The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Skipper & Samson: Everybody is loving Prime Time! Who wins when the TV networks fight?

Episode Date: September 22, 2023

Meadowlark Media CEO John Skipper and Nothing Personal's David Samson are back with another episode with Pablo Torre Finds Out host... Pablo Torre to host! It’s all about Prime Time! Deion Sanders is everywhere. Colorado is the center of the sports world. Fox wants him. ESPN wants him. (10:18) We had a massive carriage dispute in the TV world. Let’s talk about what happened between Charter and Disney. Millions of people were without Disney networks. How was this handled? What happens next? (18:41) ABC is getting the NFL. It already had the NFL, but now it gets a game every Monday night of the season. That’s right, simulcast on ESPN and on ABC because of the Hollywood strike. (27:27) Warner Bros. Discovery says it's gotten significant financial blows because of the Hollywood strike. Would this impact the TNT rights for the NBA? (35:06) What is the Bleacher Report Sports add-on? Just more sports going behind another paywall! (43:02) The NFL has a new committee formed from a committee! What’s this new one do? Look for money! (45:40) It’s time for some quick hitters! What’s on our mind? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. As a big-time CEO, I demand to be the smartest person in the room, which is why I never let Whitton and Lublin employment lawyers in my office. Because they make employees smarter by putting them in control of their options for workplace harassment, discrimination, and wrongful dismissal. And as someone who condones all those things, being constantly outsmarted would leave no rooms for me to be in,

Witten and Lublin employment moyers. Bad bosses hate us, employees love us. This is the Dunlabor tour show StugatSpotCas. So, we gotta get going immediately here because John Skipper and David Samson have been firing people behind the scenes and we can't do that on tape. I'm told and I want to get to what we're allowed to do on tape before we accidentally do do the things we can't do on tape. On tape. So hello both of you.

Hello, Pablo. Your job is safe. I feel good about what you're doing. Congratulations. Your show has been terrific, by the way. Pablo Torre finds out as the name of the show that producers behind the glass are the people that David Samson is very envious of.

And so here we are in the studio, that John Skipper built with John Skipper and me and David. So the first topic I feel like is an obvious swan if you've been paying attention to sports in any way, however sleepily, and it has been sleepy at times because Deon Sanders is making America watch Colorado football John Skipper at 2.15 AM Eastern when his game registered 8.230 million viewers, which is an audience that was

bigger. Apparently by more than 1 million viewers compared to the peak audience of any other college football game this week. It was the most watched late night prime time game. It was the fifth most watched college football game on record for ESPN. It was huge 9.3 million viewers. So let's start with John. First of all, I want to stipulate that every game they play is prime time with coach prime. Oh, come on. A broadcasting professional is what John's give for us.

This phenomenons is astonishing to me. And in preparing for this, I looked on the espn.com and found an article in which they positive the question of whether he is now the best coach in college football. What I thought was a tiny bit premature. I have had an experience watching Dion who not many years ago was the offensive coordinator for Trinity High School when his sons were both playing there. He followed his sons to or took them with him to Jackson State. He's done a spectacular job. I was a skeptic at Colorado. It's an astonishing

amount of moves he made. 71 players out, 50 or so players come back in and transfer his turnover. I didn't think it was possible to execute this. He's done it, so I give him credit. I remain skeptical that this is a long term phenomenon. This is a guy who, like I said, just a handful of years ago was coaching as the offensive coordinator at Trinity High School. That's Trinity Christian High School. Trinity Christian High School, you're correct. The, I saw De Dion coaching against South Carolina State

in the 2000s, I think it's 2021 celebration bowl against South Carolina State. The team looked disorganized chaotic, poor, got whacked by South Carolina State 31 to 10 in the fourth quarter. Or the end of the third quarter, South Carolina State scored to go ahead 24 to 7. The game was effectively over. The offense for Jackson State was wofl and Deon to my recollection, I was on the sideline. Sad on the sideline owned his helmet for a good person in the fourth quarter, not in conversation with his team because he was so

mad at them. So I predict at some point we're going to have some action like that again. And who cares? Nobody cares. That's part of what people are watching. We're in the business of the moment. And Dion Sanders is providing this moment and as a broadcaster, as a business owner, you take full advantage of this moment.

I don't care that he's not fake, that he's an underdog by three touchdowns. He's gonna get shlack the next two weeks. I love that the broadcasters are saying, hey, we're gonna go all in, we're creating these viral moments each and every week until it's done. And that's the story of how it works in this business.

You ride something, and then you ride it till it dies, and then you ride it for one or two more weeks, and then you're onto the next thing. Deon Sanders is not going to be a head coach in the NFL next year. He's not going to be the coach of the year. Colorado's not going to be in the college football playoff, but man, it's so good now, and I applaud the networks for taking advantage of it and for realizing that it's not easy to find a story. Is that super applause worthy though? The idea of, hey, here's a bunch of money, would you like to sniff this money?

And then I'm just being like, yes, I'd like to dunk my face into this money. I mean, that's what's really happening here is that they see that maybe this is a peak, right, of the stock chart, because again, to David's point, he alluded to this. They're underdogs, massive underdogs against Oregon number 10, USC number six in the next two weeks, John. Mm-hmm. I don't believe those are the likely outcomes there,

but Deon Sanders is irresistible. The hat, the glasses, the big coat. He's coaching a cowboy team. I mean, it's a remarkable moment and we should enjoy it while it lasts. It's fun. My view of this, David. I'm curious about how you feel about it. Is that the Deon Sanders experience is like a reality television show and it's remarkable.

I don't know if there's a coach, Shy of Nick Sabin, who is this must watch. And I just wonder for you if how essential winning is, right? Because we'll watch reality television as long as it's salacious. You've been on reality television shows yourself. What does it mean to be the villain

of the college football reality television show is that sustainable economically? Well, that's a question for boosters. Here's what's happening in Colorado right now. Is there trying to figure out how long can this last in terms of the finances, how much money can they raise, how do they monetize this moment? And I don't view Dion as the heel, and I certainly am not comparing him to Trump, but there is certainly a part of this when he

was doing the apprentice, when there is something about Dion that is capturing this moment, and he's going to find a way to capitalize on it, and it's not his coach of the Colorado Buffaloes. This story for him ends with him doing something else in the entertainment industry, ends with him doing something when it comes to being in front of a lot of people because as John said, I'm not sure that his love is X's and O's, but I am sure that he does love that camera and he always has and he's found a way to do it. And I think that this will end up being

some sort of reality show platform for Sanders. Yeah, well, it looks like a reality show if he starts losing, it is not sustainable because the boosters and the fans only care about winning having Colorado Buffalo's being an entertainment series. I don't think it's going to work. I predict that at the end of this season, as he ends up five and seven, he will become the VP nominee for the Republican party running with Trump as his

obvious successor. If you're Donald Trump, you jump at that man. You get Don Jr. and Shadour hanging out. A Heisman candidate and Donald Trump Jr. I can see them becoming fast friends. By the way, isn't Shadour a Heisman candidate? He's good. So it's not as though that this is Bishop Sikamore.

It's not as though that it's not a representative team in college football. It's just not a top 10 team or a college football playoff team, but he's not embarrassing himself with the team he put together. No, it does feel though that if you are another college football coach, and I am sure many of them have been grumbling about this quite loudly at this point, it does feel like the networks are rooting for them to be better than maybe they actually are. Not only is there is the star power, but also there's just, well, there is, there's, frankly, there's the star power.

I don't think they care. You're in a moment in the early part of the season where there aren't very many good matchups. The teams have not played, started playing conference games, and this has been the greatest relief for the first cup for week two and three in for ESPN and ABC. It's great. And again, he's pulled off something that I didn't think he could pull off. The question is, and maybe it'll be fun and I'll be wrong and he'll be in the national championship game this year.

So John is selling his stock in Deon Sanders. Are you David? No, I'm buying my stock. But not as a football coach. I'm buying Dion Sanders as an entertainment figure I actually think that he is gonna have a long career as an entertainment figure and he'll realize that coaching on the sidelines It's too big a pain in the neck where you actually have to prepare and do X's and O's and when he sits on his Helbert and has a temper tantrum There are a lot of great players who don't make great coaches because they don't realize what a grind it is.

That's why it's sort of the mediocre players like the Pat Riley's, the Phil Jackson's of the world, who are better coaches than the birds or the Johnson's or the Isaiah Thomas's. So I'm not sure the prime time was ever going to be a good coach, but I love the fact that he's doing it, but I view it as a gateway into something else for him. Yeah, I guess last thing for me is just,

we get to a point where, I don't know, the purposeful myth making around this character, it becomes reality because if you are broadcasting this character in this way often enough, the kids want to go be a part of that reality show. And if this is a business of talent of recruiting, I don't know who's better at recruiting right now than Deon Sanders. So I am all in on Deon, not just because I fear, you know, being in a montage that he puts together to air for recruits of people

who are very wrong about Deon Sanders. The natural next step for him, by the way, is the broadcasting booth. Hmm. It's too much work. He's been there before, right? I mean, well, at least that's a talking head, but not necessarily in Colin, Colin the big game, but yeah, John is smiling as if he would already, John have, he would have already done this, David, is the smile that he's wearing on his face. He's like, yep. I think where he lives is not in a place where he's told where to be what day. And that's a lot of coaching, that's a lot of studio.

He likes doing things on his own schedule is what I would imagine. But it's a pretty good way to see. And I think John has a better chance of being right than wrong, which doesn't happen all that often. But in this case, I think you're pretty safe, John. So in terms of having control over what you get to see and what you get to hear, we get to a business dispute. Charter and Disney, John. Like, let's just summarize some of this in the broadest strokes because there was this big carriage dispute. It blocked millions of viewers from watching ESPN, ABC, FX,

other Disney networks. A deal was reached on Monday, September 11th, on the day of Monday Night Football, Aaron Rogers Day, Aaron Rogers Achilles Day, as it were. And it lasted two weeks nearly in the end. And so the big picture take away for you as somebody who has been responsible for resolving or maybe daring someone to blink during a carriage dispute was what? During my time at ESPN, I think which was 20 years, I don't think we were ever out of

Out of service for more than an hour or two and I can't that was a camera when that was as early 2000s That the schedule for ESPN was deliberately set up so that every distributor could be stared down And that is the deal comes up on August 30th We have the US open. So you're in the middle of a very popular sport in the largest city in the country, followed by Labor Day weekend, 32 games, give or take. Those games would sometimes oddly enough be scheduled to be in the territories in which the distributor had lots and lots of subscribers, followed by the NFL. As great a gauntlet as that is, they

just prove that the cavalry in all cases is the NFL, right? They held out until Monday night when they did not believe they could withstand consumer unhappiness at missing Aaron Rodgers debut on ESPN. Now, however, you also have a situation here where both parties sort of blinked. We always went into this thinking, we're never going to blink, because we don't have to. They will often suffer so much pain, both financially, culturally, that they'll have to blink. This was actually where the two parties came together and said, we're gonna both have to give a little something

because if we don't, we are going to effectively, dramatically accelerate the diminution of pay television and it will be over in a year or two. So they didn't do that, it's gonna live a little longer. I'm sorry, David, you're gonna do it. No, I think a couple of things that we should note because I hear you, John, but back when you were not blinking and winning everything in a landslide,

the discussion and the dispute this time was a little bit different. And while the NFL is usually when you separate the men from the boys as it were, it just happened to be that the Jets for the first Monday night game. I hope you're not suggesting that the NFL schedule was done in a way to make sure that this carriage dispute, when the schedule was put out, which is before the dispute happened, that it would end on September 11th.

It happened to be the Jets playing on that day. It happened to be Aaron Rogers' first game, and it happened to be Carriage dispute with a carrier with such a huge presence in New York. So I think there are a lot of things happen, but were it not for those things, I don't think this dispute would have ended as quickly as it did, because when you look at the results of the blinking

that you so correctly state happened, this was all about what tier different things will be on. Tears are when for the people who have cable. If you have a, let's say you're a part of spectrum and you just get the regular spectrum and you look at the list of channels you have, and they say for plus 5.99, you get this plus this. It's like the menu.

And what Disney agreed to do is they allowed different of their pockets of content to be on different tiers and that was one of the big arguments is where Disney is going to allow It's or want it stuff to be available to spectrum subscribers and where spectrum wants it to be because they need to show value to their people because everyone's getting rid of cable. So John, all of these things, I tell me which of those came up back in early 2000s. My worry is as we get into the 2020s and 30s, is that these carriage disputes are going to get worse, not better, and they're going to last longer, not shorter. Well, I don't know about that. I think the most important thing here is that

spectrum are charter, but to call it charter spectrum, actually said, the pay TV universe is not going to leave us behind in streaming. We sort of think of these things as two different things. It's almost like a bifurcation. And what this says, it's not a bifurcation. You're still gonna get your entertainment bundle from one of the traditional distributors.

And now that bundle, charter spectrum is just made sure is going to include the Disney Plus and the ESPN Plus. So they are still going to be an aggregator. They're just not aggregating nothing but linear channels. They're aggregating streaming services and linear channels. But that aggregating streaming services and linear channels. But that's a huge deal because Disney counted on extra revenue from people having to go outside of the general bundle to get this content.

That's a big blink. It's a big blink because of something we've talked about it length before, which is replacing the amount of money they get from the distributors in a streaming world only will not happen. So, what has happened importantly is the financial connection between charter spectrum and the Walt Disney company was just maintained. It is still now. They were, Charo, Spectrum is paying Disney about $2 billion a year, I believe, or paying

his BN about $2 billion a year. So they have just kept that pipeline going and said, and by the way, we're going to get to keep selling for you when you move all this content into a streaming service. So you're not willing to say that the next time this happens, that there won't be more blinking. Is your view that this was a unique blink because you said you never blinked before. It's a unique blink because the entertainment company that has the greatest ability not to blink is Disney. So they just made a move which will be very important and Charter is arguably along with

Comcasts, one of the two, not arguably, Comcast and Charter are the most important distributors. So one of the most important distributors and the most important source of their content, just agreed, we're going to go into the new world in a more united way than we did before we had this dispute. But is that mean then that you expect more courageous feats to come? Does this mean that there is an understanding now and alignment of incentives here? I believe that spectrum made it clear to the other chain companies,

they will have to make some compromises here and that will actually result in less rather than more. Now, I'm missing one thing David said, because we flipped roles. David said, gee, it must be a coincidence that the jets ended up first on the schedule. I do not know, but I'm not positive that we were always doing a lot of lobbying for the schedule. I don't know when it was announced that Aaron Rodgers was going to the jets or when the speculation began. It would not surprise me if they asked for the jets.

It's a very good point that John just made David, because you usually see the puppet strings and everything. Exactly. And John just got through a story telling you, August 30th was not a coincidence. This was all orchestrated for years to give maximum leverage to Disney. I'm stunned into silence because John spends so much time telling me how uninvolved he

used to get and I would accuse him of always being involved. He denied it, denied it, denied it. Until today, this is the first minute of the first show that he's acknowledged, which now, under all legal principles, allows us to go back to every show we've done and call into question every other time he said, oh no, that wasn't me, I had nothing to do with it. Yeah, this is not the Supreme Court. You don't get to cite precedent in past cases. We're actually destroying all the tapes.

So that evidence can be found of how often we were right or wrong. So speaking of an absence of tapes, part of the story here too is what ABC is doing because they lack original scripted programming, right? This is the other sort of fork off of this story is that ABC is now planning to air a Monday night football game every week of the 2023 season because of the strikes in Hollywood. And this is of course complicating, David.

Explain why it is to you. This is especially interesting. Well, i've been fascinated by this entire story and there's two parts to the story but let's instead before we talk about the strike that's going on with writers and uh... talent and sag after let's talk about what happened just this past monday night when we were forced to watch two monday night football games they called it a Monday Night Double Header, but clearly they don't know what the word Double Header means. It was not a double header.

Double headers when you play one game first and then the second game after. These football games, it was called a simultaneous. We're happening at the same time, 715-815. And ABC, like the other channels, where CBS is now showing Yellowstone, which they're pretending it's new, but it had been out, of course, elsewhere. They're trying to figure out what are we going to do here

to fill our time. And from the broadcaster standpoint, if we can get NFL games, let's do it. From the consumer standpoint, I'm very concerned about not just the double headers that are simultaneous, I'm concerned about the simul casting that goes on, where now there's a game on ESPN

and it's gonna be side by side on ABC. That's their strike plan, is to just show the same game on ABC that they are showing on ESPN, which dilutes the value for ESPN, but they're owned by the same people. So John's going to say it doesn't matter. So there's three different parts of this story that fascinate me, John and Pablo.

Well, I'm happy. And by the way, the roles are continuing to reverse as you express concern for consumers. The consumers, I know. The finally, the first minute of the first show where David Samson expresses concern for the consumer. So he's gonna go back and look at tapes. I'm gonna go back and look at tapes. And see if I can find any evidence

of the concern for the consumer before. We've already destroyed them all. Now this is just a simple mathematical calculation, right? Which is, gee, I don't have anything new to put on Monday night. An NFL game is a wonderful thing. It will increase ratings and I'll sell more ads and I won't really piss anybody off. Nobody, no distributor is going to call and say, gee, I'm mad.

I thought I was paying USPN to get Monday night football and now it's on ABC. Almost everybody gets their broadcast television from a distributor as well. It's not a big deal. By the way, the first time we had an NFL deal and got a wild card game for the first time, they insisted that it be own ESPN and ABC at the same time. So this is not unprecedented. That's totally different. We're not talking about the playoffs. Where the reason why the NFL insisted is people weren't ready to have to go somewhere other than the big three networks to watch a playoff game.

This was, that was the beginning of them allowing the path to what you have eloquently stated could be one day a Super Bowl behind a paywall. So that was just step one. That's like the beginning of, of walking, if you will, as a toddler. And what we're seeing develop here is it's getting grown up. And what's getting grown up and now is its own person is the possibility where we are going to have to go find games in different places, behind different paywalls. And this step backwards, which is what I view these simulcasts as purely a step backwards.

It is purely strike related. And I view that it will and should disappear because you're not training your audience to do what you want them to do. Yeah, maybe. I mean, a lot of people are doing what they call mega cast right, showing the same game with slight differences, the manning cast being the most prominent among them. That's one of one of the few that makes a difference.

You put it on more channels, you drive up the audience slightly. I would be, it'd be interesting to see how many people watch on ESPN, how many people watch on ABC. Our experience was more people watch on ABC. I may be wrong here. I thought it was a pure simulcast. I didn't think it was the Nickelodeon kids show on ABC.

No, no it is. It's a pure simulcast. I did think it was the nicaloni and kid show on a but no it is it's a pure simulcast i'm i did not mean i'm may not been have been articulate the is a pure simulcast but it will enlarge the audience is not that the same number of people will watch and they'll just split it between the espionnevc they will increase the audience by doing this right jordan sounds like what you're saying is that the idea that there's a sanctity to the the only place you can watch a game. That's Longbingan. As Longbingan, the last but the NFL is a last league to sort of accept that, right? I mean

Commissioner Dale for you, Gidele for yours said every game is going to be available to the public. They don't have to pay any fees. do anybody to get all the NFL and there's been a move for where they are willing to go on Amazon and people have to pay and now and there's no distinction really between the ESPN and ABC almost everybody who gets one gets the other. Now does that feel like Roger Gidell to use your term from the previous topic? Is that him blinking? No, no, it's just he is smartly exploiting the, the he's position in the NFL. The bucket of money in front of him. Yeah. He's position in

the NFL is different, right? We're not, you know, yeah, already the NBA playoffs were on the baseball playoffs were on hockey playoffs were on cable. He was proud to say, I'm the last to move my sport to a place where you have to buy a cable subscription to get it. John, I'm extremely confused by what you said and I will grant you you've run ESPN and I've only run a silly baseball team. You're telling me that the person who runs the cable company, Jimmy Dolan, I don't want to talk about him, but someone who they see overcharger, he said, ah, no problem.

Put on ABC. Everyone who has ESPN has ABC. That's total horse hockey because people are paying him for ESPN. And he has to deliver there. The whole thing is ESPN is supposed to deliver original content. I must have misheard you because the original content is supposed to be on ESPN so that people pay for their cable bundle which has ESPN and actually gets value for it. Well, the landscape is shifted at one point. That was true. At this point, they're going to get no calls.

Cable vision is not going to get any calls going, what the hell? The double dipping allegations that have been reported of these complaints that David's referring to, right? The double dipping of, wait a minute, you turned in your homework for this class and you gave me this Monday football game and you're giving it to me again for this other one. You're saying that's also a thing of the past. I don't think this is gonna be much of a story.

I don't think the distributor's gonna be unhappy. I don't think the fans are gonna be confused. Some people watch it on ABC, some will watch it on ESPN. I don't think it's a significant matter. I completely disagree. I think that this is incredibly significant because you've got ABC who's trying to fill its airways.

They're trying to capture something that has been bought and paid for for ESPN as part of their deal with cable companies. And the cable companies to me are not going to take this so easily the way you are. But I guess it'll be another one of our way to see. But I think this is a far bigger deal. Well, given that there are no distribution deals for the Walt Disney company and ESPN until next August 30th, there will be no repercussions to that company for this move. So you can't say, the August 30th is tomorrow in your world, in our world, that's that next

fiscal year. We're world, that's that next fiscal year. We're planning for that already. I'm not even sure where to go with that. So we'll just give it back to Pablo to turn over and keep moving. All I know is that in this world, we have so many more podcasts to do before August 30th. Yes, we do.

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bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, state farmers are. Prices are based on ratings plans that vary by state, coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Don't let it hard. Oh, I like firing people. So I take the opportunity to fire whenever I possibly can, because I can use it as a learning experience for them and try to help them out and try to point out what they did wrong. But in this case, the employee was enough levels below where I was that I did not do the firing, but I had it done within moments of discovery. I'm just like firing people.

It's absurd. It's absurd. Stugats. I'm talking about people who I fire who deserve it, who have done something that actively requires me to fire them. It is my unadulterated pleasure to do so. This is the Don LebertarTar Show with this two gods. So another story that I'd like to podcast with you guys about is actually the financial damage is being dealt to these, to companies like Warner Brothers Discovery, right?

Because of the ongoing strike. And what they're claiming now, because the parent network of TBS and TNT is what foreign brothers discover he is, what they're claiming to the SEC is that there are real financial repercussions here. And I'll just give you a quote with both guilds still on strike today, the company now assumes the financial impact to WBD of these strikes will persist through the end of 2023. And so what this means, of course, draw a very short line to the next point of interest, is that when you're bidding on the NBA rights, John, when you are Warner Brothers' discovery expected to pay X under non-strike circumstances,

but here comes strike circumstances, they're saying prepare for us to give you Y. And Y is that? prepare for us to give you why and why is that? Um, I don't understand this. No more than I understood when speaking to investors, uh, Mr Zazlov said we will not overpay. So he's talking to Wall Street here, right? Give me a little break. We're having strike. Our earnings are going to be down a little bit.

He may be negotiating a little bit. He may be negotiating a little bit, always a bad idea to negotiate any of these deals in public. This will have zero impact strike on what the NBA gets paid for their rights. Well, I could say that it definitely will have an impact because it provides a great excuse for Warner Brothers Discovery to go to the NBA and say, we are not giving you the level of increase that you are expecting, Adam. We want to do business with you. And then Adam will say, but you just signed Ernie and Barkley and Kenny Smith and Shaq.

You can't have them do a show without having rights to the league. And he'll say, back, well, actually, we'll repurpose them the way we've already started to repurpose Barkley. So I think think that strike actually gives leverage to warn her brothers discovery in its negotiation with the mba adam silver i believe is not the only one though maybe you've talked about it over t and crumpets maybe i think he wants the strike done worse than most people um... i don't like it'll ever come up if it comes up he will say fine if you don't want to pay for it

I'll go talk to the one of the other bitters for this There are more bitters for NBA packages than there are NBA packages So if you have want one of those NBA packages the strike does not provide you with leverage But you agree that Warner Brothers Discovery when Adam Silver was doing the back of the napkin calculation when telling his owners that he was gonna try to get a 3x in the next deal, will you at least agree that he had penciled in Warner Brothers Discovery to be a part of that 3x? He has pencil, he has a, I don't know that he looks at every deal and goes, I'm gonna get 3x.

He looks at the totality of his rights and goes, I have a lot of bitters. I can create more packages. I think the absolute, the actual dollars I get overall, I don't know if he ever said 3x. He said it out loud to that speculative. He is gonna get a very big increase and the writer's strike is not gonna have any effect on that increase, in my opinion.

But let's turn it around if you're on the other side, if you are ESPN bidding for the rights and your parent company comes to you and says, listen, your budgets change now. You or the economics have to have changed because you can't be a drag on our earnings in this regard. What is your answer to that? Again, I don't, you, you've never talked anybody into feeling bad for you and giving you a better price because your life is tough. If I go to buy a house and I say, you know, I was going to bid a million dollars on this

house, but you know, I got to lay off at work. So I'd like to bid $400,000 for this house. Will you take it? Yes or no. I won't take it. Somebody else will come along and pay a million dollars. That's what's gonna happen here. Or TNT will buy some of what they have now,

and not all of what they have now. They won't pay the increase. But I don't think has any effect on the price. One thing that John mentioned, almost as an aside, as to this MBA rights deal, which will be up in 2025, is negotiating in public is always a bad idea. When did you arrive at that specific conclusion in this context? There was a moment in time at ESPN where there was some public discussion about the value

of the National Hockey League and a rights agreement, and ESPN did not get the National Hockey League for about 20 years after that. Nobody wants to be negotiated with in public. In this industry, whether it happens in other places it may, in this industry, I never found it anything but deleterious to my discussions with the leagues if I said anything publicly. Other than we love this league, we want to renew our rights, which we said all the time. I even said it when I didn't love the league and didn't want the rights, because as you know, the second best outcome of any negotiation is that somebody else pays way more money

than they think they have to get rights. To get rights. I love that. It's like bidding up. It's what Fox did with the Dodgers TV deal back in the day. They just bitted up, bitted up, and and then walked away and that was the end of it But there are certain times Pablo when negotiating public is actually beneficial to what you're trying to do It can you can press leverage points when you negotiate certain things in public and that's what I think

Warner Brothers has been doing from the beginning because as John alluded to there have been more public statements than usual beginning because as John alluded to, there have been more public statements than usual about re-upping TNT, the timing of re-upping the pre and post game talent. Some would argue is questionable given that they didn't have the right secured post 2025. And from where I'm sitting, it's all been part of a strategy that they're undergoing not to have to pay as much as Adam Silver believes that they are going to get paid. Yeah, I just don't think it's a strategy that works in this instance. I will agree with you because David participated mightily and effectively in one of the great places where you negotiate in public and that is where you scare the shit out of a city that you're going to leave

if they don't build you a stadium. That is well done in public, right? You wouldn't disagree with that. I certainly don't do it in the mirror. I would like to see that though. No, I'm not that guy. I don't practice in the mirror. No, I know you're not Travis Bickle. Travis Bickle, memory practice in the mirror. That's right. That's right. You don't yell, you don't yell one billion dollars. You're looking at me. That's right. That's right.

David yells one billion dollars at himself when he wakes up looking in the mirror. There was a law school class, a little off the subject, where we were, it was a litigation class, where we were learning and part of it was being of going to the Supreme Court, et cetera. And my professor said that, hey, do your closing argument in the mirror.

And this way, you can look at your expressions. You can look when your forehead wrinkles. You can look at where your eyes are looking when you're talking, and that you should use that as a way to help inform your oral presentations. And I did it one time, and I found it so off-putting that I never did that again, and I never have to this day practice in front of a mirror.

I want to say that we're very close to a very deep psychological breakthrough. And I'm not sure David's ready to get there yet, but it's a very revealing attitude. I think we'll come back to this story later when he's more vulnerable, perhaps a psychedelic and microdosing. That's right, that's enough, John.

We'll need a shaman to really unpack the meaning of that realization. One other bit of news onto this Warner Brothers Discovery thing though, is the fact that there is gonna be something when you log in to Max, formerly known as HBO Max, perhaps soon known as just a symbol like Prince, is Belicure Report Sports add-on. A sports tier that will be available at no added cost to all max subscribers through February 29th. And on that add-on you will

get, you will get sports stuff. How does that sound to you guys? Well first I just have to have a little fun with the fact that I guess a committee or a marketing company or a branding company spent weeks and hours did some focus groups and marched into an office somewhere and said, you know what? Reveal, we're going to call this the Bleacher Report Sports add-on. That's right. What does that mean?

Bleacher Report? It's an add-on. I think it's very clear that it is adding on. It actually is something, it's quite a silly title, but it is actually something quite profound. What they're basically saying is, all the sports, is it back to David's earlier point. All the sports that you get on all of our linear channels, you can now get on a streaming service. Duplicative again.

You can watch, it's not the same as being on ABC and on ESPN, but now you're going to be on TNT, NBA's going to be on TNT, and it's going to be on Bleacher Report Sports add-on. What if they have a logo for that yet? BRS-AO. BRS-AO. Br BRS-A-O. Brasau, but can we talk about the money of this? Brasau.

Yeah. What interested me here in this story is the timing of everything. First of all, great marketing. The same people who you want to see chastise for the name, they didn't choose just the way you chose August 30 as a purposeful date. February 29th is a very purposeful date because then you're looking at the NCAA tournament which starts

after that. And the eventual point is that for people who have max pay a certain amount, they expect a certain amount. An add-on is what people are used to. So we're all making fun of it. But the add-on is what we know from our old cable bills, where you get the basic tier, and then you can add on HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, whatever the case is. So adding on is a concept of, oh, more value. It's the basic tier plus. So max, as an entity, you get blank. But if you add on, then you get sports. Why is that so important? Because now we're really getting down to the scary part for team owners, which is, uh-oh, people are only going to pay to watch us who want to watch us.

That's very, very bad. We need people to pay for our content who don't watch us. That's the most important quality of a person is to pay money who doesn't don't watch us. That's the most important quality of a person is to pay money who doesn't actually care about us. Now this is another example of even more pinpointed consumer direct to consumer business and that's very, very scary. It just feels to me like it's of the same nature

as what charter spectrum and Disney decided, right? Which is, we, the distributor, are going to play in both the streaming and the linear worlds. And we as the content creator are going to deliver our content in both a linear and a streaming world. Isn't that what's happening here? It's the same thing. Yes, but you were making fun of the add-on component.

I just am making fun of the name. Oh, but you were making fun of the add-on component. I just am making fun of the name. Oh, but you love the concept. But as a concept, you're all in on what Max is doing. Is that correct? Yeah, all Max is doing is, I mean, it's funny. Everybody thought, pay TV is going to die and it'll be replaced by streaming services. The fact of the matter is, you're going to bifurcate the world into the world, we were going to bifurcate the world into the people were going to bifurcate the world into the people who buy cable subscription

and the people who buy streaming service. Now the fact of the matter is you're barely going to know you're going to call up you're going to call up your distributor and you're going to say I want to get max and you'll get it. I guess I guess you'll have the conundrum of a wait a minute. Did I pay for that twice? I got max and I added on, but I'm still getting TNT on my cable bill. I don't know. It's just, it's part and parcel of it's becoming more confusing world to find where your entertainment is and nothing is more confusing than sports because nothing is more powerful than sports. But it all speaks to you guys are kind of saying the same thing though, which is something

that I've been laughing almost morbidly at as I watch again as you've said on the show numerous times the greatest business in the history of media. Getting people to pay for sports they don't watch, pioneered by the man sitting to my right. As we watch that get disrupted by streaming only for streaming to copy the literal language of cable, as well as inhabit the cable ecosystem. It drives me insane. This is such a beautiful point because what you're actually saying is that streamers realize

that it's a way better formula to monetize by not waiting for people to say what they want, but to make them pay for what they don't know whether they want or not. And they were trying to dare to be different, and they realized, well, this isn't working, we're getting our ass kicked. We can't find a way to make money if we're not Netflix making crappy movies with Sandler. So therefore, we're gonna do what cable did.

The irony is not lost on me because now it's leading cable to blink and embrace the streamers and be part of it because they realize they're going to do exactly what we were doing. And the losers at the end, I'm sorry to say, are going to be the consumers. There it is. There it is. Finally. It is true. I will nominate this for the second event, which will go strictly to pay for view. The March basketball tournament. Some day will be pay for view. Hmm. That's, I mean, that's not even creating such a huge head. Oh, I'm making total sense.

And when you mean pay for view that you can pay for a specific game or do you have to buy the all internment, or are you saying that if you're a fan of Gonzaga, you'll be able to just watch the Gonzaga games. Well, I would say just the principle is, it is such an appealing sport and tournament that people won't it, which means you have demand, which means you can charge for it. So people want, now that you're already unhappy, you can't fare a word of watch things, get ready to where you can't fare a word of watch things, which you also have to pay to get them individually. Right.

I think we're there. And by what it wouldn't you, if I was selling it, I would sell the whole tournament, I'm making it up for $100. You just want to watch Gonzaga. I'll do that for you for 1995. You just want to watch the final four. I'll do that for you for $39.95. But that's happening now in baseball where you can buy the full package

and get every out of market game or go to Nesson and their app or yes and their app and just pay $19.99 and just get Red Sox games or Yankee games. So we're not waiting for this to happen. It's now folks. Yeah, but that in that case, it was regular season volume games. I'm talking about special events like

pay-per-view boxing, pay-per-view combat fighting, pay-per-view Super Bowl, pay-per-view March madness. So you as sports fans get ready, it's gonna be harder to find and more expensive. I just love when technology revolutionizes things only to reinvent old shit. It's like with Elon reinventing. It's the same thing. It's like reinventing. It's to do the same thing. Exactly. Because it works. Elon Musk is like, we're gonna create this boring company. We're gonna do underground. It's like, you're making a bus.

You're inventing a. A. B. B. B. Anyway. The last K-pop. I'm just mad that I missed the golden age of suckling at the teeth of the greatest media machine of all time.

Sorry, that's just me. But speaking of trying to ring every dollar from an uncertain future, the NFL is doing something a little similar. And so far as it is now formed, we're talking about how to brand new things, John. The ownership committee has been formed. The ownership committee grown out of the finance committee has been formed to, and I'll quote this here,

they formed it because they've agreed that it would be appropriate to look at the full range of ownership policies, including permitted debt levels, minimum equity requirements and holding periods, eligible categories of investors, and expanding opportunities for more diverse ownership, per a memo, and David is smiling in a way

that makes me wanna ask him what he's smiling about. I'm a fan of grammar as you know and I'm a fan of purposeful words and lists and I keep track and pay attention. That list is not a coincidence. I was always taught by my 10th grade grammar teacher at Harisman. When you're listing something, put the thing that you really want people to focus on at the start and at the end put the thing that you want nobody to focus on right before the final and

and right before the final and is eligible categories of investors oh now i know what the ownership committee is for to figure out how much sovereign fund money they will accept into ownership groups. That's all they're doing. This is a great example of probably decisions that have already been made and you're going

to form a committee to provide you with the overhang that you can announce at some point. The committee discovered that this would make a lot of sense. Like a further group. If you've ever been a part of a board where you know where you have to get and the board forms a committee to do a report and you know what the result is, but you form a whole committee

and you put people on it, knowing the result of that committee work will be something that was told to you, will be the result. Yes. Every piece of research I ever commissioned, I commissioned to find what I already believed. You would earn a lot of money. You would earn a lot of money.

It's not so different in that way. Pablo, it's funny. People paint me as the face of corporate evil and greed. John just acknowledged exactly what I talk about, which is that it's fixed. We know exactly what this ownership committee is gonna do, and it's gonna make it okay to bring in Saudi money. Just you watch. I mean, this is one of those topics.

I wanna hit a couple of them that we've covered extensively, but I feel like we should update. That is one of those stories. The other one, quickly here, is just it's the crumbling of the regional sports network business. And so David, where are we with this? It's done. So here's the big takeaway.

It's about to be basketball season. So we've got to see what ballies is going to do, what bills it's going to pay, and what the NBA is going to do, copying baseball by taking over the broadcasting responsibility for teams that don't have a network anymore. And you're going to see the ramifications the year after

and the year after because baseball promised to guarantee 80% of revenue for one year, but not two years. So teams are in trouble trying to figure out what to do and it is still the story to watch in the sports business world.

But we know the outcome and this is just the news thing is that the Denver based Rocky Mountain But we know the outcome. And this is just the new thing is that the Denver based Rocky Mountain is going to shut down. It's just another, you know, it's like looking at housing and Detroit, right? It's another, it's another. What?

What? You're saying hipsters are going to move in to the AT&D sports network? No, no, no. I should be careful when we get mail from Detroit. I'm just saying everybody knows that the AT&D sports network. No, no, no, I should be careful. I'm gonna get mail from Detroit. I'm just saying everybody knows that the neighborhood is going to shit and another house has been vacated

and pretty soon this business is going to be gone. I do, David believe, we've been consistent on this in that this is, I think there's no way to replicate either the viewership or the money. I believe that the NBA is i i think there's no way to replicate you the viewership or the money i believe that the nba has a good path towards just making all their games national and getting out of the regional sports business

so another quick hit update concerns neelson we all loved talking about neelson on the last episode and here we have what do we have here we have a bunch of complaints it sounds like that have resulted in what, John? Where are we?

Well, we had a long discussion in the last session about Nielsen agreeing to use Amazon's internal data. This is nothing more, so now they've stepped it back and said, well, wait a minute. And here, this is very much like David's quoting from the list of things. They've suggested that they haven't gained the needed clearance from a key accrediting body.

Now, note that there's nobody listed, nobody knows what this is. I don't know what key accrediting body, Nilson needs to tell them it's okay. My guess is the key accrediting body are the high paying customers they have right now, who said, we're pissed off at you for doing this, and we're gonna quit paying you, and they said, okay, the crediting body didn't pass muster. No, you think David? Oh, they folded, they folded like a tent,

and they did, they did a J-monahe hand. They tried to announce something before they had the permission of their constituents, and they gave it up really, really fast. All right, speaking of giving it up really fast, David, give us the thing that you've been burning on, the thing that you would like to show us at the end of the show here today.

I'll tell you what's on my mind is what's happening in golf and the Ryder Cup team that was named and the Ryder Cup announcing that they don't want the cameras. All of the Netflix cameras and the reality shows from drive to survive, to break point, to full swing, to all of the different ways to try to monetize. And all of a sudden you've got athletes saying, no, no, we don't want you behind closed doors. And my view is, yes, yes, we need to be behind closed doors or else all these shows are gonna fail

and the money that you think is coming your way is going to dry up faster than you think. So I appreciate that athletes like their privacy, players like their privacy, but that's fine, but then you're not gonna get paid. I happen to agree with that. I think this will last a very short period of time with so my mind, and I'm presenting the happy thing every time.

Remember I was happy the women played in front of the 93,000 people. Record crowd. Record crowd. I'm happy to welcome SMU to the ACC. Just feels so good and so right. But remember last time we talked about, people misunderstand that colleges,

media rights is not the plurality of the money. They often get more money from boosters. SMU, we were talking last time, there seemed to be some confusion. Why in the world would they go and not take any media rights? It's a home. They're in the ACC. They're in the power conferences. They raised $100 million.

I think $200 million have been pledged from boosters. It's a very well-to-do alum group. And they have just proved that they made the right decision. It worked for the ACC, it worked for SMU, go Mustangs. $1 are fungible. That was all money that was gonna go to players. All in IL money and they said, oh, let's give it in honor of the fact that we're happy to be in the ACC

as though they found $100 million from a low hanging tree, give me a break. You think this is the phony express? Yes, certainly do. There it is. So many, so many new brands we've decided to give away for free on today's show. That was John Skipper, that's David Sampson.

Thank you to you, the consumer for tolerating us. They consumer advocate, David Sampson. That's right. Goodbye. that's David Samson. Thank you to you, the consumer for tolerating us. They consumer advocate, David Samson. That's right. Goodbye.