The Press Box - Celebrity Coronavirus Doctors, Trump's "Total" Authority, and ESPN Pay Cuts | The Press Box

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

In the age of COVID-19 coverage, a new type of media figure has emerged: the celebrity doctor. We break down three types that have seen a lot of airtime in the past month (1:15). Plus: our overworked Twitter joke of the week (20:04), some snippets from Trump’s daily press briefings (23:02), and pay cuts at ESPN (32:57). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We've got lots and lots to talk about today. We'll talk about Donald Trump's weirdest coronavirus press conference yet. We'll talk about how ESPN is weathering the sports content drought, from showing classic college football games and master's tournaments to a spelling bee marathon. Plus, David guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, I want to start with a. curious figure who has emerged during coronavirus TV coverage, the celebrity doctor. We've seen praise heaped on Dr. Anthony Fauci, former FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, even Sanjay

Gupta. Those are America's Dr. Jekyll's. But then there's Mr. Hyde. There's the TV doctor who has dabbled in questionable science, touted wonder drugs, or essentially told America, don't worry. everything's going to be okay. We'll get to some famous examples in a second, but my starting theory here is this. Anyone who has watched CNN or ESPN knows how TV punditry works. Whenever anyone is saying one thing, aka the truth,

or at least our best version of the truth, there are huge incentives to say the other thing, right? To say, I'm not going to be gloomy corona doctor. I'm going to be upbeat corona doctor. And when you take those incentives and throw in the American cult of celebrity, doesn't that start to explain how we got here? Yeah, this is a problem that has been identified

in other circumstances, I guess, over and over again, sort of over the past, I don't know, decade. And I think when we've tried to diagnose, no pun intended, the problem that we're facing right now, I mean, obviously there's a huge incentive not just to be counterintuitive, but to be, you know, pro-Trump. and I mean that in the sort of most generous possible way.

I don't know what that would mean. But yeah, I mean, I think I don't know if that exclusively explains how we got here, but the sort of general impulse towards denialism certainly explains just about all of it. Yeah, I think there's also probably a bandwidth issue here, which is that Anthony Fachi is right now the single most sought after talk show guest in America. But he can only be on so many shows. And so if you're the CNN Booker or the Fox News Booker, you're like, we've got to get somebody. How about the celebrity doctor whom people already know and maybe even Dr. Drew's case was kind of used to work for us?

And can't he come on here and talk about coronavirus? virus. Right. I mean, it's a, it's a bandwidth thing. It's also, as you basically described there, it's a sort of like, you know, it's a booking issue, right? I mean, if something, if, if whatever, if like the long lost recordings of Robert Johnson were found, would you rather have like a music historian or like Bono on to talk about it on your show? You know, I mean, like you're going to, you're going to pick the name, you're going to pick the name, right? I mean, that's good that if you can't have Anthony Fauci, who's sort of become a celebrity in his own right, you're going to try to find the celebrity. Yeah. I think the answer to who would CNN have on in the,

that in that case would probably be Touré because I believe he is kind of a go-to music, music guy there. Dr. Number one, David, for our purposes, is Mehmet Oz, almost universally known as Dr. Oz.

He is not an epidemiologist, but he has become a go-to guest on Fox News, appearing on shows like Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs. And he's been promoting hydroxychloroquine, which is this anti-malarial drug that one French study held out as a possible, coronavirus treatment based on a very, very tiny sample. On April 6th, Dr. Oz had talked about hydroxychloroquine on Fox News 21 times, according to the Atlantic's James Hamblin.

And David, guess who was watching? According to CNN's Oliver Darcy and Kevin Liptack, Trump has been intrigued by Oz's appearance on Fox News. A White House official added that Trump has mentioned Dr. Oz's television appearances to AIDS when discussing the drug, that is, hydroxychloroquine. What did Dr. Oz say on Fox News? Listen to this. Tell us why you're looking at this as a possible treatment that can save lives. You know, I first learned about the study last week. It was relatively recent. Again, one is an anti-malarial drug and the other is Z-PAC, the antibiotic that so many of us use. And this French

doctor, Dr. Rolt had a very famous infectious Z specialist, had done some interesting work at a pilot study showing that he could get rid of the virus in six days and 100% of the patients he treated, as opposed to maybe 20 days in most patients who have COVID-19. That's a big deal. That dramatically shortens the infectivity. But, you know, instead of looking for a needle in the haystack, I became more like the magnet pulling in the needles. Before I knew it, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Reynolds. I was very impressed by him. And I told the vice president today that what he told me at the end of the interview stunned me. He said that he thought it was unethical to withhold this treatment based on what he knew. Again, this is not a fly-by-night

fellow. He's very well respected. And in France, they're looking at his therapies. They're using him in some hospitals. So as Hamblin notes in the Atlantic article, saying this worked with 100% of patients is a very clumsy way to talk about even this limited study. First of all, it was not a randomized clinical trial. That's important when talking about these kinds of things. Hamblin goes on to say, according to the study itself, three other patients who received hydroxychloroquine were too sick to be tested for the virus by day six. They were intubated in the ICU. Another had a bad reaction to the drug and stopped taking it. And yet another was tested because by day six, he had died.

But if you are listening to this Fox News thing and you happen to be the president of the United States, you're hearing, wait a second, a hundred percent of people have been. cured of this of coronavirus, you just see how slippery that gets when you go into the world of TV punditry from actual medicine. Right. I mean, you called it, I mean, and Hamlin also, I mean, called it clumsy to refer to 100 is 100% of the patients showing positive results. I mean, that's a very generous way of phrasing it, right? I mean, if you actually take the information that you just recited into account, that's like borderline actionable. I mean, I mean, that's a really, that's a really dangerous thing to go out there and say.

Now, we can set aside for a moment the fact that, like, it has been, I guess, now fully established that the most effective way to influence national policy is to go on Fox News and somehow the filters on Fox News in response have gotten more and more lax. But, yeah, I mean, it's sort of, even if you just look at the fact that the person who's job, it is to be a talking head on Fox News, moonlight as an advisor to the president. And this, again, is not news. And, you know, we know that Sean Hannity doing this and everything else. But it's just, it's not just like a vicious circle.

It's like a circular firing squad. You know what I mean? It's like, there's like there's no good version of how this works out, it seems like. And this is maybe incidental, but this, the line where Dr. Ross says he had an opportunity to speak to the doctor and he found him impressive. I mean, that, first of all, I mean, I guess is the, could be the capsule bio for Dr.

Oz himself. I mean, like, he like popped on the screen when he was on Oprah, so we think he, we think he's good now. But like, it's, I mean, literally the opposite of science to say something like that, right? Like scientific inquiry. And it just takes

two seconds to read on to find out what happened to everybody else who is involved in the study. And if you're Dr. Oz and you're either, you're either not interested enough to read that far or you're deliberately with, holding it for the sake of what? Having a roseglasses segment on Fox News? I mean, I don't, there's no, again, no version of that that has a positive connotation.

Trump's allies on and off TV have embraced the drug. Laura Ingraham went to the White House and introduced two doctors who had been guests on her show to Trump and talked up the potential benefits of hydroxychloroquine according to the Washington Post. Rudy Giuliani has been promoted. it because of course he has. And now thanks at least in part to Dr. Oz, Trump is all in. Trump said famously the other day, what do you have to lose?

What do you have to lose? Take it, right? Doctor number two, David, Dr. Drew Pinsky, formerly of Loveline and Celebrity Rehab. Dr. Drew has made the TV and radio rounds talking about coronavirus. I actually found an old segment the other day he did with Colin Coward on in the early days of the pandemic here in the United States. Here's a sample of the way Pinsky talked about the virus in various places

put together by a Twitter user named Droops Doctor. We predicted from the beginning that this is going to be worse than the flu. It's way less virulent than the flu. So it's a reminder that you're more likely to die of influenza, so go ahead and get your flu shots.

Smile. Doesn't hurt anybody. That should be the headline. Way less serious than influenza. That's the headline. You know what the 2% lethality thing is you have there. But the coronavirus thing is less than 2%. It's like 0.02%. It is less dangerous than influenza. Less dangerous than influenza.

Your probability of dying coronavirus much higher being hit by an asteroid, I would say. The flu virus in this country is vastly more consequential, and nobody is talking about that. Much likely to be hit by an asteroid than to die of COVID-19. Dr. Drew would later apologize in a Periscope video. saying, I wish I had gotten it right, but I got it wrong.

A couple of notes about that. One is that so much of the celebrity doctor thing turns out to be media bashing, as you heard a little bit there. The headline should be this. That's what he also said on Coward. It was all about how the media is being so gloomy and negative about this. And that's always such an interesting strain. I'm hearing, no pun intended, of media criticism during,

coronaviruses. Look, I like CNN and all this stuff, but I just, it's just so negative. I want to be positive. I'm choosing to be positive. There's no reason you can't be positive without just giving misleading information or information that turns out to be junk while you're on television. Those are not mutually exclusive things. No. I mean, I was watching his apology and when he was doing his apology. Dr. Drew made the case that, or, you know, one of his arguments was that he had actually been out there saying some of the stuff he'd been saying, i.e. listen to Dr. Fauci, uh, was right. And he said, I've been, you know, I've done nonstop PR for the past two days saying this, right? I've been on TV for hours and hours a day. And I mean, I don't know about you, Brian.

I've not done that much radio, but I've done a couple of, uh, a couple of, you know, solid days around WrestleMania season here and there or like promoting a book that were, And I know you've done the same, right? Where you've just done just, you know, 10 radio hits in a day, maybe a pop-up on TV, something like that. And that, when you do that amount of media, here's a little peek behind the curtain, there is zero opportunity for you to evolve as a thinker, right? All you're doing is saying the exact same talking points over and over again and literally convincing yourself of them as you say them. You know, I mean, you say something on one. You're like, you know what?

That sounded good. And then you say it on the next one. The idea that he's doing wall-to-wall media is not a positive. positive thing. He needs to take a breath. He needs to take some time off. That's obviously the problem of this. And to be a counterintuitive thing, I mean, to talk about doing, I mean, talking about the sports media rounds, that Dr. Drew sang talking about the flu and saying like, oh, and nobody's talking about that. I mean, he's just doing a hot take, right? I mean, like, doing the, like, here's the big thing nobody's talking about is that this is just as bad as the

flu. I mean, this is what my pothead friends were saying two months ago, right? And this is a professional or whatever, at least a media professional, a doctor who's out there saying, and listen, I have a lot of, I mean, I think Dr. Drew is a very compelling speaker and broadcaster and everything. I mean, I've definitely enjoyed listening to him in the past on podcasts and stuff like that, but like, you know, you have to acknowledge that what he's doing is, if not junk science, it's pop science or whatever. And if you don't, if he is your only guest on a news program, if you're framing him as like a doctor of significance who like actually knows, what he's talking about. You're doing a huge disservice to your audience. So what you bring up there is

there is a pop science lane to this that can be a good thing, right? Dr. Drew is not an expert on infectious diseases, but neither is Sanjay Gupta, who is a neurosurgeon by training, right? And if you're a doctor, you can read the information and be just like, I'm going to be the conduit of good information, right? My skill is I'm really good at talking on the radio or talking on television. So I'm going to be available to go around and say, here's the best information we have right now. And, and, you know, this is what you should do and this is what you do. Rather than, as you say, evolving into coronavirus pundit, you know, who's like, I'm going to, I got some, I got an edgy take about this. And it was funny is he would kind of give the semi edgy take.

And then at the end of the interview, and at least the one I heard would then defer to Dr. Fachi, which is just so funny, you know, like, but listen to Dr. Faji. well, why are you diverging from this? Right? Why even have that take to begin with? It's weird. But I just, you know, because I don't think cable news is going to get rid of the figure of the famous doctor. It's just almost that you have to make the famous doctor better, right?

You have to make the famous doctor sort of more reliable and say, I'm going to go read the information. I'm going to put this in ways that it's easy for people to understand. I'm going to be a little more colorful than the CDC veteran that might be recruited. for this slot. And I could actually help people or at least get, you know, get the word out in some kind of digestible way. Yeah. I mean, I don't know.

I think the problem is you, I mean, you would hope that at this point in this coronavirus situation, then we would have gotten better at this or the news organizations would already be better at this, but they're just not, their focus is not in medical news, right? So if they have a Rolodex, they call the doctor on the Rolodex and like, you know, when we talk trash, about all the networks sort of equally on this show. But there are certainly ones that are better than others, right? I mean, I don't think anybody would put Sanjay Gupta or whatever in the same category

as the doctors we've discussed, even though he occupies a similar role on CNN. But, you know, it is interesting that like these people, I mean, listen, Dr. Oz is a funny one because I think we all sort of have a generally negative or skeptical view of the guy, but it only takes, it's only a matter such as this where you go on Google for the five seconds it takes to realize that 10 of the first 15 hits when you search his name are like another low for Dr. Oz and this piece is published like once a year for the past decade, you know, and he will continue to get booked on these shows and not because he has relationships with it, because he's a relationship with the president and Dr. Drew will continue to get

booked too. I mean, it's interesting that there is so much skepticism in their, in their pitches about the journalism, right? Oh, here's the thing that nobody wants you to know. Here's what the other, the real journalists aren't reporting. But like, for better or worse, like real journalism would have drummed these people out the door, you know? Right. Well, that's what's so, when you talk about the incentives, that's what's so weird, right? Because these people are going to get booked anyway. It's not like Dr. Oz was looking for career opportunities.

So it's weird to sort of shade into this universe when you could just, you are already, like, surely Dr. Oz has only got something to lose at this point, you know, in terms of like, he's already the TV doctor and is going to have shows and all this other stuff. and so that's a weird part of this. David, just to put a bow on this segment, were you aware that we were getting coronavirus information from a recent contestant on the masked singer? It was dimly aware of this, yeah.

Dr. Drew was dressed as an eagle on a recent episode, like in the big sports mascot eagle costume with a red bandana. I want you to just take a listen to a little of his performance. I had really assiduously, avoided the mass singer in every forum until watching that video. You could hear the panel there

trying to guess the identity of Dr. Drew and they came up with Jeff Foxworthy, who you heard, Craig Ferguson and Montel Williams. And that person who was in the eagle suit is on television talking about coronavirus. Oh, yeah. No, by the way, you haven't watched the Masked Singer. That's one of the wonderful conceits of the show

that someone will just come out in like, you know, a cartoon ant costume and sing a song. And then Jenny McCarthy is like, is obligated, you know, by contract to stand up and be like, wait a second. Is that former president Barack Obama under there? It's just like raises, just raises the bar to ridiculous heights. And somehow no one's upset when it's Dr. Drew. I don't know what the right joke for Dr. Drew would be. If someone's like, wait, is that, is that Jonas Salk that I hear underneath?

That would truly be a surprise. I'd get me to watch a show. All right, David, time for 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 box pod. We've spent a considerable part of the pandemic, David, making puns in which the World Health Organization or WHO

is switched for the word who. Remember when the WHO said dogs couldn't get coronavirus? And the gag was, who let the dog? out. Mm-hmm. There was a recent piece about how China had deceived the WHO during the pandemic. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, official response from the who, we won't get fooled again. We won't get.

I like that. David Saturday Night Live returned to the air this weekend. There's something I didn't watch, much like the mass singer, because it wasn't funny. Twitter agreed. funny responses to Saturday Night Live coming back. SNL hasn't this country suffered enough? SNL is social distancing themselves from the funny. And I like this one.

I didn't think you could make quarantine any worse. And suddenly the cold play guy is covering Bob Dylan. Thanks to the Morgan you know for that one. And finally, David, an amazing tweet from New York Magazine. I haven't read the article yet, but how could you improve on this tweet? as people practice social distancing and cut off rats food sources rats some experts say rats will resort to cannibalism rat battles and infanticide a couple of funny responses who said there aren't any sports and i love this one after reading this dana white spent all day building a mini octagon if you think sports could be replaced by homicidal rats

And if you've already pitched such a concept to ESPN executives, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, Deb, before we get to the notebook, dump a quick message from the ringer. Hey, what's up, everybody? I'm Jamel Hill.

And I'm Van Late. We're proud to introduce our new podcast, The Wire, Way Down in a Hole. We're going to recap, break down, and analyze every episode of the iconic HBO hit series, The Wire, starting from the beginning with season one, first episodes, hitting you on April 15.

Every podcast episode will include recap, signature moments, foreshadowing, key character, deep dives, little known facts, and also awards such as we love this show, but the Stringer Bell Fuck Boy Award, my personal favorite, who won the episode and more. So subscribe to

the wire way down in a hole on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast, and we'll see you in West Baltimore on April 15. All right, David, in the Notebook Dump. I want to to you about the idea of Trump's total authority, because Monday's press briefing was a startling work of propaganda, even by the standards of coronavirus press briefings.

Trump was sniping at the media at various imagined opponents before playing a video that was intended to rebut a Sunday report in the New York Times about how the Trump administration was slow to take the virus seriously. Before we get into this, are you as amused as I am by the media saying, I know we say this all the time, but even this was a new low for Trump? Is that the phrase that pays every time Trump supposedly indulges in a new low?

I mean, I think I've probably said that too. But yes, the rhythm, the syncopation of that sort of repeated phrase is pretty incredible. I don't even know. I mean, you could probably draw a somewhat straight line to the, you know, conservative media's treatment of President Obama during his tenure, right? That like every time he rolled out of bed, it was just like another new low for the presidency. But it's more in this case our, the degree to which we insist on being

surprised anew each time with the downward trajectory. I mean, I guess that's what's significant here. Yeah, and I don't want to make fun of reporters because they're not wrong, right? Like that And that briefing yesterday was bonkers. It was it, it was on a different level than other bonkers Trump coronavirus briefings. But it's just funny because we're, we're constantly, one of the challenges with Trump is to help people understand,

oh, wow, this is really different and really bad. And when you keep saying it over and over again, you're right. It almost sounds like you're the Fox News guy. Like, oh, another, another new low for Obama. He filled out a name.

NCAA bracket yesterday. You know, what will the administration resort do next? But with Trump, you do kind of need to say that. Trump's video yesterday accused the media of downplaying the danger of the virus. All the clips presented were examples from Fox News. It also presented a timeline of events portraying the White House's response to the virus as prompt and effective. Took an audio clip from a March episode of The Daily with Maggie Haberman out of context. as Haberman said on Twitter,

it cherry-picked clips of various governors giving platitudes about the administration's response. Afterward, David Trump was back at the podium, clearly thinking he had owned the libs. So we could give you hundreds of clips like that from governors, including Democratic, or Democrat, as I call them, governors, which is actually the correct term.

We could give you hundreds of clips just like that. We have them. We didn't want this to go on too long. But I just want to say it's, you know, it's very sad when people write false stores like in that case. I guess it was gotten mostly from the New York Times, which is a highly, I mean, if you had libel laws, they would have been out of business even before they'll end up going out of business. Eric Lipton, one of the reporters who wrote the Times piece, David, noted on Twitter that Trump's rebuttal video did not actually contradict any of the facts in the Times report. which was interesting. Reporters then started to question the timeline Trump had presented as a victory.

Paula Reid from CBS asked why the administration didn't take any action between declaring a partial travel ban on January 31st and then declaring a national emergency six weeks later in March. Here's how that went. I saved tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives by hurting you. The argument is that you bought yourself some time. You didn't use it to prepare hospitals. You didn't use it to ramp up testing. You're so, you're so, you're so disgraceful. It's so disgraceful the way you say that.

Let me just, listen, I just went over it. Or this rant supposed to make people talk to it in an unprecedented crisis. Nobody thought we should do it. And when I did it. But what did you do with the time that you bought? You know what we did? You know what we did? What do you do when you have no case in the whole United States when you, excuse me, you reported it?

Zero cases, zero deaths on January 17. January, February, the entire month of the measure, your video has a complete gap. On January 30th. What did your administration do in February for the time that your travel ban bought to? A lot. A lot.

And in fact, we'll give you a list. What we did, in fact, part of it was up there. We did a lot. Look, look. You know you're a fake. You know that. Your whole network, the way you covered, is fake. And most of you, and not all of you,

but the people are wise to you. That's why you have a lower approval rating than you've ever had before times probably three. And when you ask me that question, let me ask you this. Why didn't Biden, why did Biden apologize? Why did he write a letter of apology? No, that's very important. Why did the Democrats think that I acted too quickly? You know why?

Because they really thought that I acted too quickly. We have done a great job. Now, I could have kept it open. and I could have done what some countries are doing. They're getting beat up pretty badly. I could have kept it open. I thought of keeping it open because nobody's ever heard of closing down a country,

let alone the United States of America. But if I would have done that, we would have had hundreds of thousands of people that would right now be dead. Woo! On the one hand, that reporter, did we catch your name? was that Paul Reed?

Is maybe one of the most significant heroes of, you know, the current age that we live in? On the other hand, I kind of feel like allowing Trump to even address those accusations is almost, I don't know, playing into his hands gives him too much credit. But you could tell that he sort of relished in the fight as much as he was maybe uncomfortable in the moment. I mean, this is the sort of Trump that the Trump, the Trump, most ardent supporters are like desperate to see. And, and I don't know, I mean, I'm not sure that there's anything you could get him to say

that would, that would actually benefit, you know, I mean, that would lead to greater understanding of the situation. But maybe I'm not, maybe I'm not being generous enough. Yeah, and I think Trump's clear aim yesterday was just he wanted to fight, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, he was mad at that New York Times story. And by the way, that New York Times story, which is, which is a very interesting read, but, you know, it's not, it was not, and it got a lot of play on Twitter and stuff like that,

and maybe that's why Trump was so angry. But that story was really a lot of fine grain about, you know, the Trump's administration's conflicted attitude toward China, about Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services, who had talked to Trump about this in January. Trump had sort of ignored it and then reduced his power according to the times. I mean, this was not like some gigantic smoking. gun thing. Wyatt set the Trump administration off and Trump himself off to that degree. I'm kind of, I'm kind of amazed. It was a very, very good story, but it was, you know, not one that I'm sure like a lot of

people outside of, you know, elite media channels would have paid a ton of attention to unless Trump drew their attention there, which he did. The headline of the whole briefing, David, by the way, was that Trump said he had ultimate authority, quote unquote, to override states and reopen the economy, which he, of course, is eager to do. Listen to this. question, Steve, go ahead. There's a debate over what authority you have to order the country reopened. What authority do you have? Well, I have the ultimate authority, but we're going to get into that in a minute.

We're going to just finish this up. We're going to tell you about other things that we've done right. But I will say this, had we said, let's just keep going and let's not do a closing, whether it's 2.2 that they at one point predicted as an outside or 1.6 at a lower number, you cut it all the way down to 6 or 7 or 800,000, take just a fraction. of the number that could have happened, it literally would have been more than the Civil War. It would have been a disaster.

And on and on. Ultimate authority. Jonathan Chay wrote a good column about this where he essentially said, if you have a president who has at least entertained authoritarian ideas before, it's probably a good idea to pay attention when he just comes out and says it at a press conference. Yeah. And as much as I said that maybe, I mean, in the same way that I said that that previous kind

confrontation with the reporter might have been a if not a positive outcome for Trump, something that he was sort of interested in engaging in. I think this is a huge misstep for him and I don't think he did it deliberately. I don't think this was calculated or anything like that, but precisely because of what Jonathan Chait said.

I mean, I think that if nothing else, if you were inclined to look at all these daily press conferences as a just sort of, you know, presentation of folly, your evening follies or whatever on television. If it was just sort of point in laugh or if nothing else, just sort of roll your eyes at the monotony of it, if you weren't concerned about any of the things

that the president was doing during them, then this just puts the spotlight right back on it, right? I mean, just that this is Trump, you know, living up to all of his worst impulses, everything that he's been accused of a million times in the past. and it's true. Like we have to pay attention to it. David, let's talk about ESPN,

because we got some news. Yesterday it came down from John Ahran over at Sports Business Journal that ESPN had asked 100 of its most highly paid commentators to take voluntary 15% pay cuts over the next three months. I'm quoting from Ahran's tweet.

ESPN statement said, we're asking about 100 of our commentators to join with our executives and take a temporary salary reduction these are challenging times and we're all in this together. Of course, the spoken or unspoken context there is, please take a salary cut or otherwise we're going to have to lay off less fortunate people at the company or people that don't make as much as

some of the superstar commentators. I don't know about you. This to me had always been, especially when we're talking about sports media and how the coronavirus pandemic is going to affect them, I guess us. ESPN to me had been one of those. rubicons that I'd sort of been waiting for this to get to, not out of any glee, of course, but just saying like it's in a way the ultimate sign that this will affect everybody, right?

It's not just your local newspaper, which was already strapped before the pandemic began. It's not just a website like Fangraphs that we've talked about on here before. It's the mothership. It's, you know, it is, it is the network. And, you know, this is a start. They hope this is where it goes. but it feels like, it feels like a couple of things.

One is that that's a big deal when it gets to ESPN. And two, I'm sort of fascinated about how whatever cuts may come after this will sort of change the way ESPN looks when and if this pandemic is ever behind us. Well, I think in a weird reverse way,

that's sort of what I've been thinking about too. I mean, I just don't know how, I mean, I'm sure there were people who worked at ESPN who were very concerned for the past couple months about their job security. I'm sure there are people there too who said, you know, we have a parent company

that's one of the richest media companies in the history of the world. And if they decide that we should all stay employed, then we will stay employed, right? Sadly, those people were wrong, even if they were right in principle. I guess to me, it's just a little bit hard to fathom why

if the financial situation is so dire that money has to be safe, in the form of employee compensation. I guess I can't wrap my head around why the salary shouldn't be made up directly from whatever executive was so negligent as to sign all these other paychecks that they couldn't afford to pay. I mean, wouldn't it be logical that like the idiot that that overextended themselves that couldn't get past one fallow month should be the one who takes in a cut of his

or her entire salary? I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy. No, but there would certainly been executive pay. gets two. But, no, I know. I know. They're joining in it. But it's like, but why are we joint? I mean, it's not, it's not someone, why would it be someone's fault that they, that said yes to an offer that was given to them, you know, and why would anyone expect that that, that like, a bad, I mean, that the whole point of a, of a salary, you know, is that you should be expected to pay it.

And to hold everyone else is, I mean, we saw this with SI and you wrote about it, you know, very beautifully. But the idea that, that, that you, that everyone else is, employment is being held ransom against your willingness to take a pay cut is one of the most just deplorable things I can possibly imagine. Well, yeah. And I just wonder if you're looking, if they're looking down the road and seeing, you know, that it's not a, it's not a fallow month, right? It's fallow months and months and months and months.

Well, yes. And it's interesting. I mean, I was, you know, there's been some speculation in the world of professional wrestling, if I can take a little detour. WWE is decided WWE was supposed to They pre-taped a couple of weeks of wrestling They pre-taped WrestleMania

And managed to not have any of the results leak out And they put it on the air Then the idea was that They were going to get together The following Friday And record several weeks of content And kind of see where it went from there And then right before they

Everybody kind of gathered to do the tapings Apparently Vince McMahon decided That they weren't going to pre-taped They were going to still go live And they've been deemed In a central business in Florida Unsurprisingly Which is hilarious by the way

Yeah and decided to continue continue to air alive every Monday and Friday and potentially Wednesday, I guess, too. And part of it is a sort of defiance. Part of the, you know, I mean, it's assumed that part of it is Vince McMahon's kind of defiant streak. Part of it is, you know, whatever. I mean, a business as usual sort of attitude or a desire to entertain people as best they can. But there is some speculation that, that even though it seems really, really improbable and implausible, there's some speculation that Vince McMahon doesn't want to give...

NBC Universal or Fox, the two people he's in, you know, he has deals with any possible inch of room to, to renegotiate their contract. And, and that by not having live content every week, that there would be some, you know, in some minor way, they would be in violation of their contract terms, you can kind of fill in the rest of the gaps. I don't think that's feasible. I mean, I don't think that's realistic at all, but that is the same, that is the same, that is the same anxiety that you were kind of describing in the media world, right? Or in the in the in the journalism world that the deals that we signed literally three months ago, six months ago, whatever, do not reflect the future. And there's this sort of industry wide or, you know, worldwide feeling

that the dark future that we thought we've been staving off, you know, is actually now right around the corner. Yeah. And that's terrifying for anybody in our business. I mean, I just know, again, just watching ESPN over the last couple of weeks, it just begins to get a little grim, right? They're doing the best they possibly can to say, look, we don't have any of the live sports we count on, right? Or we'd be counting on right now. And so we're going to just do our best to kind of, you know,

put up things and reheat things and do what we can. We've gone now from like, WrestleMania classic WrestleMania's, classic Monday night football games. There's a Brett Farve one on the other night. Vince Young beating USC in the Rose Bowl. But then as you see, it slowly sort of goes.

Then now we're going to like, you know, the ESPN movies being shown again. The Cal Ripkin game. I guess that was kind of a big deal. Spelling Bee Marathon the other day. And I'm like, you know, I know the spelling bee is a big deal,

but the vintage spelling bees is there going to be that big of a thing. but you just run out of stuff right after a while. Like you just, it is so hard to sustain. And the other piece of this with ESPN that's we're talking about is what's happening at Disney. Ben Smith wrote a column about this the other day. Disney is apparently losing $30 million a day with their theme parks closed down, movie releases that they would be counting on coming out over the next couple of months, not in theaters.

They are taking a hit. And there's this whole idea that, that Smith gets in his column that Bob Iger, who is apparently back in charge to some degree, is imagining what Disney's going to look like after the coronavirus. Is it going to be slimmed down? Are we going to get rid of some of these, you know, sort of things that we've had like like up fronts and things like that that we just can't have anymore? And I think that extends to ESPN2, one, because they're, they're part of Disney.

But also just this what's, what does ESPN, you know, is there a, strip down or slightly stripped down ESPN that emerges after all this is over. Because, again, of not only their own struggles to kind of put on a TV network every day, but their parent company struggles just to make money. I know. The Bob Hager on top is sort of like, I mean, and he's done a lot of amazing things obviously with that company. But it sort of feels like whatever the opposite of coaching for your job is, when you're like, you already know that your job is over, then what are the interests you're kind of you're looking out for? Maybe it's some, you know, you want to go down history as the only executive or CEO is who actually, you know, projected what the future

would look like in an honest way. But it's got to leave, you know, a lot of the people working underneath them a little bit uneasy. Yeah, I mean, it's impossible for you or I to sit here and look into a crystal ball and say, you know, whatever thing's going to, you know, what the media landscape, what Disney's reality will look like in the future. But, you know, projecting the future for the Walt Disney Corporation, I don't think matters a lot to any laid off, you know, employees who have house payments coming out. No. And you're right. And when you hear that kind of corporate speak, like we're reimagining the company, right? You're not imagining like a new ride at Disneyland. You're reimagining someone's job, uh, being gone. Uh, you're reimagining lots of people.

And by the way, it's not going to be probably those richly compensated executives, you know, you are. And, you know, that's the thing about sports television. I think sometimes with, with ESPN in particular, we think of it as this big behemoth that, you know, we want to poke knives into, many of which we, many times we should do that. But when you begin to sand it down, or at least think about doing that, these are people's jobs are at stake. And these are not, again, these are not famous people. This is not going to be Stephen A. Smith, right? This is going to be producers, people behind the scenes, things like that. And there's this just whole idea of, you know, we've been living in an era, even as downsized as it is with television, where there's so much money put into television production still.

Even for, forget the games like Monday Night Football, just chat shows, things like that. They look so good. And is there a reality that after this, it's just not going to look like that anymore? I don't know. I don't know. It's certainly on the table. Can you answer me a very basic ESPN programming question because you know these things and I don't understand at all? You know, we talked a lot in previous episodes

over the past several years about, you know, Michael and Jamel's SportsCenter. I mean, there have been a lot of different, about high noon. There have been a lot of times where we've talked about programming at ESPN being sort of gauged against, you program,

or you rate a new show versus how just standard sports center would do in the same time slot, right? I know that there's not actual sports to cover. Maybe I'm naive, but as someone who watches ESPN, largely, I mean, I watch SportsCenter, and I, you know, will find myself watching ESPN or obviously Monday Night Football, you know, when those, I mean, NBA or Monday Night Football, when those games are on a lot of the time. But when I'm watching SportsCenter, certainly

when I'm watching NFL Live or whatever, I don't know that I'm deeply invested in the need for news of the day. I guess I just, there's enough going on in the world that even if you were just doing vague NFL draft prep, because that's still happening, or talking about what NBA players are doing in their off time. I get, the question boils down to this. Like, why is, why not just run SportsCenter all the time?

Like, is it like, it's just background music to a lot of people in the world anyway. Like, how is what they're doing a better? How is, I just don't understand how, how that's not a fine solution. So that,

that's an interesting question. I mean, I was like, I explored that in slightly different form last week when I was writing about Paul Feinbaum's radio show, right? Which is normally about college football. And at this time of year would probably be about the NCAA tournament,

also getting ready for the SEC, season. And what amazed me that he's done is just make it about the coronavirus. Right. Like the whole show is about the coronavirus. People call in. The normal coaches call in, you know, SEC coaches. Like, hey, what, what are, what are, what are you afraid? Are, you know, how is this affecting your that, that, that kind of thing. And I do think there are so many talented people. And they've done it in pockets for sure. But you're right. There is this whole kind of interesting thing is, is it possible to take a sports network and just make it about is there a way to just engage with the news of the day the reality we're in right now and we'll be in for the foreseeable future right just make it about

that in some way and sort of leave it to the creative people there to do that because at some point to me I know the like you know horse in playing a horse and all that stuff is like a way to get through the day I admire the gimmicky creative spirit but at some point you just got to do something else. And again, I don't know if that's just because sports radio is is a kind of, you know, vehicle where that's a lot easier to accommodate in TV. I don't know. I'm sure they're having those conversations right now because what do we do for the next couple of months is the question hanging over the whole company. All right. Time for David Schumacher. Guesses a strain pun headline.

All right. Thursday's headline was the mystery of how a tiger caught COVID-19 has experts chasing their tails. This week's headline is from the Sunday New York Times book review, David. It sat at top a review of a new book about crossword puzzles. I like this book. What's the book? Yeah. I will tell you that in a minute. Okay. Tell me. Because it's actually got a good pun title itself. But I'm going to get you started on this headline. The headline is a pun on a famous quote from Casablanca, from Casablanca. What was the New York Times book reviews strained pun headline? that's all I get. There's crossword puzzles

and Casablanca quote. You got it. Of all the joints and all the town, of all the gin joints, of all the, different quote. That's a good start. What did they say?

Play it again, Sam. Think of here's looking at you, kid. It's about crossword puzzles. Here's looking at, God, why can't I figure this out? Here's looking at clue. kid

here's here's down across here's looking at man what is it why can I get this a crossword puzzle is a giant jumble

puzzle looking at you quiz why can I get this tell me here's looking at you grid oh

God that's so obvious that's fantastic fantastic work here Here's looking at you, Grid. He is David Shoebaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Erica Servantus and Chris Almeida, production magic by Kaya McMullen.

We're back Thursday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you, Brian. I think anybody would put Sanjay Gupta or whatever in the same category as the doctors we've discussed, even though he occupies a similar role on CNN. Sorry, that's my daughter reacting to the celebrity doctor.