The Press Box - How to Win a Campaign News Cycle, Criticizing The New York Times, and RIP to HBO’s ‘Real Sports’

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Bryan and David kick off the show with a media memorial service for HBO’s ‘Real Sports,’ which will air its final episode after 29 seasons (0:33); then they get into how to win a campaign news cycle (4:17) and James Bennet’s piece criticizing The New York Times (16:49). Later, in the Notebook Dump, they discuss Al Michaels, who's sitting out the playoffs, and who NBC will have in his place (27:30). 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

Learn more about the albums you love with Dissect, a music analysis podcast hosted by me, Cole Kushna, a lifelong musician. Each season of Dissect dives deep into one album, examining the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. We've covered albums by Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the creator, Frank Ocean, just to name a few, and our brand new season just launched all about Radiohead's 2007 masterpiece in rainbows. Listen to Dissect on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, because a great art deserves more than a swipe. Yes.

We've got a media memorial service to preside over today. Hope you've got a prayer picked out. Choosing the hymns right now, yeah. There we go, yeah. Pick the hymns. Because it is the end of HBO's Real Sports. Final episode of the magazine show airs tomorrow, January 19th. It started back in 1995 when you and I were still in high school.

Wow. It's been on 29 seasons, which is an eternity and then some in television. I thought we'd talk a little bit about real sports's heyday first. If you think of the media world as what we used to call the magazine feature well, it would have the fun stories, it would have the celebrity profiles, and then you'd have the articles delving into the more difficult topics. in the case of sports where the fun and games ran head on with moral issues. That was real sports.

Sort of like the sportsy version of 60 Minutes. Except I think that show actually existed on Showtime. But it was in, it was carrying the mantle, carrying the sword of 60 minutes. What am I trying to say here? Sure. It was 60 Minutes ever sports. That's the elevator. pitch. This thing is it was the final TV act

or final until he decides what he's going to do next for Bryant Gumble who was at the beginning of his career a sportscaster you and I remember him as the host of the Today show in the 80s and 90s.

And there's always different characters on morning TV. He was definitely the guy who was you know scrunching up his eyebrows thinking about the news a little bit, the one who could bring to that show a certain gravitas. Yep. While Willard Scott was doing weather reports.

And by the time he gets to real sports, which coincides just about the end of his run there on today, he's very much in the mode of, look, I've had my big network at bats. All I care about is truth now. He had the legal pad in front of him. and he was making notes as the correspondent story was airing

and then he could ask the correspondent some questions afterwards. Yeah. And part of the vibe of that show was, look, I've done a big jobs over here before. But now I am unencumbered by networks. I'm at a place where truth-telling goes on. Not worried about a call from Paul Tagliaboo or Bud's ceiling.

No. We're getting to the stuff here. Like you said, he had the serious journalist chops, but he also had the reputation, the celebrity, whatever that comes to hosting the Today Show. And again, like you said, totally unattached from anybody with NFL or NBA rights that they had to worry about, you know, coming into conflict with it. Speaking of it,

The show's high period also intersects with the high period of HBO sports. This is where the smart shows are. Yes. And also the shows that are a little bit raw than what you see on networks. This is the place where Vince McMahon and Bob Costas are going to get down. And then have a sequel. And if you look at the recent casts of real sports, a lot of people that are in their own way in the Bryant Gumble mode,

Soledette O'Brien used to be on CNN. Yeah. Now reinvented as a media critic of sorts on Twitter. She was on real sports. Bernie Goldberg, who was on CBS and then reinvented himself as the media's full of liberals guy. Yeah. He did pieces for real sports. Mm-hmm.

Looking at some of their highlights, of course, a big focus on brain injuries in the NFL. Some of the other pieces I was reading over the weekend, they were big on the nets that you see. at baseball stadiums now that are down the foul lines. Kind of amazing that when we were growing up. Oh, yeah. There were no nets. A foul ball coming right at you. Yeah.

Actually a serious and potentially terrible event. Did a famous piece I was reading about about children that were conscripted to race camels. I do not remember that. And it helped cause an uproar and bring about change in that world. If we want to pinpoint what happened to real sports, it strikes me that the problem of the magazine show on television

is a little bit like the problem of the magazine itself. Absolutely. Whole world changes around you. And what is it? Is it that it was harder for them to navigate a faster news cycle and command attention? from viewers? Yeah, I just think that in general,

the weekly show is really difficult to pull off in the modern era because the presumption is that by the time it pops on TV, everything's, you know, five news cycles late. That's certainly what happened to the magazine, the physical magazine. Otherwise it'd be a newspaper.

Like newspapers are barely hanging on, but at least be the newspaper, or you realize that, I mean, you have the presumption that, oh, everything here was written in the past 24 hours, right? A weekly magazine, it's written in the past week, two weeks, whatever. You know, how can you possibly convey news like that? And, you know, Real Sports, to its credit, was taking on issues that were bigger than just, you know, a weekly reactive thing. But I just told them people were really looking for things like that anymore. Yeah.

And, you know, I'd get all the press releases. That was a show that I meant to watch probably more than I watched it in recent years, if we're being honest. Well, sure. And it was also a show about, I mean, it was a press release sort of show, you know? I mean, that's just, that's, that's, that's, that came to sort of define it. And much like 60 Minutes, a lot of the pieces you'd see, I'd be like, why are they doing that?

Or why are they doing that this week? I remember there was one about Jalen Rose, just a profile of Jalen Rose. last year. And it went into his very worthy work he's doing in Detroit schools, stuff like that. But I'm just like, why are we, like if I pitch this to the ringer, would they have been like, what? Yeah.

You want to write what? Yeah. It just felt like it was out of time and out of time in ways that have more to do than just any show that's a weekly or semi-weekly show being at a time. just kind of like, wait what? What's going on here? Yeah, I mean, even big pieces, video pieces started to exist from a million different outlets online, right? I mean, before Real Sports was one of the only places doing pieces like this,

then it became, mostly because anybody that had any interest in doing it didn't have access to a TV network to put this stuff out, right? I mean, except for the broadcast networks which either conflicted or too busy showing the real stuff to get into the commentary. Yeah, but now anybody, I mean, come on, just any old media upstart could put together a nine-minute video package about some important story and get it into everybody's homes without having to wait for, you know, the start time of the show every week. So, I mean, it just really got swallowed up. That's why I push back when I see a headline like the one in Sportico that says TV dumps down further with the end of the end of, of HBO's real sports. That is perhaps true in the narrow

genre of sports television or sports TV magazine shows. But the larger media world that we live in has more smart stuff than it's ever had before. It just does. It really does.

Yeah, and even if we think about like, you know, issues of sports and morality, like the ones at real sports specialized in. I mean, just think about what was written during the World Cup last year. Think how accessible

it was if you did not pay a cent to any media institution to read pieces. Yep. About what the stakes were that were much bigger than what was happening on the pitch. Think about the NCAA stuff. We're reading about constantly, right?

It was hard in the heyday of real sports to find a lot of that in your local paper or even your national magazine. It was there, but now if you want to read about those things, it's easy, right? It really, really is easy. Also, I don't know if it's worth saying, but this is the latest and maybe the last of the many funerals we're having for HBO sports. There was the Bomani show. Yeah, which felt like it was trying to recapture some of the magic of HBO sports of yesterday year, but now we're post that, we're post boxing, we're post real sports.

Mm-hmm. Again, I feel like we've had this funeral before, but that feels like the end of HBO sports, at least, as we knew it in a prior life. yeah there was Bill Simmons show along the lines along there somewhere too yeah I mean listen they keep taking swings at it but

whatever bar they're setting for it they're clearly not clearly not meeting it it's hard to be kind of in everything to everyone enterprise right in this day and age you've seen over and over again these new not new these big media I don't even know how to define them

platforms that just you know you try to do do different things that try to draw in different audiences. And it can work for a while. But at the end of the day, you know, until there's some massive media consolidation, I think it's hard to sort of have five silos and hope you're going to get five totally different audiences.

Coming up on today's podcast, how to win a campaign news cycle. We have a very, very, very long piece about what's wrong at the New York Times. Plus, Al Michaels is sitting out the NFL playoffs. and David, an athlete has told us that he did not, in fact, overcome the doubters. 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. We got some high quality, 150 proof, scare the Democrats content today, David. Oh, great.

we've talked about if you want to capture people's attention at this point during the presidential campaign put out a poll that makes things seem as dire as humanly possible here's one from Monmouth University we got to bring back our bit about colleges you hear about largely in terms of presidential polling yes welcome back Monmouth

you're part of all of our lives now. Monmouth University poll has Joe Biden with a record low 34% approval rating, 61% disapproved. Michael Scherer, who writes for the Washington Post, says Biden approval down 14 points since July among Democrats and independents, his own voters, could keep dropping.

He appears to be in a standoff with people who don't want him to run for reelection, but who he believes will vote for him if he is the only alternative to Trump. So that's how you capture everybody's attention. If you have a poll like that, again, this is your window. Put it out right now. But I would also add to you that there is a bumper crop happening

in pieces that explain why polls like that are coming out. So you're scaring the Democrats on the one hand. And then as a secondary step, you are explaining to the Democrats what is happening that they can't imagine, right? They can't imagine that these are the results.

There was a piece I was reading this morning in the newsletter, off message by Brian Boiler, called New Media Change the World and we aren't immune. There was another column in the Times that got some traction on this question. But that feels like

the op-ed or big essay at the moment. explaining to Democrats how something you can't imagine happening is in fact happening, at least at this early stage and might happen all the way to next November. Yeah. I mean, this is not new, right? This is something that this has been a fertile market for a long time, especially when it comes. See resistance Twitter, especially when it comes to the left. Yeah. Also, polling has been really bad for a long time, right? I mean, I think we're going to keep hearing these stories,

and I think there's every reason to be concerned. But I don't know. I mean, I am personally, I am, you know, reasonably worried, but also fully convinced that this election is going to come down to, like, 1,600 people in Pennsylvania, and it's always been that way. it's just a, those people can landslide or can divide it up, divide it down the middle, come down to a couple of votes. But I just like, well, I mean, what are we really arguing about here? How many of those 1,600 people in Pennsylvania are at your recent weekend barbecues?

I don't know how many. I don't know how many are on the fence. I'm going to be honest with you. Well, we'll just leave it at that. David will be spreading the word about the upcoming election. By the way, another poll that got a lot of traction was Nikki Haley gaining on Donald Trump in New Hampshire. Iowa is sort of seen as Donald Trump and in parentheses, maybe Ron DeSantis, maybe. Well, here's a new poll from CBS and UGov in New Hampshire, 44% Trump, 29% Nikki Haley and 11% DeSantis. 10% Chris Christie. So perhaps that horse race that has been denied. the political media now since April

is happening, at least in some limited way. Speaking of long pieces, the other one I wanted to talk about was James Bennett's piece in The Economist. You remember James Bennett. Yeah, of course. Editorial editor over at the New York Times, he is the one who, under his stewardship,

the Times published the Tom Cotton op-ed during the Black Lives Matter protests. which pissed off a bunch of staffers at the Times. Bennett says that initially the publisher, A.G. Solsberger, was supportive, and then a few days later, Salsberger asked for his resignation, which he unwillingly gave. Well, Bennett has a new piece about his experiences at the Times.

It's in the economist, David, and it runs about 17,000 words, according to one estimate. Wow. I read it but did not count the words as I was reading, which would have involved a lot of fingers. First off, before we even talk about what's in this piece, isn't it amazing that the New York Times continues to be the sole institution, sole media institution in American life that can occasion the 17,000 word broadside journalism from one of its former employees? Mm-hmm. Does anybody want 17,000 words?

Well, let's take that back. It's unclear that anybody wants 17,000 words from James Bennett about the New York Times. But if they wanted 17,000 words about anything, it would be the New York Times. Sure. The only institution that could occasion that kind of,

I used to be inside the place, let me tell you what's wrong with it from a far hand-wringing. I saw Dylan Byers over at Puck wrote a piece about this and he pointed out that Howell Raines when he was ousted defenestrated, you might say, from the times

way back when, his piece about his experiences there was actually longer than Bennett. People got a lot to say. Oh my God. So Bennett's piece is mostly about a theme that we've talked about a little bit here and I don't want to go into too much today

the Times' problem has metastasized, Bennett writes, from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favor one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut down debate altogether. And he talks a lot about that. One part that I did think was interesting that made me perk up a little bit, was it Bennett talked about how many columnists

were minted inside the newspaper? Not just in the broader opinion section. We talked about how that has just grown great guns, right? every carbon-based life form in the United States has an opinion column at the New York Times. That's where they've seen so much growth in traffic. What he points out has also happened inside the Times to a larger degree. He says the Times Newsroom has added more cultural critics. And as Bacquet noted, that is former editor Dean Bacay, they were free to opine about politics.

Departments across the Times Newsroom had also begun appointing their own columnist without stipulating any rules that might distinguish them from columnists in opinion. It became a running joke. Every few months, some poor editor in the newsroom or opinion would be tasked with writing up guidelines that would distinguish the newsroom's opinion journalists from those of capital O opinion, and every time they would ultimately throw up their hand. Right. To me, that's fascinating.

He's seeing this a little bit in terms of, you know, ideology and turf wars and all those kinds of things. but I perked up for a few reasons. One is because that has been one of, to me, the best parts about the Times is arts pages. I often look at the actual articles that are in the arts pages and I'm like, this is not stuff I want to read.

Then I see an Amanda Hess column and I go, ooh, that is exactly what I want to read. Because you're writing about something I'm interested in or you're even better taking me to a place that I didn't know I was interested in. you're a great writer and a great thinker. Taking me to a different place is a great way to say it. Because again, you want something that is not so down the middle, right?

You want something who's going to take a slightly different angle on something to draw in different aspects than you would immediately presume. And thinking of the idea like culture very, very broadly. But you could also see that within the columns of the time. is arts critics, James Pontewasik on television, who I just love reading. During the Trump presidency, his column was often about, hey, here is a quality television show, the kind that Chris and Andy would be talking about on the watch. But oftentimes it was Donald Trump had a press conference. And I am going to write about it.

And in the course of writing about it, I'm talking about its visual elements and in the television quality of it all and how Trump uses the medium, but I'm also talking about politics a lot of the time. Yeah. Necessarily. And that's been so fascinating, right? Because, you know, you and I grew up in a world where everybody was a lot more siloed than they are now. You were a television writer, you were a political writer, you were a sports writer. Yep. Those categories gradually leaked into each other and then during the Trump presidency

they fully leaked into each other in a lot of ways some people found that very off-putting some people said please go back to talking about the thing that you're supposed to be talking about I can't stand one more bit of liberal propaganda

from you feel there were a few critiques of the press box on Reddit from time to hit that mark but also it was just one of those things. You're the TV critic of the Times. Television is about Trump. Yeah. Of course you're going to be writing about Trump. And you're smart

and interesting. And of course, we want you to be writing about that. Absolutely. In addition to just being like, I'm, you know, I got what you need on Breaking Bad. That's that those are the things that you want to. I mean, those are interesting things to read, right? I mean, listen,

not to be too dismissive about it, but in so many ways and the modern world, the New York Times, and most newspapers have sort of become the way that we talked about the onion back in the day where it's like, okay, I got the headlines really all that matters, right? You know what to explain? You know what's going to come after that, you know?

And it's imperative to draw on readers to have stuff that people are like, feel, you know, intrigued to read past the headline. Yes. I mean, whenever you and I talk about publications that are feeling their way, and maybe that's a nice way of saying it here in 2023, what they're often failing to do is just produce things that people want to read. And you can see that in terms of, you know, political bias and ideological colorings and all those kinds of things. but oftentimes it's just what what is the thing that it's going to get people

to read a story in the art section right now? Yeah. Is it going to be a newser about a thing they've probably already seen on Twitter that doesn't add that much to it? Or is it going to be letting one of our columnists swing away? Mm-hmm.

And write a really interesting piece. I was reading Ponawazik on the Charlie Brown Christmas special yesterday's paper. Yeah, there you go. The right on the front page was awesome. Such a good story. But that's like, that's part of it, right? And you know, you can think about this in turn terms, but it's finding stuff that people

want to read in 2023. And that's way different than what it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. For sure. A little bit like the real sports thing. So I just think that's really fascinating. Of course, at the times, that blows the circuitry, right? Well, we have opinion over here. We have news over here.

We've always had critics. but what are these columnists doing in the news pages? And how are they operating outside this framework? And are we thinking about them the same way we would think about Ross Douthit or name your favorite or least favorite opinion columns? Yep. Totally short circuits. But from my point of view, I'm like, no, no, those are the people who are bringing me back

to the Times is arts page. Because I can't wait to see what they have to say. All right, coming up, Al Michaels is not calling an N.S. NFL playoff game this year. What do we make of what happened to Uncle Al? But first, David, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Senior nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. Saw this in my Twitter timeline over the weekend. Actor Sidney Sweeney was bitten by a spider while filming a movie.

movie in Australia. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. Sidney was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died. Look it up if you don't know. Thanks to Kevin Dorsey for that one. And David's, we have some news from the coach firing division of NFL content. Great. The L.A. Chargers have mercifully fired their head coach, Brandon Staley.

Oh. their interim head coach is an outside linebacker's coach named GIF Smith GIFFF GIF Smith It was an overworked Twitter joke to right way Does it pronounce GIF

or GIF Thanks to PJ Kendall So far so bad and will among many others If you raised a question that I don't really remember how the internet answered Congrats you made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. I can't tell you how many times

when I was putting together this pot over the last year. I was like, wait, did we decide it really is GIF? Or GIF. In the notebook dumped up, David, some news from the New York Post Andrew Marchand.

NBC is going to have four NFL playoff games this season. Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Number one team of Mike Toriko and Chris Collinsworth will do three of those. The fourth it was thought might go to Al Michaels. Now he doesn't work for NBC anymore.

He's over at Amazon. But when he left the network two years ago, or a year and a half ago, he was named to an emeritus role, which I'd never actually seen in broadcasting. I went back and found the press release and it said, we are thrilled that he's staying in the family

and raising the stature of our events for years to come, which is not exactly a declarative statement. of any kind. Yes. Last year, Al Michaels did an NBC playoff game, but as Marciaan reports this year, that job is going to go to Noah Eagle,

who is calling Saturday night Big Ten games for NBC. There's a couple parts of the story. One is when Marcia and called Al Michaels about it in November, Michaels did not seem to know he wasn't doing it in an NFL playoff game, which was very unfortunate. Mm-hmm. In the big picture, I guess, I'm kind of surprised but also kind of not surprised because NBC is not in the owl business anymore.

They are in the NOAA Eagle business. Yeah. You've got a young broadcaster. You've got a Big Ten package that you are really, really going to want to promote, especially starting next year. Yeah. And we've seen from some of those Big Ten games, often not the best quality football programming in the world.

So anything we can do to get more eyeballs on that, it makes sense. I also feel that we have this tradition as a nation where we get together on Thursday nights and we make fun of the quality of football on Amazon that they're showing. We make a lot of fun of it when the Chargers, who would quickly fire their coach, gave up 63 points, not a typo, to the Raiders last week. 63 points.

And what happens is you almost leap from that to this idea that Al Michaels doesn't have a great job anymore. Yeah. How can I push back on that as forcefully as possible? Al Michaels has a great job, folks. Yeah, he does.

Amazon Thursday night football, after leaving the job at NBC where he called a Super Bowl in his hometown on the way out the door, he is still what we call on the wrestling business day, but a top guy. Yes. If you don't believe me, let's get every football announcer in America and ask if they want to trade jobs with Al Michaels. Yeah. Kevin Burkhart, Joe Buck, Jim Nance, Mike Tarrico. They might say no, because they're still in the Super Bowl rotation. They're on the network packages. Every other football announcer in America.

Yep, that's a yes. To make the big bucks to found or practically found a sports division to bring the NFL full-time to streaming, to have a night where you have NFL football all to yourself. Yep. with no competition for anybody else. Are we serious about this? I love Hal Michaels.

I really do. But I remember when Pat Summerall broke up with John Madden, because Madden had another job, and Pat Summerall was like, I want to keep broadcasting. Let me just say the valedictory tour for Pat Sumeral was, maybe you should do some games with Brian Baldinger.

Yeah. You're going from the first Tom Brady Super Bowl to not the Super Bowl. this is a this is the richest and biggest valedictory tour i can ever remember for a broadcast yeah fantastic job and i just feel it is worth saying sometimes in the midst of a thursday night blowout in the second quarter that house got a great job sides of playoffs aside what the chargers are throwing you know throwing up all over themselves on thursday night i don't know man It's just funny.

It's just funny to see us talk ourselves into something else. And people are like, well, this is what a horrible way for Al's career to end. It's like, first of all, it's not ending. He's in another year on his contract. He's coming back. And second of all, it's not a horrible way to end, you know. It may not be exactly what he desired, but it's a great, freaking job. Yep.

Only in crazy, naval gazing media world is this some utter humiliation to do Thursday night football on Amazon. some history made this week, David, an athlete tweeted something. That itself was not historical. You and I like to laugh when players insist that nobody believed in me. Oh, yeah. I overcame all the doubters.

And then we look at their Wikipedia page and we're reminded that they were taken second overall in the draft. Yes. So somebody believed in you, we reply. Well, the Giants defensive end, Kavana Thibodeau, would seemingly fit that profile. It was an absolute game wrecker of a pass rush or Oregon. He went fifth overall in the draft last year. Mm-hmm.

But David, Kavon Tibido has other ideas. Last week, he tweeted this, presumably to his fans. Thanks for all the recognition, but I'm not a victim and prove people wrong narratives are old. I'm playing good football and constantly getting better. Let's stop hanging on to old headlines. So Kvon Tibido seems to be speaking out against nobody believed in me content and freezing cold takes in one tweet.

I can't tell you how refreshing that is. That's amazing. Good job. I totally understand when athletes, you just like, I got to work myself into a, a physical and emotional state to go kick some ass. Yep.

So I'm going to just remember because I've done that at my computer. I've picked out editors and bosses that did nothing but believed in me. And I've convinced myself that they don't believe in me. Sure. And that gets that first draft of the story done or the podcast rundown done. So I don't blame anybody, but it's interesting. There's somebody's saying, I'm going the other way. A sufficient amount of people believed in me.

I did not have that many doubters. By the way, Kavon Tibino deleted the tweet, so not sure if this should be declared a total victory. Well, I hope he knows that we support him. You have a lot of support. Come on press box and talk about these issues further. You and I have asked the question, who is talking to Chris Wallace?

Or who's talking to Chris Wallace? I'm just thinking about it. Now see, you were. I've got some news for you, buddy. Chris Wallace tells the hill that David Zazlab called me this summer, which is unusual, and said, I really would like your voice to be part of our political coverage in 2024. And I have to say, Chris Wallace continues, having been away from it, for almost two years, I was getting itchy.

Chris Wallace will not just be doing interviews at an uncertain time. on either television or on streaming, Chris Wallace will be back to covering politics. Well, guess who knows some of the people that will be talking to? Is this what you were wondering about Chris Wallace? Or do you have some other ideas floating through your head? Let's just leave it there.

You seemed a little underwhelmed by this news. Yeah, well. We haven't done media test test in a while. Let's do it. Joaquin Nagel sends this one along, and this is from a tweet, season of Stranger Things is like season

one on steroids. Oh my God. Good to know. Our friend from television, Mitch Carr sends us this one, James Carvel. By the way, James Carvel, are we sure that James Carvel isn't just like an aggregated tweet at this point?

Last time we saw a live James Carvel's segment. I saw him on God, what talking, what did I see him? I saw him on TV recently. So he still. Was he on Bill Maher recently? I think he was on Bill Mar. Yeah.

Okay. Maybe this is from Bill Mar. But James Carville called, or he said of Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the house, his views are quote, hypocrisy on steroids. Not just hypocrisy, but hypocrisy on steroids. Got some only in journalism words for you. Great. Alert listener DB nominates Ballyhooed.

Oh, yeah. Really feel like I'm opening up Newsweek in 1992 when I see the word Ballyhooed. Yeah. In print. That's just a funny word. Oh, yeah. It's a great one. And then alert listener TM nominates cudgel.

As a quote here, scholars of impeachment warrant. Cudgeon. Yeah, you never say that out loud. No. Do you know what a cudgel is? I assume a blade of some sort. Okay. So I went with a hammer because I realized I've only been reading this in political articles.

Yeah. And I have not been interacting with a real-life cudgel. Turns out it's a short, heavy club, according to Merriam Webster. And some of the pictures on Google showed it as a short heavy club with spikes. Oh, really? Yeah. Dang. you had a real role-playing game.

Yeah, for sure. I'm trying to think. If I ever, if I ever had like a, you know, a thief or a warrior that ever used a cudgel, I probably did. I feel really terrible now. Well, it's time, David, for everybody's role-playing game. It's time for David Shoeemaker.

Guess it's a strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about the return of an adorable creature was, welcome back, Otter. Today's headline comes to us from Joel Landau. It's from the New York Post. Rewind one NFL news cycle, David, when the Giants Tommy DeVito

was still something of a media sensation along with his agent. The subhead on the front page of the post here is how rookie Giants quarterback, who still lives in parents' house, won the hearts of New York. I want you to think of a former hit song,

a real earworm as you think about Tommy DeVito and Ponder, what was the New York Post's strain pun headline? A hit song? Yes. Is it a, God. Still living at home? Still living at home. Home.

Song looks like it dates to 1999. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do do do. Oh, live in Lovita Loka? Yeah, so it is living, living. Live. Live in DeVito, DeVito. Loca, yeah. Living Davido Loka.

Yeah, okay. That's fine. Do we want to speculate about the age of the New York Post editor who came up with that wood? at least a certain age. We're not once to talk. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic by Brian Waters. Do we have time for a little story time here before we go? Sure. Let's do it. I've taken a lot of pleasure in showing my son Owen, who's 10 years old, a lot of movies. Yeah. Raiders of the Lost Dark, Star Wars movies,

Gremlins recently. Oh, yeah, that's on RQ. I took him to Die Hard, which got randomly released in theaters a week ago. Oh, that's cool. Or two weeks ago, oh, my God. When he heard Hans Gruber say, now I have a machine gun. Oh, whole, oh. There's just the laughter that erupted from him.

He was his first R-rated movie. That was fun. That's fantastic. An unexpected source of mirth, though, because he's now, becoming old conscious about movies and actors. And speaking of circa 99 or thereabouts, the Arnold Schwarzenegger prank calls.

Oh, gosh, that's so great. So we revisit favorite movies, favorite books, but what if we revisited crude internet content from 20 plus years ago? So great. And if you don't think he, young Owen has been walking around the house going, now I have a bunch of questions.

And I want to have them answered immediately. Oh, that's so great. Oh, my God. Truly one of the best things I've ever done. There's going to be somebody on TikTok doing like the Arnold Soundboard, right? I guess. I don't know. It's such a good gimmick.

And it was really the best one, right? There was an Al Pacino one that was okay. And then it got into like Dr. Phil and stuff we didn't care about. I guess we have too many copyright issues to worry about. but somebody should somebody should be doing that oh my god but i'm listening like arnold schorstenegger calling gateway computers and i'm like it's this amazing moment in time where you have the technology to harvest quotes from kindergarten cop and other movies but you also have the advantage that the person answering the phone doesn't totally know

that the technology to do that exists yes oh yeah they're not like i'm listening to arnold sound they don't know what a soundboard is they don't know that i'm listening they're just I guess you don't need that anymore. You have AI. We should just, can we just do an Arnold Schwarzenegger podcast that's hosted entirely by the 1995 soundboard of Arnold Schwarzenegger? Absolutely. It was the original AI, the original deepfakes.

That's a, that's a free story idea, by the way, here at the press box. Alan Siegel, I hope you're listening. I'm calling internet entrepreneurs in the country to help us relive the Arnold prank calls. Later this week on the press box, David, we're doing this Thursday. we decided. Yeah. Our year in media,

this is going to be a whale of a show. We put together the list here. Oh, my God. First of all, there's a whole wow that happened in 2023 category of stories. Like Chris Lick, that was, oh, right, that was this year.

Fox News Settlement, Michael Lewis, ESPN, layoffs, AI, speaking of which. What a year it was. It's only the happiest year, but we will have plenty to revisit, along with the usual coterie, only in journalism of lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.