The Bill Simmons Podcast - Pats-Eagles Super Bowl Plans and Thanksgiving Picks With Peter Schrager, and HBO’s Remarkable History With James Andrew Miller

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by NFL Network’s Peter Schrager to discuss the three NFL Thanksgiving games and make their Million-Dollar Picks for NFL Week 12 (2:35). Then Bill talks to author James Andrew Miller about his now book on the history of HBO, ‘Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers’ (50:03). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Peter Schrager and James Andrew Miller Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, Rewatchables fans, we have a new one coming on Thursday, a special Thanksgiving drop. It is a very famous sports movie. Stay tuned for that. If you want to hear the whole archive of Rewatchables podcast, go to Spotify. We have 213 movies, I think at this point, all available only on Spotify. If you want to hear anything from the last 45 days, it's available everywhere, the entire library, only on Spotify. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality,

great taste. Picture this, it's game day, all the gang's here. You're tailgating outside the stadium. It's a great time for beer. Or how about when you're standing at the grill and the smell of sizzling burgers is in the air? Moments like that. Or when you want a light beer that tastes like beer, that's delicious. You don't want to load up on those heavier beers and then you only have two of them. Then you feel tired. Your stomach feels full. Miller Lite, it's your friend. It just accompanies whatever else you're doing. You're super happy with it. Opening an ice cold Miller Lite can signal the beginning of Miller time. Miller Lite is the light beer with all the great beer tastes we like. 90 calories per 355 mil can. So why not grab some Miller Lites

today? Your game time tastes like Miller time. Must be legal drinking age. It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. Football is in full action. FanDuel's highest rated sports book is the best place to bet it all. We've been doing pretty well on million dollar picks this year. I love the first month of the season because you have to go into the season thinking, I think Pittsburgh's going to be good. I think the Chargers are going to be good. I think Seattle's going to be good. And then trying to back what you think in those first few weeks and then zag

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or visit rg-help.com. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel Sportsbook as well as the Ringer Podcast Network. Hope you're checking out Playing English with Derek Thompson.

Man, that thing launched with a bang. He's done three so far. Really good. Feels like that pod's been around for a year or so. Great job. Smart guests, smart topics, and a big asset to the Ringer Podcast Library. I hope you're checking that out.

Speaking of checking things out, the third film from our Music Box series is launching 8 p.m. HBO, Thursday night, Thanksgiving, and also on HBO Max as well. It's about DMX. It is called DMX, Don't Try to Understand. It's directed by Christopher Frierson. It's really good.

I don't know what to tell you. All six of these that we made, they're really good. There's no stinkers. There's no runt in the litter. They're all just really good. People love the Atlantis one last week. You're going to love the DMX one as well. It's emotional. Just warning you now. So I don't know. Look, you might want to watch football on Thursday night and then get to it over the weekend. You might be tired of football by Thursday night. Might want to watch something with the whole family. But this is a

really good film. We are really proud of it. We are proud of this whole series. And if you missed the first two, Jagged or Woodstock 99, those are on HBO Max. So there you go. Coming up, Peter Schrager and I, we're going to mix things up because we've been a little stagnant on million dollar picks. Not really getting killed, but not winning money either. So we're going to mix it up. We're just doing it on Tuesday. We're going to try to get the Thursday games in. We do million dollar picks. And then Jim Miller, who's been on this podcast a few times talking about SNL and ESPN and CAA. Well, he wrote a new book about HBO. It is almost a thousand pages. It is an exhaustive oral history. It's really good. And we're going to talk about HBO. So that is the podcast for today. Million Dollar Picks, Jim Miller. It's all next, first, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, Peter Schrager is here.

We are mixing it up this week. Usually we do this on a Thursday. We could have taped it ahead. We could have taped it Wednesday. We could have... No, we're doing it Tuesday. It's 11 o'clock Pacific time. Coming right off the Monday game.

Jason Garrett just got fired. Stuff's happening. Lines are moving. We're just going. We've been... I don't want to say we've been in a slump, but we just can't get momentum. Last week, we lost $16,000 last week. That's it. That's nothing. We gambled a million. We lost $16,000. We're up $98,000 for the year. It just feels like we're on a hamster wheel. So we're opening up this week in a variety of ways. First of all, the Bills let us down last week.

The Bills are playing on Thursday. There are three Thursday games. Bears-Lions with rumors of Matt Nagy's demise circling over that. Bears are favored by three and a half in Detroit. Then you have Dallas, seven and a half point favorites at home against Vegas. Hard to believe Vegas can get their shit together in three days with the kind of season they're having. And then Buffalo, a line that started at four when I woke up this morning and is now at

five and a half at New Orleans on Thursday night going head to head against the DMX document or an HBO, which I guarantee would be more entertaining. But my first question, because I really want to put the bills in a parlay. Do you trust the bills to bounce back this week? Because I feel like I do. I read a great piece on the, in the athletic today by shield compadia about how this Buffalo thing isn't nearly as dire as it seems. And a lot of it just comes down to they got their ass kicked against the Colts obviously, but Hey, they're down 10. They're down 13 earlier. They're playing catchup. They've had some, some untimely interceptions and fumbles and really bad luck on fourth down.

And he was saying, if they just shift a couple of those things, all of a sudden, this doesn't look like a disaster. I was thinking, look, they play the Pats in a week. This is a nice comeback game. Doesn't seem like Kamara is going to play. Simeon looked terrible. And maybe they get back on the horse this week on a Thursday night in New Orleans. What say you, Peter Schrager? Under McDermott, historically, they've played well in these type of primetime games where it's like, all right, questions, whether the bills are for real. And I remember a couple of years ago, they went into Pittsburgh and Josh Allen beat the Steelers with the terrible towels waving. And it was like, okay.

And then Thanksgiving that year, it was like, all right, they're going against the Cowboys in Dallas. And are the Josh Allen led bills for real? And they blew out the Cowboys. And last year, week after week after week in a big spot, Allen delivered. He let us down against the Jagu spot, Allen delivered. He let us down against the Jaguars this season. He's let us down against the Colts this season. Going into New Orleans will not be easy. The Saints, they do play really well there on

Thanksgiving. Last year, they always have success on Thanksgiving. But gosh, I'm watching the Philadelphia Eagles run for 270 yards all over them last week. The Saints have nothing on offense going for them, right? No, Kamara. I like the bills in this one. I feel like if they're anything, they're going to be anything. They have to win this game. And this is like kitchen sink type deal. We just need them to win.

Dallas against the Raiders is seven and a half, which can be teased or parlays. And Dallas is another one coming off kind of an ugly game against the Chiefs. They ran out of receivers. We don't know if C.D. Lamb's going to play. Cooper misses the last two games because he's not vaccinated, basically. It seems like they're going to have him back for Thursday.

Dak had an uncharacteristic, just wasn't that good? Didn't look great. And you could make the case, Hey, be careful of this, be careful of Vegas as a live dog. But I don't like what I've seen from Vegas. Have you, what am I missing? Like, I, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Mariota this week. We, we put money on the, on the bangles last week and it was like 16, 13 and you and I were texting and it's like, I don't know. And then Bengals put

it on them and they won 32-13. I think they just kind of let it rip. It felt like that was the Raiders season, didn't it? And two years ago, they were six and three at one point and fell apart, missed the playoffs. Last year, they were six and four at one point, fell apart, missed the playoffs. This year, there's obvious reasons. And you and I mentioned it two weeks ago that lost in the absolute tragedy of the Henry Ruggs thing is a football piece to it where he was the 12th overall pick and is maybe the fastest player in the NFL. And you take him out of your offense too. And they have not been able to replace that. They looked lifeless in the second half on Sunday. They didn't look like

they had spirit. And that was at home. I don't see it just clicking all of a sudden that defensive pass rush, which was so good with Crosby and Ngakwe, kind of went away in the second half against that Bengals team. And then you mentioned Carr. We were talking Carr MVP as recent as early November after they had those gutsy wins in the wake of the Gruden stuff. But gosh, this feels like he just does not get it done when they need him to. And I wouldn't be shocked if he saw some Marcus Mariota. He's healthy now. And it feels like it might be time to mix things up for, for Las Vegas.

Here's the bad sign for car. Cause I think we're going to end up putting Dallas in something. If it's announced an hour before the game that they're starting Mariota, I'm way more nervous than I would be for car. I've got, Oh no. Oh God. That,

that this is like This could be a different Raiders team. Who knows? I like on these Thursdays, a team that only has a couple of days to prepare that's either in turmoil, coming off a bad loss, looks like it's kind of heading the wrong way. You see these teams just check out on Thursdays. Usually it's the Lions or, you know, or either the first or the team playing Dallas, where you just watch and you go, oh man, that team looks like they can't wait to get to the 10-day break.

Feels like that's going to be the Raiders. Dallas has usually been pretty good in these games. I am a little worried about the C.D. Lamb thing because I don't think he's going to play. And I thought their offense completely changed when he was out. But on the other hand, you know, they have some time to readjust the pound, the ball, run the ball down the Raiders throats, the Raiders. I think you could throw on them. I think as the weeks have gone on the fact that the Bengals so

easily handled them in the second half last week, I thought it was a bad sign. And it just feels like that that's a team with the arrow pointing down. I'm not buying the interim coach getting them ready in three days. So knowing that, that there's a pattern of that where the interim coach gets you going and there's all this bluster and the first couple of times out there, then over the course of the season, it's like, all right, he's an interim coach. He's a special teams coach. And this team was built with Gruden's vision and has Gruden's fingerprints all over it. I would also look at the Cowboys and say, you know, Tyron Smith might be the best tackle in football.

He was out and Chris Jones goes out there and has three and a half sacks and they're injured all over the place, but a lot of teams are injured all over the place. So it's almost like no excuses. Find a way to win. You're at home against a reeling Raiders team. If we're talking just winners, I would

think the Cowboys are a safe bet there. Yeah. And I think what I'm looking at, there's a Pats-Bills parlay that's basically even money. It's minus 102. Both of them just have to win. The Pats are playing the Titans. We'll talk about them in a second. Then there's a Pats-Bills Cowboys parlay. All of them just have to win. That's plus 150. So I think my instinct is maybe we dabble in both directions with some real wood. And by the way, I'm ready to put down

some real wood this weekend. I am too. Thanksgiving. I'm tired of treading water. We got to go back to we're the guys. Once upon a time, five straight weeks.

I know. Week 17 through the playoffs last year, we made almost five and a half million dollars. Let's get that back. We did our mojo back, Peter Schrager. I know. At the end of last year, I would go to the airport and there'd be paparazzi and there'd be TMZ and everybody would be like, oh my God, million dollar picks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now I'm walking off the plane and I'm asking people to notice me and they don't want to even look at me. It's embarrassing. It's like we've lost our mojo. We had an album come out that just was a

complete dud. This is the movie that was like, everyone, we were the hottest thing in Hollywood. And now, Bill, we can't even get a table at the hot spot. We need to get our mojo back. The only way is to swing big. This is the week. And we're still up $98,000. That's nothing to me. Nothing to be ashamed of. No, it is something to be ashamed of. We were up millions. It's true. It's true. But we can get it back. Pats-Titans. That is a Sunday game. I got to repeatedly check FanDuel because the lines were really moving

like crazy today. This line is settled at minus six. Pats minus 275. Sal and I talked about this a little on Sunday. You need some luck with this stuff. And I think the Pats have made their own luck to a lot of degrees. But in this case,

catching Tennessee this week is really lucky. Where they had, you know, the Pats could be the number one seed in two weeks.

They're getting a Tennessee team that doesn't have Derek Henry. They've thrown three running backs into the mix, including Foreman last week. None of them have looked good. A.J. Brown goes out last week.

Julio's out. Julio's gone. Who was the backup receiver who was getting some fantasy play? He got hurt last week. Yeah, he got hurt. What's that guy's name? I can't remember.

Khalif Raymond? No, that's the trait. Who was? The backup Tennessee guy. I'm sorry, backup Tennessee guy. Nicholas Westbrook-Akina? Was it him? I just think it's going to be really hard for Tennessee to move the ball.

Because, all right, let's say A.J. Brown even plays. What's Belichick going to do? If you're only going to show one thing to him, all right, I'll take out that one thing. What else you got? That's what he's going to do. I love this Pat's defense. Been talking about it for weeks.

I think the defense is playing the best of any defense in the league. They have a real hunger to them, especially late in games, which I think is a really good sign. You saw it with Atlanta where they're just, they're piling up the score. It's like when you have the really good NFL defense, it turns into the high school football thing where they're like, they're trying to get points in the fourth quarter. Yeah. They want more. They don't, They're not just satisfied with winning. And I just think this is a bad spot for Tennessee. The counter would be Vrabel has had a lot of success against Belichick. He seems to have a good feel for this stuff. But that was really Brady-based, and Brady is now not on the Patriots anymore.

Well, Vrabel has a ton of success. So does Tannehill when he's with the Dolphins. But always give the Patriots fix. You know, I'm watching that Thursday night game and Van Noy returns that interception for a touchdown. And then they interview Van Noy after the game. And Matthew Judon, Mike Reese from ESPN had this. Matthew Judon is standing off to the side during the press conference and he's dancing and laughing.

And it's like, there's something to this Patriots team. It's a little different than years past where they're outwardly having a ton of fun too. They've always heard that like, they're having a blast, like in the building and you don't get it. It's really fun there. But like those guys two weeks ago, Jacoby Meyer scores the touchdown. The entire team comes to the end zone in a blowout and it's to celebrate that moment. They're having fun. They're getting better. And the young guys are improving. Barmore, who we talked about, it was a second round pick and he's dominating the middle of the field. And I had a coach text me after I was talking about him

on Good Morning Football. And he was like, this was a really weird defensive draft where it was good with corners, a couple of linebackers. Parsons is kind of a fungible player. Not sure what to do with him, but Barmore is the best defensive lineman in this draft and he's playing like it. So you add that to Judon, who's been arguably the defensive player of the year. And then all these young players that are getting better every week, it's ascending.

It's the right feeling. And Tennessee fans, like they come after me because I'll often say, hey, the Cardinals are winning without Kyler and without DeAndre Hopkins or the Packers. They pulled it out.

I can't believe they won. They didn't even have Bakhtiari. And like the Titans are like, we have 20 players on IR. We have 80 different guys who have missed games because of this. We've had 80 different roster spots filled. I think it caught up with them last week.

That loss to Houston was bound to happen. I could see the Patriots taking care of business here too. Yeah, and the line, even though it's minus six, which is a little hefty, but the Pats are home. 10 days rest. You could argue this should... I think people are judging Tennessee based on the record and the body of

work this season. But the team that played Houston last week is not the same team. And I don't think it's going to be the same team this week either. So you could argue you're getting a couple extra points that we could be, uh, this should be Pat's minus eight considering how well the Pats have played the last few weeks. I think,

I think lost in a lot of the headlines on Monday morning and Tuesday was that Houston Tennessee game. And I watched a lot of it. It's pouring rain. It few weeks. I think, I think lost in a lot of the headlines on Monday morning and Tuesday was that Houston, Tennessee game. And I watched a lot of it. It's pouring rain. It was gross, but like Houston did not do much on offense. They were giving the Titans every opportunity to come back in this game. And they did cut it to six at the end, but Tannehill threw four bad picks and that's

to like nothing against the Houston Texans. That's a team that was last in the league in offense. Lovey Smith is a defensive coordinator. This isn't like the 85 bears that they were against and they could not move the ball and it was at home. So is that a Mulligan game? Is that just like a, that's one bad one or is that a sign of things to come? I think the Patriots are ascending. Tennessee might've seen their best games. Yeah. And they just, they're built around Derek Henry and play action and two big receivers. They only have one big receiver left that might not even have the other one this week. And they have, they went from the best running back in the last seven years to just this hodgepodge crew of, you know, fill-ins and it's just not the same team. fans and media is getting a little annoying for you, who is a day one guy who put yourself on the line and said, no,

I welcome it. I like looking in the rear view mirror and seeing it fill in the back. The amount of people who hit me up in August when you were like, Ramondre Stevenson and Damien Harris are as good a one, two as Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt. And we're like, you are a, you know what?

For not pushing back. I did. I that's, I didn't a hundred percent say that. What'd you say? I said the fantasy football show, they were doing a take purge. And it was takes that you kind of believe in,

but you're also embarrassed about. And my take purge was Ramondre and Damien Harris are the thinking man's Chubb and Hunt. The thinking man's, okay. Thinking man's Chubb and Hunt. Just like, you don't think of them that way, but if you really kind of look at it and you turn a little bit.

Now, Chubb and Hunt versus Ramondre and Damien. It's a good discussion. It's a battle. It's a good discussion. Ramondre. I mean, this Pat, this Pat's hitting the past two drafts like they did. So good.

Where you get six blue trippers in two years. Listen, I think they win this week. And I think it goes to the Bills next week with everyone on the bandwagon. Okay. And then that's when I'm worried, where it's just like the bandwagon is now, people are standing on the roof.

They're grabbing onto the fender, trying to hold on. And it's like the Bills, they barely beat the Saints on third. And that's the one I'm a little more worried about. Did you hear McDaniels talking about Mac this week, though? I mean, he's saying this guy's as smart as that. I mean, really, really complimentary.

And I know those Patriots coaches do not like to pump up their own players, but basically just saying Mac has got it up here to a point where he's doing things at a very accelerated level and accelerated pace. I'm with you on the vibe with the Pats, because even today there was a whole social media thing about Judon was basically went in on Mac and cheese, how bad it is. He's like, keep that off my table on Thanksgiving. It's just noodles and cheese. Like he had literally a monologue about how bad Mac and cheese is. And that became a thing, but there's, there's a lot more personality

than usual. All right. So we're looking at a Pats Bills parlay straight up, which is minus 102, and then a Pats Bills Cowboys parlay, which is plus 150, both of those. You can find all these lines on FanDuel. We're going to take a break, come back, do some straight up and some underdog, and then we'll figure out who we're taking. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey.

Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you could still walk or run 60 kilometers, host an event, or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. Okay. There's three straight up games that I really like. And then two more I want to talk about. So I'll hit the three I really like first and then you can tell me what you think. First one is Tampa Bay. Minus two and a half

against the seemingly red hot Colts coming off their best game of the year. Always fun to bet against a team the week after their best game. That game goes perfectly

for them. Big lead early. They can run the ball. Buffalo's kind of has two left feet. And it's just like if you're a Colts fan that couldn't have played out better.

Now you have Tom Brady coming in. 11-3 regular season against the Colts. 4-1 playoffs against the Colts. 15-4 overall. What year do you think was the last year

he lost to the Colts? 2009. 2009. 2009. Nice. That was a guess. Who was the team that ushered in Deflategate and tried to humiliate Tom Brady, led to a four-game suspension, and tarnished his wonderful legacy? What team was that?

That would be off a Dequell Jackson interception by the Indianapolis Colts in the rain in Foxborough. Yes. Brady does not like the Colts. I do believe with quarterbacks, I do think the great ones have like the two or three teams where they're just like, oh, I own these guys. And I think the Colts are one of them. We're getting

less than a field goal in this game from Tampa. Tampa, good run defense. Now, New Orleans, who was the team that gashed them a little bit? New Orleans a couple weeks ago? Yeah, they ran all over them. A few teams have. Yeah.

But on paper, we should get Vita Vey next week, I'm guessing. I don't know. I don't know. He was out in the warm-ups yesterday trying to test it out, which makes me think we might see him. Yeah. I don't know, man. I think Demp is about to go on a run.

You would bet against Indy after last week? I just have such a hard time thinking that, okay, after what they did to us when we took the bills and ripped our heart out, and then the way they play, it's really responsible football. Taylor runs the ball, and Wentz, who is usually careless, does not make mistakes. I watched that whole game, and there's third and six, and it's third and ten, and's, it's third and 10.

And it's like, when's just making the smart pass in the rain. I think about what you're saying. You're talking about Carson Wentz. He's roping you in. He's sucking you in. Now you want to take them against Tom Brady. Think about that.

Think about, think about your words. There's so many games though this week. Why would you touch this one? It's more a Tampa play. That's why I want to talk about it. Because getting less than a field goal, I think they're better. I think Tampa is still my NFC pick. If I had a gun to my head, who am I taking the NFC? I still like them the most. Add Indy this week. Add Atlanta next week. Buffalo, New Orleans

home. At Carolina. At New Jersey. Home Carolina. I believe they're two and three on the road. They lost to Washington very recently. They're putting up a lot of points at home and they're beating up on bad teams. Colts are not a bad team. Okay. Stay away, Bill. Next one is Miami, Carolina. Miami is getting a point and a half. Who do you like? In Miami. Miami has won three straight. They're now four and seven. Now granted, two of the teams they played

stunk. One of them was Baltimore on a Thursday night. And the tendency is to be like, throw that away Thursday night. It's stupid. But they still beat Baltimore. Their defense seems like it's found a little bit of an identity the last three weeks. It's back to the blitz happy Brian Flores-y kind of feel to it.

They have no first round pick. Next week, bye. Next two weeks, Giants-Jets. There's a little feeling. There's a world where we look up and the Miami Dolphins are 7-7. And we're like, what? What did that happen the Miami Dolphins are seven and seven. And we're like, what? What did that happen? The Dolphins are seven and seven?

Yeah. This is now in play. You look at Carolina. Cam Newton. Oh my God. It's great to see him back. Oh, number one. Boo.

18 first downs total last week for them. Three and 12 on third and fourth down combined. This is what we saw with the Pats. It's fine when it's second and three. It's fine when it's third and two. But once you go third and seven, third and eight, third and nine, third and ten, he's not hitting anybody. Guess what the longest play for our receiver

was for them last week? This is, again, Washington. A team that had no Chase Young. Yeah. How many yards? Thirteen. Yeah. And their strength is Robbie Anderson going deep. And if you can't get him the ball, no chase young. Yeah. Who, how much, how many yards? 13. Yeah. And their strength is Robbie Anderson going deep. And if you can't get him the ball, it's kind of ineffective. And then DJ Moore is great after the catch, but he also has some speed. If cam can't get him the ball, it kind of dilutes their importance as well. So Miami is getting points here and I don't know, is there a difference between these two teams? I

just feel like we're getting two free points, and I like where things are going for Miami, too. I don't think Carolina's very good, honestly. I'm down with that. I'll roll with Miami. They're hot. They've won three straight games. There's this feeling of, like,

everyone counted us out. Let's rally around us, blah, blah, blah. And I agree. Carolina does not scare me offensively, even with Christian McCaffrey. We saw it last week. I was thinking McCaffrey was going to gash Washington. It didn't happen.

Miami's defense is better than Washington's. Yeah, you look at the Carolina quarterbacks. Since week five, passing yards, 177, 207, 112, 129, 172, 167, 189. Three different quarterbacks. From a point standpoint, yeah, they whipped on Arizona, but that was Kyler getting scratched

and Arizona kind of threw that game away pretty quickly and I think we overreacted a little on that one. Yeah, and Cam played nine snaps in that game. The story afterwards was Cam Newton came back and had two touchdowns. He played nine. PJ Walker went 22-29 in that game and didn't get a name in the headline the next

morning. It was like, Cam's back. He screamed at the cameras. And then it was like, eh. I think Miami, I think they load up. I don't think they're afraid of the long ball at all. I think they load up. They just try to take out McCaffrey and they're blitzing every time it's third and five, third and six. Listen, Miami beat

the Pats week one and it was a good game. Tua, it seems like they figured out some of his limitations and they've just kind of worked around them. The Gaskin, they're running games a little bit better. And Waddle, who I traded in one of my leagues, but man, they're starting to really figure out how to use him in all these

different ways. I like Miami plus one and a half. All right, we'll mark that one down. Next one is Vikes plus three against San Francisco. We've loved the Vikes this whole time. We rode them last week. They've been very precious to us this year. Very five and five.

They could easily be eight, two or three place. Rest of the way at San Francisco at Detroit. They take care of business this week. All of a sudden they're seven and five. Pittsburgh at Chicago. Rams at Green Bay. Chicago.

Can you bet against San Francisco after the last two weeks the way they've just manhandled opponents? Okay. Who are the opponents? Okay, the Rams. They had an 18-play, 11-minute drive to start the game. And then last week against Jacksonville, it was the same stuff. They are demoralizing teams right now, just shoving the ball down their throats. I, I don't know if I would bet for them, but I don't know if I could bet against them right now. It

feels like something's clicking with the 49ers. Let's talk about the Rams game because that felt like, like it didn't seem like Stafford was healthy at all in that game, which we're going to talk about when we talk about green Bay Rams. It seems like Stafford's hurt. Rams can't run the ball. Nobody's afraid of their running game anymore. And defensively, the Niners got up a little bit early and then they're one of those teams. They're like the Colts.

If they can get up 10, they're good to go. I guess with Minnesota, one thing that I really liked from them last week was they're just like, look, if we're going down. Let's throw the rock. Yeah. Let's Jefferson.

You've got to go downfield five, six times a game. We're just going to try to get you the ball. They really used their skill guys last week. And I thought the Packers played pretty well in that game. They did. You know, they hit some big plays. They kept coming back. And Minnesota, they kept fending them off.

But they have three really, really high-level skill guys. And Cousins, who, as you watch all these quarterbacks, the difference between Kirk Cousins and the bottom 12 in the league is a pretty big gap. You think how many bad quarterbacks we watched last week? We can go down the list. And it's like, all right, Kirk cousins has two interceptions this season. And I said it on our show on good morning football.

I'm like, we're talking about Josh Allen and Dak for MVP is cousins playing any worse than those guys. Well, those guys win games. What am I cousins has been fine this year and they've lost in crazy fashion to Cooper rush and to, you know,

fumbling and then missing that kick against Arizona. They could very easily be like eight and two or nine and one. They could be in two and three place. They could. And we, how about the Meg Zimmer revelations? Oh my God. We love them. Tell the audience. I'm not telling the audience anything. There's stuff on the internet. You might have a 26 year old model girlfriend. I could see her in the box at the Super Bowl. Australian

model is what the internet said about Mike Zimmer. Mike Zimmer, who knows if it's true? No deny, but Mike Zimmer seems to have hit a groove here, and they've won a couple games in a row. I don't know. I think they're really fun to root for. I know you said you have a friend. What's his name? Jeff?

Jeff Gallo. Who's refused to watch him. Refused to watch. He's right. He probably turned the TV off after the interception before it was overturned. I like the plus three. I think we should take the points. Okay.

I mean, here's the thing. Five losses for them. OT by three, by one, by seven, by four, by three in OT.

Like they play close games. They hang around yeah they can also catch up near the end and um i don't know like who who's playing running back for the what was it jeff wilson jr last week jeff wilson and then elijah milch and eliza mitchell is always seems to have some ailment this is to finger kyle rolled out of formation at one point and i it was my favorite play of the year. It was an incomplete pass from Jimmy, but it was, it was Brandon. I, you get tight end and Jeff Wilson at wide receiver and use check a wide receiver, Kittle at fullback and Debo at running

back. It's like, Oh, let's just try everything. And let's just run the ball. That's what they do. Uh, if they, if the Vikings can get this to be a shootout, then I'll take the Vikings. But if this game is, you know, Kyle Shanahan, 16 plays, 11 minutes to start the game, good night. We're done. Field goal? This feels like a field goal game to me.

I like the plus three. We lose the big if we lose. Green Bay is minus one against the Rams. To me, this is a, I don't believe in the Rams pick if you're taking the Packers, which is why I wanted to talk it out.

And again, it doesn't seem like Stafford's healthy. And it really does seem like the lack of a running game and a pretty mediocre offensive line makes me nervous. On the flip side, they're coming off a bye, whole week to integrate Odell. And I feel like this is a stay away, but I just wanted to point out the blatant lack of respect for the Packers who were not, were I think nine and one against the spread

until last week, or they had the best, still have the best record of the week against the spread week after week, people seem to be underestimating them. And that's why I mentioned Tampa earlier. At some point we have to decide who we think is winning the NFC. And to me, it's either Tampa or Green Bay. And if it's Tampa or Green Bay, they should both win these weeks under a field goal lines. And yet, something scares me about the Rams. I think it's a stay away. Let's talk it out. Yeah.

Packers come in hobbled. And Rodgers, he said it's worse than turf toe what he had. He looked amazing on Sunday. He was so dialed in. And he was throwing to Lazard and Marquez Valdez scantley and guys and equimania saint brown guys who have not been having big years and have been injured he was clicking with them um i feel like i wouldn't want to face and again i'm biased because i talk to him often and we know i did the podcast with him but like i don't want to face mcveigh off a buy where he's had seven straight days to build an offense for

this game. And McVay and LaFleur are very tight. They know each other. LaFleur got the best of them in the playoffs last year, but McVay's beaten LaFleur in the past. I just would stay away on this one. I know that it killed Sean to lose like he did on Monday night football to Kyle Shanahan, the 49ers and your bye week. You know, do you want to go to Santa Barbara? Do you want to fly to Cabo? Do you want, he stayed at home and was just working on this. And whether that's good or bad, I would say if we have a choice not to bet against them, I would say, let's at least give them this week to see what he cooked up for Odell. Because oddly enough, that was welcomed with a lot of like eye rolling on, like they need Odell, like Robert Woods is

out. They need Odell to be really good. And I know a lot of the week was spent on the offense and trying to build something that's going to make sense to be able to compete with the Packers. And that's why I don't totally trust that Niners game

because Woods gets hurt right before that game. You're talking one above average skill guy at that point on their team because Odell only played like nine, ten snaps. And Stafford who looked really hurt and like he needed a buy. And I just feel like that was one of those weeks.

I'm not going to overreact to it. So last one, this would be an anti Seahawks bet. Washington favored by one over Seattle. Wow. Are they? Yeah, I think it's a stay away. I wanted to talk it out quick because it does feel like rock bottom for Seattle. And, you know, they just had a bunch of bad drafts in a row. And then on top of it, they trade the two picks for Adams. The offense has been impotent.

Terrible. The running back situation is as bleak as it's been for them. And Wilson looks like a guy who's got six games left and he's out. I just wish I liked Washington more. I feel like it's a stay away. They won first last week. They went to

Carolina and won that game. Heineke's got them playing well. And Gibson and McLaurin, they have a couple guys who really seem like they're competing and trying to make the playoffs, which I like. Could Seattle really lose again? Could Russell lose?

I saw the craziest that the Cardinals actually sent it along to me that Colt McCoy is the only quarterback in the NFL to win in Seattle last season and this season because Russell Wilson still has not won a home game. And he won one McCoy with the giants last year. And Gino Smith's the only one to win at home this year for the Seahawks. Like it is that bleak. And gosh, if they lose to Washington, that starts to question, like,

is Pete the guy moving forward? Like you start having all these questions because they were all in for this season and it's not happening. And the Adams trade looks like a mini catastrophe. Bad. All right. We'll stay away from that one. Just a couple other ones to mention really quick.

I really wanted to bet against the Browns again this week, but I don't like the Raven spot. And I don't, and on a Tuesday where we have no idea what's going on with Lamar's too many questions, but the Ravens are minus three and a half over the Browns. And I just don't see it with the Browns. I think the quarterback situation

and the lack of firepower offensively is pretty much insurmountable. And they're in a position of a lot of teams. Like if they can get an early lead and just run the ball, they're okay. But I have no faith in their ability to come from behind by even three points. But sadly, we can't wager against them. Chargers, Broncos, Chargers minus two and a half in Denver.

And Denver's looking like a tad tasty because I'm staying away. But I'm just saying, Denver hurt our feelings recently. They did. The Chargers coming off the Sunday night comeback win where you're like, oh, Chargers, they're back. And then you think the Steelers, basically everyone's hurt on their defense except Cam Hayward. And should we be this excited about them? I think it's a stay away.

Wanted to mention it. And then... There's one game I really like, Bill. Let's hear it. Giants-Eagles. Eagles coming to town like a house on fire. Giants coming off one of their worst losses in recent memory. And Giants retiring Michael Strahan's jersey at halftime

with a building full of Eagles fans. As I know, that's what's going to be the case. I just feel like you can't find two teams going in more different directions right now. Interesting. What is the spread on that one? Eagles minus three and a half against the Giants. And the reason I stayed away was it looked like

the most obvious pick of the week. Sometimes it's right underneath our nose. I didn't understand why it wasn't six, the way the Eagles. So do you believe in the Eagles? Make the case for the Eagles, just in general as a late bloomer team. Yeah, 200 yards rushing the last two weeks. Their quarterback, Jalen Hurts, has now had 50 yards rushing in five straight games.

Last one to do that was Cunningham for the Eagles. And their offensive line is mauling teams. That Saints rush defense is number one in the league. They went for about 240 last week. Jeff Stoutland's the coach of that offensive line. And it's like my Alotta, it was this project that they've built. And now he's one of the best tackles in the sport, just manhandling guys, Kelsey Johnson, Driscoll. These guys were, they were having such ease with that good new Orleans front. And it's like, there is a momentum to this where they run the ball well and hurts, finds a way to get first

downs. And they've now won two big games in a row off of a loss to the chargers where a lot of teams would have said, all right, that's the season. Like 24, 24 chargers suck the wind out of the ball and win in their building. But they answered with that win in Denver and the win against new Orleans. I feel like the Eagles are just getting started.

And I mentioned it last week. It's picking up more speed now, but they play the giants this week. they play the Giants this week. They play the Jets the following week. They play Washington. They play the Giants again. And then they play the Cowboys. So that's at home.

They don't have to board a plane the rest of the way. And I feel like they're feeding off that. And Sirianni, I said it before the season started, it's either going to be they believe in them or the veterans are going to roll their eyes. And right now it looks like they're believing in them. Can I interest you in a Pat's Eagles plus 114 money parlay?

I love that. Do you like that more than Pat's Bills minus 102? I like both of those. This is the weak bill. I think you talked me into that one. I'd like the money line more than the minus three and a half. Something scares me about that half point.

Seems fishy. Put it this way. Who's taking the Giants plus three and a half in that game? Name a person in your life who's like, you know who I like? The Giants. Freddie Kitchens' children. He's going to be calling the plays on Sunday.

Jason Garrett's out. Freddie Kitchens calling the plays on Sunday? Oh, yeah. Oh, my Lord. Back in the seat. Sunday? Oh, yeah. Oh, my Lord. Freddie, back in the seat. Jesus. The Strahan thing's interesting, though. They planned this before the season.

I believe the Fox NFL Sunday crew, Terry, Howie, all the guys, they're flying out for it. This could get ugly. If they're down 21 to nothing at half, John Merrill wants to come out there as the owner and that the Giants fans either that are in the building are not going to be happy. And then the Eagles fans are buying up tickets.

They're got like the Eagles fans are alive right now. Like it is, it is a house on fire with Eagles. Like, oh my God, we found it. Like we've got it. Giants are the opposite, right? Like this could get really ugly on Sunday. Jeff Chow and Chris Ryan from the Ringer, Philly fans,

were asking me, what are we going to do about the Super Bowl? Can we be in the same suite? Or should we be in different suites? The Eagles are five and six. They're asking about Super Bowl tickets. I'm all in on that. So, underdog parlay of the week.

God damn, we came close last week Oh Steelers came all the way back Oh my god We have We've hit I think three During the season But we've had three more That we were winning

With two minutes to go The Steelers We had them tied to the Vikings last week And Washington It would have been huge We would have hit both of them It would have been huge We would have won

33,000 each But We would have won that back But it would have been I think we would have won $33,000 each, but we would have won that back, but it would have been, I think we would have won like $450,000. So that was tough. I know. Well, we have the Lions plus 146 this week.

We can go back to the Steelers at plus 164. They are playing the Bengals. They're in Cincinnati. That's up to plus 166 on FanDuel. A lot of action today. A lot of action. People are alive. Plus 166 Steelers and the Bengals.

And then we had the Vikings plus 134 in San Francisco, I think are the three. I think it'd be fun to include the Lions in one of them just because it's Thanksgiving. So we would have all three Thanksgiving teams. Sure. Lions with Steelers plus 166. Okay.

Or Lions with Vikings plus 134. My only issue with the Lions is that they haven't won a game yet, Bill. This will be it. It would be a very special underdog parlay. They're a really bad football team. They're really awful. It's one thing to say that they might win. It's another to say, let's go Lions.

Then again, this is going to be one of the worst football games played all season. Why not have a dog in this fight? Why not pick the scrappy underdogs at home playing for pride? I don't know if it's golf. I don't know if it's Boyle. I'm with you. Let's go with the Lions. They're really awful. So the Bears are going to have Andy Dalton

and lots of rumors of the coach getting fired right after the game and fire nagging chance, not just at Bears games, but at a Bulls game last night. So it's pretty brutal. And they're really banged up on defense. No Khalil Mack the rest of the year. And they're really banged up on defense. Like,

no Khalil Mack rest of the year. No Mack, no Hicks, like, no Robin. Like, they should have won that game against the Ravens.

It's crazy they lost. But here we are. Isn't this the game the Lions have to win? They don't win this one. When are they winning? They get, they get a beat up.

How do you see it though? How do you see it? We've watched a lot of Lions. You see DeAndre Swift just going nuts. Like, what do you see? Swift is probably, feel good about him. I think they need a special teams play and Andy Dalton to be Andy Dalton.

Would be the recipe. Yeah. And if you're Dan Campbell, this is it, right? You don't want to go 0-16-1 on this season. I think we put him in. What about Lions-Steelers plus 554 and then a little Steelers-Vikings plus 552? You're big on the Steelers,

even with all the guys being out. The Bengals, you didn't feel like that was a good one for Cincy? I'm not big on the Steelers at all. I'm just looking for underdogs. The weird thing about this week is that we don't have a lot of those plus 150, plus 170 type of underdogs. We could do...

Let me see. I mean, we had the Browns plus 158 against Baltimore, but we'd be banking on Lamar not playing again. Maybe we just do Lions-Vikings for plus 475. 158 against Baltimore, but we'd be banking on like Lamar not playing again. Yeah. Maybe, maybe we just do lions Vikings for plus four 75. Let's do it. All right.

All right. When we come back, the million dollar picks for week 12. What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to powers your scale with no preset spending limit. More cash on hand to grow your business with up to 55 interest-free days. And the ability to reach further with access to over 1,400 airport lounges worldwide. Redefine possible with Business Platinum.

That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. All right, Million Dollar Picks, Thanksgiving edition, week 12. We are up 98,000 for the season. We are opening up this week. We are going all in.

We are upping the stakes. We are trying to get some momentum. Peter Schrager, we're tired of being on the hamster wheel. We're swinging big. It's time. We've been dibbling and dabbling. This is the week. It's Thanksgiving. All the families around on Wednesday night. Everyone's making out with their high school sweethearts at their local bar. We're swinging big. Let's go. All right. First one. We're trying to get two Thanksgiving teams into this. We're not inviting anyone from the

Bears-Lions game for this parlay. Patriots playing on Sunday with Dallas playing the Raiders and Buffalo in New Orleans on Thursday night. We're going to money line parlay those three together. It's plus $150lay those three together. It's plus 150

for those three. We're going to put 600K on that. 600? Yeah. 600K on that. Oh, we're not done because of Pat's Bills money line parlay.

That's minus 102. We'll put 300K on that. Come on. Let's go, Patriots. Let's go. We're on it. Come on. Let's go. Patriots, let's go. We're on it. Pats-Eagles. Again?

Plus 114. We're going back on that. Let's go. 300K. Another one. That is plus 114. So we are using the Pats as our swing team this week. All they have to do is beat the Titans.

No Derrick Henry. No Julio Jones. A.J. Brown, questionable. New England home. Completely healthy. Take care of business. Prove that you want to be the number one seed. I'm all in. Three Pats bets. Starting that. You agree with that? I don't care about a potential trap game before Buffalo. I don't care that Ryan Tannehill owns the Patriots. I don't care that Mike Vrabel never loses. I don't care. We're all in. Let's go. All right. Alright Next one You wouldn't let me bet on Tampa

For all the people On the social media videos Schrager just He just agrees with Simmons Pulled you back I wanted to do Tampa Minus two and a half over Pulled you off of that

I wanted Tom Brady Eleven and three Regular season Four one against the Colts In the playoffs Hasn't lost to them in 2009 Getting less than a field goal You said no

You threw your body in front of it. You took my car keys. You were like, no, no, no. Get out of the car. You're not doing this. I was responsible. I'm a friend. And of all the things you could do, betting against Jonathan Taylor right now is the least responsible thing you could do, Bill. Let's stay away from that one. Let's get out of that game altogether. Well, we're not staying away from Miami. Not red hot, but definitely the water's boiling on the stove for them a little bit. Right?

Almost ready to throw the pasta in. Miami, 4-7 with the legitimate chance to be 7-7 in three weeks. Because after this Carolina game, they have a bye. They play Giants and the Jets. We're going to take Miami plus one and a half against Carolina and Cam Newton, who I just, against Miami's defense, I think it's going to be Miami's defense. Jalen Waddell, they have no first round pick.

This is their season. Brian Flores, very passionate guy in the locker room. Hey guys, we're not out of this. 10 and seven can make the playoffs. Nine and eight might make the playoffs We're not quitting Send in the house against Carolina Miami plus one and a half

We're going to go 250,000 on that I'm in, let's go And then the Vikings This one we talked about for a long time We talked about it I think I got you there I think I got you there You were a little too excited about

San Francisco killing Jacksonville And then beating the Rams without Robert Woods and Stafford all banged up and Odell coming in and get the lead. I'm not scared of that. I love a Kyle Shanahan 18 play drive. I'm not scared of Kyle Shanahan and his 450 winning percentage.

I'm not. You bet against Kyle Shanahan, 55% of the time you're going to win because that's his career winning percentage. Vikes plus three. I love that. This is, you could still,

they lose by a field goal. It could still cover. And I think this is a field goal game. I think they have a chance to win. I love that they're airing out to Justin Jefferson. I like that feeling. Got a little more involved. I like the cook Madison combo.

And then Kirk cousins, you see that list, 300 yards, three TDs career games. And it's like all the great-Madison combo. And then Kirk Cousins. You see that list? 300 yards, three TDs, career games. And it's like all the great quarterbacks in history. Dot, dot, dot. And Kirk Cousins. It's like the old Jeff Ross, Ross joke. Like, it's an honor to be here with so many great comedians.

And Tommy Davidson. Love it, live in color. Two interceptions on the year for Cousins Say what you want about their record They're 5-5, they've lost a lot of close games Cousins has been money And Cousins has put up big numbers Can he go into San Francisco against his old mentor

Kyle Shanahan's his mentor That's his guy I think he can, let's go 250k in the Vikings You want to put a little more on the Eagles? Do we have enough in the Eagles? You want a little more? You want Eagles minus three and a half?

I'm envisioning all Eagles fans at this Giants game in MetLife. They're honoring Strahan and half the places wearing John Runyon jerseys. Let's go. How about this? You don't trust my Tampa pick. I don't totally trust the Eagles minus three and a half

because it looks too easy. What if we parlay them? What if we do a circle of trust parlay? Tampa minus two and a half. Eagles minus three and a half. We'll just put, I don't know, 150K on it plus 260 parlay. This is a wonderful idea. Circle of trust. You and me. Tom Brady,

Jalen Hurts, 150K to win plus 260 if we hit that. Do you see that many saints of Newark, the little pinky swear at the end? That's what I feel like we're doing here. That's it. There you go. Last one. Underdog parlay of the week. Not a lot of great candidates this week. We came off last week. We almost hit on both of them. And then the Steelers, who I think the D-back might have been concussed, forgot to cover Mike Williams. He just got hit, kneed in the head eight minutes ago. Mike Williams

is running right by him. We're going to do a little, just a little sprinkling. We want to get the Lions-Bears game involved in Thanksgiving. It's going to be awful. It's the Lions' one chance to win. We're going to take the Lions. We're going to put them with the Vikings. Plus 475. Little sprinkling, 33K on that. Just to say we did it. To borrow a Thanksgiving analogy, this is like, do we also need the sweet potatoes with the brown sugar on top? We have so many other things.

It's like, yeah, let's get the sweet potatoes. Why not? You're already pot committed with all the other stuff. You might as well. We have nine different hors d'oeuvres on the table. Like, why not? We'll also get the sweet potatoes. So we're doing a little underdog parlay as well.

You got DeAndre Swift, like eating a turkey leg after the game. That's how you see it. Yeah. Oh yeah. He wins the turkey leg thing. Oh, I wish we could bet on that. Can we bet that? Does Fandu have that? you see it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. He wins the turkey leg thing. Oh, I wish we could bet on that. Can we bet that? Does FanDuel have that?

What is it? It's a Fox game. What's their thing? It's a turducken, I think. Turkey? I think it's like, yeah. Well, they do have either DeAndre Swift or David Montgomery to have 100 yards plus rushing is plus 125.

This feels like a Swift game. Let's go big on Swift. Can we do anything on individual odds? You know what we'll do? I have an idea. You can bet on FanDuel most rushing yards for the day. DeAndre Swift plus 450

to have the most rushing yards of anyone on Thanksgiving. Here are the other nominees. Montgomery plus 250. Zeke Elliott plus 430. Ingram plus 450. Josh Jacobs 5-1. Josh Jacobs 5-1. Josh Allen 10-1.

Here's why I like Swift. Got Penny Sewell up front. They're trying to prove themselves. Last year's second round pick. This year's first round pick. They're getting their first win. It's going to be a close game. It's going to be one of the trenches.

DeAndre Swift goes for 123 and three touchdowns. Let's go! 33K on that. Those are the million dollar Thanksgiving picks. That's okay. Eight on the let's go scale, I feel like. That was a 10. All right, let's go.

We're all in this week. Let's go. Good to see you, Peter Schrager. Yes. Happy Thanksgiving. You too. All right, Jim Miller is here. We are taping this.

It's a Monday. We're running out on Tuesday. He just released a new oral history book about HBO. It's called Tinderbox. How many years were you working on it? A little over three, maybe three. You did CAA, you did ESPN, you did SNL twice. What made you want to do HBO?

A, it had never been done before. B, it's wholly consistent with the other three in terms of started in the 70s from very modest origins and people didn't think it was going to last. Yeah. And I think it's clear, most importantly, that it's had an indisputable major impact on both television and I'd say the culture.

I knew at least pieces of like 75% of it. The corporate stuff, didn't know a lot of, especially when you go into the first two decades of it. What struck me is I read everything. A lot of what ifs, a lot of sliding doors. And ESPN had the same thing, which I think is what's fun about rereading this stuff. You have moments where like, I mean, who knows if they actually could have bought Netflix, but at least they were discussing it in the mid 2000s.

You have the Fox trying to buy them in 2014. Going way back, you have all the stuff they had with the different presidents, people jacking for the top title, people trying to figure out where broadband was going. I was both amazed that the company emerged from that intact and as powerful as it is. And at the same time thinking it actually could have been more powerful in a couple of different iterations. Right? Right. I mean, look, I try and create a narrative running through all 49 years. And one of the themes,

or at least one of the things that is reoccurring is just how many times there was the ubiquitous fork in the road. Because I think it was important to point out to readers that there's never been a stock called hbo yeah you could never at any point from the moment that it went on the air you could never just directly interact with hbo they were always owned by another entity above them and sometimes that was a boon and sometimes it was a bane to their existence and to try and you know track that and try and isolate why those things happened uh and and how things could have been different i think is really important i mean look everybody talks you just brought up netflix and everybody talks

about oh they you know they could have bought netflix in 2005 or 2006 well first of all i'm not sure reed's selling But second of all, people forget that it had just... I mean, they've just emerged. Time Warner, their parent company, it just emerged from this incredible ground war in Southeast Asia called AOL. So it's like, oh, yeah, right. Try going to Wall Street and say, oh, yeah, we just had $200 billion in write-offs. And now we want to go and buy this thing that, you know, these little cute red little envelopes with DVDs in it. And by the way, they're not earning any money.

It's impossible. Now, if there had been a different parent company, maybe they have the freedom, you know, both with their investors and with their cash. But there was no way Time Warner was going to be able to do it. A lot of similarities with ESPN. Like basically what you just laid out and some other stuff about

where you have like these parents that you become kind of the apple of the parent's eye in some cases. In other cases, you might have a bad parent come in. You're always used as this shiny toy

to either try to drive the stock price up but they never think about selling you because it would have too much dramatic of impact. I mean, basically the same thing, right? Disney could have sold off ESPN at any point, but it was too much of a cash cow. And HBO for a lot of years could have been sold off or spun out or whatever. And they were never going to do that. It was too successful. Right. In the case of ESPN in 1996, Eisner, they buy Cap City's ABC. ABC is valued at zero. And Eisner goes on to say the crown jewel is ESPN. Right. people at HBO were amazed at how important HBO was, particularly given,

you know, the fact that at some points time maker, time Warner, there was many different companies. There was a ton of companies underneath that banner. So it was, it was illuminating to, to,

to see those sequences. But then when Stanky comes in in 2018, who was running AT&T, AT&T acquires HBO as part of their whole Time Warner merger. And he makes the point, you guys should actually be making more money. You guys should be growing. This is how tech people think about this stuff, right? You're doing this, you're doing great, but actually you should be doing more. How do you do more? Which was anathema to everything HBO is about. What do you mean do more? We're the best. We're going to pick

and choose. This is what we do. We don't do more. We're not in the volume business. And you were able to lay out with a little perspective because it was only three, four years ago when all this is going out. Now more people are willing to talk, pluppers out of there who used to run HBO. But you had a lot of stuff in there near the tail end of the book about this was two cars just playing chicken going right at each other. And Plepper's going to lose that one every time. Yeah. I go into a little bit of detail on this infamous town hall that Stanky and Plepper did.

And you could just see at that moment that they are not lined up properly. And look, Stanky, to his credit, or at least you understand what Stanky... He's paid a premium for the company. And he wants to make money and he wants to make sure that AT&T shareholders get the best of this deal. The problem is that it's a lot more difficult than people thought. And you need a lot more money than AT&T was willing to spend. And in fairness to them, they got sidelined for 17 months by the Department of Justice.

You know, Trump held up this merger as long as he could. Yeah. So, you know, it was problematic from the start. Did you, you were working on the book as that was all gone, right? You were in motion with it at that point or no? Oh, yeah. Or you thought about doing it?

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, even you've already done some of the background stuff, you know, even as it's, you know, this story that's occurring every day in different news places, you know that this is actually going to be worse than maybe people realize. Well, in fact, I was going to do HBO before CA book. And I just, when I started doing my research, I realized that Time Warner was going to have to sell. And so I wanted to wait until that transaction. So I put CA first before,

because there was no doubt in my mind that there was just no way Time Warner was going to be able to survive on its own. And the story had to play out and all that stuff. I want to hit a couple of big themes in the book because obviously HBO has been in my life since, fuck, late 70s. I think my dad had the box after my parents separated.

He had the, back when you put the box on top of the TV and we could get boxing and some movies and then eventually it got on the cable in the early 80s and the movies were really the first thing where it was like, holy shit, like they're going to have Rambo two. Uncensored without commercials. And that's a big driver that in sports.

And then all of a sudden blockbusters started appearing on the corner and HBO is like, Oh shit, wait a second. You know, we got to do something different. And that really tried, you know, that really moved them into original programming.

Yeah. And the movies were the hook. The fact that we're still pretty early in the whole VHS era, just kind of evolved. Blockbuster's not even close to being Blockbuster yet. And the chance to just be able to watch movies again. And they would have their cast of movies that, some of which we do on the rewatchables, but they would just play Eddie and the cruisers.

It would be on five days a week for a month and a half. They didn't have the same kind of library. It was tough to figure out who you could get different. But then as the, as the eighties evolved, they start making shows and you go into like, there's this 10 year window before Larry Sanders when they're, they're making their own stuff, but it's not hitting. Sanders was the first one, first in 10 and the hitchhiker. Right. But you're talking about series, Bill, because the other thing that's going on is if you're like a comedian in the late 70s or in the 80s, you get four minutes with Johnny Carson and the networks are going to know every single word you're going to say.

So there's big censorship. If you're all of a sudden, I mean, HBO was so smart. Michael Fuchs, they laid out, look, come on on for an hour. We don't care what you say. We won't even look at it. So George Carlin does seven words that you can't say on television, on television, which is great. You have, you know, Rodney Dangerfield giving Andrew Dice Clay free reign. The Young Comedian special.

That was iconic back in the day. I mean, so at a time that before they were able to even afford to do a regular series, they were able, because of comedy, because of music. I mean, Bette Midler and all the incredible music, Whitney Houston and Madonna and even Springsteen. I mean, they were doing music specials that you couldn't see anywhere else either. So they figured out a way, plus the sports, right? Boxing. They got Burns and Hagler and all these... Tyson, I mean, at his height.

They have all these different kinds of offerings that you can't get anyplace else. So even though they weren't ready with the half hour or the hour model for scripted television, they were able to more than hold their own there for about eight or 10 years. Yeah. TV shows were fifth on the pecking order because you had movies, you had comedy, you had the sports, you had music. And then let's be honest, you had movies with nudity, I think was almost as important to them as TV series. Like they quickly realized this is another lane for us.

And they leaned into it with not only some of their first original shows, but even some of the later night movies they showed. And then documentaries. Because Sheila Nevins in the documentary unit is doing real sex, Cat House. I mean, all of these taxicab confessions and those things were huge. Yeah.

I mean, they just, I mean, she told me, she said, we didn't even have to publicize them. Everyone knew when they were on. They got great numbers and no one else was doing anything like that. So I think that they were very, very smart. In fact, it was so hard to get the series started that Chris Albrecht wound up making shows for the networks. He does Martin and he does Everybody

Loves Raymond because Michael Fuchs said, we're not ready to carry deficits like that. We can't afford to do those shows. So Albrecht says, all right, what the hell? He says, I'll just make them for other people. They struck oil a few times there in the 80s because you had the two Eddie Murphy specials, which I think the delirious was the reason I got HBO because it was like, this is the only way you could see this. Like, all right, how do we get this? Start badgering your mom.

In my case, my mom, my stepdad. We need HBO. I need to see this Eddie Murphy thing. Tyson in 86 was a big one. And you, you covered this in the book pretty extensively, but the first comic relief was kind of the highlight of comedy, I think in the eighties and a lot of different ways, like the, even the fact that Letterman and Chris Elliott did, you know, a little short film for it. It just felt like everybody who mattered in comedy in 1986 was part of Comic

Relief. And at that point, that was to me between Tyson and Comic Relief, those were the two things that you kind of had to have HBO at that point if you cared about this stuff, right? Absolutely. And I think that one of the things that you start to see with Comic Relief and with Tyson is that people who normally wouldn't even be thinking about pay subscribe pay subscription they're they're just driven to it because it becomes it becomes essential i mean like comic relief was a big deal and um the cast i mean the people that they were obviously they had whoopi robin and billy hosting but the comedians that they were able to attract and the attention that it got was amazing. And I mean, look, at some point, more than half of the subscribers of HBO in certain years in the 80s were subscribed because of boxing.

And that's something that the networks used to have. The problem was the networks gave up on boxing. They moved it to the afternoon. And so Fuchs and Seth Abraham were able to come in and say, listen, we're going to put on primetime. And Don King was like, really? Okay, I'll take less money and I'll put it in primetime. If you'll put it on primetime. And I think those were really smart moves on their part. Yeah. When I was growing up as a kid, ABC was in pole position with most of the boxing. CBS had a little, NBC had a little, but it was really ABC. And then they would replay the big pay-per-view fights on Wide World of Sports. And that lasted really till, I would say,

the early 80s until CoSell kind of turned on boxing. At the same time, the pay-per-views are about to come in in the mid-80s. And HBO was like, hey, all right, cool. We'll take all this. The comedy thing, I can't tell you how many comedians I discovered on HBO and especially the Young Comedian special. That's where you saw people like Jim Carrey, Sam Kanesan, Bill Maher. You go on down the line, it was like basically every comedian, that was where they were discovered.

There and Letterman, I think, were the two places. Carson was a little long in the tooth at that point. Right, but the thing with Dave, again, is you're going to get four and a half minutes. And you're not going to know. I mean, like for somebody like, I mean, obviously for people who didn't see it on YouTube, I mean, when Sam Kanesison's first appearance on Letterman

is just legendary, it is just breathtaking. But the truth is that he could only do so much of what he really wanted to do on network television. Then you get over to HBO and it's the Wild Wild West. There's no guardrails. He's staying and doing everything. And that's what builds the fan base. The other thing I was able to show was that,

I mean, I looked at the number of comedy clubs before HBO starts doing this in the United States. And there's like a dozen in the seven. Like all of a sudden, there's like hundreds. And the proliferation of comedy clubs because people are seeing this. And these comedians then want to go on tours after they do their HBO special.

So that had a huge impact on the culture. And Inside the NFL was a show that was just unlike any other show on TV. And that's in there for a while at one point. The boxing coverage just felt so much better than the network coverage. They really spent money all over the place on everything. Even the way it looked, it just felt bigger. It than the network coverage. They really spent money all over the place on everything, even the way it looked.

It just felt bigger. It was always Saturday nights. And they also had time. I mean, they did this thing 24-7 where they followed the boxers before the fight for like a week. I mean, it was an earlier version of almost like Hard Knocks. And then you could have a big pre-game, pre-fight.

And then afterwards, they didn't have to go to commercial. They didn't have to go late night programming. They stayed around. And so Jim Lampley's in there and other people, and they're talking about the fight. They have interviews. They break down everything. So if you're a real fan of the sport,

you're getting time and attention and analysis at HBO that you just couldn't get anyplace else. Yeah, and you spent more time on the sports than I was expecting in my head. And I thought it was all worth it because I do think their impact on sports fans the last 40 plus years is actually kind of a little bit underrated now. And I think people look at HBO now and they just think of like, you know, they think of real sports and something like that. And it's like, it was way more innovative, especially with, they were the only ones doing sports documentaries the way we're kind of used to now for, I would say a good 15 years. I mean, they eventually became too formulaic, but they were way ahead of the curve on that. They're way ahead of the

curve on coverage on those 24 seven type shows and hard knocks and kind of pushing the envelope the way they had Wimbledon. I'll never forget. All of a sudden, Wimbledon was on all the time. I remember watching that Boris Becker one. I think it was 86. And HBO just had it on all the time. I was like, this is great. I get to watch matches that just wouldn't normally be on TV. So way ahead of the game. Wimbledon was never on during the week. In fact, I found out from a couple of producers that they were putting the tapes on of Wimbledon on the Concord to get him back as soon as possible. That was amazing.

I mean, you know, it's like they're spending money and they're spending a lot of time. They develop relationships with people like Billie Jean and Mary Carrillo that leads into careers after they're done playing. And I thought it was really interesting. The problem is, as you just alluded to, though, that once they lose Wimbledon

and once they're really starting to do original programming, then the money isn't there. And you have a series of executives who really aren't big sports fans. Yeah. Wait, that's an understatement. Well, but I think people That's it. Wait, that's an understatement. Well, but I,

but I think people think that it's, it's just, well, you know, whoever's running it, they have to do sports and they have to do, it's like, it really matters who's in involved.

I mean, you know, I remember the very first thing that Skipper did after he got the ESPN job was four hours later, he got in a plane to try and steal the world Cup from NBC because he was a crazy soccer fan. Yeah. You know, Michael Fuchs loved tennis, but Jeff Fuchs wasn't a sports fan. Chris Alford wasn't a sports fan.

Richard Plevler wasn't a fan. Bill Nelson. I mean, everybody who succeeded, they really weren't that kind of, you know, devotion to sports. Meanwhile, you also, if you can create another show like The Sopranos or try, I mean, it's impossible to create a show like The Sopranos, but create new original programming, you'd rather do that than spend it on

another fighter. Well, eventually they would have people in charge of HBO Sports who didn't follow sports. You had a thing in there in the mid-2000s about the UFC and how close they came. And Dana White's basically saying, hey, we wanted this to happen. They would have turned it into the fifth professional sport, basically.

And it fell through because there was nobody in the higher, higher up, as you laid out in the book, there was nobody on the higher, higher up side who really wanted to champion it. And there was a little human cockfighting element at that point. What happened was, look, even though he wasn't a big sports fan, Chris Albrecht met with Ari Manuel and with Dana and understood the power of it. He was going to give them their own kind of channel on Cinemax. So you'd have a UFC basic channel and he was all set to do it. And then he got fired. Yeah. I think, and just play down is with that, because as Ari says in the book, if HBO has UFC, then Endeavor doesn't buy UFC. And that changes a whole bunch of things.

Well, how about the ESPN Plus piece of it? I mean, that's basically carrying ESPN Plus right now, the UFC part of it. Turned out to be a great deal. I think UFC has credibility probably five years faster than it ended up getting. Without a doubt. Yeah.

It's a great what if and it was at the right time where the boxing for a combination thing, they had a lot of competitors for boxing. Showtime stepped in, took a couple good fighters,

but there was also like... Yeah, including Tyson, but there was also kind of a dead time in general for boxing. It didn't have the same stars that, you know, that we grew up with where there was always. I drilled down on that Tyson Showtime thing because they had agreed to a contract and Don King and Mike Tyson get on the phone with Seth Abraham, was running HBS Sports at the time and said, this is great. We're so happy about the new contract. And then Tyson says on the phone to Seth, and I'm so glad I'm not going to have to deal with that Larry Merchant guy anymore. And Seth goes, what are you talking about? He goes, well, Don told me now in the new contract, you're not going to have Larry Merchant anywhere near me.

And Seth says, I know that's not part of the contract. And so all of a sudden, you know, Don King and Mike Tyson go to DEF CON 1 and say, we're not going to go to HBO then if you insist on having Merchant there. And believe it or not, Seth really stands up for Larry Merchant. He says, I'm not going to let you push me around. And they go to Michael Fuchs. And Michael Fuchs says, look, it's just like a director, like a star who says, I don't want this director. I mean, just put him on something else. And Seth says, we can't be pushed around like this.

And Fuchs defends Abrams. And then they lose. So they lose Tyson to Showtime. I mean, that's the big stakes. I think by the end of the 2000s, there was definitely an arrogance with that HBO sports ad that ended up backfiring against them in a couple of different ways

because people were stealing a lot of the ideas and kind of mindsets of things that they're doing. They're stealing some of their fighters. At ESPN, we ended up basically taking the documentary corner for them.

And even as it was happening, they were super arrogant about it. I remember Ross Greenberg, who ran them up until 2010 or 11, and he gave an interview and he just shat all over us. It was like, how dare anybody else make sports documentaries? It's adorable that they're doing this, but we're the best and they'll never approach us. And we took their lunch, but it really stuck with me. I really, I really took that personally that he felt that they own the sports documentary. It's like, nobody owns this. They're documentaries. People have been making them for decades. What are you talking about? Right. But I think that, you know, they had done it to such a, such a degree. I mean, at least for a year and winning tons of awards because there wasn't much competition that I think, you know, Ross was, I think, pretty confident, at least at that point before he saw what 30 for 30 was going to be. And, you know, the quality that you all were going to be doing and the volume.

Well, and how modern and how modern they were was the big one. That was our big advantage. They were doing Joe Lewis and they were doing Mickey Mantle and we were doing Reggie Miller. not just to talk about what we want to do with 30 for 30, but you said, this is an incredible opportunity in terms of the marketplace because these guys, musically speaking, are doing variations on a theme. Yeah. The whole look of them is derivative of one another. Yeah.

The initial memo that I wrote them was more a branding thing than anything. It was like, we were making a bunch of different types of documentaries and the viewers couldn't tell which ones were good and which ones weren't. We we were making a bunch of different types of documentaries and the viewers couldn't tell which ones were good and which ones weren't. We were putting out a lot of them. Under different rubrics

too, like ESPN Films and this. Yeah. EOE. And we had just had the real thing with 30 for 30 was we just did that 20th anniversary thing that was like ESPN 20. Right. Or ESPN 25. that 20th anniversary thing that was like ESPN 20 or ESPN

25. I'm sorry. And that was in 2005 range. And they had like Gatorades attached to it and all these things and people just hated it. And people thought they were going to hit over the head with it. They thought it was gratuitous and it made them mad. And it was right there in that time in the mid 2000s when people started to resent how much ESPN was in their life, right? Because we had the phone, we had ESPN The Zone, we had the Gatorades, we had all these shows, we had all these catchphrases and there was this backlash. And part of the pitch for 30 for 30 was like, let's zag against this. Let's do really good stuff. We'll brand it a certain way. We'll do 30 stories

from our 30 years. And initially it was four filmmakers and then we'll make the rest ourselves. And then Connor had the idea to what we could actually make these with all 30. But it was trying to zag against what people thought our brand was, but then more importantly, what they thought HBO's brand was, which was big, grandiose, Liev Schreiber narrating, and everything's 30, 40 years ago. So we initially, the initial list was like Doc and Daryl and, you know, Reggie Miller and things in the Fab Five and things that had happened in the last 15 years. We were really 15, 20 years. So that's what worked, I think, for our benefit versus where they were thinking. And they kind of didn't know how to react to it.

And if anything, they kind of stopped making them by like 2013, right? Well, I mean, look, Ross leaves and there's also this question of dwindling resources. And they had to make cuts and you have new leadership that isn't committed to storytelling the way that Ross was. And you start to see a period of that entire decade where instead of it's about growth, it's all about shrinking. Right.

Protecting the lead you already have, which is... We talked about this with ESPN. When you're not innovating, when you're just trying to protect what you have, that's usually when these big companies, I think, get in trouble. And you could feel it. I thought in the book, the most interesting part to me from a big picture content standpoint was where they were in 05, 06, 07, where you have Chris Albrecht, who you laid out all the reasons why he had to go. But you had this turmoil at the top. You had a lot of people trying to now take pieces of their turf, all these different networks.

You had AMC coming now. AMC is mad, man. You have FX coming. You have Showtime's in the mix. And people are grabbing the turf. And HBO's instinct for at least a few years there, which I hadn't really realized until you pieced it all together, was let's just spend more money on famous people. And vinyl is the perfect example of that, right? It's like, here's a ton of money to all of these famous people. Maybe that will

solve this. And I think the best thing Casey's done, which you also had in that book, was he went back to what the basics of HBO were. Go to creators, make stars, bring people on shows that become stars. One of the first things he does with Succession is he says to Adam and to his team, look, we don't need stars. This is a great show. This is a great script. We believe in Jesse and his team, and we don't need to do stars to make this work. And I think that that certainly was a page from the past. And I think it was important. Look, sometimes those big names, even HBO, turn its back on that.

I mean, I go, Lisa Kudrow and Laura Dern both talked to me about the comeback and Enlightened shows that they both gave incredible performances and won awards and everything else. And HBO then decided, forget it. It wasn't enough. I mean, part of,

one of the things that HBO did really well was they said, we're not going to pay attention to ratings and we care about, you know, awards and we care about criticism. I mean, The Wire was never a ratings juggernaut. And they, you know they stayed close to that. And then all of a sudden, they started to change the formula.

And that became really problematic and really pissed off a lot of the community because the community always thought that HBO was talent-friendly. One of the fun things about reading this book, not everybody's going to like every show you have in here, right? Like I wasn't an enlightened person.

So I'm like skimming that part. But then you get to like Sanders and I'm like carefully reading every single letter of the 11 pages. And, you know, the Sex and the City stuff, there's really good behind the scenes stuff on each thing. The Sex and the City stuff, I knew they didn't get along,

but I didn't think I was fully aware of how dysfunctional it was. And it makes sense that Kim Cattrall isn't even in the remake that's coming out next month because of how bad it was. But I think that the thing that was interesting for me was just how great a job, and you'll appreciate this, how great a job HBO did in managing all this. Because it was always an iceberg. Yeah.

You look at all the publicity that Sex and the City got and all the incredible, the articles with all four of their faces and all the harmony and stuff. And little did anybody really understand. I mean, I did that with Gandolfini because they kept a lot of that quiet. And so- I didn't know any of that stuff. I knew he had some issues, but man, you really was that, were they hiding that stuff? What was going on? Why wasn't more of that out? Of course. I mean, listen,

when I asked a couple of people about the golden globes in 2005, they were like, how did, I mean, they were, they were stunned. And, uh, and also about Gandolfini's intervention intervention uh they were david chase when i mean i was sitting right next to him when i asked him about that that was um it was pretty intense they did not you know i'm not trying to pat myself on the shoulder but they had done such a great job of keeping it under wraps that um you know they were really not prepared to to talk about it uh but i thought the Golden Globes thing was amazing in part because he's ready to present

and he's in no condition to present. And Michael Imparalee has to fill in for him. Well, and then the fact that the contract holdout when they use his love of the cast against him and they're basically, all right, we're shutting down the whole show. And then he's costing everybody money and they quickly figured that out. But yeah, it's complicated guy who unquestionably got too involved in that character for better and worse, became the greatest TV character in HBO history.

Without a doubt. One of the greats ever created in any TV medium. And yet it seemed like it wasn't helping him personally at all. Well, the problem is, and the thing that I wanted to really report on, which I think is important for context, is that, look, he had had some demons before he even got cast in that role, right? He started talking about when he was 17 or 18, some of the problems that he had. So as a result, playing Tony Soprano, he had to tap into aspects of himself that he had been trying to bury over the past several years, you know? And so, you know, he said to somebody, you don't know what this role is doing to me. And he would say things like, you know, after a day, I feel like I have to take a shower, you know,

to rinse Tony off of me because it was, it was just matching up with some really dark sides of who Jim Gandolfini was. And that was a problem. Out of all the shows you covered in this book, what was your favorite one to research and interview people about

that you felt like there was the most material to mine that you felt like wasn't out there already? Because it felt like you had a lot of game of Thrones stuff too, but I felt like game of Thrones was so exhaustively covered and not positive. There's been enough distance. So I felt like I knew a bunch of that stuff, but like the Soprano stuff and the sex in the city stuff with more

distance, it just felt like, did you know the stuff about the ending of game of Thrones? Because I talk about a pivotal meeting that... I didn't know that. No, that was new info. I mean, that to me was the biggest... Look, HBO for years and years, decades,

they say to the Hollywood community, come on over, right? We're going to give creators tons of autonomy. And so they do. And I mentioned that Larry Sanders has a 20-minute episode. Gary Shanley wants to take a year off. Oz, they let Tom Fontana do all these crazy things. How about Curb right now?

It's 40-minute episodes for reasons that are made unclear. I mean, all these things. So that's all good, except that when Dan and David, when Weiss and Benioff are talking about the architecture for the end of Game of Thrones, they go, I talked about this meeting in Mike Lombardo's office where they say, listen, we're only going to do eight episodes for the penultimate season. And the last season is only going to be six episodes. And then they say,

and we might finish it up with two movies. I mean, can you imagine? I mean, that was that, you know, Lombardo was in a state of shock. Puppet was in a state of shock. They tried to convince them otherwise. They were able to talk them out of the movies. But one of the things that, you know, I write about is that this formula came back to really haunt them because obviously they wanted Game of Thrones to go longer. And obviously a big part of the fan base was disappointed

that the ending of Game of Thrones was so truncated. Yep. You know, that became... But they had no tools in their toolbox to deal with it because they had already given that power over. Well, you did a good job of laying out how exhausting it was to film that show because that was always...

I got to know, uh, one of the guys a little bit and I never realized like how debilitating that was from a family situation where you're basically Northern Ireland and Iceland and all these places for months and months on end and terrible weather and long shoots. And it really seems like those guys got burned out. And I, I think it was the right move not to pass that show on. They were able to do it in Veep, which you covered as well. And I think Veep, it's a little easier to do with half-hour comedies maybe. And sometimes it could energize your show.

I don't know how you do that with Game of Thrones. No. And one of the things about Game of Thrones, again, sometimes these are names that people don't even know. But there's this extraordinary woman named Bernie Caulfield, who was, you know, an essential part of making all of it work. Sometimes they're shooting in four different countries. I mean, she wasn't there for the first season. Things were very difficult.

Dan and David bring her on. And just to kind of like literally deconstruct what somebody does in that job and how important it is and all the different departments that were involved. I thought it was great. You know, with Veep, I'm not sure, Bill, if David Mandel doesn't come along, I'm not so sure that Veep continues because they had gone through like so many, so many names and it was a very particular thing. Yeah.

Armando's voice and, you voice and the chemistry with Julia was so delicate. I mean, thank God David did do it. He kind of had a slow start, he said, but he really recovered well. And Veep is arguably one of the greatest comedies HBO has ever done. When was this place

functional, in your opinion? Because you do a good job of laying out all these different eras where very rarely did it seem completely functional at the top, where everybody's kind of swimming the same way in the ocean. It seems like maybe the early 2000s when Chris Albrecht is kind of at the peak of his powers and Carolyn Strauss comes in and she's handling shows and Sheila's doing the documentaries and sports is in good shape. Is that the most functional? I would go back to like 97, which I mean, Carolyn had been there, you know, since the mid eighties. Um, but I think that

the key is the relationship between Bukas who's running, who's the CEO of HBO until 2000. Jeff Bukas, yep. Jeff Bukas. And that relationship is very important. And I think that Bukas to Albrecht to Strauss, that's when you see, in a short period of time, Sex and the City, Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sexy Thunder. I mean, it's like, it's crazy. And it's great.

I mean, it wasn't, there wasn't that harmony when Michael Fuchs was running the CEO because he fancied himself and in some ways he had unbelievable programming instincts. But there was a synapse between him and Chris Albrecht and Bridget Potter was running programming. So I think that probably from, you know, 97 to 2002, 2003, even when Chris is come CEO, I think that's, that's, that's your sweet spot right there. Everybody's on the same page. And by the way, everybody in Hollywood knew who, you know, you go to, I mean, several years later, you have, you know, Plepler, you have Mike Lombardo, you have Sue Nagel, you have Michael Ellenberg, people without backgrounds in programming. And it wasn't clear who was making the decision. Yeah. So there was a lot of confusion. And I think that that was tough for people.

Yeah, I think you go back to the late 90s because the documentaries are really crushing it at that point. Paradise Lost, I still think from when it popped out, what it meant and how revolutionary it was, I think is one of like the four or five most important documentaries ever. I had multiple friends where we would just get on the phone and just talk about like Paradise Lost for 20 minutes. Just like, holy shit, what do you think?

Who did it? It was really one of the first true crime ones. They also had, they didn't really come. They waited 18 years. I remember. What kind of commitment is that? I mean, you got that

and you got Andrew Jarecki with the Jinx that literally, I mean, goes to murder trials today. I mean, you have Spike with, you know, New Orleans after Katrina. Big, big, big events. And then of course, you know, other documentaries. They're winning, big events. And then, of course, other documentaries. They're winning Academy Awards.

I mean, on every cylinder, they're firing incredibly well. Yeah, but you missed a couple things. If I had been your conciliary, I would have been like, where's this, where's this? The autopsy show. Where was my 10 pages on the autopsy show? I felt like that created CSI and this the autopsy show where was my 10 pages on the autopsy show I felt like that created

CSI and the whole autopsy world there was no other show like that for 10 years I was in the 1300 page version and it broke my heart it broke my heart what an unbelievable show

that was it's I mean that these are entire channels now that was basically the autopsy show was the only person on that corner. So that one, Dennis Miller.

Well, Dennis, look, I'll be the first to admit, Dennis was great to me for Saturday Night Live and ESPN. His departure with HBO left a really bad taste in his mouth. I thought the Dennis Miller show was very important to HBO. Me too. He didn't want to go there. I was told it wasn't personal. I was grateful for him for other interviews he's done with me.

I'm going to try and get him for the paperback because I really think that it's a show that deserves more attention. The problem is that I just didn't want to be writing five pages on it without... Right. Without Dennis Miller in it. Yeah. I think

that show still holds up the format and I think what was really special about it and why I liked it so much was the guests would come on and they were comfortable in a different way than you would see on the late night shows. I don't know whether it was cable or they just kind of came into his world.

And I felt like a lot of the DNA of that show ended up in the Chris Rock show because he was able to emulate it with the guests that he had on the same kind of like, same kind of vibe. Absolutely. Big influence on it. And look, it breaks my heart that sometimes when i'm like talking out of college and i talk about the dems miller or the chris rock show and somebody's like chris rock had a show it's like oh my gosh some of those sketches some of those some of that material was unbelievable it was it

was you know they're doing this john madden documentary fox they showed they were showing a either a commercial or like a sneak preview of it or whatever. And I was watching with my son and my son looked at me and he goes, John Madden was an announcer. He had no idea. It just makes you think like, Oh my God, nobody, people under 25, like you, you take for granted things they might know, but you just never know what this stuff, it seemed. So I know you get this when you do your books where people go, oh, you were really pro that person. You were really anti that person.

Oh, you could see you're in the corner. But as you pointed out, like with the ESPN book and other ones, like it's kind of the eye of the beholder, how people see it, how they read it, maybe what backstory they bring into it. I did think Chris Albrecht came off really well in the book, for lack of a better phrase, because I think he seemed like the person who was the first one who realized,

we have to back talent and our job is to put talent in position and trust the talent that we're hiring, put them in position to succeed and bet on the talent to figure it out. Is that fair to say he, I don't want to say invented it, but perfected it? I think Fuchs felt that way. He was running around, whether it was Bette Midler or,

I mean, look, Fuchs is the one who bought Gary Shanley, that pitch from Brad Gary, and gave them an astounding commitment. I mean, Judd Apatow said, nobody was giving away commitments like that. Fuchs really loved his relationship with talent. He was very,

very close with all of them, with Billy, with me, he went to Moscow with Billy Crystal for that special. He was, he was, he was definitely foreshadowing that kind of relationship. The thing with the Chris did though,

was it just was a much bigger canvas. And so he carried that through to a much bigger level. And so he gets bounced. He gets in an altercation after a fight in 2006. 2007. In 2007.

If that doesn't happen, how much longer is he in charge of HBO? Did you feel like things were starting to change anyway? No, I think he would have been there for a while we certainly would have had i think we would have had the ufc i think um there would have been uh i'm not so sure that he would have it's a question of how long he would have wanted to do it because i think chris became ceo not because he wanted to be ceo but because he didn't want to be working for someone else. Yeah.

He still wanted to be the creative guy. So I think probably maybe another couple of years, and then he would have said no. But Chris's departure left no disrespect against Carolyn Strauss because she just wasn't empowered after he left the way she had been empowered while he was CEO. And I think it led to a lot of problems for HBO, particularly at a time, remember, it's like bad food and small portions because Chris is leaving. And this is where all of a sudden you start to get Netflix involved and other competitors in

serious ways. So they're sitting around saying, Oh yeah, this House of Cards thing. Yeah, I think we'll do a pilot on that. And meanwhile, Netflix is telling David Fincher, We're going to give you two full years. Seriously, commitment of two seasons. How can you compete with that?

So it was a really difficult time for HBO to kind of lose its footing. It was a little similar to where ESPN was, I think, in the mid-2000s, where there was all of a sudden a lot of executives near at the top, and you had a big bullseye on your back. And Chris leaves. Carolyn Strauss, who I think everybody seems to agree is one of the best people with story and with talent and problem solving and giving notes that probably there's been. At the same time, she's pretty weird. Like, and the last couple of years, I had a meeting there once, like she was, there was definitely a vibe that was a little off. Like she was really eccentric. And I think that, I think that became the word on the street in LA of like, she's, she's kind of out there. Okay. But let me just say this because

that kind of, you know, the people who were saying that at the time, I mean, she had been there since the mid eighties and she, she's, you know, she's very reticent to give her own opinion sometimes. And that's happening in the 1990s when people are pitching her shows and it's happening in the early 2000s. And sometimes she keeps people waiting in the waiting room for 10 or 15 minutes. She was 10 or 15 minutes. It was like 40 to 75 minutes. She did that in the 1990s. The difference is, in the 1990s, HBO is like this proverbial little engine that could. It doesn't have these hot shit shows on the air. And nobody thinks that she's this big, egomaniacal power broker.

She's the same person four years later. But if you keep somebody waiting in the waiting room after Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Curvy Enthusiast, and Six Feet Under, all of a sudden it's like, oh, you think you're a big shot now, huh? Well, we're going to put a target on your back. I think it was incredibly unfair. I think there's huge elements of misogyny involved. And she was always, I mean, look, she's really, really smart. I mean, we can, you know, of course, you know, she went to Harvard. She had, she's very, very diligent about her work. She's the same person. It's just that the circumstances changed. Don't you feel like people were feeling like HBO was getting a little too big for their britches

though, late 2000s. I mean, you had some of that in their book, in the book, some of the things that they were greenlighting. Um, absolutely. There was a lack of central something. Now they shift the other way a little too much because then when Pueblo and Lombardo take over, they're trying to overcorrect for stuff like that. Meanwhile, theirs is dysfunctional in their own ways. It's just less overt. Right. Look, vinyl is a great example of that.

The development of Westworld is a great example of that. The development of Westworld is a great example of that. What happened with, you know, the corrections and, you know, the Brad Pitt, you know, project that they had that they spent nearly $25 million on. I mean, look, nobody bats a thousand, but there are a lot of miscues.

And, you know, once again, it's happening while the other places are not only developing their own stuff but remember uh house of cards and uh breaking bad and mad men all come to hbo first now one of the things i try and do in the book is isolate, deconstruct the exegeses involved in each one of those because the reasons for HBO not doing it is different for all three. Yeah. In fact, Carolyn loves Breaking Bad,

but there were some other circumstances involved. But the truth is that they're also getting beat by shows that they could have controlled. Right. Well, you did a good job with the Mad Men thing laying out. It actually made no sense for them to pick that show up because it would have hurt the Sopranos because Matthew Weiner was one of the right-hand guys of David Chase. And you're hurting your own show if you pick it up. But try telling that to the headline writer at one of the trades. It says, HBO passes on Mad Men, which of course makes AMC into another

big competitor, wins tons of Emmy awards. And I think it was very difficult for HBO during that time. And especially after the run that they had. The crazy thing about Carolyn Strauss, she leaves, she gets bounced. And yet still has this massive impact on the network because they do the thing where they're like, oh no, they're going to produce some stuff for us and blah, blah, blah. And that usually never works, right? You never see the person again.

She's in Game of Thrones with an important role on Game of Thrones the entire time it's on the air. That has to be the one recorded case ever that's happened. I mean, not only that, but she was a champion for Game of Thrones the entire time it's on the air. That has to be the one recorded case ever that's happened. I mean, not only that, but she was a champion for Game of Thrones. I mean, the quote unquote cupboard was bare. I mean, it makes me car sick because, I mean, there were a bunch of things in there, including Game of Thrones.

And there's no way that, I mean, Carolyn, what she does with Chernobyl is incredibly important. Craig Mazin, I purposely talked to Craig about Carolyn's contributions to that. So we're talking about one of the great, quote unquote, producing deals after you've left the executive ranks that actually winds up benefiting the network in myriad ways. And so... Well, she also had a dramatic impact on Casey who ends up being the caretaker of this brand as they've rehabilitated itself from a content standpoint. They're on one of the best runs.

Casey got there in 2004. I mean, she was at the top of her game. And he said to me, he still remembers things that she taught him. So I feel like she is... Again, somebody could say, well, I never heard of these people, whatever. But I feel like Carolyn Strauss is one of the best exhibits in the book

to really... For readers to understand what happens behind the curtain and how one person can have such an amazing impact on an organization. Well, it's a little similar to Skipper at ESPN, right? Amazing impact and maybe you throw away the last two years. Like just from a performance standpoint. Maybe the last couple of years weren't great. Carolyn Strauss, unbelievable run. Last two years, eh. She got a little eccentric.

But I think the second life with the Game of Thrones was phenomenal. All right. So I'm going to tell you this. So 2015, I'm leaving ESPN trying to figure out what to do. And one of the people I'm talking to is HBO. And one of the things I'm hearing from everybody is this place is the best. They know how to treat talent, which by the way, both things true. You won't have any of the dysfunction that you had at ESPN at this place. This place, everyone's on the same page, impeccably run. They know how to treat talent. So I come to read your book and it's just as

dysfunctional as ESPN. Lombardo and Pupp are the two people I met with to talk about doing a show. And as you lay out in the book, they have five years of, they're playing, they're in this crazy high stakes chess game with each other.

I had no idea. I just thought they were these two nice guys who work together. But let's be honest, the big difference between ESPN and HBO for you, Bill, is that at ESPN, you had an army of Bristol lifers who could not understand, given your success in every area. They would say to me, well, why does this guy want to be on camera? We don't really like him on camera. We don't want him to be on camera. Why is he insisting? And of course, he's got

skippers here, so he's going to get himself on camera. At HBO, I believe that when you go over there and you're developing your show, there is a genuine interest and there's genuine enthusiasm. Now, you're very open in the book and I appreciated it because you went through some of the things that happened and it was going on in your mind in terms of like rushing things and some of the calculations that you made. I mean, you really do break it down in a very strategic way. But I think that that is a big, big difference. You were supported by people at HBO in a way that you just didn't have that support at ESPN in terms of your own identity and your own ability to bring a show to air. I think it's funny that they thought I wanted to be on camera at ESPN when I

would always turn down chances to be on camera. I don't know where that one came from. There was years and years of me never wanting to go on any shows. I think that the NBA pregame show, the whole, the shoulder programming around NBA. I think, look,

the truth is that you liked it and you wanted it to be better. And you talk to them about ways in which could be better. And that's, that's what, I mean, look, the truth is that you liked it and you wanted it to be better. And you talk to them about ways in which could be better. And that's, that's what, I mean, they don't. That was my mistake. Yeah. It's not, it's, you know, who you are, but the point is they didn't want to hear it and they held it against you. No question.

No, I was saying with the HBO piece of it, I had no idea that the Pueblo Lombardo relationship, I knew nothing. I'm walking into a blank slate. I had no idea it was as complicated as it was. From the outside, it didn't seem like it. And I saw Lombardo the day before he got fired, which was on a Friday. And he was in my office on Thursday because we were planning the show. And it was like we were launching the show like four weeks after he got fired. And he was in the office and he seemed fine and didn't mention anything. And then the next day all of a sudden he was out and it was the classic Friday late afternoon news dump, right? Right. Credit to Richard and to Mike both that they were able to function in a way that you didn't even, I mean, look, there was, that's why I say it's,

it's an iceberg and it was fun for me to dive below the surface and, you know, report on all the stuff that was going on. But I will say at ESPN, it was much more out in the open. Yeah, that's true. Cats and dogs living together. And there were all of us who loved tweeting about it and reporting on it and gossiping about it week after week.

It wasn't like that at HBO. Yeah. They really shoved that toothpaste back in the tube at the end of the day. I really like both of them and continue to like both at HBO. Yeah. They really shoved that toothpaste back in the tube at the end of the day. I really like both of them and continue to like both of them. But I also understand why at some point it wasn't a tenable relationship with the two. Where at some point... I mean, look, I think what I tried to do was I tried to say that they really weren't...

They didn't have a great game plan going in because they weren't clear with what their respective duties were going to be and how they were going to divide things up. I mean, Lombardo thought it was going to be a partnership. I mean, that's probably the last word that Richard Blepler would have used in characterizing what was going to be going on with Mike. Well, you laid that in the book. You said they had a meeting where they had a chance to carve out the territory was it like 2010 and they didn't carve out the territory correctly and that was it for the next five years they're

stumbling and stammering and stepping on each other yeah and then of course the bigger irony is that richard and mike get rid of Carolyn and bring in Sue Nagel, and that didn't turn out to be that great for everyone. And that was, she's an agent. Right. Lombardo was from business affairs. Plepler was from corporate communications. By the way, who else?

Let's talk about Richard Plepler for a second. Aside from Peter Turing, there has been no one. Plepler gets in a company in 92. He fuses right-hand man in terms of image and PR, and then he broadens his scope into branding of HBO. the CEO. It is, I mean, one of the things that I try to do in the book was show the various inflection points that enabled Richard Plepler. I mean, he's not a distribution guy. He's not a technology guy. He's not a script guy. He's not, I mean, he's not a documentary guy. He's not, but what he is, is he's the conductor of the orchestra. So instead of being like one, like great at one instrument, he just knows how to get up in front of a crowd and talk about the HBO brand and create this esprit de corps for people that, you know, carries him to the top.

It's quite an amazing journey. I really liked him. He doesn't come off awesome in the book. I got to say, it's definitely, it's one of the rockier up and down arcs I think the book has. He was so charismatic in that seat. Right. And he really made you feel like HBO was the best and the biggest and the

most important. And we had the best people and he had, it was funny. John Oliver had that canvas thing. Cause that was like Puppers famous for that line, right? We just, you're an artist. We want you to paint. We're just the canvas. Like he said that to everybody, but he was always impeccably dressed. Um, really fun to be with. And yeah, and tan and handsome and just made you feel like, you know, he had a way of whoever he's sitting with. They felt like the most important people in the world. The one thing that happens with Plepler in the book is he's, he makes a lot of personnel moves and he gets rid of, you know, a lot of people who had been there for quite some time. And, you know, like Sheila

Nevins and Mike Lombardo and others, they talk about it and they're upset about it. So it's not, you know, it's not shocking. I think the fact that Plepler always did most of it without any fingerprints was pretty amazing and yes with who he is and to richard's you know richard's own brand is that i mean i tried to engage him on some of this stuff he wasn't going to get into a street fight with these people and he wasn't going to like talk about you know the specific instances or the specific reasons why he did what he did, or push back on people. And I think that, you know, when you decide to take the high road in a book like this, you know, some people may think, well, you're not talking for a certain reason. But I think that Plepler, you know, just remained consistent to who he is and who he wants to be by not engaging. Believe me, I tried.

Well, it seemed like a lot of people were more than happy to lob shots his way too. But that's what happens when you're at a place for 30 years, you're in the big chair for a while too. And then you're not there. I mean, if he was still at the company, I mean, it would have been crickets, unless for people who had already left the company. But I think, you know, a lot of people talk about being intimidated by him. Or he's got an amazing network of friends and influential people. And, you know, I think that there's no doubt that people were afraid to confront him. A couple more nitpicks.

I just felt like Oz deserved like four more pages, maybe for the paperback. There just was no show like Oz. I agree. I cut back on it. You know, I should have given you the 1300page version because then you would have had less. Where's the 1,300-page version? Is that paperback? I'm trying to. Well, there's going to be definitely a lot of new... I think there will be material. But I think, look, at some point, it's incumbent. It's my responsibility to do some triage

and to look you know, kind of look at where you hit diminishing marginal returns. I would have loved to have, you know, done more with Oz because it was so important and there were so many great stories. And it was a terrifying show. Terrifying, even now terrifying.

I can't, almost can't believe it was on television. I mean, they just like... Basically, I think that they made a list of... Think of everything that you've never seen on television that you think you can't do and that's going to scare the shit out of people. It's like, okay, there's our next season. I mean, woven with great characters,

the great writing by Tom Fontana and the group. I mean, Barry Levinson and whatever. But I think I could have done a whole book on Oz, Larry Sanders, The Wire, Soprano. I mean, all of these shows. I mean, Six Feet Under, literally, that I think is one of the best finale episodes in the history of television.

You know, I had like 10 pages on just that episode. Yeah. You know, you just got to somehow keep moving. And the book probably most important, just legacy standpoint, Michael Fuchs, just because I didn't really know who that was and I had no idea that he was that important. Who is this ESPN doppelganger?

Who is this ESPN guy? Has to be somebody from the 80s, right? Is it Bornstein? Who is this ESPN guy? Has to be somebody from the 80s, right? I just... Is it Bornstein? Probably, because Bornstein is the only one that comes close. Because I got to tell you, Fuchs is totally fearless. He is great managing down, and he is absolute disaster managing up. He confronts all of his bosses.

He takes on Bob Daly, who's running Warner Brothers Studio at the time. I mean, that's formidable. Daley is one of the most, at this time, one of the most important figures in Hollywood. And Fuchs is totally fearless. So I guess it's Bornstein. But man, oh man, he is just not afraid of anyone. Who's the MVP of the book for you? It's 49 years. I'm not sure that there's, you know, I'm not sure that there's, it's really hard. I think each, I think, look,

Fuchs was indispensable to when he was there. Jeff Bukas, who's a silent killer without his financial engineering, doing what he did, getting the money for Albrecht to get this original programming, moving to corporate, beating back Steve Case and Bob Pittman and all those AOL guys, and then somehow returning a ton of money to shareholders. I mean, that's important. Plepler in his way, Casey in his way, and of course, Carolyn Strauss.

I just think that one of the things that happens, and this happens with ESPN too, you need people to step up to the plate. You needed John Walsh to come and bring journalism to ESPN if it was going to be really, really serious and to recreate SportsCenter, to create a new era for SportsCenter. And the key is, I mean, only SNL is different because Lorne is there basically for, you know, except for five years, he's still the person who's doing it. Otherwise, you have these kind of like people that come on the scene, do dramatic things, elevate it, save it, rescue it, take it to another level. And that's really important. It's funny. I felt like Carolyn's dress was the John Walsh doppelganger a little bit. Yeah.

Like one of the things when Casey said that thing about how sometimes she'd only have one note, but it was the right note and it was a great note. That's what Walsh was like in the 2000s in a lot of ways where he could be in a meeting for an hour and not say anything and then have one point and it was like one of the best points and be like yeah they only do few points they bat a thousand i mean carol doesn't need to be heard at a meeting if she doesn't have anything to say she's not going to talk and then people are going to think wow what a snob or she i guess she doesn't have anything going on but she does she really does and everyone who i spoke to in terms of like what it was like to work with her and get notes and every get notes stuff i mean she really impeccable reputation um who do you think's gonna

be the maddest is there are there candidates well you don't have to say but there's gonna be like three or four people who are gonna be mad it feels like well this is where i get come back to like this rorschach test these books yeah like i mean somebody said oh my god you know so and so is gonna hate this. And then all of a sudden, the next, like an hour later, somebody says, Well, you really, you know, you really put so and so same person on a pedestal. It's like, you know, it's really hard to, to say I never have an agenda for I mean, I'm not into personal destruction. And I, I definitely, definitely sat on a lot

of stuff that I came up with because I didn't want to hurt people personally. One of the things that I learned from ESPN sometimes was when I report salaries, and I didn't do that here. There's a lot of money going on around here. People made a lot of money. And it just felt very... I mean, people were really uncomfortable with it when I did it in the past. And I didn't do it here. There were lots of relationships going on.

It was a busy world there. 80s, 90s, yeah. Oh my gosh, even 2000s. Right. But I wasn't about to do that. I didn't want to interfere with people's family. So I sat on a lot. You did some good

inferring. As you keep doing these oral histories, there's definitely a couple moments where you're like, oh, you lay the breadcrumbs without actually making the cookies a few times. Sometimes people can connect the dots in a way that I think is both responsible without me harming someone. Like somebody's one phone call at one point in this book

and it's like, oh, some breadcrumbs are being dropped right now. Wonder where this is going. Yeah. That was a big moment. Yeah. A lot of intrigue. So the paperback, what's that, two years from now?

Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I got to make sure that. Because you have this whole discovery thing that God only knows how the fuck that's going to play out. And then as I was reading, the other thing I forgot to mention was the AOL Time Warner stuff, which was complicating it at the time and seemed nonsensical at the time. And even as you laid it out with 20 years of perspective, it still made no sense. It was like they're merging and the arrows are already pointing down.

They're like, cool, plow ahead. I did get Jerry Levin, who's very kind. I interviewed him over 20 times to admit that they did a weekend's worth of due diligence. It seems like it. He literally confirmed it, which I don't think he's done before. And you start to scratch your head and you start to wonder. I mean, it only led to $180 billion of write-offs. So you're talking about the worst merger in... One of the worst mergers in US history. And so for all those people who thought it would be

really cool to survive that and then buy Netflix in 2005, that's a little rough. Well, and they were also counting the subscriptions of the CDs they mailed people and they would sign up and then never use AOL. And there's like, there's a little rough. Well, and they were also counting the subscriptions of the CDs they mailed people and they would sign up and then never use AOL. And there's like, there's a customer. It reminded me of when ESPN in the late 2000s, when they used to, you would go on ESPN.com and the video player would automatically start. And then they would claim that as a view

for whatever video it was. We got 2 million videos or views or so-and-so. Yeah. Or Main Street. That was another one where it was, they were just counting these auto star views. It's like, those don't count. That's just somebody coming to uspin.com.

They don't know what's playing on the right thing. But yeah, so there was a lot of chicanery with AOL that unfortunately, that's crazy that that merger happened. I know there's been a whole book about it, but I might have to read it, read it, because it's confusing to me yeah no it had a huge but one of the things that i tried to do was not only tried to show what it was at the time but the incredible repercussions it had for time water going forward i mean it's just it's just brutal well we'll see we'll see how this discovery thing goes. I hope they don't mess with Casey, who's on a hot streak.

This is a four-year run for him. Just leave that guy alone. Don't go in his office. Keep away from Casey. I mentioned that to Zaslav. I don't think David's going to do that. And I think Casey's in a position to continue to do what he did. Just a question of what kind of money.

Because AT&T, you know, there wasn't enough money to really do what they originally thought they were going to be able to do. And at one point, HBO has two different agendas for the future. One is if we get money and two is if we don't get any more money. And that's a hard way to program a network.

You know, you, you had a little bit about this when they were trying to figure out how to go digital. And there's HBO Go and HBO Now and all that stuff. And when we did the deal, and you had

that in there about the Jon Stewart thing, how that deal fell apart. They didn't understand in the actual deals that they couldn't do digital stuff. The stuff had to run on HBO first. And that was something we found out the hard way because part of when with The Ringer, when HBO was involved with The Ringer and we're going to do these Game of Thrones aftershows right directly on the HBO digital service. And they realized with their deals, it was actually

illegal for them to do that. So they had to run on HBO. So within five weeks ago, all of a sudden, the show that we were making, a digital show, all of a sudden had to be on actual HBO. We had to scramble and add these different things. But I remember thinking that was weird. It was like, these guys are running HBO and they don't even know what they can and can't do with the digital. And it was very similar to ESPN, how they were throwing this stuff together really fast because they knew they needed to be somewhere, but didn't have a plan. Right. But part of the problem is that the world was moving so fast. Yes. You know, you sign a contract and all of a sudden, you know, two months later, because of something that's happening in the marketplace, all of a sudden it's out of date. Or some piece of technology all of a sudden makes something... You're able to do something with something because of technology that you didn't

even understand. Right. I think that's really important, just in terms of context. The flip side of that was the early 2000s when they made the incredibly smart decision to just own their libraries and buy out the backend of all these shows, thinking that it would be good for DVDs, not realizing that this would also give them an absolute war chest for whatever it was coming to HBO Max. One of the weird things that happens with HBO,

but also like you could say with ABC, CBS and NBC is like NBC does friends. And then why does friends wind up on Netflix like HBO you know some of their shows winds up they wind up on Apple or Amazon or something you know it's like people are there's cash and there's deals but then you realize you're you're sharing your IP and and it's hurting your brand because you're able to conquer the whole world with some of these hit shows. And then all of a sudden, Netflix can show it. I mean, TV Everywhere, which is something that they try around 2010, was a big attempt to blot Netflix's impact.

So, you know, and, you know, it didn't work out. You need a lot of cooperation. But at the same time, it gets a little frustrating for, you know, the networks to see their stuff, I mean, you know, wind up someplace else. There was a money grab element to it because I've told you that story about 30 for 30 when we just sold them to Netflix and made extra money. Right. And it was like,

cool. They're just paying us for stuff we already did. Great. But meanwhile, that's how Netflix is building their whole empire. It was like, cool. We'll take this.

We'll take that. Here's some money. We'll take that. And then all of a sudden they have all of these things. Yep. You know, the good news is you get paid for it. The bad news is that you lose it. And it's really hard to make it part of your ecosystem. You know, the good news is you get paid for it. The bad news is that you lose it.

And it's really hard to make it part of your ecosystem once again. You know, I mean, it's a really troubling aspect for the networks, you know, of what Netflix was able to do. The book is called Tinderbox. How many pages is the hardcover book? I think 964. 9 964 how heavy is it it's like jesus it's like a small child oh but you should have added legs to it espn was close to 800 and that's just a sports network. You know, this is 49 years of sports, documentaries, movies, takeovers, original series. I mean, you know, it's like I have a lot of masters in this book. It's by far the biggest agenda.

And again, I know I don't get any credit for cutting about 400 pages, but... No, I think it was the right move. Yeah. Sheila Nevins wins some award for the book. I don't know what, maybe liveliest quotes? The best. But least give a fuckability in the book? Didn't care who, she just had a flamethrower out a couple times.

But, you know, I mean, look, when you're 82 and you've dedicated so much of your life to a place you know she that's like your dream interview where somebody's just like i don't give a fuck turn the recorder on i'm going to ask me anything and she was terrific with me and i sat there in her apartment with her many many times and uh i mean what she does with todd black in the, I mean, you know, it's, there are a lot of stories that Sheila tells that are just amazing because you're, you're listening to, you know, somebody who really just wants to speak her own opinion and a real truth. And, you know, I, I always say that the real sign of power is when somebody says, yeah, I don't need to talk on background.

It's like that's sheer power because you know that you either don't care or nobody's going to come after you because you're so powerful. And in Sheila's case, I think she really didn't care. Unfortunately, that's how I was wired in 2009 when you interviewed me for the ESPN book. But that was foolishness. Hey, listen. Look, can we just say that we've made some progress? Because I don't think that after the HBO book, you're going to have to write any letters of apology. Oh, my God. I had to write multiple.

I had to call people. After the, yeah. After the ESPN book. I think when we did the interview, though, I was at a particularly irascible time. I think some things had gone wrong recently, and I was definitely in fuck this place. I'm probably leaving anyway mode. Well, it wasn't just one time. So I think whatever you're trying to say is your state of mind.

It was over a period of several months. Yeah, probably that too. If only you had told me some stuff where you'd have to write letters of apology but uh you were very honest about the show and i think you know i i really appreciated that and i think you know i don't even think my show should have been in the book it was like the 120 000 most important hbo thing music box i think has a chance to make the book, though. I could not believe some of that Alanis footage.

Music Box is good. I think we're going to get two pages in the paperback. I can feel it. It's good. The whole series is really good. I'm proud of it. Ready.

All right. Jim Miller, great work as always. Congrats. I'm not going to ask you what your next project is. I know deep down you probably have one. I hope it's not ask you what your next project is. I know deep down you probably have one.

I hope it's not ESP in the last 10 years. Thank you. Is it ESP in the last 10 years? You're not really doing that, are you? I'm sitting on 420 pages of notes. Oh my God. But no, I like moving forward. I think there could be a documentary in it.

But anyway, it'd be interesting to turn the doc on to ESPN. It's a place who's done so many docs. But I just got to make sure this one gets read. Okay. Tinderbox. You can read it. It's out Tuesday. And you can read it.

You can get the, what do they call it? The e-books? You can do an e-book. Do a little Apple book. You can get the, what do they call the eBooks? You can do an eBook, do a little Apple book. You do a Kindle book, whatever. Any way you get a book, it's there. Good to see you. Thank you so much, Bill. All right.

This podcast was produced by Kyle Creighton. I have good news for you. Another podcast coming from me this week, doing some MBA tomorrow. Have a very special guest who has not been on this podcast for a while. We're going to do that heading into the big four-day break. And then don't forget

new rewatchable is coming on Thursday. A very famous sports movie. It's worth a Thanksgiving drop. Pumped for that one. I will see you tomorrow on this feed. I don't have.