The Press Box - Chris Cuomo, Reinventing the NBA Draft, and the Olympics Viewing Nightmare

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker answer your Listener Mail! They unpack Chris Cuomo’s role at CNN as the inquiries into accounts of sexual harassment by his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, continue (6:15), talk through the reinvention of the NBA draft (15:02), and discuss how to watch the Olympics (27:42). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gene and Roger is the story of the two most powerful, influential movie critics of their time, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. You can find Gene and Roger on the Big Picture feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's a quick trailer. It seemed like a crazy idea for a TV show. Take two rivals and let them duke it out about movies. But Gene Sisko and Roger Ebert quickly became the most popular film critics in the country. Millions of viewers tuned in to see whether they vote thumbs up or thumbs down. This is the story of two unlikely superstars who changed the way we argue. From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, I'm Brian Raftery, and this is Gene and Roger.

Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, what's on your mind today? This is actually from a few days ago, but I had this down because I really wanted to get your thoughts on the matter. A guy that I follow on Twitter, who is, you know, mostly for his wrestling insights. His Twitter handle is Five Deuce Four, Tray Seven. Right now his handle is Bad News Brown to Chief Rocca.

I actually don't know who he is, but he's brilliant. He tweeted this on August 2nd, beginning of the month. I'm not surprised by the reports of other teams wanting to join the SEC. It's the most powerful division, especially with Texas and Oklahoma added. As I've said before, it's 80s WWF.

and they're getting the best draws from the territories. Either you join up or you fight a losing battle. Now, as a proud Texas Longhorn, one, I actually don't know how you emotionally feel about joining the evil empire, but my real question for you is in 80s wrestling terms, what wrestler is the University of Texas joining up with the SEC? So definitely not Hulk Hogan, you know, right? We're talking like, so if people don't follow college football, Texas is a very prestigious program that has won a less than prestigious number of games over the last 40 years, 50 years of college football.

Yeah, yeah. So we're not looking at somebody that would be a very famous wrestler from the 80s. Actually, we say somebody's a very famous wrestler from the 80s, but not particularly successful wrestler from the 80s. Yeah, and not. And certainly not the Hulk Hogan of WWF. It's not you're not walking in the door as the headliner. And I would also say not an admired wrestler from the 80s by people who are smart about college football. Because as far as I can tell people that think about the University of Texas at all just make fun of the University of Texas.

Yeah. So yeah, I mean, you're going to have to help me here. Who is that from the... I got a couple of ideas that come to mind. Number one, and this is in no way to demean the wrestler. just Texas, not the wrestler. No, no, is junkyard dog because he was, at his prime down south

was like the biggest wrestler in the world. He like, you know, sold out the Silver Dome. You know, I mean, just like it was a, wait, that's not the Silver Dome, it's a Super Dome, sorry. Like he sold out, you know, football arenas in, in, you know, Louisiana and Mississippi. I mean, he was just a super duper star, and he was a big name that everybody loved.

He was big on the cartoon and everything when he got to WWF, but he was never physically and everything else going to get back to where he was. He was a cool guy to have around and undeniably a star, but never going to be Hulk Hogan material. Now, the other one... He sounds like Boise State to me. No. He was with the biggest stars in the world. I mean, just in the world.

But you're right. Okay, so here's another one. A million-dollar man Ted DiBiase. Actually, I'll take it back. I'll just say Ted Dibati. because when he was working in Mid-South, he was a big, big star. I mean, he, but he was just Ted DiBiase. He was like a regular tough guy.

And he was one of the biggest dudes, you know, one of the most popular performers in the world, but especially in the South, in his region. And then when he eventually signed on with the WWF, that old schick wasn't going to work. And it just by the grace of Vince McMahon and other forms of serendipity, he reinvented himself. as the million dollar man and found a place in the modern world. So that would, I think, be the hopeful look that Texas somehow, Texas somehow becomes a headliner by dint of turning heel and, you know, putting on a sequenced suit.

So I think you hit it exactly right. And there's an additional reason, which is that Texas is really good at making money, not so good at winning football games. So essentially, Texas has won the million dollar belt of, of college football where you have a title, hey, we are the million dollar champions but we're not the actual champion.

We're not the champions where it matters. So yes, Texas is the million dollar man, Ted DBSC. By the way, one of my favorite wrestlers of all time. So I'm happy, happy to take that on as our 80s wrestling avatar. So at some point, it's just going to be like, you know, Alabama or somebody wins the title. I guess Alabama's Hulk Hogan.

Who would be the big heel of the SEC? Or is that also Alabama? I think it's at some point Alabama will win a national title and Texas will buy it from them. And it'll be the greatest, like villainous moment in football history. Yeah, Alabama is both Hulk and Andre in this analogy. Coming up on today's show, we answer your listener mail about Andrew and Chris Cuomo, reinventing the spoilerific NBA draft, trying to watch the Olympic Games on Peacock, and more of your only in journalism words.

all that and more on the press box, a part of the ringer, podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here, along with producer Erica Servantes. David, we need to answer some listener mail today, and we need to start with the Cuomo brothers, because Andrew Cuomo was the subject of a much-discussed report from New York's Attorney General this week. The report found that he had sexually harassed 11 women. His brother also figured in this report. Did you see the email that Chris Cuomone?

had sent that appeared to be, and I'm quoting from the Washington Post here, a draft statement on behalf of his brother responding to allegations. Yes, but go ahead and read. So we know, we know, we already knew Andrew Cuomo's reaction to all this was being workshoped with a bunch of people, including his brother who was a prime time host on CNN. now we have an email which has a statement again Chris Quillam was sending the email there's a statement and as the Washington Post notes the governor's office released a version

with similar language so we were not only involved at the you know I'm on a phone call with my brother what should he do to get him out of this political mess and moral mess that he's in we now have hey I'm sending an email that looks a lot like the statement that the governor released earlier this year.

So listen, this part wasn't shocking to me. I mean, when I heard he was on the call, I mean, this is not too many steps beyond that if it's even a single step. But it is, I mean, but we find ourselves, and this, listen, I mean, Cuomo is, Governor Cuomo is not fighting the good fight right now. I mean, he's, I don't even, we don't even need to get into the sort of just discussing territory that he's in, but if we just want to talk about this as a media thing, I think that we talked about it before, I mean, I don't know if we said this out loud, but it sort of

struck me that, like, there's, like, the journalistic ethics standards, and then there's sort of, like, human being standards. And by the fact that, like, CNN is basically employing Chris Cuomo as, like, a human being or, like, a personality, right? I mean, it's like he doesn't, you can hold him to journalistic ethics standards, but, like, it's sort of beside the, you know, it's sort of beside the point with him, right? So, you know, in some ways, I don't think that gets him off the hook, but it makes it easier for me to wrap my head around when I'm just like, well, listen, I mean, of course, you will get on the phone call with your brother to discuss, like, a terrible thing he's going through. Like, we can all sympathize with that, even if it doesn't,

maybe, you know, pass muster or something you should be allowed to do in a certain line of work. But what we're seeing now, I guess, is kind of coming full circle to, like, unregular human being standards throwing if we want to throw journalistic ethics aside we're in like we're clearly in cannibal territory not cannibal like he's eating another human he could be canned territory i don't i don't want to introduce any new charges here cannibal it's like it's almost like the journalistic journalistic ethics are chris quillan was best defense now where he is just like hey i did what you guys didn't tell me not to do that you know he's like he's trying to like trying to argue on a technicality when it's just like in any line of work, any iteration of this, it's like you've brought shame to your employer.

You are fired now, right? I mean, it's like you, it just seems, it just seems like we're sort of, he's just sort of operating from the other side all of a sudden. And this isn't like he's not outwardly saying this, but the best defense of Chris Cuomo at this point is one that like, I feel like I threw aside six months ago as like, as inapplicable. So, you know, I just, I don't know. It's, it's just, it's just bad. It's just bad stuff. all around. And his brand on CNN is not, I'm just an entertainer who's talking about politics. His brand is I'm the brave truth teller who's calling it down the middle. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, but again, that's sort of a put on. I mean, but yes, yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. Well, now we know

that that that's kind of a put on. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it strikes me as one is, you say he is cannibal potentially because of this news. Maybe. And I'm, I'm sort of wondering now what he has to do to lose his job at CNN. Like what would be the thing now? And I say that on two levels. One, on the ethical level we're talking about, but on the second part of just like, would it matter on CNN if you put somebody else in that slot?

If you just move Jake Tapper up to there and put somebody else in Tapper show, would there be a discernible difference in the ratings? I actually don't know the answer to that. We know on Fox News the answer is usually no. Fox has replaced their primetime lineup several times and with their biggest stars walking out the door, and it doesn't matter?

So does it matter on CNN? Are people saying, like, I love Chris Cuomo, and if that's somebody else who has the Chris Cuomo truth-telling mantle, I'm not tuning in? I'm not tuning in, excuse me? This is why I'm probably not employable as a news network executive, because I think that when you read these stories,

it's like, I like Chris Cuomo, he's fine, we talked about it before. Like, there's a lot of people that have varying degrees of appreciation for on a lot of different levels. But when you read it, he makes $5 million a year and then you talk about replaceability. I mean, don't you think that if CNN held a national search or competition to like sell, like the winner gets Chris Cuomo's job and you get $5 million? Wouldn't that be a bigger, wouldn't more people watch that like by the millions than watch Chris Cuomo right now? So like the Jeopardy thing.

Yeah, I mean, but it's like five million. Everybody gets a week. Listen, I believe. Aaron Rogers, you get a week. Levar Burton, you get a week. I mean, just like, you know, like Jesse from the bar, you get a week. Just like whatever. If you win, literally anybody.

Like literally anybody. Wouldn't you rather watch someone who didn't know what they were doing, like host a primetime news show than watch whatever the replacement level Chris Cuomo is at this point? I mean, when you say why, yeah, I mean, obviously Fox, I think it was Fox News, but also the New York Post had, you know, ran with the story this week about how, uh, There's an executive vice president, Alison Gales, at CNN, who came from being a communications director with Andrew Cuomo. So there's like all this like like like it's sort of whether or not there's a direct line there. There's a lot of very like plausible answers to why is he still employed that don't necessarily. It doesn't all necessarily have to add up to you or me. Right. I mean, they're obviously making this decision based on some 3D chess or, you know, advanced calculus or whatever else. Yeah. I just look to know what that is in. ratings terms. I really would because I know like he's a big star in cable news in that world. I get that, but there's a lot of big stars in cable news and they often leave and people put in other big stars into those slots. And like I said, it doesn't, are we, are we absolutely sure

there would be an appreciable difference? Well, I think on Fox. And then CNN would not have a hundred articles about why their biggest prime time hosts made this incredibly dumb move to advise his brother about this stuff. And you end up getting a lot of, I mean, it seems. that you get a lot of press and presumably a lot of extra eyeballs would you just put somebody new in a primetime slot anyway, right? I mean, when you're kind of, you can kind of do the media rollout, the press rollout of, hey, look at Jesse from the bar or whoever in this new job. You really like Jesse from the bar for this slot. I mean, well, he's got, he's got a lot of, he's got a lot of, you've got a lot of upside, very high ceiling. But, but, but yeah, I mean, it's, it does, it seems like at some

point you're just holding on because you've already been a holding on, right? I mean, the news just came out. I think it was in the Latisha James investigation. I read it in the New York Times about how Jeff Zucker went to Chris Cuomo after the last story broke that he had been advising his brother and said, you know, you can just take time off and you're not in trouble, but just take time off if you want to keep doing this, you know? And Chris Cuomo apparently said, no thanks and continued to do it. Continue to do both, both. Both. Beaux on the air and to advise his brother. It's, that's not like the most damnable story in this whole thing by a long shot,

but it's also like once you're, once you're running CNN, once the head of CNN is like, you know, no biggie. Don't, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to point any fingers, but like you're free to handle this in a more appropriate way if you so feel you want to.

Yeah. Once you've gone that far, it's kind of hard to fire somebody over any of this, right? It's kind of hard. And even not from like a legal like contractual point of view, it's a little bit hard to like do a 180 from your own personal moral point of view. You know, it's like you've already, this has been okay so far. Like what has actually changed?

That a report came out? Well, you didn't learn anything from it. You knew all this shit before. No, I, I completely agree. Speaking of upside, David, a note from Wesley Bulch. He writes, the NBA draft is not a must watch. Twitter is breaking picks before the picks are announced. Plus, draft picks are often wearing the hat of a team that has already traded them.

Any ideas on how to improve this should the crew be reporting information straight from Twitter? Bill and Ryan Rosillo talked about this on their pod the other day. How do we fix the NBA draft? I don't listen to Bill and Ryan talk about it, but I know KOC was tweeting about it the night of and talked about it to Bill a little bit that night or the next day. The response, I mean, what Kevin said basically was the NBA, has to fix it. They have to just fix it. They have to make it a better viewing experience. And someone, I forgot who it was, but another writer, I believe, responded right away,

you know, or someone from the NBA, maybe. Someone who knew with their document said, listen, we can't run the NBA draft broadcast based on tweets from Woj. Like we actually, people just have to functionally call in trades and make them official with the NBA, even though they're functionally official and that Woj knows about them 30 minutes before they happen. The NBA cannot conduct its business that way in a public way. It just seems to me like that's a really easy solve, right? I mean, can't the NBA just say, like, here's a more streamlined way to do this or whatever, like if anything leaks out, you have to abide by it or you get fine into some giant amount, like just find some way to make the trades happen quickly and happen on live television,

right? I mean, the wearing hats thing is the easiest thing to point at, and it's kind of dumb to be a dumb thing to complain about in the grand scheme of things, but it's kind of the most important thing. You know, like they had cameras pointing at Spike Lee at every other Knicks fan who were there for the draft

who like literally every time the Knicks made a pick they would get excited, but the Knicks weren't taking any of those players, you know, and it's just, it's a TV medium. But I think that you really, that you could really go about it

first and foremost by saying, how do we make this make sense for Spike Lee, who's in attendance? How do we make this make sense to the people there? Yes. And then work and then work outward from there because I don't know that there's like

some brilliant fix. There's no like you know five minute delay we could air this on or whatever else because you are competing with your own talent in Woge and also Shams and everybody else who's out there tweeting info. The hat thing is easy to fix.

If everything else is fixed, the hat thing gets fixed. Well, but you can just announce the trade. We have to go through this theater of pretending that a team is drafting somebody when they're not drafting somebody. Can't we just do the NFL thing where the commissioner goes up and says this pick has been traded? The actual team drafting is this and they take this guy? Well, I think the problem is that the timelines are so much more condensed and whatever the rigmarole the teams have

to go to to formally make a trade that they don't actually have the trade in place. But when they're going up there, it's just that like, as they're calling the league office, some assistant GM somewhere is texting Woj being like, we just traded the pick. And like that's, and that gets out. How is that different from the NFL? I assume the trades are official in the NFL. I assume that trades are somehow made official by the time that Roger Goodell is saying it out loud, but maybe not. In the 15 minutes or some form signed? I seriously doubt it.

I have no idea. I think it's all, I think, I don't think so. You're right. It's feasible to fix it. It should be very feasible to fix it regardless. The bigger problem is tipping the picks. So like the draft was a, let's face the NFL draft, the NBA draft, every draft is a contrived television show. The pick comes in and instead of flashing up on the source, screen, we wait for the commissioner to come out every 10, 15 minutes, whatever it is, and make the announcement on a stage. And we do that because there's a certain amount of ceremony and there's a certain amount of drama in it. We have created a television show out of what is essentially

teams making a list of players that they did. So then Adrian Woznarowski, ESPN reporter, formerly Yahoo reporter, comes along and he says, I'm not interested in this artifice. I'm interested in telling you as soon as I know who the teams are taking. So I'm going to undermine the television show. I'm going to tweet out the picks as soon as they happen and you don't have to wait for the commissioner to come out on the stage. But then now he works for ESPN and we're all kind of looking at each other going, wait, we want the contrived television show back. Like, why are we watching, why are we watching a contrived show if it's not withholding the information? It's not like the Oscars, right? Or the NFL drag.

where we're not going to know anything until the last second. It's a great question. I sort of want them to sort of go full Steve Kornacki on Woj, where the camera's on him and we're watching him work. You know, it's okay. So who cares who's actually being drafted? I want to know Woj picking, you know, working six picks ahead. And I want to see him there on his BlackBerry.

And then he looks up at the camera. Oh, I just figured out who it is. It's, you know, and so-and-so. He just got, he's the sixth pick. Could you imagine? Could you imagine just how closely everybody would be zooming in on every single, every single picture of Woj to try to figure out if they can see who he's giving the text messages from? Or like, every time his phone flashes, it would just be like, this is a Pruder film. People trying to like do work backwards with all that stuff.

I mean, what if it's just his voice? It's just like a still photo. I think that's a great idea. And I think that, well, you, so, you know, every year people sort of comment on the, the arms race between Choms and Woj, right? And the people that are breaking these stories. And occasionally there's somebody who comes in with a little bit of a closer tie to a certain team or a super a certain agent.

By the way, the, the, the, the tagging of agents in these free agency tweets, by the way that have happened lately is just out of control. That is really, really strange. Bonkers. Like this is the sort of transaction. It started a couple years ago, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you look at it now, it's like every single thing is like, is like a, it's a promotional

tool. And obviously it is, but I mean, tagging, like literally putting the Twitter handle of and the name of the person and the agency that made the deal is not, is not any, it does not make any more sense than tagging like, you know, skittles and saying how much you enjoyed eating them while you tweeted that thing. You know, I mean, it's like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's just dumb. It's not, I mean, that's it's it's it's it's not news, you know, nobody. Maybe in a couple years we will be more interested in those chess pieces. But right now people care that like somebody signed to somebody, not that, you know, not who the agent is that the broker the deal. But anyway, I do think that what's interesting is, yes, there's competition for these draft pick, you know, for the inside info. And I know that they can't run the show based on what Woj knows or whatever.

But at some point, we have to like be honest about the fact that like Wouge is more plugged in than literally Adam Silver than like the entire league off. right that he's not going to get these things wrong and if that and if you're not willing to say if you leak to woge you're fired or to woge and everybody else if you leak any information you are excommunicated from NBA games or something like if you're not willing to iron to like you know put down the iron fist or whatever and and make a giant rule then you have to acknowledge that like there are there there's a dude on Twitter who is more equipped to handle this transmission of of information than you are and you being the NBA and ESPN.

Yeah. And you got to work from there. I think so. I think this is all just too many things going on. There's Woge breaking the picks on Twitter when he learns them. There's the contrived TV show. And then, as you point out, there's the arena show that involves Spike Lee. So we're trying to do something for Twitter.

We're trying to do something for television. And we're trying to do something for the fans live in the arena. That is like, it strikes me that's at least, that's at least, one too many things and maybe two too many things. So we just can't do, we can't do everything, right? What if you just made it? What if you got rid of the crowd and even the draft picks and just made it into like a super studio show?

So at least you wouldn't be disappointing Spike Lee, right? Or at least you wouldn't have guys in the wrong hats. I just don't think you can do all three of those things and hope they all come off perfectly well. Yeah, I mean, some of it sort of beggars belief too, right? It's like the little, the crew that was there on set, Jalen Rose, et cetera. We're like getting information wrong that we were, that we get, that we knew to be wrong as they were saying it out loud. I think it was Kendrick Perkins was talking about a team's fit with somebody that they in fact had not drafted.

Yeah. And then at some point they started, they sort of correcting, oh, this person had been traded to Detroit and Jalen got excited and like interviewed somebody based on them being a piston and they weren't actually a piston. We all knew like during the course of the interview. It's, listen, some of it's like you find out these things live and these things are happening in real time. and you can't, like, you know, there's certain things are just going to happen. But you have to be either prepared to interrupt or just prepared to roll with the punches

or like, you know, prepared to get it wrong sometimes. But still, it seems like it's so strange. It's like if I were one of those broadcasters and I made a fool of myself, right? By talking at length about something that the entire world knew to be untrue at the time, I feel like anybody else in any other line of work or even in sports, the Chris Cuomo is of the world,

anybody else would walk out. out of that and say, fix this. Don't ever let me look like that on TV again, right? Like, this is not acceptable for someone who's, who you're paying to be an expert. Absolutely. And you would think that they would find a way to fix that, but the whole thing is so knotted up that, like,

they can't fix one thing without the whole rest of the thing coming, tumbling down. And so, I mean, it's almost like you just got to start from square one, right? I mean, you've got to just rebuild it. And if you rebuild it as just a straight TV product with, you know, wodge there and everything else and then let all the players go get their prom pictures taken with their hats on and Adam Silver

later on or something like that. Like that's fine too. But like, there's got to be a way to do it. I want to talk to you about the Olympics and possibly one of the greatest secondary interviews in magazine history, David. 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 box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. David, do you remember the band The Offspring? Of course. According to Variety,

the drummer from the offspring says he's been kicked out of the band for not getting vaccinated. It's an overwork Twitter joke to write. I know where this is going. I guess they think they've got to keep him separated.

Yeah. We would have also accepted, why don't you get a jab? Thanks to Patrick Coran, Sam Kerr, Dan Stan Stan Zanzig and many, many others for that one. in TV news, David, we mentioned the game show Jeopardy has auditioned numerous hosts to replace Alex Trebek. Reports this week have them closing in on someone named Mike Richards as the replacement.

Not Lovar Burton, not Aaron Rogers, not Dr. Ross, Mike Richards. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write pretty on brand that everyone will be saying, who is Mike Richards? Oh, that's great. Thanks to Brian Judd, Steve Papinga and Mesa. Matt Unmacht for that one. Mike, for the wrestling, the pro wrestling perspective on the, Mike Richards is a executive producer on the show and was like the, was one of the trial host that like no one

understood why the EP was getting a shot. And then he gets the job until a lot of wrestling people were tweeting Mr. Vince McMahon pulling the hood off his head and saying it was me, Austin, it was me all along. Like he was like the higher power was in fact pulling the strings in this whole thing, which is basically what happened. Because I have been struggling to understand the Mike Richards being. the choice. Finally, David, the Delta variant

of the coronavirus is scary on its own, but as the Daily Beast notes, there is even worse news. Quote, South Korea has detected its first two cases of a variant called Delta Plus. Delta Plus.

There's an overword Twitter joke to write, oh, great, another streaming service I've got to buy. Thanks to Chris and many others, if you prefer Delta Plus to Peacock Premium, congrats. You made the overall Twitter joke of the week. Speaking of Peacock, David,

people are trying to watch the Olympics. You and I have touched on this, but we haven't had the full conversation about this. And they are mad that they cannot watch the Olympics in the way they want to watch the Olympics. We saw this with the semifinals of men's basketball the other night. Really interesting game, right?

USA, Australia, you've got to go to Peacock Premium to find that. game, which I did. Like I think most people in the ringer verse probably did. I have a couple takes on NBC. One is that as long as you and I have been alive and NBC's been doing the Summer Olympics at 1988, no one has ever been happy with NBC's coverage of the Olympics. Oh, no.

Ever. This is a thing we do every four years because there's time zones and the, you know, the games or matches are happening like in the morning, but then NBC is. is saving them for prime time. But, and this goes back to the sports radio days, we already knew how, what the results were. So it was kind of spoiled for us in the morning, but we couldn't watch it when we wanted to.

Now NBC has gotten this thing where they put it out on multiple platforms. So you can finally kind of watch most of what you want to watch and watch it live. Yeah. Watch in the middle of, watch Slovenia versus France the other day in the middle of the night. But then you've got to go pay for the app. So now people are mad at that part of it as opposed to NBC is trying to create a prime time show and, you know, saving everything for prime time.

I'm not really sure how to do. I mean, putting the basketball on the premium service was was something. Right. Clearly they're trying to grow the service. Those are really big games in the. Olympics right up there with gymnastics and track and KV Ladecki and everything else. But I don't know what the, I don't know what the good solution here is, just like with the NBA draft.

It's really, it's a really bad situation. I mean, it's tough to say, listen, it only happens once every four years or once every two years or whatever. So you're like, there's nothing to really judge it against, you know? I mean, it's hard, it's hard. On the one hand, on the one hand, you know, everybody's going to complain about any sort of new technology, any sort of new way to access stuff, any presentation they're not used to. It's like we're talking about last week. Every time a website gets redesigned, people would just

go apoplectic. And then, like, two months later, you realize that's the way the entire internet looks that way now, you know? And there's, so people are going to complain and they're going to complain online and they're going to find thousands of other people that agree with them, even if they're wrong. Even if they're, even if their complaints are baseless or stupid, you know? So it's going to seem like everything's crumbling to the ground. But at the same, time, you know, we're actually learning how to, we're re-learning how to engage with this stuff and, you know, over the top platforms and everything else in a way that we've never had to before. It was the blissful ignorance of the prime time show, what everybody could complain about the same

thing. And now we're having to, you know, actually grapple with the opportunity to see everything. And sure, to pay for it, you know, especially the moment when you're trying to push, when you're trying to switch channels to realize that you have to like subscribe to a service and put down some money, going to be terrible. You know, it's always going to be, you know, it'd be great if there was some way to just say, yes, I promise I will do this tomorrow, but can I just watch it now? And I just push a button to watch it now, you know? But I mean, it's weird.

I think NBC is actually doing a pretty good job of like presenting everything. And as you mentioned to someone who already has Peacock Peacock Premium and everything else, it's, it's been, if not seamless, finding everything. The process, you know, I haven't had any moments where I was like, you know, throwing things at my screen. but it's tough you know there's no training wheels for this there's no one's going to log on in you know in may for like a how to guide to learn how to access the Olympics and you know when they pop up you know it's it's people have to figure it out as they're doing it and it's and people are going to be

mad but it's not you know this is always going to be it's not an excuse but this is a thing that we're going to be dealing with probably pretty regularly for the rest of our lives or at least the next few years how people settle into these things i mean it's like every year a new wave of viewers watches, streams the Super Bowl instead of watching it on, you know, traditional cable. And that wave of viewers gets really mad on Twitter when there's a lag between what they're watching what other people are watching, right? I mean, it's like, this is the normal, the normal way, like evolution of things now. New, like, there are new adopters, and those new adopters will be irrationally angry about how things are subtly different than what

they're used to. It's just the, it's just the way the world works. I absolutely agree. and I think we're in this kind of wonderful time for sports watching right now and I don't want to be a toady of the networks or the streaming services or anybody else. But we've always had to pay to watch the sports we want to watch. Like your NFL games of the week, a couple other things were on free television, you always had to pay the cable fees to watch most of what you wanted to watch, to watch wrestling, right, to watch all those kinds of things. Yeah.

Then this wonderful, you know, we get all this wonderful technical. And people are like, aha, I will not pay for the cable bundle. I will cut the cord. I will show the cable company that I'm not going to pay for them. And then they're like, wait a second, I'm still having to go around and pay and assemble all these things. And sometimes I can't get the channel I want. And sometimes I have to pay for people.

You know, it wasn't going to go from a world where you paid the cable company a bunch of money to where everything was free. That just wasn't happening. And I know that it may have seemed like that for five minutes, but that wasn't going to be the future of watching things. You are going to have to pay. And if you weren't paying a lump sum to one entity, you were going to be paying smaller sums to 20 entities. That's just the way it goes. And again, I don't love it. I don't love putting my credit card in for all this stuff. I don't, I want it to be less money. I want it to be less frustrating. But the economic model here is the same

economic model. It just got moved into a different place. I mean, I was looking, it was funny. I was looking at an old University of Texas schedule the other day long before the Longhorn Network and it said one of the lesser Texas games was on pay-per-view because they put like one game a year on pay-per-view. Does anybody remember when that was the case? Probably not. But you know, 10 years after that we'd be like, wait, I have to get the Longhorn Network to get this game. Yeah. And now we'd say, I have to stream

ESPN Plus to get this game and pay them for it? It's the same complaint. We've just transferred it over to different people. And the moral of the story, sorry to catch you off, the moral of the story is it's never going to be free. It's never going to be free. And it's never going to be particularly easy. That's the bad news.

Yeah. I mean, listen, there's nothing, there are very few things in life that are more irritating than trying to push play. trying to just turn on the TV, you're running in the door, your family's sitting down with popcorn, whatever, to watch a thing.

And then you realize you have to fumble with your wallet and the remote control and go through all of these steps to make a thing happen while everyone in your family is asking you why you can't make it happen. Like these things that's irritating.

You're missing kickoff. You're missing whatever. Like it's terrible. It's like the hell of modern life. But it's also just like really nothing. So, you know, we... Yeah. It's really, as these things,

things as things go, it's, it's pretty low on the scale of frustration. We have been talked about, we've, we've talked about various times, David, how magazine stories, when you write a magazine story, especially about a celebrity, you'll get what are called secondaries. Secondary interviews from other famous

people. We got a great nomination for one of the great secondaries of recent times from Mark Tracy of the New York Times. There was a dual leap up profile in Vanity Fair. And Vanity Fair got burning. Sanders. As a secondary, I can read you some of the quotes.

The attacks against Duar are outrageous, Sanders said, simply saying that we must uphold international standards of human rights consistently. Even when it's politically difficult is not anti-Semitism. It is good that we are seeing a rise of a new generation of leaders like Duo who are speaking out, etc., etc. Bernie Sanders. That is unbelievable. Great job, New York Magazine.

It's Vanity Fair, but. Oh, it's a great job. Sorry, great job. in fair. David, did you follow the call me coach controversy this week in sports media? Yeah, well, only very vaguely. Will you fill me in?

There are two parts of this. The first was Dion Sanders, who is now the head football coach at Jackson State. While back, he was at Southwestern Athletic Conference Media Days. He told a reporter, you don't call Nick Sabin, Nick.

Don't call me Dion. If you call Nick, Nick, you'll get cussed on the spot, So don't do that to me. Treat me like Nick. What Dion Sanders wanted to be addressed as was coach by a formal title. So like you call a U.S. Senator, when you're talking to him, you say Senator.

Mm-hmm. You call Dion Sanders. According to Dionne Sanders, you call him coach. Well, Thursday, New York Giants offensive coordinator Jason Garrett got in on this act. Pat Leonard of the New York Daily News tweeted out this snippet from a Jason Garrett press conference. Yeah? Good to see you guys. good to see you guys

yeah we say good to see you coach that's how we do needless to say of course David sportswriters do not need to call the coach of the team coach

in a formal you know it's not like Mr. President I have a question at the White House right I always you know when I've interviewed

coaches of the years I often use that because to me it's such a funny honorific as honorifics go it's sort of like when you'd read about somebody in the old days who took the title colonel, even though they weren't a colonel in the army, you know, like, oh, Colonel Shoemaker over here, you know.

I always think Coach is just a funny title. Yeah. So, you know, co, hey, coach. Thanks, Coach. I mean, listen, nobody calls, you know, if you're the manager of a McDonald's, nobody calls you manager Curtis when you walk off the, you know, walk off the premises. But it's, it's inherently funny.

I totally agree. They do not call me. And also, by the way, I grew up in Kentucky where, colonel is an official state awarded designation. It's like getting the key to the city. If you achieve a certain level of recognition, you can become a Kentucky colonel. But I believe Colonel Sanders,

you know, famous colonel from Kentucky, I believe he appointed himself such. How about some only in journalism words, day before we get out of here today. Sports writer Mike Vorkinov suggests the word bruising. That's pretty good. You often see that in political context,

a bruising primary in Cleveland. This is from journalist Greg Conner's Rife. Rife. Nobody ever uses rife in normal speech, but... You wouldn't say that my house is rife with cockroaches? I don't think... I think crawling, maybe. Infested, yeah.

Ink, as in signing a contract, he inks a deal with the Philadelphia. That's also a headline word, right? Because it's three letters and you can smash it into a good small space. We had a nomination for Uvra. Oh, yeah. Uvra? That's a good word when you just-

I've used that one a lot. Me too, when you wanted your pros to sound fancy. The other day I used summa, you know, instead of masterpiece, summa, because that made my sentence a little snazier in my mind. Cavorting was another nominee. I think I would use cavorting in real life. I mean, a little bit tongue-in-cheek,

but yeah, you use guvvvoting. You wouldn't you if you're is cavorting just like a euphemism word? Is that why it's on the journalism list? The other day, I wrote a piece the other day and I had the word assignation in it because I was trying not to just come out and say the thing that I was talking about and somebody's like, aha. So you used a word because you were trying not to say the thing that you were talking about in the piece of you said assignation. I think cavorting is in that department as well. And finally, David, I like this one, Boone. Oh, yeah.

Well, Boone's an only in journalism word because it's not a practical word. There's probably this applies to some of the other ones too. It's just not a practical word to say out loud because even if you used it precisely and in their exact, you know, pronounce it correctly, put it in the exact perfect, you know, usage, perfect placement. Whoever you're talking to would just be like, what did you say? Did you say boot? Did you say boot? Like nobody would get it. Like it's just, that's it.

That's not a journalism problem. That's a spoken English problem. You talk about the wine? Yeah, exactly. Boone's farm. Wine's stretching it, but its stuff is good. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker. Guess is the strained pun headline.

Yeah. Monday's headline about the crappy jungle cruise movie was Amazon subprime. Today's headline comes from Dan Halpman Esquire, our good pal. It's from the New York Post. I'll give you the subhead, David. Somalié of the year busted in string of arsons. Somalié, I didn't know arsons

could be plural, by the way, but Somalié of the year busted in string of arsons. Okay. All right. What was the New York Post? Strained pun headline. Sorry, excuse me, he was the ex-Somalié of the year. I didn't want to imply anything about the current

Somalié of the year. ex-Similee of the year. They doesn't have to return his crown, is what you're saying. There's a morals clause in the Somali of the year award. Something is it wine? Is it wine and fire and wine, right? I mean, these are the two things that were burning. Exactly.

Those are your words. Fire and wine are the actual words. Those are the words in the headline. Firing wine, fire, why? So close. Firing. Not firing wine. Just switching around.

little bit. Just switch it around a little bit. Exact same pun. Fire. In the in the wine in the fire? Wining in the in the wine.

And the wine of fire. Oh God. That's so great. Oh, that's good. That's so good. I almost watched that one the other day. It's a classic. That's a good movie. I was in the hotel in L.A. the other day and said this is the elevator. There was a plaque that said this is the elevator.

that one of the ending scenes in that movie won't spoil it. Oh, in downtown? Yeah, that's a place that was always just to put us up in the Grantland days.

Yeah, that was great. I love that hotel. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production, managing by Erica Servantes. We are back Monday with more lukewarm takes

about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.