The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Sports Repodders: Year-End Edition With Bryan Curtis and Jason Gay | The Bill Simmons Podcast (Ep. 460)

Episode Date: December 26, 2018

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Bryan Curtis and Jason Gay to discuss Bryan's article about how Fox stole the NFL from CBS and how it may happen again, NBA gameplay vs. NBA drama, sports gambling, player podcasts, award shows, paywalls, and much more. 'The Great NFL Heist: How Fox Paid for and Changed Football Forever' by Bryan Curtis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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here without further ado is the sports reporters, but first Pearl Jib. All right, it's time for a holiday edition of the Sports Reporters. Brian Curtis is here from TheRinger.com. Jason Gay is here from The Wall Street Journal. This is the last time we were doing it in 2018. We might as well start. Curtis wrote a great piece that he spent seven years of his life on about the 25-year anniversary of Fox stealing the NFL from CBS and basically creating their own network.

And if you read between the lines of this piece, the implication is this might happen again. Now, the suitors for Fox are all companies that are doing fantastic, like Amazon and Apple and who knows, Netflix. I have no idea. But I read that piece and I thought, now here's Fox 25 years ago saying, we don't even care about the number. We need football so badly that this doesn't even make sense. We don't care. We are pushing ourselves to another level. Brian, when you were writing this, did you feel like this was the future for where football is going right now? Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it's going to be the next deal,

which is 2022. I feel like the network model has just enough juice to get us through that deal, don't you think? 2022, that those networks are going to write one more giant check each. God, I don't know what to think anymore. Like Jason, your kids, does your kid even, your kid's almost six, does he even turn on cable at all? Does he know what cable is? No, no, but he doesn't know what football is.

I pointed at the screen yesterday and he knew what football was, which was a real accomplishment. I found good parenting skills there. Great job. Great job. We're all proud of you. Yeah, I think we're talking about three different generations now that don't flick channels with a remote control.

And then probably the cutoff, Nephew Kyle. Are you 25 yet, nephew Kyle? 25. Did you ever have a flicking through the cable guide moment in your life? Or were you just always straight? I used to have a TV guide, yeah.

Yeah. So what do you think the cutoff is? What about your brother? No. No, yeah, I guess. He's 15, but I mean, it's gone now.

I don't know. The thing I can't wrap my head around, like if Amazon got football, how would we flick around? How would I watch four games at once? What would be, like when I have on DirecTV, when I just have the package and it's like Red Zone 703, and then the games are from 705 to 712. I don't understand how that works with Amazon, but I might just be too old. I might be too, but does it involve another screen?

Are you watching the game on your laptop and then also operating a television? So they just want us to have multiple, like I have an iPad, I have my iPhone, and then it's on my TV. I mean, in the near term, but obviously they would figure that out. This is, I think, the network's biggest advantage with football is the ability to bounce around. Unless everything just becomes the red zone thing. Jason, are you pro-red zone or anti-red zone? It makes me jumpy. I get bored of it pretty quickly.

Not bored. It makes me anxious in a way. It's just sort of unnatural to me. I know there's a whole generation or two growing up behind me that, or generation or six growing up behind me that, you know, this is, to whom this is nothing, but it just feels like, you know, licking the tops off a cupcake to me. You should be watching this football as well. Well, they reconfigured the ratings this year in a really kind of genius, evil genius kind of way. They loaded the Thursday games. The Sunday night games are better.

And the Monday night games are a little bit better. And they threw away Sunday afternoons. And there's basically like one or two good games on Sundays now. And they're banking that we won't notice because we either got the red zone, we have fantasy, we have gambling. And we don't need the quote unquote signature game at one o'clock or four o'clock East Coast time. I actually think this strategy has worked. I've enjoyed the night games this year. I think so too. And I think, by the way, that's a reward for Fox, speaking of Fox bailing out the NFL, for bailing out Thursday night football. What did we hear about Thursday night football for the last X number of years?

Players hate it. The games suck. It's boring. It's terrible. They're going to have to get rid of this. And what does Fox do? Comes in. Here's a check. Yeah.

Here's a huge check. So you take a pay increase from CBS and NBC, right? And the reward was, here's a bunch of good games. And Fox was willing to sacrifice Sunday afternoon games. But to your point, by the way, I feel we still have one Sunday afternoon game that's pretty good every week. I don't know if you saw the number that Patriots Steelers did yesterday. It's the highest rated game of the year in the NFL. But you told me ratings won't change my life, Brian. I didn't. You said the R word. You said the R word. I do feel we have one good game a weekend, though. We always feel like the early game, there's one good one. And the late game, there's one good one. And then after that, it's all fantasy and gambling.

I don't see how Amazon could have the entire package. But if you're talking about how do these streaming services come in in a big way, it would make sense for them if there was the only game in town. So basically, they can't answer Thursday night, Sunday night, Monday night. I would think so. And let's say Amazon gets it or Apple. And it's just like Thursday night football. This is an awesome game. And the only way you can watch this is on Apple. Jason, does that make more sense to you?

You know, it makes sense. 2018. I think an important question is, does it make sense in a room of 31 owners? And I think that will always be an advantage for legacy television, at least in this generation of owners, for whom it's going to be hard to explain to them the idea that they're not going they would, you know, they want a big score here, that they're not just going to try to nick off a small part of the package and grab, I don't know, Monday or just Thursday. You think if one of these, what do they call them? Fang companies jump in and grab a, uh, a football package, they're going to want a much bigger deal.

Yeah. And I actually think a Superbowl would be part of and I actually think a Super Bowl would be part of it. And I think it would have to be part of it. So if Amazon comes in and says, we want Monday nights, we want one playoff game a year, and we want the Super Bowl, and we're paying you three times what everyone else wants you to pay. Now if you're Amazon, all right, so what are the benefits? And like you talked about this in Fox 25 years ago.

Fox saw this whole landscape differently than the networks did. The networks were like, as you pointed out in the piece, like CBS, like 295. That's what our breakeven number is. And Fox said, we don't care about our breakeven number. If we get football, everyone has to add us in the different cable systems. We can promote our shows. They saw all these things that make sense now. They didn't make sense 25 years ago. Amazon could look at this and go, all right, we have football. People have to come here. We're getting all the data. We can follow what they're, what, you know,

the same people that watch football are also more likely to buy these kitchen appliances and to buy these Blu-rays and go on down the line. They're, they're probably seeing benefits in this. It's, it's all a little big brothery, I think. And, and unfortunately, I think that's where we're heading. I would just say that the, and the history with these companies is that, you know, the first deal is the best deal, right? They want to bring you in. They want to seduce you with numbers and money and access and this feeling of futurism. And then they get control and they sort of reset the parameters. And I think that's why anybody in the media business

needs to be slightly aware of these giant digital players is that there's a pretty strong track record now of changing the terms. And so I think that'll give pause to the NBAs and the NFLs and anybody else renegotiating deals, because as much as they want to move on, they know these devils. They know these networks. They have histories with them.

It's funny, because the tension back in 1994 was these guys like Jerry Jones had paid so much money to buy into the NFL that they were like, we need money. We can't just take another deal. I got to have money because I'm leveraged.

The Cowboys were the most expensive team in the history of sports in 1989. Now, of course, it's ridiculous expensive team in the history of sports in 1989. Now, of course, it's ridiculous. He paid a couple hundred mil for it. But at the time, he's like, we just need money. Wellington Mara doesn't need money. I need money.

And I think that's the sort of like what you'd have to get to. And maybe there's an NBA version of this. It's like, do you have enough new owners that got in at such a high level that paid so much to get in that they need that Amazon check. They need that Facebook check.

They can't just take a nice little 20% increase every four or five years from the networks. I think that'd be an interesting question too. Well, and then you go to the nefarious route where if Amazon's your business partner or Apple, and they're overpaying what everyone else is offering, but they also can offer you intelligence too. And they could teach you about your analytics data, stuff about your audience, who's actually consuming it.

There's all these things that they bring to the table that a traditional network could never bring to the table. And that's why I actually think I agree with you. I think the NFL is more old school. What's the biggest check? This is too weird for me. It's a little too forward thinking. Let's try to keep it the way it is and just get a lot of money.

I think the NBA is more likely to be the league that says, yeah, here you go. You get our Sunday games and you could get the NBA finals and in turn we get all this data and a crazy check. What seems more realistic to you, Jason? I still what you said at the top is probably

the way it's going to go. I think it's going to be one last go around for the Legacy Network. Maybe siphoning off a little bit of it to an Amazon. You know, it's now a couple of years ago, but I asked this question of Jerry Jones in the flesh and he, you know, the idea of the, you know, a major game being sold to Facebook or to an Amazon. And he kind of looked at me like I was suggesting hotels on Mars, he just sort of seems to feel it was not ready yet. Now, the world has changed dramatically in these, you know, 24 months since.

So who knows what they're thinking? But what you're describing, Brian, isn't this, I mean, basically a digital company kind of making a lost leader play, which I don't even know if that's the kind of thing that digital media companies try to do. I mean, you see it a little bit with like Netflix, right? They're flooding the zone. They're spending like crazy, but they're just trying to grab share, share, share. Yeah, that's lost leader. I mean, isn't Amazon nothing but lost leader for like their entire history? Yeah, until they're running the country in about five years. But, you know, with an eye on, you know, eventually owning all of the grid, right? That's the whole idea.

And does sports television, I mean, you know, what's the calculation when Fox, you know, overpays? They're like, okay, well, it's going to lift our primetime programming on other nights, you know, which became everybody else's play and overpaying for it. But the other strange thing that happened in that interim, which, you know, you do in the piece as well, is that, you know, the games themselves became profit centers. I mean, they really became the most powerful things on television. You know, we've seen all the ratings at the end of the year that, you know,

live football games, NFL games are 75 of the top 100 shows of the year. It's a different environment. You're not getting the kind of like crazy double, triple digit, like, you know, 60 minute event television that you once did. Yes. I think that intelligence is going to be the biggest factor going forward for some of these leagues. Like for instance, they did that tiger versus Phil thing, which I want to talk about later, which was a hit and a miss at the same time. The reason that it was a success was because they made all these people download that BR live app to get the event.

Present company included. Present company. Well, I actually just pay-per-viewed it. Yeah. Because I still know it's called Table. You actually paid, which doesn't say you actually paid. Yeah, I wanted to see it. I was home. I was going through emails.

Do I regret spending $20 on it? Kind of. But I also spent, you know, I'll spend $16 on a Halle Berry action movie. Like, I'm a bad person for this. So they get all these people to download that app. Now that people have the app downloaded, now they have the intelligence of those people. Now they can send them notifications

unless they turn the notifications off and they're just gathering intel. So for instance, let's say that Amazon gets football. And as part of that, they make people download a new Amazon NFL app. And now you have to download that. And as part of it, your location and your notifications have to be on. And all these people are in there and now they have all this new data on top of all the data they already have, but they can also share that data specifically with the NFL. Here's your audience.

Here's the age range. I think that makes a lot of sense. And if you're just throwing away like Monday Night Football, just say, take it off ESPN. It's on here instead. You have to download the app. You get one of the wildcard games, and every four years or five years, you get the Super Bowl. Here's the biggest check you've ever seen in your life.

I think the NFL would do it. I think they might. I really think they might. Super Bowl, to me, is the biggest climb. Because it's still tough to take that off. But that's how you make the splash, right? Remember, we're all old enough to remember 30 years ago, ESPN got Sunday Night Football. And people freaked the fuck out.

Yeah? They're like, oh, ESPN? But we don't even have ESPN in our neighborhood. And you would have thought nobody had ESPN. I don't know how many homes it was in. It was a huge deal. It was like 85, I think. Yeah, something like that.

Guess what happened? More people had to get ESPN. More people called their cable distributors and now ESPN's in everybody's home. And that was the tipping point for ESPN. They still have the legacy policy of carrying the ESPN feed or the cable feed all over you just have rabbit ears, which I honestly feel is like a calming influence upon an octogenarian NFL owner. They like the idea that they're not going to be getting calls from angry fans wondering

why they can't watch the game without a cable box. That sounds like a Jason Gay Wall Street Journal feature where you go find the last person in America who has a rabbit ears television. I don't even move. They sell rabbit ears anymore, but you know what I mean? I mean, yeah,

I don't think they do. They're reading newspapers. Yeah. I just love, I would just love an experiment if we could get like, you know, with five of those octogenarian NFL owners in a room and say, here's something you don't understand at all.

Yeah. And I'm just going to put a number down though. This is a number and it's a billion number. I know you understand numbers. Yeah. Do you take this or do you not take this? And I think the answer is they're going to take it. If it's a multiple, you know, if it's three, two, three, four times

what they could get on ESPN for Monday Night Football. Yeah. And they're going to take it, of course. Let me bring this all the way around. ESPN, which has Monday Night Football? Yeah, they're going to take it. Of course they are. Well, let me bring this all the way around. Okay. ESPN, which has Monday Night Football, what if they said we want Monday Night Football

for the OTT service only this time? Ooh. Ooh. And here's a much, much bigger check for it. And we'll share you guys with some of the data

and all that stuff. I think that if I had to bet on the Monday Night Football package or Sunday Night or whatever, I would bet that the ESPN OTT is going to be one of the players. In 2022? Yeah. The next one.

That's the real way you get people to subscribe to that service. Because ultimately, if it's good football games, people are going to pay for that over anything else we have. Whether it's boxing, baseball, basketball, people are always going to pay for football. Yeah. Well, they are certainly lining up the boats to get football. I mean, if anything has happened at ESPN in the last, I don't know, 8 to 12 months,

it has been a complete recalibration of their position towards professional football and making nice with the league. And they've been transparent about this. I mean, Jimmy Patara has been very upfront about the fact that they want to make sure that is a good relationship, a partnership.

And that clearly seems designed to extend the relationship. Actually, I want to talk about that. Let's take a quick break. Let's take a break to talk about the New York times crossword app. Not the New York times crossword, the New York Times Crossword app. If you're listening to this podcast, you've already figured out smart ways to spend your time. Well, I just gave you another one.

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try not to cheat. My dad still does them. I got to get in this app. I might make a crossword app come back. Maybe as I approach 50, might be my move. Whenever you like to do crossword puzzles, it's going to be there for you. You can challenge your friends. You can play against your family. You can trash talk your family. Do whatever you want. Download the New York Times crossword app at newyorktimes.com slash mini. Brian, do you feel that ESPN right now is, you know, they were always trying to find, especially when I was there, they're always trying to find that balance between journalism and opinion.

The seesaw feels like it is the most skewed that it's been for them. I think so. With them really just wanting to be a partner to the NFL and not wanting to cause a lot of waves. I think it's probably the same way in the NBA. And there's some stuff that I think five years ago they would have made a huge deal out of that nowadays they don't. I look at LeBron's broken hand as a good example in the finals when he said he almost broke his hand or whatever. Everyone just let that go. The way they cover the NBA is just much more favorable and friendly than I think it used to be. They care about breaking news. They don't care about starting shit with teams.

The Schefter bomb kind of stuff. Yeah. Woj bomb, Schefter bomb kind of stuff. And I really think this is the right move for them as a company. Why should they be in the opinion business to the degree that it actually harms business relationships? Now we're talking about the opinion business. Are we talking about Van Damme and Wickersham pulling Roger Goodell's pants down business? Because those are kind of two different things. Well, let's talk about both because do you want to be reporting on your

partner that aggressively to the point that they might take their entire business to another network and now you don't have football? It's really, I mean, look, this is a dangerous conversation. I don't want to say like, I'm condoning it. I'm just saying, I see it. I understand it because ultimately ESPN's a business. And I think what they're realizing is all of the issues that we've had over the years are because we're trying to pretend we're not a business, but we are. And let's just admit we're a business. I think that kind of thinking is with the new regime, right? I mean, one thing that's happened over the last couple of years at ESPN is all the people who were magazine veterans or journalists or newspaper veterans have slowly

left the company, right? Skipper, most prominently, but also John Walsh's, the Vince Doria's, the Chad Millman's, right? All those people have slowly gone out and they've been replaced by either Disney people or television people running the company, for the most part. Few notable exceptions. But a lot of people that aren't worried about how do we achieve balance, right? They're more worried about how do we not piss off the NFL. And the NBA. I would throw the NBA in there.

I think they are very wary of pissing the NBA off these days. The amazing part to me is they've done this pretty much since John Walsh came in and helped make it a real journalistic thing. They've done this. They've pissed him off one day and written a nice check and cozied up to him the next day. And so

what's happened, we're saying, is they've just decided, at least on some cosmic level, that they can't piss him off anymore. ESPN is less powerful now, so they're not powerful enough to say, hey, sorry, you're going to have to take some L's from ESPN, the magazine, but then we're also going to write you a check. That thing is done now. Yeah, I would say maybe if it's a weakened state to some degree, that makes you make decisions a little bit differently. We're talking about ESPN in 2013 when they're making $8 billion a year. There's no sign whatsoever that the subs are about to decline and they are just a monolith. They can basically look at a league like the NBA and the NFL too and be like, you need

us. We want to do this and you need us and you can't tell us not to do this. Now we're heading into 2019. They do not have the same footing. They've lost, I think it's like 20 million subs over the last, I don't want to say the exact number, maybe 15. I can't remember. They lost 2 million this year. Double digit million. Double digit million. And now the seesaw has flipped a little bit. What do you see, Jason? Brian and I have worked for ESPN, so we're slightly tainted in our opinions.

You have not. Yeah, I have not. I think that you're describing this basically as a leverage question. Who has the power, right? And ESPN had it a half-dozen years ago. Clearly, across all sports, not just the NFL. That has changed. And, you know, the NFL is in a situation where they have more options, of course. You know, we talked with the digital players at the top. And, you know,

if you're a business person and your charge is to expand the company, grow the company, to stem the subscriber losses, what's your best play? Well, live content, obviously, is that. And what's the best live content? That's NFL. So it seems like a very natural move. What's surprising to me, and, you know, I want to all know this, and you guys talked about it a lot.

I mean, he has spent time in incredible journalism on the NFL, on concussion issues, on the Ray Rice stuff. They've been all over the ownership stuff, the stuff that Wickersham and that up down over the years has been great. But I feel like their ultimate kind of NFL story now is like, Condi Rice could be the brand coach. Like that's their kind of like smash now. Like that's the kind of story that they wanted to get people talking.

And it might not be those really dramatic rain cloud pieces. Yeah. It's the perfect ESPN story now is like what happened with the three team trade this weekend where report, they broke the news, something got effed up. Then they broke the news that the trade was effed up. Then they broke the news that the deal was offed up. Then they broke the news that the

deal was off. And it was all the same person. It was Woj through the tweets. And then it leads to the deal's off. They start this 12-hour really funny news cycle. And then the trade's back on and they broke that too. And it's like, they're just in the mix the whole time, but nobody's feelings got hurt. If you're in the NBA, you'd be like, I can't believe what ESPN did. It's like they're just, the NBA has become its own running character and the ESPN's just kind of there along for the ride. But they're not,

you know, the biggest story, the biggest NBA story that everybody is the third rail right now is the whole tampering thing. And when do these teams go after players? Do the Knicks have a deal with KD right now? the whole tampering thing. Right. And when do these teams go after players? Do the Knicks have a deal with KD right now? Like, is it just assumed that he's going there?

Are they already looking at their plans next season with that in mind? I mean, to their credit, they say nothing about it. They're like, we're on the Warriors. We're trying to win a title. But we've seen year after year, there's wink-wink stuff. And people thought LeBron was going to LA for a year and he went to LA nobody's going to report that

yeah not that you need to be defended on your own podcast but I you are not the slightest bit out of line as the way that you asked her the question about what team he was going to go to and whether or not he would stay with the Warriors and Rich Kleinman

I think was a little out of line and scolding you for that. That was not cool. No, here's the thing though. I should have, I always forget this that cause it's audio only. I know those guys really well. Like that, that whole podcast was very good natured and, and he just screwing around. Yeah. We were messing around back and forth, but those guys weren't actually mad. But I think when people heard it, they actually thought he's mad. They knew I had to bring it up and I think they were making fun of the position of it more than anything. All right. I take it back. I can't, I can't defend all the times Rich interrupted the podcast.

We've had to talk to him. Yeah. We, uh, you might not be invited next time. Yeah. Can I ask you like be invited next time. Yeah. Can I ask you like, as an observer, and let's be candid here, the ringer is very much part of this ecosystem too, you know, as much as anything,

the coverage that you do, the coverage that your staff does. Do you think that there's less and less attention on gameplay? It feels that way. And is that a bad thing for the sport, that there's far greater and more fascination, attention with where Kevin Durant is going next season, who LeBron's going to get to be his co-pilot, versus talking about what actually happened in the game

night to night. Is that a sign of the health of the league or is it a sign of something else that's happening? I would say there's definitely more transaction talk, but I think that happened a while back. Yes. It's like five years old at this point, right? Yeah. As soon as Twitter became

Twitter, that became part of the narrative. And LeBron to Cleveland that summer, that was a big something felt like it really shifted that summer. that was a big, that felt like something felt like it really shifted that summer. I feel like when it really shifted, and I don't remember what year it was, but I think it was February 2012 was when it seemed like Dwight Howard was going to, or maybe it was 11, when it seemed like Dwight Howard was going to leave Orlando.

And then at the last minute, he signed an extension for one more year. And it was like, he completely changed his mind. And that was the first time I felt like Twitter was a real player in something. Like I felt like the, his Twitter replies almost made him back down and decide to go back to Orlando for another year in a weird way. Yeah. But, um, and that's also the time Woj has decided to essentially change his career from i'm going to go to the games and write these kind of like the gamers that have info and interviews to like i'm going to break stuff on twitter yeah and i'm just going to beat everybody i'm going to just i'm going to beat everybody senseless on twitter and making it into like an event

right like the transaction is the event right and me breaking it is the event it's it's winning twitter and winning the ESPN bottom line and all that stuff. I disagree with Jason, though, that I think everything with basketball has gotten bigger. And it feels like the transaction and the day-to-day non-basketball stuff is bigger. But I also think basketball is bigger, too.

The amount of people that are breaking down somebody's offense and doing prisoner of the Moment stuff. And we do it every day. We write probably four NBA pieces a day at this point. I think the appetite is just there in a way that it wasn't 10 years ago. And to be honest, I think the reason is that just it's the under 30s grew up at the NBA and people in their lives liking it when they were like seven, eight years old. And you're talking about my generation. Their dads and moms like it, right? Yeah. I'm the oldest of us, right? I'm 49.

And when I love basketball, it was like this cool kind of on the side thing that I liked that I didn't really have in common with a lot of people and I loved it. But then my generation grew up and Jordan took off. And now you're talking about the people that Jordan went over from, I don't know, 88 to 98. Those people are all like 40 and under now. The age range for them is, I would say, 25 to 40. So those people now have kids. And so I think to me, it's more of a generational thing. And also the fact that social media has helped.

The players are just so effing likable compared to the other sports. And then the drama of just the shorter contracts and the player movement. It's a perfect storm. Yeah. I feel it's three buckets of content, though, right? There's the gameplay stuff, there's transactions, and then it's three buckets of content though, right? There's the gameplay stuff, there's transactions, and then there's NBA players so like us, right? They eat the same kind of sandwiches we do.

You know, they go to the same kind of vacations we do. They like wine. Everything, right? That has just like become its own. And that's sort of like, I feel that's part of what you're saying. Like we feel like fans feel connected to them and they also feel like they've grown up with them. So then there's this whole kind of weird journalism that evolves. It's like, how do, how do we connect with these guys? Right.

This guy, this, this person, Kevin Durant has nothing in common with me really. But if we can just figure out that he and I like the same kind of, you know, food or, or music or sandwich or whatever it is or wine or whatever. Yeah. It's like, then we can develop this connection. I feel journalism has, that's one place where journalism has kind of followed the path of fandom to try to sort of make sense of it. Well, you're also, you're also talking about what matters in culture has changed. And this is something I talked about with Alison Herman when we talked about Saturday Night Live last May about what was happening with that show. And for the first

five years especially, Saturday Night Live reflected the culture of what the 70s were like. It was like this counterculture comedian thing that they just tapped into that just hadn't been on television before. And now it's become the institution. The show is geared toward white people and educated white people. And that is something that was the case 40 plus years ago, but now it's still the case. And it's why they had like a Weezer sketch on Saturday night, which I thoroughly enjoy, but I'm a 49 year old white guy.

That was wild. What they're missing is that pop culture has shifted and pop culture has shifted. And pop culture isn't Bruce Springsteen and Huey Lewis and Cyndi Lauper anymore. Basically, all the principals now are black or in that culture that people care about. Drake, Kanye, Migos. You're talking about all the music. It's just so much more diverse.

And basketball fits into that, I think, more than it did 35 years ago. It's just so much more diverse. And basketball fits into that, I think, more than it did 35 years ago. It's just kind of the culture. LeBron and KD, all those guys are part of the culture in a way that they're just ingrained. And I don't see it with football. I don't feel like Aaron Rodgers is part of the culture. You know, like he's a hero, but he's not, he's not a trend setter. Yeah. It, it, it, it helps that, uh, there aren't, you know, not to sound glib, but you know,

there aren't 65 year old NBA players walking around with brain damage and regretting, uh, their professional livelihoods, um, which is really, you know really a big shadow over the NFL. Can we give a moment to the Charles Barkley story, which I presume you guys have read or listened to, which was really an incredible phenomenon over the weekend? Yeah, it was a medium story about this random friend he met in some airport or restaurant or something, and then just started a friendship with the guy. I believe it was a hotel bar. He was a Chinese immigrant who met him in a hotel bar, and he had a couple drinks with Barkley,

and Barkley's like, I'm hungry, let's go have dinner. And this kicks off what seemed to be at least a decade-long friendship where the guy was in and out of Barkley's life to the point where he attended the funeral of Barkley's mother, and then there's this very sort of teary bit of symmetry at the end where the guy passes away, and Barkley shows up in Iowa at this guy's funeral. And everyone's like, why is Charles Barkley at this guy's funeral? And it's told through the voice of his daughter. And she had recorded her father. And yeah, you really had some good guy vibes about Charles Barkley at the end of that thing.

That's pretty amazing. That was wild. That was wild. It was a great story. And I think basketball, one of the biggest advantages it has is that, you know, football will always have the helmets, which it was able to get by just because the game was so freaking popular. And so perfect for television. Yeah. So exciting on TV.

Hockey added the helmets, which they had to. But it really hurt the sport because, you know, when I was watching hockey when I was growing up, nobody had a helmet. And I felt like the guys, it just felt like I knew them. And now I can't even tell who's who. And they had to do it, but it's just the way it is. Baseball has the same kind of intimacy that basketball does. You're a little further away in the stands, but I think for the under 25s, they're not watching baseball as much. Soccer, I think, has replaced that intimacy part. And I think people really care about soccer players and basketball players. And then it's like one-offs after that.

It's like people really care about Serena, right? But that goes back to the intimacy thing. When you're talking about the younger football players, the under 30s, they have some good candidates now, right? Like Deshaun Watson's a great guy. I like Deshaun Watson. Saquon's amazing. Tons of young quarterbacks.

Yeah. Baker Mayfield is like an appealing character, right? Yeah. And they're playing in a sport that is more popular than all the other sports. But I just, I don't know how Baker Mayfield is going to approach me like KD or Kyrie. Kyrie's putting out his own shoe every year.

My kids wear Kyries. They're not going to wear Baker Mayfields. And I don't know how you cut through that. And I just think basketball's hold on the culture is so powerful right now. I think hip-hop's control is incredibly powerful. And then the Taylor Swift kind of the pop artists are powerful. And then like the Taylor Swift, kind of the pop artists are probably like, you can see who the players are and the Kardashians,

the ones who know how to use social media, the ones who are shopping themselves and their products. And that's kind of what our culture has become. Unfortunately, unfortunately I do savor my role here. How do you feel about, how do you feel about the growth of the high school, and we've seen it as early as seventh and eighth grade

with LeBron James' son, that whole sort of economy that's out there now of people taking clips and showing them all over social media and weird guys standing on the baseline with video recorders on their phones at random high school basketball games. What sport does that help the most? No, I mean, it's basketball.

I mean, it feels like basketball has 95% of that market. I think basketball has just, social media, it's just the big winner. It really is. Soccer to some degree, but soccer just doesn't have as much action. Basketball has the ability. How's the highlight seems like it's half NBA clips and then half weird shit that happens during high school basketball games, the AU games.

What was the point you were about to make Brian? No, I mean, I just, I just say, I really like being the ringers, NBA, let's tap the brakes guy always,

you know? Yeah. And I just hearing, hearing Mark Stein on this podcast the other day saying that Dirk was the number one athlete in Dallas. Oh my God. And I just, I almost crashed the car on the 405. And then he was saying, you know, that all, all the Cowboy fans are after a loss are waiting to see what Dirk tweets, that that's the moment after a Cowboys. Let me just tell you yesterday when the Cowboys got shut out by the Colts, I wasn't waiting to see what Dirk tweeted.

Maybe he's talking about the younger Cowboy fits. Yeah. Maybe he's talking about these. Maybe I'm just, I just, I, I, I know,

no, you know, I love Mark, but I was like, come on. No, no way. You know,

absolutely not. Back to the ratings thing. NBA ratings went down this year on the Thursday night games. And it's kind of an interesting story because, all right, so why did they go down? Has there been a basketball situation? Is there a bubble? Like we do this stupid shit.

We did it with podcasts on a couple podcast companies whenever. It's like, is there a podcast bubble? It's like, no, they just had a bad business split. But with the NBA, it's like Thursday rains are down. What does it mean? It's like, well, it's very easy to explain, actually. Thursday night games are better on Fox.

They have better matchups. They did a better job of scheduling them. And then because they stretched out the NBA season, they actually added Thursday games that weren't on TNT. So you have these nights where you have five NBA games and three of them aren't TNT games. And then you have like, where you have five NBA games and three of them aren't TNT games. And then you have like,

if the Celtics are playing the nuggets on my Celtics channel and there's a TNT game, guess which one I'm watching? I'm watching the Celtics. So the fact that the ratings only went down six, 7%, I actually wasn't surprised by that because that makes sense to me. What did you make of the LeBron to LA thing

when people were talking about how that affected viewership, that LeBron was all of a sudden playing late at night on these cups? I don't buy that. I don't buy that at all. I think it comes down to the extra Thursday night games and football's package was a little bit stronger. Remember last year we were like, oh, football, what's going on? The ratings.

Oh, look, football's up The ratings. Oh, look, football's up this year. Oh, why is it up? Because all this stuff is stupid. Unless it's... If the ratings are down 30%, let's have a conversation. When you're talking like the margins of 5% up, 5% down, you know, ESPN losing 2 million subs in a quarter

or whatever, like that's something. But the... The football thing was just such a, I mean, and it was such a perfect storm, right? You had the, there was something for everyone to hate about the NFL. If you were a Trump fan, Trump was telling you not to like the NFL. If you were not a Trump fan,

you were looking at Colin Kaepernick being blackballed and be like, this is terrible. And Trump is attacking, And plus there were the head injuries. Plus there was the injury. It was like a bad year for injuries. I like when the Patriots got blamed. When people are doing the list of the 10 factors and one of them is people are tired

of the Patriots. Let me tell you something. People are never tired of a villain. You know like the Yankees might sign Manny Machado right now. I need it. I like everyone on the Yankees. I don't have a single Yankee I hate except for Chapman. I love when we hit

Chapman. But I need them to sign Machado. I need a Yankee in my life that I just despise. Please, sign Chapman. Absolutely. It'd be great. What were you going to say, Jason? Well, Jess, if you're going to talk about a television program that had the massive ratings drop

and actually does need some sort of crisis management, and you guys have talked about it, it's the Oscars, which is sort of remarkable that we're in the second half of December and they don't have a host. Yeah. And that's a show that... And I feel like that's a behavioral change. I don't think a host. Yeah. And that's a show that, and I feel like that's a behavioral change.

I don't think that's a programming change. I don't think that there's any conceivable person or format change you could possibly make that is going to restore it anywhere near its ratings peak. So it's just not going to happen. It's just, you know, the whole different world now. I was interested. I was reading some of the pieces.

It's a no-win job, especially in the area of social media. And I think that's the number one reason it's harder for them to attract stuff. But when they list the people that hosted it a million times, like Bob Hope. Yeah. Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson. I'm like, who's our Bob Hope, Johnny Carson now? Who's our Billy Crystal? I mean, who's just the guy? Billy Crystal was kind of like reliable guy out of the bullpen. Ah, you know, we gave it a shot let's get billy back well i think there's only there's only one person it's lynn manuel miranda oh i think if you're just talking about approval ratings

you're gonna say jimmy kemmel go ahead no jimmy became more polarizing when you know when he got more involved with politics like he definitely i i think it was the right thing for him to do. And I thought it was probably one of my favorite things he's ever done. But it's also, at that point, you're seen as one side or the other by a certain demo of people. Monroe Miranda, everybody just likes Hamilton.

He can sing and dance. He can do song parodies. You're never going to bat 100%. I feel like Johnny Carson, late 70s, early 80s, if somebody had said, I fucking hate Johnny Carson, you'd be like, what? It's really the most shocking thing

anyone ever said to you. It's the most approval rating in American life. We don't have that anymore. There's nobody like that. Everybody's polarizing. Lin-Manuel Miranda might be the one person out there. Jason, I think no host. I would go no host. No host? Yeah, no host.

I feel like you have to have something. I just don't feel like it's confident to show without a host. What does a host do, though? It feels like this is the announcer-less game that we always want to do, and then we do it, and it's terrible. Here's what the host does, though. It feels like this is the announcer list game that we always want to do and then we do it and it's terrible. Here's what the

host does though. The monologue at the beginning and like two bits during the show. So you get rid of the monologue. You just start with a musical number. And then you get Denzel and you get Meryl Streep and you get Tom Hanks. And they're just basically like our shepherds for the night. They're not trying to be funny. They're not trying

to entertain us. They're like... We're like at their dinner party. They're like come on in. But they're just basically like our shepherds for the night. They're not trying to be funny. They're not trying to entertain us. They're like- Yeah, we're like at their dinner party. They're like, come on in. But they're the host. Not really. Do they come multiple times in the night or just do one award and then disappear? Maybe they're on nine times.

It's like, but you could do a lot with the overhead announcer. That sounds like a host. Eh. It's like coming up, the best actress award. Here are nominees. Here's Michelle Pfeiffer. I don't know.

Do we need a host, Jason? I think you need a host. I think you need a host just because it's, you know, A, it's a tradition, but also I just, I think you need a reason to tune in. And as a much rating suffering as they've had in the past couple of years, the thing that people talk about afterward

and through the entire telecast is the host. It is sort of the, you know of the central force of the conversation. My move, I would go, I would offer Beyonce whatever she wanted. She'll say no. That would be your smash hit. That would be the best. Then I go Jennifer Lawrence. Polarizing.

Oscar winner. Proven host, weirdly enough. Good as a host on Kimmel. And then thirdly, I go Dan Fouts. Dan Fouts. Can he bring Ian Eagle with him? Yeah, that's interesting. Has Steve Carell and Friends been introduced as a concept?

Would people like that? Steve Carell seems blandly popular. The problem is it looks like this movie that he has coming out is going to be like one of the legendary bad movies. I don't understand it at all from the previews.

I'm just like, oh no. It looks like a movie Robin Williams would have made in 1996. Yeah, when he was at the end. You saw the ad, you're like, what's going on? Why is Cuba Gooding Jr. in this? Like one of those movies

with the host thing I think what's going to happen with all of these places is they're going to make the hosted decisions simply based out of fear of the response so the safer you like the Beyonce suggestion is perfect

everybody likes Beyonce nobody's going to be like oh, that's fucking crazy, Beyonce. Like they would never do that. So, you know, when you talk about even Jennifer Lawrence, I think that that reminds me of the Anne Hathaway year when they had her and James Franco. It's like, oh, this is cool, young actors. And then everybody got pissed off.

People just get pissed off. Yeah, that's why I think that Jennifer Lawrence wouldn't do it. It's all downside. She's a huge movie star. What does she need to do this for? And everybody gets mad at her on social media. It's chewed up so many people. Chewed up Jon Stewart kind of, didn't it, that one year?

Letterman hated it. Kimmel, Letterman notoriously. Kimmel had Ellen DeGeneres came out decent, right? Kimmel lucked out because the first Oscars he hosted had the strangest thing that's ever happened in the history of awards. And nobody even took the time to spend one second on how he did. I'm sure there would have been some backlash for something. But it all became about that envelope switcheroo.

And then, you know, he's also good at it. But I just don't know where it goes. And more importantly, what happens to the ESPYs? If people are afraid to host the Oscars. I mean, I thought we hit rock bottom last year with Dana Kirkpatrick, but now it happens. Yeah. I don't have a lot of opinions on who should host the ESPYs. Is it going to be like Nick Young and Abby Wambach as your ESPYs host?

Like, where do we go? What do we do? Let's take a quick break. Hey, the fantasy playoffs just ended. That doesn't mean daily fantasy ended. Daily fantasy goes every single day. Go to FanDuel. You can get a second chance.

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Get a $5 bonus when you make your first deposit, pick a new fantasy team every week, get all the fresh starts you need to get back to winning. Come play with me, Fando.com slash BS. Use that URL. They like it. New users only bonus, not available for withdrawal. State and age restrictions apply for full eligibility rules and terms and conditions. Go to FanDuel.com. Alright, I have some quick ones for you. Is Joe Buck the best announcer alive? Play by play. I kind of think he's kind of become that, don't you?

Jason? I mean, Ben Scully's alive, so... I hate when he does that. How about working? Working an answer. Come on. Working an answer. I guess so. Yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, he

has really, you know, I think he did your show, you know, the breakout for Joe Buck was to embrace the hate, right? To realize that, you know, the anger that he provoked in opposing sides was a refraction of, like, his love, right? And that he understood the way the beast works. And he's a more comfortable guy and funnier. I had a conversation recently with somebody about, do you remember Joe Buck's HBO show? Yeah. Remember that whole thing? That's a fascinating thing. How could we forget? But that was a different Joe Buck.

I think Joe Buck in 2018 would have rolled with Arnie Lang. Well, you know, the other part is, and he said this in Brian's piece about the 25th Fox anniversary about how when he became the announcer, he just did a Pat Summer impersonation. And he did that for like 12 years where he just tried to be super duper

understated and serious and then clearly was frustrated that his sense of humor wasn't coming out, which led to the HBO show. But now he's hit this nice kind of zone where I don't feel like he's preachy. I think he matches the excitement of the game for better and worse. It's not like a Joe Tessitore thing. He's very good at channeling.

Yeah. And Michaels is the best at that. And I think Buck has a little more versatility than Al Michaels probably does at this point in his life. But Al Michaels does the one thing where like, it'll be a deep pass and it'd be like deep to Jeffrey. Like he has a way of, he can rise his voice to make sure the play is either complete or incomplete.

That is just unparalleled. But I, I feel the best when Buck is doing my team's game out of anybody. And I think your point is exact. I think he just got older. I mean, this is a guy who did the World Series at 27, 28, right in there. He put in his 10,000 hours. And he was becoming a

person on, I mean, he was becoming an adult on the air. And I don't actually think he embraced the hate, as Jason said. I don't think he's ever wanted, as I know him fairly well, right? I don't think he's ever wanted to be a heel. Maybe like he dealt with the hate. I think he understood with Jason.

The second thing he said is how the media works, and I think he also just got more comfortable with himself. Yeah. And he just was like, I'm going to go here. I'm going to have a good time. I'm going to learn. That job is really constricting. If you're an interesting person, being a play-by-play announcer is not a great way to

show it. Yeah. And I think he figured out how to get as much of his personality into that job, whether it's, you know, doing that weird, he and Troy on Thursday, it's like fun night for them. They're wearing half zips and kind of looking at each other, kind of, you know, squinting the eye, you know, like, oh, we eye like we're screwing around tonight and it's fun that's what Thursday night football should be it should be like fun night it should be goofy night

I'm not a huge Aikman fan and I made that point to somebody in there like he's been good this year and I've actually been listening to him was it to you? I was listening this year he's actually way more coherent and lively than he's been. And I think part of that goes to Joe Buck.

And I think what people don't realize sometimes, and I've been in this situation where I've worked with really good people and really bad people, the play-by-play person or the studio host, whatever, they really can make people better or worse. They're the point guard. Yeah. They really are. They're the freaking point guard.

You watch Get Up now, and once they figured out that Greenberg was the point guard of that show, like, Get Up's a pretty good show now. Like, I watch it in the morning sometimes. It's really not bad. And what they realized was that Greenberg had to be the point guard,

and that was how to succeed with that show. And you need one point guard, not two point guards. You do not need two point guards. But we knew that when they announced it. It didn't make sense. We said that the first day. There was no question that wasn't going to work. I really like Ian Eagle is the other one that continues to just jump out at me.

Whether I'm listening to him do the Nets games. Isn't he doing the Nets games? Doing the football, the college football. He's just awesome. And his partner's always in a good mood. You always get the feeling his partner's like, I didn't put me in a good, in a place to succeed. So I think those are the two,

other than Kevin Burkhardt is the other one that I think really jumps out to me. Anyone for you, Jason, that you love? Well, of course, you know, I knew you were going to get to it the you know world professional cycling announcer phil liggett uh yeah who's been uh calling 45 consecutive tour de france's um no i think of course he was on all of those and you know i just had one quick thought about buck which is that you know unless fox does something

uh he's going to be denied the sort of great sportscaster legacy thing of the olympics I just had one quick thought about Buck, which is that, you know, unless Fox does something, uh, he's going to be denied the sort of great sportscaster legacy thing of the Olympics. Um, he's, that's the one, you know, thing for him to climb.

He's not had that happen for him. So unless he moves to NBC or NBC surrenders the Olympics, which is a whole other fascinating right conversation, because if you think a Superbowl is expensive, try the IOC. Um, yeah, he's not done that. And Rupert tried to get in on that answer i think it was 2000 which is the sydney olympics it was a lot of interest and he tried to do the same thing with the nfl here's the giant check you can't turn down they're like you know what we are turning this down we

don't we don't want this hey we're not ready for that al micha Michaels is the other one that I think is really good. Al's still rock solid. On Al Michaels' point, on Al Michaels, I agree with you. In the total first class, he is

known, of course, for having commentary on what once was a societal taboo, which is sports betting and lines and the covers and all kinds of stuff. And we are now in an era, of course, where federal laws are being rolled back and states are legalizing sports betting. I'm across the river from the now sports betting legal state of New Jersey. And you hear more of it. There's more conversation about this kind of thing. And, you know, I am of the belief that sports betting, a little bit like fantasy football, a little bit of it goes a long way.

I can't imagine a telecast where you're constantly talking about those kinds of things. But I don't know, Bill, maybe you're all about that. Maybe you want that. Maybe there's a whole side network for people like you who want that kinds of things. But I don't know, Bill, maybe you're all about that. Maybe you want that. Maybe there's a whole five network for people like you who want that kind of content. People like me. It was degenerates. I thought that was the most interesting thing of the Tiger Phil thing because

it wasn't fun to watch them play 18 holes with what kind of PGA influence was over the event. It would just would have been more fun if it was just way more off the rails and like the 10th, 11th, the 12th goal, they can only play with a seven iron and there should have been, it should be a way more gambling and stuff like that. But they did lay the groundwork for something

that I think can work over and over again. Like I was thinking, like Zion's going to announce for the, he'll leave Duke, he'll announce for the draft right why wouldn't you know whoever have a dunk contest with Zion that's pay-per-view in May and just have all these dunks and will Zion get a tan and figure out a way I do feel like things are headed this way these these events that are specifically designed to game on if you remember like in the 80s there were a couple one-on-one basketball games.

Yes. And it was like Kareem versus Dr. J. God, that was awful. I think I pay-per-viewed that. Magic and Jordan tried to set one up. Magic and Jordan. And they don't think they ever did, but that was going to be a thing. They were going to play one-on-one. Could Durant and LeBron just be like, we're playing seven games to 11.

And who wouldn't watch that? And it's a two-on-two, and it's 29. Now, the players union might have to, maybe they step in, or maybe LeBron and KD are like, we're playing horse. Great. Right now, we're going to be at this park.

Would watch that. First come, first serve, and it's a dollar. But you have to download this app. And now they have all the intelligence on all the people who downloaded it. I do think that's where we're headed with stuff. But going back to Jason's point, the more and more contrived events we have like that, the more gambling is going to be involved because that'll be how you justify it. Like, oh, this is cool. I'll just bet on this and some website will have whatever. And that's how it'll

go. Or the players can bet. What if KD and whomever could bet on a horse game in real time? I would like that. Wouldn't you like that? Well, what if we had, you know, thousand dollars? I hit the shot from behind the basket.

Yeah. Like, yeah. Okay. Half court shot. Give me five to one odds. Yeah. You need,

this would could be Sal's destiny in life as he's the gambling commissioner for each bet. He's like the Norman Chad of this thing. He's just standing there with a mic. He's like, all right, plus 500, KD hits the half-court shot. But I do wonder if that's, you know, you talk about like the 70s was when Rune Arledge made all these events up because he needed programming because he lost, I think he lost the NBA.

He just needed. And ABC was number three. He needed something on Saturday. He's like, there's no sports to buy. What do we do? And he created the NBA. He just needed. And ABC was number three. So he needed stuff. He needed something on Saturday. He's like, there's no sports to buy. What do we do? And he created the super teams. And that became the superstars.

And then that eventually became Battle Network stars and basically paved the way for all the terrible reality programming we'd have 40 years later. Wide world of sports. I mean, just stuff. All that stuff. So could that be where we're heading

with some of this stuff and with all these athletes who are now their own content companies could this be we really last year wanted to have Jimmy Butler he's this great dominoes player apparently Jimmy Butler plays dominoes against six other NBA we couldn't find other NBA

players for him to play maybe that's where we're headed, just these little one-off things. A dollar here, you can bet during it and bet on the winner and there's just lines for everything. It's going to lead to the greatest gambling scandal in like 60 years, Jason. Maybe

Jason Gay trying to do the Tour de France off-season. Can he finish it without crashing? Eight to one. Eight to one outs. All right, I have a couple more topics. The Rise of Player podcast.

I realized listening to Winging It with Vince Carter and Cain Baysmore, which coincidentally happens to be a Ringer podcast. They had those two and they had Andre Iguodala and they had Steph Curry on. And with Andy Finberg kind of driving the steering wheel. Just was a different type of conversation. I really felt like I was eavesdropping on these four dudes talking about basketball in a way that it's really hard to do.

It's really hard to do if there's a media person involved, there's somebody staring the ship. Chaney Fryer and Richard Jefferson stumbled into this a little bit last year. I think JJ Redick on our network, when he has the right podcast, he's done it. Is this going to become its own form of medium or are the people that made this work people who were overqualified to do it? Because I have an opinion on this, but I'll wait for you guys. Meaning there's not,

the athletes that are doing it are just really good at podcasting and there's not that many that are actually, would be really good at this? Yeah, so I'll step on my point now then. I think JJ's just really good. JJ's going to retire and he's going to go to Turner or ESPN or wherever and he's going to do this for 20 more years. Vince Carter is going to be the biggest broadcasting free agents we've probably had in the NBA since Barkley retired 20 years ago. This is going to be an all-out street fight to get him. And by the way, Dwayne Wade is probably the number, the third on that list for future TV free agents. And my guess is that it's just that those guys are just, like if you listen to that Vince podcast carefully,

he's moving the conversation in ways that is really advanced. In ways that like, he just has a sense for like, oh, there's some meat on that bone. I'm going to pull the meat a little bit. I think there's more there. And he does. I was really impressed because he hasn't been doing it for that often.

Jason, are you prepared for players to take our jobs basically? Yeah. Is that now a requirement among all elite athletes that they have a chief content officer? Is that kind of a thing now that's part of the group? Yeah. You know, I don't know. I think there's two things that are happening simultaneously, right? There's an incredible demand for this stuff because there are all these new platforms that are happy to have it.

There's going to be a lot of junk. You picked off some of the stuff that's working and really good. But it has to have that quality that you described at the top, which is it does have to feel like you're dropping. If it mimics regular sports programming, if it just starts to sound like talk radio, if it just sounds like any old sort of sports chat that you could have, I don't think it catches on at all.

But I do feel like they have more power than ever. They do have the ability to do one-off. They do have the ability to be their own networks. But yeah, this is sort of a side of the farm. I have a follow-up on this, but we're going to take a break. Hey, let's talk about State Farm. They have over 19,000 agents across this country. That is a huge number, but it's not really about the number.

It's about having a real person who's nearby, someone you can talk to and get personalized help protecting what matters most. Combining the purchase of your home and auto insurance is easy with the help of a real life State Farm agent. Go to statefarm.com slash agent to find an agent today. And by the way, they sponsored the NBA trade value column this year, the 2018-19 trade value, December edition. It's going to be moving every month, but State Farm was kind enough

to get involved with that one. So check that out. If you missed the trade value column for whatever reason, I don't know why you would have, but that is on theringer.com as well. Coming back on what we were just talking about, sports franchises as content companies really intrigues me.

I think the WWE really laid the groundwork for this in a lot of ways, in NBA entertainment, NFL films. We've seen the leagues doing this, but we haven't really seen the teams. And there's been a few exceptions, right? Like if you watch the Yes Network, which Yankeeography. Oh, yeah. Yankeeography. It's so awesome. It's really like.

God-frocious. An hour. God-frocious. It's really like very similar to if Trump could have his own cable channel talking about how great Trump's doing. And it was just all. It was like Trumpography and an hour with, I don't know. But now I think we're in a situation where I think franchises are going to invest in content in really big ways because the thinking is, and by the way,

it's players, it's franchises, it could be casinos. The thinking is like, who cares where it comes from? Why can't they be the producer? They have money. They have the ability to drive awareness. Why not us? To borrow a phrase from a disgraced Red Sox legend, Curt Schilling. I agree with the sentiment that a lot of people, a lot of consumers don't really care.

Where it comes from. Yeah, and I know that because my cowboy fan uncles are sending me clips from Dallas cowboys.com and listening to stuff on there and all that stuff. And I'm kind of, you know, come on. I have not found a ton of those that I find all that interesting. Like, like I'm a university of Texas guy, right? There was a thing called the Longhorn network. Yeah. I've watched that for like 20 minutes if there's not a game on and I'm, it's just too much Longhorns for me. You know, I'm kind of like, it's the equivalent of Scott Brocious, you know, Vince, Vince Young's, you know, cooking secrets or something. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what, I don't know that they really need like the smart person to come in and tell them what to do. Yeah. I'm here. Bring me in.

I'll come in for one day. I'll give you nine ideas. Yeah. And it's just like, and the Cowboys are another one. Cause obviously let us say that Jerry Jones is very interested in maximizing content. Yeah. But you know,

and they'll have like a smart guy who's an ex scout on their given stuff. But then there's always, there's still that kind of thing where you look at it and you go, this feels like an inside job. Yeah. It doesn't feel like, and if the team's winning, you're kind of okay with inside jobs sometimes. But if the team's losing, you really hate it. Right.

And you want somebody to be, you know, that's when you want actual, you know, unfettered journalists. The team that I think is going to figure this out or that maybe not figure it out, but at least go down the road with it the most is the Clippers. I think a lot of the stuff they're trying to do, if you add up the breadcrumbs, points to a team that doesn't feel like it's just an NBA franchise anymore. Like him talking about getting rid of a cable channel completely and just streaming the games through an app. The Clipper Court Vision thing that they do that I happen to be a member of

because I'm a season ticket holder where it's like you just, all of this extra stuff and videos and clips and all this stuff, they hire Lee Jenkins to help them. It seems like tell stories. No, we haven't seen any of the stories yet, but I think that's going to be part of his job, right?

And then you think about it, an NBA team is actually really interesting. And if you're in the right hands, if you're going to tell stories about people on a team, it's like, get to know us. Here are the guys you watch every day. Here's Tobias Harris. Here's a one-hour documentary about Tobias Harris. Now, the audience is limited for that. Including on this podcast, by the way. Including on this podcast.

I just fell asleep when I heard that. Or Boban or whatever. Still asleep. Could you turn your own players into IP? Yeah. When does this get beyond like a mildly interesting thing they show on the Jumbotron at Staples Center? I mean, that's kind of what this sounds like to me.

So the highest upside is hard knocks, right? Sure. The lowest upside is being on the Jumbotron being like, do you like baked beans or coleslaw? Coleslaw! Yeah, everybody cheers. There's some sort of middle ground where you can get content from your people. That would actually be interesting. Though my favorite thing every week online that's really stupid is the Patriots, after they win, they show the inside of the locker room of Kraft greeting the players coming back in from the win.

That's gold. I watch it every week. It's fantastic. He shakes everybody's hand. He has an awkward conversation with Brady. Him and Belichick pretend they like each other for two seconds. I love it. I feel like there's some sort of sweet spot we haven't hit yet.

Awkward owner cam, I'm in. Oh, my God. Yeah, that'd be great. Maybe that could be part of Amazon's NFL deal. The Lakers, I don't know if you saw this, the Lakers are advertising for a creative director, which is pretty funny. And I looked at the job description and it really is kind of like one of these old fashioned, like impresario creative director jobs that you would see at,

you know, a magazine at the height of magazines or an ad agency. And, you know, someone who has this sort of 360 degree vision of everything that exists around the Lakers off court. And, yeah, it speaks exactly to all that stuff. But I don't know. I just feel like people have so much to choose from. The idea that they're going to spend, you know, a large portion of their day in just one world. I don't know. And, you know, I know we want to talk about, like, the idea of just subscribing life,

and, like, everything is now going to be a subscription, right? That is going to be the new formula for everybody to make money in media. And, you know, there will come a point where, man, I don't know, it's like, how many subscriptions are you going to have? I mean, I just did a call recently of all the subscriptions that I had,

and I didn't even remember that I was still subscribing to. And we're still in the early days of this. I just don't know how many we'll be able to survive on that kind of format. Yeah, Dave Finocchio, the guy who owned Bleacher Report, had a tweet stream about this recently that I thought was interesting. He's basically like, at some point, we're going to hit the same bubble with subscriptions

that we've hit with everything else. We saw it with digital media sites in the middle part of this decade where there was just too much content. And at some point, you knew that some people were going to win and some people were going to lose. And that was just the way it is. There were too many people writing and talking about the same things. And now it's going to eventually head the same way with these subscriptions.

Because yeah, if we all added up what we subscribed to already, it would be a lot. But now, three years from now, as more and more people move to the bottle, it could be three times as much. And I think, especially nephew Kyle's generation, where all he cares about is FaceTiming his girlfriend at three in the morning and trying to get stuff for free.

That's my least favorite part about having a girlfriend, by the way. FaceTiming her at three in the morning? Yes. All right, that's going to be in the Sports Reporter's next thing. But yeah, his generation is used to trying to cut corners to get something for free.

Word. Right, Kyle? I'm not smirching the millennials. Yeah, a bunch of emails that we never use. Yeah. That's how we get the free stuff. Yeah. So now you're asking them to pay for everything.

And I don't know. Yeah. I feel like as kind of an old person, I feel I'm the ideal for this because I have switched my New Yorker subscription that I piled up and I never read for like 10 other things on digital subscriptions that I forgot I had. My wife and I were looking through the Amazon channels like we subscribed to. It was like, who got BritBox? It was like British country house mysteries. Who did this? And she's looking at me.

I was like, I don't remember that, but I can't rule it out. We subscribed to Shudder and Quillo. Oh, what is that? I have no idea how either happened. I actually like Shudder. I was like, oh, they have a couple of horror movies I like. And then you just forget. Oh, totally.

And they charge you a credit card every month. That's amazing. This is the athletics entire business model, by the way. Oh, they'll forget. They forget they subscribe. But by the way, I think that's kind of effective, don't you? Maybe. I don't think that's that nuts.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's kind of effective, don't you? Maybe. I don't think that's that nuts. Bill, you have, I mean, I imagine you've had discussions at some point or another of a sort of membership model for the Ringer, have you not? I mean, the idea of like, okay, it's not like a paywall at Ringer, but maybe it's like Ringer Plus or Ringer Membership

and you get this and this and you get access to Kevin Clark and that kind of stuff. Have you had those kind of conversations? It's just been about Kevin Clark. Access to Kevin Clark. It's been access to Kevin Clark for $4.99 a day. Just get all the Kevin Clark. It's an all-you-can-eat Kevin Clark.

And that's... No, I mean, this is something... Curtis, did you get Golf Plus? I think I accidentally subscribed to it, yeah. Oh, remember that? Because you had to pick that or something else, right? And I think I picked Golf Plus? I think I accidentally subscribed to it, yeah. Oh, remember that? Because you had to pick that or something else, right? And I think I picked Golf Plus. I think, so I've researched this a couple different times in my life.

One was when I had my old website in Boston and I was deciding, did I want to spin off and do it on my own? The Boston Herald was trying to hire me to put me behind a paywall because they were starting to paywall their newspaper stuff or I had a chance to go to ESPN potentially. And I really thought about the whole paywall model and I kept coming back to the same issue,

which is that once you're walling people off, how do you get new people? How do people stumble across your stuff? And then I remember Glenn Beck, what was the year that Glenn Beck launched his thing? The Blaze? Yeah. Well, there was the thing. The Blaze, yeah. No, it was even before that where it was like Glenn Beck. Unplugged. Yeah, whatever it was. Whatever it was. And it did really well, right? And then a few years later, the subs dropped and part of the problem was that he couldn't get new people. And I think I can't figure out that fundamental issue of how you raise awareness for stuff that people can't see.

And I don't know how you do that for the ringer. Like we just don't have the scale. I think, you know, when you're talking about the New York times and Washington post and, um, the New Yorker and places like that, like they just have a shitload of content and they have breaking news. And it's like, if you care about media and you care about information, you kind of feel like you have to subscribe to them. That's a really hard bridge to climb. Like, could we make this podcast a subscription

and could it do well? I don't know. But I know that I would wall off all the possible people who could potentially subscribe to it and you antagonize people. And there's all these elements to it that I think it's really hard to do unless you have just a ton of stuff. And that's why Netflix works. Netflix has a shitload of, nobody's like, wow, I just not getting my money's worth out of Netflix. Like we go through the Netflix screen. It's like, fuck, all'm just not getting my money's worth out of Netflix. Like, we go through the Netflix screens.

Like, fuck, all these TV shows and movies. Like, Jesus, it won't end. I think that's how, I think that's going to win. The New York Times has a shitload of stuff for what you get, you know? But if they ever throw the Daily behind it, we're in trouble. Brian, what did you think when you heard New Yorker commercials on Bill's podcast? That was an amazing moment in media. In new old media moment.

Really underrated. I mean, did you ever think you'd be doing... We don't call them commercials. We call them reads. Okay. Did you ever think you'd be doing a read for the New Yorker? I love the New Yorker. I know.

But that's kind of a moment, right? The greatest moment... On the BS podcast doing a read for The New Yorker. I love The New Yorker. I mean, The New Yorker is an incredible publication. I think we're doing another read right now. I know, it really is. It's been a huge part of my life

and I've read just incredible, so many hours. But I mean, Sports Illustrated on the other hand, I finally stopped getting it. And now it's for sale. And there's this really, I don't even, interesting is not the right word. I don't even know what the word is. These legacy brands that are being pursued by people who are old, who remember when the brand meant more.

The glory days. Yeah, Sinead of SI that that I forget what the final price was, but it was all these suitors for SI and all the people trying to get them just seem to be older people who have money. And the same thing that happened to Time Magazine. It was the same thing that happened to what was the other one?

Fortune. Or somebody bought The Atlantic, which is a really good magazine and just pumped a bunch of jobs and openings into that. But it's this combination of it's a brand that matters, but then it's somebody who just has a lot of money who's like, I'm going to make this one of my legacies, which I think is kind of cool.

And it actually weirdly, it's like Robin Hood. It's the Robin Hood era for journalism. I'm going to ride in with my bow and arrow and save this publication. And be a media baron. Yeah. And people know who I am more than they did if I was just in the business pages, right? Because I look at New York Magazine. I think that magazine, maybe the magazine itself was probably better four or five years ago.

It's still readable. The website's great. It has a lot of, it has a lot of good writers. I respect it a lot. And I say, I hear it's for sale and that people aren't sure. And maybe I'm like, holy shit,

like the New York Magazine, that should be a Robin Hood magazine. Where's Robin Hood for that one? That was a scary one. Cause it's like, oh my gosh, you know, this is being edited and done at a really, really high level. Yeah, we really admire those guys.

And to hear that they can't find a buyer, I don't know what people even look for anymore with this stuff. But with the subscription models, I think you have to have scale. You agree, Brian? Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, that's, I just, I do think that the New York Times right now, I mean, the other interesting question is we say you have to get the New York Times, the Washington Post.

You have to subscribe. And I feel the same. And I feel the same way, especially about the Times. But I also wonder how much of the population is going to feel that way when Donald Trump shuffles out of the White House. If all of, you know, currently there feels like there's a lot of must-have subscriptions. Is that going to feel must-have when there's not just a fire drill in the White House every

single day? Brian, what's this paper you're talking about? The New York Times? Is it daily? Yeah, it's every day. It's out of New York. Pretty good daily. I do wonder what's going to happen.

Don't you feel like the Trump bubble is just like, it's kind of hard to understand even. You know, we put the Times into this category right now, though they're kind of, they went from, I mean, let's not forget Carlos Slim, having to take money from him and all that stuff. I mean, that was 10 years ago, a little more, when they felt like they were really- Michael Hirschhorn predicting the New York Times would be out of business within six months or something like that remember that call they were really on the ropes and all of a sudden they feel bulletproof and I just I just wonder how much of this is

Trump driven and if you really if you know there's going to be a lot of marginal people that are like okay Trump's gone do I have Trump's gone. Do I really have to subscribe to this? I don't know the answer to that. And I'd be sort of worried. Like a carbon dioxide monitor or something like that? Well, maybe it'll be, maybe they'll just move to global warming.

Yeah. There's plenty of other emergencies in the world. I'm not saying, I mean, I still get the print New York Times, so I don't, I love it. That's my favorite thing in the world to read in the world. I'm not saying, I mean, I still get the print New York Times. So I don't, I don't, I love it. It's my favorite thing in the world to read in the morning. Newspapers have gotten to the point

with me when I see people reading a newspaper, I actually notice it now. Yeah. If I'm getting a coffee at Starbucks and some dude is just kicking, some older guys

kicking back with like the front page of the Times, just kind of digging in. I'm like, oh, look at that. Newspaper reader. I get more comments than that.

It's like he's nailing a horseshoe to the bottom of a horse's foot or something like that. One of the many reasons I love going to visit my dad is he's got this kitchen table and it's got the Globe and the Herald on it. Awesome. He's just thumbing through the Herald.

Oh, look at the story of the Red Sox closer. That's amazing. Do you think that the other thing besides Trump, and I don't think there's anybody in the newspaper business who would give you an honest answer that didn't say that Trump undoubtedly has been a huge boon to people's everyday interest in newspapers. But the only thing that's happening is what you know, what's happening with Facebook and social media and people's distrust of that. And I think that's another real avenue for media organizations to try to capitalize upon because, you know, after years and years and years of like being funneled this idea that, you know, social media was the place to get your information and information will have

to be free. Well, it turned out a lot of free information was crap and, you know, fake. that social media was the place to get your information and any information wanted to be free. Well, it turned out a lot of free information was crap and fake. Now you have this opportunity to jump in and have a brand that says, if nothing else, the stuff that's in here is legit. I think that's right. I think that's a good point. It does feel like we're groping around for something that's like the gold standard

now. And it's, you know, a handful of new into the handful of newspapers and then other, you know, a couple other media organizations. I think the Facebook, the Facebook piece of this is the most interesting media story of this decade

for me. And maybe you could argue the century century where it swung an election. They committed, it seems like a whole bunch of crimes. It seems like they're genuinely bad people. I'm sorry, who are they? In this case, this is a Trump. Whoever you want. They have our information.

They've sold our information to multiple places. They've probably have our passwords and our credit cards and pictures of my kids. They know my habits. A lot of data breaches in there. Yeah. I've noticed I don't even go to Facebook anymore. I really don't. I actively dislike it.

And I really did think of deleting it. But every once in a while I go there if I'm super bored, just to see like, you know, who's my, what friend of my wife has put some picture of their kids or whatever. And I'll notice they'll have soccer ads, those promoted ads. It'll be like to kick a soccer ball. And meanwhile, like, so they, they had that because I posted photos in the past of my kid's soccer team. And they've been able to run that through some analysis thing and be like, this person has posted soccer pictures. So here's the special soccer ball.

I think it's fucking creepy. And the way people use data now, it really freaks me out. And when you're talking about the late 90s, the first wave of this of this when it was like subscription this is where it's heading and people were saying to themselves they'll never get my credit card they'll have all

of my information you know it's like out of that Sandra Bullock the net and Disclosure and all those movies about like

don't let this happen this is how they're going to get you and they just kind of broke us and now I'm like I'm on the fucking airplane giving my credit card so I can get wifi for an hour I'm like, I'm on the fucking airplane giving my credit card

so I can get Wi-Fi for an hour. I'm like, anyone in the airplane could be just hacking all my information in five seconds. I'm like, they probably have it anyway. Fuck it.

Absolutely right. Absolutely right. I saw today right before we came on that Walt Mossberg, you know, was the journal's old tech columnist. Yeah. Legend.

Just announced on Twitter that he is quitting Facebook. Yeah. So that's because now we're to the stage of famous people announcing that they're quitting Facebook. God, I've thought about doing that for a while. But here's the problem. I love Instagram. Instagram is my favorite social media platform ever.

I love it. And Facebook owns Instagram. So what am I going to delete? Instagram? I really enjoy Instagram. My kids love Instagram. Is the leaving Facebook announcement the new I'm leaving New York message? I think so.

I'm moving to the east side of Los Angeles. Yeah. I'm pretty sure why I left Facebook. You know, someone made a very good point about Facebook that I wish I could remember who it is and I can't take any credit for it, but just that the idea of this, you know, Facebook being this unavoidable monopoly might be BS in this respect.

That, you know, you look at monopolies in the past, like, you know, electric companies, gas companies, you know, Standard Oil, railroads. I mean, these are things that have phased out. But, like, you know, electric companies, gas companies, you know, Standard Oil, railroad. I mean, these are things that have phased out. But, like, you couldn't, like, not get electricity. You had to have electricity. Whereas you can live your life quite successfully and even quite successfully digitally without Facebook. And so that really may be where there's the most amount of trouble because it's not something that is completely baked into the hardware of American life.

I don't think Facebook can come back. I think there's been too much damage and I think eventually Instagram will just be where they butter their bread. I just think there's been too much damage and too much distrust and they've handled every single thing wrong now for three years and do not seem like they have good people running it. Like what, Mark Zuckerberg's apology tour for a year? What the fuck was that? Remember when he was running for-

Why don't you sell more of my data, you asshole? Remember when he was running for president? Remember that was going to be a thing? He's an asshole. Guess what? We knew he was an asshole from the social network. The whole movie's about what a fucking asshole he is. Now we're surprised he's an asshole? What the hell? We know he's an asshole from the social network. The whole movie's about what a fucking asshole he is. Now we're surprised he's an asshole?

What the hell? We know he's an asshole. He's a bad guy. But think about this. You probably would not have said this five years ago because Facebook had a grip on whatever product, whether it was Grantland or Ringer. I mean, Facebook was the conduit to getting eyeballs, to getting new readers,

and they really had publishers beholden. I remember the last year of Grantland, Facebook became a huge driver of traffic for us. And you can even see it in some of the old posts I did from 2014, right? You know, posting my columns or other people's columns. And then, like with everything else, there was just so much content on Facebook that it just, but there, there was a sweet spot there and it really did help raise awareness for, for Grantland.

And I didn't know that they were probably selling my data to the Ukrainians at the time. Specifically the Ukrainians. And aliens or whatever the fuck else they were doing. God, just the worst. And then Sheryl Sandberg fuck else they were doing. God, she's the worst. And then Sheryl Sandberg with her lean in thing. It's like, why don't you lean into some dignity with the place you work for?

Don't sell our data. Tough year. Yeah, lean into not selling our data. How about that? And also being honest with the press, right? Yeah. When they got you. And then you have like three different answers.

It means there's a new New York Times story every single time. All she cared about was, oh shit, this might ruin my chance to run for office. Instead of like, oh shit, this was horrible for our country. This is really bad. We have to fix this. This was, out of anything,

this whole decade was all about like people in positions of power just being fucking assholes. Well, you know what this means, guys? To bring it back to the beginning, really the place where Facebook here is a nice, fat NFL deal, right? You know, just bring it all,

you know, get all NFL Sundays, you know, come on. And they'll be like, it's free. We're giving this to you for free. It's free football. You don't have to pay a dime because we have all your data anyway. That'd be a big moment, right? Sports you really want to watch

only on Facebook. We've bought your trust back for free. The problem is the Ukrainians have all your data. I don't know why I picked on the Ukrainians. I was going to say. I love that that's what you fastened on us. Jason,

you don't have a parting shot for us, do you? I don't. Like a real true lazy sports columnist, I'm not prepared. So, you know, I'm staying in the role. I have your mission for 2019. What's that? Cycling. I think it should be a bigger thing.

I think you got to start writing about this. Look, in the Venn diagram of financial trade publications covering cycling, I feel I'm an industry leader, okay? Listen, the best thing that's going to happen to the sports reporters in 2019 is Jason's son is now into wrestling, and I can't wait to see where it goes. Have you written the first My Son Is Into Wrestling column? No. It's coming. My mom is a little mad at me.

It's still a little raw right now. Oh, it's great. But the thing that I, just to ask you a quick question, you know, this was small time wrestling. This is Johnny Rod's school of wrestling in Brooklyn, New York.

They do a monthly show at Gleason's. The boy is about six years old. Uh, we sat in the front row and I was kind of getting that the bad idea look from other people. Yeah. And we stayed and it was great, but was that a bad idea?

Yeah. It was a bad idea. He put your son in danger. Because he might've been crushed to death. Yeah, idea? Yeah. It was a bad idea. You put your son in danger. Bad idea because he might have been crushed to death? Yeah, maybe. Yeah. I am in the mindset of if you're under eight, you shouldn't be courtside for a basketball game

in the front row for a baseball game. Although I guess in baseball, they have the nets all the way around. It probably feels like... Because you're going to get smushed, possibly. You just don't know. Even if it's a one in a 10,000 chance, it's still... Just wait.

My son watched wrestling. We had a trampoline in the back, and within three months was doing RKOs and flips. I mean, Nephi Kyle, he's a legitimate maniac, partly because of wrestling, right? Yeah, there's no trampoline now, so he's jumping off couches and stuff too. Yeah, he told us the other day he was trying to do a 720 flip. Whoa. But the couch doesn't have enough room before he hits the floor. Thank God.

We're like, can you stop doing that, please? It sounds dangerous. So yeah, good luck with that, Jason. Good luck with the wrestling. Should be great for you. And good luck to all of us for Facebook after they sell our data to the Ukrainians right after this podcast.

Usually the blog, instant blog post written up after a BS pod is something you said about the NBA, but I think it's like you calling Mark Zuckerberg an asshole. He is an asshole. There you go. He's been an asshole his whole life. Watch the social network. There you go.

Brian Curtis, you can read him on theringer.com. You can listen to him Watch the social network. There you go. Brian Curtis, you can read him on TheRinger.com. You can listen to him on the Press Box. Jason Gay, you can hear him in a whole bunch of platforms. And you can read him in the Wall Street Journal. Thank you for coming on. All right. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to go to ZipRecruiter.com slash BS.

Thanks to State Farm. Don't forget to go to StateFarm.com slash agent. Thanks to FanDuel. If you're not a fantasy expert, FanDuel is the place to play. You get the excitement of researching and building your team each week, regardless of the outcome. Come play with me at FanDuel.com slash BS. Get a $5 bonus when you make your first deposit.

New users only. Bonus not available for withdrawal. State and age restrictions apply for full eligibility rules and terms and conditions. Go to FanDuel.com. And thanks to the New York Times Crossroad. Crossroad. I keep saying Crossroad because my daughter's applying to Crossroads. Thanks to the New York Times Crossword. Leave that in. I want people to hear how stupid I am, Kyle. If you're looking for a smart way to unwind, play the New York Times Mini Crossword.

The Crossword is the fun, relaxing way to stay sharp, enjoy quick battle wits with yourself, or challenge a friend, or challenge my dad. In about two minutes, you'll experience the satisfaction of solving the mini-puzzle as wordplay every day. Download the New York Times crossword app at newyorktimes.com slash mini.

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