The Press Box - ‘Inside the NBA’ Lives, the Tyson-Paul Fiasco, and Life on Bluesky

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David kick off the week with some exciting news: 'Inside the NBA' will live on! They discuss the popular NBA show, which has been licensed to ESPN (0:30). Then they discuss Netflix, which is now streaming live sports, including this past weekend’s Tyson-Paul fight (11:35). Then in the notebook dump, they discuss the following: Bryan gives a report on going to Bluesky and his thoughts on the social media platform (28:21) Former NFL head coach and John Madden’s best friend John Robinson has passed away (35:24) The Rock has been named GQ’s Entertainer of the Year (37:21) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, Only in Journalism, America’s Softest Target, 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

In the summer of 1999, thousands attended what would be the final iteration of the Woodstock Music Festivals. But unlike its namesake, Woodstock 99 was not about peace and love. Joining me as I dive deep into this story about music, mud, violence, and tragedy. From Spotify and the Ringar Podcast Network, I'm Stephen Hayden. And this is Breakstuff, the story of Woodstock 99. Available Tuesday, August 27th. David? Yes.

Some exciting news from the world of television. That's how I'd like to get things started here. Great. Inside the NBA is going to live another day. Oh, that's what we wanted to hear. I said that sarcastically. I meant it sincerely. That's what we wanted to hear.

Yeah, it did sound like you were going to bury inside the NBA at the beginning of this segment. There were actually two big related stories that broke on Saturday. Mm-hmm. First, Warner Brothers Discovery settled its lawsuit with the NBA. Yeah. This is the lawsuit it filed when it lost the NBA rights

and was not able to match the other network's bids. Mm-hmm. That news was broken by a young media reporter named, let me see here, Bill Simmons. I was wondering how we're going to do that. All right, great.

It's funny, I didn't see Bill's name credited in the Wall Street Journal article or some of the others I read that reported the news later in the day. Probably a newspaper convention, I just don't understand, but Bill had it first on Twitter. That's part one. Second part of the story is that Warner Brothers Discovery,

which owns Inside the NBA, the show of Ernie and Kenny and Shaq and Charles, is going to license it to ESPN. Yes. Meaning Inside is not just going to survive, it's going to become ESPN's special event NBA studio show. Now, who knows when on behind the scenes for all this,

but I can't help sticking on what the value of inside the NBA would be and whether ESPN was the highest bidder in some sort of internal, you know, monopolistic checkers match here, like bidding war, or if that was just assigned to them sort of in this process. I mean, it does sort of seem like you could argue that the value of inside the NBA would be bigger or would be comparable if it was an NBA.com property that was licensed or could be licensed out to all the shows. Why is it ESPN exclusive? So that's a really good question. I think ESPN had the biggest and longest running problem to solve with NBA pregame. I guess they have the most games or they have the, I mean, they have a consistent schedule of games that would sort of line up with the. T&T schedule. They have the A package. They have the finals. They have the conference finals and all the way down.

We know that ESPN president Jimmy Patero is like the people that ran the Yankees in the 90s. We need a free agent. We are going to go get the highest priced free agent possible. That's what we're going to do. And this feels like, hey, we need a couple of football announcers. I know Joe Buck and Troy Aitman. Yep. We need an NBA pregame show. the NCID, the NBA guys. Because I'm not sure everybody would have done that. In Pataro's position, you mean? Yeah, well, I think the other networks,

like when they were looking at what they're going to do, because NBC needs a pregame show, Amazon needs a pregame show. You know, I think a lot of it was started with, we want Charles Barkley. Mm-hmm. And then, you know, if, okay, but the price of getting Charles is to get everybody,

that might have been a different discussion. but I think with him it's like oh well we will take everybody yeah because one we have lots of as you point out lots of NBA inventory so we can have different kinds of pregame shows they can come in I guess they're going to do the first game of the season they're going to start on January 1st they're going to do playoffs they're going to do through the finals but also we're willing to take everybody because that's we're ESPN and in the Pataro era that's what we do yes although I mean I think I would expect

I'm not shocked, right? I would expect Jimmy Pator to see the value of the team, the entire inside the NBA team together. But it wouldn't have shocked me if it went the other way, too, like you were saying. I think that, you know, at least in some sort of imaginary, you know, caricature version of what we think these conversations look like, you would imagine the Amazon executives to be like, you know, we just want Charles Barkley and we'll surround him with three more Charles Barkley's.

And it'll be even, it'll be four times the magic, right? and without actually seeing clearly what the value of the current foursome together is. But do you think Patero hesitated on that at all in your fantasy booking of the situation? Well, I think everybody started out with the idea that we want Charles Barkley. But then I think what we're yet to learn about this is how committed Charles Barkley was to this whole team idea. Because remember, he had like 19 different answers when asked what he wanted to do with his career. next year. Yeah.

One of them was, hey, I'm going to be a free agent and sticking with these other guys, it's not really important to me. Yeah. And in that scenario, I think it would have been Charles Barkley, Stephen A. Smith, Malika Andrews, and a Bob Myers-like object on the ESPN pregame show.

Yes. I think that's absolutely what they would have done. But if he's got this huge contract with T&T, and remember, that was such a confusing press release, we had a couple months ago where he's like, I am sticking with TNT on my 10 year $200 million contract.

Yeah. And we were like, you're sticking with them, but they're not going to have basketball after this season. Yeah. So you're going to be making $20 million a year to be the post game show for Rosoli and Isles? Like, what are you, what are you doing for your money?

Oh, man. I would watch the hell out of that, but go on. But this also solves TNT's problem. Because Turner Sports. has to exist in some capacity. It's not the NBA anymore, but as long as you have something called Turner Sports, then you can still justify those cable fees,

at least to a point. Yeah. They've got baseball. They've got hockey in this convoluted deal with ESPN where they license inside the NBA to them. They're getting some college football games back, some big 12 games. Yeah.

13 of them. That means like one a week to me. So suddenly we have more college football. We're also getting some college football playoff games from ESPN. Plus, we have the use of Charles Barkley and the inside gang to potentially do other stuff for us. Yeah. They're still branded as Turner Sports, right? They're still part of our thing.

So I think that's why this deal works for everybody. You keep the band together. You keep Turner Sports together in whatever we make of that. And then ESPN just seamlessly takes a show that's still going to be produced out of Atlanta. by the Turner people and their problem, their again, decade plus long problem is solved.

Everybody wins. Yeah, now we just got to wait for like two years from now when T&T or when Turner decides that the price for inside the NBA is like

$3 billion a season. Right? Just flip the right, just flip the rights negotiations around on everybody else. But yeah, I think for now it does seem like a crisis averted.

David Zazlov says the new price is $3 billion. You thought I was screwing up this company. I just saved everything by adding several zeros to the licensing fee. So big winners in this deal, Turner Sports are what's left of it, ESPN, and finally, David, big winners, you and me. Oh, yeah. Because we don't have to suffer through another Charles Barkley free agent period. You don't think he's going to declare free agency at some point again? before the new deal is up?

Thank you for checking me on that. He will probably make noise about retiring or being a free agent once again. Yeah. Maybe within even a year or two. Do you remember when he was going to retire in May of this year? Yes. We're not talking. I just want to play this clip because all these media organizations,

including the athletic on Twitter, we're like breaking in Walter Cronkite style and saying, folks, we have some news we must share. Charles Barkley. is retiring. Here's what he said on NBA TV. I have made the decision myself, no matter what happens, next year is going to be my last year on television. And I just want to say thank you to my NBA family. You guys have been great to me. My heart is full with joy and gratitude.

But I'm going to pass the baton at the end of next year. I hope the NBA stays with TNT. So, yeah. I don't know if Jimmy Patero knows that inside the NBA will not involve Charles Barkley after this season. Might have made a weird deal there. So I guess the losers in this deal are the Dan Patrick show and every print journalist that Charles Barkley got on the phone with and just told wildly interesting and contradictory things to, month after month. Got the tweet out of and then he made a different decision. Yeah.

Now he's with his old pal. Last note before we get out of here, David, I saw a tweet. from Jimmy Trina and accompanying story saying that Shaquille O'Neal might not be signed? What? Oh, for the ESPN show? Yeah, for the ESPN licensed inside the NBA.

That's awkward. Although I don't know this, but Shaq is only signed through this season. Yeah. I think this is a, this is maybe a non-story, right? The whole, I mean, unless they try to unless they try to

short change him or something. I just kind of feel like, you know, you get a commensurate raise for your time here. And I know Shaq is, I mean, Shaq's not negotiating in standard terms, right? Shaq's not saying, Shaq's not just negotiating against what his co-hosts are making or even what his replacement would be making. He's saying, this is how much money I'm forfeiting from my pizza and eyeglass franchises to be here instead. You have to pay me that, right? So I don't, I'm not sure that this is going to be a sticking point in any negotiation. You know, the superstar luminaries just sort of seem, man, it seems like they, it seems like

they managed to get what they, what they require to show up. Yes. Payshack. All right. Coming up on the podcast, Netflix shows its ass with the Mike Tyson, Jake Paul fight. A post-election promise about cable news that we're making to our listeners. A report from the magical world of blue sky where there are fewer racists and more resistance. Plus, John Madden's best friend, the 2024 man of the year.

And our new favorite bit. America's softest target. All that much more on the press box. A part of the wringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker and producer Brian Waters here with you. David, henceforth, the list of legendary boxing matches will include the following. The Rumble in the Jungle. The Thrilla in Manila and the AARP in AT&T.

otherwise known as Mike Tyson versus Jake Paul on Netflix. That is unkind, Brian. Let me tell you something else that was unkind. I texted you on Friday night. Just a little host to host friend to friend check in. To see if you were watching the fight, to see if you were even able to watch the fight with all the technical issues. And I didn't hear back.

So you got to tell me, did you watch this fight? Were you able to log on? I was at, I did not text back because I was at my teenage son's high school production of Neil Simon's rumors. Excellent job, Princeton High School, Drama Department, and excellent job, Neil Simon. Way to go, man. Who knew? But yeah, we made it home in time for the semi-main and the main event. And yeah, it was, it was quite a production. I would have loved to have been in the same room as you, not so much during the fight, although that would have been fun, a nice throwback to our youths, but just through all of the, just the show, just the production, the numerous desks with

who knows who conducting interviews with who knows who. It was just a thing of wonder. And I can imagine you have some opinions. Well, when we logged on and it was like, oh my God, the announcers are Morrow Ronallo, Roy Jones Jr. and Rosie Perez. And early in the card, Mara Winallo was talking to Rosie Perez and saying, hey, remember when you were wearing boxing gloves in the opening credits to do the right thing? Like, oh, is that why we made this decision?

Cedric the entertainer was also part of the studio presentation? Yes, he certainly was. I, you know, I've watched a good deal of boxing, but I don't watch enough boxing. I feel like, I felt like any time I caught myself saying, like, what the hell are they thinking? I was just like, maybe I'm just not watching the right boxing. Maybe Cedric the entertainer has a weekly boxing podcast or something that I'm just not privy to. Maybe I'm just not attuned to it in the way that I would be another sport. So I kind of kept checking myself, but the whole thing just seemed really, really bizarre.

And it also, I mean, I know it's a, you know, dollars per square foot probably kind of sort of proposition here where just the longer they can drag it out the more imaginary money they're making or whatever. But I really thought that if they were going to take anything from the UFC from WWE, it would just be not the part of boxing where you have to wait until midnight for somebody to throw a punch. Oh, my God. Do you see how many people who had never seen? a boxing pay-per-view. They're like, is this thing always so late? Yeah. Oh, it's always late.

I kind of thought they would have learned to speed through it, though. I agree. And when the show started and we got like the three-minute performance from the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. You knew you knew something was up. I knew something was up. That's also the most boring part of a Dallas Cowboys game in person. Yeah, a little bit of a flashback there. A lot of people had trouble watching this fight at all. You and I way back when Amazon started with Thursday Night Football said like the biggest hurdle

for streaming. The most important thing you have to do is have people be able to watch the event. Yeah, of course. Which sounds like simple and patronizing. But if it doesn't work, it's no good. And for me, I was mostly fine and then Mike Tyson came into the ring and it just froze. at that moment. I was like,

no, no, not now. I've suffered through all the, all the boring parts and then an awesome women's match.

And now you freeze? Yeah, it definitely started freezing up at the main event. I mean, listen, I'm sitting over here on wrestling Twitter,

where I'm saying, like, oh, is this what Monday Night Raw is going to be like? And like I said, on the mass man, I was like, no,

I don't think you have to worry about 40 million people watching Monday Night Raw in January. I think it's going to be, I think they're going to have the servers to process that one. but yeah I mean there it was it was laggy I mean it wasn't terrible from where I was watching either but yeah when it's when we talk about this with football I think I probably at the time

referenced I was an early I was you know I was an early adhere to switch to digital cable right so like just the earliest days of when the ringer started I was like you know one of the few just defiantly didn't have a cable hook up even though that's how we traditionally watch sports I was watching it on Hulu or TV or whatever I was on at the time. And I was just like every year at the Super Bowl, it was like more and more people are going over the top here with their cable and more and more people are going to be complaining as if it's the NFL's fault and not their dial, not their modems fault when they can't get what they want or what they're used to getting on cable. And there was some of that. People are just like,

what is that? You know, like, but in, in this case, it was sort of Netflix's fault. And presumably they could have had more servers. I don't know how this stuff works. Could have been paying Amazon more money for the cloud or whatever the hell that is. But the funny thing was, as you mentioned it, there was a sort of built-in resentment not of Netflix, but of all the other posers who are tuning in to watch it now, who have suddenly slowed down my feed, right? So they, Netflix gets to deflect onto the success that they're having, right? It's like, hey, don't blame us. I didn't realize that like all these people who don't give a shit about boxing we're going to tune in just because it's on Netflix. And they're the ones slowing down your stream.

not us. The funny tweet here from Dave Lane, no Michael Buffer tonight, but plenty of buffering. That's good. When you talk about those 40 million households, which by the way is one of those numbers that needs like 10 asterisks after it,

Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal. I literally just made up the number. So I'm glad that my imaginary number was close. 40 million households worldwide. So first of all, we don't usually hear worldwide in viewership numbers. Also, viewership is typically, you know, counted by an outside firm, not just reported internally, like this Netflix number.

So there's a lot of, there's a lot of reasons to kind of look at that and go, okay, and move on. I guess my bigger complaint was, I thought the whole production looked really cheap for Netflix. Well, I don't want to get, I don't know what you, as the, as the Riggers Art Director, I don't know what you want me to say here. I mean, listen, there's a, there's, that's really hard to quantify, right? It's really hard to imagine how these things are going to look when you're setting them up. All you can really do is hire the best people in the world who do it. And assume it's going to look.

Like, I don't know how this thing's going to look. Well, that's kind of your whole goal when this is for this to look good. Boxing is historically pretty small scale, right? I mean, that's one of the reasons why sports like boxing have always had such a long and successful history on television. And, you know, like, you know, when HBO was starting up and they had all the great boxing fights. It's like, this is similar to pro wrestling. You know, boxing is really easy to air, you know, and when you think about all the great moments, announcers, you know, the great fights and then the announcers speaking to each other,

I mean, they're like standing at ringside, right, with just like microphones with cords coming out of them. This is like, they're really basic setups here. And they tried to blow it out. They tried to turn it in the Super Bowl with, with, you know, announced desks floating in the crowds and stuff like that. And it's unusual for boxing. And it's really, and again, it introduces an element of unpredictability.

you know, I mean, it's, I guess there's obviously football to go off of, but even in the football games. You know, they have the pregame setups and then, but the announcers are up in the booth. I mean, it's, it's, it didn't look great. I'll just, I'll agree with you. I'll, I'll definitely agree with you on that point. It also looked unrehearsed because they would do this thing before every match where they have a camera sort of floating through the air and there'd be a graphic on the right and a graphic on the left. Mm-hmm. And the whole thing would kind of look right and look left. I'm like, did you, do you try, this out before you pushed the buttons tonight

because this looks like it's being done for the very first time for all of us to see. Also speaking of unpredictability, how about Mike Tyson's interview with his son Amir and then he walks away and we see Mike Tyson's bare butt? It was the most, it was so unbelievably staged. I mean, so unbelievably presented

that it seems staged, right? Because not just, it wasn't just an error like, oh, we got a bad shot here. It was just the very end of the interview. you as he's walking away. And then the camera kind of demurely turned northward. So we wouldn't see the bear butt, but then we kept seeing it for another second.

And then it just cut away completely. Yeah, very, very bizarre. Netflix also tweeted that clip out, by the way, just so I don't know what conspiracy theory you want to put there. But if they were just like, hey, this is great, great content. Mike Tyson's butt. It feels like if that was anybody except for Mike Tyson,

that would be all we're talking about, right? just, or like there would be a, some fine being levied or whatever else, you know, like it just seems like it would have been maybe less memeable and more of a big deal. We got Christmas football coming up, Christmas NFL on Netflix. I could tell if all the worries about NFL not working on Christmas Day as performative, kind of like the Monday Night Raw worries, it just feels like whatever Netflix does not want to screw up, it's the NFL on Christmas Day.

Yeah. there were some funny little whispers from executives at television networks who all are looking at Netflix like there's the company that's going to come steal the rights away from us. It's already taking two Christmas Day games. And then when this contract gets torn up with the NFL, they're going to come in, right, with a huge bid and take away the thing that's keeping us alive, which is pro football. There's a lot of like, you know, cackling, aha, they couldn't even make the broadcast work. You got to talk about the fight itself too. I don't have a lot of judginess to give you here because this really was like a bar bet come to life. Yeah.

Is it not? Oh, absolutely. I mean, remember when you and I were sitting in the Lower East Side and we could have been talking about the great books or, you know, deep, deep issues in our lives. And we did at times, yeah. We did. We got there. But most of the time, we were like, hey, if you or I got in a ring with Mike Tyson, could we survive for one minute? Yeah.

And then another one would inevitably ask. Are we allowed to run away or do we actually have to fight Mike Tyson for one minute? Yes. This was the living manifestation. And then once you had the answer, it would be like, wait, what if Mike Tyson was 58? And that was the sad realization in this fight because I was, I kind of talked myself into it. And then the beginning of the third round happened. I was like, oh, my God.

That looks like me out there. Except it's not me fighting Mike Tyson. It's Mike Tyson as me. He can't move. he's limping around he's throwing one punch per round yeah I was watching with my son he's like kind of rooting for Mike Tyson because why not but he's like he can't win this fight if he doesn't punch

yeah if he does not throw he does not throw jabs he will lose I'm like yes that's getting in the way of him winning any of these rounds I had some set up for you David here which was Chris Wallace our old friend leaving CNN. Who's talking to Chris Wallace now? Well, another question is who's subscribing to Chris Wallace

because apparently he wants to do some new media venture. Dang. But when I saw that and when I saw the Morning Joe gang going down to Mara Lago with Donald Trump, I kind of stopped caring about cable news, transaction wire altogether. And I wondered if you and I should just make a pledge right now. Oh, okay.

should we just stop talking about cable news all together on this podcast? Oh, that's a big decision. Sure, absolutely. Let's stop talking about cable news. It's a big decision that you have the answer for immediately. Well, now that Chris Wallace is gone.

I really don't know what the point is anymore. There's nothing there for us anymore. Yeah, Matt out, Jake Tapper. Chris Wallace is the reason we were hanging around. I mean, it's good timing, right? The election's over. That was the time you really, we're sort of relying on cable news a little bit more than you normally would.

But I'm like, I just don't, does anybody listening to this pot actually watch this stuff? Well, people can tweet at you and answer the question. It's a good question. I mean, listen, they're going to do some of these names that you mentioned and others are going to do crazy things that we'll have to comment on at some point. But in terms of like the broad strokes of history, I mean, the cable news era. might be chugging along and probably would benefit the show and behoove our listeners to talk about stuff that might matter a little bit more. I just remember when Gabe Sherman was writing New York Magazine cover stories about MSNBC. I remember reading those and I enjoyed them, but then I would think like, this seems more interesting just for like the clash of egos.

And, you know, this person's pissed off and this person's up and this person's down rather than this being a thing that people are actually consuming in any numbers. And now it feels like there's still a lot of that from, you know, Joe and Meeker or Chris Wallace or whoever it is and all the pay cuts at CNN are people that didn't get raises anyway. There is an interesting story about just like covering the death of a thing. Yeah. Journalists love to be there at the death of a thing. They did it with the networks for three decades, four decades. Sure. And now you see cable news on this strange precipice.

We're like, oh, my God, given the choice of doing like a big cable news interview or some podcasts, including ones you and I had pretty much never heard of, all the campaigns were like, we picked the podcast. Yeah. Because this is more important to us. So on that level, but that's not a reason for us to talk about it for a while anyway. and if you and I decided we need to break the fast and do a cable news segment

let's talk about it off air let's have one of those late night bar conversations from the Lower East Side and say should we do a cable news segment again on the podcast because I'm kind of thinking now how about this? We'll consider doing a cable news segment on the podcast if Joe and Mika make the trip to our studio

and ask us face to face fly both to Los Angeles and Prince. It's not just like Austin. Well, one of... Okay, listen, I'll make... I'll extend an olive branch. They just have to come to one of the places where other one can teleconference in.

Okay. That's fair enough. All right. Coming up in 30 seconds, David, I left Twitter or I cheated on Twitter. I went to the other side. A report from the world of blue sky. But first, 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, send your nominees to at the Pressbox pod, where they are always, always gratefully received about that Mike Tyson, Jake Paul fight, David,

and fighting aged boxers. It was a very overworked Twitter joke this weekend to write. Jake Paul has called out Jimmy Carter and their fight will be streamed on Tooby. That's good. If that's halfway believable in the Netflix sports, universe, or it was to you, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke

of the week. All right, big news for my social media life, David. I signed up for Blue Sky. Yeah. I also signed the press box up for Blue Sky. I saw that, yeah. We are at the press box pod

there. So when I found like a funny headline the other day, I was like, oh, I will now post this on Twitter and then I will also post it on Blue Sky. Which means I did. didn't make a decision at all. No. I just promoted us in more places.

You're just doing twice as much stuff. Yeah. Which, by the way, is at the root of a lot of people leaving. They're like another place to promote myself. Hey, I'm in. I just, I know love. And somebody complained to me about this. Like, oh, you were making fun of all the journalists are leaving and all the stuff.

I was like, okay, I know there are journalists who are just like, I'm sick of this. I love the community of social media. And I want to go somewhere that's not full of the stuff that's on. Elon Twitter. That's very cool. Did we anyone need to write a letter and post a letter to? I've seen at least two of these now on letterhead. I'm just like, was there was was there something in our Twitter contract that said if you ever leave, you need to just do it in the way you would like. You just formally do it. Yes. Like the way you used to have to quit things. Like I am I am writing to tell you that I went out of my lease on this apartment?

Yeah, yeah. Just get a few more clicks on the way out the door. I'm not exactly sure what the thought process is there, but whatever. You know, interesting journalism note, one of the great values of Twitter, aka X, is that it's an institution, right? I mean, it's a borderline utility and some of the complaints about Elon Musk's management or that he hasn't treated as such, obviously. But I was reading an random article.

I just like click through on my phone from like Huffington Post or something. Is it so called Huffington Post? Huff Po. Is Huff Po the official name? Mm-hmm. Okay. That shows you how much I'm paying attention to that one. But it was like, I think it was a Huffpo article.

And it was about how conservatives were mad about something. And they had some tweets showing how mad they were. And then for the response, they went to liberal voices on blue sky. Oh. That was where the other half of the argument came from. And I was just like, all right, blue sky. Or, you know, I've posed got your back anyway. You've made it.

Yeah. Finally. So I get over there. And one of the first tweets I saw was from the podcast Mueller, she wrote, as in the Mueller report. Mm-hmm. And Mueller, she wrote, had snapshoted some reporting and put some emoji eyes over it. And I was like, okay.

Ooh, this feels a little too close to Twitter for me. then I saw somebody getting mad at New York Times editors because Astead Herndon had published a podcast interview that he had not published during the campaign that he himself had chosen not to publish during the campaign. Yeah. Like, oh, look what the Times editors held. Yeah.

They held it back. I'm like, okay. So I understand we've gotten away from a lot of the undesirable things about Twitter, but we have also preserved some of the other undesirable things about some things I did not want. So the first thing I had to do was like a mass muting. It was like, don't want any of this. No, no, all good.

The funny thing too is like, so you get over to blue sky and tell me about this, do you then just follow everybody you followed at Twitter? Yeah, you're like, I want. Or do you just like, hey, I want to start over? Maybe I don't want, maybe I want 10 friends on this app. Maybe I want totally different friends on this app. How do you handle that? Yeah, I had flashbacks to those early days of Twitter.

And also to my least favorite part of every new platform, which is like when you sign up for Paramount Plus and they make you spend 15 minutes telling them what shows you like, you know, like, can I not just start watching? Yeah, the data input is not ideal. And you feel a little bit of drift and you think about, oh, maybe I do want to do this a different way than I was doing it on Twitter. And then you basically, at least I always land on thinking about this is more trouble than it's worth. So I'm just going to follow the same accounts that Brian's following and expand naturally from there. Are you on blue sky? I am a blue sky. Yeah, it just happened.

Wait, just now? No, no, like two days ago or something. Oh, I was looking for you and I couldn't find you. But you're here now. I'm there. How have you found the conversation, well, here, I don't know, wherever you are. How have you found the conversation so far? I mean, it feels so different.

I don't know to what a degree my, like, Twitter timeline was getting throttable. over the months or getting, you know, getting juiced with ads and whatever else. But yeah, it feels like kind of what I remember Twitter to be like a little bit more open. We can't talk about it that much. Everybody will go there too, you know. Well, no, it's like, but we, I posted something on the press box account. Then I checked the new press box blue sky account and every on the from Twitter and everybody was like, you're here. Thank God. This is amazing. It was like everybody, everybody followed. Now, I'm looking at your account right now and you just

posted a different avatar of a wrestler in a mask. I mean different than the one. Yeah. Well, they don't keep them on file. I have to find a new one. That's the Masked Marvel, I believe,

the first ever masked wrestler. Yeah. David Shoemaker is on blue sky, folks. I did, when you talk about the topics, I signed up for books. Because I was like,

that's a kind of, that's kind of fun. And aspirational. But yes, it's, did you put aspirational? Oh, I see,

yes, aspirational. Also, journalism was one that I picked. I avoided politics. I'm like, you need a little break. I can't remember. I don't know if I did sports or not.

But it's interesting. And people, by the way, we had a couple of journalists we like reach out to us and be like, please come over here because it is actually cool. It is fun to scroll through. It's not a bad who is this account and why are they tweeting about RFK and hamburgers all the time. It's something new. So join us over there if you want at the press box pod.

and at Brian Curtis and at David Shoemaker we will say if you're going to sign up for books be prepared for a lot of pro-library propaganda which I wholeheartedly agree with man there's a lot of people There's a lot of no Faction in American life The uh no the libraries are great

I could not live without our local library The libraries are great The books Seems to be at least so far A lot of people In the books Uh vertical in the books arena on Blue Sky

who would just say nice things about books not specific books not literary criticism just like books make great presents that's nice right yeah

it's a different we walked over to a different bar from the bar we usually go to I like this bar a couple more things for you

uh John Robinson David died on November 11th let me tell you John Robinson was for people that don't know he was a football coach big name of the 80s because he coached the Los Angeles Rams.

And the Rams of the 80s were kind of like the Vikings of all the decades, where they would have winning seasons and they'd be in the playoffs, and they were in the conference championship game twice with John Robinson, but never went to the Super Bowl. So he was one of those name coaches who just never quite got there in the NFL. But a very cool thing about him is that he and John Madden were best friends. They'd grown up together in Daily City, California. They both went and had incredibly successful NFL coaching careers in college, too, in Robinson's case.

And then, David, this has always just made me smile when I learned about it, whenever I've thought about it since. In the 2000s, John Madden is in the booth on Sunday night football and in BC, what turns out to be the last couple of years of his career. he brings John Robinson into the booth as his spotter. So here's a former NFL head coach, a big name coach of the 80s and 90s. And he is in the booth just looking out for things that he can tell his lifelong friend John Madden that maybe then Madden can incorporate into the broadcast. Yeah.

There are lots of people that do this job, like professionals that do this job that bounce around from announcer to announcer. they're not John Robinson. I mean, that'd be like, Hey, Ron Rivera, anything to add that won't actually get, you're not speaking into a microphone, you're just telling me something and then I will relate it

to the audience. That happened with John Madden and John Robinson on NBC in the 2000s. And I always thought that was very, very cool. Yeah. New issue of GQ, David, The Rock. A man, you spend quite a bit of time thinking about

the Rock is GQ's entertainer of the year. Yeah, he is. So you are saying that you are pro the Rock getting this coveted honor at GQ. First of all, this is an excellent essay,

or excellent piece in video essay by our friend, by our friend Zach Barron. Yes. Who can do no wrong when he's writing or otherwise, for that matter. In his entire life,

he has never done anything wrong. Are you taking exception to the Ross designation as the entertainer of the year? Well, I'm just wondering, what would Zach's fine work aside? The Rock was in Red One, which just went Bomo at the box office. No box office, but yes. No, it was box office. It came out and it didn't do well. The idea is that it's going to be on Amazon and that's going to be its maximum value.

Okay. But it's like a $250 million movie that made $30 million and it's open. weekend. Sure. So that's not great. We got Moana 2 coming up. There's a lot of pressure on Moana too, I guess, for this, for this award. But yeah. You told me the other day you've never seen Moana. No, I've never seen Moana. How old is Aubrey now? Five and a half, but he just hasn't gotten into it. He's almost in the Moana zone. Yeah. Yeah. You will be humming Moana songs before you know it. Oh, I'm humming, humming Disney songs left and right, just haven't gotten to Moana yet. I do like the whole

Man of the Year, entertainer of the year franchise, and I was almost thinking, could we convince somebody to accept the press box media person of the year award?

And if we could, who's the biggest person we could convince to accept? I mean, that's part of the deal for GQ, right? You have to get the person to show up and have their picture

taken and do the whole thing. Because it's not about you. It's about us. It's about us getting you. You get an award, that's nice, but mostly it's about us getting access to you. So who's the biggest person you think we could convince to accept such an award from the press box? I have no idea. All right.

Your suggestions on blue sky only at the press box. Who from your Rolodex? Who's the biggest person? I mean, I think we could convince a number of people to do it, but I think we should aim a little bit higher. Like, who's the person like we have a very prestigious award, our podcast is going to be? to be giving out right now. Could we get Charles Berkeley to accept it?

He feels like he answers the phone, yes. Yeah. I don't know. He'd care about the award, but I think he would do it. He would do an interview probably. Is that the biggest person you think we could get? Is he the most famous sports personality? Not a player.

Do we have to bring up the fact that we've buried him like six times this year for giving conflicting information about his career? on the podcast. But I feel like that's what that's what would make him so excited. He won you over, Brian, despite all of us. Despite some doubts I might have.

Even the haters are just handing out the, or lining up to give me awards. Yeah, it's really interesting. If you're a famous media person listening and you'd like to accept the media person of the year award for the press press.

Let us know. Also, only on blue sky. Let us know. Do not reach out directly to either me or David. Those are the rules here. a couple of running departments David before we get out of here America's softest target

this is a new feature here at the press box in which we name a figure in the news that every reporter is piling on top of because there's no career downside to doing so we got a nominee from Donald Alveshire last week's nominee the inaugural nominee

was Joe Biden people are like you know who I'm mad about this election Joe Biden it was like yeah thank you Thank you for for focusing on him. The second nominee for the America's softest target is Jerry Jones, the other of the Dallas Cowboys. Oh my God. I don't know if you watched any of that Cowboys Eagles game. I suspect you did when Jerry Jones will not put up the curtains on the side of AT&T Stadium.

So the sun is streaming in and then CDLAND could not see a sure touchdown pass in the end zone. And then Jerry had to just absolutely wild. post game quote where he was like, well, how about where's the moon? Like, oh, well, that's a good, as long as we're talking about heavenly bodies, that is a good question. Where's the moon on moments like this? A lot of people piling on Jerry on the, on the opinion shows and I'm like, there you go. That, that's America's softest target. Yeah. Everything's been said. There's nothing's going to happen here. You're never going to be denied an interview with Jerry Jones because of something you

said on a show? Maybe by Jerry, I mean, maybe if you went directly to Jerry's people or something and you were the last person to say something cruel, but here's the thing. When you're as old as Jerry Jones is, so many people have said negative things about you that if you were keeping a list, you would just be, you would just be, you know, you couldn't ever leave your house. For fear you might accidentally bump into one of those people at the gas station or at the NFL meetings or whatever, you know, I mean, you can't, you can't hold a grudge. There's been, there's, there'd be too many grudges to hold. we got some media piss test here David

this is where we chronicle reporters or other notables describing things as being like something else but on steroids this was sent to us by listener Keshav. Potsay of America's Tommy Veter was talking to Congressman Pat Ryan from New York and I want you to listen to how Ryan described the threat of Donald Trump's second administration

I think unfortunately in the next two years we will see Trump's true colors again, as we saw for four years. And people are going to need a place to come to after they really remember and see Trump 2.0 on steroids. Should you pick either one or the other of 2.0 on steroids? Sure. Yeah, that would be ideal. Because we haven't experienced Trump 2.0 yet. No. So we can't even say this is Trump 2.0 on steroids.

Yeah. Trump 1.0 on steroids. Or it could just be Trump 2.0. Yeah, Trump on steroids. Or Trump on steroids. Sure. We're working that out with Congressman Ryan as he tries to rebuild the Democratic Party. All right.

Speaking of rebuilding, it's time for David Shoemaker. Guess is a strained pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about the Democrats' disaster at the polls was pin the fail on the donkey. Listener Max McLean thought it should have been donkey wrong. Pretty funny. Today's headline comes to us from alert listener Duncan Brooke. It's from the New York Times, David.

I'll read you the subheadline of this science article. Museums are adding sense. This is from Science Magazine? Well, the science section of the New York Times. Oh, okay, New York Times. Museums are adding sense like things you smell. as another tool for communicating information about science and other subjects in their exhibits. So once you think about museums, some of the particular parts of museums you might visit and sense.

What was the New York Times, a strained pun headline? The particular parts. There's like the planetarium, the dinosaur bones, the art. So that's the learning part of the museum. where do they really want you to go at the museum? The gift shop. Aha. Okay.

Exits to the gift. Okay. So there. Okay. Good. We're just going to mess with that first word. Smelling. Smelling an action involved in.

Exhale through the gift shop. Exhale through the gift shop. Yeah. That's fantastic. It was the New York Times headline. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Brian Waters.

Coming up Thursday. Joel Anderson's coming back. we're going to talk about what it's like to been to watch college football this fall ahead of a big game on Saturday between Ohio State and undefeated Indiana. Joel not only watches college football, Joel played college football.

Did he really? How did I miss that on hang up and listen? For four-war's very own T.C. Hornfrogs, I might add. Yes, sir. So he's going to have a lot of takes about the old college football. We'll talk about other stuff as well.

Of course, Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.