The Bill Simmons Podcast - The NBA’s Risky Restart and Quibi’s Struggles, With Shams Charania and Matthew Belloni

Episode Date: July 8, 2020

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by NBA insider Shams Charania to discuss the NBA restart, its implications for the 2021 salary cap, journalism in the Orlando bubble, and more (4:17). Then Bill talks with former editor in chief of The Hollywood Reporter, Matthew Belloni, about the short-form video platform Quibi, some of its missteps, and ways it could rally back (54:05). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight's episode of the BS podcast on the ringer podcast network brought to you by zip recruiter. If you're an employer, you know how challenging it can be to hire right now. You face even more challenges, mats and resources. They could relate. They needed to hire a seasoned senior Citrix administrator to provide it support. They turned to zip recruiter, our presenting sponsor. That's how they found Peter Alcantara jr. He laid off during COVID-19, needed to find another job quickly. He posted his resume on ZipRecruiter. They identified him as a great match for the role. At Madsen Resources,

they hired Peter in less than three weeks. See how ZipRecruiter can help you hire. Try it now for free at ziprecruiter.com slash BS. Meanwhile, turn your great idea into reality with Squarespace. They make it easier than ever to launch your passion project, whether you're showcasing your work or selling products of any kind. With beautiful templates and the ability to customize just about anything,

you can easily make a beautiful website yourself. And if you do get stuck, Squarespace's 24-7 award-winning customer support is there to help. Head to squarespace.com slash BS for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code BS to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey, if you like the rewatchables, we put one up on Monday, 35th anniversary of San Omar's fire.

One of the most influential people who just graduated college movies ever. Plus it was Joel Schumacher's, uh, really his first big hit. And he just passed away recently. So me and Chris Ryan, we broke that one down and I broke the record for most times screwing up when I'm recording from home, which I think I own the unofficial ringer record right now. This time I've done it a few times, but my battery has run out as I've been recording. I forgot to plug my microphone into the zoom recorder that we have. Um, I forgot to press record. That was a good one. I've done that twice. So this one, the dials on the recorder,

they go from one to 10 and I guess I had on the recorder, they go from one to 10. And I guess I had moved the recorder around and the dial moved to 10. So everything I said in the Sin Olmos podcast was at the loudest possible decibels and was completely unusable. So we had to use my Zoom audio for that one. So I keep redefining new ways to, uh, to screw up recording at home. Anyway, we're making it up to you. We're going to do swingers. That's going up Wednesday night. It is not an anniversary. It's just an awesome movie. And, uh, and it's aged in a really fascinating way for a bunch of different reasons. So we'll be putting that up on Wednesday night. Please remind me to record from my end in the best way possible. Coming up, we're going to talk about the NBA's restart. If it's actually going to happen in the way we think it's going to happen,

if all the teams are going to show up, if the bubble is going to work and how we're going to report in the bubble with Sham Sharania from the athletic and from stadium. And then Matthew Bellany, the, uh, former editor in chief of the holiday reporter, which, um, he did an awesome job there.

We're going to talk about Quibi, which is celebrating this week. It's three month anniversary. Also the three month anniversary of what people, when the free trial is up, whether they want to keep going with it or not, it has been a fascinating misfire thus far. We're going to talk about all the mistakes they made. And then also if it's salvageable and then what, what the streaming universe looks like

as we headed to the second half of 2020. So basketball and streaming stuff, that's all I got for you. There's nothing else going on right now. You didn't want to hear me talk about my home's baking 503 million, even though only like 140 of it's guaranteed. You can, you can listen to the ringer NFL show for that one. Anyway, that's all coming up first. Our friends from Pearl Jam. All right. I don't know how this hasn't happened before, but it's happening now. He's at the athletic. He's at stadium.

What other gigs do you have, Shams? Just those two for now, but obviously during the pandemic I've been pretty busy just appearing on networks like CNN and CNBC. But just those two right now. I have a lot to cover. I want to start here. Do you think

this NBA season is actually going to happen? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's definitely going to get off the ground. All the planning and preparation has been put into place for this to happen like there's um you know all these protocols um you know everyone around the league that i speak to it's all systems go now are there going to be things put into place if there are a rash amount of positive tests or you know an outbreak occurs i think the league does that it does have that in the back of their minds and is, and is, you know, mentally aware that that is a possibility.

I think even Adam Silver has said it publicly. He's talked to people privately about it. But everything as of right now is it's all systems go. Well, you talk to a lot of people. Are you sensing a growing apprehension as the covid cases spike around the country and especially in florida i've been feeling that for weeks though you know there have been swaths of players coaches executives that have had kind of this growing uncertainty about it but again the fact that the vast majority of players want to play lebron james has been vocal that he wants to

play um yann he wants to play. Giannis wants to play. So you have a lot of these star players. Kawhi Leonard, you know, as long as things are safe and, you know, given all the other leagues right now, the NBA is the only league to have this, you know, fully daily testing protocol set up. You see the MLB, you have different players coming out saying like, listen, we're not getting the daily testing that we need. saw chris bryant said the other day like i've been tested in five

six days that's not happening in the nba like these guys are getting tested daily i think that's part of the reason why you're seeing like you know over over two dozen positive tests i know even in the last several days um you know obviously these guys results are private you know them it being released is is really their decision but there have been players even in the last four or five days um you know a good amount of players that have tested positive as well and so the nba is treating it as you know chris paul michelle roberts when you when you hear them speak publicly and privately i mean it is kind of like trying to treat it like an injury because that's, that's where they're at right now. And trying to, in terms of trying to restart this, this NBA. Do you believe the official number of positive tests versus what the actual number is?

Cause I've heard it's closer to triple figures than maybe they're admitting. Um, I mean, I think the last thing that they, you know, the NBA announced was 25. I don't think that they're, they're, um, you know, I don't think that they're falsifying that. Now, since that 25 came out on Friday, you know, I do know there have been several others that have tested positive, which I'm sure reflect on, you know, the next announcement that the NBA does make and reveal the teams as far as positive testing. But again, it's not, you know, you don't have, you know, a bunch of teams dealing with it, but there are several teams that are going to, you know, going into Orlando, I'm told that are not going to be traveling with their full complement of players. Like, you know, there's a

group of three, four or five players that are going to have to stay back to make sure that you, you know, comply with testing protocols. What's your responsibility as a reporter? Because you obviously have incredible access to information and you have to vet what you put out there versus what you kind of tuck away. There's stuff maybe you find out that isn't supposed to be public. And in this case, if somebody's test positive and they don't want anybody to know, then it's their right for nobody to know. So have you stumbled? I mean, you don't, obviously don't say what you've stumbled across, but you must hear things that you just can't act on at all. Right. Yeah. I mean, but again, I think that's just the nature of the beast,

especially right now, right? Like coronavirus isn't, you know, a torn ACL or an injury. Like I've had different people say that to me and that is true. And you know, you've ACL or an injury. Like I've had different people say that to me. And that is true. And, you know, you've got, you have to respect the player, you know, I think early on, you know, when Rudy Gobert tested positive, Kevin Durant, um, you know, different guys around the league, Donovan Mitchell, it was such a shock. You know, we, in America, not forget the NBA, but I feel like in America period, I remember that night, you know, you had Tom Hanks, his wife test positive. And then within 30 minutes, Rudy Gobert tested positive. And, you know, the crazy thing about the Rudy Gobert situation is, you know, again, the league, you know, basically that game was suspended.

Right. There was so much chaos at the beginning of that Thunder Jazz game. And I remember I heard exactly at like 7 p.m. central time that, hey, a jazz player tested positive. It was Rudy Gobert. And I didn't report it until eight 27, my time, I believe that was the time. And so that's an hour and 27 minutes that went by and bill, you know, and like breaking news an hour and 27 minutes is a long time, but that time was being spent, you know, like you don't go into journalism school or, you know, what I do or I try to do when I try to master in terms of you know reporting and and building relationships you don't go into it reporting on viruses and pandemics and so it was such a newness to it and so there's so many different factors you had to so many legal bridges you had to cross

and i think there was such a newness at first to where okay when you have the information you can try to report it as delicately as possible. But obviously now, you know, the player's privacy, I think, is so important with this situation. So it happens all the time where, you know, you have, you know, I feel like over the last two, three weeks where, you know, you know that, you know, player X has tested positive. But again, it's his right at the end of the day if he wants the information known, you know, him and his camp. So look, going back to March 11th, which I think officially has become a date. Like, if I hear the March 11th,

I think of Gobert, Tom Hanks, being in my back house watching basketball, and all of a sudden the OKC game's getting canceled and just pure chaos. Did you have a sense even before that night that things were headed that way? Cause like Spotify had shut down its offices 36 hours before that people, bigger companies weren't comfortable with their employees traveling. We didn't let our people go to the Sloan conference and stuff like that. So there was a sense something bad was happening.

Were you kind of waiting for a night like that? Or were you just hoping it wasn't going to happen? I was probably hoping it wasn't going to happen. Like, I think there were a lot of things that were trending that way, you know, like that previous Friday, so that happened on a Wednesday, right. But that previous Friday, you know, NBA teams got a memo real late at night on a Friday night, you know, yes, you know, NBA games are going on a national TV ESPN and teams got a memo real late saying like you know uh basically start preparing for the possibility of no fans so it's kind of like a late friday night just you know kind of not buried memo because again the nba is 24 7 they're always working and

so they kind of push that out to teams late on a friday night and i think that was for me the moment when the wheel started turning like Like, yo, this is serious. And this isn't, again, I heard about the coronavirus really in December, January, just because the players in China were being affected. The American players that were playing the CBA were being affected by it. But I'll admit, I don't think I took it as seriously as probably I needed to in the moment. But I think that's where the wheel started getting turned. And then that day on Wednesday, I was told that Rudy, you know, Rudy ended up, you know, he was taking the coronavirus test and I knew that that afternoon.

But again, Bill, you go into it and you're like, all right, listen, he'll test negative. You know, it'll come back. You know, we'll just continue playing on as usual. And then, you know then what happens, happens. And everything from there, it's been obviously history. Looking back now, it's been almost four months. How fast it went from that weekend to that Wednesday, which is only four days.

And it feels like a whole lifetime. I mean, my family went to, I think two Clipper games that weekend. And it was like, ah, should I worry about them at Staples? And then now you look back, you're like, oh my God, what, what was I doing? And I look forward to looking ahead to where this season is going. We're not going to have fans in the bubble, but even next year, I know the teams are just completely flummoxed trying to figure out what are we going to do? Like, even if this seat, let's say the bubble works and it pays off and

we ended up getting a champion and we get out of there with minimum hiccups, hopefully they still have to start the next season, probably around Christmas. And none of these teams have any idea if they're going to have fans. What have you heard on that? Yeah. So, you know, I reported it a have fans. What have you heard on that? Yeah. So, you know, I reported it a few weeks ago, you know,

on that Kyrie Irving call, you know, it had several different MBPA members, right. You know, you had Garrett Temple, Chris Paul, and you know,

a couple of them said point blank, like us as the MBPA leadership, we're expecting there to be no fans all of 2021. So players are, are braced for, for no fans all of next season. And, you know, Adam Silver said on a player's call, I think about two months ago, if I remember, I think in May sometime, that basically fans are 40% of the revenue for the NBA.

So how are you going to replace 40% of the revenue that comes from fans, you know, punching their tickets in to each and every game and everything else that comes with that. I don't know. And I think Adam Silver is trying to figure it out. I think he will have some solutions for at least part of that 40%. The question is how much of that 40% will be equated for because that's a lot of money, Bill, that's going to be left on the table. You know, if they play without fans next year and it's going to show in terms of the salary gap. And it's the league that probably has the hardest time figuring out how to account for an unknown variable like that, like baseball, whatever the luxury tax gets affected.

Football, they have so many players. The players are, the best players are prone to stay where they are for the most part. Basketball has turned into this sport where, you know, you really only have three or four guys that matter on every team. They're all on contracts that are four years or less. There's incredible turnover. And now we have a cap situation where I look at like Giannis, Giannis can be a free agent, uh, summer 2021. Well, if the cap is 40 to 45% less than what it is, how is he going to jump teams? How is the team even going to have the cap space to offer him? So it seemed like for somebody like him, he's almost stuck in Milwaukee unless they come up with new CBA language to be like, all right,

so the cap's this, but you can actually do this what have you heard anything on that or they're not even thinking about that yet no it's tough to think about the cba but i mean listen players know that there is a good possibility that that they're gonna have to redo different parts of the cba that's just like yeah that's just an inevitability like they're gonna have to you know rest different, different elements of it. And I don't know if they're going to completely rip it up, but you know, they're going to need to go back and really account for everything that's going to have to take place here during this, this time period. You know,

if the season completes, you know, hopefully for the league, it does complete and then around September, October, you have an idea of what the salary cap will be next year. And, you know, players, the one thing I know is the MBPA, the players do not want the salary cap to go from, you know, it's a 109 projection, I believe, for next season. They don't want that to go from like 109 to 90 or 95. They're going to fight for it.

Or 80. Yeah, or 80. I mean, it could go way lower than that. It could be the opposite of what happened in 2016. They do not want that. So if it can go, I mean, it could go way lower than that. It could be the opposite of what happened in 2016. They do not want that. So if it can go, I mean, again, this is just me throwing numbers like 105, 100. You know, if they can keep it within a range that it's not that much of a decrease, that's what they're going to be going for.

So that will have an impact over next year and beyond, but you know, the players, you know, they don't want that, that large deficit in terms of their, their, their salary cap for next year. But again, this is going to be something that will be known more in a September. That's why it is important for them to finish out this year, account for the revenue,

finish off the season. My guess is that they're going to have some version of the amnesty clause, but it will be like the bizarre amnesty clause, but it will be like the bizarre amnesty clause where it'll be like every team, one superstar just doesn't count against the cap. So the cap will be, I don't know, 75, 80 million, whatever. But each team can designate one guy who just doesn't count at all. So like for the Celtics, Kemba makes, I don't know, 30, something like that. So the Celtics would just designate Kemba. You would just remove him from the cap.

And then the cap would be for the other guys on the team. And I think that's what you would have to do. And they've done the reverse of it with the amnesty, right? They did the amnesty clause a couple of times to try to give relief. I think they would have to do the reverse of it with the amnesty, right? They did the amnesty clause a couple of times to try to give relief. I think they would have to do the reverse of that. And then that would inadvertently help teams keep their own players too. I think they did it correctly. I've, I've heard a little buzz on that, but yeah, I haven't heard that yet, but I mean, that's, I'm sure the NBA is looking for any ideas in terms of like how to move forward, but like, that's something I hadn't heard, but I mean, you know, it would probably be a wise move um you know in different elements but i mean again like next

year seems so far off and oh my god again like i get i get questions asked at different points about like what's the salary cap looking like next year but i think now everyone realizes like they need to finish off this season see what the revenue looks like off this season and then really go from there in terms of how do we change the CBA? How do we, you know, you know, manufacture what the, what the next salary cap will look like. There's so many unanswered questions. So I felt like this was a mistake at the time. And I think it's becoming a bigger mistake that they have too many teams in this bubble and to go with 22, I thought they should have done 12 or 13, basically the top six in each conference plus Dallas. And maybe you figure out some mechanism

where the, where I don't know how they would have done it with Dallas. Maybe there's like a, a playoff with the five, six, seven seeds in that conference. Two of them get to go, whatever. And they keep adding these teams. Now we found out today, like Bradley Beal's not going, you have these completely depleted teams. You had Aldridge decided to get surgery. Um, you have the nets are just decimated. This seems dumb to me. It seems dumb to me that we're doing 22. Was there ever a world in which there was going to be 12 or 14 teams instead of 22? And why did they settle on 22? What do you think the reason was? Yeah, it was never going to be that low, Bill.

But I know there were a lot of GMs around the league wanted 16. That was the cleanest, easiest way to just go into this bubble, right? Just do the 16 teams. But again, in terms of accounting for the financial aspect of this, 16 teams wasn't going to bring the revenue that 20 or 22 would. And all 30 teams obviously did not make sense from a health and safety standpoint. So that's why the NBA decided on 22. 20 would have meant group play. But listen, I've had GMs tell me, what if they just did basically what they did with the 22 teams and just did it for 20 teams and leave out, you know, Phoenix or Washington. But, you know,

from what I'm told, you know, ownership levels of both Washington and Phoenix push for their teams to be in. And how you look at it, you know, Phoenix, you know, obviously they're, they're really, I mean, I guess they have a puncher's chance. And Washington without Bradley Beal, you're already six games out. And Bertons. And Bertons out, even without, you know, Spencer Dinwiddie, a puncher's chance and washington without bradley bill you're already six games out and burton and burton's out even without you know spencer dinwiddie deandre jordan maybe one or two more players like the nets you know still have a six game lead it'll be tough to see them not hold on

to that spot especially given the fact that brad bill's out so if you're you know if you're adam silver like what you know your reverse response could have been like, hey, Washington, if John Wall, Brad Beal play, I got you guys. You guys are in. But if they're not coming to the table, why should I bring you? Again, those guys, they still were brought into this. So definitely there are still some lingering questions. That's why you had a team like Portland. They voted no for the entire structure.

And that had to do with Portland ownership, the players all believing that 22 teams, isn't the way to go. We should go with 20, but, um, the league and, and also listen, I do believe Adam Silver did talk to the majority of teams and the majority wanted as many teams as possible. And if 30 wasn't going to be the route, 22 teams, definitely. I mean, obviously 29 of 30 teams voted for that. So you think the players driving this, and I was waiting for the players to get involved. And then they finally did in a big way. LeBron, Chris Paul are the guys people know the superstars that are really pushing this. Who are like the next three guys who are, who are, if you had to

do your starting five of the guys with the most influence and power, who everybody else is kind of following what they do, who are the other three with LeBron and Chris? Great question. You got, I'm stumped on this one. Um,

so maybe it's just those two. Yeah. I mean, listen, Chris Paul has definitely been a big driving force in terms of communication um I'm trying to think back at some of the players that I know have also advocated I mean like does Giannis have a voice or or now I think Giannis made it clear early in the in the hiatus that you know he wanted to play um and he as long as it was safe again there was always that

caveat you know as long as it's safe we want, there was always that caveat, you know, as long as it's safe, we want to play. So I think Giannis made that known early. You know, but I'm trying to be like, Garrett Temple, you think, huh?

Garrett Temple has been very, I mean, you know, in a, in a, in a way in terms of trying to educate players in his mind, trying to educate players in terms of like, you know,

the financial component of this and, and what it means, you know, he's obviously VP of the MBPA, which, you know, is a position that your boy Kyrie Irving has as well. And so him and Kyrie share that position. And so Garrett has definitely been very vocal

in terms of, you know, trying to educate players. You know, on that call that Kyrie had, you know, Garrett, Chris Paul, these guys were vocal about, you know, what it would mean to not play. And I think CJ McCollum, you know, is a guy that has had both ends of the spectrum. I mean, I know at one point, you know, he was toward not playing. Then at another point, he wanted to play.

But through it all, you know, just talking to other players, he's been very educating. And he's been bringing a very level head to this argument. So I think, I guess if I have a four group for you, I mean, you know, I guess it's those four. But again, like LeBron's impact is more from a vocal, subtle standpoint. It's not from a, I'm involved with Chris Paul and we're talking with the PA on a daily basis.

You know, from what I'm told, like LeBron James, if he wants to talk to Adam Silver, he'll talk to Adam Silver directly. If he wants to talk to Chris Paul, he'll talk to Chris Paul directly. Right. wants to talk to Chris Paul, he'll talk to Chris Paul directly. Right. Were you on the zoom call that Kyrie had, or were you just getting all the information literally as it was being said on that, on the infamous zoom call?

Yeah. You know, I can't be on those calls. I'm not allowed. So I definitely was not on that, but you know, you had amazing info. It's my job to report. And, um, you know, I tried to just paint the most accurate picture off that call. And, uh, you know, I saw what JJ said on your last podcast. And so I guess I'll take the honor, but I, I was not on that call. Were you expecting that from Kyrie? Because he had been on the calls a week before and, you know, from what I heard, hadn't said that much.

And then I guess they let him talk at the tail end, but, um, something happened over the, over that six days where he became a lot more active. Where did that come from? Yeah. So on, on that call with the PA, you know, Kyrie Irving basically asked, you know, what is the, what is, what is the players association, the league doing in terms of sponsorship deals, right? Like what are we doing in terms of trying to get, um, you know, what is the, what is, what is the players association, the league doing in terms of sponsorship deals, right? Like, what are we doing in terms of trying to get, you know, partnership and endorsements, right? It was a very specific question. And, you know, his tone from what I'm told, like he was challenging, like Michelle Roberts, Chris Pollack, what are we doing? And then throughout all that, he also was talking to a group of players, Avery Bradley, Dwight Howard, several other guys, about a dozen guys, about not playing, about the possibility of unifying and trying to see if there is a way for a group of players to unify.

And that was going on at the same time. And so Kyrie Irving was leading a lot of those calls. So that Friday call, when that took place, that was a buildup of like two or three weeks. And there was a Zoom call earlier that week that didn't have as many players. Like that Zoom call on that Friday had about 85 players at most, right? But earlier in the week, they had about a couple dozen players on that call. So he kind of grew and they brought in some outsiders on that call. And, you know, that was, that really was Kyrie's opportunity to speak up. And he did. And, you know, there was a lot of back and forth, a lot of opinions shared. I thought it was, I thought it was, I thought it was good for them. I thought it was, I thought it was productive. I think you need to be open and honest with each other. At one point,

I was told Russell Westbrook was still on the call. I'm all for sitting out. I'm all for seeing what we can do to unify, but guys, we need to have a plan. If our best plan is by playing, at the end of the day, we're the players.

We have an obligation. At the end of the day, we're the players. Like, we have an obligation. And at the end of the day, we have a voice in the bubble. And we're going to have a voice to make change. Like, we need to have a plan. If our plan is to play, like, I want to play too. So it was opinions like that where you see both ends of the spectrum. And it seems like we're headed toward everybody agreeing on some sort of plan for how to, how to protest in the bubble in different kinds of ways, or at least get different messages out. I should say, um,

what, who's leading that process. And have you heard that it's going smoothly because I've from everything I've heard, it's gone pretty smoothly. Yeah. It's, I feel like it's gone smooth, but again, this is, and i heard this early this is going to be the nba listening to the players right this is going to be the nba just really giving the the nbpa an opportunity to just give them different opportunities give them different opinions obviously the black lives matter opinion on the court um i report a couple weekends ago like that uh the nbpa pushed for you know different jersey names on the back uh which will go into effect um i'm told there will be warm-up

shirts uh for the movement as well so different things like that there won't be a jersey patch from what i'm told but they're going to do a lot more i'm sure there'll be commercials potentially so they're going to be doing a lot um but listen there are a couple players that want different names right you've seen mike scott Jalen Brown vocal about like, you know, we were given such a small group of names, but again, that was the MBPA that put those names together and agreed upon it with the league. And so there's so many players, it's tough to satisfy them all. But I think for the most part, this is the league just waiting on the players to hear what they want to do and just going from there. Have you heard about any owners potentially being in trouble financially?

Because you think about some of these guys, these teams got super expensive. But some of these guys, they have their money in certain places where, you know, like look at the Houston owner, for example. He's restaurants, casinos, things like that. If you read up about him, he's leveraged himself a couple of times. And now a lot of his businesses have, have gone South at least for now. Um, have you heard about any potential upheaval in the owner ranks? I wouldn't say upheaval, but I mean, Bill, a lot of people in the ownership ranks, they're losing money right now. I mean, as the players took a pay cut, the owners also are losing money. And some of the owners, like in Sacramento,

I believe they're responsible for that arena. And so they are dealing with that. There are financial losses that that ownership group. Wait, hold on. Let's talk about what those losses are because I don't think the average person realizes how big the losses are. You're talking teams are losing somewhere between, what, 25 and 40 million basically just this season for all the basketball we've lost? I don't know if it's that high. I don't have specific numbers, but you know, I think it's that high. That arena. Yeah.

I mean, that arena is, you know, as far as monthly, every couple of months, I mean, that could reach in at least the 10 million range. Right. And so I, I have heard that that, you know, that arena situation is something that is, um, you know, one of the things around the league, one of many different ownership groups that are dealing with potential losses. I think that's just the nature of what our country is dealing with right now. Yeah.

It's something that not a lot of people have written about or reported about. And I think it's been underground for the most part, but I think it's going to be an interesting outcome of this because we haven't, for the most part, we haven't had ownership turnover at all the last, I don't know, eight, nine years. There's only been a couple of sales, but you think about the recession in 08 and then the next two, three years after that, remember at one point there was like 10, 11 teams for sale. And we had a bunch of teams change hands and things like that. People are getting out.

The values were all over the place. The Philly guys ended up stealing the Sixers. And I'll be interested to see how that plays out too. I want to talk about the reporting, but we're going to take a quick break. Hey, if you've been dealing with acne, redness, dark spots, or wrinkles, finding treatment that works can be complicated. You need skincare that actually performs, but getting started can be overwhelming. Thankfully, there's a solution. Roman makes it convenient to get customized prescription skincare that really

performs. Just grab your phone or computer, complete a free online consultation. You'll hear back from a US licensed physician within 24 hours. If appropriate, a doctor will prescribe a custom blended treatment based on your skin type and priorities. You'll receive your custom skincare treatment with free two-day shipping. You also get free unlimited follow-ups with your doctor if you need to make a change to your treatment

or have any questions. With Roman, no commitments. Cancel anytime. Go to getroman.com slash bill. Try out a three-month supply of Nightly Defense for just $5. Free to chat with the doctor. Your first order is just $5. That is GetRoman.com slash bill.

Eligibility requirements and additional terms do apply. All right, so reporting. Now that we're headed toward the bubble, normally you would be on location doing your thing. And this has been the last decade. This has been the decade of basically the arms race for breaking stories. Everybody's trying to get information. How fast can you get it out?

Stuff like that. You're right in the middle of it. You've broken a ton of stories. How do you break stories in the bubble? It's a great question i i don't i don't know how much you know it'll be interesting to see this unprecedented obviously so i'll be interested to see how much being inside the bubble you know impacts not only access but different information but there's not going to be like you know bill you know when i go you know, when I go, you know, when I try to go and cover games and you try to work on stories, work on different situations

and, um, you know, sometimes get guys alone and talk to them on the side. That's, I mean, that's going to be tough in this type of environment, maybe even impossible. You won't even get, you won't even be allowed near them. Right. I don't see a scenario where you're next to them. Yeah. And so just knowing that, but again, that's, that get, you won't even be allowed near them. Right. I don't see a scenario where you're next to them. Yeah. And so just knowing that, but again, that's, that's, you know, this is the MBA we're talking about. That's really a society right now that we're talking about where there's this kind of uneasiness, you know, unless you really know the person or you have an appointment or you have something set up with a person, it's kind of this like uneasiness right now i think in just society that we're gonna have to deal with um you know wearing masks and doing doing things like that so i don't know how it'll impact reporting i wish i had an answer for you but i do think you know the in terms of access in terms of like the one-on-ones you know after games you know trying to get player x alone um or or doing things from that standpoint it's just

this world is it's not going to be the same. I don't know when, maybe until we get a vaccine or whatever. The ringers, Brian Curtis calls it sidling. He bought, I think he borrowed that from Mark Stein, but he wrote a piece about it a few years ago about sidling when after games, when the reporters sidle up to different guys and try to pull them aside and get the three, four minutes. That error is gone. On the other hand, these guys have way more spare time. Have you heard more or less from the players in the last four months than you did before texting DMs? There's no question. And one more thing, Bill.

More. One more thing. These guys know how to do Zoom interviews now. They know how to, a lot of them know how to do FaceTime, do Zoom interviews, do Skype. Now they've had to master it. So before just even thinking about trying to set up a video interview from home, their schedules are so he the bubble, it might be even easier to get guys on Zoom or get guys to do video interviews than it would be in the past or even if you're in the bubble. Whereas doing it digitally is probably the way to go versus in person, face to face. What is your phone like on the average day? I mean, so you wake up in the morning, you live in the Midwest, but do you already have like 70 texts? Like what, walk me through your day. What is your

phone like? How many, how many chargers do you have? I mean, I'm not that popular. 70, 70 texts to wake up. No, I mean, I think, I think you wake up, I mean, you know, usually have a few and then you kind of go about your day and you try to treat every day kind of the same in terms of you know having dialogue with people you know across the calendar and it's something that i've learned going back years and years now but it's not you know reaching out to people technically when you need them or when you have a you know have a necessity for them it's just maintaining dialogue over the course of the year and yeah you stay in touch

and knowing when there is something that could be going down and just make sure you monitor that. But yeah, I mean, I've always had one phone. I haven't gone the two phone route yet. I have a couple of charging cases. Definitely have a lot of chargers. And now that I'm in the house,

it's like, I don't, you know, when I'm out and about, you know, there are situations where you lose battery. And that's, you know, you know, bill, like that's the worst situation to ever be in. But now it's like, we'll come find to our home. So I haven't dealt with that. I remember Houston all-star weekend in oh six and Houston is so spread out and it was, you know, the Blackberry era. And it was, you were using that Blackberry almost like it was a car driving to Vegas where

you might run out of gas and you're just like, Oh man, you were getting cooked down there. I got one bar left and it's only 10 at night and I'm 40 minutes from my hotel. I really have to make these last four texts matter. And that's it. You were cooked. That, that happened to me in LA at all-star weekend. I think it was a couple years ago now but like you you know those parties again on west coast time those go late oh my god in terms of event parties like those go late and so you know you're kind of bouncing around event to event and your batteries you know and i didn't have a charging case at the time and and i was just bouncing around at night and it's like by the end of like i'm my phone is damn near dying by the time

i'm at the hotel you're just like hoping it doesn't die because again there's always stuff going on there's always things you want to be aware of oh yeah i mean do you appreciate the moment you're in now because you think like 10 years ago just trying to gain sources and get information is a million times harder and now you basically have direct access to anyone you want. And these guys, these guys know how to work it too. I think if we've learned anything in the last five, six years, it's that the players are really shrewd about who they reach out to, who they have relationships, who they'll text, what they're up to. How do you measure the agendas of the players in this whole thing?

Cause they're a lot smarter than they were 10 years ago. No, no question. They're definitely a lot smarter. And, and you, you know, you have players right now that are taking control of their own message and even beyond just having, you know, your own camps or, um, you know, representatives or, um, you know, having the team, uh, you know, decide how different things are going to be portrayed.

Like a lot of guys are taking it upon themselves to be the ones that drive the message. And I don't know if you want to take that all the way back to the decision in 2010 or how LeBron handled different things. Yeah, we can definitely. Like, I think that was probably the start of it, but I think again, it's just continued to elevate year after year after year. That's what I'm seeing um but to answer you like wait how you started that question there's no doubt like it's it's no it's been a

good kind of it's always good to look back but again bill it's like you know i think a lot of people now may look at it and be like this happened overnight you know sometimes easy to see that you know whether it's the last two years maybe you've been doing something at a certain level, but you know, I'm sure you've noticed or know, I'm like, I've been trying to do this or do this for about 10 years now. So like you said, nine, 10 years, I started in 2010, 11. And so, you know, at that very small minuscule level, like I was just trying to break in. And so it's been just day after day of just continuing to try to push through

and just, just lay the groundwork. Do players fish you for information? Do they ask you what you're hearing? Like almost like they're a fan of the game, wondering if you know what's going on with stuff? I mean, you know, tough to answer the questions like that. I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, you get that from players, from team people, from managers, whatever, all parts of the industry. And especially when the whole stoppage of play was going down, I remember I got a flurry of text messages from players, from people on the league, like, oh, my God, is that real? Did your account get hacked? Like, you know, throughout the whole pandemic, I think even more there's been a thirst from players,

from people around the league just wanting information because at the end of the day, there's not much clarity. There's so much unknown throughout everything that's going on. So I feel like every little bit of information, especially if it's accurate, you know, and I try to be, you know, overly accurate. You know, if I'm not like 100 on it, I've missed out on stories because I'm waffling about being 95% or 99%.

If I'm not 100, I'm not putting it out. Hopefully, that carries on with guys that read my stuff. There's no doubt, especially in a time like this where there's so much unknown, Bill. I think there definitely was a lot of that. When I think about reporting the last 20 years, I think I probably talked about this before on the pod, but you know, my friend Mark Stein, when he was in Dallas early internet, I mean,

I got, yeah, the internet was there late nineties, Dirk and Nash show up and they kind of become his guys. And those are his guys. There's no national reporter that is going to have a better relationship than he has with those two. He's there every day. He's there all the time. Then you think about how it's changed the last 10 years.

You can still have the local people or the people who are based in a certain city with certain team. They can still have those relationships, but it's so much easier for people outside the city to establish a relationship with somebody, you know, and they can still have those relationships, but it's so much easier for people outside the city to establish a relationship with somebody, you know, and they can, even if it's text DMs,

that's what a lot of these guys and most people under 30, like they have a lot of relationships with people that sometimes they've never met or they met them once, you know? And, and I think, I think you give that, you attribute that to social media.

Like, yeah, that's what I mean. I think social media has opened the door in a lot of different ways to reporting. And yet at the same time, I feel there's more access, but it's not as good access. You know, a lot of times it's stuff like people like you and even me, like we can't really use, we, you know, you have different relationships,

but it's not necessarily things like if somebody's bitching about something like, oh, that's interesting, but you're not going to like tweet. So-and-so told me he's really unhappy with Coach Blank. I think about where we're going the next 10 years. These guys are so much more active and they're actually can be aggressive. Sometimes we've seen with KD where if they don't like a report or they don't like a piece, somebody wrote or what somebody said on podcast, they'll just go at them on Twitter. I don't know where we're going the next 10 years. And we also don't know what innovation is coming

either. What, what's your prediction for athlete media relationships as the next decade goes here? That's a great question. And by the way, I actually, you know, it's good to see, for me, like, I like it when KD wants to try to take, you know, his initiative in terms of wanting to shape, you know, how he feels, try to set things straight.

I'm a fan of that. I think all players should do that when they feel. But overall, I think it's going to be a lot of what you talked about in terms of players, you know, taking that upon themselves in terms of how they want their message to be. And I think players are getting smarter and smarter in terms of shaping their message, shaping their narrative. I wish, I wish I had an answer for you as far as like where exactly it's going in terms

of athlete relations. But, um, you know, it's just going to be a lot of that. The real answer is, and it's a cop-out, but we don't really know because we don't know what technological innovations are coming. Even think about how Zoom has been a game changer just the last four months. I wish I had a stock in Zoom, to be honest. I don't know if there's even a public, I mean, I assume it's a public company, right? Yeah. It went way up, then it went down, and then it went way back up again. But yeah, there's going to be more innovations like that. You'd think like when Twitter happened in 09 and 2010, it was more amusing than anything.

And it was a place to get jokes. And then I think the decision made everybody kind of realize, oh shit, this is actually like people are just kind of half reporting stuff. I'm hearing this rumors. Miami has moved into the lead. And then really you could, the, the, the whole course of NBA reporting really starts there for me. We talked about it on pod last week. That was the first time people were reporting stuff that they heard this might happen versus like this is happening. And then, you know,

it's, it's led to where we are now. I mean, that's a great example. You know, another situation I think was, I don't want to compare it to the decision, but in terms of like speculation and like, you know, how it impacts the league, I think it was Kawhi Leonard. Like there was multiple days before July 6th, I believe July 6th is the day, or July 5th, when Kawhi Leonard officially committed. I think it was the 5th or whatever day it was. Like, there were so many.

I'm sure, Bill, you heard it, you saw it. You know, there was a day in the first four days where I'm like, you know, I'm sure you spoke to people on league, I spoke to people on league that were saying, he's going to the Lakers. It's done. But, you know, again, I didn't say anything about it. I was, you know, I wanted to get the real, you know, when he actually decided and when it was actually set. And so you always hear different things. There's always different rumors and there's always different things being thrown around. But I think that was the only other instance I can think of,

at least since I've been really tracking news and things like that, where there were so many different scenarios being thrown around. And one day where you feel like it might be done in a certain area, and then obviously you let things really play out and you ended up a clipper. Yeah, I look at stuff like that. It's almost like you're solving a Law & Order episode or something. You're just taking all the information you get and you can hear stuff. And I remember that Kawhi Laker stuff. It was like, look, he's not going back to Toronto.

He doesn't want to go back. And at that point, the Clippers, he wasn't going to go by. Everyone was like, he's not going to go there by himself. So technically it wasn't wrong that he was going to the Lakers because I think that might've been how it played out. If they don't make the Paul George trade, I still don't think he goes there by himself. And now you look at it in retrospect, you'd probably rather have SGA and a hundred thousand picks a gallon area than Paul George, as good as Paul George is like, you think of all the stuff they gave up. If I'm Kawhi, I have a, I have a slightly better chance of winning this year, but then all the future stuff. So I, my point is the only time I've ever really 100% been sure about something the last five years was LeBron going to LA. Cause that, that was one of those things like a year earlier, there were just too many signs.

There was too many people talking about it. And every single thing that happened was a breadcrumb pointing to this same outcome. And there was no other version where he stayed. I didn't feel like, um, I, I honestly felt like that was done for a year,

especially when he started buying giant houses here and do all that stuff. It's like, all right, he's, he's definitely coming. Do you think he finishes his career here? You think the Lakers are the last team he plays for? That's a great question. I mean, I, you know, I assume so. I, I think he's even set on the record. He hopes that, that he can finish out and play out the rest of his career there. I think that's where his mindset's at, but I mean, Bill, we've seen everything at this point, right? I don't think you can bet on it.

Yeah, I don't think it's bettable. Because who the hell knows? Who knows? Three years, his son might get drafted. You know, he might be like a second-round pick on Charlotte. Who knows? Yeah, and he might go there. Like, you just don't know.

But, again, I think when he signed the deal, I think his intent was to finish it out and retire. But, you you know we'll see this that's why this playoff run is going to be so important for them in terms of like they put all their eggs in trying to win this year right and you know i know that was the big pitch to dwight howard to return it's like you're a big part of this championship team like like all chips are to the table you know like they're going for it all this year and and i think you know in terms of lebron you know, like they're, they're going for it all this year. And I think, you know, in terms of LeBron, you know, his age, everything like that, this, this year means a lot. Yeah. You think about the stakes with some of these teams, right? Where Milwaukee, this might be their second to last year with Giannis, who knows LeBron,

who knows how long he can keep doing this physically. The Clippers, they only really have those guys for two years. You know, there's an urgency now with some of these situations that, you know, just didn't exist 10, 15 years ago. You think like the 08 Celtics, if they didn't win the title that year, they were still going to have a bunch, you know, three, four more years of taking cracks at it. And this year it really feels like everybody's on a two-year window. Now, even Philly, if Philly lost a round one, would you be shocked if they blew it up and got rid of those guys? One of those guys, I wouldn't be shocked.

See, I would be shocked for one reason, because those two guys are still so young and obviously under contract for so long. I feel like there's other changes you can make, especially in a climate like this where you just don't know, one, the salary cap. And free agency, a lot of these players with options, like, let's be honest, they're going to be opting in because the money is just not going to be there at the highest level, especially at the salary that a lot of these guys are.

You saw Drummond, you know, I think a day or two after the season was announced back, he went on record saying he's opting in. Like it was that quick. And his date isn't even until October. So that mindset resonates through a lot of different players around the league that have options, that understand what the financial outcome will be. So I think you have to take all that into factor, especially with a team like Philly. You have two young guys that are already locked in that do have a ton of upside potential.

I think they can make other moves around the fringes, whether that be roster, coaching, et cetera, before you get rid of two very, very explosive talents like that. All right, we'll have to bet on that. I feel like if they have a bad ending in this bubble playoffs, I wouldn't be shocked if something major happened. Hopefully we can bet a dinner, Bill. Yeah,'t be shocked. Hopefully we can better dinner, Bill.

And it's something. It'd be nice if we could have dinner the next seven years. Yeah. Um, did you get the shakes around June 28th, two weeks ago when, when the July 1st is coming and it's going to be this complete whirlwind. And yet I didn't even realize I saw my,

on my iPhone, I looked at it and I was looking to see what time it was. And I saw the six 30 and it kind of startled me for a second. I'm like six 30. That means something. And I had like this three seconds and I'm like, Oh, this one, this is usually the day when all hell is breaking loose. And it was just another quiet day. Not this year. I mean, what, what did we see that we like Corey Brewer signed a deal with this, with the King? Like you saw,

you know, I guess there was spaghetti theoretically, though. I think, I think there was to a degree, but yeah, that was, it was tough.

It was tough, but it's a different, it's a different world. So just, I guess prep for October. Well, conceivably we could have this bubble playoffs immediately go into the draft,

immediately going to free agency. This might be the biggest whirlwind we've had for the league probably since, you know, at least since the 11, 12, when we went from no season to all of a sudden in December, 2011,

there's a million things happening sprint to the end. Then the draft, free agency, all crammed into like eight months. This would be even a nuttier version of that. It's a whirlwind. And I know players, I mean, they look at it and the layoff that's going to occur between the end of the season, the finals.

Imagine that finals team, right? You're winning or losing both final scenes in mid-October and you're supposed to turn around a month later, potentially go to a training camp. Like it's going to be, it's, it's going to be hell in a lot of ways. Yeah. That makes me, that's makes me think that Christmas is a little unrealistic. I know they've sketched all of it out, but I wouldn't be surprised if that stretch to January to try to at least give the finals teams. Cause the other thing, you know, I know people have talked about this, but the, the actual playoffs of just every other day, these guys

are going to be playing. We don't know physically what that's, how that's going to impact some of these older guys too. I'm worried about that. I, I, I do think that's going to be taxing. You know, one thing though, that I have thought about is my theory is that like, you know, in a lot of ways, this little layoff that we're having right now for these players that are going to be playing the playoffs in the regular season and whatnot seeding games like this has been a mini off season for a lot of these guys at least a month in like they got off two months you know some players said we didn't do anything really work out playing basketball we just did some light conditioning like this was a small off season for them so i don't know if the nba is going to use that as like a carrot like listen you guys are gonna get one or two months in the real offseason

but you also had three months in in you know on the front end so there's a lot of different ways you can slice it but this is a lot of time i saw i saw a stat i remember when it was announced that the nba approved the plan it was like from the start of the season to the hiatus or the March 11th date was the exact time, March 11th to what, you know, July 30 will be as far as the number of days. I think it was like, actually,

I don't even want to guess. I don't want to throw a date out there, but there was a number of days and it like matched up perfectly. And so they basically, you know, they're going to be putting in a tough position. Shams. Don't be a stranger.

This is a pleasure. We'll check you out in the athletic and on stadium. You're going to the bubble, right? You're going in there? I will go there eventually. All right. Good luck.

Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. All right. We're going to talk streaming stuff in one second. First, turn your dream into reality with Squarespace. Squarespace makes it easier

than ever to launch your passion project. Whether you're looking to start a new business, showcase your work, publish content, sell products, and more, Squarespace, the tool for you. Beautiful templates created by world-class designers and the ability to customize just about anything with a few clicks. Look, you can easily, and I mean easily, make a beautiful website yourself. Squarespace's powerful e-commerce functionality lets you sell anything online.

Analytics help you grow your site in real time. Everything optimized for mobile. Right out of the box. Nothing to patch or upgrade ever. Buying domains. Simple. Yeah. You'll get the help you need

with Squarespace's 24-7 award-winning customer support. Squarespace empowers millions of people from designers to lawyers, artists to gamers, even restaurants and gyms to turn great ideas into something real. Head to squarespace.com slash BS for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code BS to save 10% off

first purchase of a website or domain. Once again, that is squarespace.com slash BS offer code BS. And since we're here, don't forget about the rewatchable St. Elmo's Fire. base.com slash BS offer code BS. And since we're here, uh, don't forget about the rewatchable St. Elmo's fire, which is on the Mount Rushmore of, um,

movies of people who just graduated college did that one on Monday. And we're doing swingers on Wednesday night. So stay tuned for both of those. Let's get to Matthew. Here he is. All right. This is an to Matthew. Here he is. All right. This is an exciting podcast. Another first timer,

Matthew Bellany, who used to be the editor in chief of the Hollywood reporter, my favorite magazine until recently. I really enjoyed the work you did there. Congratulations on all the success you had there. I thought the magazine was phenomenal. Well, thank you.

Hopefully it's not the end of the road. There will be something in the future, but I appreciate that. Okay, good. Yeah, I'm looking forward to your next move. I really respected everything you guys were doing. I brought you on to talk about Quibi. Ah, Quibi.

The punching bag of the entertainment industry. Yeah, it's interesting. So full disclosure, we even did a couple ad reads for them on the Ringer Podcast Yeah, it's interesting. So, full disclosure, we even did a couple ad reads for them on the Ringer Podcast Network when they were launching, so I wanted to mention that. It was always...

It always seemed like a puncher's chance to me because they were so adamant about how we have this new way of entertainment. Anytime somebody starts talking about, this is the new way people consume something. I'm always a little dubious.

They raised almost 2 million bucks. What was interesting was Jeffrey Katzenberg, the guy who dreamed this up, didn't seem like he was putting a lot of his own money into it, which I thought was a red flag. Yeah, I mean, that's maybe red flag one. But anytime, you know this from the sports world, anytime you come out and make a big boast

and claim to be reinventing things and doing it differently and, you know, all this other stuff that you've been enjoying for the past 100 years in entertainment, we're going to reinvent that and do it differently. Anytime you do that, you are setting yourself up to just be on a firing squad. And I think that's what was going on with Quibi here. So let's do a fantasy draft. We'll go back and forth. Biggest mistakes they made.

And then at the end, we'll decide whether it's salvageable or not. I'm going to start. Their number one biggest mistake I think they made was not having this available to just watch on my Apple TV, to not be able to stream. They were so adamant about, no, this is on your phone. And you could turn your phone either. You can have it, the phone facing up, or you could turn it sideways and the picture will change. It's going to be awesome. You're going to love it. You cannot watch this any other way. That's it. This is the only way you can watch this. Come into our Quibi world

and that's it. I think that was a huge mistake. Yeah. I mean, obviously, what they say is if you're going to do something different and upend the traditional ecosystem, you've got to do it differently. And this was an express strategy they made where they said, we are for the phone. We are coming up with this great technology. And if you look at the app, the Quibi app, it's great. It's very good. I agree. It looks, you know, the content looks good. They have that turnstile app where you can watch it vertical or horizontal. So that's not the problem. I just, you know, anytime you say that you're going to make it for the phone, I think you kind of got to make it for the phone. But you're right, closing off that ecosystem and having it, you know, the consumer rules these days,

you've got to make it easy. And you've got to make it so that if you're sitting on your butt at home, and you want to be entertained, you can do it however you want. So I agree with you on that one. The big thing for me is the fundamental value proposition of Quibi is that they are going to spend a ton of money getting A-list premium content for people to watch in little short spurts. Yeah. And I just don't know if even the initial idea for the product was a good one. Because these days, I mean, you've got kids in that wheelhouse. Young people, they want to watch TikTok. They want to watch YouTube. They want to watch 10 Minutes of Friends.

They don't necessarily need a whole service dedicated to short form premium content. It's already kind of out there. Right. All right. So that leads me to, so that was your number one pick. Yeah. My second round pick. Go for your second one.

Which is basically playing off that. They completely misunderstood how young people consume content. So part of it is what I just said. They want the malleability of like, I might want to watch this on my phone. I might want to stream this to my Apple TV, et cetera, et cetera. The other piece was young people love sharing pieces of content with their friends.

They see something they like. You couldn't even screenshot clips from pictures from the shows. They wouldn't even let you do that. It was this completely walled-off universe where they were betting that the content would be so compelling that we would all be so interested in watching a

Liam Hemsworth drama in 10-minute increments that we would just flock to Quibi without wanting to share what we were watching. It's just so weird. Well, not only was it weird, you see like how they,

well, they, they basically walled off this whole world that you have to enter and exit. And it's, everything is by their rules. It's almost like everybody involved didn't have kids or teenagers. Because even if they had been like, hey, what do you think? Here's our whole plan.

Any thoughts? I would have been like, my daughter wouldn't like that. My daughter likes accessibility. She likes malleability. She likes the ability to share. She likes discovery. She likes to tell her friends about certain things. You're basically removing all the things she likes about the internet.

So I don't think this is going to work. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people have pointed to the fact that Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, the two leaders of this company are both pushing 70 years old. You know, Jeffrey's kids are grown and have their own kids and yeah,

you know, and you know, his argument is I'm not a mother and I made a lot of movies at Disney that mothers love to see. And I'm not a millennial. But made a lot of movies at Disney that mothers love to see, and I'm not a millennial, but I know what millennials want. And you can make the argument as to whether surrounding yourself with those people is enough. I think that that was a fundamental flaw. I'm curious, though. The whole short-form content thing I find annoying on Quibi to begin with. The one thing on Quibi that I was really interested in watching

with the Donald Sterling documentary, which interestingly enough, when I heard they were making it, they were touting the fact that they got Sterling to participate. And that was a big deal. I was like, Oh, that's I'd like to watch that when it aired,

didn't have Sterling. But I was interested, oh, I'd like to watch that when it aired, didn't have Sterling. But I was interested in that. And I found it so annoying that you got to watch seven minutes and then you had to wait another day to watch the rest. I didn't want to watch that way. Couldn't agree more. Guess what works? A documentary that's two hours and has a beginning, middle, and end.

And I just sit down and watch the whole thing at once. Cliffhanger documentaries makes no sense to me. Yeah. And you know what? If I'm sitting in a doctor's office or I'm on the subway and I have to pause it and pick it up later, fine. I'll pause it and pick it up later, which is the Quibi model. But it doesn't force you to stop and wait a day. I even get annoyed these days when I'm watching an HBO show and I want to watch the next episode and they make me wait a week. Now, I understand why they do it, but that's at least an hour-long episode with a beginning, middle, and end. This is a seven-minute clip of the Donald Sterling documentary where you're just getting to the part where everything hits the fan and they say, oh, tune in tomorrow. Well, I think that was a big part of their strategy, right?

They were like cliffhangers pulling people so that tomorrow they'll have to come back to see what happens. And this isn't like 1950s Bonanza where you're waiting for the wagon train to see if they make it across the gorge. Like this is, you know, people are so used to, they're just going to leave and go to TikTok or Netflix or whatever. Yeah. So that leads me. So that leads to my third mistake, which is basically couldn't agree more. Are we sure the future of entertainment is just these little eight to 10 minute bites that have cliffhangers at the end? And I'm just this idiot

who has to come back every day to see what happens next. I'm positive that's not the future of entertainment. Why would they think this was the future of entertainment? I don't get it. Well, the whole proposition is built on the phone. And their idea was, if everybody is consuming content on their phone, there is an untapped market for a premium version of that.

And I know Jeffrey very well. I've talked to him many times about this. And he believes very strongly that there is going to be a reorientation of content around the phones or that age group that's 20 to 35 and grew up with phones. So maybe that's true. And this is just a version of it that doesn't really work or at least doesn't work yet. Keep in mind, there's a big caveat. One hit can turn around a media company. And if Quibi all of a sudden tomorrow launches something that is so compelling that everybody has to see it, maybe they can turn it around.

So it's not a complete disaster. It's only been in existence for a few months. But I don't think that long term, this is the product and this is the content that people are going to all of a sudden gravitate towards. I just completely disagree with that as a premise that everything is going to be through our phone. I think if anything, the pandemic has shown that people's standards for what they watch

has dropped all over the map. You even see it on ESPN and CNN, all these places where they have the talking head shows, where all of a sudden, oh, guess what? Everyone's on Zoom. Doesn't really matter. Doesn't really matter that we're not in a $1 million studio and that the host isn't wearing a suit, does that makeup. It's just like people are just watching to watch.

And I think TikTok, I'm just so fascinated with how much my kids love TikTok, how addictive it is and how stupid it is. And it's like, did we really need premium phone entertainment? Like the whole point of the phone is people watch dumb shit on their phone. Why, why did people think we needed million dollar episodes of TV shows on my phone? I didn't need that. Think, think back to the 70s and 80s, though. I mean, broadcast television was the equivalent of TikTok of its day. And still, there was a market for HBO to come in and do a premium version of that. So I do think there is a version of a premium service for your phone that may deliver something

that would be compelling. I just don't know if the short form content is the way to go. Like maybe it's just, you know, maybe it's just something that lives on your phone, but is a better version of Netflix or something like that. I don't know.

I mean, because all those services are available on phones. Don't forget Netflix, HBO Max, you know, all of these, Amazon Prime, you can watch that stuff on your phone. And people just do. They're not watching 10-minute shows on Quibi. They're watching 10 minutes of Friends. And then they're stopping, and they're watching the middle part of Friends, and then they're stopping again, and they'll watch the end of Friends.

But you just made the key point. HBO 40 years ago, 41 years ago, whatever it was, when they upended TV to some degree, they didn't change TV. It was still the same experience of watching TV. You just had access to movies and nudity and bad language and things you couldn't get on TV. But the ultimate experience wasn't different. I'm still in my living room watching a television. And I think with Quibi, they seem determined to completely upend the experience of everything is headed to the phone. We're going to make the best possible content for the phone and this is going to win. And I think what makes 2020 great is there's so many different ways you can experience content. Isn't that the number one best thing about 2020? There's 95 different formats. Why would experience content. Isn't that the number one best thing about 2020?

There's 95 different formats. Why would somebody think one format was going to win? I just completely disagree with it. Yeah, and I think a lot of that is a marketing and PR problem. And there's been a lot of PR disasters in association with this. I mean, every week now, there's some article in the media that comes out about what went wrong with Quibi. And a friend of mine called it Quibi porn, where people like to read about the train wreck of

Quibi. And, you know, Jeffrey has said some things in the media where, you know, it hasn't helped this cause. But think back to HBO, that was a premium version of what everybody was getting for free. And that's kind of what they're trying to do here. But it gets to this question of, okay, what is on the service? Because a lot of the stuff that is on Quibi, yeah, it has movie stars and it has athletes and it has people that you know, but there is a sense that it's kind of the B-level content. It's stuff that's been sitting around in a drawer or, you know, yeah, there's a LeBron show, but it's not LeBron playing basketball. It's LeBron talking about the school for at-risk youth that he started. And it's a lot of these, you know, people, projects that were not

necessarily going to be the A-list projects that an outlet like HBO or elsewhere would buy. And the thing about HBO is that it started with premium movies that you could watch at home, and it shifted to premium TV shows that had the best stars and the best writers doing their A-level game. And I don't think Quibi ever launched, or at least it hasn't launched yet, with that kind of a proposition. mistake, which would have been my fourth round pick. I said this when it was happening, when they announced their first launch of shows. It seems like they were getting everybody's seventh best idea. I think it could have gone a couple different ways. Full disclosure, we met with them. We talked ideas with them. I, they, they could have gravitated toward influencers, um, younger up and coming creators where you're getting like the second thing they've done, stuff like that. Like think like Ryan Coogler six years ago after Fruitvale station, you get like, all right, what's your next project? We want that. That's not what was

happening here. They were getting every, you know, in the New York magazine article that was recently written about it, talked about like some of the things that they greenlit were things that had been bouncing around for a couple of years and they got in business with all these creators. But like you said, not their A-list stuff. HBO was always curating excellence. If you brought an idea to HBO, it was your best possible idea. And Quibi's not doing that. So they're saying on the one hand, this is a premium experience. We're revolutionizing whatever. And then it's like, here's everybody's seventh best idea. I don't know how that wins. Yeah. I mean, I was talking to someone a few months ago who is

connected to Christoph Waltz, the actor, and Quibi paid him a million bucks to be in a show. And that was his quote, that he was not getting elsewhere for very minimal work. And it was not the best project, but Christoph Waltz did it. And, you know, that was the kind of thing where Quibi was willing to pay for stuff that other outlets looked at and were like, not necessarily for them. And that's a problem when you – a lot of agents looked at this as a buffet. They said, oh, there's these new guys in town that are going to pay premium and are not necessarily going to demand the best stuff because they're sort of desperate for content. And that's why part of the allure and what Katzenberg was talking about is that he had the buy-in from all the studios. They were all investors and they were all willing to provide A-list talent, which is locked up at all these big companies. But I talked to the head of a studio

who was pretty involved with Quibi. And I said, give me your off the record. What do you think is going to happen here? And he's like, what am I going to say? I want them to be in business because they're buying a bunch of stuff from us that we wouldn't otherwise sell. So I'm not going to say anything negative about this company.

I'm going to say positive things. And everybody said positive things. And they said, we got to bet on Jeffrey. We got to do this. And again, it may still work out in the long run. We don't know. But at least now it feels like all of Hollywood kind of lined up at this buffet and didn't really expect to have to sell their best stuff.

You know, and this happens from time to time because I remember at Grantland, we were trying to get this huge YouTube deal done. It was that late 2011, early 2012. Remember, YouTube was making that big play for content. And they had like, I don't know, $200 million to spend. They wanted to do something major with Grantland, create a whole YouTube channel. And there was a moment where we were going to get like, I forget, it was like $8 million, $9 million from them. By the time ESPN took so long to do the deal, it ended up being like four or five million. But our whole attitude was like, they're going to realize a year from now, this is a bad

idea. Let's take their money. We can create a YouTube channel. That'll be great. But we've seen this over and over again with like Go90 was like that for a year. Yeah, Go90 was a very similar product that launched on AT&T, I believe. No, it was Verizon. Verizon launched Go90,

and that was a very similar product to Quibi, and it came installed on all the phones, which is a huge advantage. And still, that didn't work. That subscription product did not work. All right, so I have a new fourth round pick. And it became even more apparent after reading that New York Magazine thing. I still don't know if they knew what their age group was that they were going after.

Because I look at the Fugitive idea that I actually think is a pretty good idea. That's one I probably would have watched. 10-minute episodes. I've always loved the Fugitive. We did the movie on the rewatchables. It was one of the first ones we've done. Kiefer Sutherland's in it. Um, it's done by a guy that the showrunners done a couple of good things. And it's these 10 minute fugitive shows. It's like, all right, that's a good idea, but I'm 50. My daughter could give a shit about the fugitive and she's probably not going to watch it.

That's a show specifically geared toward people, I would say 40 and over. So is, is that their audience? Like that's the part I don't understand. Yeah. I mean, I'm a little bit younger, but you know, even they claimed they were going after 25 to 35 year olds with the core audience for this, but they don't care about the fugitive. Right. Exactly. But the fugitive is a property that was available and it's a franchise and someone was willing to sell it to them. So you sort of take what you get. I mean, the best anecdote about the age gap was that Katzenberg's original idea was to call it omakase. Right. Oh my God. That was tough. Nothing says 25 to 35 year old mass audience than something that

is named after the sushi menu at nobu malibu right that was tough that's i mean some of the press has been a little unfair that anecdote it's just really tough to spin that one the other way yeah and you know that i mean i don't know how representative that was. I do know that a lot of people that work at Quibi are in that age group and they were trying to get projects that would appeal to that age group. But again, when you're trying to load up on content so quickly, you know, some of them were like, I thought the Chrissy Teigen court show idea was a good idea. I watched it and I thought it was kind of asinine, but that's a good idea. She's a social media star. That's a funny concept to put her in and that might appeal to that group.

But there weren't enough of those. It was a lot of kind of vanity-oriented projects for people that seemed like out of the age group. Yeah. And then they're also competing. You just see how fast with TikTok and, uh, in YouTube, how fast the stars come and go. And I just know this from my daughter, like they're these people that are in her life that are like three, you know, three or four of the most important people she's following. And then six months later, they're just gone. Right. So I don't even know when there's that much turnover and there's always like the sexy new thing on Tik TOK or YouTube that that age group's gravitating. How do you even compete with that? If you're Quibi, I have no idea. What does stars even mean? You know, like,

like there's this notion of what a movie star or TV star is for people like you and me, but it's not quite the same for people who are younger. And does Liam Hemsworth matter? Yeah, he was in Twilight, which if you're a female between 25 and 35, you've probably seen the Twilight movies and you know him, but do you care about him? Are you going to pay $5 a month to watch a show that he's on? I don't know. And what would a hit look like? I'm trying to think because you think, all right, with HBO, when HBO really started to have a foothold in the late 80s, mid-late 80s, I remember first and 10 with OJ, that it was a football comedy. There was some nudity. I'm in high school.

I'm like, all right, I'll watch this. OJ is in it. And you think like, at least that kind of sucked me in. I don't know what the Quibi version of a hit is. I would guess it's like some sort of drama with a cliffhanger every 10

minutes, but I would just want to watch that all at once that everyone everyone was talking about. I mean, these days with social media, you can sort of tell what is resonating and what is not just by people talking about it. And nobody talks about the Quibi concept. They just don't. If you're trying to build buzz to create subscribers, people have got to talk about it. Um, and there's, you know, and I'm not following, you know, 25 year old Twitter, but I imagine it's not that

different. And it's, it's, um, you know, it's the kind of thing where they need a hit that people talk about. Well, with comedy, it's tough. Cause this is the most humorless year we've ever had. Probably. I don't, I don't even know how you do comedy in 2020. Yeah, I mean, and you can also point to the pandemic and the quarantine as another reason if you wanted to keep going with your list as to why it didn't succeed. I'm not so sure I buy that because-

Well, that was his excuse. Yeah, that was his excuse. And he's blaming it, which I would do too if I were him. And maybe that'll get him a do-over where they've still got plenty of money left and they've still got all these deals and they're going to trudge through. But if you look at sites like TikTok and YouTube and these places that have seen viewership spike during the pandemic, I don't think that just because it is made for phones means people wouldn't watch their phones when they're at home. There's enough people that are up in their room or out in the yard or wherever that might watch if the content is compelling enough. It's one of the worst excuses anyone's made in the last 15 years. Let's be honest. All people are doing all day. You're talking about a lot of owners of sports teams that to contend. Oh my God. All people are doing all day is looking for anything to watch.

Everyone is so fucking bored right now. And to say that, you know, the pandemic, even his excuse about we designed Quibi to be on the go when you're at the doctor's office, when you're commuting to work. It's like, well, what does that mean? So your content's good enough for me to watch when I'm in a doctor's office, but it's not goodfighting from 10 years ago, where it was just a compendium of clips of guys getting gored by bulls. I was watching that on my walk because I wanted something to watch. I've been watching old MTV challenge seasons that I've already seen because I miss sports so much. Yeah. Amazon has this thing. Here's a little tip for the listeners. Amazon has this channel called MTV Hits, and you can subscribe, and it's like seven bucks a month,

but you can cancel after a month. And it's got like 16 challenge seasons and all this other shit, and I miss sports so much. I'm like, yeah, fuck it. I'll run back Rivals 2. So you're seeing like bananas much. I'm like, yeah, fuck it. I'll run back rivals too. So you're seeing like Bananas in his prime. Oh, yeah. The early choral seasons. Yeah. No, this is

like late the 09-13 range, which was really the apex of the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. HD is fully in effect. TJ Lavin knows who he is as a host. Right. Bananas is kind of emerging. I feel like that was before.

I mean, Bananas these days, I mean, I know he's a friend of your show, but he sometimes feels like he's phoning it in a little bit. That was something to prove. He's kind of LeBron the first Lakers season. He's kind of there. He knows he's not making the finals, but he needs to be

on the show for his brand. Who's your number one challenge guy that you wish they'd bring back? Oh, man. I mean, watching some of these old ones, Landon was probably the best pound for pound challenge guy ever.

He would just win every challenge. They would have to figure out how to get him out of the game because he was going to win. I think CT was the most overpowering. That was the one where in any one-on-one challenge, he's going to win unless it's like a puzzle. Yeah, that's why I get a little depressed watching the challenge these days because the decline of CT into the sort of dad bod kind of like post-competitive CT makes me think about my own mortality,

Bill. Well, and it should, I think what happened though is, you know, the real world was always the feeder system to the challenge, right? It was the, it was like basically college basketball for the NBA. And when they lost the real world, they had to scramble and then they had to go to England and find all these other things. My point is like, if I'm watching old challenge episodes, I'm pretty sure I would have found some time for a good Quibi show. Right.

Right. And yeah, no, that's honestly, they should think about rebooting the challenge. They did reboot punked. They looked at some of the old MTV shows. They rebooted punk,

which is, you know, not terrible, but again, a lot of these old punk punk clips are available online. So do I care about punk with newer stars or punk with old stars? I don't know. Yeah. And also, I'm sure if they had to do it over again, they probably would have gone way deeper into people with huge social media audiences and influencers. They did it a little bit, but you know, I,

I think those some of those influencers have the ability to bring a younger audience wherever they want to put the audience. And if they had been in, if somebody that my daughter loved was on Quibi, I mean, I showed my daughter Quibi. She didn't even know what to make of it. She just didn't even understand it. And there was nothing. Huh? She hadn't heard of it until I showed it to her.

Yeah. And this was like, uh, when it came out three months ago and I'm, I'm like, would you watch anything? She's thumbing through and she's like, is this for this for people my age? And I'm like,

I, it's kind of for everybody's age. She's like, nobody my age will watch this and just kind of gave me the phone back. Yeah. I thought that was a bad sign. They had a behind the scenes of some TikTok star that you get access that you wouldn't otherwise get.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, they do this thing with TikTok where they put people in a house and they do like seven people in a house, six people in a house. They could have done five of those shows and it would have been better money spent than trying to reboot some 10 minutes at a time action thing. So it doesn't sound like you're ready to take Quibi off the life support machine yet. You feel like there's a chance. I think I agree with you. I'm just more amazed how badly they botched all this when they had two years to prepare for it.

And, and just how wrong they were about some of their content decisions, like the Clippers documentary, thinking that people would want to watch the same documentary for two weeks. Like who would want to do that? It could, the only one that could have worked like that was OJ made in America is probably the only level of documentary that that could have worked. Well, so you're getting at an interesting point here, which is that what Quibi doesn't have is a hit. And most, and I don't want to say all, but most media companies can be turned around with a big hit. And I don't, you know, if in the next month or two, they come out with something that just attaches to the zeitgeist and becomes the thing if they have the equivalent of the Michael Jordan documentary or Tiger King or something like that. Now,

those are a little bit different because I think they became big because of the big platform they were already on. But if you think back to even something like House of Cards or Orange is the New Black or any of these shows that have launched networks, you know, the equivalent of that for Quibi maybe exists out there somewhere, and they have enough money behind them where they could come back. And just as much as the media loves to pound up on something, the redemption narrative, that version of the Quibi porn story could still be out there. Someone would love to write that, hey, don't look now that Quibi's back. You know, but any of these platforms, like HBO Max is a perfect example. Nobody's really talking about HBO Max, the new Netflix competitor built on HBO.

And that's because they don't really have a hit. If they had a hit show there, people would be talking about it. So, you know, in a hit-driven business, you can't totally write something off. I think people are more confused about the HBO Max, HBO Now, HBO Go thing. I really like the HBO Max. Their movie library is incredible.

My wife convinced me to watch Some Kind of Wonderful last night. Oh, that's a good one. Do not do a rewatchable. It does not hold up. Oh, really? It's a John Hughes movie Do not do a rewatchables. It does not hold up. Oh, really? It's a John Hughes movie, which you would think would be good. But talk about his B-level script.

This was in a drawer somewhere. And Pretty in Pink was a hit. And they said, okay, let's just reverse the gender. Right. And the guy will be the poor guy. And the girl will be popular and rich. Not good. I just watched,

I watched Eyewitness on HBO Max. HBO Max has a shitload of movies that just have not been available for a while. Eyewitness was, I think, William Hurt's second movie during the incredible William Hurt run. It's Sigourney Weaver throwing 100 miles an hour

early in her career. James Woods and Morgan Freeman. And it's done by the guys who did Breaking Away two years earlier. And it's a really good movie. And I just hadn't seen it in 30 years. And it held up. It was good. But they have a lot of stuff like that.

And I think looking at Peacock that's coming next, which you're like Peacock. Sorry. So they have The Office and some movies. Yeah. Dot, dot, dot. But they do have that whole Universal library and there's going to be stuff in there that we haven't seen in 20, 25 years. Yeah.

And they should be, you know, all of these services are, I think, just kind of trying things out. They don't know what's going to work. They know that Netflix works and Disney Plus was a huge launch and they were a huge launch in part because of the brand and because they had a kick-ass Star Wars show that everybody talked about. Right. And they're paying money to put things like Hamilton on the service. I can't wait to see what the numbers are for Hamilton if they reveal them, because you know that was a hit.

Imagine if Hamilton was on Quibi. Right, 10 minutes at a time. One song a day. Oh my God, one song a day for 30 days. That might've been a better use of one billion of the $2 billion. Totally, but the point is, there's no way in hell that Lin-Manuel Miranda

would have sold Hamilton to Quibi. No, he would have given them... He would sell some, you know, some C-level thing that he and his buddies dreamed up on a Saturday night.

Right. His seventh best idea that he came up with at 11. Yeah, I think Apple's a good parallel for how hard this is, right? They just spent a shitload of money.

They still haven't had a good show. Oh, really? I thought Morning Show was pretty good. Would you say the totality or just that it had a couple good episodes? I would say that it got consistently better throughout the show. And it actually went to a place that was interesting and a little bit daring by the end. It was one of my favorite hate watches. Oh, interesting.

I thought it had one great episode. I think it was the eighth one when it was the flashback with Vegas. Yeah. Yeah, the Vegas one. The Reese Witherspoon as the precocious young upstart who is somehow the same age as Jennifer Aniston was unrecoverable to me. She was 12 years too old for the part. Yeah, she was about 15 years too old for that part. Yeah. But you know what?

I got sucked in because it's a Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon TV show where the supporting characters are Steve Carell and Billy Crudup and Gugu and Batha Ra. Like, that's a good cast. I watched that and I watched Defending Jacob. I watched that too. And you didn't like that?

Oh, it's bad. We watched every episode. My daughter loved it. I think she was the audience for it. And, you know, their strategy isn't much different than Quibi's strategy of just getting giant stars and putting them in things? Just spending a shitload of money on the stars, which if I were doing this, I would much rather go for the behind-the-scenes people and spend the money on those people. I don't know.

I mean, I will admit I watched Defending Jacob and The Morning Show because of the stars. But not because of the stars, but because it looked like those were a ideas. I don't know why to me, maybe it's the brand of Apple. It looked to me like that was their attempt at in, you know, uh, a house of cards style show, like, okay, we're going to get real movie stars here and we're going to put them in a TV show and surround them with great people, you know, and people. And both shows look great. You can tell they spend money on it. You can kind of feel the notes. I'm sure you've heard the same thing

that Apple has a lot of chefs in the kitchen. Yes. And you can kind of feel the notes in the shows. They scrapped it and redid it a bunch of times. But it does feel timely because of the Me Too thing. This weekend, they've got a Tom Hanks movie. They got this movie Greyhound that was going to come out in theaters, and they just bought it from Sony,

and they're going to release a Tom Hanks World War II movie on Apple. I'll watch that. Yeah, what was the one? Oh, The Five Bloods, Netflix. Oh yeah. The Spike Lee movie. Like about three, four weeks ago, they just dropped a brand new Spike Lee movie. And wherever this is going, I don't know how much of it was caused by the pandemic and how much of it was going to happen organically anyway. But I think we all know where we're going here. We're

going to have eight to ten streamers. They're going to spend an obscene amount of money on content and probably get a lot of the good movies. I haven't heard how the Judd Apatow movie did. I liked it. They haven't released numbers on it, but I thought it was pretty good. It's like all Judd Apatow movies.

It's a little bit too long, and they dwell on things that are kind of random. But I thought Peteson was surprisingly good but that might be a movie like that might just be on demand right away instead of going to the theater and that might be i mean it's an interesting time now because they're getting these projects that were supposed to be in theaters but are now being rolled out on uh vod because there are no. So the question is, could they get a Judd Apatow movie when you don't promise theaters? Because Apatow obviously wants to premiere in theaters.

All these directors do. It's the same with a Will Ferrell movie, Eurovision, going right to Netflix. There was a time when Will Ferrell would have demanded that that movie go to theaters, and then he was willing to do it on Netflix. There was a time when Will Ferrell would have demanded that that movie go to theaters, and then he was willing to do it on Netflix. And I think more stars are going to be willing to do that going forward. I just don't know. There's going to be a class of stars that don't want that. Well, they're catching stars at a certain point of their career, right? Where they've already made so much money that now they can make a decision based on, all right, I'll make even more money. I'll do this.

They're not on the way up scrapping, trying to get their huge break. They already had it. Right. When Sony wouldn't pay Sandler his fee anymore, Netflix called and he said, oh yeah, I'll take that call. You're going to pay me and all my friends to go to Hawaii and shoot a movie at my full fee? Yeah, I'll do that. By the way, genius move by Netflix. And it's probably one of the five best deals they made. That terrible Jennifer Aniston movie he did with her, the mystery movie or whatever it's called. In Monaco, yeah. And that thing still pops up on the top 10. Yeah. It's definitely doing well for them. Well, they know.

Their algorithm spat out Adam Sandler. They're like, hey, what do our people like? What are they like in different countries? The algorithm's like, hey, Adam Sandler. Hey, check out this Adam Sandler guy. At some point, they were just like, hey, we should just make Adam Sandler movies. This will make sense. He happens to be a guy with not very much pretense

other than pay me my fee and let me work with all my friends. Right. And I'm always going to make movies. I have my audience that is going to just come to my movies. And that's it. Netflix now, it just feels like, what would you say their lead is? Like a three-year lead on everybody else at this point

three to five yeah three to five uh you know the question with netflix is always when are they going to run out of money because they're not very profitable they just have a booming stock price and they have you know the most subscribers of any of these services 182 around the world uh so that's a pretty big lead and i don't think none of these services, 182 around the world. So that's a pretty big lead. And I don't think, none of these services are really trying to catch Netflix. They know that that's the leader. They just want to carve off their own piece of it.

And you've got to have a story to tell Wall Street that you're in the streaming business because that's the future. Everybody, at some point, these cable channels that nobody watches, they're all going to go away or they're going to be, you know, jammed together into five mega cable channels that can survive. But the streaming services are going to be around for a long time. Yeah. The Netflix thing. If you had, I mean, if you had told us eight years ago that that was going to be the leader, you would have been shocked. It is. I mean, if you had told us eight years ago that that was going to be the leader,

you would have been shocked. It is. I mean, they've done all the right things. They've benefited from some luck, I think. And just being first in the space, if you, if Netflix had released house of cards and orange is the new black today, they would have been decent shows, you know? Okay. But because they released them when they did and everybody's like, holy shit, we're watching HBO shows on the internet? Like, that's pretty cool. Sure, take my money.

Like, they had such an advantage there. So Quibi, we're not pouring dirt on Quibi yet. And I gotta be honest, I hope they figure it out. The more good content, the better. Oh, yeah. I think they made a lot of avoidable mistakes, but I do hope they figure it out. So when you're changing your game plan as fast as they did, where within four weeks,

they're like, oh, shit. All right, we're going to get on Apple TV and Roku. When for two years, they've been like, nope, you're not getting get on Apple TV and Roku. When for two years they've been like, nope, you're not getting us on Apple TV and Roku. And within four weeks they were audibling. That's usually a bad sign. It is. And it's also a bad sign that their advertisers are getting angsty and asking for refunds or credits, if you believe some of the reporting, because they haven't had a supported tier. That's not a good sign.

You can kind of tell with these things what's buzzy and what's not. And it's just not buzzy. It doesn't have a good narrative to tell. It's possible to flip that around, switch it up, but they got to do it quickly.

Are you worried that we're headed for the worst Oscars ever? They got to have some quickly. Are you worried that this is, we're headed for the worst Oscars ever? They got to have some movies to, to honor, right? I mean, we're halfway through the year and it's like, what are we even looking at as contenders?

It's been nothing. Pete Davidson. Jesus. Mark Wahlberg and that Peter Berg Netflix movie. I mean, I don't know how this plays out. I legitimately saw someone write the other day whether one of the songs

from Eurovision could get a Best Song nomination at the Oscars. Oh my God. And I was like, if that happens, they should just cancel the show. Well, there was an article about whether Hamilton was eligible for Best Movie. It's like, what are you guys talking about? They just filmed a Broadway Movie. It's like, what are you guys talking about?

They just filmed a Broadway performance. That's not a movie. It already won a bunch of awards. They're called Tonys. Yeah. There's no movie aspect to this. It's not like they made Chicago and actually invented it. The thing about the Oscars is they changed the deadlines so that movies can come out in January, February, and March even, and still be

eligible for the series Oscars, and they pushed them to April. So let's say movie theaters do come back in the fall at some point or around the holidays, which is a big if. You could get some of these movies to restart production, finish, and come out. The West Side Story movie is already shot. There's a couple of other movies that have been teed up for the awards season that could sneak in there, but it's going to be a diminished Oscars, I think. This was really fun. Yeah, thanks for having me.

I'm glad we banged this out. And I do think this is prime I'll watch anything time. So that makes it even more amazing that Quibi hasn't succeeded so far, but we're fortunate to have a lot of good options out there. I got to go back to my bull riding, goring videos. Do the Amazon MTV hits channel.

I will. I will. Seven bucks. You get like 16 challenges. It'll be great, man. We are desperate right now. Thanks for coming on.

Appreciate it. No problem. Thanks to zip recruiter. Thanks to Shams. Thanks to Matthew coming back with one more BS podcast this week, probably doing two this week, two next week. And then we'll see what happens with the basketball. We might have to fire it back up. I'm ready. If the basketball comes back at full speed, I'm ready. This feed will be active. See you on Thursday night. I don't have feelings with him. On the wayside, I'm a person never lost. I don't have feelings with him.