The Press Box - ESPN Loves the Knicks, Scarlett Johansson and AI, Reporters Discover the T-Wolves, and the Media Acid Test

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Hello, media consumers! David kicks off the show with a fun story for you (0:40), then he and Bryan get into NBA playoff talk with the following: How much does sports media know about Minnesota (7:05) Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns's reactions to being told they are supposed to lose (12:25) Stephen A. Smith and ESPN’s love for the New York Knicks (15:01) Later in the Notebook Dump they discuss: Scarlett Johansson’s voice being used for AI (26:42) Netflix and the NFL (31:00) Cam’ron’s appearance on CNN with Abby Phillip (38:05) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight. Which streamer is on the brink of collapse? And which executive is on the hot seat? Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again?

Follow the town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Yeah. I understand you've got a little story for us to start things off. I do. I had a very Brian courtesy experience this weekend. Well, maybe not quite on the nose, but this feels like I was having a good time this weekend and being like, this is exactly the story, the kind of story of Brian would tell to lead off the press box. Let me play the David role here. Go on.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, listen, as most people know, I moved to New Jersey, to Princeton, New Jersey at the beginning of the pandemic. You know, bought a house, got a yard, got a lawnmower, just ordered my second weed whacker yesterday. That's not the story, but just to give me some context. And as one does, when you move to a new place, you explore. And I have kids, so you've explored any number of farms and play areas. And you try to, you know, get some cultural exposure to. I've seen orchestras and choirs and, you know, been to various vineyards with, with, you know, bands playing or whatever. But really haven't done a lot in terms of the music scene. I think generally I understand when I've seen music acts like bands play, I go to Philly or I go back to New York.

You know, I mean, those are the places where these things happen. The one thing, one place that I've never went, I just quarantined myself from for no good reason. I think I just thought it would be too expensive and potentially uncomfortable. I finally made it to this part of the country's musical mecca. And that's the parks casino in Pennsylvania. Wow. I mean, it's right down the road. It's like 30 minutes away.

You know, it's like it's, we visit Dom's my wife's family over there in in Bucks County all the time. And this is like, you know, just this is local for them. And so my wife took me out as a surprise. and said, I bought you tickets to an orchestral performance in Philly. I think the joke was that she referenced Bach a few times. But anyway, we get to her sister's house to drop off our five-year-old for his cousin to babysit him. And her sister and one of her nephews gets in the car. And I'm just like, what's going on?

We have to drop them off. And then about two seconds later, the facade fell. And they're like, we're not going to see an orchestra. We're going to see a concert by Sebastian Bach, formerly of Skid Row. one of the most formative bands of my middle school years. I'm going to date myself here. And yeah, I went to go see Sebastian Bach play at the Parks Casino. And it was just amazing.

Now, you know, Skid Row wasn't absolutely tip of the top for me. And those are the days where you had to, owning a record was pretty huge commitment, you know. So I had a pretty good handle on like five songs and absolutely no point of reference for everything else that was played. There was some new material, of course, that was sprinkled in. But it was so great. I will see any hair metal band reconstituted or in solo form. If they, if they, if they decide to come to the park's casino, I just want to let you know, I will be there. And I'm not sure if this officially deposes the gin blossoms as the official band of the press box,

but for my money, I can't imagine having a better time watching a 50-something-year-old man sing notes that you know only a classically trained soprano should be able to sing it was it was an incredible show I am ready to go ahead and move the gin blossoms down those rarely tended to press box power rankings

okay we've got a new official ban okay but I am also going to see Chicago apparently later during the summer so that might be that that might take the cake well they didn't go through the facade of saying it's going to be another orchestral concert.

It just told you it was going to be Chicago this time? No, because it's my wife and one of her sisters together, whether together they can't keep a secret, you know? I mean, it's like they could do it individually, but I think they just want to talk about it, you know? So, there we are. Maybe if we start, maybe if we start the Chicago hype going early, I can get some of that sweet gin blossoms backstage access that you got or whatever.

Just start, just, I'm just to start talking casually mentioning how excited about Chicago. I am. Chicago, I don't know anything about, I mean, I know there's hits, I guess, from the radio, but I'm sure that'll be a good time. This feels like a Harvilla-style podcast or series of pieces, but you just write about the bands that come to the Parks Casino. Oh, yeah. I think that's it.

Just move into the Parks Casino. Just move the family to the Park's Casino. I don't even know. I guess there's not, I don't even know if there's a hotel component to the Park's Casino. It didn't seem like there was. but yeah it was nice it was nice also just just totally underrated just the the low-fi casino experience my only experience with this was going to tunica mississippi like 10 years ago which was just i mean i'm sure much better now but at the time not a lot going for it um

but this is great it's just like you drive up easy to park you walk in feels like every other casino you've been in if a little smaller and they have like the whole battery of of faux fancy restaurants. I mean, they were nice restaurants, but like if they looked like a restaurant you've heard of, but I'm not sure that it exists anywhere else, you know. And it was great. I got there. I got to see, you know, the end of the Fury fight on a, into the sports book. And then Maverick started playing during the concert. And so it was a casino is a good place to be sometimes, you know? Next Monday, David is going to be telling us about buying his second weed whacker in New Jersey. Unfortunately, it doesn't ship until the 30th.

So that might have to wait. It sounds like a hell of a time. I'm jealous I wasn't there because Parks Casino plus ban from middle school, plus restaurants that kind of look like a famous restaurant. That is absolutely an awesome milieu. And dude, that sounds like a fantastic time. Yeah. Next time you're around, we'll go to the parks.

And the Mavericks won. So that was good news too. That was fantastic. Coming up on the press box, David, Scarlett Johansson and AI. ESPN embraces the Knicks. The media discovers the timber wolves. The NFL is coming to Netflix and a media acid test. All that and much more on the press box.

A part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Brian Waters here. Speaking of those mavericks, David, the NBA conference finals start tonight. Celtics Pacers game one on ESPN. then on Wednesday we get the Western Conference Finals, your Dallas Mavericks versus the Minnesota Timberwolves. This is one of those rare moments in sports, dude, when the national media that is covering this thing

knows almost nothing about a franchise. And just like last year with the Denver Nuggets, our favorite basketball reporters are going to be discovering things about the Timberwolves minutes before they report them to us. And the reason I know this is because in just about every NBA-related podcast I've heard over the last day and day and a half,

including Bill and Rosillo, the question, have you been to Minnesota, has been raised? Now, if Minnesota was snapping off NBA titles for the last decade, I think we'd have a lot more people that would have visited the Twin Cities. But the answer was pretty much no. Then we got the moment on TV. Charles Barkley talking to Anthony Edwards

after they'd finished off the Nuggets, has Minneapolis been part of Barclay's travel plan. Okay, I have not been to Minnesota in probably 20 years. Bring your ass. Hey, hey. Can you send me a list of good restaurants? We're going to be there for like five days. I want you to send me a list of some good restaurants, okay?

I love how it's either Yelp or Anthony Edwards. that's how Barclay's going to find a place to eat. It's funny, isn't it, when we get to discover a franchise anew? Yeah, it is. And also a city anew. I mean, you know, Minneapolis, well, was supposed to be the site of WrestleMania, supposedly next year and they moved it to Las Vegas, again at the last minute.

But I, you know, spent some time thinking about going to Minneapolis. I've been there before. I went there in my, like, teen years, a couple of times. But yeah, I mean, traveled around for work. I've traveled around for events. I don't know that I've ever had any cause

to go to the, you know, Twin Cities area. It is sort of weird. It's also sort of weird that like inside the NBA is now just there's just an uncomfortable personal disclosure every episode now. It's just, it used to just be like, these guys will say whatever is on their mind. And now it's just like this weird confessional,

just like I haven't been to Minnesota in 20 years. Also, I didn't vote for any of you for MVP. I just want to Chad, maybe Barclay should have said I just wanted to say that to your face. I don't like Minnesota.

I just wanted to say that to your face. T. Wolves are such a funny franchise. They've been to one conference finals 20 years ago, 2004. They've had a lot of good players who have won stuff elsewhere like Kevin Garnett, Jimmy Butler, Kevin Love,

even Stefan Marbury. I'm not sure that counts as a T-Wolf success story. he was sitting courtside with the Knicks the other day. Yeah. He was identifying as a Nick. Well, you know, again,

I don't sure there was a battle. Which franchise cannot claim Stefan Marbury? He's also from Coney Island, right? He's a New York legend. Yeah. I mean, I guess there's a flip side of it, which is like as much as people have sort of laughed at the Timberwolves over the years,

they kind of, they're weirdly one of the few teams that get the pat on the back for shipping their star off to win a championship elsewhere, right? think there's a point where you become so only in journalism word moribund that you uh that when when you when you when you release a player to a better team it's just like oh that's a nice thing to do because everyone knows nothing would have ever happened here i mean it's we feel so happy for kg yeah we can all agree on that he he had to go somewhere else to win if you remember this last year but i investigated whether any books, proper books, had ever been written about the Denver Nuggets.

Yeah. And I found that the answer was one. Mm-hmm. Well, the answer to that question about the T-Wolves is also one. There's a lot of, you know, the Minnesota Timberwolves of the NBA style quickie books on Amazon. But I found one book today called Timberwolves stalk the NBA obsession. this is a little bit of an unwieldy title, Bill Musselman's Relentless Quest to Beat the Best

by Bill Heller. Yeah. Ford by Dave Winfield. I'm sure if that's the Dave Winfield, but one proper book that I could find about the T-Wolfs. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, when you were doing the Nuggets thing,

were you just counting, is it just specifically like the Nuggets team, the history of the team, or would like a player on the team count? Yes, there was an Alex English memoir that I did not count. Okay. But there was one book by a writer about the team,

which I bought, and then I told Bill about and he bought because it wasn't part of his NBA library. Yeah. Oh, wow. It somehow eluded both of us. Yeah. We have every sports book known to man.

This T. T. Wolf's team is going to be really fun to cover. After Game 7, Anthony Edwards and Carl Anthony Towns were at the podium, and Yahoo's Vincent Goodwill asked them, aren't you supposed to lose a bunch of games before you win? This is for you the one of you guys. And usually in NBA history, it says you have to lose and lose big before you win.

What is it about this team that says we lost last year? Yeah, but that's different. You have to lose at a bigger stage. Usually teams, usually. It's the playoffs we lost last year. We lost the last two years. God damn. How much more we got to lose?

How much you want us to lose? We're losing for 20 years. I mean, that's just the truth, though. God damn. What I love about that is not only embracing their own fairly crappy years, but embracing the entire 20-year stretch of no wins for the T-Wolves. Yeah. That's how you really embrace a franchise.

We are going to take all the crappy years as well. Yeah, I mean, not for nothing. Just to be able to say we've been losing for 20 years off the top of your head. You know, there's a lot of a lot of professional athletes playing for teams today that probably don't have much of a constitutional or institutional memory about what happened It happened five years ago on the team. And don't care. Alone 20.

Yeah, exactly. Don't you love how this process of learning about the Timberwolves, learning about their history is what reporters do on every subject? You mean? We figured things out. You know, we do some research. Yeah, a little Google search newspapers.com, make some phone calls. And then 15 minutes later, we relate them to the public like we've known them our whole lot. Yes.

as Eric Musselman once said you didn't know that that's what we do I remember being a rookie reporter and figuring that out and being like oh these people aren't just pulling all this out of their brain they're researching and then acting like they pulled it all out of their brain

yeah there we go some announcing fun for you I and Eagle this was before game five of the Mavericks Thunder series tell me David if you don't hear someone who savers the cliches of business like we do here at the press box. of the Knicks Pacer series was not such a great moment in announcing.

This is the one that ESPN turned into Stephen A. Smith's personal Locked-on Knicks podcast. No offense to the Locked-on Knicks podcast, which I'm sure was more interesting. ESPN decided to shoot Stephen A arriving at Madison Square Garden like they shoot the players, where they shoot wrestlers walking into Vegas at at WrestleMania next year. They almost completely ignored the Pacers pregame

and then there's a hilarious moment at halftime where Malika Andrews asked Bob Myers what stood out to you for the Pacers and Bob Myers just gave an answer about the Knicks. It was almost like ESPN was contractually obligated

not to cover the Pacers. We also got some some really, really weird sound. This was Stephen A on the court before the game started having a good time, having an intense time with Nick Superfan Spike Lee. Stephen A. Smith, it is your moment.

Please rally the Knicks faithful for a totally unbiased opinion of the outcome of this game. Good luck with that. Well, see, I don't have to rise. I don't have to rise New York to the occasion because they all here. Everybody's ready.

Ignore Bob Myers, Mr. California. Ignore Wilbart, Mr. Chicago. They ain't here right now. You understand what's at stake. It's been since 2000 that we've been in a conference final. We've waited 24 years for this moment right here. OG Ananovi is back. Josh Hart's going to play.

When you talk about game seven, it comes down to grinding. It comes down to gut. It comes down to who would have been. Come up in here. Come up in here, Spike Lee. You'll come right here right here. I think you and I are probably on the same place here, which is it we're not.

not offended by Stephen A. being a Nix fan. No. We're not offended by Stephen A being a Nix fan before the quote unquote pivotal game seven between the Nix and Pacers. Yes. But there is a line where being a Nix fan crosses into just making bad television. Is it specific to the Nix? All right. Being a fan of anything, I guess. A super fan. Yeah. It's super fan. There's a point where you're just not covering the thing well anymore. Yeah. And that's where I get offended because I'm just like, that's just, that just stinks, man. Like that whole rap we just listened to, that didn't have anything to do with anything.

Yeah. Like, except Stephen A. Yeah. I mean, I get, it's a little bit exhausting to come down on Stephen A. Smith, just because I just assume that everybody else has done it to. But, uh, yeah. I mean, the funny thing is that like I find myself defending Stephen A. Smith way more than I find myself criticizing him, right? I mean, it seems like a lot of people who have anything to say about him sort of missed the point. And he's such a capable performer doing just about everything that he does. I think everyone, just about everybody agrees on that at this point. And he has those social media videos where people write in questions and he does a full Stephen A. Smith like impression of himself, like arguing is like why like, like, you know, you know, Garfield never needed Odie or whatever. And that's a sort of self-parity that we can all get behind.

It shows a little bit of self-awareness. It's the sort of meta-take. But I feel like the Knicks fandom is like the bad kind of self-parity. Like the unintentional, I mean, it is obviously intentional, but the just unnecessary form of self-parity. Like he's like, like when my mom walks in and I'm watching him on TV or whatever, she'll be like, oh, I can't stand this guy. And I was like, just watch him for five minutes.

Like, he's doing a thing. Like, you know, whatever. whatever, but like the Knicks fan thing is the stuff where if she walked down, I'd be like, no, no, you're right. He's just, it's, it's inseparable. And it's not like they don't have enough space on the ESPN calendar to carve out a superfan space for him that's separate from the reporter space, right? Yeah, it's called first take when he can do whatever he wants or his personal podcast

when he can do whatever he wants. And you and I could say like, hey, 10% of the pregame show. devoted to Stephen A's Knicks fandom and how nervous he is before game seven by getting back to the conference finals. Okay. But 65% of the pregame show devoted to that. Or 30% of the pregame show devoted to that,

it's too much. And it goes to the thing we've talked about with Stephen A and Pat McAfee, by the way, who was making his own videos about the Pacers over the weekend when they won, which is nobody can say no to this. Nobody can walk over and be,

like, oh, off switch. Ha ha, ha, that's fine on first take. Not totally what we want right now. Yeah. Once you've empowered him and once you've paid him, you can't then say, okay, stop being the Stephen A that we paid and empowered and gave airtime to because you're on the NBA pregame show. Yeah.

They can't do it or they won't do it or there's nobody that feels they are allowed to do it. Or maybe they all like it, Ryan. I mean, maybe that's- I don't think so. I really don't. In my heart of hearts, I don't think they do. I think they watch this stuff. And they kind of go, this isn't what we want out of this. It's really not.

And by the way, I don't think this is what the NBA wants out of this. And we know ESPN, like every other network, is sensitive to their league partners. You can't tell me if Adam Silver was watching that on TV, be like, this is great TV. More of this, please. I'm sure he wants the Knicks and the conference finals because, you know, it's great for business for everybody. But he's just watching that and just going like, this isn't good. This isn't good. But they can't tell him it's not good.

By the way, the whole thing probably made worse by the fact that the Knicks lost game seven. Yeah. Because if ESPN had gone all in and then the Knicks made the conference finals, we'd go like, well, that was way too much. But oh, well, but then they lost. So it all looked even worse. Yeah, it's true. In retrospect. Quick NBA rights update for you.

We know ESPN's in on the next NBA deal. We know Amazon's in. Do they both have frameworks of deals? They both have frameworks. Okay. Just making sure they have their framework status. this, let's go. NBC and Turner are vying for the final framework, David. A lot of people think the NBA is predisposed at this point to pick NBC.

Bill said it, Alex Sherman at CNBC has reported it. Ryan Curtis wrote about it. Mine was more nostalgia, but there you go. So let's say that the NBA wants to go with NBC as their next partner. Then we get into this weird and murky idea of matching rights. because there's a notion out there that Turner, which is to say their parent company, Warner Brothers Discovery,

has the option to match any offer. So if NBC's framework really is a $2.5 billion offer for the NBA, the question becomes, can Turner just say, oh, we would like to match that? We will also pay $2.5 billion to the NBA, and because we're your partner already

and because we have these matching rights, we win. Do they definitely have matching rights? Or is this just speculated? This is where the murkiness comes in. We don't know. Or can the NBA say, oh, you know that NBC deal that you're trying to match?

That's taking a bunch of games off cable and putting them on network TV, which is what we want. Yeah. You're proposing a cable television deal. Yeah. So even if you're matching the money, you're not matching.

the offer. We don't know quite how that works. And Alex Sherman says, let's say the NBA does pick NBC. Let's say Turner does try to match, then everything probably goes to court. And we can let lawyers figure out whether they have the right to match that off or not under those terms. Especially in the sort of ever-changing media landscape. Again, I think that's an only media phrase that we're in right now. It seems like it would be, I mean, most of my contractual negotiating experience only comes

from reading stories about NBA contracts, but it seems like there's a way to poison pill of this, right? It's not just the cable to TV thing. Wouldn't it be easy enough to be like, you know, your streaming platform doesn't have as many viewers as their streaming platform. And so we're not talking about the same thing. I mean, it just seems like the criteria is pretty ambiguous at this point, or at least pretty easy to define however you want to define it.

that would be that would be incredibly weird if this went to arbitration of any sort yeah right i mean doesn't it seem like exactly what any sports league would want to avoid you know i mean as we're like making these big announcements uh like you know we got big news we're going to be on amazon and then we're going to be on some other channel depending on the outcome of this case yeah i mean and any media company would want to go out of their way to avoid Well, I mean, I think, I think, kick off our next contract by dragging the league into court. Yeah.

I mean, yes, that wouldn't be ideal. But at least for if you're, you know, time Warner discovery, you can say, we're really fighting for the stuff that works for us. We're fighting like we all. We're not, we're not trying to shortchange anybody. We're doing it all. You know, we're doing what we thought, you know, our contract said we could do.

Who wouldn't do this, you know? But you're right. I mean, maybe that's a bad look in general to be forcing anybody in the media world's hand to, you know, to do what you want them to do. All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds, Scarlett Johansson and AI. You saw the movie. Now see the actual AI. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag

that was so obvious, but all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the Pressbox pod where they are always, always gratefully received. what a weird weekend at the PGA championship. The number one golfer in the world. Scotty Sheffler got arrested Friday morning on his way to the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville. I'll pronounce that correctly. It was an overboard Twitter joke to write,

our golfware manufacturer is going to produce defund the police quarterzips. When Scottie Shepler was reported to be out of custody and on his way to Volhalla, it was also an overword Twitter joke to write, Oh my God, they killed him. Thanks to our good friend Chris Almeida for that one. By the way, did you see the journalistic heat check that Jeff Darlington of ESPN had?

Oh, yeah. I was watching him live on TV. And he was there with the phone. Mm-hmm. Filming the like, he's kind of newish to the golf beat. Yeah. And then he happens to be there and is ready to press record when the number one golfer in the world is arrested at a major. Mm-hmm.

And he's also there to answer the questions from the cops and they're like, who did we just arrest? Yeah. Let me tell you. That is Scotty Shuffler, who is the favorite to win this tournament until now. If you never thought police overreach and golf major would fit in the same sentence, congrats. You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, David. Let's talk about Scarlett Johansson and AI.

Yeah. The company OpenAI has a new chat GPT. iteration that came out last week. According to NYT's deal book, the chatbot can listen to spoken questions and respond verbally. And one of the voices it can respond to you in

is called Sky. And it sounded a lot like Scarlett Johansen. Now, this seems like something less than a coincidence for three reasons. Number one, Scarlett Johansen said, Open AI tried to hire her to do the voice.

I thought that was going to be reason number three. Wait, it gets even better. Sam Altman of OpenAI tweeted out the word her earlier this month, just her, which is the name of the movie in which Johansen plays an AI assistant. So either his fingers just got a little crossways there or he was hinting at this. Also, Sam Altman said this, chat, G. The new iteration, quote, feels like AI from the movies. So we learned from Dealbook that OpenAI is pausing to use an only in-crisis PR word, pausing the use of Sky. I don't even know what to say about this.

Can I tell you something? It just seems like the last thing you would want to do if you're in the world of AI, of chat GPT. when the last thing you'd want to do is rip people off I mean isn't that the business that you're in that's the point

I think that's the point I'm trying to make when you're when there is the perception that you're in the business of just taking other people's stuff and repackaging it as your own maybe don't get into a

potentially public squabble with a very famous person over obviously like blatantly doing that exact thing I mean this is inevitably going to like you know that just AI in general or freaking government is already dealing with these issues in ham-fisted ways and it has all the potential in the world to end up in the

you know dustbin of the internet as a series of tubes just while AI runs wild while our well our Congress just fails to wrap their heads around the entire issue but now anytime there's anybody from the government on down who doesn't understand what the problem is all they have to do is just point to scarlet johans they look what they did to her That's the entire business model. Is that okay? And then, you know, all of our old senators will say, oh, no, I love Scarlett Johansson. It was a huge fan of her work as the Black Widow.

And then, you know, AI loses. It seems like if you're going to get into dispute with a famous person, I would not pick somebody who's in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yeah. But as mainstream and beloved as it gets. Also, just a little bit on the nose, right? I mean, it is. Like, she played this character in a movie. You're like, oh, yeah, we should do that.

I mean, I... We got a text from a correspondent known as Mr. MediaX who points out that everybody didn't get mad when AI borrowed the thoughts from think pieces written by the likes of Brian and David, but they get mad when the voice sounds like Scarlett Johansson. Yeah. That's what triggers.

Not the plight of journalists, but the plight of Scarlett Johansson. Good thought to add here. And I think what's really key there, whether or not you like Scarlett Johansson, I assume she has an incredibly high approval rating. But whether or not you do is that she doesn't, she she doesn't have the perception of trying to like make money off of this, right? Her argument is like, I would rather not. It's Bartleby this Grivner stuff, right? And it's actually way more compelling than a, it's sad to say than a journalist saying like, oh, you stole my writing.

Because I think the average Joe is going to be like, yeah, you just want some of that tech money. But then they look at Carl Johansson, like, well, she doesn't need the tech money, right? She's just saying, please, no, thank you. And they're not, and they're not listening to her. And that's, that's, that's, that's, that's in a lot of ways a more compelling case. Let's talk about Netflix in the NFL. Netflix has two Christmas games. Speaking of that good tech money, they're also going to have Christmas games the next two years going forward, David.

Mm-hmm. Adding this to their burgeoning sports division that includes the Tom Brady Roast and W.W.W.s Raw. Which is maybe Monday Night Raw, maybe some other night raw. That's why I deleted it there. A couple notes on this. Netflix, getting more into live stuff.

It's a good story by A.A. Dowd on the Ringer today about that. Getting more into sports. And in terms of the NFL, bringing yet another well-moneyed entity to the table. Yeah. To bid for this stuff. According to John A.A.

It's going to be out 150, million dollars to buy those two Christmas games. So the NFL just had a giant crazy rights deal. And then they're like, you know what we should do is just slice off even more of this, even though we've already been paid for all this stuff. We're going to slice off another little package and sell it to the biggest stream. Yeah. For $150 million for two games.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, we've tied a lot of conversations about sports and streaming rights. Weirdly, it's not any, I mean, the games have mostly all gone off without a hitch, you know, like a announced team hijinks aside. But, yeah, Netflix has been talking about getting into the live programming game for a long time. And I've heard discussion prior to them doing it.

I kept on here, I had several times I heard discussion of potential first outings in a lot, you know, with live. And there's all these technological issues, right? I mean, it's just a whole different ballgame to be like airing a live broadcast as opposed to just having billions of hours of stuff sitting on a server for people to access or whatever. But it sort of has just happened. It's, they do live now, you know, and it's kind of gone off without a hitch. And I think that's kind of been more reality shifting for me than any of the rights deals, right? I mean, it's just like, oh, they can just do it. And Netflix is for so many people to home screen. We know, when they turn on their TV.

Yeah, it's a pretty big deal. I imagine we'll be hearing less like, where do I find this game for those Netflix games than for other stuff, although I'm sure it will still happen. What we have been hearing, though, is people complaining that the NFL is slicing their rights up and distributing them to even more streamers. Remember, we had the Peacock version of this argument during the playoffs last year

when the Chiefs play the Dolphins. And then I already saw, oh, look, if you're going to want, watch all these NFL games, you're going to have to spend this much, this much for a month of Netflix. Yeah. You're going to have to buy Prime, obviously, for Thursday night. You're going to have to have ESPN for Monday night football. Just all fair in a way, it's probably worth, like, defining what you actually have to pay

for because if you live in a city, I'd never tire of repeating this, if you live in a city where an NFL team plays, which is the most obvious way to consume an NFL team. all the games are on free over-the-air television. Even if the game appears on Netflix or Prime or ESPN or wherever, it is on over-the-air free television in that city. All the games. They don't black them out when the city is that just, that doesn't have anything to do with that, right?

You know, I mean, if the game is being shown on television, it will be shown on television to you. So there was somebody who was posting like, it'd be cheaper just to buy tickets to the Carolina Panthers games than to pay for all these streaming services. It's like, no, it would not be cheaper because the Panthers in Charlotte are on the television. They're on the television with the rabbit ears.

Do not pay to go to Panthers games by for any reason. Stay home. Stay home and watch the Panthers. It's free. David, David Tepper is going to show up at your house, Brian. Yeah, that's, that's true. Is there anything, do they have, do they have like subscription fees written into any these deals, I wonder? Like, is there anything prohibiting Amazon from signing a 10-year deal with

the NBA and then just jacking up the Amazon prime price to like $5,000 a year or something or anything? That's a great question. I don't exactly the answer to this, but you'd think there'd be some guardrails on that. Yeah. So it wouldn't be like a, you know, a copy of a CD where only one exists, you know, it's an extremely premium price if you want to watch this. Yeah, it has to be, you'd think it have to be a pretty agreed upon price. The NFL feels like that's not a huge hurdle to jump over. Yeah. Because those are that, I mean, because those conversations, I think, are becoming increasingly mainstream and, and, you know, like how much, how, I think in a more general sense, how much is too much to pay for your monthly media consumption or whatever. And it is true that like those

NFL standalone windows, they are in different, there are in more places now. Yeah. A couple years ago, if you had ESPN for Monday night and you had the NFL network for the odd game here and there, you got everything. Because the networks were doing Thursday night, at least a bulk of a big chunk of the season. And now there are more windows, right? There wasn't a Black Friday game. Well, now there's a Black Friday game. That's an Amazon thing.

There wasn't necessarily a Christmas game. Well, now there is. It's on a Wednesday this year and it's a Netflix game. So there's more stuff and you do have to pay more. But I do think if the phrase move the goalposts has ever been okay to use, it's here because we're like, you are wanting to watch every single NFL game, basically. Yeah.

Or every single standalone NFL game. Mm-hmm. And it's more of a pain. It's more costly. I totally understand. I do also think that some of the people that are standing on soap boxes and trying to high horse this thing don't really care, you know, about the consumer. No.

How dare the NFL treat its biggest fans like this? Well, I think the Sunday ticket experiment is, I mean, listen, if you're a tech company, you know you're going to get some of that blowback, but there's no better business to get into than the NFL because people have been having to deal with direct TV Sunday ticket for the past however many decades to get the same to get that content, right? I mean, not that it's been a total mess, but it is, but for that era, just a huge added pain, you know, and now you're in some, for a lot of people, you're, you're streamlining the process, even though you're adding, even though you're coming with

a whole new thing. Totally. Reminds me of those people that were standing on the soapbox about the booger mobile. Remember the booger mobile on Monday Night Football? Yes. Like those paying fans, their view of the game is blocked by the, but it's like, I don't think you really care of all that much about that. I think it's a good blog poster right.

Adventures in cable news booking, David. CNN broke a big story last week because they published the video in which Sean Combs was seen assaulting his then-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura. That was from 2016. Well, last night, in primetime, Abby Phillip had Cameron on to talk about Sean Combs. First couple of minutes of the interview, Cameron was not engaging with many of the questions, and here's how the interview ended. What about the industry in general?

I mean, so many people have pointed out that Diddy couldn't get away with this stuff if there weren't a lot of people protecting him. Do you think that's the case? Who the talent agent for this joint? Like, you think I'll be sitting around watching what Diddy do and all this? I didn't know this was a Diddy Joint that are inviting me to. Yo, who booked me for this joint? All right.

Oh, wow. And I don't be sitting around watching Diddy and all that? Thanks for joining us. Thank you for your time tonight. Yeah, yo, thank you for having me. You enjoy it. And after about three minutes, that was the end of that. Who booked me for this joint?

I love that. Got some fun for you here, David. I was spending the weekend at the Santa Fe International Literary Festival. Nice. Not exactly the Parks Casino, but it had its own enticements. I can imagine. Christine, my wife went with me on Friday night. We found ourselves at dinner with David Grand, Douglas Preston, and Hampton Sides.

we went to the author dinner Saturday night. All together? Everybody at the same table. Wow. Saturday night author dinner, Anthony Dore, author of all the light we cannot see. Our friend Hua Shu from the New Yorker. Kai Bird was at the table who co-wrote the Oppenheimer bio that just got made in the movie. Yeah.

I mean, I felt so literary I cannot tell you. Wow, that's awesome. also ran into some press box listeners. Ted and Jenny from Fort Collins, Colorado came up to me. Couldn't have been nicer people. Hampton Sides. Hampton Sides was not a press box listener. Well, he didn't mention it right off the bed.

David Grant did say he listened to the press box. Oh, great. Wait, wait, talk more about that. We can quiz him about that, but he did say he listened to the press box. Wait, finish your story about our actual listeners. I'm sorry, I cut you off. Ted and Jenny from Fort Collins, Colorado. Wonderful.

New Mexico's very own, Travis Barnett came up to me. after one of the sessions and said hi and took a picture and all that stuff. It was really cool. Very, very cool to see people like that. That's so awesome. But we got a very special contribution from the aforementioned Hua Shu. Also a listener to this podcast, by the way. Wow.

And he found a very early version of Media Piss Test. What? Listeners will know media piss test here is when we make fun of writers who say so-and-so is like something on steroids. Yeah, yeah. Which I say all the time. He found a feature in Spy Magazine from the late 90s where they were doing the same thing except making fun of writers who said something was like so-and-so on acid.

It's the media Kool-Late acid test. That's great. It really is. It reads like Graham Green on acid. like Edith Piaf on acid. Wild Bill plays like a Sergio Leone odor on acid. Doesn't the 90s seem more fun than the 2020s? Yes.

What happened on acid? Did that become, is that not PC somehow now? Or is it just that people have more experience with acid? I don't know. I just think our ear is less fun. We're on steroids instead of on acid. That really does say everything, doesn't it? Yeah.

Yeah, this again, this was like, this was late 90s. So like right before, this is December 96. This is right before the home run chase that I think really put us on the trajectory of on steroids. Yeah. So maybe summer in 98 is to blame for all of this. That's when the world changed. Yeah. From we're having fun on acid to we're having fun on steroids.

Well, it also talks about the media that's being considered, right? It's not just like it's like X but weird. now in this day of age it's it's like ex but loud right it's sure that's just sort of that's that probably says a lot about the kind of media we consume too such a good point all right it's time for a feature that is both loud and weird it's time for david shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline yeah thursday's headline about a political race in washington that has three candidates with the same name was three bob knight three Bob

Night today's headline David comes from valued listener John Walters it's from the New York Post the post reports

that a Manhattan law student was so hooked on cheese on cheese she had to go to rehab to end her

insatiable appetite for dairy I'm going to spot you the word Guda as I ask you to consider I'm being totally honest

okay what was the New York Post pun headline. She had to go to rehab? Yeah, things look bleak for a while. Something that no Gouda, uh,

uh, no Gouda outcome. Yeah, um, the Gouda, the bad and the ugly. There we go. Done. We're done.

He got it, folks. The Guda, the bad and the ugly. Well done, sir. He is David Shumaker. I'm Brian.

Ryan Curtis, Back to Magic by Brian Waters. Thursday guest host, David, this week, the ringer's very own, Shio Copadia. Yeah. Talking NFL. I'm going to be drawing him off sides into unrelated media and political topics. I love that. We just take somebody who is so well-known and so expert at a thing,

whether it's NFL, whether it's Philly sports, and you just draw them. on to the dark side of a media podcast. Amazing. It's going to be incredible. But that's not all we have this week, David. What? Because when I was in Santa Fe,

among all these writers and novelists, I pulled one of them aside for an hour-long chat, which is going to run as a bonus episode of the press box tomorrow. That writer's name is Patrick Radden Keefe of the New Yorker. Oh, hell yeah. Who you might know from such out of the way books as Say Nothing or Empire of Pain or is Collection Rogues, which I really, really enjoy. Yeah, rogues is really great.

I mean, I love that one. It's really great. We talked about everything from whether there are too many crime stories in the world to his adventures with Anthony Bourdain to say nothing becoming a Hulu series later this year. He is very, very involved with that too. And this was a key question. why is his byline, Patrick Radden-Keefe instead of Patrick Keefe.

All the important questions asked and answer. That's Wednesday. Shields on Thursday. Shoemakers on Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. I got it. It should have been try to make me go to rehab. I say, no, no, no.

All right, you just won. It's also timely. It's also timely because there's the movie coming out. Anyway, I'll see you next week, Brian. See you later, no. Thank you.