at this very moment, and i m sure they will come up with a great idea. just before we finish, kevin lygo from itv, we ve talked a lot about how itv is evolving its business, its products. you have got itvx landing. i just wonder if you re nervous about the world cup? itv hub famously struggled a bit during one big game in the euros, when england were in the semifinals a while back. it s going to get a huge amount of tension and pressure, itvx, with the world cup games coming up. are you ready? yes, we re ready. remember, we had the england senegal game, when millions of people were watching through the itv hub, and we are confident it will be all right, but it will be massive traffic. nobody except the bbc, actually, bbc one and us, gets this sort of volume. whether it s tiktok or netflix, nobody deals with 10 million people at the same moment, all clicking in. but so far, everything has worked very well, so let s just hope that continues. and lots of people have been paying attention
and this year, he released a book called the emperors of byzantium. kevin lygo, welcome to the media show. you re a busy man! yes. we ll talk about itvx, the future of linear tv, the culture secretary on the bbc, love island, maybe even if you ll make a programme about byzantium emperors for itv. not a chance. we ll get into all of that. i ve got to ask you about matt hancock, though. in the last few hours, he says he s going to be stepping down as an mp when the next election happens. of course, it s just a few days after he was on one of your shows, i m a celebrity. did you did you have any inkling that might follow? no, but i suspect he did. but i don t know. no, that s his choice. and i thank him very much for coming onto the show. it was a great success. were you involved in the decision for him to take part? yes. were there pros and cons, or simply something that you said, my goodness,
as well and you can watch it live, if ou like coronation street, you can watch it through itvx. so it is that. what we can do is offer a greater range than we have done of programming. there is enormous pressure on commercial stations to get 4, 5 million viewers every night at nine o clock sort of thing, and certain genres and types of programming, that s a real stretch for. comedy is an example. sitcoms in the last period of time a decade, almost, with notable exceptions struggle to get people in big audiences now. itv has not been making comedy. but with itvx, you can let things grow and develop, and we are commercially interested in maybe smaller audiences that are, that are people who don t watch a lot on itv that would be looking for comedy, and we can make