The Press Box - Ep. 102: Bryan Curtis With James Andrew Miller

Episode Date: April 30, 2016

Ringer editor-at-large Bryan Curtis is joined by James Andrew Miller to discuss the departures of Skip Bayless and Mike Tirico, and the future for ESPN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When everybody leaves ESPN, we call James Andrew Miller, who is the author of These Guys Have All the Fun, which has become the standard history of ESPN, and coming in August, another book, Powerhouse, The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artist's Agency. Jim, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me.

So Dan Lebitard goes on his ESPN radio show this week and says, when you leave, meaning leave ESPN, you're going to get lost. Is he right? Long enough, an obvious thing at the beginning, which is on any issue, you know, about ESPN. So it's kind of a little dangerous to make global comments like that. I think that's been true for some people. I think other people have clearly survived. Is he parroting what an ESPN executive would say and has said about talent for the last couple of decades?

And I think that they, I think that to some degree, agree they have to believe that because that's one of the ways in which they give people to stay options other you know elsewhere I think they have a tendency to give some examples of people that you know may have left and thought that that it was going to be better at maybe it didn't work out that way for them and you know they they can they can do that I think that what's more interesting to me is you know what kinds of people ESPN is deciding to really try and keep and what kinds of people they don't mind losing part of the

equation. And then all of a sudden, you know, money doesn't matter. You know, it's part both of those paths. What surprised you as an ESPNologist about what happened this week? Well, look, I mean, the Torrico thing is interesting because he's been there for over two decades. And I think that inside ESPN for the last six months, people have been saying there's no way you know, Mike, it's not that surprising, though. I mean, the truth is that one of the weird things that's happened

just years is just take Monday Night Football for a moment, which is a big part of Mike's portfolio at ESPN. You know, it's gone from being the premier football event. Basically, the fourth, Paul, Al Michaels will be, you know, leaving one day, who knows, but, you know, we have football too. There's no, I mean, he's going to a lot of golf, and there's other things. So I think it's really,

the current landscape, long-term deals with conferences and particularly with college football and other things, but other places, you know, they have attractive to people. So it's never a guarantee.

I think that, you know, the competitive. As for Skip, a nice offer for me as PN, because I do believe I was right when I tweeted it was north of $4 million. But, you know,

Fox is, going to pay him a lot more than that. He's going to be in the five. Money bonus I think he's going to get. And so it's a lot more money. And I think he feel a different kind of culture over there that he, he, he, what would he? What was he?

What was he? What part of the Bristol culture was he uncomfortable with, do you think? Well, you know, look, I mean, there's certain baggage that you have at ESPN. And part of it is ESPN's fault and part of it isn't. You know, it's just because it's such a, you know, know, the good news is that it's a big fishbowl, the bad news is it's the big diversities or whether or not management was going to support him or whether he's going to get suspended or whether he had gone too far, whatever that equation, and they happen a lot

at other places. And I think there's also just this notion of who you're working with and who you're reporting far with at Fox in terms of talent. They're trying to get people over there. There are people that don't, but, you know, the people that have gone over there, I mean, obviously they have, that becomes... Did you, as you took the temperature of Bristol on-air people over the years, what did they think of Skip and Skip's work, do you think? Part of it is there are people at ESPN who sit around and say, oh my gosh, look at what Skip and Stephen A are doing to our brand.

And then there were other people who sit around thinking, what 60 hours to fill in a given year. There's all sorts of... If we're trying to, in the morning, good delivery system. It's tonnage. You know, you get a lot of hours every day of the Monday through Friday, and it's a great demo for average. It makes money. So, you know, some people were the, you know, the actual business behind something like first take. I mean, forget about whether or not they say crazy things. I mean, that's, at this point, that's part of their

value proposition to the audience, right? Which is like, we're going to say things that you're not going to hear anyplace else. And the other problem they have is sports center serving less and less of people's needs. So television, you know, how do you get people really engaged? How do you make sure that they have a reason to tune you in, day, and day out? And it's not to get the scores of the highlights that you can get on your phone. So first take became a keeping people with appointment television for, you know, over 400,000, 400,000. and that's not a bad number for that time period. In a period where an argument becomes more valuable than a highlight in a weird way to ESPN.

Right, because again, how are you going to differentiate yourself from anybody else? Everybody else, you know, how are you going to make it different? And you're going to make it different because Skip at some point is going to say something about Tim Tebow, Tom Brady, and countless others that is just going to be, you know, either off the wall crazy, or you're going to want to read or something, and that's the kind of engagement. You know, early on in Howard Stern's career, they had figured out that people who listened to them was like 20 minutes or something, and people who hated them, listened to them, like, they're like 35. And I think that, you know, a lot of people, and then I'll say to them after I answer their question,

by the way, do you watch them? And go, oh, yeah, I watch it every day. They're just, they're just, but I never miss it. You know, whether it's slowing down to see a car accident, I'm not surprised they want to keep them. you know, we shouldn't be shockedly left. You know, the funny thing is I have a serious XM in my car, and they have one of the channels as a simulcast of ESPN TV. So I listen to First Tech basically as sports radio on a daily basis every morning.

And the funny thing is everyone talked about it being so transgressive, right, and too hot for TV. But if you listen to it on sports radio, it just sounds like sports radio. If anything, it's probably more thoughtful in the segments are slightly longer than the rest of what's on sports radio, including, by the way, ESPN sports radio, which I always thought was... Right, exactly. I will say, though, that they have, those two kind of perfected this art of, I mean, it's almost Oscar-worthy, the looks that they give each other and the pregnant pauses and the deep breaths and all these things that are just, I mean, they are kind of telegenic in the sense that you just think, oh, what's coming next? Or are they really that mad?

You know, I mean, it's not, I mean, the thing about, let's say, Will Bonn and Kornheiser is, you know, at the end of the day, they're probably going to continue to argue even after their shows over, but they have a long history together. And there are moments when you think, wait, are these guys off the reservation or what the heck is going on? So it makes it even more engaging when you're watching it. Yeah, if I think of Skip on ESPN, I think of him nodding, right, lips closed, nodding kind of thoughtfully while Stephen A, you know. holds forth. Right. How easy is it do you think, or let's put it this way, how easy is it for ESPN, how easy do ESPN executives think it is to plug someone else in, go two rounds with Stephen A every morning and still keep the same number of people on the glued to the screen? Well, I think the first hint is that they were willing to pay skip over $4 million. I don't think, I'm going to give them

credit and I think that at this point they're cold in their shorts because it's not. not something that you can throw. Not to mention, it's a high wire act without a net, because you have to be fearless. Even if you think that every single word, double-digit IQ, you have to give him the respect of the fact that he could care less, like what Twitter's going to say after he says something. Like, you have to be fearless to take some of the positions that he and Stephen A take. And so that's the first kind of, you know, you have to have somebody who is to make these characterizations or opinions. You need to have them to be fearless. You need them to be able to work

with Stephen A and, you know, that kind of choreography. So two guys really, they have to have the ability, I mean, to have this like Pied Piper quality to them, which is that people really kind of want to hang out with them and listen to them. You're said than done. It'd be tricky. There are a bazillion ex-writers, right, or mostly ex-writers who come to ESPN to become pundits of some sort of another. And is that what? what you said? Is that what made Skip weirdly the most valuable and irreplaceable of them all, that he was just fearless, that he was happy to be on the high wire every morning and didn't worry about what the blowback would be or what people thought of him?

I think that's part of it. I really do because, I mean, look, there have been times in ESPN history where people have said provocative things and then just gotten, like, slammed. And you see that sometimes they kind of like retreat a little bit. And, you know, all of a sudden, a couple weeks later, you look, and they've been, you know, kind of speaking in the proverbial, between the proverbial, they haven't been swinging for the fences that much or whatever. I mean, Skip like wakes up, he can't wait to say those things. And he has enough knowledge, metric.

Now, there's always a statistic to be found to support any kind of argument, prediction or something like that. So it's not just wild ramblings. There's always like a kernel of something that you think, oh, wait a second, could this be or hold on a second, even as crazy as that might sound. So there's a science to it that

he has, you know, perfected as well. I think, you know, the biggest thing about Bayliss in that show is that it's harder to do than people think. I mean, I'm not, I'm not a, you know, I'm not a

diehard fan. I don't watch it all the time. But whenever I look at it, even if they're doing it points in terms of being outlandish and crazy, it's still hard to do. Let's talk about the other half of the defections this week, Mike Tariko, who walks into ESPN straight out of Syracuse at a ridiculously young age in 1991. What is Toriko's ambition when he walks into the network back then? I think that it's too, you know, there are sometimes when they moved over to sports or they want to be in the world of sports, but they don't love it enough, do all the, you know, in other areas like news or politics, in Wall Street and whatever. You have to do that with sports. You have to work hard. And I think that so he came. I think he really loved sports. I think he also loved broadcasting. I mean, you know, the late Stewart's book, and he talked about from North Carolina just loving the idea of like being engaged in that role every single day, just could not get enough of it.

And I think that when you, you know, when you listen to him or you watch him. So I think we were fairly safe in saying that no one watches an event to watch Mike Torrico specifically, which is not abnormal for announcer. So what is his value or was his value within ESPN? When you spend the money that ESPN spent on Monday Night Football, it's see, it was $15.3 billion. So just by definition, you want to make sure, you know, it used to be like in the NBA, the old day David Stern, Brad Nestler or whoever he would be complaining about that week.

You know, you want to make sure that you have connected to that NFL shield. And I think that that's without question. Does it move a rating point? I don't think so. I think that once we got past, you know, Howard Cosell and Dandy Don and Frank and all that and watch the game. And if they can't, I mean, you know, I know that happened. Some people threatened to do that when an NFL game, although there are plenty of fans for Berman, too. But my only point is, I think you're right, as Mike Dorico is not going to be in the booth.

Yeah, and it's sort of like his value is that he's the guy, as you say, who the commissioner's never going to pick up the phone and complain about. He's the custodian, a good custodian of Monday Night Football or the Masters or whatever the property is for ESPN. He loves golf, and he's got a great presentation for it. And, you know, with the NBA, particularly with Sadly Gone. So, you know, he definitely, he definitely fit in nicely there. He will be missed. Yeah, it was funny. And it's funny, too, because I saw the phrase, face of the network thrown around

with regard to Toriko this week. In the same way, you might see it with Jim Nance at CBS, writer Bob Costas at NBC. And I think it would have probably have been kind of an upset if I had told you back in 1991 that Terrico would have been that guy? And how did we get there? How did we get to an ESPN that Mike Tariko was as big a personality of and face of as anyone else in Bristol? The golden era of sports center.

We went to Keith and Dan 11, Craig Kiliborne at 230. You had all these amazing personalities who had kind of big presence as a result in terms of what was going on out in the field and the actual events, which, by the way, let's get many more eyeballs, even in sports centers' heyday, you know, shows them. You know, Toreko had a pretty impressive,

you know, coming through a good job. And of a problem, I don't think, you know, to your point, I think that if you look back in the 90s, it's very hard to, because everybody was of a certain age, much more of a follow. It didn't necessarily, I think he was probably, of having his personality and his identity be bigger than the brand itself.

As you saw with Oberman, Patrick, and others, you know, they like those four initials to be more dominant than any individual. It's one of the ways they safeguard anybody leaving, you know, taking, you know, part of that brand. Nobody was feeling that, you know, so it wasn't like he was a diva. He did a lot of work. He tried. The guy loves to travel, man. I mean, that isn't for a lot of people. So he was, yeah, and I like what you said. I mean, it's sort of he, he was the, he was a guy who was able to succeed wildly in that company, and I'm not diminishing his talent at all because he's a talented broadcaster, but without becoming bigger than the company and without, you know, acquiring this sort of larger than life personality that would have made him threatening in that

world. And I think, you know, I just think he and Chris Fowler, I mean, they hit the sweet spot. If you're going to be at ESPN, like there are things that you just, do and there are things that you don't do. And if that happens, you just keep on, you know, and both of them, you know, getting paid a lot of money and getting the prime assignments. And, you know, you just wind up being hugely, if you choose the other route, which is that, you know, you kind of complain and you get into trouble with on-air comments or social media comments and you become a diva amongst the the production team. I mean, one of the kind of gnarly little things that go on and not, people on the road,

you know, all those, when they were doing the World Cup and when they go on the road with football and whatever, it's, if you're like, if you're low maintenance and you're, and it's fun to hang out with you and you treat everybody with respect, stuff matters. You know, people who have not played that game well, have a tendency sometimes to get shot by their own troops, if you know what I mean. Yeah, no, it's the rise of the organization man at ESPN, right? The old class is known for being

wildly talented and also, you know, sort of crazy and difficult and occasionally hard to get along with, right? And the new class, I think when I look at ESPN now, I think of people that are very competent and very smooth and very versatile, right? And that's their value as much as having some, you know, gigantic, larger than life presence. Here, well, let me ask about, go ahead, sorry. And that's, I'm sorry, I just wanted to, I think that's true for a lot of places. I mean, it's probably just not true if you happen to be a Republican running for president this year named Donald Trump.

But otherwise, you know, the corporate world is less forgiving. And, you know, as corny as it may sound, teamwork and culture and all those things, actually it's on the radar screen now. Let's talk about one patch of Mike Toriko's career where it was not so smooth, which is the Monday night football booth. There were, I think, three different versions of this booth, getting it right. I think you got a very juicy quote out of Bill Simmons for your book about Torrico not setting up Tony Kornheiser enough when they were together. What took so long to get that right? Chemistry problem, and I think that in the case of Tony, agree with Bill, I don't think that Mike did, I think Mike, I think Mike,

Look, we've been talking about the fact that he's a team player, and I think he tried. I don't think he tried in a valuable to Tony. And Tony had a different approach to, everybody comes to the booth with their own kind of map, right? I think that Tony came to it with a kind of very specific idea, which was what's best for Tony. And he's not going to be sitting there for hours and hours,

and the linebacker goes down in the middle of the second. you know, the nickel D is going to be as effective with him. Tony really could care less about that. To his credit, Tony thought, hey, Mike, you know, that's fine. You take that. You can talk about that. I want to talk about, you know, why Madonna's at the game today and certain aspects of the game itself.

But I may stay at 30,000 feet, and I might be saying something, you know, huge X's and O's fans are orbit. It's going to make it a little bit more accessible. It's going to make it more to do than 10. just the football plays himself. And I think that that was hard for Mike. He didn't know how to pivot with that. You know, I think about first take, when you get a booth, I mean, I don't personally,

I don't believe in the three-man booth after the death of Howard Cosell. I never understood it. And, you know, I think it's smarter with the two-man booth. So at least they were able to make that change. A couple of final big thank questions here. So in the last year in change, ESPN loses Terrico, Baylis, Simmons, old. And you and I might be interested in why those people left and say they left for different reasons. But I honestly don't think viewers and readers really care that much.

I think they look at it and say, I can't read or watch some of my favorite people anymore. Is there a point at which ESPN executives say we've reached a critical mass of, you know, likable or liked people leaving? And this is going to in some way harm the network? Yes. I mean, the short answer is yes, because one of the things that is clear, not only from the from Bill Simmons, but from others, is that if you have unique, you can own that independent on a huge infrastructure. You don't need it to put together your own ecosystem of like, you know, okay, I'm going to partner with this person on the pod and I'm going to, you know,

partner with this person for a nightly show or weekly show or whatever. So ESPN has to understand that it's not like they're, you know, they're the place to go. and they don't have to worry about it. And I think that there's something else, which is in the context of the struggles with SportsCenter, it's like, so why are people going to watch the network outside of the live events? I mean, Skipper was smart in the sense that he doesn't know whether or not he will be working three or four years from now,

but he knows that people are going to want to watch the Roseball, and at football. So he spent a ton of money. He spent a ton of money, and he went out and bought a lot of these things, term deals and whether or not he paid too much for it that's a side issue but he understood that so that's their foundation but in terms of all the other stuff for when those live events aren't on how are you going to get people to tune in and the and the real the real way to ensure it

is to have these distinctive personalities and who are delivering something that nobody else can deliver so once skip bailiff that persona and you know maybe That's not worth $5.5 million to some people. And, you know, so at least they, the thing that I will say about Jamie Harwoods right now at Fox is he's got a strategy. And it's very clear and he's executing it. Whether he's overpaying for it or not, we can't have to wait. But I understand the strategy. Mr. Rico universe, what will they miss most, do you think?

Well, I mean, look, you know, if you're sitting in in front of like a lot of empty beer cans and empty pizza boxes from the night before and you're trying to like just wake up and you, you know, you're in college and you click on first take and soon will be. The person is not, you know, hitting home runs like, you know, that viewer may have thought. It's much, it's, um, uh, Bayliss is going to be very much more apparent on Monday night football only because Monday night football has this tsunami of the game itself, washing over, you know, I mean, it's not like Mike's even on camera. Are you going to hear a voice?

And it's like it may be, wait, is that, hold on a second, you know. And so, you know, not to take anything, that's going to be an adjustment, but it's not going to be as drastic as people who are not going to see him. Jim Miller, when the next ESPN personality leaves, will send up a bad signal and hope you answer the call. My pleasure. Thanks for coming on.