction when you have so many
people who identify Blueye as like this generation's like iconic
children's television, piece of intellectual property, and Disney can only
license it. Disney cannot control the rights. They can't exploit
(09:50):
them in the way that you would imagine that they
would like to.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
On top of that, the company is considered buying you know,
blue out right several times. It's unclear why a deal
has the Mae Lubis Studio controls Bluie. They say it's
thought for sale a little though, you know, for the
right price, you know, who knows. But I think the
problem is what is it worth without Joe Brumm.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
A question that's now front and Center. A surprise episode
last weekend confirmed a fan theory that the Healer family
is moving out of their house and maybe fans speculate
off of TV. The creator has been coy on whether
he'll stick with the show, and while it could technically
continue without Joe Brum, would Blue be as valuable if
he steps away? That's after the break Demn, could you
(10:40):
tell us about Joe Brum, the mind behind Bluie? How
did he come up with the idea for the show itself?
Speaker 5 (10:45):
Well, it's sort of funny because he was an animator.
He wasn't somebody who wrote TV. But he would listen
to people talking on the writers' room doing kids shows,
and the writers role older and they were trying to
draw on experience, is trying to remember things that they've
done with their kids. But in his case, it was
all right there. You know, he's working for home, he's
(11:07):
just two little girls, and everything's really really fresh. He's
just having those experiences, so he basically draws on that
for his scripts. It's all drawn, you know, right from
his own life.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
How much has the wild success of this changed both
his life and the production company that latched onto this
Early on.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
We'll do the production company first. They went from like
a five person operation to like a fifty or sixty
person in operation. Blue has become the sort of global,
multi platform enterprise for them. But I think for Joe
it's a bit more complicated because he has said Bluie
is going to end at some point. I have other projects.
(11:44):
I want to do projects for, you know, older kids,
and then his own daughters are older. But I also
just get the sense that like he just keeps wanting
to do shows that are better and better and better
and aggregate, you know, to use his term. He doesn't
want to repeat himself. He just seems like somebody who
is it's a true creative person.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
I mean, I feel strangely moved by the difficulty of
managing success. He is really a guy living in Brisbane,
Australia who happened to make something that ties together like
ten major cultural threads at once golden age of television.
It's in age where like tours, the tours are really
(12:22):
the showrunners, the people who are writing and creating their
own work. I think of a Jesse Armstrong like succession.
You know, they don't want to be locked into their
own success. And right now you have Joe Bram where
he technically doesn't control the rights of Blue you have
the fates of like BBC and to some degree, Disney.
As Devin points out in the story, Disney's streaming has
(12:42):
been a major money loser for the company. Bluie is
a real bright spot. We can make some informed speculation that, like,
if Joe Brom was like, I'm good for ten seasons,
Disney would be like, bam, like we we want to
be in the blue business, you know. But I think
everyone seemingly understands the singularity of this guy's vision, Like
(13:04):
what sells it is how personal it feels, and so
just strategically, how are you going to scale such a
personal thing?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Last weekend a surprise episode called Ghost Basket Drop. This
is the one about the Healer family, moving ahead of
a much longer episode everyone is waiting to see, called
The Sign. It is four times as long as a
usual episode, and it's sets premiere this Sunday, April fourteenth.
So far, there's been no announcement about a fourth season,
and unsurprisingly that has stirred up a lot of speculation
(13:38):
about the show's future.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
The Sign is interesting because it's coming out simultaneously in
the US and other places, which is usually not the case.
And I think that there's a lot of anticipation about
what it is, obviously with the fans, but I think
also for Joe Browm in his camp, it is the
closest thing to a Bluey movie, which has also been
(14:02):
long rumored to exist.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
That latest episode seem to confirm a theory among blue
fans that the Healers are selling their house, But does
it signal an even bigger move that Bluey could be
coming to an end.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
The Little Guy said that specifically, you know, a lot
of it depends on like what the response is, what
happens after the sign So I kind of speculate towards
towards the end that if he's going to go forward,
he wants to know he can top that or you
do something better, he says, you know, it's just a
magical episode. It's an episode that sums up what we've
been trying to do for three seas is now so
so I think I just think he sets to the
(14:34):
bar really, really high for himself, and that's why the
show's so good.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
We've talked about through the anxiety of fans how much
nervousness is there on the commercial side of this in
this vacuum period between season three and whatever might come
next for the BBC Disney what's at stake here?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
I mean, David, I don't know about if you know
about the media industry, but we're not exactly in a
good state right now in general. So I would imagine
that if I were the BBC and I was attached
to the biggest children's show in the world with one
of the biggest merchandising horizons possible, I would be very
anxious about that. Ending from Disney side. You know, Disney's
(15:16):
a ginormous company as many and many things going on,
but it's streaming service has been the source of a
lot of issues.
Speaker 5 (15:22):
You know, Disney Plus actually lost some subscribers in the
last last quarter. But you can just imagine how many
of those subscribers are subscribing primarily for Bluie. If if
Blue's accounting for almost a third of the TV views
on Disney Plus, that's a really important show for them.
They can't afford to lose it. Unfortunately. You know, it
may not be you know, it may be when their
(15:42):
power to keep it going.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
At this point, I feel anxiety about it continuing, and
I feel anxiety about it ending. Yeah, I think it's
really again, like there's something about making something that is
so good and like operates so well on so many
different levels, commercial, creative, et cetera. That like the feeling
of like can you keep going? Can you top it?
And like at what point do we call it? You know,
(16:07):
because you can't make the same thing forever and keep
it as good. I think that's like the creative challenge
of television.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
This episode was produced by Thomas Low and Jessica Beck.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
It was edited by the club Beat Store.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
It was also our executive producer. It was mixed by
Veronic Coo Retriguez. Our senior producer is Naomi Sham. Elizabeth
Ponso is our senior editor. Sage Bauman is our head
of Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David
Gerra Special thanks to Reinica, Gregory Abel, and Mave.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Please follow and review the Big Take. Whenever you listen
to podcasts, how's the listeners find this stuff? Thanks for listening.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Louis a family fand it is a dad, and Chili
is the mom, and Bingo's the younger sister, Louie's oldest sister.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
It's a little blue dog healer dog h ee ei okay,
And they have like adventures around their house and there's
like a problem and then they like solve it. Oh yeah,
so they like snash philia.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
The kids are talking about Blue. That is the hit
Australian animated TV show that premiered in twenty eighteen. It
has millions of fans worldwide, and those fans are children, yes,
but also grown ups. There are Reddit threads about if
it's okay for childless adults to watch it. The answer,
by the way, is a resounding yes. There are too
(00:57):
many fan blocks to count, and articles and pages of
vocal adult fans on TikTok. Blue is a big business.
Speaker 4 (01:05):
It's a behemoth. It was the number two most stream
show in the US behind Suits Full Stop.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
That's Rayhan Hermancy. She's a senior editor at Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
I have two kids, four and six, and like over
the past year, I couldn't help but notice they were
coming home from school with Bluey mimeographed coloring pages. Every
birthday party has some element of blue We have blue
Cops in our house that I swear to God we
didn't buy. So like it has permeated like young kids'
lives in a really big way. So it felt like
(01:37):
the financial and the scale of viewership was really extreme.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
I contacted Brand Finance, was just a company that does
evaluations for brands.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Devin Leonard is a senior writer on the global business team, and.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
They said it's worth as much as two billion dollars,
but they also said that potentially it keeps on going,
it could be worth as much as pepper Pig, which
was sold to has Bro. I think it was twenty
nineteen for a four billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
In twenty twenty three, Americans watched seven hundred and thirty
one million hours of blue That is more than Ncis
Cray's Anatomy, Gilmore, Girls or Friends, and each episode of
the show is only seven minutes long. Now, you could
chalk up the success of Bluey to its popular appeal
to lucrative distribution deals, but it is also because of
its creator. It's Joe Brumm. He is the soul of
(02:25):
the show.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
He's his verice of earnest, kind of since a very
funny guy. He just sort of imbused the show with
all of that, and he wants everything to be perfect,
you know, because he's kind of a perfectionist. It's his
aesthetic and you know, reflection of his life.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
This episode of The Big Take is called Bluey's Big Business.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
How a kids show about a family of dogs became
an international sensation And what's at stake for blue fans
and its financial stakeholders as Joe Brum decides whether it's
time to call it quits. What is it about the
show that your kids like so much and that you
(03:05):
like as well well?
Speaker 4 (03:06):
So it really isn't about them. They are at best
indifferent to Bluey. But I during the Pandemic, we start
watching Blue and you know from the jump it is
like visually delightful and has a kind of it's like
operating on a bunch of levels at once. I think
that one of the things that makes it so appealing
(03:28):
is that Bandit and Chili's daughter is Blue and Bingo.
They're not gendered in the way that like a lot
of children's entertainment is gender to like kind of pink
unicorns and like Marvel Action figures, they play across a
lot of different sphirits and they're very physical, and I
think that it makes it really easy to watch and
not really think about, like if you're a boy watching Blue,
(03:52):
Like I'm watching a girls show, which I think can
be a big deal for kids, and you know, it's
like sweet and related in the kind of kids plot.
And then the parents in it are pretty remarkable. They're
just built for this age of parenting. I think they
immediately start doing imagine or play with the kids, especially bandit.
(04:13):
The dad and I bought this statue today from a
shop and it turned out to be magic. Yeah. And
it's both aspirational and also very real. The parents get frustrated,
the kids get frustrated, and I think that that representation
(04:34):
is very interesting and also feels of its time.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
There are a lot of episodes we could pull from here.
I wonder what your favorite one is.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Well, I have like a sentimental favorite, because you know,
there's a whole lot that I really like. But there's
an episode called the Beach in season one. The Healers
go to the beach and then Chili, you know Blue's mom,
She wants to go to take a walk by herself,
and I don't know it just it might be my
wife just wanting to get feet away from the rest
of us. But to me, it's sort of said the show,
(05:04):
you know, it was about a little more than's just
the kids.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
It struck me watching the beach, how much compressed wonder.
There isn't a lot of these episodes. I mean, yes,
they're seven minutes long. They never drag, and it seems
like there's a lot in there.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Oh yeah, I mean there's a lot of moments where
they very true to life, pivot quickly from like boredom
and anger to wonder. It really captures, I think, the
feeling of a parent, just like trying to grapple with
all of these big feelings and also the banality of
it all.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Do you have a favorite?
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Yeah, I mean, well, sleepy Time. I feel like I'm
going to get emotional talking about sleepy Dinner.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
I want to do a big ghost late to night.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I'll wake up in my own bank.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
Sleepy Time is the episode where Bingo, the younger sister,
starts having trouble falling asleep.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
You do your best, Toney, but remember I'm always here.
If you need me.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Okay, weet drains you. Now.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
From Chili's perspective, it's just kind of like, oh God,
Like the kid keeps getting up and getting into my bed,
and so you're there with them in this, and then
it changes and becomes about the dreaming. In your dream,
she sees her mother as the sun and she's orbiting
around and she's like holding like a little stuffy and
it's just like, I just think it captures how as
(06:20):
a parent you don't even know what's going on in
your kid's head, and so it's like both so big
and so small. And what's amazing is that there's almost
no steaks in this whole episode, and a lot of
Bluey the steaks could not be lower. A lot of
other animated shows use animation to just go to crazy
places and like show extreme situations, and Bluey is very restrained.
(06:44):
And how it.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Approaches that, like that wonderful interplay between that the kind
of cosmic dream and then what's happening in the bed,
which is like punching and kicking, and you see how
she's processing it. But also the parents are kind of
living through this as well.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
So yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's why Sleepy
Time has really stood out because it really just encapsates
the whole experience.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
And also to the music of Gustav Holtz the Planet.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yes Yes, years before Joe Brum and his team weave
the Planets by Gustav Holst into this ambitious and critically
acclaimed episode Sleepy Time. Brum started Bluey with a clip
capturing a simpler parenting scene.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
He and another animator they do this little clip Bandit
takes Bluey to the playground, you know. Bandit's playing Fruit
and Ninch on his phone while he's pushing Bluie on
the swing and then blue goes around the swing set
and comes down and clung them on the head. And
he shows it to these guys, the founders of Luda Studio,
which is a sort of small sort of TV production
operation in Brisbane, and they like it, but they but
(07:51):
they shop it around and they're able to raise some
money from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to do a five
minute pilot.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Brum took that I let to a big gathering of
TV executives and it was a hit. Soon the production
company had a deal with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and
BBC Studios and some Australian government agencies. BBC Studios now
manages Bluey's licensing rights outside of Australia.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Last year, the BBC's revenues topped two billion pounds for
the first time, and they're saying a lot of that
had to do with the sale of Bluey consumer products.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
It seems pretty clear that, you know, when the BBC
says they want to double revenue by twenty twenty eight,
a big chunk of that has to be in part
due to Bluey.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
And it goes beyond Bluey the show. There are Bluey
themed books, live shows, toys, pajamas and in twenty nineteen,
Disney won a bid to stream Bluey on Disney Plus.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Disney tested the show in American kids. They love the accents.
And then along with that, as Joe put a Disney
you know, put into gazumping offer that blew away all
the other of the other contenders.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
If we look at this as a pie, BBC's obviously
gotten a lot out of this. I watched it on
this Plus. How does that giant entertainment company fit into
all of this? And how much of that pie are
they are they getting?
Speaker 4 (09:07):
I mean, We've been joking that Bluie ends up being kids'
first lests and intellectual property because for American audiences it's
a Disney show. Like when they go to Disney theme
parks and they can't see Bluey like, they get upset.
But Disney has benefited greatly from this show, and.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
They're just licensing this. They're just licensing it.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
They do take a piece of the merchandising, so they're
not wholly cut out. But I do think it creates
a little bit of friction when you have so many
people who identify Blueye as like this generation's like iconic
children's television, piece of intellectual property, and Disney can only
license it. Disney cannot control the rights. They can't exploit
(09:50):
them in the way that you would imagine that they
would like to.
Speaker 5 (09:53):
On top of that, the company is considered buying you know,
blue out right several times. It's unclear why a deal
has the Mae Lubis Studio controls Bluie. They say it's
thought for sale a little though, you know, for the
right price, you know, who knows. But I think the
problem is what is it worth without Joe Brumm.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
A question that's now front and Center. A surprise episode
last weekend confirmed a fan theory that the Healer family
is moving out of their house and maybe fans speculate
off of TV. The creator has been coy on whether
he'll stick with the show, and while it could technically
continue without Joe Brum, would Blue be as valuable if
he steps away? That's after the break Demn, could you
(10:40):
tell us about Joe Brum, the mind behind Bluie? How
did he come up with the idea for the show itself?
Speaker 5 (10:45):
Well, it's sort of funny because he was an animator.
He wasn't somebody who wrote TV. But he would listen
to people talking on the writers' room doing kids shows,
and the writers role older and they were trying to
draw on experience, is trying to remember things that they've
done with their kids. But in his case, it was
all right there. You know, he's working for home, he's
(11:07):
just two little girls, and everything's really really fresh. He's
just having those experiences, so he basically draws on that
for his scripts. It's all drawn, you know, right from
his own life.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
How much has the wild success of this changed both
his life and the production company that latched onto this
Early on.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
We'll do the production company first. They went from like
a five person operation to like a fifty or sixty
person in operation. Blue has become the sort of global,
multi platform enterprise for them. But I think for Joe
it's a bit more complicated because he has said Bluie
is going to end at some point. I have other projects.
(11:44):
I want to do projects for, you know, older kids,
and then his own daughters are older. But I also
just get the sense that like he just keeps wanting
to do shows that are better and better and better
and aggregate, you know, to use his term. He doesn't
want to repeat himself. He just seems like somebody who
is it's a true creative person.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
I mean, I feel strangely moved by the difficulty of
managing success. He is really a guy living in Brisbane,
Australia who happened to make something that ties together like
ten major cultural threads at once golden age of television.
It's in age where like tours, the tours are really
(12:22):
the showrunners, the people who are writing and creating their
own work. I think of a Jesse Armstrong like succession.
You know, they don't want to be locked into their
own success. And right now you have Joe Bram where
he technically doesn't control the rights of Blue you have
the fates of like BBC and to some degree, Disney.
As Devin points out in the story, Disney's streaming has
(12:42):
been a major money loser for the company. Bluie is
a real bright spot. We can make some informed speculation that, like,
if Joe Brom was like, I'm good for ten seasons,
Disney would be like, bam, like we we want to
be in the blue business, you know. But I think
everyone seemingly understands the singularity of this guy's vision, Like
(13:04):
what sells it is how personal it feels, and so
just strategically, how are you going to scale such a
personal thing?
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Last weekend a surprise episode called Ghost Basket Drop. This
is the one about the Healer family, moving ahead of
a much longer episode everyone is waiting to see, called
The Sign. It is four times as long as a
usual episode, and it's sets premiere this Sunday, April fourteenth.
So far, there's been no announcement about a fourth season,
and unsurprisingly that has stirred up a lot of speculation
(13:38):
about the show's future.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
The Sign is interesting because it's coming out simultaneously in
the US and other places, which is usually not the case.
And I think that there's a lot of anticipation about
what it is, obviously with the fans, but I think
also for Joe Browm in his camp, it is the
closest thing to a Bluey movie, which has also been
(14:02):
long rumored to exist.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
That latest episode seem to confirm a theory among blue
fans that the Healers are selling their house, But does
it signal an even bigger move that Bluey could be
coming to an end.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
The Little Guy said that specifically, you know, a lot
of it depends on like what the response is, what
happens after the sign So I kind of speculate towards
towards the end that if he's going to go forward,
he wants to know he can top that or you
do something better, he says, you know, it's just a
magical episode. It's an episode that sums up what we've
been trying to do for three seas is now so
so I think I just think he sets to the
(14:34):
bar really, really high for himself, and that's why the
show's so good.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
We've talked about through the anxiety of fans how much
nervousness is there on the commercial side of this in
this vacuum period between season three and whatever might come
next for the BBC Disney what's at stake here?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
I mean, David, I don't know about if you know
about the media industry, but we're not exactly in a
good state right now in general. So I would imagine
that if I were the BBC and I was attached
to the biggest children's show in the world with one
of the biggest merchandising horizons possible, I would be very
anxious about that. Ending from Disney side. You know, Disney's
(15:16):
a ginormous company as many and many things going on,
but it's streaming service has been the source of a
lot of issues.
Speaker 5 (15:22):
You know, Disney Plus actually lost some subscribers in the
last last quarter. But you can just imagine how many
of those subscribers are subscribing primarily for Bluie. If if
Blue's accounting for almost a third of the TV views
on Disney Plus, that's a really important show for them.
They can't afford to lose it. Unfortunately. You know, it
may not be you know, it may be when their
(15:42):
power to keep it going.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
At this point, I feel anxiety about it continuing, and
I feel anxiety about it ending. Yeah, I think it's
really again, like there's something about making something that is
so good and like operates so well on so many
different levels, commercial, creative, et cetera. That like the feeling
of like can you keep going? Can you top it?
And like at what point do we call it? You know,
(16:07):
because you can't make the same thing forever and keep
it as good. I think that's like the creative challenge
of television.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
This episode was produced by Thomas Low and Jessica Beck.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
It was edited by the club Beat Store.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
It was also our executive producer. It was mixed by
Veronic Coo Retriguez. Our senior producer is Naomi Sham. Elizabeth
Ponso is our senior editor. Sage Bauman is our head
of Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David
Gerra Special thanks to Reinica, Gregory Abel, and Mave.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Please follow and review the Big Take. Whenever you listen
to podcasts, how's the listeners find this stuff? Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.