The Press Box - Listener Mail on Announcer Trades, the Rewriting of January 6, and Who Should Write the Ben Simmons Profile

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

Bryan and David answer your Listener Mail and discuss networks making announcer trades, Halloween-themed TV studio shows, their dream choice for who would write a Ben Simmons profile, and much more. Plus the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Production Assistant: Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twice a week, Van Lathen and Rachel Lindsay dissect the biggest topics in black culture, politics, and sports on their show, Higher Learning. They discuss the most important and timely conversations while also frequently inviting guests on the podcast and occasionally debating each other. Check out Higher Learning on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, what's on your mind this week? Well, I was watching some football last night, watching some basketball this week, as one does. I guess what I'm thinking about is the fact that NBA is moving off of Thursday nights, which is, you know, one of my favorite basketball nights to watch. They've moved off of Thursday nights so they don't have to compete with NFL Thursday night football,

which raises a lot of questions. You know, it's obviously a statement about the NFL's dominance, right, in the ratings, that you'd be moving off the Thursday night away from the Thursday night game, which is certainly not the most high-profile game on the calendar for the NFL in the NFL week. But also just that you'd be moving off at all. I mean, I understand not wanting to go head to head. Maybe you shift to a different night or you shift, you go an hour earlier or a couple hours later or something like that. If it's a ratings battle.

But this shouldn't really be a rating. battle, right? Isn't this? I mean, it just seems like a total, it's, it's less of like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, like a, giving, giving up almost. What am I missing here? Is there a distinction, uh, between waving the white flag and sorry. Sorry. Sorry, yes. Surrey. It's, it's less of a, it's less of a, like, a, like an acknowledgement that you're going to lose, right? So why fight? So why fight tonight? And more just, I mean, it's, it's not just, it shouldn't be a contest, right? It's a contest. It's a contest. It's a contest. It's a contest. for viewers. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a contest for viewership so that you can like, so your advertisers want to pay you money, right? But it's not like, like, you lose in a rock fight to football and no one thinks the NBA's got it anymore, right? I mean, there's a certain expectation. And one would think that from an advertisers or from a network point of view, getting a, you know, 0.9 rating for a, a Lakers game or something on a Thursday night is better

than what you would have had otherwise. So what's the argument here? It's pretty bracing. It really is to just say like we're not even going to be the sport for the people who love basketball and don't want to watch football tonight. We don't even think there's a niche there just to come in, as you said, with a smaller audience, but a cool basketball audience on Thursday night. Yeah.

And that's just amazing. I mean, it's not just we don't, not just for the people who don't want to watch football, but for the people who want to flip channels during the timeouts. You know, I mean, it's like, I understand that's not like a, you know, a ratings point, right? That's not, that's not a, that's not a,

that's not a discreet demo that you'd want to target channel flippers. But like, it's just, it just seems weird that they would just be running in the opposite direction when there's no, again, there's no like material loss other than them having to acknowledge whatever the rating would be, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's like, I just think it all in a way comes back to the story that you and I've seen our whole lives, which is the networks and then live television have been losing audience, losing audience, losing audience. Football has lost less audience than everything else, has done a better job of maintaining its audience from the three channel days of our youth to now. And I saw this note in Peter King's column today. He was talking about as recently as 2009, the NFL actually didn't play. Sunday night football during the World Series. The idea of being, yeah, the idea of being like, oh my gosh, like if we play games tonight,

people are going to be watching the World Series and that could really hit our ratings. Maybe we should adjust the schedule. Maybe we should kind of sort of indirectly do baseball a solid. And they just decided, you know what? We're going to play Sunday night football during the World Series. And last night, it's not just Sunday night football going up against Game 5. It's the Dallas Cowboys going up against Game 5. The ratings magnet that are the Dallas Cowboys, and you're like, you know, the NFL just, why would the NFL care about that anymore?

Why would they care about anything? We just, we are going to have our thing and people are going to watch whatever it is, whatever we put on, even as you say, a somewhat lackluster Thursday night game. And everybody else just has to now literally get out of the way. I mean, it seems maybe I'm, I mean, what do I know what I'm talking about? But it doesn't seem like it would be in the days of streaming when all these, you know, terrestrial, I guess threshold is not the right word, but all these like just old TV networks have to, are trying to hang on to their audience as best they can't. It seems like consistency would be more valuable than anything else, right?

I mean, you're going for the audit, you're going for an audience who values tradition, values sameness, right? I mean, like, why would you jump off a date because of a rating? You mean, you feel like it feels like you risk losing even more in the long run. Yeah, if we've lost the whole idea of you have to show up Thursday night at 9 p.m. Eastern time to watch your favorite show. Like, that is kind of out the window in the streaming era. And you can preserve it a little bit by having an NBA game that starts on Turner at this time on Thursday night.

Why wouldn't you just cling to whatever appointment viewing you have left? So I'm not going to make a conspiratorial turn here. on purpose, but I realize as I'm asking this question, it might just sound like one. The other thing is that like the traditional NBA on T&T crew, you know, Charles and Kenny and Ernie and Shaq are going to be moving from Thursday to Tuesday night while there's only one game a week leaving the sort of, you know, up-and-comers over on Tuesday, the Candace Parker, Dwayne Wade, Shaq, and Adam Lefcoe crew, I guess absent. a game to be there for.

I don't know if they're going to be completely, like, sitting idle, but they're not, but that's their slot, right? So, I mean, is that significant? I don't know. You did the good thing where I said, I'm not going to do a conspiracy theory and then just laid out the conspiracy theory. I should have asked that. You're right.

I should have asked it at the top of the segment because it's significant. But I did, but now it's like I'm framing that as the answer. I don't know. I don't believe that's the answer. I can't imagine. If anything else were the answer, they would have done the same thing with the broadcast cruise or with it with a studio cruise, but it does seem like, well, that could be an answer. I think you handled it just exactly like everyone in through history has handled it.

I'm not doing a conspiracy theory here, but and then just lay out what everything intriguing theory is, which is more interesting than the actual truth. Mm-hmm. Well done, sir. Well done. Thank you. Thank you. You have a prestigious perch in media for a reason.

David, we had not done a listener mail show for a while. So coming up on today's pod, we answer listener questions. about announcer trades, the rewriting of January 6th, and who should write the Ben Simmons profile we all want to read? All that more on the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here along with producer Isaiah Blakely. David, let's dive right into listener mail with a tweet from a friend of ours, Ryan Rosillo. Of the ringer. Mm-hmm.

Ask this question. Would you do Scott Van Pelt and a second round pick for Joe Buck? Oh, man. I'm tempted just to let that, just let that lie. It's a perfect question. Would I do Scott Van Pelt and a second round pick for Joe Buck? As me as a human being? Or as if, am I ESPN or Fox?

I guess I'm either answer? I'm Fox. If I'm, um, whew, uh, I'm a big Scott Van Pelt guy. Um, you know,

it's my obligation as a, bald glasses wearing, tallish fellow to be part of that team. Um, no, I, I've always, I've always enjoyed him,

really enjoy his show. Um, and, I mean, I think that the easy answer would just be to say, I'm going to stick with Van Pelt. The way he's phrased this may it seems like I'm in possession. of Van Pelt, especially if you have to give up a pick. But, I mean, we've talked about Joe Buck

too many times on this show and acknowledge his sort of sui generous value, right? I mean, he's just such a, he's an icon, and he's not, he doesn't seem to be diminishing, and there's a lot of value there. I think for me personally, I would rather have Van Pelt in a second, but I think that it'd probably be hard to explain that to my owner. Do we know where ESPN is picking in this hypothetical second round? This is an early round or a late round pick because ESPN was having a really crappy year this year. Yeah. Remember the whole fake high school thing and the Homerier Rachel Rachel Nichols thing?

And then they had the Manning cast, though. That was ESPN's best thing in a really, really long time. So maybe they were picking early in the second round. Now they're picking a little later in the second round. I think you should put that into it. Also, by the way, you hit on a, we didn't even talk about the fake high school in this show, I don't think, but I like how the fake high school was just like a throwaway line amongst media controversies.

That's just amazing stuff. Shows how far we've come. Also, do we need an announcer trade machine? You know how Bill, whenever he's doing fantasy trades, puts the NBA players into the trade machine to see if the salaries will work? Do we need one of those that could somehow tell us, well, you know, you're going to lose your sports center guy if you trade away Van Pelt and your golf guy. but you would basically solve every play-by-play problem

that ESPN currently has with football and baseball. And I know. It's true. Did you have to factor in calling somebody up to that sports center job? Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. I mean, listen, I mean, Chopach, I'm sure, would be happy to call golf or anything else they put in front of him. He did that for Fox, yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, it's true. You would be able to take up a lot of the slack. What about Joe Buck is your late-night sports center anchor, though? Can we just do that? I think he could do that. Joe Buck just never leaves the desk. That's how we're going to do it.

In the, you know, post-COVID era, no one has to travel for games anymore. We're just going to have a very comfortable chair for Joe Buck in Bristol or wherever he wants to be. In St. Louis, I think, right. Yeah, he's going to say. And he'll just, he can just broadcast from there as frequently as he wants to turn the camera on. This is from listener Jake Tuber, David. Can you share any wisdom about the return on investment calculated by periodicals when they go after a huge long-term story for a single publication? For example, the Washington Post's Sunday piece on January 6th.

The cost must be enormous. How does a media entity translate the soft benefits of great reporting into profit? Ooh, that's a good question. clearly they were, I mean, there's an interactive online component, there's a print edition. You can tell that they're working to monetize this and as many, you know, I mean, as, as much as they can. But what is the question? Like, is something, is it just that long, all the resources that it would take to publish something like that are prohibitive compared to just publishing regular content? Is that what we're trying to, is that what we're presupposing? Yeah, I mean, I think this is kind of an interesting one because it's Trump.

You know, it's not like we sent somebody to the Arctic Circle to do the definitive interactive story on global warming. That's next week. Yeah, sure, which they probably have already done too. But this is a Trump interactive story. It's January 6th. It's something that still is very live. Trump is still the head of the Republican Party, as we're reminded with the Virginia governor's race this week. And yeah, so to me, this is kind of an interesting one because it's certainly resource intensive.

It's a big project. It takes a long time. You get, you know, a couple of days in our world out of this. But this also just is something that is very, very top of mind and topic A as opposed to, you know, an outside the box kind of big interactive project. I mean, yes, I can speak from a very like personal and self-centered. point of view, which is that like I mean, I feel like when

especially when we were in our 20s or whatever, if when this sort of thing is published, you read it, but like you would go out of, even if you're reading it online, you go out of your way to find the physical copy, right? There's just sort of like a publishing moment aspect to it.

So maybe they make more money off of just like hard copy sales, people actually picking it up. That's a thing I need to own, right? It's like a, it's like a you know the paper from an important day in history or something but just like it's a it's like it's like you know buying a buying a you know one of those biographies that you're never going to read it's a thing that you kind of for some reason feel driven to own a copy of so maybe there is some sort of you know really direct return on investment there maybe that's just you know

me and you and a couple of other bookstore dwelling eggheads but um yeah it's it's it's it's It is a, I mean, there's obviously a lot of, a lot of reasons why this story in particular would draw people in. I mean, I think that it's, you know, you can make the case that it's like, I mean, easily make the case that this is an incredibly important story that, you know, and this is a, this is a definitive account. It might be sort of a model for, you know, print journalism moving forward to try to identify these things that might have been books in ages past,

you know, and just sort of like shotgun them out into the world. So yeah, you have to like spend a lot of money and a lot of resources, fact checking and corroborating and obviously getting every version of it, including multimedia ready to go as quickly as possible. But, you know, I don't think that it's a bad idea at all. I think that, especially for an outlet like The Washington Post to the New York Times or someone with a lot of, with the financial resources to do this sort of thing,

this could be, you know, in some ways more interesting and more significant than anything else they would do. Might have been a book and might have been a documentary, or at least a TV documentary. Yeah, might still. So you're sort of claiming those businesses. And there's going to be books about January 6th, but we're going to do our own multimedia, a very easy to read, comprehensive version of it and get it out first.

I mean, to me, it's always interesting when we get these little peaks under the hood of how subscription businesses like the New York Times and Washington Post work and the kind of stew of elements they wanted to do. I mean, there's stuff like crosswords and recipes and all kinds of things like that.

There is the opinion section, especially the New York Times. Remember we saw that stat about how much of the traffic opinion generates at the New York Times, because we'll just click on things. There are scoops, especially scoops about politics over the last couple of years that have been a big thing. Mm-hmm. And then I think you could call this sort of multimedia, but very scoppy, explanatory,

sort of like the New York Times thing on Trump's taxes. Yeah. You know, just in that sort of zone. And you want to give people enough of that so that, oh, I can't just go cancel my subscription to the post. I'm going to want to read this when this thing happens every few months or when it does. And that's probably part of their calculus.

Yeah, I mean, I know every, the calculus in-house has got to be just really heavily give people reasons to not cancel their subscription. But this is also, I mean, if we take a step back from the world where people are canceling subscriptions left and right and who knows what the Washington Post's trajectory is, I certainly don't know the top of my head. But this feels to me more like a subscription starter, you know, like you see this and you're just like, yeah, that's the sort of place I want to be reading every weekend or every weekend or every day or whatever else, you know?

I mean, it's, I have a Washington Post login, but just got, but don't have, I accidentally deleted all of my auto login. So I actually had to go back and find it for this yesterday, you know, and, uh, that would have been a moment. I mean, this is certainly not one where I'm just going to like skip it and wait until I saw it again after I found my, after everything, I was logged back in. This is one that I had to go read in real time, you know? So I think that it's, um, it certainly pushes people like that.

Another sports media person has a question for us. This time it's Peter Schrager. Oh. Familiar to listeners of the ringer, watchers of television. Peter writes, as someone on two different studio shows, both of which had fun with it, what does the press box take on studio show Halloween stuff? First of all, fantastic humble brag. Good morning football is, like,

Like, I've been traveling a lot and good morning football has become my, like, go-to hotel room morning show. It's like CNN International used to be. We just, like, flip it on. You see it in the airport and, oh, we're watching this now. And yeah, it's the new go-to. I'm not a football fanatic, like other people, some people, the ring or are. I watch a good bit of football. But, like, if you would ask me at any point over the past 12 years, whether or not I had NFL network, I probably would have been confused.

You know, I'm not quite sure if I know the answer. But when it's, but now, I mean, I do have it now, I know. But like, it's, it's, it's, what a good, what a awesome show. And I'm watching it at home. So, I don't know. But to the question, because even if I love the show, I, not wouldn't necessarily defend their costuming. I think it's, I think it's fine.

You know what it is? It's like, I just went trick-or-treating with my kids in Brooklyn, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It's where the rest of our sort of modern family lives. So that's where we were. We, my wife and I spent, you know, the early hours, the early hours that like 10 to 1-ish, just kind of messing around Brooklyn doing some stuff. And you see the first trick-or-treaters that or the, you know, the people who were on their way to a thing, you start walking through McCarron Park or whatever.

And there's just a whole lot of like parents and families gathering. at the beginning, I have to admit, I'm a little bit dismissive of the heavily costumed parents. Now, I don't mind adults in costumes at nighttime if that's what you're doing. And I certainly don't mind, you know, parents putting on a mask or whatever, just a thing. Or if, you know, if you're hanging out with your kid, your kid wants you to do this. I understand.

I would be there doing the same thing. But, you know, sometimes from afar, it's easy to point at, like, the family that spent a whole lot of money on their Incredibles getups or whatever. And you're just like, whose idea was this really, you know? And so anyway, that's a, it's a totally, I shouldn't even say it out loud because I understand it's a sort of irrational snarkiness that hopefully like, you know, I will age out of sooner rather than later. You sound like a guy who was like looking at Instagram last night and seeing all the family getups that were clearly done for social media. I think that's the turn off, right? It's like, I know that if, if, you know, or you know, like, if one of your kids came to you and said like, whatever, will you please be the cartoon father, you know, the, the, the, the,

of the character that I'm being from this Pixar movie, you would just be like, yes, of course, you know, like, whatever. Give me my cartoon father. But all of that is to say when the trick-or-treating actually starts, you're just like, oh, look at all these cute parents. Like, this is really fun. Like, it's nice. This is, it's fun.

You're part of a thing. Like, it's everybody's in it together. I kind of wish I had more of a costume on, you know. Like, we're all there for the kids, and it's a lot of fun. I kind of feel the same way about studio hosts. stressing for Halloween. It sounds a little bit like, you know, you want to be a little bit snarky about it in the abstract, you know, but when it actually happens, you're just like, yeah, what, that's cool,

that's cool. I understand why they're doing it. And it looks like they're having a good time. So, you know, more power to them. It was a lot bigger deal, I feel, in the suit and tie era of television, where every time you turn on TV, if it was any kind of studio show. news, sports, whatever was, everyone was really dressed up. So then on Halloween when they were, you know, Fred Flintstone, you were like, whoa, look at that.

But now when you're wearing the half zip on a Monday on your studio show and then you're kind of dressed as something, it's just not, it's not, it's not, red, Lassow. I don't know what you're dressed as. It's not really that big of a move. It's true. From one to the other. By the way, Peter was dressed as Bum Phillips on Good Morning Football, which is a really excellent. costume. Encourage people to look that up online.

And let me give you, by the way, this also exists as this weird role. I know when I was looking at Katie Couric, one of those stories the other day about Katie Kirk when we were talking about her, there were pictures of her on the Today Show on the Halloween edition all dressed up. So this just exists in perpetuity in a weird way for television people. It's like, oh, there she is on the set. And there she is dressed as something funny on the set for that one show a year. One more thing to add to this. So Peter, that was good morning football. Peter was on Fox and he was wearing a Christian Acoye jersey.

The old Kansas City Chiefs running back. Of course, yeah. Christian Acoye jerseys in any context. Christian Akoye, by the way, is the real Tecma Bowl legend. All right. Bo Jackson was faster and all the praise he gets is deserved. But yeah, the real ones out there know that Krishna Akoye was the most fun to play with. So Peter's dressed as Christian Akoye.

And a PA runs out from the back. while he's talking dressed like the killer in scream with the mask on and the black cloak and just scares him like legitimately scares him while he's delivering a football point and he looked so freaked out on the air and there was no point to it other than we're just going to run out and scare you like you'd have a jump scare in a movie So I kind of fully endorse that. We need to see on-air talent frightened more before our eyes. Oh my gosh.

That's great. All right, David, let's do the Overward 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 nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. David, we got a tweet from an account called Design Boom. Sounds like an account I would follow. Go on. Yeah. Design Boom writes, future homeowners in France

are now looking into straw houses. Future homeowners in France are looking into straw houses. It was an overall Twitter joke to write did a big bad wolf write this. Thank you, Patrick Fo for that. A weird but probably inevitable sight during Game 4

of the World Series, David. Donald Trump was at the stadium doing the reviled Tomahawk Chop with Atlanta Braves fans. There is video for this. It was an overword Twitter joke to write. Trump is at the World Series

so he can finally see what it takes to win in Georgia. Thanks to Brian Forshall for that one. And this week's runaway winner, David. Facebook has changed its company name to meta. Yeah. Meta.

It was an overword Twitter joke to write. Ron Artest already did this and he didn't destroy democracy first thanks to a whole bunch of people including Mario Antreddy Bezo Michael T Andrews C.L. Podgang John King I'm going to have to take a deep breath here.

Elliot Powers, Elwhorse, Jake Tuber, not Chester Lemon, Dr. Bobbard, Matthew shot Charles Prairie the Third Jesse Moose and Terry MacDonald if you made a good joke about Mark Zuckerberg that didn't just rehashed stuff in the social network, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, let us continue with listener mail from our good friend and fellow podcaster Joseph Bean Khan.

It's hard to picture an athlete more in need of an access heavy profile to reframe his public image than Ben Simmons. Ben Simmons, of course, of these 76ers. If you could fantasy book any sports journalist in history to write it, who would you pick? Can I give you some fantasy booking Ben Simmons profiles? Oh yeah, please, please. So 50 years ago, this were all happening, 50 years ago,

my pick Gay Talese for Esquare. No brainer. 30 to 35 years ago, Gary Smith for Sports Illustrated. 20 years ago, Dan Lebitard for ESPN the magazine. Remember those profiles, Dan Lebitard wrote for ESPN?

You don't understand the athlete. Here's the way the athlete really is. Ben Simmons would be a perfect one. And if we're fantasy booking this now, Pablo Torre, who was written a lot about the 76ers process, only it would be a podcast. That would be the current iteration. Yeah. Oh, man.

I mean, there's a lot of people that could do that really well. Our old buddy Tyler Tyne is just tearing it up at GQ right now and seems to be just like absolutely demolishing everything that's put in front of him. I would not put that. I would put his name on the list. Can I give you my outside the box pick? Yeah. Philly plus that kind of particular profile plus sports.

Mm-hmm. Buzz Bissinger. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I'd read that. I think that might be it. For non-obvious choices anyway. This one is from Seth Somerfeld, David. Do you think the subplot of the Braves chant being problematic would be at least mentioned on the broadcast? If Fox wasn't the network or does MLB just have tighter control on its broadcast? I feel like bad stories and other sports are at least brought up even during the Super Bowl. Seth continues, all other bad stories aren't literally constant background noise.

It's unavoidable during three games of the series. It's not like you could hear the sound of a deflating football during Patriots games. So I think that is exactly the point here. There is this chant and chop in Atlanta. Mm-hmm. Fox. I have not watched every minute of the world series. I'm going to be honest. So maybe Fox has mentioned it. But the complication here is that is the soundtrack of all the games in Atlanta when you watch. That is going on. And by the way, I'm sure the network 20 years ago, 30 years ago

thought before they were, before they got religion, thought that was really great. Oh, wow. Look at this ambiance. This is amazing. So how do you address something? And then, have it be over your air for the next three hours. Because I think somebody could ask, well, this is so terrible. Why are we just hearing this for the entire game? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a weird situation. I mean, they don't, they're not, like, playing it or encouraging it over the loudspeaker

at this point, right? This is just a totally organic, you know, bestical organ of, of fandom past. I'm not sure on the loudspeaker part, to be honest. Because it seems like a playoff run, I mean, it wouldn't be necessarily a popular decision, but it seems like a playoff run like this might have been a good opportunity to start trying to get rid of it, right? To sort of say like, hey, since we're all together

and we're all in a good mood, let's maybe try something else together and start new traditions. But that's when they lean into the, to the, to the to the bad thing. Yeah, I know, but I, but the excuse at the beginning of the next season is going to be,

well, then no one's going to come to the games anymore or whatever. Now they, they kind of have your, your fans, you have your fans sort of, you know, stuck.

Like they're, they're going to keep rooting for their team, even if they say, you tell them they have to cheer a different way. But anyway, um, yeah, I mean,

it's, it's really tough. I'm sure there's a historical parallel to this, right? That I can't even, think of. But, um, I mean, in pro wrestling, you know, there's, well, they'll air chance that are just like, sometimes full of profanity. And the announcers have to be like, don't listen to them. Whatever. I mean, it's, you know, just try to like, try to redirect your eyes somewhere else or your

ears somewhere else. But, um, yeah, it's tough. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, you know, unfortunate situation. What are you going to do? Can you just mute it out? I mean, is that the, no, but you can't mute the whole crowd. I just, I don't think that's possible. You could certainly turn it down, right? Turn down your crowd mics and sort of, you know, make your announcers a larger part of the audio feed. But I don't think, I don't think it's possible to just drown it out completely. Well, I mean, you know, this is Atlanta.

Speaking of pro wrestling, you remember back in the day when Goldberg was getting big and they would just, they would just pipe in Goldberg chants to the entire arena whenever he would come down, just like he was huge. But they really pushed it even further that they should just, they should just play some other chant. That's loud as they can through the arena whenever the chance start. Looks like the Braves during the 2019 playoffs, according to USA Today, responded by not giving out foam tomahawks to fans during the series with the Cardinals and not playing the chant over the loudspeaker,

Atlanta's season ended with a loss to St. Louis, but the chop has returned to the ballpark since. So there you go there. Wonder to flag a book for you, David, that's out tomorrow. It is called Woke Up This Morning, the definitive oral history of the Sopranos. Hmm. It's by the hosts of the Talking Sopranos podcast who were also in the show The Sopranos.

Now, I believe this book contains like every force in modern media right now. Just count them off with me. Oral history. Mm-hmm. A definitive oral history, kind of an acknowledgement that there are lots of oral histories of the Sopranos, including an excellent one by Alan Siegel over at the Ringer. It's the host of a podcast. writing the book.

People who were in the show, so it's kind of the people that we used to write about and the media used to use as a subject now making their own media. It is also episode recaps, rewatch content. So what have I missed there? I mean, doesn't that feel like that is everything that is currently happening

in media is now happening within this book? I'm sorry. I didn't get to read the, the flap copy, is any of the contributors to this oral history breaking their silence on the what happened during this? I believe David Chase has broken his silence so many times that they did not even go with the ceremonial breaking of silence here. Oh, man. I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is just a modern media bingo card. There's also a ghostwriter, a third, a third writer. Did I add that part? Oh, he's not a ghostwriter. His name's on the front, but presumably he's the only

one writing and the other two guys aren't. So I guess he's ghosty in that sense. Also, also that person. Let's let's add that to the whole list here. Oh, man. I'm, I'm, I'm enthralled by this. I needed no more. Is this just podcast excerpts turned into a book? Or is this a totally new reporting job? I have no idea. I absolutely have no idea. And I'm not going to have an idea. If you like the Sopranos, you go for it. I'm glad you brought up breaking of silence because listener Seiku has an interesting one for us, David.

Huma Abiddeen, former Hillary Clinton aide, long-time Hillary Clinton aide, former wife of Anthony Weiner, has a new memoir out this week. And Seiku asks, is this the rare legitimate breaking of silence? The stuff in this book

is really interesting, right? Like we, this is somebody who has not spoken a ton and who we do want to hear more from, potentially. Yeah. Is it legit? Yeah. I think this is legitimate. I mean, yeah. Yeah.

I feel like if you've been holding something in for that long, you've never really given the interview. And yes, we all want to hear about it. And sure. That's just silence. Some. It's not no. It's not never talked, but it's, it's, it's, you know, it's something of a breaking.

of silence. Yeah, this might be the one legitimate one. I'm sure there's other ones, but this is, this feels, I'm skeptical of any, of all of them and this feels, yeah, legitimate. It's not Thomas Pinch on giving an interview. I get so, I get so, I get so, my vision is blurred by motives, right? Because I, when I said before, it's like, you kind of have to, like, have the receipts.

You got to show the email that you sent to Huma, like, every six months to say, are you ready to break the silence yet? And then when she says, yes, that feels like a real formal breaking of the silence. But I don't know why she did. I don't know if she, does she, is she doing something else? Or is she just out here like just talking about this one thing? I don't know. I don't know.

If she, if her motives are pure, then I'll give her the breaking of the silence designation for sure. It's time for David Shoemaker guess is a strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about a musician who was allowed to play in one of the city's public spaces was consensual sacks. This week's headline is from Nate Bowling. It's from Newsday. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell died last month, David. And one of the really interesting counter histories, which I wanted to read more about,

was the what if Colin Powell had run for president in 1996 as a Republican, which he thought about doing. He had a lot of issue positions that were at a step with the Republican Party, as it was constituted in 1996. But he did lead Bill. Clinton and several polls. So what if he had taken that popularity and run for president?

Well, Newsday did a story about Powell's deliberations at the time, particularly as they concerned his wife, Alma's opinion about whether he should run for president. So Alva was very key in this decision. What was Newsday's

strained pun headline? Alma, I mean, is this like an Alma mater pun or like Alma? Alma, Alma, Alma Matters? No, we're done here, folks. Is that it?

Alma matters. That's not. Is that really it? That's it. I can't believe. Yeah. You did 45 seconds worth of work in five seconds. Wow.

Well, I feel good about it. I also kind of feel like it's a, you know, that's maybe not the best headline. As partial as I am to puns, I don't know if that really gets to the heart of like a, I guess if it was running, they ran it in 95. Yeah, 95, 96. I mean, that really just assumes an incredible amount of familiarity with Golan Powell and his wife.

But, you know, if he's pulling that well, then maybe that, maybe that works. Should we look up the desk editor from Newsday in the mid-90s? Get him on the show. David's got some issues with your headline choice. He is David Schuemaker on Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Isaiah Blakely. Coming this Friday, David, another how-to podcast. This is How to Be a newspaper sports columnist with the Los Angeles Times' Bill Plashky.

And Shoemaker and I'm back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Ryan.