The Press Box - CNN and More on the Coverage of Ukraine

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

Bryan and David discuss the latest coverage developments from the invasion of Ukraine. They break down the “fog of war” and decipher what we can understand from recent reports, weigh in on CNN’s on-ground coverage, and discuss media moments surrounding the invasion (0:39). Later, they touch on the sports news that Troy Aikman will be leaving Fox for ESPN’s ‘Monday Night Football' (24:10). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dave Chang is an avid student and fan of sports, music, art, film, and of course, food. With a rotating cast of guests, they have conversations that cover everything from the creative process to his guest's guiltiest pleasures. Followed the Dave Chang Show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here along with producer Erica Servantes. David will get to the very important business of NFL announcers in just a second. But let us begin with the coverage of Ukraine. We are now four and a half days since Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The two countries spoke today, but those talks were inconclusive. As we record this, the Russians have not succeeded in taking any major Ukrainian cities, including the capital of Kiev, though there are several reports today that the Russian attack may be escalating. You and I talked on Thursday, David, about this whole idea of the fog of war, journalistically speaking. Watching reporters try to figure out something that is very, very hard to understand in real time. Oh, yeah.

I was struck again today, reading the New York Times, by this paragraph. I'm just going to read it to you. Quote, Russian troops, at least for a time, also drew closer to the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, according to videos and photographs analyzed by the New York Times.

The footage showed Ukrainian Ukrainians firing rockets toward Russian troops, as well as some Russian military vehicles burning and others being ransacked by Ukrainian forces. So just in that paragraph, you see how careful

on the one hand the Times is being, but on the other hand, how they are trying to make a determination. Yes, when I read videos and photographs analyzed by the New York Times, I guess that could mean a lot of different things, obviously, and certainly would have meant something else five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. But when I read that right now, I think the New York Times, you know, newsroom is reading the

front page of Reddit just like the rest of us are. And they're trying to figure out which of those videos are authentic. Well, yeah. And this is, this is again, like the very careful version, right? This is, we don't want to say, hey, there was an explosion. there appears to be something else. We're trying to be a half a step slow and tell you what's actually happening in this country rather than doing cable news light show, you know, and it's hard.

And the answer is not always terribly apparent. I get this book recommended to me by Jack Schaefer, my old boss, Politico columnist. It's called The First Casualty, The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth Maker from Crimea to Iraq, apparently there's several editions by Philip Knightley. And the reason I'm bringing it up is because it is fascinating to read about how different wars were covered and how in most cases it wasn't that the war correspondents were doing something wrong or that they were lazy or that they were corrupt or whatever it was. They were just working from very, very little information.

And I'm reading the World War II chapters last night, you know the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II. famous historical moment. Later, the subject of a Christopher Nolan movie. This is from Philip Knightley's book.

There were no British war correspondents writing from Dunkirk. They covered the whole of the evacuation secondhand from the southeast coast ports where the troops landed. So they're sitting there

and the troops come back. Then they try to reassemble this narrative. It is very heroic and very noble. Of course, there were many, many heroic

and noble actions at Dunkirk. but it wasn't a full picture. And it was years and years later before we began to understand what had actually happened there. Because they just couldn't see it with their own eyes. And it's really funny to watch this in real time because, again, you have lots and lots of great reporters absolutely during their best, putting themselves in harm's way, working incredibly hard. But there's just a limit of understanding in a time like this. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's sort of like the people who are physically in the position to bring us the most news

are obviously not in the best position to sort of synthesize the news on a broader level, right? I mean, if you're there on the ground, you don't have the same ability or, you know, it's not automatically you don't have the ability to zoom out. And the people that are in the position to sort of take a wider view almost definitionally aren't there on the ground. So it's, it's, it's, it's sort of like the Dunkirk story, but happening in, in real time. Everybody's sort of trying to, you know, feel the elephant and decide what it is. Yeah. And on, what does even on the ground mean, right? Ukraine's a gigantic country. Yeah. Russians are attacking multiple cities at once. Just being there doesn't get you,

get you the halfway. It's incredibly difficult. We're reminded of this because on CNN breaking, just as we started the podcast, was this. this is from Jim Acosta. Ukraine's defenders of Snake Island. Remember that story from very early in the invasion? Oh, yeah. Who were initially feared dead after telling the Russians to go F themselves are, quote, alive and well, according to the Ukrainian Navy.

So we heard that story. Russian warship came. Snake Island defenders said, you know, go F yourself. Yeah. And they were killed. It turns out, again, according to at least these CNN, reports that they are alive and well. That was interesting. In retrospect, perhaps not shocking. There's a lot of sort of, you know, halfway misinformation. A lot of text messages from

unnamed Russian soldiers and Ukrainian soldiers and stuff are all sort of being passed around social media as they sent this right before they died or they recorded this right before they died. I guess it gets a little bit more attention. But great to hear that the defenders of Snake Island are alive. Yeah, this was the one that got me the other night. The former boxer Vatali Klitschko, former heavyweight champion of the world, now the mayor of Kiev. He and his brother Vladimir, who's also former boxer, said they were going to take up arms and fight for Ukraine. Literally take up arms and fight for Ukraine. Now, Friday night, I'm reading Twitter and I see people posting photographs of Vatali Klitschko in army fatigues.

standing next to a machine gun. Yeah. There were very notable people posting this, including Logan Paul, retweeting one version of it. I went over to Vatali Klitschko's Instagram page, and it turns out that photo was posted on Instagram last March, 11 months before the Russian invasion. Again, I know nothing about what he is doing right now. He could, for all I know, be doing that right now. But that particular photograph that was being passed off is here is something that is happening

right now. By the way, not to make light of any of this, obviously, but what is the statute of limitations on identifying Vladimir Klitschko as a former heavyweight boxing champion in like when discussing his current role? Because I read, I certainly there's a lot of people that don't know he went, he returned home and went into politics. And it's a helpful identifier, right? The New York Times a day, I think just referred to him as just straight, you know, Mayor Vladimir Klichko offhandedly.

Oh, Vatali Klitsko, yeah. Sorry, Fatali Klitschko, yeah. So what is the point where we are just talking about him purely in the context of somebody who is the mayor of Kiev, who is bravely staying in the country, rallying people in the country, rallying people around the world to Ukraine's side? Yeah. If like Arnold Schwarzenegger was our president, well, I guess the president's a little bit different. When he was the governor of California, wasn't it necessary when you talked about him

on a national news piece to be like former action star and California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. of that one. Right. Well, what he's doing, what Klitsko's doing right now, right? It's so important. Yes. Yes. You're right. We can probably drop the modifier, right? Right now he's the mayor of Kiev. And he is doing lots of important things about that. Speaking of truth telling, David, we often have the role of the Fox News truth teller come before us. It's been filled by Shep Smith, by Chris Wallace at various times. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the role has been filled by Fox News.

is Jennifer Griffin. It was a national security correspondent on that network has done on-air fact checks with Fox and Friends, Sean Hannity, Harris Faulkner. You sent me this clip. This is from Steve Hilton's show. I'm not watched that show myself. He had former retired, retired Brigadier General Don Balduck on, who has run for Senate and lost, and apparently running again for Senate.

Baldock suggested that the way the U.S. could aid the Ukrainians was to, quote, help them on the ground. Here is how Jennifer Griffin, Fox News correspondent, responded to that. And clearly, Brigadier General Baldock is not a student of history. He's a politician. He ran for Senate in New Hampshire and failed. He's not a military strategist. And to suggest that the U.S. would put indirect fires or special operations or CIA on the ground to, to, to give Putin any sort of excuse to broaden this conflict is extremely dangerous talk at a time like this. It's frankly, like, kind of surprising to hear not just on Fox News, although easy target,

but on any news network to hear somebody not just kind of yes and, not just pivot off of something, yes, but I guess, not just pivot off of the speaker that came before them, but to say the person who you just deliberately had on your show seconds ago doesn't know what they're talking about. Now, talk about the fog of war. And, you know, I aired some of these grievances last time we talked. But there's a lot of people on TV just because of the necessities of cable news broadcasting. There's a lot of different people out there playing talking head. And a lot of them don't know what they're talking about.

Even the ones who were paid to do this as a career, you know, think tankers and former generals and everything. else, they don't always get it right. But it is sort of reassuring that there are people out there who are willing to object, you know? I mean, there's there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's too much agreement, I think, or just the, or the, or the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, pretense of agreement, even when someone's completely wrong. And this is a situation where it's important to be kind of as correct as possible.

Um, Fox News is obviously a particularly fraught battleground for this stuff, though, because, well, because it's a network that often is sort of ideologically deliberate, to put it one way, right? I mean, they sort of have a party line view on most of the things that, most of the major political discussions of the day. And this sealed and exactly situation where there is some sort of, there are, well, I was going to say warring parties, which would be, but there are, you know, different points of view, or at least it seems, the sense that people are sort of great. grasping for, you know, the talking points that they're supposed to be using, it's nice to have

a voice of assurance and a voice of confidence. And, you know, it's never surprising when a voice like that pops up on Fox News and gets attention. This is just a real, you know, pointed version of it. Yeah, that was a really interesting critique because it wasn't just like, I disagree with the analysis that your last guest gave. She was essentially saying, I don't think you should have had that person on the air to talk about Ukraine at all. Yeah. You know, it was almost like a more, a bigger sort of objection to like, why are you putting this person who is basically a politician now on the air to talk about this issue?

Well, and yes. And to disagree, I mean, it'd be one thing if someone was, if someone said, you know, something that was, that was, like, made a bigger argument, right? I think we should officially join the war against Russia. He didn't go that far. So I think we should break out the nukes and start blowing them up. It's one thing to say something that broad and have someone come on and say, no, I totally disagree, you know, like this is a A or B decision.

But this is the sort of distinction that could be just sort of hand-waved away, you know. And it's significant that she's making very clearly, you know, stating very clearly that you can be completely wrong on something that is, presented as just sort of maybe a less significant point, you know, that like even the minor, well, I don't want to make anything seem minor, but even the lower level sort of suggestions, quibbles, policy ideas in this situation can be like incredibly dangerous, you know, and it's really important to point that out. Jennifer Griffin told another Fox News show, I'm here to fact check facts because I report on facts.

And my job is to try to figure out the truth as best I know it. I share those facts internally so that our network can be more accurate. that's what I've always done. There's nothing different than what I've been doing for the last 26 years working at Fox. I also want to come back around to another idea we talked about on Thursday, David,

this idea about CNN. People complain about CNN. People have their issues with CNN. But since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, you've had lots of people saying, this is CNN's best self. CNN putting lots of people on the ground in a very, very dangerous and complicated situation like Ukraine.

By the way, they have 75 people on the ground if you include the local people that are helping the network's journalists. This is what we like about CNN. Tom Jones wrote an article for Pointer in which he said CNN showed why it remains television's gold standard for fast-breaking international news. I want to take you to another scene from CNN. This is correspondent Matthew Chance. You remember we talked about him last time.

He was a guy who came upon military officers in an airfield and said, where are the Russians and then they said we're the Russians. Here you'll hear the anchor throw to Matthew Chance in the field in Kiev and he is crouching down near the ground. Listen to what he said. Offensive positions or are they moving about striking targets of opportunity? It's a good question. And the thing is what's happened over the past couple of days since this invasion begun

is that the Ukraine, actually I was crouching down right by a grenade there. I didn't see that. I was crouching down right by a grenade and I didn't see that as he stands up and walks backwards. It's funny because a lot of the pieces about CNN, David, or the tweets about CNN, talk about CNN covering the Gulf War, the first Gulf War back in 1991. Yeah. Which was this defining moment. I was looking up some of the articles about that and before. And it's really interesting because CNN in the 80s founded 1980 by Ted Turner.

And it was known as the Chicken Noodle Network because it was. so cheap and so cheesy in its attempt to do 24-hour cable news coverage, which at the time was very unique in the field. And so you have this sort of slightly gets better and better and more vital and more vital by 1990. And the 91, they cover the Gulf War, it's been other level. It's just interesting. And that, by the way, was used as an absolute cudgel against CNN for the next X many years.

It was like 90s ESPN. Why can't CNN just be like it was in the 90s? Sure. Why can't CNN be just like it was in the 90s? Never mind that people don't want to watch that anymore. They want to watch the personality-driven news. They say they want to watch it, but they don't want to watch it. They really don't watch it.

Yeah. So in that case, CNN was trying to recover or was trying to become a real news organization. This is a different thing, right? when we're looking at when people talk about this is CNN's best self, they're saying more like, I'm tired of personality driven news. Is that it? I'm tired of the red clock that has a countdown, even when something is not really that important. What are they reacting to, do you think? Well, I mean, frankly, they're reacting to something that's unique, I mean, this unique about the way that they're watching it, right? they're reacting to their personal desire for information, right, in a very, in a general way.

And CNN's offering it in, I think it would probably be, you know, when the popular vote is the most, as the best way. I mean, they're doing the best job at that and they have traditionally, they know how to do it. I mean, it's a skill that's in their, obviously they're in their toolbox. And they've been, like you said, praised for it for years, except when they're not do it. it. Now, I mean, it's hard, it's hard to, I mean, I think it's just hard to imagine if you're, if you are, if you are CNN, but you know, if you're, if you're running CNN, what, what is, how do you, if you, if you were to marshal these resources in exactly the same way,

four months from now, what would you be covering or four months ago? Like, what would, like, what would, like, what would buy this build back better, Bill? Right. I mean, do you have like people on the streets of Washington, D.C., reporting and pointing behind them about what's going on with the same sort of energy? Do you have people in all the, you know, home states of all of the relevant senators and Congress people? I mean, I don't, it's just, it's, I'm not sure what we, what will you be watching? I wish that there was this sort of information down, you know, download for other subjects, too, but I'm not sure how well it translates. Yeah. And that's the problem, right? So when there's,

when we know what to do in a situation like this if we're CNN. We know to put correspondence on the ground. I said that Anderson Cooper is actually in Ukraine now, put anchors on the ground there, give you the most and best coverage that we can possibly give you, again, given the limitations of war reporting, given the best coverage that we can give you from the ground. But it's the other times where we have to put something on TV

and we don't necessarily know what we're supposed to do in those times. Do we follow the other news networks and do, personality-driven news. Do we do personality-driven news, but in a slightly different way? That's part of CNN's identity crisis, I think. It's hard, right? In a world that's changed a whole bunch

since 1991, not only do they have more competitors, but just people get their news in different ways. Yeah. The old vocabulary of network news going to the person in the field is largely gone, you know, for a two-minute segment or whatever it is. So that's the identity crisis. Well, then the identity crisis is,

is a bigger crisis, right? Because the worst thing you can have is a news network and, you know, is an identity crisis, right? I mean, that's sort of why, for better or worse, the answer is worse, you know, the homogeneity of Fox News is so effective for them, right? I mean, I don't think that, you know, MSNBC has, has, you know, variety in different ways, but I don't think that, you know, I think that most times if people want something different from from the news that they're watching at that moment, they'll change the channel. You know, they don't look at the, look at the TV guide and see what time this very different

thing comes on the same channel and is it 90 minutes from now? Because it's not. It's always the same. And that's what, that's what draws people to these news networks at all hours of the day. Yes. And I just think people right now are watching CNN any time of day and going, I understand exactly what this is. Mm-hmm.

I mean, I'm looking at my screen right over, right over the computer that I'm watching you in. I'm looking at CNN. U.S. officials worry the worst is yet to come for Kiev. I can see the pictures. I can see Jake Tapper anchoring. I know exactly. I understand what this is. And this is also what I want at a timeline.

It's very interesting. David, we did have a couple of unfortunate moments with some of the coverage and some of the tweets regarding the Ukraine situation. The first one of these came from the musician known as the weekend who last Wednesday night wanted to tease an announcement of his new Amazon Prime. show. Oh, no. So as the rest of the world is watching the harrowing pictures of the first night of the

large-scale Russian invasion, the weekend tweeted all caps, let's go. Informed that let's go was not a great tweet as the Russians were entering Ukraine. The weekend replied, unfortunately, I'm just now seeing what's happening with the conflict and we'll pause on tomorrow's announcement. I pray for everyone's safety. Wow. Wow. Second example, David, comes from the Twitter account at Basketball Talk. The site was aggregating a report about LeBron James and his tensions with the Los Angeles Lakers.

The tweet read, and this was also from Wednesday night, latest report of tension between Lakers, comma, LeBron, likened to, quote, early days of a war. Oh, my gosh. We allow a lot of war metaphors in sports writing, but maybe not on the actual. early days of an armed conflict like this. Yeah, no, no. And finally, and I'm sure you saw this one, right before we were set to record on Thursday, a lot of people on Twitter started pointing out a very unfortunately timed Applebee's ad. This was on Thursday, early on Thursday morning, CNN, David was showing, or I guess letting you hear the sound of an air raid siren. And somehow that uncomfortably transitioned into a country music themed

Appleby's ad. Just listen to a little bit of that sound right here. I'm not sure what ad would have sounded good after the air raid siren. But the answer is certainly not the Zach Brown band Chicken Fright. No, yeah, yeah. Big fan of the song. That's not the time to play. David, we'll talk about NFL announcers in a second, but let us 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 gratefully received. There has been a big story, David, about the amount of money and arms that various countries are delivering to Ukraine this week. This item came across Twitter. Sweden has just announced it will deliver 5,000 anti-armor rocket launchers, 5,000 body armor kits, 5,000 helmets, and 135,000 field rations from Sweden. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. Unfortunately, they will come shipped in a bunch of pieces that you have to reassess with an Allen wrench. I was laughing.

I couldn't even get it out. Oh, wow. Thanks to Ryan Snyder and James Frazier. If you reminded me of that Alan wrench, I found while moving this weekend, congrats. You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in a very sharp. right-hand turn of in other news here.

There's a big news from the world of sports announcing. Troy Aikman, number one NFL announcer on Fox, is apparently leaving for ESPN's Monday Night Football. He is going to sign a record tying deal that will pay him $18 million a year to call Monday Night Football for the worldwide leader in sports. I always like your bit on why we like Troy Aikman. Yeah.

I think you have a handle. Can you repeat that for people who have not heard why the voice of Troy Aikman is so reassuring on a Sunday afternoon? Joe Buck and Troy Akeman sound like a football game. Like they could, I don't mean, this is not a commentary on their analysis skills at all. But literally if they were having a conversation about dinner at Applebee's, for three and a half hours, and you had the volume on like 11, you know, out of 100 or, you know,

relatively low, you'd just be like, ah, what a great football game. This feels exactly, it just feels right. It feels comfortable. And they're certainly good at their jobs, but, but,

I mean, I do think that one of the, that's kind of the best thing. I guess a lot of times when people are critical of Vagman or a lot of other people, you know, you say it's almost beside the point, you know,

I mean, part of what makes a, I mean, listen, you're the one to talk about what makes a great announcer, a great color guy or whatever else, but a lot of what makes them, what makes them valuable at a certain point in their career is our comfort and familiarity with them, right? Yep. If you're starting a new broadcast, you know, when you're launching Sunday night football, you get Al Michaels, whether or not, I mean, Al Michaels was in top form, but it's almost, he didn't need. need to be, you know, or to have the value that he did to Sunday night football he didn't need to be, right? So it's, it's a, I don't know, it's, um, it doesn't shock me that Troy Aikman is such a hot free agent. I love the salary talk, though. I love that we're just at a point, I mean, I guess the press box probably benefits from this too, but I like that we're at a point

in our discourse where we're talking about lead analyst salaries the same way we talk about active quarterback salaries, right? That it's like, like every new quarterback salary is either, a match of exactly as high as the one that came before or like, you know, $10 million higher. It has to just keep trending upward, right? And it's important to compare to whatever came before. I'm glad you said that because there's a couple of things about this that are really interesting. One is the Tony Romo contract, which was the previous $18 million a year or thereabouts contract in announcing, has just had so many crazy ripple effects.

or to me more blunt about it from the point of the view of the networks, it screwed everything up. It screwed everything up because if you're Troy Aikman and you see the other guy who's on CBS who has exactly the same job you do, get $18 million. And exactly the same previous job as you in this case with fewer Super Bowls. More on that in just a second. But if you see that, you're like, now where's my $18 million? Yeah. because nobody watches a football game to hear Tony Romo call it. Just like nobody watches a football game to hear me, Troy Aikman, call it.

So we are exactly the same value and people and what you're talking about the familiarity with the voice, with the speech patterns. We are bringing exactly the same thing to this broadcast. Well, that's sort of a nihilistic way of looking at it. If they don't add it. So basically it's like because none of us add value. None of us is not we're all worth nothing. We're all worth the exact same $18 million mark. I mean, is that the argument there?

Dude, that's exactly what it is. If I'm a sitcom star, you know, remember when we had sitcoms? But if I was a sitcom star, I could say, you have to pay me $2 million an episode. Because I have a hit show. You make this much money off at a week. And you're about to sell into syndication. So I'm worth $2 million. And then you would have to, as the network head would have to figure out,

whether that makes sense to pay me. What is it with NFL announces? Yeah. What if I had the game called by generic, mediocre play-by-play guy and generic mediocre color guy? Would one person not watch the NFC game of the week or Monday night football or Sunday night football that wasn't going to watch it anyway? The answer is no.

So on the one hand, you say, well, wait a second. Why are they paying it so much? But on the other hand, you say, hey, they can pay us anything they want to. It's true. I mean, and when you think about it, it's not like the job is different than someone who's doing color for a basketball game or a baseball game that happened, you know, multiple times a week as opposed to this game that happens just one time a week. You know, the NFL only plays once a week and this job generally calls for one game for announcing one game a week. If the NFL magically went to a, you know, 82 game season, I can't imagine that the networks are going to be paying. a million dollars a game to every single color commentator, right?

But it's because of the scarcity artificially imposed by the sport that they're, that they're able to demand that much sort of per, per attempt. The scarcity and the fact that NFL games are the highest rated thing on television. Sure. Yeah. All of the other television, the sitcoms that the guys used to get a million dollars in episode, $2 million in episode four, not in the top 20 anymore.

Sure. For the most part, not in the top 50 anymore for the most part, but those NFL games, it's the last way people watch live television. What's the, watch live television? What, I mean, is there, if you're working for Amazon or whatever, I mean, what is the, obviously there's a value to the, to the name of Troy Aikman and the, you know, whatever, like, to the sort of institution of Troy Akeman, but to what degree is he inextricable from Joe Buck? And I don't just mean, I don't just mean Troy Akeman.

I mean, any person that sat next to somebody else for that long, you know, I mean, it's, It's all sort of tied together, right? I think that's a fascinating question because we do identify these guys with a certain shield with a certain logo on their network blazer. Like you are Fox, Joe Buck, Troy Aikman. So when I'm watching you, I'm thinking of Fox. There's a certain face of the network value. And you're saying if we take him out of Fox and put him on ESPN, does that transfer over?

is that the same is there something different you know is there some it does the value carry over or is it become different i don't really know i mean again i think it's i think there's a certain like cbs for instance really likes jim nance remember he was having like a thing a contract thing a couple years ago or a year ago now and he was like in the whole idea i was thinking it was like we like jim nance because jim nance is cbs he's the masters i was just going to say this i was because it does seem like there's more value in the continuity to the, you know, to the people that have them there than there is to the new net. And obviously, it's a totally different sort of investment, right? It's a different, like I said, if you're starting a new football broadcast, it is

incredibly important to have the trappings of legitimacy, right? I mean, that could mean a lot of different things. But yeah, I mean, it's possible that anybody that gets hired away like that and put in a totally new environment with a new partner and everything else could just sort of fizzle. And it's conceivable that the value is not there. It doesn't materialize after six months or whatever. So I don't know, it's, it is really interesting. You did see the second part of the story. It was at ESPN. It's also interested in Joe Buck coming over there to call Monday Night Football. So if we're worried that Troikman out of the context of Joe Buck would be somehow different, what if we went and get Joe Buck, whose contract is up after this year and bring him over there?

So now we're not to bring up our guy. We're bringing the team over. See, the team makes more sense. But Joe Buck seems like he's got a lot of other stuff going on at Fox. It's got the World Series. He's called a bazillion of them in a row. Sure. Sure.

And he kind of is Fox. That was his first, you know, network job. His first really big job when he was in his 20s. But, you know, I think it's, again, to just circle back to your point in a second, if it's like a news brand, like Jake Tapper on CNN, you're like people, you want people to watch CNN news. Uh-huh. Because they identify with that guy is if any of these people leave, is anybody about I'm not watching sports on Fox anymore? Right. Because they don't have those guys.

I don't think that's the case. But this isn't a new thing, right? I mean, it's an existing institution that has a long, speaking of Monday Night Football, that has a lot of recovery. I mean, it has a, they would hope has a lot of room to grow, which is a kind of a unique situation for professional sports, right? To have both an institution and, well, what's the rationale for spending that kind of money must be, you know, that you could improve viewership? I don't know about that. You don't think so? I think maybe marginally.

I think the big thing is they have a Super Bowl coming up in a few years, which will be ESPN's first ever Super Bowl. And the thinking in the network is we need an A team to be doing this. We've had a lot of, we've gone through like how many permutations to try to figure this out, the most recent of which is Steve Levy, Lewis Riddick, and Brian Gracie. We need to figure this out. And we need, we need a big announcers that we can imagine calling a super for us.

Not just calling your Monday night game with the Jaguars, but calling the Super Bowl for us. But it's also got to be more than the Super Bowl, right? I mean, it's still a bigger investment. It's a bigger. I mean, it's a huge investment. But that's the thing. But why would you, I mean, you could just say, you know, go to Fox and say, can we borrow your A team for the Super Bowl in a few years?

Why would, why would Fox want to do that? Why would they want to help them out with that? Because they'll give, we'll give you $50 million or whatever. I mean, it's like, you know, you just call the one game for us. I mean, that would probably make more economic sense. Well, that's what I'm saying. It's got to be bigger than just the one thing. You're trying to sort of establish the institution, reestablish the institution.

I don't know. You're right. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot that goes into it. And I'm sure of all the things in the world where it's easy to write off an $18 million salary, you know, Monday night football is probably one where ESPN could probably shuffle some stuff around and make that disappear. But it's still, I mean, it's, it is a. It is a noisy move. They've been trying to get somebody in that seat for a long time, though, right? I mean, that's always the, that's the, it looks like they've been trying to hit a home run or to sign,

I guess that's probably the wrong, the better sports metaphor is just to sign a big free agent for a long time, right? But it doesn't, it's never really worked out for them. They're like the Dallas Mavericks with their maximum salary space. You can pick your team, I guess. They've had a briefcase full of money. They offered it to Tony Romo. He wound up saying at CBS. They offered it to Peyton Manning before the Manning cast.

He said no. And now they are taking the briefcase full of money and giving it to Troy. Yes. And you're right. Amazon's job here is we want to make people who are skeptical or find it weird that they're going to watch like NFL games on streaming. Not just also watch it on stream, but like a thing that originates on streaming. We want to make, we want to be a real boy, right?

Like Pinocchio, right? That's Fox. That's Fox back in 1994. We want to seem like a real network who knows what they're doing. So we'll get familiar voices. Al Michaels. We'll try to go get Troy Aikman. There's a new rumor they went Kirk Herb Street.

Monday night, it's harder, right? They just want to be like, they want Monday night to seem bigger. But I'd be really curious if seem bigger, seem like a bigger deal actually translates into more people watch Monday night football. Sure. Than the 11, 12 million, whatever it is a week that watch now. I don't know. I just don't know that sports work that way.

I think, you know, that you would just think, okay, let's in the best case scenario for them, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman are here. You know, we're going to be watching more people are going to be watching our network. Yeah. The other, the last thing I would have said about this, which is kind of funny, is we mentioned ESPN going after Tony Romo a couple of years ago. Yeah. So the fact that ESPN was in that negotiation is what helped bump Tony Romo's salary up to

18 million dollars a year. Mm-hmm. Now, ESPN didn't get him, and now they are coming back and paying somebody else $18 million a year. Yeah. It's tough. So this is the... And again, I don't blame Tony Romo and Drayman for getting all their money.

Why not? You know, great. Whatever somebody wants to pay you, that sounds like the right amount. You know you have that. I mean, listen, this is make another bad sports point. It's like when you're the, you know, the... Well, I guess there's the Oklahoma City Thunder now, but we would like, you know, the Boston Celtics had like 20 draft picks that they were sitting on and they thought they were going to be able to trade for all these stars. I think it's a hard deal to call somebody in the phone and just be like, I really want to trade for this guy.

We'll give you our like fifth and six best asset, right? And they're just like, no, we know you have these, you know, first round picks. We want those. And if you're Troy Aikman calling, you're just like, I know, you should, you opened your wallet. And we all saw the $18 million in cash sitting there. We're not, you know, we're not going to just sit back. We're not going to ask for anything less. We're not going to accept anything less because we know that that's the, that's the, that's the, that's the bid.

You know, it makes sense. You were the ones that told us this is the rate. This is the new benchmark. If that's the rate and we're all worth the same thing, yeah, that's what we're getting paid. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses a strain pun headline. Yeah. Today's headline, David, comes to us from Marcus Gilmer and Trevor Frank. It's from the BBC, those yucksters over at the BBC.

here's the story around 4,000 pairs of Nike's worth 400,000 pounds have been stolen from a lorry at a service station in Scotland. A major CCTV trawl is underway in a bid to identify the suspects. A daring theft, David, of Nike shoes, a major theft of Nike shoes. What was the BBC's strain pun headline?

Um, daring theft. A daring theft? The big, um, it's not going to be, it's not a just do it pun. I just care how has it not a just do it fun. Uh, a daring theft of like high, high top robbery, high, uh, high, um, sneaker, trainer. Oh. Mm.

Mm. Mm. Mm. The Great Trainor robbery? The Great Trainer Robbery. Glad you left it in pounds. That helped out. He is David Shoemaker.

I'm Brian Curtis. Production managing by Erica Servantes. Coming later this week, Margaret Brennan from CBS talks to us about Face of the Nation and about covering Ukraine. David and I are back Monday with more Luke Wemtakes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.