The Press Box - Extorting John Skipper, the New Power of Cable News, and March Media Madness | The Press Box (Ep. 443)

Episode Date: March 20, 2018

The Ringer's Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker examine the startling story behind John Skipper's ESPN departure (01:45), Chris Cuomo's pivot to primetime (19:30), and how cable news is staffing the White House (28:30). They wrap up the show by reflecting on some notable media moments from the NCAA Tournament (33:15). Read Bryan Curtis's article "The New Draft Gurus" here: https://t.co/8hZGuxkOmQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, we're in the midst of March Madness. So how about we do our own NCAA bracket of gimmicky media NCAA brackets? Okay, okay, I'm into this. It's a 116 matchup, Carrington Harrison's Best Kanye Songs bracket versus the Spun's 64 Most Annoying People in Sports Media bracket. Who do you got? I got to go Kanye with this one, man. Yeah, it's an easy. It's a blowout, right?

First job blowout. Okay, an 8-9 matchup, the Indianapolis Stars Celebrity Alumni Bracket versus Pardon my take, 64 people most likely to retweet this bracket and get us more followers bracket. I have a lot of respect for the ingenuity and the irreverence of the second one. I think this is a Cinderella matchup, though. Let's go with the alumni. Haven't we done all the NCAA brackets? Aren't we all done with funny NCAA brackets?

Everyone's been done, right? We've done all the brackets we could do. We are your media analysis Cinderella's. This is the press box on the ringer podcast network. The press box is the media podcast where you're not allowed to use the phrase. There is no there there. I think I've used that phrase. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer.

If you want some recent content by us, you can check out David and Kenny Herzog's preview of the WrestleMania 34 lineup. Or me on the new NFL draft gurus, aka we're all Mike Mayock now. David, I got three topics for you today. First, shocking is an overused word, but we'll talk about the shocking reason ESPN president, John Skipper left the network in December. Second, we check in with cable news,

which is both holding Donald Trump to account and staffing the White House. And finally, since it's tournament time, we'll talk about which media entities survived and advanced and which got blown out by the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Plus, as always, our overworked Twitter joke of the week. But first, David, let's start with the plot against ESPN, as I'll call this segment. Of course, it was reporter James Andrew Miller who got the story

of why John Skipper left ESPN so mysteriously last December. We learned from Miller's article in the Hollywood Reporter last week that Skipper was using cocaine, and that his resignation came after some of the first. someone he bought cocaine from, tried to extort him. First impressions upon reading this piece last week, there's a lot to unpack here. Yeah, thanks for going to me for first impression. It was a supremely bizarre journalistic experience to, I guess journalistic is not even the right word.

It's just a bizarre experience to read this. I guess I was trying to figure out what, it seemed like they were like, like both. Both the subject and the author were at odds, but somehow in cahoots at the same time. I mean, obviously, this interview doesn't happen. John Skipper wasn't, like, on a rope line or, like, caught with a microphone coming out of a restaurant. This was a planned interview. Mm-hmm. And yet, the structure of it was, uh, seemed to be Jim Miller sort of pulling teeth to get the, to get the, the interesting bits of the story out into the public.

Right. Which is, which is the job of a journalist. It's not, I don't mean to say that with any sort of built-in irony. But it was interesting to see it on the page. Like this was either a direct, like a very overly precise transcript or a transcript with which lots of liberties were taken. That's the way that it read to me. I can't. It was very strange.

I just don't know what to make of it. I think part of that is that it was done over the course of two multiple sessions. And the gym is going back and saying, wait a second, I don't have enough here. You know, it's kind of like the original thing that came out was, okay, it's cocaine, turns out to be the substance, right? When he leaves ESPN, shockingly in December, he says a quote, I have a quote, substance addiction. That's all he said, which led everybody to wonder what that meant, if that was a euphemism for something, right? So I think probably, you know, this happens in multiple installments. That's why you have this thing of seemingly trying to coax the witness into saying, you know,

What he wants to figure out what actually happened, you know, in this case, right? I think part of it is what you're saying is funny because we're used to celebrity interviews and profiles where the person is a more than willing participant. Sure. Right? It's engineered by agents and everything. And this is one of those where we can talk about why Skipper is talking about this now in a minute. But this is not necessarily that case, you know. He perhaps has an interest in coming out with this.

But it is like you said, it's like pulling teeth to get all the information. out. Yeah, I mean, it just seems, you're right. I mean, what I'm basing, what I'm basing, I guess all of my preconceptions are built on other interviews, other print interviews. And so you're right. Whereas in a regular conversation or, you know, maybe like a televised conversation, then you do have instances where someone says, yeah, I don't know if I want to, I don't know

if I want to tell you that. And then one second later, they're like, okay. Yes, it was a cocaine dealer who was exhorting me. I mean, that seems like it just on its face a strange thing to be, like you, you, I feel like you should know walking in the door if you're going to give that up or not. No, it's all. You know, interview transcripts look like that. I know.

Right through, smooth everything out. Yeah. It's true. It's totally true. Especially when you're dealing with real stuff, you know, versus did you like the director you worked with on this project? How did you guys get along on the set? Strong point. So my overwhelming question is just reading it the first time, I got this in my inbox about 90 seconds after the piece went up, which was, why didn't they call the cops?

Yeah. Like, you have a major Disney executive who is being extorted, he says. Yeah. Putting not only a giant company ESPN in some risk, but even giant or company Disney in some risk. Did you call the cops? Did you call the FBI? Because it just seems like, you know, a very quiet, quick resignation is one answer to this puzzle. But there's another answer to this puzzle, which is, you know, perhaps a quiet, quick resignation.

But also, yeah, we called the cops because this was really serious, right? and that was, you know, something they didn't really talk about in the piece. I don't know if he just didn't answer that question or whether that's something we're going to find out later. But to me, that was number one among questions I had after reading this. I mean, I think the whole thing asked a lot of questions. I mean, it begged a lot more questions that it – I mean, certainly it answered the most central question, assuming that the information we got is, you know, on the level. But, yeah, everybody – I mean, as soon as everyone who read the –

this, walked away with many more questions than they walked in with, right? Yeah. I mean, there were just so many. And again, I'm not, I have no criticism of Miller or of his editors at the Hollywood reporter, but being in the business, your mind does immediately go to like the cogs turning to make this interview come out, right? So there's all these, it's not just the questions that are asked and then re-asked and the answer changes, but, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of lines from Skipper that

like you would think would be edited out unless there was something there that they were trying to sort of underscore subtly, you know? I mean, there's just a lot of questions. Let me get to burning question number two then. So, John Skipper goes to Bob Eiger and says, here's something, I have some really strange news for you. Not only am I using cocaine, but I'm being extorted by my cocaine dealer. Skipper says that it became clear in the conversation that he would have to quit, that he couldn't go to rehab. So the other unanswered thing is, why did that happen? Yeah.

A lot of people asked when Skipper so quickly was, was Bob Iger at some level dissatisfied with his performance? And this was, okay, here's a reason to go. Or was it purely about this, right? And that's a question that probably nobody except Bob Iger and maybe a handful of people of Disney can answer. Sure. But it's certainly one that you read this because you're like, it wasn't talking. There wasn't, no, no, no, please stay. We can get through this.

Or I hate that this is the case, but I just don't know what we're going to do here. I mean, that part to me, I was still like, okay. So, you know, what were this? Was there no plan B, C, D here, you know? The one answer was you got to go. I mean, I guess, you know, this whole thing seems to, like it seems to want to defy Occam's Razor in so many ways. If you want to draw a straight line, I mean, the straightest line possible to answer your question, one could imagine that Iger had already decided that he would let Skipper handle the layoffs and then reconsider his position there. You know, let him be the hatchet man and then we'll have an opportunity to bring in a new chair or a new president with sort of a clean slate.

And then maybe this just sped it up by six months or something like that. You can imagine that Iger was thinking this is an awkward way for him to go out. This is an awkward way to have this, you know, to come to this decision. But it would be more awkward to publicly defend him now and then fire him in six months, as was my plan. Right, right. And that's pure speculation, obviously. But I'm trying to imagine how someone would just be willing to sort of roll over and see one of your, you know, top lieutenants just watch him marched out the door. And we think we know from various pieces of evidence that Skipper thought he was staying, right?

Sure. A couple of days before he tells a meeting and all hands meeting at ESPN. At the end of this meeting, I want you to be confident about the future of ESPN. I want a lead in ESPN that strives purposely and confidently into a new world, which is not scary but exciting. Right. And in this interview, he says, I believe strongly that a year later, two years later, the narrative was going to be very different, meaning the narrative about the once invincible ESPN shrinking in whatever way. But he was aware of his own corporate mortality, as it were. I mean, he talked about that being his last act as president of his union.

Totally. I mean, I think that's probably because of his age. Sure, sure, right? He's just kind of aging out of the job or thinks he's aging out of the job. Yeah. Not that, you know, ESPN's various problems are going to get him shoved. Yeah. So, but here's the other thing.

It was just amazing to me, context now looking back as a person who had to write about this in the moment when, of course, you know nothing back in December, sit down and write a column. Things that happened to ESPN last year, in the process of losing more than 10 million cable subscribers, presiding over two sole. soul-sucking rounds of layoffs, two separate ones. Yeah. That once and for all into the idea that ESPN was invincible. Taking on water because of the ESPN is liberal jive, right? And oh yeah, being attacked by the president of the United States. These are things that happened in 2017.

Now, let us add to that list. President of the company was being extorted by a cocaine dealer. I mean, what in the world? Yeah. I mean, I know the whole, I never say, you'll never hear me say, words ESPN is dying. You'll never hear me say any of those things. Yespian is making money.

ESPN is doing just fine. ESPN will be around for a long, long, long, long time. But what a surreal year by any standards, by the standards of the Trump White House. Yeah. That was. And now this is the capper. Well, I don't, I think what's significant about this interview, or the reason why we're talking about this interview is because it doesn't feel like the capper, right?

It feels like there's more, there's more that's going to come out. I mean, it's like. I don't know if it does come out. Maybe not. So here's the question. One, I think it's notable that in the interview, Skipper said, there is nothing that will come out that will contradict what I have said here. Yes.

He did not say there's nothing else that's going to come out. Right. Some carefully chosen words. Also, I don't want to assign any, you know, malevolence or moral turpitude to anybody in the Disney organization. I mean that very seriously. But, like, this is what you were getting at earlier about calling the police, calling the FBI. Why would stepping down even be part of the conversation? Right?

I feel like in every movie about powerful corporations that I've seen in my life, this would not have been the solution. It would have been how do we fix this? Not how do we fix this from a PR standpoint, let's solve the problem, quote unquote, right? I mean, let's figure out a way to make this go away. Yeah, like Harvey Kotel and Pulpiction. Exactly. So it does seem like it's hard to imagine. And Jim Miller gets at this in the interview.

You know, he asks several times. It's hard to imagine that being enough to spell out the end of the Skipper era at ESPN. Absolutely. And Jim has been all of that question since the beginning. Yeah. And I still think it's something to be pushed. Okay, a couple quick notes. One is that somebody told me, and this is a lot of journalists say this when something like this happens,

but there were other journalists close to figuring this out, which may have, you know, made John Skipper more or less eager to talk. Okay. You know, so that was in the air. And everybody says that, right? That's the joke. I was reporting this from a month, and he just tweeted it out, right? It is amazing to me that it lasted this long. Somebody as big as the president of ESPN, you know, and we're three plus months later, right?

And that still came out. The other thing that was said over and over again, the article is saying that, Skipper's saying, this didn't affect my work at ESPN in any way, right? This didn't affect my work. You know, I was doing this. He's called an addiction, but also said, you know, I think I was a competent president of it. And I missed a few. He says, other than I missed playing a few canceled morning appointments, I've never been a daily user, et cetera, et cetera. My use over the past two decades has been quite infrequent. You know, I have no idea if that's the case or not. But I remember thinking over the last year, just he did a lot of odd things last year. You know, like the barstool van talk thing was the ultimate odd thing. Erratic. I've no idea why he did those things at all. I'm not connecting it to this. But he had a strange erratic year last year. Right? You eat all the bad stuff. You eat.

eat by signing up the bar stool people, and then you eat all the stuff you eat by canceling the show after one week. You know, it was a very, very strange year, and I think people now look back at his tenure at ESPN, fairly or not under, you know, now that we know all this stuff. Sure. Through that lens. Yeah. And how can you not? I mean, it's just like, you know, you had a giant, giant job in media, you know. So a question for you.

I mean, one, that, again, we're just doing the same, the same dance here over and over again. it makes this interview even odder to me because I mean maybe it's me but I sort of think that the ambiguity was I mean that the the interest in the story was going was dying down or would eventually die down and to revive it and to sort of

put a spotlight on the cocaine situation seems like an odd choice separate from that though to go to what you said if there were a couple reporters who were circling the story why haven't they written this story yet because it's not a I mean when people say I've been working on and he just tweeted it, the piece still gets published with additional information.

We knew the Weinstein stuff was coming out. I mean, when the New Yorker scooped the Times on Harvey Weinstein, they still published their story. They may not have been closest as they thought they were, you know. Yeah. They may have just been close to cocaine. I have no idea. You know, there's multiple levels of getting close here that you could have advanced

the story. All right, David, it's time for our 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. Note to listeners that the news that Cynthia Nixon is running for governor of New York just came out. Yes. So we're missing the Miranda jokes that are now on Twitter and hopefully we'll just miss them forever. All right, David. Last week we did a detour into overworked late night joke of the week.

You remember that? Today, how about the overworked tabloid headline joke of the week? Go for it. Patriots left tackle Nate Solder jumped to the Giants for a guaranteed $35 million. The New York Daily News, post and Newsday all use the same headline. Are you ready? Soulder of fortune. That's according to an item by s.i.com writer Dan Garland

and pointed out to us by Rattie. Thanks, Dan and Rattie for that one. All right, sticking with NFL free agency, listener Kyle Madsen, notes than when Teddy Bridgewater signed last week, we got a whole bunch of Teddy and the Jets jokes. You might remember the pre-Twitter, Vinnie and the Jets jokes for Vinnie Testaverty. So I was thinking, how else could we exploit this pun? If Kevin Clark writes a piece about the Jets, How they all read Lena Dunham's email newsletter.

Can we do Lenny in the Jets? Is that still available? Anthony Hardaway takes over for Todd Bowles. We can do Penny in the Jets. Benny and the Jets recorded in 1973, by the way. A lot of miles on that joke. All right, a group award, David, for Rex Tillerson humor on Tuesday. Trump fired the Secretary of States.

We got Regsett everywhere on Twitter. That was a big one. Good one. And on Friday, we learned that Chief of Staff John Kelly told reporters in what was supposed to be an off-the-record session that when Tillerson learned from Kelly that he was about to be fired, he was using the toilet, which led to the overworked Twitter joke, talk about a Friday news dump. Thanks to Politico's Stephen Shepard for that one.

Also Friday evening, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe was fired. Trump taunted him on Twitter, and McCabe said, quote, it was part of an effort to discredit me as a witness in the Russia investigation, to which everyone made the joke, McCabe and Mr. Mueller. That is a Robert Altman joke. It's an event of Western. Wow, right? from Matthew Zylund.

It's amazing how many people went there. I didn't know that McCabe and Mrs. Miller was that popular on political Twitter. Also in Trump News and also from Matthew Ziland. Last week, we were all waiting for people to be fired. It's like Black Monday in the NFL except it just could be anybody in government. That was kind of an amazing day. Josh Dossie of the Josh Doss, excuse me, of the Washington Post, tweeted out a message from a White House source, quote,

something is going to happen today. I just don't think anyone knows what it is. And everyone noted those are almost the exact. same lyrics of Bob Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man. It'll weird, overworked Twitter joke. But this week's winner, David, news that Toys R Us may go out of business. I was waiting for it. Made everyone offer up the lame joke.

I guess we have to grow up now. That's a reference to this beloved jingle. Did you know that Jaliel White was a star of some of those ads? I feel like I should have known that. Isn't that amazing? My wheelhouse. I had no idea. Arguably Jaliel White's most important.

important artistic achievement, I think. Did I do that? Thanks to listener Rylan Grant and WIP Spike Eskin for pointing that out. All right, before we go to cable news, David, let's take a quick break. Hey, guys, I'm Mark Titus. And I'm Tate Frazier. We are the host of One Shining Podcast. It is March.

Check your calendars. It's true. March Madness is coming up. We're here to talk about all things college basketball. If you like FBI investigation, if you like teams that are on the bubble and think they belong in even though they have like 16 losses. Come check out OneShiny Podcast. If you like Buzz of Beaters, Buzz Williams, being buzz watching basketball, those are all three things you can do and you can listen to us. We're going to talk about everything that happens in the

tournament. It's going to be great. We're going to be here all month. Please subscribe to One Shiny podcast. Check all of our stuff out. Tate has done some very disgusting things for money in the past. Yes. He is desperate for more to come. For more subscribers so he doesn't have to return to his old life. So please, please, please subscribe to our pod. Check us out. We're having a lot of fun this March. You can get us wherever. you find your podcast, Apple, Stitcher, SoundCloud. I'm a Google Play guy. Google Play doesn't get enough love when people do this. And Spotify. People are on Spotify now.

So go check it out. All right, our second topic, I am going to call. You are about to enter the no-spin, no partisanship, no anything but tough interview question zone. The news this week is that Chris Cuomo is leaving CNN mornings for prime time at 9 o'clock. He'll compete with Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow. Anderson Cooper's two-hour show is now a

one-hour show. David, what do we think? of this bit of musical chairs. I will, I will, I can't say that I'm surprised because I can't say I was like hyper aware that Anderson Cooper was two hours every night. This is like Laura Engram. Remember last couple of weeks ago we learned that her show was called the Ingram Engram Engel? Yes. You didn't know until there was like a move. We learn a lot in the, in preparation for this show.

We try really hard to educate our listeners along the way. It seems like this is just sort of coming into a lot. line. I mean, this is part of the steady, you know, prehistoric progression of CNN until a modern news station. You know, I mean, there's no one else is doing two-hour blocks with the exception of morning shows. Yeah, and CNN groping for an identity, right? Sure. What is our identity? I mean, I feel we'd have to go, I'd have to go back through and look at the, I mean, see when it became two hours.

But it certainly seems like Anderson Cooper was part of their sort of a stop gap and the solution for what is our identity, right, for that question. But, you know, it's just a two-hour block, I mean, it doesn't surprise me at all that they would be going, they would bring Chris Cuomo in, you know, to be a second face during that time period. I sort of, I feel like their lane in this, right? So we got, obviously MSNBC is left. Fox is it right or is it just Trump, right? I think Trump, right? Sure. So their lane seems to have been like Jake Tapper, right?

Is their ideal? like a guy who's going to, you know, be kind of extremely critical to the president, but is generally just going to be like a good interviewer and chew some scenery when appropriate. And, you know, kind of be like Mr. Just the Facts. It's the Just the Facts line. Is it not? Is that what they're trying to do? Well, I mean, that's CNN sort of like traditional ground, but they're bringing in, you know, it seems like they're perpetually making the move to be more entertainment based, right? And they certainly are doing more and more shows that are not,

news. I mean, they're news-based, but they have the history of comedy stuff. That was CNN. The Bordane stuff, you know. Bordane is a great example. There was a cover of Vanity, I mean, of a Hollywood reporter a while back that had Camau Bell and Anthony Bourdain, Jake Tapper, as you mentioned. And who's the YouTube guy that I can never, Casey Neistadt, who's now, who's already no longer with CNN. He was like they paid millions of dollars to acquire his YouTube network and it's not around anymore. Right. But that's normal, right? You do prime time. You do news guys, quote, or at least quote, unquote, news guys and gals. Sure. And then, you know, you have to fill up lots of time, right? So you can do other stuff. Yeah, I think it's just a programming question because, I mean, when we see this

with ESPN, we had the same conversation where you don't, I feel like we had this conversation last week about Sports Center. You know, you're built in the sort of what you can, what you can too easily assume to be your built-in audience base are the people who are tuning in all the time just to get the news in ESPN's case. It's just to, you know, get the sports recap. And if you mess with that at all, you might be losing more than you're gaining, even if you're putting on better, more grabier television, you know? Yeah.

So, you know, it's, it's, it is an interesting point of view. I mean, interesting question. You know, I mean, I think there's probably a case to be made that if they went the, if they went, you know, Jake Tapper 24 hours a day, not literally him, but just sort of that. I'd love to see that. Sort of the straight news, truth to power, you know, channel, they would probably be about where they are right now, you know, without. without spending the money or making all the adjustments that have gotten them to the point where they are. But, you know, it's, I mean, it is interesting that they are the sort of central target of President Trump's ire in a way that MSNBC isn't. I guess it's easier to, I mean, I guess it's more compelling to point at a nominally unbiased news network and call them fake news than to, you know, pick on the lefty, you know, channel.

I think so. I think there's just more to gain by toxifying CNN, right? Sure. Sure. But it's interesting that they're sort of inching away from that identity at all. Yeah, totally. Did you, by the way, see this Chris Cuomo tweet when he was kind of outlining what his show was going to be? It was actually going to apply to somebody.

We will test power every period, damn, period, day, just like always. Have to talk to people more and about them less. Debate with decency. The need is clear. Hopefully we will fill it. Hashtag Chris Cuomo, Prime. If we're, that's great. That's fantastic.

Can we just say, what a goofball. What a goof? I mean, that's, come on, man, you know? Yeah. I mean, there's a way to go down that road without, you know, sounding like Edward R. Murrow, you know, parody channel, right? Yes. Just come on. And by the way, you know, it's like I went hunting for some, you know, Chris Cuomo.

He's done several, several interesting ones with various trump eyes. But I think his style, the style he is trying to bring off, might be most. evident in this LeVar Ball interview. Is what you're saying that because the president of the United States didn't bring the boys home with him, he therefore didn't do enough? Or do you think he really didn't do anything? I didn't say nothing about him. I didn't say nothing about him. I know, but you're kind of like talking about him without saying his name. I'm just trying to clear up the confusion. I mean, I'm coming back home and I'm just saying anything. There ain't no confusion. There's a lot of confusion. I saw a fantastic tweet from the Twitter handle by Your Logic that said,

it had tweets from luminaries like, Joe Walsh, James Comey, Jordan Peterson, and Representative Adam Schiff, and the tweet was melodramatic middle-aged guys of really coming to their own in the last few years. This is their era. You could definitely put the Cuomo tweet in there, too. I told you this when we were like setting up for this over the weekend, but like my greatest fascination with the state of CNN is not Trump's attacks on them, but Fox News.com's attacks on them.

Oh, yeah. I am always because I mean, I know that this is a point. problem that I have that I read too many Fox News, like, celebrity stories. I'm just deeply enthralled by them. They weirdly are all over my Twitter feed. I never quite understand how. They always talk about my Apple News. I love to see what

aspects of Hollywood, of the celebrity world that Fox News deigns to cover and then the angle at which they cover it. But of course, they save their greatest snark and venom for their rivals over at CNN. The headline was CNN slashes

Anderson Cooper's program as network hopes to make room for anti-Trump quit Chris Cuomo. But better than that, the lead is in an embarrassing setback for Vanderbilt Family Sion Anderson Cooper, CNN announced that his half hour, that is in-house rival Chris Cuomo will be taking over its ratings challenge 9 p.m. hour to shake up, coming as CNN struggles badly in a ratings war with MSNBC cuts Cooper's airtime in half. That was like half New York Post and half Trump. I know. Struggling badly. It sounds like a badly should be in all caps, right?

That's incredible. Yeah, the piece goes through. They're like shared time at Yale University. I mean, they're definitely like driving a wedge. Not even dog whistling. Yeah, exactly. We're creating a wedge and hammering on it. Vanderbilt family Sion.

It's really, really, really fantastic. I mean, in some ways, this is the best Fox News take, right? I mean, just let the, like, I have no qualms at all with letting them go after CNN because it's just sort of, it's, it's, you know, self-aware and transparent on a certain level, and it's hilarious. It's like the post going after the Daily News. Exactly. And that's actually the tone that was written in.

Yeah. Also, one last quomo thing, I saw him. This is in January when his show kind of started the test drive in prime time. He says, because that's not a lot of what you see at night on cable. There's a lot of pandering. There's a lot of pundry, a lot of panels. And I'd like to avoid all those. Isn't CNN kind of the network of the mega panel now?

Yeah. That's kind of their identity, right? Sure. Besides the just a fact stuff. It's like we have literally more people here and probably more ideologically diverse people than you could find anywhere else. Yeah. I mean, that's not saying much, you know, but like there's just, there's like 12 people on set at all time.

Sure. So it's kind of amazing. I just want to get these people out of here. I just want me and Kelly Ann Conway here. We're going to talk. Well, it does make sense, though, that in an era we're like, I mean, if your panelists are expendable, then your show is sort of expendable too, right? I mean, how much time is, how much time is Anderson?

Cooper or anybody else getting on the air when there's 10 other people surrounding them. So the second part of our cable news check-in should be Trump using cable news as his personal LinkedIn. You know, like every, all the jobs are coming from now. But famously this week, Larry Kudlow from CNBC is his new chief economic advisor. But there was also, thanks to when this is all from the New York Times is Michael Grinbaum. Heather Noward, former Fox and Friends anchor, is a State Department Undersecretary of Republic Diplomacy and Public Affairs.

Pete Higgseth, who's also a co. a Fox and Friends weekend. How many Fox and Friends co-host can there possibly be? I don't know. It could be Secretary of Veterans Affairs. John Bolton, the commentator, could be National Security Advisor. Grinbaum writes, The moves are another sign that the dividing line between media and government has been all but been erased under Mr. Trump.

A former reality star views himself as the casting agent in chief. That's kind of amazing, isn't it? I mean, it's not new, right? Under Obama, Jay Carney from time was Biden's and then Obama's spokesman. It said Blumenthal goes from New Yorker to the Clinton White House. So I don't think it's that presidents are hiring people who seem to have been auditioning for the job to some extent in their old media job. I think that's fairly normal. I think it actually goes both ways.

I think it's just the sheer number of people because of Gregg's Grinbaum goes on. At least three Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Kimberly Gilfoyle, and Laura Ingram were approached about joining the communications team. And last week, Mr. Trump dined at the White House with Jesse Waters. I don't know why Jesse Waters just feels like the bridge too far. for me. I'm sure that was a fun dinner. I think what's different here is that, like, you're potentially casting your entire administration with media types.

Sure. Like, that is kind of your first choice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you can make, you can very easily make a logical argument that casting someone from casting, that hiring someone from Fox News to be your PR mouthpiece is fine. That makes sense, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And like I said, liberals have done it too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm just saying that's not a difficult argument to make, you know. Laura Ingram, no matter what you think of her. would be a fine White House spokesperson because she's, that her job is public speaking, right? Sure.

You're doing a really good job of retaining information and reading from a script. I don't know what we're judging by fine means, but yes, she would be of a piece with the Trump White House. Absolutely. Sure. And the other thing is that these people are going to get, obviously, much more press.

And I don't mean that in any sort of jokey way. You know, we hear about when a Fox and Friends weekend host shows up with interviews or has a phone call. It's Kimberly Guilfuel on line 3 or whatever. That makes news immediately, probably not in the least, because those people are working at news outlets

and get off the phone and probably say, I just talk to President Trump. But, you know, I mean, there's all the time, I mean, there's a million other White House staffers that are not getting this level of media attention. Absolutely. I think the other thing is that Trump's

enthralled by television. So he's hiring these people based, based on the way a viewer would be enthralled by them. Absolutely. This is a great thing with Cudlow where after he hired, he calls Cudlow last week and says, he said, quote, you're on the air. This is Cudlow recounting it. He said, you're on, you're on the air.

And you say, I'm looking at a picture of you. And he said, very handsome. So Trumpian. Trump is like, you know, like, the way our moms kind of watch television or whatever. But that's how Trump is hiring somebody to be his chief economic advisor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, he's impressed with the fact that Larry Cutlow is sitting there on CNBC, you know? He's just like, look at that. Look at those pinstripes. Look, incredibly. Those suspenders. Unbelievable. Well, you know, I mean, if you don't, if you're more interested in your staff for how they come across on Meet the Press and how they, like, convey information to you in a meeting, then I guess that's not, I mean, that decision-making process makes sense, right? I mean, it's, you know, we can, we can toll the bell for the future of democracy all we want.

But it's, you know, that's a different podcast. That's a different podcast. That's the watch, tune into it. But, but no, I mean, it's, it is, it's sort of sad also is, you know, part of the culture that we live in. The presidency, it's sort of been walled off from this for a while. But I don't think, you know, I think it's more of a symptom than anything else of the, of the culture that we live in, you know? I mean, you talked about Anthony Bourdain earlier,

but I was just thinking as we're having this conversation about celebrity chefs. You know, if you want to open a successful restaurant in New York City, it's better to have Guy Fieri than the, you know, than a guy with a Michelin star that no one's ever heard of from Paris or something. That is definitely his, that is definitely the Trump way of casting. Exactly. Absolutely. Get me Guy Fierry.

Wait. Sarah Sanders, you're out. We're going to have Guy Fieri in charge of, like, health and human services before we know. It's going to be terrible. All right, David, our final topic, I'm going to call this obligatory golden retriever joke here. The NCAA tournament is happening. I'm going to hit you with a few media moments, much like the Oscars. The NCAA tournament is a media event.

I think we can agree on that. So let me hit you with a few things that caught my eye. Number one, the annual selection show. We open up with Greg Gumbull and Ernie Johnson standing like 45 feet apart. It looked like they were going to play catch. It was like this giant stage. It was not like a traditional television sound. It was just a huge stage.

It was like the opening scene of a play where the playwright was really trying to tell you something about distance, you know, human distance or time or something like that. That was kind of amazing. I also love the whole, you know, it's like we talked about obligatory Oscar Twitter where you complain that the thing is too long. We have obligatory NCAA selection show Twitter. Yes. We complain about the way the brackets are revealed. And what I love about it is people are like, are mad.

They say, you know, this is too long. This took 35 minutes to reveal everything or 30 minutes or it's two hours. But they're not mad about being manipulated. Very few people say, you know, I wish they just release the brackets on Twitter, right? We're happy to be manipulated. We're just not happy to be manipulated that much, right? It's like the Oscar ceremony. Two hours and 45 minutes, we all kind of go, this is great.

We didn't just release the winners online, right? Yeah. We like the tease, you know. But once it gets to three, that's too much tease for me. I'm out, you know? we all have a line. Is it that we're tired of it? Or is there a line or is it that like that's when the jokes about the length become funniest?

Like that's when it's appropriate to unfur all those jokes. Yeah. But it's like this is all of a piece. Right. The NFL schedule release show. The NFL draft, the NBA draft, right? You could just announce the picks very quickly. But no, no, we need somebody to come to the podium and read it out.

Yeah. You know? But it's just funny to me when our sports viewer brain kicks in and we're like, okay, that's just too much. Now you've gone too far. You know, it wasn't too far to have a show to announce the brackets. Yeah. But just going like the 25th minute, that was it. We're totally.

I love that the complaints even exist, though. I mean, I understand why I understand that people are upset and that people use Twitter as a means of just talking out loud. There's not, no criticism of that. But it's like, you're complaining about it is perpetuating the problem. This is, you know that the NCAA and all of their television partners are looking at Twitter and saying, like, yes, people are still tuning in. We've got them. We've still got them. This is the hostage video.

They're here. Look, they're right there. I always wonder about, you know, I always like ask my friends, you know, what would you do questions? And I always go back to one of those like Andy Kaufman, you know, situations where he just like gets up and starts reading the book in front of the crowd or whatever. But like, the Great Gatsby. Yeah. How long could you drag out the selection show before people actually turned off the TV? Or like, if they're just like, if they're like, we're going to make our last, you know, we're going to announce the last five teams, last eight teams after this commercial break.

And then the commercials just stretched for 35 minutes. or something like that. Do you think if Ernie Johnson started reading the Great Gatsby just at the beginning of the show? Do you think anyone, how many people do you think we'd hang on at the end? And like every couple of Chavezpsons. When I finish this, we're going to announce all the NCAA brackets. How many people do you think would keep watching? That's a fascinating experiment.

All right. Another thing that came up to me, before the tournament, we did a whole segment on this a couple of weeks ago. NCAA, bagman, money, corruption, all this. And then the tournament starts. How much have you heard about? the NCAA FBI case bagman corruption since the tournament started. No, I mean, none, basically. Close to none.

The future of the sport, David, was at stake. We were going to just blow every team out of the water, and the tournament starts like, oh, this is fun, basketball again. But this is one of the great coincidences. You feel free to read in whatever conspiracy theories you want, but of the tournament is that all of the teams that were implicated were either didn't make the tournament or were swiftly expelled from the tournament. How convenient.

How convenient. How convenient NCAA and FBI or whoever, whatever shadowy entity we're blaming here. If you wanted to rewatch that Arizona game tape and see like, you know, Sean Miller sandbagging with a gun against his back or whatever, you could probably, you could probably, you know, you could definitely make the YouTube video that would make people believe that conspiracy. We would definitely have some hand-wringing if there was a possibility of like a vacated title. Of course, what we were assured from the initial articles was that just about everybody was going to be swept up in this thing. So we're not sure, you know, that's not like a quote-unquote clean champion. is definitely going to be crowned. You know, it's just the very selective information that we've been given so far.

It sure makes rooting for underdogs, rooting for the Cinderella is that much more poignant, though. The teams that seem furthest away from this sort of corruption. It feeds into the, even though it has nothing to do with the same thing. It feeds into the Cinderella myth or the Cinderella thing. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it was to me, it's like the Olympics, right? It's all about graft and corruption. And then the Olympics starts like, ooh, curling.

Yes. Cool. Yeah. That sounds fun. Nobody cares anymore. But I think that there's a bigger, you know, I mean, I don't want to, we can talk more about the corruption and the NCAA, but I think that that speaks to a sort of broader, you know, argument about the entire tournament, which is that we've gotten really, really good at covering

we, the media broadly defined, have gotten really, really good at covering things like the NCAA tournament, you know, I mean, you know, three, four years ago, major organizations like, you know, Sports Illustrated and, you know, the ringer, if it had existed then, would have had hours and hours long meetings about how do we call, you know, how many people do we have have to have covering each game and what's our social media strategy. Everyone's gotten really good about it. Sports Illustrated for their part was releasing these web-only covers that just sort of, you know, like that will just be about one great win, you know, or something.

It's a good idea. It's a cool idea. It's also, you know, a little bit craven, whatever. That's the whole point of it. It's a really good media strategy. But all of the narratives that have come, I mean, that have come up and have been identified by really smart media outlets and most media outlets, you know, hit on the same ones have, all lasted about 45 minutes.

I mean, that's what a media, like, the NCAA tournament is obeying the rules of a modern media story right now, you know, it's like, nobody can beat the zone. Okay, we're tired of that. It's like, you know, Tony Bennett and UVA, they lost. It's so sad, okay, I can't have finished that sentence, you know, whatever. Like, there's, there's. UMBC was really great. Now they're gone.

Yeah, they're immediately gone. There's no, I mean, I guess we still have the Kentucky's division with no top four seeds or whatever, and people will still be pointing that out on the broadcast. all the NBA draft prospects are gone. All the lottery. You know, I mean, but like... Yeah, because we had the little guide at the beginning member. If you care about the lottery, if you care about your tanking team, here's the games to watch.

The ringer had that guide. Yeah, yeah. And we're going to continue updating it with more and more players. It's morphing into our NBA draft guide as we speak. But yeah, exactly. Nothing lasts long at all now. And that's sort of the way we consume everything, T, basketball and media about sports. Yeah, it's funny because this was ideally suited for that, totally accidentally.

So we fill these buckets with the NCAA every year, right? have to have the Cinderella thing, which this year is University of Maryland, Baltimore County, blows out Virginia by 20 points. Yeah. First 16 over one ever. And that's like, to me, what's always amazing about the NCAAs is that nobody knows any of the players. Oh, yeah. Really.

And everybody, you know, you'll hear people like, oh, basketball sucks now, the one and done and the quality of play is so low. But the thing is, it brings in so many non-hardcore sports fans that just don't care at all because they can look at it and be like, okay, that team's number one and that team's number 16. That is literally all I need to know, right? Yes. For this to go to David and Goliath, which is the oldest sports story. Yes.

I mean, there's just not, there's like, you're good, right? You can even be 710. And the number 10 seed can be favored. You don't have to know that. Right? Just like, oh, look at that. I just think there's so many, you know, it brings in, it's like the Super Bowl, right? There's so many casual fans. There's so many things for casual fans to latch on to that whenever we worry about the quality

of playing all that stuff. I mean, look at one UNBC one the other day. First of all, I did not put the airbud tweets. They're mascot of the retrievers. I just left that out because I don't know that we need to do that again. But, you know, that was just this huge thing, right? Everybody's obsessed. People buying the shirts from the library, the school library, and it was a whole thing.

Yeah, no, it's totally true. I mean, the numbers, I mean, you know, the seeds really help the uninitiated viewer. Also, the fact that the games are on, you know, for the first couple, for the first little bit, they're on nonstop, and you can just click on the TV at any point, and Twitter's right there along for the ride. You know, it's not just one big game at night that if you go out to dinner with your family, you're going to miss.

You know, I mean, it's always, you can dip in, you can dip out. And you're right, nobody knows the players. I mean, Purdue won without their biggest player. I was like, Haas the other day. I mean, he was replaced. I mean, I know many people have pointed this out on Twitter and elsewhere by Harms, Matt Harms, I guess is the last name.

Both players have the double A in their name, and I just couldn't help but wonder, like, if they hadn't even talked about the injury, would anybody even notice the difference? Yes, the diehard fans. The vast majority of casual fans, probably not. No. And I think that's what's... Gamblers and actual college basketball fans, which is a small scene.

The gamblers more so than the actual basketball fans. I like this tweet from ESPN's David Fleming. The greatest trick the selection committee ever pulled was convincing the hoops world to celebrate Cinderella's, instead of focusing on their utterly incompetent seating. Pretty funny, right? Because if you just mis-seed the tournament, lots of Cinderella win all these these, Cinderella's quote-unquote win all these games, right?

Sure. Sure. They used to do that with mid-majors all the time. They just give them a low-seat, and the teams would win every year. And you'd be like, maybe they're just good. Yeah. Maybe they're not just pulling off miracles year after year, right? They're actually good, and eventually they kind of feel it.

But isn't the smart case to make that the way they're seating it now is the best way to make it, is the best way to do it? Have some, like, if you seat it based on conferences and, you know, you kind of, the smaller schools are going to come in with a big disadvantage in the seating. But when they get in, if they're there to win the first couple of games, that's good television. That's good sports. I remember just as a kid, just how little we all knew collectively as a society about seating. It was just like magically your team appeared in the bracket.

You're like, cool, we're eight, you know. And now that, gosh, it's an amazing. How what a science that is now. The other thing is there's always an object, an internet object of obsession, which I think it's fair to say is Loyola, Chicago team chaplain, sister Gene. who is 98 years old. Yes. Who went all over Twitter. A couple of my favorite jokes.

Chris Cotillo, the MLB reporter, Sister Gene parting like it's 1927. Loyola, Chicago got to the Sweet 16. And I were our pal Stephen Roderick, quote, as a Loyola Chicago fan. I am available as Loyola's agnostic counterpoint to Sister Jean, which was really nice. That's fantastic. Yeah, and they're through the Sweet 16, but she was just like, she would grant interviews. How did you motivate these guys in your pregame prayer? I told me we were going to win that we could do it and God would be on our side and we're just going to do it today to keep calm and just put into play everything that coach has taught them to do.

Now I have a hard question for you because the guys Clayton Custer, the players, they told me they found out about your bracket and that you had them going to the sweet 16 but then they're losing there. So what's the problem? What's going on there? I just thought they would go to the sweet 16 and now we're. may even go more than that. So you'd prefer if your bracket was wrong. We just go one game at a time, though. So we're going to Sweet 16 now. Great. I like that mindset.

Congratulations to you in your school, and I hope they bust your bracket. Thank you so much. She was like a meme, you know? There were like screen caps. Yeah. She was, Sister Jean was content. Uh-huh.

Just amazing, you know? On the other side of that spectrum, I think, is we should give some kudos to Charles Barkley, Kenny the Jetsmith and the whole T&T crew. But the fact that as far as I've seen on tour, I'm sure I've missed some examples, but Barclay has been like supremely unmeemworthy so far. Is that an exciting tournament or has he actually been buttoned down? I think, I mean, it's just compared to when he started. Yeah.

It's like, you know, it was a gag, you know, basically. It was cheerfully negligent. I just have no idea what this is, which I love, by the way. He's not up there. I mean, they have Clark Kellogg up there with him who fills in a lot of the blanks. And, you know, he's Berkeley. I mean, yeah, Berkeley's no Jay Billis or whatever. But, you know, he's competent.

And that's what you got to be in the NCAA tournament. Just competent. Play good D. You know, it's going to be fine. This is for sports media nerds only. But there's just an astounding number of announcers associated with the tournament. Even the selection show, they would, like, rotating in Seth Davis. And he goes out and Barclay comes in and Kenny Jet comes in.

Kenny Jett comes in and there's Raftery and Nance. You sometimes forget about the number one team if you just watch the wrong games. Like, oh, wait, there's a Jim Nance, Grand Hill, Bill Raftery team that is the number one team in college basketball. And they will reassert themselves down the line. Sure. But right now they've just kind of vanished. Well, you compared it to a stage show at the beginning. I mean, this is just like some really, really incredible production of Our Town or whatever.

And there's a lot of, you know, a lot of townsfolk moving on and off the stage. It's pretty incredible. With that high cultural illusion, David, we'll call it in. this podcast. Thanks. Going me to quote Our Town before we go up here? We'll do a stage reading and just like, well see, that's our experiment. How many people will listen to the press box if David does all the parts in Our Town, Patrick Stewart-style, for 45 minutes to an hour.

Thanks to our producer Jim Cunningham and for listening to this week's show. Back with more hot media takes next week. See you, David. Does anyone ever realize life while they live it? Pins stripes. What are incredible suspenders. Unbelievable. Talk about a Friday news dump.