Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-11-25_FRIDAY_6AM

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

Morning news and talk, former Annheuser-Busch president Anson Frericks talks how the Bud Light thing came to be, open phones follow.

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Clouser Drilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Good morning and welcome to Friday morning, April 11th, 2025. 57 degrees. Could be a nice day, nice weekend. Looks like it's going to be nicely warming up over the next few days.

Not very wet, though. Just keep that in mind. So as far I might have to actually turn on some sprinklers after a while, even after all this massive rain that we've been having. At some point I've got to water the weeds, okay? Got to water the weeds. Anyway, join the conversation here at 7705633770KMED. Kind of a tit-for-tat thing going on right now. I guess we're looking at retaliatory. It's really between Trump and China right now, anywhere from 100 to 145 percent tariffs coming in from China on American goods, although they haven't been buying a whole ton of American

goods in the first place, from what I could tell. And needless to say, the are are in a not a hissy fit it's you know some things are going down some things are going up gold this morning though is is quite an interesting story gold has soared now let's see the other day it dipped to below 3000 like 2974 at one point And today we're looking at gold at $3,236 an ounce. That's at last look for the futures. And Mr. Silver has joined the fear trade too. Silver this morning at 3160, roughly speaking.

So needless to say this, there's a lot of people piling into some of the fear commodities at this moment too. Some of the stock market people are saying, we're looking at the lower futures, others are saying we could. It's going to be an interesting day once again. Yesterday, the markets leaked off a little bit, but we'll just kind of dive in and out of it. Markets are going to do what markets are going to do and millions of people deciding where they're going to place their money or put it. I'm kind

of on the sideline a little bit at this point and I know some people might say it's kind of stupid, but I felt like raising a little more cash at this point, but that's just my point of view. And you know, if you're talking with real estate people, it's always a great time to be buying a house. If you're talking with stock people, it's always the best time to buy stocks. Sometimes, yeah, maybe I'm missing out on some things this morning, but I'm just going to kind of watch. I think there's some room for buying in at a better price later.

And maybe I'll be proven wrong on that. Or maybe I'll be proven right. One way or another, who knows? Who knows? It does feel like we're kind of at the end or the bull market. The just straight across bull market is probably a bit exhausted at the moment. But we'll see. We'll just kind of watch.

I'm taking more of a Buffett exhausted at the moment. But we'll see. We'll just kind of watch. I'm taking more of a Buffett view at the moment. I can't just kind of, you know, watch everybody slash and burn. And of course, some people will make a lot of money during the slash and burn too. Well, we got a little more. I finally went up to KOBI and took a look at what they were reporting on when it came to the Eugene Emeralds because we were talking about that a bit yesterday, we have been over the last few weeks. Because sports team socialism, I'm not a real fan of it. This is something which has made many cities and many taxpayers just throw millions upon millions of dollars in building sports stadiums in order to attract private businesses.

And it has been one of the most irritating trends. And of course, it's being done and I can understand there are some people that would love to have a football team or they want to have this sort of like an area, a sense of pride, you know, these sort of things. But there's a big price that comes with this. Essentially, sports team socialism means that the sports team owner gets to keep the money and the community gets to pay for everything they need so that the sports team can make the money. Very rarely do you have

sports team want to come to an area and say hey I'll tell you what if maybe you got a little piece of land and maybe you lease it to us cheap or something like that, we'll build the stadium, we'll run it, and we'll pay the expenses. In fact, I don't know if anyone's ever done that. They always expect the community, the community, you know, the communism. They expect the communism to get together and tax the folks and pay for their private business. It's amazing. It's kind of like Elon Musk. Of course, say, Elon Musk, I'm a big strapping.

And of course, he made an interesting car, right? Nothing wrong with electric cars. But the whole thing about this was that, oh, man, we need to get tax breaks in order to get this so we can fix climate change, right? So everyone is looking for a grift these days out of the taxpayers. And I'm hoping that the Medford City Council, after their Wednesday night session, their study session is what it was, there was the presentation and they had all the folks show up there.

Eugene Emeralds is a high A affiliate, San Francisco Giants, and they want this new home because the taxpayers in Eugene saw through the grift attempt and they said no to the 100 million dollar. Well, they took the 100 million dollar stadium plan and they took it down to 90 million dollars and they proposed that to the Medford City Council the other day. And there were a few questions that were asked. I think Jessica Ayers and Nick Card, by the way, I reached out to Nick Card and left him a message, saying, Nick, do you want to talk about this? I don't know. Something tells me that maybe the

City Council doesn't want to talk with me about it. Maybe I'll talk with Jessica Ayers about it. Who knows? But Jessica Ayers is asking if this is even feasible. And there was the guy who was the team's economic gun, and he's up there saying, well, you're not going to make money on the stadium. Downtown Medford, like a downtown in a lot of places, needs to be revitalized. Our stadium would be the capstone. This is the anchor.

This is what you build everything around. You build everything else around. And this is why it will work. And I couldn't help but just laugh as I'm reading and listening to the story on KOBI because they're talking about, hey, we're going to have this ball stadium in the downtown, make it like a capstone or near the downtown. And this is at the same time that the city of Medford is talking about this all climate friendly equitable community bullstein that has been forced in by the

past governor Brown. Remember everything climate friendly equitable community translation the 15-minute prison city the prison cities or the freedom cities if you're in the Trump administration you you know, however you call it. You don't have to go anywhere because everything will be right here. And by the way, you won't be allowed to have a car, but you won't need one, but you won't be happy. You won't need to go anywhere because all of your needs will be provided by the communism in your climate-friendly, equitable community and we will save the planet.

Yeah, I'm target with a broad brush but essentially that's what this this this nonsense all is that the city of Medford is going in and then the Eugene Emeralds are coming in well let's drop a ball stadium in the middle of this too. Okay well I guess if if you're not allowed to leave your 15-minute prison city climate friendly equitable community unless you can go see a ball game. Maybe that's the hook to get everybody into downtown Medford. But anyway, yeah, they're proposing this one. And we'll see. So they want a $90 million stadium, and even their own money, people are saying it would take 23 years before the money coming in would be higher than the expenses.

So we're talking about the city of Medford would be, which means you and me, would be paying expenses, would be subsidizing expenses. There wouldn't be enough money coming in for the baseball or from the baseball action to pay for things. The expenses would be higher than the revenue for 23 years. Now, I don't know how they figure out that after 23 years the economy magically... Well, at that point, then they'll probably be talking about tearing down the stadium and building another one because it won't be adequate either. See, this has all been coming because Major League Baseball, just like National Football League, the two

of these major corporate grifters, all of the owners are very, very wealthy people, but they essentially, you know, have communities fighting amongst themselves to have sports ball, you know, coming to their town. And I don't mind people wanting to get into sports ball, that's fine fine But they never want to do it on their own dime They want to do it on everybody else's dime who may never go to the game and they'll say well, you know What was it? Randy Adams? One of my Facebook friends out of Klamath Falls He's another broadcaster and he goes out there and says the typical thing. Well, you know that stadium could be used for a lot of things Yeah, why don't we use it for a jail? It could be a part-time jail than a

Baseball stadium in the summertime. That's what somebody said on that. I kind of laugh with that. You know, yeah, we'll make it multipurpose. Ninety million dollars, multipurpose, a baseball stadium and also open air jail. Yeah, we could do that. Maybe Nate Sickler could get behind that. And all of a sudden, the Chamber of Commerce says, you know, a jail in a baseball stadium, that would be a great thing for the community. I know, I'm just kidding around, kind of having some fun with it. But the nonsense that passes for economic growth and vitality, but that's the way of the land.

Everybody wants somebody else to pay for their entertainment. And that's essentially what of the land. Everybody wants somebody else to pay for their entertainment. And that's essentially what you're doing. If baseball, and I said the same thing like I say about aquatic centers, if these paid so well, if aquatic centers would pay so well and make so much money, then why did the Medford taxpayers have to build the aquatic center, right? Well, the reason private sector hasn't done it is that they always lose money. In fact, the best person to have an aquatic center is to buy it after it's gone bankrupt once or twice, which I think happened down in Redding, the Redding Aquatic Center that

people would go down there, or the water park, that sort of thing. You buy it after it's gone through a couple of bankruptcies and then you're in good shape, those sort of things. And same with sports stadiums too. But they always hold this out. And I don't blame the cities for at least exploring these things. I really don't. I'm trying to be fair about this because they're trying to put lipstick on a pig. You know, it's a deindustrialized Oregon. It's the climate friendly, equitable thing. You're not supposed to be doing business. You're not supposed to be doing business. You're supposed to be sustainable and putting on the hair shirt in every way possible and not using energy and not driving a car and not eating meat.

You're supposed to be eating rice cakes and being miserable in your climate friendly, equitable community, but you'll be happy even though you don't own anything and can't do anything. So that's where I think we find ourselves right now. They're looking for a way to get additional revenue in a city that, once again, makes very few things because America, as Trump has even said, makes very few things. He's been trying to work on that. And the markets will be wild on that today. We can talk about that. We can talk about other things in your mind too.

But yeah, there you go. 90 million dollars for a ball stadium. At least the grift is out in the open. What can we say? Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Welcome. Good morning. This is David in Phoenix. Hello, David. How are you doing?

I'm doing good. Okay. Here's where my confusion is, and you can help me. Okay. I thought we had the Harry and David's baseball stadium, and I thought we had the Rogues. So where am I missing with this Emerald thing? Well, we do have the Rogues, and we still do have Harry and David, but you have to understand is that for the high level athletes that are in Major League Baseball, they require much finer

facilities from the taxpaying public in order for them to play baseball, to play a child's game. Much higher facilities, including weight rooms and massage tables and various other things. Now I'm serious, serious. These are things. There are standards that Major League Baseball, I once saw a story about how high the standards are that Major League Baseball demands of communities in order to get ball teams. And it just... But I don't even get that. I know, but you see, this is just it. So many people are just hoodwinked by this whole thing, like,

oh gosh, we have a high level A team playing out of Medford. And I get that. There's a tribalism, a source of pride, I think, when you have a good team, a local team doing well. I mean, look what happens to us right now, David. Sports teams lose and men's testosterone goes down, right? You know, seriously, you know, that stuff happens. So it's a real thing.

And there's a sense of... I have my pink quip that I can drink. I'm fine. Yeah, okay But it but it's also though you have cities that once again in a land that has decided you're not supposed to make anything because Making things makes carbon, you know that sort of I love but I love carbon. I know you love carbon I love carbon too plants love carbon But remember everything's about we're not supposed to do it. So they have to come up, they try to come up with all sorts of other nonsense to make

up for the fact that we used to actually make things and cut trees and produce wood and made stuff. But what is the difference between the emeralds and the rogues? What's the difference? Well, the rogues, of course, it kind of like you know college players I forget exactly the structure of it it's not a major league deal it's not a man this would be a major league this would be like an 18 so how major are they okay well if you talk to the people in Eugene they don't think it's that major because they turn

down the 100 million dollar grift bond, I want to turn it down too. Okay. But the thing is though, the Medford City Council might do the same kind of sleight of hand that they did last time, which is all we have to do is just have a majority vote on the council and we'll put it on your utility and your parks fee. That's how they do it in Medford. Okay. Put a jail on my utility and parks fee and let's clean up the real mess here

in our valley. Maybe so. Just to be fair about that though, jail would be a county facility. This is a City of Medford project that they're discussing right now. It all comes out of your wallet and my wallet. Yes, yes it does. Yes it does. Thank you for the call David. Yes, it does. Thank you for the call, David. Good morning. Hi, who's this? Welcome. Hello. From the Applegate. Oh, hi, Vicki. What are you thinking this morning? Well, I got a couple

points in my head. First of all, instead of a 15 minute city, why don't they make a homeless city? OK. And second, um, the baseball season is seasonal. It's not a year round thing. No. For the bigger athletes. I don't watch sports personally. And I, it's ridiculous. A lot of people do though. It's a big deal for people. And I understand that. And I appreciate it. We all have our, or, you know, the things that we love and a lot of people love sports.

So there are people who would support it. Don't get me wrong. Okay. And as far as the water park, I've been to the one down in Redding and I think that it would be a major moneymaker up here in our Valley because if you look at it, I mean the main businesses that they have here are car lots, restaurants, and motels. So why don't we do something where it's going to bring people in during the summer? I mean, look at the Family Fund Center. When they put that in, I mean, that gave a lot of families something to do together. And you see, and that's a private enterprise, and I'm perfectly fine with them doing it that way. The

problem is that that park, that water park in Redding went bankrupt a couple of times. And so it's a very risky thing because it's done with discretionary stupid money. How many people, we have so much tourism up here. How much tourism do they really have in Reading? I don't know. It may be more than ours. I don't know. How much tourism do we have here in Southern Oregon? Well, maybe more than we realize. Look at all the hotels that have gone up. Appreciate the call there. I'll grab one more call. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Hello? Good morning, Bill. Hi, Tom. How you doing? What do you say? Pretty good. Well, you know, the Medford City Council, probably the most self-destructive city council, you know, anti-people and just pro-bureaucracy and so forth,

and everything they do is to discourage business and so forth. Very self-destructive. Yeah, so it's self-destructive on that hand, but then we want to do this and hang this business on other people. Which is destructive of people's lives. So everything they do is counterproductive. So here's my question. I wonder how much money we would have to pay each of the city councillors to have them go down and

listen to a few talks by Diane Anderson. You know, Diane Anderson actually goes to the city council and speaks now and then. Good for her. Does she really? Yeah, yeah. Hey, you know, I'll tell you what, Tom, could you give me a call at about 10-15 minutes? I do have a guest that's rolling in here in just a moment, but I'd like to explore that more, okay? Okay. All right. Good. Thanks so much. Yeah, joining me here in a minute. I'm looking forward to this. This is another example, the sports grifters and things like that. Anson Frerichs is going to join me here in just a little bit, and he's a former president of Anheuser-Busch.

So, and we're going to be talking about how Bud Light did in that company. It's a pretty interesting book he has out. Joel here, Brewer Ford and Truck Center. Hi, I'm Matt Stone, owner of Stone Heating and Air, and I'm on 106.3 KMED. How did it happen? How did the Bud Light situation happen over

at Anheuser-Busch? Well, I'm so proud to bring on Anson Frerichs, who's a former president at Anheuser-Busch, formerly the home of America's most popular brewery. And he just kind of watched it as it all went down hard. He has a new book about it called Last Call for Bud Light, the Fall and Future of America's Favorite Beer. How are you doing this morning, Anson? Welcome to the show.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to being here. Really appreciate it. By the way, this was always your dream. Wasn't it always your dream before you ended up going to Harvard and everything else to end up doing this kind of work, running Anheuser? Was it a dream to actually run Anheuser-Busch specifically or did you just kind of fall into that? How did that work? I don't know. I feel like it's a dream for like a lot of, for a lot of,

for a lot of males to run sort of a beer company. And I don't know, I was one of these kids that grew up in the eighties and nineties and you know, had seen spuds McKinsey and it's seen the Budweiser frogs and the romantic genius and all these, all these amazing advertising commercials. Um, so I, you know, I actually never thought I would, I would end up running in as a Bush, but when the opportunity came to join them after business school, it was a really cool company with a 150 year

history of the Bush family running it. It had recently been bought by this group called InBev that kind of recruited me to come work for them. And so couldn't turn down the opportunity. And I don't know, after a bunch of moves and different businesses ended up, yeah, President has a Bush. So it was kind of a dream job and really sad to see what happened over the last couple of years. And I had left about a year before the partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, but saw a lot of the

problems that were coming down the line that led to that partnership. And unfortunately, it led to, be aware, the company lost millions of consumers, billions of dollars of value, a thousand people got fired. So it's been really sad to see because it once was a really truly great American company. And I wish they would take steps to become great once again, but still haven't turned the ship around over the last couple of years. And that essentially they took $30 billion and set it on fire in the parking lot, right? It's essentially what they did with the Bud Light fiasco, right? I mean, that's it. The whole Dome of Anees fiasco, the stock was trading around $70 a share, and it's been down below $50 a share. It really hasn't yet recovered over the last two years,

and it really hasn't recovered because Bud Light, which used to be the number one beer brand in this country, has lost 50% of its sales. None of these sales have come back. It continues to decline. It's been passed over by other beer brands at this point, and that's been problematic for its other beer brands like Budweiser and its craft portfolios. There's been just a lot of missteps that have happened over the last couple of years. It's been frankly sad to see. Something which I found very common in businesses, you'll talk with folks, and it seems like they never seem to want the customers that they have. It's always about the customers they don't have.

Is that part of what ended up taking things down for the company? How did that all start? Because like I said, you used to run it. Yeah. I think there's really, I think, 15 years of history that led to this marketing disaster. I think one was, people forget that Anheuser-Busch is actually no longer an American company. In 2008, it was bought by this Belgian based company called InBev. Yeah. And InBev owned brands like Stellar, Klaw, and Hogarden and Leff. And what they, there was really this clash of cultures.

And the Bush family was, was for 150 years, the Bush family hit around Anheuser-Busch. And this company was started in the 1860s, 187070s this is when you had the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilt and the Carnegie's running other empires they had all gone by the wayside the early 2000s when you had the Bush family August 4th was still running the business they had some issues and unfortunately had to sell and the culture was very different the Bush family understood the US consumer they were headquartered in st. Louis. They were a geographical center this country and they got the US consumer In-depth based in Belgium was more about cost cutting

they brought in a lot of brand managers from Belgium and from other parts of the world I don't think ever really understood the US consumer and then in 2015 There was a big problem that happened where the actual in-depth executives They moved the headquarters the salesmen headquarters and as a bush from st. Louis to New York City And then in 2015, there was a big problem that happened where the actual in-bed executives, they moved the headquarters, the salesmen were going to headquarters in Andrew Bush from St. Louis to New York City. That was a really big move and a really big problem.

As all of a sudden you started recruiting people that had only grown up in New York City and had only seen the US through the lens of Fifth Avenue. And that's a very different customer base than the traditional Bud Light, Budweiser customer base. So the company, they just, I just didn Light, Budweiser customer base. So the company, they just, I just didn't even know who their customer was. I think by the year 2023 when they did this partnership, and then they just didn't really think about which branch or which customers. I mean, you know, and as a Bush, they have hundreds of brands. Yeah. Yeah. But the thing is,

Bud Light, you know, people just wanted to drink beer, have fun. They wanted to drink beer and have fun, right? Isn't that essentially what they wanted to do, Anson? That's what that's it. That's all it was. I mean, that's it. It should be a big bloodline should be for drinking beer, having fun, and tons of other beers that can serve, you know, the different customer bases. And they didn't leverage their whole portfolio. That was a problem. Yeah. Now, what role did ESG play in this one? And I'm wondering, did you ever problem with it with BlackRock coming to you and Larry Fink saying, hey, Anson, you guys better get a lot of DEI and go for the island of misfit humans in your ads or else we're going to dump your stock? Was it ever that open or overt? Can you tell me about that?

Yeah, I mean, it was massively problematic. This whole movement away from shareholder value, shareholder capitalism, business folks and their customer. And there was this big movement led by really BlackRock in the United States, which is the world's largest asset manager, consulting firms like McKinsey, a lot of activists where they were really pushing companies to adopt ESG and DEI,

mostly doing it because they were putting companies in ESG and DEI funds and charging 3X the amount of fees on these funds that are the regular funds and consulting organizations were therefore extracting massive fees to coach companies on how to become more ESG friendly, more DEI friendly. I mean, I thought of Anheuser-Busch where our board all of a sudden was asking us to put in diversity dashboards and effectively quota systems and really focusing really, really heavily on DEI. And that's really how Bud Light all of a sudden

started doing more partnerships with people that frankly had nothing to do with the Bud Light brand. There was a whole organization called Human Rights Campaign and every year they needed, they essentially had to get 100% score on your DEI index, your Hard Human Rights Campaign index. You have to do so many partnerships with the LGBTQ plus community,

even if it didn't make sense to your brand. Bud Light, who had never touched, he really controversial issues or partnered with controversial political people, essentially did this campaign to appease BlackRock and to appease the human rights campaign and appease all these stakeholders. And it was obvious to the detriment of the brand.

And we saw that not only Bud Light, we saw it with Disney got involved in the Oprich Journal of Rights, Florida, and Coca-Cola was getting involved in election peggies. All of this was to appease kind of the BlackRock and ESG and DEI agenda, which has now imploded. And, Sam, I only have about a minute left with you, and I just wanted to make sure you get this in and ask you, is this going to go away or is so much of this just baked in the United States DNA right now in corporate structure that we've got a lot of work to do? I'll give you the final word on this. Yeah, I think there's definitely still work to do, but we're in a much better place than

we were two years ago. I mean, Bud Light became the straw that broke the camel back where every CEO all of a sudden woke up and they did not want to be in the news. There's this new adjective essentially being bud lighted and nobody wants to be the next company that gets bud lighted where you lose millions of your consumers and that's the least sustainable thing

that a company can do. The whole ESGDI movement was based on sustainability but when you're losing off your customers, you lose revenue, that's the least sustainable thing. So even before Trump took office, you saw a lot of companies like Walmart, Tractor Supply Company, Harley Davidson backtracking on ESG and DEI. You see even more so in the last two or three months. I think that's good for business long-term and let business get back to business, focus on their customers, focus

on hiring, leave all the politics aside, leave that to the politician. I think that's going to be good for American business, American shareholders, and also good for the democracy that we live in moving forward. Let individual people vote on all these political topics, not having companies and CEOs tell you what to think and do. Anson Frerichs, great read by the way. I'm really enjoying looking at the insight of how this all developed and its last call for Bud Light, the fall and future of America's favorite beer. We'll put this information up on KMED.com. Anton, great getting a chance to talk with you. Thanks a bunch. Thank you. It is 641 at KMED

and 993 KBXG. We'll do a quick check on news. More of your calls coming up. Find your phone Friday. Oregon Trunk and Auto. Trust in Will is an online estate planning service. For details, see TrustinWill.com. This is News Talk 1063 KMED, and you're waking up with the Bill Myers show. And I hope you aren't waking up. 7705633 770 KMED.

And we've got Tom Standenbaier going to finish that conversation we had before we were interrupted by the guy who used to run Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch. Interesting story there. Deplorable Patrick, you wanted to weigh in on that briefly, too. Go ahead. Bill, that was an excellent segment. I've been waiting to hear something. But I will tell you, I took my van through the car wash the other day and I could

have sworn I saw Alissa Hynerscheid down there dyed her hair. A little different. I'm sorry, that you saw what, Saw who? Alissa Einarscheid. Who is that? The master of stupidity at Bud Light. That was the marketing person, right? The marketing person that was fired. Yeah, okay. Now he had left the presidency like a year before that all ended up going down.

So I guess I can't necessarily blame him, but he did make it clear though that you could already see where the DEI and the ESG and the Larry Finks and all the investment, the woke investing. And remember when they were talking about stakeholder capitalism rather than worrying about the people who actually give them money, that kind of thing, right? They love to come up with new terms to try to distinguish themselves and I think that Alissa Hynershide was another one just trying to figure out a way to insert herself and make a difference and she did make a difference. Yeah, you know I was reading his book, you know, this

guy's book that is Last Call for Bud Light, and what he was mentioning in this is that even now, even though Anheuser-Busch has tried to reverse course, they're still down 50% on Bud Light sales, roughly speaking, and that people have just not forgiven them. And you got to be really careful about this kind of stuff. It would be like if all of a sudden under diversity, equity and inclusion, Patrick, I were to say, you know, I'm going to take on KMED and we're going to put on the Rachel Maddow show. So we put on Rachel Maddow. What do you think the reaction would be? And I'm saying, well, listen, we're trying to get diverse opinions and views on the station.

What do you think would happen here? I think if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Thanks Patrick. 7705633. Rachel Maddow, right after Bill Maier. We'll replace Mark Lee Van Camp and Robbins with Rachel Maddow. Just kidding. Let me talk with Tom.

Tom, we got interrupted interrupt it because I had to schedule a talk there with Anson. I think you wanted to go a little bit more into this ball game, this ball stadium push here out of the Medford City Council. And I'm not completely, I don't want to throw the council under the bus here, but they are trying to put... maybe this is what challenges southern Oregon, Tom. Let me run this by you. Southern Oregon... we'll take Medford as an example, even though you live in Tallent. Medford is too large to be cute and quaint. It's not going to have that Ashland or even like a Jacksonville sort of field.

It's too large to be cute and quaint, and it's too small to have the gravitas to attract the big stuff. But they keep trying to do that. Could that be some of what we're looking at here in this desire that the ball team will be lightning in a bottle for us? I don't know. What are you thinking? Well, what I'm thinking is just what happened with Bud Light and Medford City Council. I see an analogy or a connection between the two because they're both trying to be politically correct in the DEI business. Medford City Council, like I said, is just making one bad decision after another. They continuously do that and you look at downtown road striping and 20 miles per hour.

So it's just over and over and over and all these cameras all over the town, you know, as a revenue enhancement. And then you're talking about the planners coming up, well, we need to do more things to attract people downtown. Well, people would be attracted downtown if you ended up making it easy for them to use the streets and get there and don't take away your parking

and do these other things. Yeah, common sense. It's kind of like the way Bud Light didn't like its customers that it had. And so it did everything it could to to tee them off and make them go away because they wanted a different type of customer. I don't know what kind of customer that the city of Medford is is looking according to the urban planners these days. I guess someone who doesn't have a car and only wants to walk every place and, you know, wants

to live in a climate-friendly, equitable community. I don't know. That's what I mean. It's this wrong-headed thinking, you know. They got Alan Jurnay to testify at the Bedford City Council for a lot of their programs. So this DEI, I'll call it crap, is very dangerous because it's not based on common sense. It has this very skewed ideology that it's not for the best interests of people. And you have... so I see just over and over this messed up thinking that causes bad decisions, that causes hardship for... And maybe what the city is working through though, and I'm trying to be really fair about this, this is why I invited Nick Card on. Hopefully Nick Card will return

my call and we'll have a chance to talk about it. I like Nick, we've talked with him before about things before going on here. And I'm wondering if all of this is that the cities find themselves caught between climate friendly, equitable community orders coming down from the governor's office and also the reality of where all the urban planners have one point of view. I don't think there are any urban planners that really look at cities the way they used to. Everything about urban planning today is to turn us into Europe. And of course, Europe has its own set of problems. But that's really where they're going. I really think if they just went and listened to Diane Anderson's talks, we'd get a whole different perspective coming out of the city council.

So you're proposing that we should pay the city council to actually sit down with Diane Anderson and listen to her for a couple of hours at least and truly listen, right? I'll pass the hat for that one, okay? Okay. Thanks, Tom. 7705633. Like I said, I don't like picking on city council decisions in the past and things. I don't like doing this. It's not... People, why can't you be positive, Bill? Well, you know, I'm just looking out for the taxpayer and it seems like it's really really hard in today's Oregon to look out for the taxpayer and then be accused of why don't you want to say yes to everything? Let me go to line four. Hi, good morning. This is the Bill Meyers show. Who's this? Welcome. Hey Bill, this is James trucking down Northern California. Glad to hear it.

Thanks. I'm not sure if you covered this. I don't always have a signal, but is it the reason the Metford A's went away? Because the city, the county, the public wouldn't buy them a new stadium? I don't know if that's why the Metford A's went away or not. I'd have to look that up. I'll try to. I know some people sent me some history on that and I just haven't had a chance to read a bunch of that. But I would imagine part of that, that was probably part of it. That's always the implied deal.

If you want our amazing team, you better build us a stadium stat, that kind of thing. My dad was working there at the time. And I mean, that's the way I remember it. And, you know, people stopped going. I mean, there wasn't as many people going, the interest kind of got lost, and then they wanted a new stadium. They ended up moving them, I don't know,

up north, Washington, somewhere, but. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know exactly No, maybe somebody else can help me with that exact part about it. Okay, appreciate the call Thanks for checking in seven seven zero five six three three. So Instead of a hundred million we're talking 90 million for a stadium here though, at least. Hi. Good morning. Who's this? Welcome Hi, this is Dirk Dirk or Derek?

Dirk Dirk. Now see Dirk. That's a man's name. Good to have you on Dirk. Dirk or Derek? Dirk. Dirk. Now see, Dirk, that's a man's name. Good to have you on Dirk. What's going on? I'm just happy to be alive and I'm excited because they've de-extincted a species of wolf and that's just the coolest thing ever. You know something I've been wondering about here, Dirk? You know something I've been wondering about here, Dirk? If you're going to de-extinct something, why would you de-extinct a predator? Have you ever wondered about that? Well, that makes it more exciting. Oh, oh, okay.

You know. No, and they want to do the dodo bird, they want to do the Tasmanian tiger, and they want to do the dodo bird, they want to do the Tasmanian tiger, and they want to do the mammoth. And I say, why stop there? Let's de-extinct Neanderthal or Bigfoot. I don't know. Sometimes if you look at some of the stores on a Sunday afternoon, I think Neanderthal never left us, but I could be wrong about that. I think women listeners should call in and volunteer surrogacy for a Neanderthal. So let's find the Neanderthal genes and by the way you have to say Neanderthal otherwise you're a Neanderthal. You have to say Neanderthal.

I guess that's the official way you're supposed to pronounce it, Mal. That's what I'm told. That's what I'm told too. Yeah, yeah. All right, so that's right. We need surrogate women then willing to give birth to Neanderthal babies. That's right. All right. That would be cool, right? Oh yeah, yeah. Just because we can, we should, right? Yes, you got it.

All right. Why don't we bring back the raptors too and the Tyrannosaurus Rex? So, you know, we don't need to have the Medford Airport any longer. We'll have Tyrannosaurus Rex and it'll be just like the Flintstones. We'll put seats on. We'll have Tyrannosaurus Rex, and it'll be just like the Flintstones. We'll put seats on the back of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and we'll take off. What do you think about that? You get it, that's it. All right, see, that's how we'll get wealthy.

And we'll be a climate-friendly, equitable community, flying not in jets powered by dyno fuel, supposedly, but by being powered by dinos itself. 655. Welcome to Dustin Curbs parking lot maintenance. We're exceptional parking lot maintenance. CERDICS 3 KMED. I want to give an email of the day to someone who doesn't really like me much.

That's okay. In fact, they never give me their name, but their email is 399-DIVORCE-IN-PERILLEGAL. So it must be an interesting business here. Good for you. It says, Bill, we're in the business of doing our talking with our paralegals and legal assistants by way of written documents briefs, so thank you for the invite to phone your show. But we're just a distant listener. However, we're amused by how so many times you lack facts to further your arguments. Or it's the Bill Meyer way. Why have you not mentioned the stadium and business enterprise that exists in Kaiser

Oregon? Yes, it was a city providing a facility and now look what it has become 20 years later where it has paid for itself, generated millions of dollars in the market, added jobs, infrastructure, etc. Clearly you have no clue about sports and the business of sports, whether public or private. Next, why do you not reach out to the Portland Pickles, owner of the WCL West Coast League in Portland?

How about contacting Fred Herman, who once owned the Medford A's and went through all the facility issues with Jackson County and moved the team to Vancouver, BC? Had he contacted Boise Yakima, all these sources could give you more of a perspective on how public and private entities have put successful deals together. There are also a few major cities who have done quite well with joint ventures with pro sports teams.

Further, there have been many cases where a privately owned pro sports team has leased a facility and helped make significant contributions to improving the facility, such as Portland Timbers in the City of Portland, with Providence Park. Hillsboro recently entered into a new deal with the Hillsboro Hops to replace Ron Tonkin Stadium. Why do you suppose some cities are doing these kind of deals? Well I'll tell you why because they're desperate for some sort of revenue stream. Okay that's what I would figure they're doing and you know you're in a world right now that doesn't want to actually you know build something of use and import. And so the idea is

that we'll just build our entire economy here in our climate friendly, equitable Oregon on sustainable tourism. That seems to be it. Further on, this person says, the city of Metford already has Harry and David Field and could easily add on and renovate that complex to meet MILD standards. The Medford Rogues are not a professional league team with players being paid. The Rogues are a level above American League Baseball with most junior college amateur players. H&D could be built up and out, an outfield seating structure built, team lockers, rooms, hitting facilities, etc. And while we are on the subject, how much money has Jackson County invested in improving the Expo in 50 years?

Zero. That facility could be renovated and undergo a facelift to be similar to facilities in Nampa, Tri-Cities, Kent, Washington. Medford could explode with a WHL Western Hockey League franchise like the Portland Winterhawks, Dry Cities, Americans, etc. The Expo could facilitate NBA and WNBA preseason events. Arena football, indoor pro tennis soccer, Medford and Jackson County is looking at is missing out on what many other cities in the region are doing, providing entertainment

and related businesses. Providing entertainment and related businesses. Providing entertainment and related businesses. I didn't realize, I appreciate your alternative way of looking at this one and maybe you're right. But should the people be taxed in order to do this? this because is the business of the city to actually go into business with these ventures? I know that's been a very popular thing to do in certain cities and I understand, I appreciate your opinion, 399 Divorce and Paralegal, but did we move to Medford to, or did we move to Grants Pass, or did we move to Medford

to do this? Is this a wealth generator for the general public or a wealth generator for specific businesses? That is my concern. My concern with the whole public-private partnership situation, when you look at the history of it, is that the public more often than not get saddled with the cost because even the Eugene Emeralds at this point, as I talked about that, revenue will be less than the expenses for some 23 years. And I would imagine when you're talking about that to the Medford City Council,

you're trying to paint the best picture when you have the financial things. In other words, the revenue is not going to be, you're not cutting the profit for 20, 23 years or so. And that's a problem, don't you think? When even the Emeralds themselves admit that it's gonna be, you know, more than two decades. How many of us know anything about what's gonna be happening a couple of decades now here in Southern Oregon? I would just be proceeding very carefully, okay? Anyway, I appreciate your opinion.

I'm gonna give you an email of the day, even though you and I are going to disagree on this one. Emails of the day sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson and Central Point Family Dentistry, centralpointfamilydentistry.com. And to me, I guess the public-private partnership What is the principle? Where does this stop? Only the sports world seems to have this conceit that we're going to sit here and we're going to leverage city against city, you know, to come out. Who gets the best taxpayer grift in order to get our star players here to Southern Oregon? I'm suspicious of this. I'm suspicious. And I understand why the City Council wants to do this. I do. Because once again it's the it's of desperation of an area that doesn't seem to produce much more other than chain restaurants and and medical facilities. You know it it seems to be the two big things

that we're doing here. And it's to make up for the fact that we de-industrialized down here in Southern Oregon too. It's my opinion, my observation for a number of years. We'll see. You know, we'll see about this. We'll see how wise the Medford City Council is, but you know, $90 million is a lot of money.

And my concern is that they'll just throw it on to the monthly parks and utility fee, just like they did last time for ROGEx. But that's okay. We can cornhole a tournament and WNBA ourselves into prosperity. Maybe you're right, and I'm wrong. I appreciate your writing, though.