The Press Box - Can the Media Shove Joe Biden Off the Ticket? Plus, A.I. Al Michaels and the NFL’s Big Loss in Court.

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

Hello media consumers! Bryan and David talk for the first time since the presidential debate. They discuss whether or not the media could push Joe Biden off the ticket and have an open Democratic convention to choose the candidate (1:45). Later, in the Notebook Dump, they get into Al Michaels agreeing to allow NBC to use his voice for AI for olympics coverage (40:50) Then they discuss the antitrust lawsuit and the NFL loss regarding the ‘Sunday Ticket’ (51:06). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, humanoids. It's the Maskman David Shoemaker. It's a new era in professional wrestling, and that means a new era here at the Ringer Wrestling show. Kaz here, every Monday and Thursday hang out with me and my guys' shoes on the Masked Man show. And Ben Cruz here. Come kick it with me, Cal and Brian on Tuesdays for Ringer Wrestling Worldwide, where we hit on the most interesting headlines and even react to some of Maskedmans and even your hottest takes. Don't tap out. Tap in to the Ringer Wrestling Show feed now on Spotify. or wherever you get your podcasts. Worldwide. David? Yes.

This is the first chance you and I have had to talk since the presidential debate. Where the old guys certainly did not have it. That's correct. What did you think while you were watching that thing? That's a good question. I would like to say I was, there was an element of disbelief. but it was more just sort of disappointment in myself that I expected any other outcome at any point.

I don't know. I mean, it's just so rare that like the sort of public opinion, conventional wisdom comes true in such a resounding fashion that it just seems like I can't believe, I can't believe that life is the meme that everyone else had already sketched out for it. You know, it's just, just sort of sad. Word we heard a lot of the last few days is gaslighting. You felt that you gaslighted yourself into believing something was going to happen

that was not a Biden clip that had been circulated around conservative media and played on the Jesse Waters show. Yeah, exactly. So the question the media is pondering right now is a simple one. Is Joe Biden going to be on the table? ticket in November. Democrats have talked about this mostly on background. A lot of Democratic sources flying around in news articles, but they have been publicly circumspect. And David, it's the media that has been giving Biden a shove. The New York Times editorial board

has a piece out that says, to serve his country, President Biden should leave the race. Yeah. It's one of those pieces that was so important that I got a formal email from the Times notifying me that the piece had been published. Yeah. David Remnick and the New Yorker. I got an email about that piece too. Mm-hmm.

There is a piece saying that David Remnick wants Biden off the ticket. Joe Scarborough, who is Joe Biden's favorite TV host, though he kind of walked it back. Claire McCaskill on MSNBC, Van Jones on CNN, the editorial boards of the Chicago Tribune an Atlanta Journal Constitution. Also giving Biden a little shove. The knee-jerk take care was that this will only harden Joe Biden's resolve to actually stay on the ticket. Yeah. What do you think the collective influence of all these media institutions telling him to get out will actually be?

It's a good question. I mean, the hard and the resolve thing, I think that's probably closest to the truth, although I don't think I would read it exactly that way. I mean, I don't think it's a situation where he's like, oh, yeah, we'll prove these dodo's wrong. Bingham and Applebaum doesn't tell Joey Biden what to do. Yeah. But I do think that there's an element to which you sort of, whatever narrative you fed yourself to get yourself. to this point sort of

calcifies, right? It's just like what they, what all these people are missing is the reason, is what I've been telling myself for the past 18 months, which is that I'm the only person

who can possibly do this. How about his whole life? How about 80 plus years, right? This is the Joe Biden mythology. How many times have you heard him say that in a speech? It's not whether you get knocked down, Joey. It's whether you get back up. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there's a sort of like reverse symmetry or, you know, just perverse poetry to this, which is that four years ago, even eight years ago, he wanted to be the savior, right? He wanted to be dragged into the race and could never quite, never quite stage the dragging, right? And there's a world in which he declined, he would decline to run this term and would get that opportunity. to get dragged into the race. If whoever else didn't seem to be doing the job, the other candidates weren't doing the job. But now he's in that reverse position of sort of people are attempting to drag him out of the race. It's very much like the athletes we listen to all the time

who are always talking about the doubters, no matter how successful they are. And with Biden, there are enough data points to justify the mindset. Yeah. Barack Obama dissuades him, from running in 2016 to clear the field for Hillary. He is nobody's number one draft choice in 2020,

almost until the moment that he wins in South Carolina primary and he's suddenly everyone's number one draft choice. He's going to lose the midterms along with the Democrats in 2022, and then he doesn't lose the midterms as badly as everybody thinks he's going to lose. You can see all those data points there, fueling that, you know, that idea. No, no, they keep telling me they want me off the ticket. Keep telling me they don't want me to be their nominee.

But I'll show them. Yeah. As for the media stuff, I think the New York Times editorial board saying they don't want Biden on the ticket is kind of a shrug, especially to Biden land. Sure. I think it's really hard to be a Democrat. candidate running against every media institution. Media institutions that are fiercely anti-Trump.

I think that gets to a point where it is hard to sustain that. Will that cost you votes? I don't know. I don't know that we're in a period where that somebody's going to be like, okay, the times is out, that I'm out, or I'm just going to stay home in November, some of that's sympathetic to Biden to begin with, then sympathetic to Democrats.

But I do think that's a very, very tough position. And I also think that if there are Democrats making the case to Biden's advisors and even to Biden himself, these are exhibits, right? David Remick doesn't want you to run. Nick Christoff, a guy you read in the Times, doesn't want you to run for president. Still waiting for the David Brooks column since he's apparently one of Biden's favorite columnists. not sure he was interviewing Steve Bannon today so I'm not sure he hasn't gotten around to it yet but

that will be another one yeah and at some point if you get to not just exhibit A but exhibits A through Z I think that has to be in the calculus for Democrat for Biden for Biden and for almost any Democratic candidate in the age of Trump yeah I mean but again there's the causification of the argument internally and also just the internal polling whatever i mean it's not like they don't have you know reams of poll data that you know self-serving poll data that tells them that they're the only people that can do it right so i mean that certainly inside the biden campaign they have all i'm sure they can formulate all the numbers they want to say that we're the only people that have a chance of of beating donald trump so you know you can say well again with these

people don't know is that it's not going to get any better any other way. Like I really am doing this for the good of the country. But I think you're right. I mean, I think that it's, yeah, it's like it's like, you know, you can only stick your fingers in the leaks of the dam for so long, right? And then, and now with everybody talking about it, this now becomes if it wasn't, I mean, to the degree that it wasn't already, the entire narrative of the campaign, what interview is he going to give that this isn't questions 1 through 10? You know,

what, like, what can he possibly do? And I do think there are people that set it out because it, because all of these, the cumulative effect of all of this, all of these stories is to,

even to a small degree, paint Joe Biden as less than the paragon of honor and virtue. and selfless service of the country that he would paint himself as, right? And that's, I mean, all that we're talking about, I mean, I've been saying for months, see me seriously, this whole election,

no matter what direction it goes, is going to be decided by 1,500 people in Pennsylvania. And, I mean, it's, we're talking about a real, like, marginal impact having a real, like, cataclysmic effect, you know? And, you know, so it all, it all really, really matters. Now, you said, like, you know, it's impossible to ignore all this stuff. It's not impossible. I mean, you didn't use those words, but it's certainly not possible.

They can keep their heads down and keep chugging along, and there's nothing that's going to stop them. Because on some level, just like all those op-eds aside, you do have to appeal to his virtue. You do have to appeal to his sense of right and wrong, because that's really the only, really practical way that he won't be on the ticket. And again, going back to the first point I made, most of these are procedural arguments, right?

I mean, it's not saying that he's not a better presidential candidate. He's not a better option than Donald Trump. It's saying that there is a, that after that debate, the path to victory looks less than secure. Yes, the times came out and said, we will endorse him if he is the candidate in November. We just don't want him to be the candidate in November. Well, if you talk about the arguments that are going to really affect people, I mean, that's kind of, of what John Fafro said in his statement after the debate, right? He was just like, don't get me wrong. We're going to full, like, wholeheartedly,

full-throatly endorse whoever the Democratic candidate is, but this is really gives you pause, right? And I think that's the sort of thing that could potentially have more of an effect than a public op-ed. Not that that statement, it wasn't public. But again, then I think that they, as if you're the, if you're the Biden campaign or Biden camp, then you go back to point one, which is, if you're not saying he's a

wrong candidate, you're just saying that the path is uncertain, right? That the path to victory looks bad. Well, we have all the information we need to tell us that it would look worse

with anybody else. Right? And so... Yeah, and you saw that passive aggressive note they sent out where they had all the other potential candidates and how they would fare in a matchup against Trump. I mean, it's false. I mean, obviously, we all know this.

Like, you just don't know until somebody's on that stage, right? It's not like Trump walked in the door eight years ago with a 65% approval rating amongst Republicans or whatever. I mean, you just get the attention and everything changes. And frankly, I mean, whoever it would be that would replace him is in a terrible position. I mean, what kind of attention are you even going to be able to get? Are you going to stand a debate stage next to Trump?

Even if it happened tomorrow, you know, I mean, these are, there's a whole lot. There's just a raft of question. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, um, If you're the Biden campaign, you know, the insistence upon what you've been doing so far is not difficult to imagine. It's not. It's not. By the way, so if Biden is not on the ticket November, then the Democrats would likely choose their nominee through an open convention. This David has been the dream of political reporters since at least as long as I've been in the business. Yeah. And I think it predates me about 30 years.

Like every convention since 1970. Yeah. It's been a done deal. And there is this whole sort of, you know, it's, it's not quiet, right? Like it is political reporters lusting to be Jack Germand and Johnny Apple. We're going to go to a convention where stuff is decided. Yeah. No, the idea of doing the convention, it's like the, it's like, it's like a draft day

starring Kevin Costner except like the Democratic Party version, right? It's like, just imagine if all these things fell into place and we figured out the next president on the fly, you know, like it's, there's just a, there's a huge amount of just like storytelling, just narrative appeal to the whole thing. Oh my God. That's the perfect analogy and also the perfect analogy within the ringer universe. So thank you for nailing that times two. Yeah.

And the pains I, the pains I feel are one is it's a big crazy cosplay fantasy. booking story. And then the other pang, I feel, is that very common journalistic pang, where things were more fun in our profession at an earlier time. Yeah. We all just missed the golden age. If Shoemaker and I had had the press box 30, 40 years earlier, Muhammad Ali would be coming on every week talking to us about politics and the media and Howard CoSalle and everything

else. We just missed it. But if we could have an open convention. the smoke-filled room, David, but without the smoke. We could bring some of that bad. It's a room. It's a room at the United Center. That's basically what we got.

A room in Chicago. You know, and that, for whatever reason, this is what makes me think this is unlikely to happen. That Biden will, in fact, be on the ticket because it just seems like we would be indulging that journalistic fantasy. Oh, yeah. To such a crazy degree, it never actually happens. But, you know, the Red Sox didn't finally win the World Series. The Cubs finally did win the World Series. Sports writers got to cover that, unlike sports writers who had existed decades and decades before.

So could political writers finally get that convention they've lost to? Yeah, I mean, I don't discount the fees of the plausibility, I guess, in a very general way of a brokered convention or whatever. but like I don't think it would actually come down to it the way that people imagine it. I think if on the just really, I think, unlikely chance that it happens, it would just be a situation where Biden stepped down and everything was prearranged again before the convention, right? Everybody coalesced behind Kamala Harris for instance. Like the vote would occur at the convention, but I don't think there would be any background.

I don't think there would be any need to fill the rooms with smoke. I think that everything we pretty well smoked out before it got there. We'll see. You're skeptical, but there's a lot of political reporters praying to the heavens. Oh, I know they are. I mean, listen, that would be a lot of fun. I mean, for whatever it means, democracy aside. But yeah, I just, it feels impractical to me.

All right, we're going to turn off the piano music and give you more debate fallout. What do reporters covering Biden think about his performance? how Team Biden tried to get the candidate in front of cameras Friday morning after the disaster. Did CNN, David, benefit from this historic debate? Plus, Al Michaels is going to be AI, and the NFL has taken an L in court. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer, podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Brian Waters here with you.

I want to talk to you, David, about the Biden beat. Hmm. This has been a very interesting beat because it's been consequential, as any White House would be, without being super compelling moment to moment, especially compared to what covering Biden's predecessor was like. Mm-hmm. All of a sudden, the Biden beat has become incredibly interesting. What are the details we want?

want to know right now. Well, we want to know what was it like in Biden's camp after the debate. What has it been like with the Biden family this weekend in Camp David as they sit there together talking about what should we do going forward? We got a bunch of those details from Katie Rogers of the New York Times, among other people. If only Joe Biden can decide to self-definitrate from the Democratic ticket. What is going on in Joe Biden's mind? Yeah. We had a daily readout with Donald Trump

on days when he did nothing but watch TV in order of a cheeseburger. Had very, very little of that kind of stuff with Biden. But all of a sudden, that is that's the good stuff, right? Yeah. That's what we need.

The other thing that's interesting about the Biden beat is this is not an administration that likes the press. Not a super comfortable thing to say, considering Donald Trump seemingly wants to sue every journalist ever for a liable. But you start to see the downside of shutting out the press. For instance, Max Taney and Semaphore was writing about those age stories that reporters have been trying to write about Joe Biden for months, if not years. And Alex Thompson, who writes for Axio, says this, the White House is very, very important. effective at working those stories. And the extreme lack of access to Biden makes it difficult

to report them. The comms team gaslights, deploys Trump what aboutism and earnestly delivers sometimes false denials. You and I have talked about the public side of this debate about covering Biden's age and his stamina and his ability to run for a second term. We've seen the public side of it, which is, hey, they're not putting Biden on TV. they're putting them on the smartless podcast. Yeah. It's also a private side that is leaking out into the universe, which is all those reporters who took their stories

to Biden's PR team, to Biden's comms team, and now feel, after watching that debate like they were misled or maybe lied to. And I'd also put the backdrop here that this has not been a terribly rewarding beat for the last couple of years. Yeah. access, no big book deals. And now you find out that on the biggest story that you could have reported,

you were Stonewold. Yeah. It's a fascinating, I don't know, predicament is the right word, but place that we find ourselves with that group of reporters, all of whom have been must reads over the last couple of days. Yeah. Alex, Ian Axios, Tyler Pager in the Washington Post, Katie Rogers in the New York Times.

I'd also add to you, there are really two conflicting ideas in front of us right now. Go on. Idea number one is what Max Taney was writing about in Semaphore. That the media somehow didn't get a story about Biden's lack of ability to run for re-election. Yeah.

They didn't get that piece of evidence that would have helped everyone see last Thursday coming. Yeah. Idea number two, is the one you and I heard every time we mentioned Biden's age on this podcast, which is the media was covering the age question too much. Yeah. That you were looking for false equivalencies, you dastardly reporters.

So you kept saying, hey, you're Joe Biden's old. So now we've arrived at this place where the media covered the age question too much, but didn't effectively report on. Is that the best way to describe it? it's a good question I mean I don't think the what aboutism is necessarily incorrect

even if it's used in a sort of pointed fashion from the Biden by the Biden campaign but yeah I mean the story was there as it's being told now this is you know the people who covered Biden closely we're talking about his age to an incredible degree more than it was ever

talked about in public and so and that's I mean that's not exactly damning but that's a significant sort of isolated data point but yeah I mean I think that's probably close to right you know

it's I mean it's a really in some ways is sort of implausible a situation as we were faced with during the Trump years where it's just like you kind of like the institution isn't really built for I mean this is going to sound extreme

but isn't really built for someone to exploit it in such a way right? I mean it's like if you don't we would all hope that if this were a that if his cognitive situation were such that he couldn't serve his president or even to the extent that it was just like oh his you know stutter has reemerged the point where it's going to make it implausible for him to get reelected you would hope that our system is built in such a way that it requires the people it requires Biden or the people close to him to be forthright about that and that's not and they haven't been right so um it's it's a really it's a really tough situation i will say make one point about the media's role.

I think one of the really difficult things that the mainstream media was faced with was that Biden's age, cognitive decline, however you want to say it, was being covered to an incredible extent by the online right. And they were doing it in such bad faith. Like, those stories would have been there

if Biden had slipped zero, right? If Biden were the exact same person he were four years ago, hell, if he were the same person who were 12 years ago. Right. All that stuff would have been there anyway. And so I think that they were, a lot of media outlets are faced with this weird conundrum where it's like there's a real story here.

But it looks like that we're just dogpiling. It looks like that we're adding to this false. Because the narrative is weirdly at the same time true and false, right? The narrative that was being spread by a lot of right wing outlets was not necessarily based in reality. Right? and so it puts it puts you can understand how that would put an editorial department in a very uncomfortable position to not to know exactly how to proceed. I completely agree.

I think this is one of those stories where everybody is right up to a point. Yes, the way Biden's age circulated through right wing Twitter and Fox News was beyond mendacious. Yeah. at the same time it wasn't nothing. Yes, when you look at the coverage of his age over the last couple of years in mainstream, in the mainstream press, it did feel a lot of times like, hey, we're just, we have to put something on the other side of the scale here. Yeah. Donald Trump wants to end democracy. Donald Trump tells tons of lies.

We've got to put something on the Biden side. Or we're not doing our job. And this is what we got. Is his age? Is he too old to be president? is he too old to run for re-election. Yeah. That can be true.

But at the same time as we saw Thursday night, it wasn't nothing. Oh, yeah. It wasn't. It wasn't the instinct to ask those questions was not wrong. Completely wrong. It wasn't made up. So you do find yourself in the thing. It's like everybody's a little bit right.

Uh-huh. Everybody is at the same time. It was interesting, too, to see Evan, Osnos make the media rounds. He was on CNN right after the debate. He interviewed Biden the White House in January for New Yorker profile. Remember, that was one of Biden's big and to that point only mainstream media appearances. And he wrote in that profile, his voice is thin and clotted and his gestures have slowed, but in our conversation, his mind seemed unchanged. He never bungled a name or a date. Well, then Osnows tells semaphore over the weekend.

The Biden I spoke with in January was very different from the Biden. We saw. on that stage Thursday night. So now what you have is people going back over their reporting and saying, did I miss something? Is this just like how normal people age where people have great moments and they have not so great moments? We've all seen that with our relatives. And just because somebody has a bad moment doesn't mean that is their permanent state, right? Things are hard to sort of differentiate.

But I thought that's been an interesting little part of this media coverage as well. speaking of the media David the Biden family went to camp David over the weekend they were at great pains to say this was a scheduled trip this is not us huddling after a bad debate and trying to figure out the way forward but one thing they were doing over the weekend was taking pictures with Annie Leibovitz now sometimes David American politics begins to resemble the satirical novel written about American politics Yeah. If Christopher Buckley had turned in a chapter in which a Biden-like character had the debate he did on Thursday night and then went to Camp David because of a pre-sched photo shoot with America's most famous celebrity photographer, would you as an editor have sent the chapter back to Christopher Buckley and said, this is a little on the nose even for you?

Yeah, probably so, yeah. Yeah, I just think you just, you know what, that wouldn't really happen. This has to be at least somewhat plausible. No, it really happened. Also, Jill Biden, First Lady on the cover of Vogue, just released today. The day after the debate, David, I was interested in the way team Biden wanted to get him in front of the cameras. To get a new clip that could play on social media and the TV networks that would at least push those clips from Thursday night down the queue a little bit. it. Yeah.

You also knew that when Biden did get in front of the cameras, he'd have some kind of line ready about the debate. So here's what he said at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina on Friday morning. I don't walk as easy as I used to. I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. No. I know. I know I know right from wrong But I know how to do this job Shades of Toby Keith

In there Not as good as I once was, right? A little bit of the American dream A little bit of the American dream Dusty Roads, you know North Carolina and General Southeastern Wrestling legend You know, my heinie's a little bit too big

That whole thing But yeah, yeah I mean, given what you had to work with, that's fine. Absolutely. I get the point. But team Biden also sent out a fundraising pitch from James Carvel asking for contributions after the debate. And as the aforementioned Tyler Pager pointed out, Carval had just told Axios that

he didn't think Biden would be on the ticket in November. It's a very, very chaotic moment. You know, it's always interesting when you see political campaigns. I didn't know pleasure in any of this, but when you see political campaigns in a moment where they're like, what do we do now? Yeah. This was this was not on the bingo card, as the kids like to say. Saw that on CNN right after the debate. For me, one of the most compelling hours, two hours of cable news coverage I've seen in a long time.

You had Kamala Harris going on with Anderson Cooper. And getting the kind of interview that I have not seen a non-Trump president or vice president get in a long time. Yeah. Very contention. She, by the way, was praised for how she held up and defended Biden. Benji Sarlane, who was on the pot on Thursday, said this, that whole post game on CNN was like watching history unfold in real time. Mm-hmm. we went to John King first and he was like,

let me just tell you what has been on my phone for the last hour and a half. Yeah. Major Democrats saying, we got to do something. And it wasn't just people, David, being like, hey,

he had a bad debate. That was obvious enough. It was people saying, there are Democrats saying, maybe we should make a change. And then people like Van Jones suggesting, hey, maybe we should make a change.

Yeah. They were saying, the thing seconds after the debate was over. That was just, that was wild for me to watch. Yeah, it was a really incredible scene. I would, I would have to imagine that the world of like high dollar Democratic donors is probably flipping out right now, right?

I mean, I'm sure they, the, the, the types of world these people live in. I mean, they probably feel like they've been misled. Right. All the money they've donated to a campaign that's not capable. I mean, it's not a real campaign in so many ways, you know? I mean, it's got to be, I mean, that's, this is probably the only time in like, you know, American political history where I'd be actually more interested in hearing what the donors have to say than just about anybody else. But, but yeah, I mean, watching that broadcast on CNN's was at the end on all the networks. It's just sort of. it was amazing. My other thought about that postgame show was so Abby Philip and Caitlin Collins, who normally primetime hosts on CNN were part of the panels. They were effectively analysts. Yeah.

They were both really good. Yeah. And it reminded you of how good they are at being analysts. Yeah. And I'm like, as CNN lumbers forward into the future. I want to see that quality of them become more of, become more of a quality you see on their primetime TV shows. Well, I mean, this is part of just the conundrum of the modern cable news industry, right?

It's like you have your, you hire somebody like Ivy Phillip or whoever because of, you know, that talent. But to get your money's worth, you know, or to effectively build the star to make them, to get them out there as much as you can, you have to have them on a daily show. And, you know, obviously the, the directive from on high is that daily shows

are not position driven, right? I mean, it's, especially on CNN. At least on CNN, yeah. Yeah. They're more like BBC style hosts. Yeah. I mean, and frankly, anywhere else, I mean, it's like if you're,

unless you're, unless you're like pretty partisan, it doesn't really help. It doesn't necessarily help to try to be an analyst first and foremost, right, in terms of just drawing viewership. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, that's it. But that seems to be the vibe that I get. It's like you're either, you know, on MSNBC or Fox doing a, doing sort of a partisan bit or, you know, you're pretending to play it straight. Well, see, that's what we think.

But wasn't the whole idea of the Chris Lictier that that was really a false choice that people like Jake Tapper, have a way of commanding the camera. And in fact, CNN throughout all the Trump years, even when it was like Don Lemon and whomever it was in primetime, had a way of doing that by letting the host use all of their personality, used all the golf clubs in the bag, and not try to be this.

Hey, I'm just a point guard here. I'm asking good questions. I'm doing good interviews, right, which Caitlin Collins does on a nightly basis. But you just let them lean into it. It doesn't have to be a partisan thing.

I think there's a way of doing it where it's just, we've now gone so far down the trail of personality-driven television, and these people are good personalities. That's the thing. They're interesting. They're interesting when they talk about politics that way. That you just let them do that. Yeah. That's the way forward. I don't know what the other way forward would be. It's true. Because I don't think there's a way to do it without being MSNBC or Fogg. No, you're probably right. You let him get too interesting and they'll be hosting Good Morning America in six months instead of working for your way to do it. network. So that's that's that's that's that's the TV business. Yeah. Uh, we got some numbers on the debate. Uh, these are from Dylan Byers over at Puck.

CNN 9.53 million people. Mm-hmm. Fox News 9.28 million people. So it was the CNN debate produced by CNN with CNN moderators. And CNN narrowly beat out the number of people who watched the CNN debate on Fox News. Yeah. And if you look, it was really, really split between all the networks. C&A, excuse me, ABC, 8.7 million, NBC 5.1, MSNBC, another four.

CBS, nearly 5 million. The Big Fox, 3.48 million and on and on and on. I'm really interested to see what, what, if any, happy effect this has for CNN? Mm-hmm. It's a good question. I mean, when you want, it makes total sense, at least, especially in retrospect. respect, right? I mean, it's like, it's like when you're watching, you know, playoff football and the,

and the post game shows bleed into the pregame shows in the other channel, all of a sudden it's like the put, you, you realize it's already four o'clock, and the game should have started, and you're still watching the person in the booth, and you're like, oh, shit, what channel am I supposed to be on? The, you know, the vast majority of people who are tuning into this, or tuning into the, they turn onto the channel they always watch. And then if the debate just comes on, then why don't know if you change the channel to the, even if it says CNN in the corner, you know, you're not going to, it's like you want to crisper

feed or something. And I think especially for a network like Fox, they be, they be totally content for other, for the other network to handle these things all the time. Because their network, their viewership's probably not going to change a single bit. And, you know, and then they can, they can get the benefit of airing it and also get the benefit of tearing it down. right? I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a absolutely, like, perfect situation for them. That's what's so fascinating about it. I mean, it feels very flip to compare it to the peacock game. But the whole idea of putting a thing on peacock that people really wanted to watch was that they had to subscribe to your service. And a lot of them, and the numbers

bore this out, forgot that they subscribed to the service or decided they liked what was there and still subscribe to Peackeye. With CNN, it's a debate, so it seemed untenable to say, hey, let's just only put this on CNN. The only way you will possibly watch this, a presidential debate. But then you share it. So what you're hoping for is that people either just, you know, had the brand stamped into them by that little bug in the corner of the screen. Maybe they turn to CNN to watch it because they just thought of it as a CNN debate and they liked what they saw around the debate, like that post-game show I talked about, it's an interesting calculation. Of course you would want it, right?

Of course, because look what happened and because you're CNN and you need anything you can get right now. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, regardless of how effective it's been, we've talked a million times. One of CNN's greatest assets is the sort of perception, you know, of CNN. Right? we like we we don't even if you don't watch CNN you acknowledge that they are the most unbiased of the news sources you acknowledge that the best at covering international conflicts

which we've discussed several times we've acknowledged that there they can kind of be just if not above the fray a little bit distinct from the fray more often than not uh this certainly helps that you know that this that adds to that line on their resume um it's almost like you know being is like PBS hosting a debate or something right see and gets that sort of, great, how much that really affects their ongoing viewership, you know, kind of hard to monetize that sort of feeling.

All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds. A familiar voice from the sports broadcast booth will be speaking to us as AI. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

Send your nominees to at the press podcast. pod where they are always, always gratefully received. David, some sad news from Tenseltown. After nearly a quarter of a century. Only in journalism, city name. Go ahead. You'll see why I went for the synonym here. After nearly a quarter of a century, the Jim Henson Company is selling off its historic lot in Hollywood.

There's an overworked Twitter joke to write. Everyone, this is the moment we've practiced for. We need to get the Muppets back together to put on a show to save the studio. Thanks to not Chester Lemon for that one. If you think of us as the Bunsen and Beaker of the media beat, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right.

In the notebook dump, I know that passage of time jokes are a little bit cheap. Yeah. But David, the Summer Olympics are this month. Oh, my God. opening ceremonies coming up July 26th. And NBC did something interesting. They went to Al Michaels,

who we know is the Broadcaster Emeritus at that network, former play-by-play man at Sunday night. Football, of course. And NBC said to Al Michaels, we'd love to have you on our Olympics coverage. But Tom Clutt explained all this in an excellent piece last Wednesday in Vanity Fair.

You should all follow Tom if you like the kind of things we talk about. The piece is called how NBC convinced Al Michaels to embrace his AI voice for Olympics coverage. So as part of the coverage, NBC is going to have daily recaps on Peacock. Here's your last 24 hours of Olympics action. And A.I. Al is going to narrate. those recaps. I guess I had two questions.

Maybe we had the same ones. Go ahead. First question was just like, is Al okay with this? Yeah. Is it good for Al? Because when we talk about AI, the first person you're concerned about is who's,

who is being channeled by the robot. Yeah. Al's okay with it. Frankly, it was astonishing. It was amazing. he told Clutt in a phone interview, and it was a little frightening. Michael's was left in awe,

Clut writes, of the nuance, the way it captured his intonations and verbal subtleties. It was not only close, it was almost 2% off perfect, Michael said. I'm thinking,

whoa. So Al was okay with him using his voice and also surprised that the AIA bought sounded like Al. Yeah. Question number two, David,

is this good for broadcasting? I mean, what do you mean by broadcasting? Is this good for like the studios, like the networks? Or is this good for like the way that we experience broadcasting? All the above, certainly. I mean, it's easy to point the finger at NBC and just be like, yeah, sure it's good for them. Although I'm not really sure how it's good for them. I mean, if you're, if you're the agent, right, aren't you saying, well, okay, to get him to do this,

in real life, we'd we charge you $10 million. So our price is $10 million, right? I mean, it's not like you're accepting a discounted rate. And if you're at B.C, like, clearly he's available. Like, what, like, what is the benefit to doing it the fake way? I don't quite understand. It's just this gateway drug situation that everybody's perpetually scared of. It's just like, but now we own Al Michaels. And when we combine him with, you know, Bob Costas in 10 years, and that'll be an NBC proprietary AI bot and we don't have to pay anybody and we never have to pay an announcer again.

I mean, that's the concern, right? That's good for NBC, I guess. You know, but I don't, is that good for us? I guess only time we'll tell. So that was my, that was my same question. It's like, if you wanted Al to detract the recaps every day, why wouldn't you just send a script out to L.A.? Yeah.

have Al walk to a microphone to get him to do it. So the answer to this in Clutz article is that there could be nearly seven million variants of the recaps based on what you're interested in. There's also, so there's like there's two layers of AI here, right? There's AI coming up with a recap. There's AI coming up with the recap for me. So there's not enough time for real Al to narrate all the recaps. So I believe that's why this is happening.

Jesus Christ, are we going to spend the entire Olympics, the entire Summer Olympics, just like meticulously listening to recaps to figure out where AI got it wrong? Is that just going to be like our, the press box beat for this entire thing? It might be. We might replace the overworked Twitter joke for a couple of weeks and just did AI get it wrong. Your point about the gateway drug is exactly right. because this is the gateway drug,

this is the starting gun on the 100 meters for how soon can we have AI call a game? If not at NBC Sports, then somewhere. Yeah, I mean, it's probably more plausible

as much as we like the nuance of our favorite announcers and, you know, the, the, the feel, that kind of Eureka feeling

of a great call at the exact right. time, if they can match, if they can find like whatever lilt, whatever tone is most pleasing to, not just the viewers at large, like you said, in a way that can be modified to the listener, I mean, as much as I appreciate any number of sports announcers, anyone that's played like a sports video game in the past 10 years, especially the past like couple, say, you know, five years knows that like a video game that's barely reacting the things in front of

you gets you about 65% of the way there. You know? Jesus. It's like, so it's, we're not that far off. I'm sure by the end of this Al Michaels experiment, they'll know exactly how close they are. That idea is incredibly depressing to me. Yeah.

I mean, I think of announcing as a minor art form. Oh, I agree. I agree. I have spent way too much of my life writing about announcers. I agree with that. You also agree. But what interests me about them is not their contract situation, not how much money they make, but what they do. Yeah. Totally.

Who they are. Because I find their skill to be mind boggling. It would be something I could not do in a million. in years. No, I completely agree. But the thing that they have going for them is that they're like human computers, right? I mean, they can do, they operate on a, they process faster than you and I could ever do. And now, but you know, this is John Henry shit, you know, it's like now, now they're going up against actual computers. It was going to win. God. I remember saying that about Al in particular, the Patriot Seahawks Super Bowl. Yeah. Well, there's the interception in the end zone.

He goes, Malcolm Butler. And I'm thinking, how do you? did he get Malcolm Butler's name out of his mouth? Yeah. And how did he get the perfect surprise, shock, outrage on that call instantaneously? Well, every one of the football experts that I was sitting with the press box that they were like, who's that? Yeah. He had it. Like, it was, it was amazing. You're right. It was computer light. So now we're coming up with this idea where they would actually be the alternative would be the computer. Both Clutt and Richard Deich

listened to AIL or at least the test drive of it and said it did sound remarkably good. I would just like to reserve the right to be the judge of that. I mean, I respect their opinions. Strangely more so than I respect Al's reaction to it. One, because he's getting paid a lot of money, and I'm sure he's contractually obligated to be positive about this.

But two, because, you know, most people who do audio for their careers, not most, many people who audio for their careers probably couldn't pick their own voice out of a lineup, right? I have an audio lineup. You don't necessarily listen to yourself a lot that you don't think that's how you sound, you know? I mean, it always sounds different when it gets broadcast around. And now, you know, Al might be more meticulous about that and listen to himself. But I think one of the most appealing things about Al Michaels is contrary to the supercomputer aspect of his ability, there's a lot of awshucks to it too, right? I mean, not necessarily in his presentation, but in his interviews and stuff. He's just sort of like, you know, I can't believe I was there when all this happened.

You know, it's just a series of cool moments that he got to be a part of. It's as prideful as so many announcers are. And I think this goes to the brain, the special minds that they have. he was he was the most human of the major announcers he was yeah yeah for sure he's the most human but i think all of them are just a little bit like yes there's a lot of work that goes into this but i think they're all a little bit dumbfounded by their special ability to do this you know totally totally but al was able to get al and his in his announcing oh for sure very very quickly that's what we always liked about him right the wink whether it was you know the betting line is the one that everybody

yeah for sure but since we're talking about presidential politics one of my all-time favorites It's 2004. It's a game in Foxborough between the Patriots and the Colts. So Tom Brady versus Peyton Manning. This is 2004. John Kerry is running for president. And the cults have been playing well and all of a sudden the Patriots start playing well. And John Madden, who's Al's partner on Sunday Night Football goes, this is amazing.

I mean, this is a crazy game just underwent a flip-flop. And Al goes, they picked the right state for that. I don't even know if I agree with that politically. Well, what a moment in the middle of this nationally televised football game. Look it up. That really happened. Speaking of the NFL, let's do a quick explainer on the anti-trust lawsuit that the NFL just lost. Oh, great.

This took place in L.A. I was out of town or I would have happily gone to see Roger Goodell and Jerry Jones testify in this case. The lawsuit involves a Sunday ticket, David. and there's a good breakdown by the AP's Joe Reedy. So the Sunday ticket, of course, is what you pay for if you want all the NFL games. Yeah. Not just the ones being shown to you locally by the networks. Joe Reedy says the league broke antitrust laws, the jury decided, by selling Sunday ticket only on direct TV and at an inflated price.

So if you want to buy Sunday ticket, that costs you $350 a year on YouTube. It was a similarish price back in the direct TV days. That high price is on purpose because Fox and CBS, aka the networks that show you games on Sunday afternoon, pay billions of dollars for that privilege. And they didn't want somebody coming along, either DirecTV or let's say YouTube and say, hey, we're going to sell Sunday ticket for like 50 bucks a year

is this huge loss leader. Yeah. To get you to sign up for YouTube TV. because then everybody would buy it. And that would just clean us out. You know, we would not be able to, our affiliates would not be able to give you the game, show you the game that they want to show you. Right.

So we have to kind of charge a high price. You have to fix the price. Yeah. I mean, that's apparently what the jury decided. They also, the NFL didn't offer team specific packages in Sunday ticket. So for some godforsaken reason,

you're living in Los Angeles and I want to watch just the Carolina a Panthers, you had to buy the whole package. You couldn't just buy the Panthers package. Right. That sort of came up in this lawsuit. So anyway, it's a class action suit. Reedy writes that the jury awarded $4.7 billion to residential subscribers and $96 million to businesses.

Because the damages are trebled, there's only in journalism word, under federal antitrust laws, the NFL could end up being liable for $14.39 billion, unless it's reaches a settlement or it is reduced. There's a lot of work to do here. The judge could still rule that the plaintiffs didn't prove their case, reedy rights. The NFL could still win on appeal. Yeah.

So we're not to the point where they're paying out people like me who subscribe to Sunday ticket on direct TV. But we get there. But you already got a new couch, didn't you? You already certain spending them. How did you know? I just bought the baseball package. I really feel in my oats.

All right. Last thing to get for you here, David, and it's about a topic we don't talk about on this podcast enough, Evan Gershkevich. As of today,

July 1st, Jake Tapper says on Twitter, the Wall Street Journal reporter has been in a Russian prison for one year and 94 days. One year and 94 days. He was arrested for espionage and held in prison under this law

that allows Russia to imprison him while they do an investigation, quote unquote. Oliver Darcy says that that trial for espionage, the actual trial, is now beginning. And there was a headline at Gershkovich's paper that says falsely accused Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkevich in court for secret trial. He was shown with what looked like a shaved head. And by the way, the lousiest part of a very lousy debate was Donald Trump boasting that he would have

Gershkovich out of prison after he wins the election. Yeah. But before he takes office. No, no, I'll get him home after I win the election. Of course. That will help me bring this guy home. He should never been in prison to begin with. Of course not.

SB and I, we should just say it as a matter of course here of a few weeks. Espionage charges are bogus. He's imprisonment as bogus. The fact that he's not home is beyond bogus. Yeah. Absolutely true. He's a graduate of Princeton High School, my local high school over here,

and my son, all of his classmates, wear shirts in his honor all the time, which is, you know, kind of the least any of us can do more than you and I do on a regular basis, but you're absolutely right.

It's, it's a, I mean, it's a fucking travesty, you know, and it's just so seconding with it. It has become a political football, but,

I mean, that's just where we are. You can't, apparently have any other leverage to do the right thing here. So kind of disappointing. Amen. All right. It's time for David Shoemaker.

Guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. A week ago Thursday, David, we had a headline about the white socks pondering the trade deadline. It was gets, as in GM Chris gets make a deal. yet's make a deal. Today's headline comes to us

from valued listener and our good friend Rattie. It's from the Wall Street Journal piece by Jim Carlton about San Francisco tourism. It's hot everywhere right now, David. But San Francisco, according to the journal,

markets its cool, foggy summer weather, foggy summer weather, as a refuge from the heat waves hitting much of the U.S. So that cool, weather gives San Francisco an opening with tourists. What was the Wall Street Journal's strained pun headline?

Fog. I know everyone listening to this. How have people listening to this just knew it immediately. I just feel like I should get it. Okay. So synonyms for fog. I think that's a great place to start. Fog missed.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So this is the opening. This is San Francisco's chance. missed your chance, missed your, missed opportunity. Missed opportunity.

All right, there we go. Missed opportunity. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Brexit Magic by Brian Waters. If you are looking for some good political content, let me direct you back to the podcast

that Benji Sarlane and I recorded on Thursday breaking down the debate. After Benji, he had a very long and interesting interview with Jeff Greenfield. David, Jeff Greenfield, the former CNN and ABC news analyst and author of O'Water, One Order of Pro.

Yeah. Which he mentioned on the podcast, by the way. Oh, really? He did. Yeah, it's amazing. Interviewed him about four elections he covered. So many great election stories there for you political junkies. We might have created a backdoor pilot there.

I'm thinking about more tales from the campaign trail press boxes this fall. A whole list of people I'm going to reach out to. July guest host lineup is in process. I hope to tweet that out at the press box pot later this week. But we know what's coming later this week. Tim Miller, David, Tim Miller of the bulwark is going to be our guest host. He has written about Joe Biden and he's written about Clay Travis, a.k.a. everything we cover here at the press box.

Very excited to have Tim on the podcast. We're going to record that tomorrow and it's going to be out Wednesday so you can enjoy it over July 4th. And then you, Mr. Shoemaker, you and I will return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the meet. See you then, Dave. See you later, Brian.