The Press Box - Listener Mail on Rachel Nichols, Stephen A. Smith, and the Future of Sports Coverage

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

Bryan and David open up the mailbag and answer your Listener Mail. They discuss the removal of Rachel Nichols from NBA programming (0:38), talk through Stephen A. Smith’s vision for ESPN (8:55), weigh in on 'Monday Night Football' coverage for the upcoming season (22:20), and more! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringers Charles Holmes and co-host Grace Spellman present the most notorious new podcast in the industry, the Ringer Music Show. Every Tuesday, they'll bring you the latest news, the hottest takes, and the deepest reporting about the wild world of music and the chaotic industry that creates it. Check out the Ringer Music Show exclusively on Spotify. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here along with producer Erica Servantes. David, it's Friday, so let us do a little listener mail to take people into the weekend. Gabe Hernandez asked the question that I wanted to ask you right off the top. What is your take on the cancellation of the jump and the removal of Rachel Nichols from ESPN's NBA coverage? Does the timing of this move seem delayed too? The timing is really weird. And I don't actually don't have a lot more to say about it than that. Although like it doesn't, the idea of waiting to make this announcement, I guess is not shocking in principle.

way that it was rolled out and the sort of finality of it. It's not what I was expecting. Frankly, I wouldn't have been shocked if they had kept doing the jump. I wouldn't have been shocked if they had, I probably would have been even less shocked if they had canceled the jump, but immediately announced, you know, what Rachel Nichols would be doing next for them instead of just having it be like a mutual decision thing. Yeah.

I mean, it was, it was surprising. It was, I mean, maybe not surprising considering, maybe not surprising for another company. Maybe not surprising, you know, in an ideal situation. But it's not how I expected ESPN to respond. And I think it's, in some ways, really, really impressive move. Well, there's two parts to this, or really any journalism controversy, I think. There is this larger question of, did what she did, which in this case, of course, is making the disparaging comment about her fellow host or former fellow host, Maria Taylor, which got accidentally taped and uploaded the server at ESPN, did what she did deserve outcome X? That's question number one.

But the second question, I think the more practical one is, what would, would. did it have been like for Rachel Nichols to continue to work in the ESPN newsroom? I don't actually know like the physical logistics of her day to day and how the jump is filmed and whatever else. It's like, you know, the jump seems to exist in a little bit of its own world over there. And I'm not sure how much, you know, face to face she would have actually had, would have had to have with her colleagues. But regardless, it's a sort of bigger question than that, right? And it's not just how Rachel Nichols would have been able to, you know, to continue operating, but how the rest of ESPN would have been able to continue operating

when they're given the impression that their complaints have been heard and the, and the, and the, you know, formal, and the, and the, and the, and the decision from on high is we don't care, right? I mean, so, um, I think it, you know, it could have, it, the fact that ESPN decided to sort of go, I mean, that, and that's really what I would compliment them for. I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't feel like I'm in any position to, you know, adjudicate Rachel Nichols and her, you know, personal moral code or anything else. But the fact that, I mean, clearly it would have, it would have created an uncomfortable environment. I think if not for Rachel Nichols, then for all the people working around her, or for many of the people working around her.

And in that sense, ESPN made the really, made the, made the, made the, made the, made, and made the right move. She filmed the jump in. Angeles, which when you talk about being in its own world, and ESPN is kind of in its own world. Everything else is in Bristol, Connecticut. There are a handful of things out here, one of which was the jump. So that was kind of, I guess, sort of a wrinkle. But you're right. The people that work around her, I mean, remember the day that story broke when Kevin Draper

wrote it in the New York Times? It's like one of the most interesting social media days in ESPN history. And almost all of it was manifested at people. sort of tweeting, sub-tweeting, whatever you want to say, their opinions about what had happened, you know, and about Maria Taylor and everything else. I just, I just think that any scenario where she would have continued at the network, you would have almost certainly had people somebody and I don't know how many people it would have taken, just stand them and say, I'm not comfortable with this.

Or I, or to go back to the point you made, which I think is exactly the right point, I don't feel my concerns are being heard. That was the big thing, right? When this whole thing first became apparent inside ESPN, I believe Maria Taylor wrote an email directly to this effect saying, I feel like something has happened here. And I feel the overwhelming response for management has been just to kind of push it to the side. Right.

So that I do not feel like this has been addressed in any way. and there was no functional scenario where she could continue hosting the jump on ESPN or really doing anything on ESPN. And according to Jim Miller on Bill's podcast, she's not going to be on the air and then have it feel like the situation had been addressed. It just wasn't. And I don't know. And in the timing, the timing is really interesting because we heard also from Miller that there was this, you know, ESPN. the particular circumstances of how that comment came out, she was recorded unknowingly by an ESPN camera.

It was uploaded to the ESPN server. And then it was discovered there and disseminated throughout the company. So there was this idea that, well, you know, can ESPN take action on this? Or are they sort of hamstrung by being afraid of getting sued, right? Like there's this whole world of stuff out there. So maybe it always had to come eventually to a settlement of some kind, an agreement of some kind where you hammer out details about what is going to happen. And maybe I guess on the timing, it was like, we can't do this during the NBA finals because

as big of just a PR nightmare for us as this is right now during the NBA finals, that would just take it up 10 notches. I don't know if that was their thinking but in terms of trying to explain why does this happen right now as opposed to at some point earlier

I guess that's it yeah I mean at some point you just have to start prepping for next season right and the and this may just be an instance where they finally came to that you know whatever the settlement was and just in both parties

just decided let's just announce it move it on and you know start moving on as quickly as possible i i don't think i mean i i imagine that both parties were eager to start moving on and to start figuring out what comes next so i don't know the timing particularly has to make particular sense um and maybe that's why it felt a little bit jarring when the announcement came down um i'm sure that that you know the whatever the you mentioned the potential for you know some sort of legal action or whatever else those threats, and obviously, you know, these threats are sort of hypothetical, but the threat of that happening, I'm sure, affected the way they reacted in real time, right?

I mean, I don't think ESPN was going to come out and cancel the jump the day that the, you know, Draper story came out, even if that had been their inclination, because there's a lot of, a lot more things at play. But yeah, now it's, now we're all moving on. Now, obviously everybody's on the same page. begrudgingly and it's it's on to the next one i guess we got a question from ryan snider how does the nickels thing ripple through ESPN's NBA coverage and how does it change the pregame or postgame shows i mean you and i have talked about how the studio stuff is

so conceptually broken that it feels like that's going to be a fresh start no matter what like how do we figure this out um it almost leads us to our next topic which is Stephen A. Smith, because we learned in the New York Post this week that Stephen A's vision of NBA studio programming involves Stephen A and also potentially Magic Johnson and maybe Michael Wilbon. I mean, I just, that is that is sort of the interesting part here because I don't know what you make of this. We already knew Stephen A. Smith was the most powerful on-camera person at ESPN. That's not news and it hasn't been news. for a couple of years.

But the idea that he's just now sort of programming ESPN to an extent. He doesn't want Max Kellerman, his former co-host on first take anymore. So Max Kellerman is going elsewhere. Yeah. And now he's sort of thinking out loud about what ESPN's NBA coverage might look like. What do we think of him becoming, I don't know, just sort of not only just a host of ESPN, but somebody who is now mapping out what the. network is going to look like.

Well, I mean, I don't, listen, it's easy to sort of take exception to it or take humbridge to it or whatever, only in journalism word do you want to use. But I feel like that's the instinct. I'm not sure that we would really care that much if it were another operation or maybe if it were another media figure. it does seem a little bit untenable that for one person to have such outsized control in a company the size of ESPN, right? Because it's like you can't, it's one thing to give, you know, it's one thing to give the chef the reins at your restaurant, but you can't, you know, you give the chef the reins of like the McDonald's franchise. They might be too busy to be to cook, you know.

I mean, so it's, although we, I guess I shouldn't assume that there's a limit to Stephen A. Smith's abilities to do everything in the world. He certainly seems to be capable of doing every job that's presented him without a hitch. So, hmm, I mean, it is a little bit weird. We could argue without a hitch, but, but well, yeah, I mean, but listen, I mean, he's, he does, he, he, he work, the guy works a lot. Do we, do we remember, by the way, and I, And I don't mean you and I, but I mean just collectively as media watchers and media members, the Shohai Otani comments that Stephen A. Smith made. I know.

Do we remember the comments that Stephen A made about the members, the names of the members of the Nigerian basketball team? Folks, those were last month. Yeah. That was not a hundred years ago. That was in July. And now we're getting not only articles about that Stephen A. Smith is running ESPN, but they don't even mention that that just happened. It's just completely,

it's like completely disappeared in everything. You know what this reminds me of the ESPN, and here's your think piece of the day. The ESPN Stephen A relationship reminds me of how these cable news channels get into these relationships with their prime time anchors. And you wind up having controversies and you wind up having those anchors say things or do things that sort of pulled a whole network into a controversy, but you're so wedded to them that the line between anchor and network kind of disappears a little bit? Doesn't this feel a little

like that sort of relationship to you? But that's what's sort of perplexing about it to some extent because ESPN has, you know, 20 hours of programming, 22 hours of programming every day without Stephen A. Smith on it, right? Maybe 20 is closer. So, I mean, it's not just, I mean, so it's, and the evening news is the extent of, I mean, not the extent, but it's half of most local networks broadcasting, right, for their news division. So it does make sense that, like, the local anchor would be seen as inseparable from the evening news program.

Is that what you're talking about local news or are talking about national news? I'm talking about the national cable networks. Oh, yeah. The prime time, the way that Fox News and Tucker Carl, are kind of one thing. And I don't want to, I don't want to cast a, I don't want to be unfair to Stephen A. Smith, or, you know, pick your CNN, Chris Cuomo, whatever. They become like one singular brand.

And it's almost as if the prime time host in a way is dictating the destiny of the cable news network. That's what feels like it's happening right here, right now with Stephen A. Smith and ESPN. Well, they've spent a lot of time and energy trying to sort of replicate first. take, right? Over, like, throughout the day, the day's programming and it hasn't worked. No. And, and, you know, I'm not saying it's the right decision, but it maybe logically, it follows that you're better off just like literally giving Stephen A the reins rather than just trying to duplicate him. You know, I mean, it's, I mean, duplicate what, trying in vain to duplicate the magic that makes Stephen A work. I think that's exactly what happened. He just

turned out to be better at the art of debate TV than anybody else. else. And that was part of what made him so powerful. You couldn't have 10 Stephen A. Smith's at ESPN because it turned out to be impossible. So maybe Stephen A. Smith's stamp of approval is more important than Stephen A. Smith's than whatever you... I mean, it's like this is a much less relevant comparison. But, you know, my family watches on occasion... Oh, actually my family watches a lot of HGTV. And you know, like Chip and Joanna Gaines, we've discussed them on this show. After the success of Fixer Upper, HGTV had a lot of shows that looked a whole lot like Fixer Upper, right? They like, all the shows kind of look the same anyway, but they did a lot to try to replicate the magic of that show to varying degrees of success.

But it sort of turns out that people are more interested in a Joanna Gaines cooking show than a show that looks like Fixer Upper but isn't Fixer Upper. You know, it's like at some point you're just so tuned into the world that they've created that you would rather just watch them shop for groceries than watch someone else try to rip them off. you know, and that's sort of what you have with Stephen A. Smith, I think it's almost like, I would rather see Stephen A. Smith, I, a viewer would rather see Stephen A. Smith's, like, you know, self-appointed successor or whatever, you know, somebody that he likes or, or whatever, then some other debate show, because he's already conquered debate. Like, he knows how to do that. I mean, we can get that in the morning or on endless replays if we want to see it. And it's just interesting for ESPN to have gone so long trying to not be defined by their

personalities to go even further. I mean, we're not just going back to the Keith and Dan level, you know, or whoever else, like, you know, level of stardom at ESPN. Now it's like we're just letting Oberman run the show, you know, which is pretty shocking considering the trajectory of the network from then till now. Well, I would say a couple of things about that. One is that post-John Skipper, one of the. interesting things about ESPN is they go really all in on big stars.

True. They love they they're less interested in kind of the, you know, middle rung stars that used to populate ESPN and used to hang around there. In part of that's dictated by finances, I think in the cable model and all that stuff. But they go, they want really big stars and they want to go all in on those big stars.

Mike Greenberg has a morning show. Mike Greenberg has the radio show. Mike Greenberg has something on the app. Stephen A is all over. like that that's just kind of the thing but dude i would tell you this other thing when you to the point you made about stephen a there's 20 hours of ESPN that don't involve Stephen A Smith a day who's the biggest who are the biggest voices on that 20 hours like who are the people who are breaking through in the way that he does or even in a sense in the way he does because if you

and i'd gone back five six years of ESPN we'd be like okay michael and jemel okay, you know, here's Lebitard, you know, Tony and Mike on PTI. Now who is it? I mean, Scott Van Pelt to a point, I think on the Midnight Sports Center, like he's a big voice on there.

You could certainly find some other people, but I think what's happened is there's almost this vacuum. And he, Stephen A is still Stephen A, but the rest of ESPN, the volume, you know, the people have left. There's just not, and the volume has been turned down to an extent. So he just seems bigger in that new ESPN universe than he did in the old one. It's true.

I mean, and it sort of begs the question of what they're going to do now to replace Rachel Nichols and Maria Taylor, right? Because there are fewer people than maybe there would have been in the past who are lining up, I mean, who are potential replacements for that job. But regardless, you know, I mean, I, I mean, I mean. I mean, I mean, you and I could name names, right? I mean, you could, like, we could, we could hypothesize if it's going to be, you know, Malika Andrews or Cassidy Hubbard or whoever else. But, like, is, is, is, is, should we then take what you just said and assume that, you know, this era of ESPN is just going to say, well, Mike Greenberg, you're the new host of NBA countdown, you know, like, why not? They did with the draft. Yeah.

You know, like, and I think that was part of it. like let's get a big he's if this is our big star why aren't they on our big properties that we have with the sports leagues i i think that's the theory here i will say that you know we we think about ESPN in a lot of different ways and when we think about the creativity it's a little bit i mean use the chip and joanna thing there's a little bit kind of like more stephen a is not really an idea how do we fix this uh more stephen a okay how do we how do we how do we something on the app people want to watch more stepan a i guess that's a solution at some point but at some point that feels like you just didn't have any ideas about what to do so you just kept

saying more stepan a more stepan a more stephen a more stephen a yeah and that sort of feels like where we are now yeah yeah it's true i mean listen if you can get stephen a to do you know appearances on get up and then he does first take and then he does some you know NBA countdown or whatever the NBA, you know, all the various NBA shows during the season. And, you know, they'll definitely find some afternoon evening responsibilities for him when the NBA season's not, you know, going on. I'm sure they'll find, even when the NBA season is going on, I'm sure they'll be eager to have him, you know, pop up on NFL shows and whatever else. But if you can get him to do like four or five tent pulls throughout the day, then maybe the idea is you just have to bridge the gaps, you know? I mean, but it does seem really, like, it's not an idea.

No. But it is a, but it is a plan. I mean, it could be a plan even if it's a really shaky one. Yeah. And then what do you do? And then by the way, if you're, if you're trying to exert your influence, if you're trying to get a little bit of leverage in any of these situations, if you're Stephen A. Smith, what better thing to do than to go over to Jimmy Kim alive and just prove that you could do something else?

Like, I'm happy to walk away. Somebody else is going to write me a big check, you know, and who knows if there's any legit, that could ever happen. But it is a pretty, it's a pretty interesting. And if you see it as a leverage play, right? So, but if you're ESPN and you run the risk of Stephen A. Smith going Hollywood or deciding to do something else or whatever he might do,

you have to be thinking about what the next, what comes after Stephen A. Smith. Because the best case scenario, if Stephen A. Smith doubles the longevity of everyone that's come before him, well, the clock is still ticking, you know? And then if Stephen A. Smith is the only thing you have on TV, then what are you left with? Yeah, exactly. That's what, and that's the downside of going all in on somebody. What if somebody eventually says that, wow, you, I've gotten so big that I need to go somewhere else. I need to host a comedy show at night on late night television. but I man if you if you ask me like what is the what would be a post stephen a plan at ESPN I don't know and by the way I would really track back to those remarks he made last month and you know ESPN doesn't even have a plan to have Stephen A off the air for a day I don't think that's just I just don't believe that's in the I don't believe that's in the cards over there because they've become so dependent on him we want to spend a second talking about Monday night football since

were getting close to NFL season. Sure. Monday Night Football did something really interesting this year. They hired Stephen A. Smith, right? Yeah. Stephen A is going to have his own alternate broadcaster, but he had football. It's actually the one Stephen A, so far, one Stephen A free zone of ESPN. I think he was, didn't he argue at halftime of Monday night a couple years ago,

if I'm not mistaken? And he may have it. Monday night football on ESPN this year. You will turn on the main channel and you'll see Steve Levy, Brian Greasy and Louis, Riddick, the three announcers calling the game. You will turn on ESPN2 for at least 10 weeks out of the season and you will see Peyton Manning and Eli Manning having an alternate broadcast where they presumably are talking ball because I think both those guys are very engaged and are going to be engaged with the football,

but also like hosting celebrities interviewing people during the game. By the way, we talked a little bit last week or last episode earlier this week about whether sports broadcasting could ever, or just broadcasting in general news broadcasting, whatever, research to resemble podcast. Now, there's not a manning and manning podcast,

but the idea of putting two brothers together who have a infinite sea, presumably, of inside jokes and yuck yucks or whatever else, and having them sit in a room and talk to the viewer for three hours, that might be way closer to a podcast than anything we've ever seen before. a really good point, right? And it's like casual conversation. And let's bring, and now let's bring on our, our next guest. Yeah. It's very podcasty. So it is going to be really different. I think what,

you know, we've seen a whole bunch of these alternate broadcasts, like the college football national championship game. They have the coaches looking at film. You know, there's a blimp cast or has been a blimp cast for ESPN. I think what makes this one so interesting is those all felt kind of like very niche. And with the Mannings, ESPN went and got one guy, and I guess you could even say two guys who everybody wanted as a big announcer in the main booth. And they are to a certain extent programming against themselves saying, hey, we got this Monday night football broadcast we're really, really proud of.

Oh, by the way, we're also going to have this big time Monday night football broadcast at the same time. And what interested me about that, I wrote about it this week, is that like game announcers are some of the only people in the media anymore in our very, very, whatever you want to say are, you know, the universe that has splintered into a million pieces who kind of have a monopoly on our attention. Like if you, if you want news from Afghanistan, you don't even need to watch TV. Like you don't need to watch some newscaster give you the news. Yeah. If you want sports highlights, they're on Twitter, you know, half a second after they happen. But if you want to watch the Fox game of the week on Sunday afternoon, you kind of have to watch Joe Buck and Troy Aikman.

They've kind of got a lock on it unless you want to like listen to the Cowboys radio broadcast or something like that. Now I believe we're moving into this universe where maybe that's not the case anymore. Maybe they don't have a monopoly or maybe, you know, the vast majority of the vast majority of, the audience still goes to those guys, but you have these really enticing options on other audio channels. And I think on the one hand, that's awesome for people like you and me, because we can,

we have, we can sample different things. Choice is almost always better, but it really does change the job of a game announcer. Does it not? If you're not the only person someone can listen to. It makes it more competitive. I mean,

yeah, listen, I don't think. It introduces competition into something. There was no competition. Well, you sort of skipped over, I mean, you, you know, skimmed over the idea of people listening to radio broadcast. I mean, that's not unheard of. Maybe it's, it's a lot more, I mean, if it's, if there's people that do it, it's way more prevalent amongst like diehard fans that have, I mean, whatever, that have, that have, I mean, it's not just people that, that's been, that's been, that's been, that's been, they've taken the time to investigate the other options, you know, and to, and to think about.

and to weigh those things, that's a tiny, tiny sliver of the sports viewership. But this is sort of like, this is not a very different, this is not entirely different than that. This is basically just like presenting to the world that it is an option, that it has always been an option, right? That you can listen to someone else to call the same game if you want. And what ESPN is doing is, I mean, they're not, they're not giving anybody else the rights to broadcast. They're just giving you a separate audio, you know, a different audio track to listen to. So I think it's really interesting. I mean, I think it's, I think that if you can, if you can offer people five different ways to listen to the show or to watch the show, I mean, obviously they've been trying out different networks, have been trying out different versions of this for a while.

But if you can offer someone different ways to listen to the show and it increases the audience at all, it does seem like it's a pretty, pretty safe bet, right? I mean, I don't know, Peyton Manning might be making $10 million a season or something like that for all I know. but at some point, the more people you can bring to the game, the more money you can make. You know, so it seems like it's, well, it's a really interesting bet, and it's a really interesting sort of way to consider what the future of live sports might feel like. So the financial part of it's really fascinating, and I'm not going to claim to just under, you know, to be inside the books on a huge level. But ESPN told me when I asked about this that they expect the Manning broadcast to what you, call lift, meaning increase the audience of the main broadcast, by three to five percent. Money Night Football has a giant audience, like 12 million people a week.

So they're going to add three or four percent to that audience. Not a huge number, right? It's actually a very, very tiny number, though, three or four percent of 12 millions, a lot of people just functionally. So it'll be interesting. I think a question for all these networks is you can do this now. You can certainly do the cheapo version of this, which we've already seen, I think, happen a little bit, right?

Like, okay, we have a SkyCam. So we're just going to have a Skycam broadcast of this game. We can get some coaches in a room. That's pretty low cost, low cost way of doing business. Amazon is going to get Thursday night football next year. You know, it'll almost certainly be multiple audio tracks like Amazon does now. You know, so we can have the main broadcast, then we can have something else, scouts talking or gamblers talking or whoever we want.

But when you talk about big people, I don't, I don't, I don't, know the answer to that. Is that really going to be cost efficient to have like multiple huge stars calling the game? Now, the Stephen A channel is that, I mean, are we like 10 seconds away from Stephen A is like your alternate broadcast for the NBA finals? Could that happen? Maybe. It's interesting.

I mean, would there be an audience for that if Stephen A was just commenting and interviewing people and doing stuff like that during the NBA finals? I mean, listen, there's a difference. There's a huge difference in between those jobs, right? Stephen A, it's easier for Stephen A to transition to from first take to get up or to a sports center spot or to count down than it is to consider calling a game full out, I mean, all out, right? So it wouldn't shock me if it's a conversation that had already happened and if Stephen A. Smith had already declined because it's, you know, you really put yourself out there, especially when you're as a sort of polished performer as Stephen A. Smith, you put yourself out there. for a lot of potential of failure. But you don't have to be Mike Breen, right?

You can just be Stephen A. Smith. You can hire Mike Breen or, you know, you can have your own Mike Breen. But Mike Breen's still going to be there. Mike Breen's still calling the NBA finals under this scenario. No, no, I know. I'm saying you can bring your own person in if you're Stephen A. Smith to handle the grunt work, sort of, you know, and you can still be Stephen A. Smith. Like identifying who hit the three-pointer in the corner of that kind of stuff.

Exactly. And I think that's, I mean, listen, it's definitely feasible. It's definitely feasible. I don't, I think it wouldn't surprise me at all of that were an experiment that we, you know, saw in the near future. It's interesting because it's not, I mean, it's coming at a time when everybody has the ability to watch the same game on three different screens at the same time, right? I mean, we can all, we can all do the multiple screen experience. Although if the video is not changing, I don't imagine a lot of people are going to do that, although they may just to make it easier to toggle back and forth between different audio streams. But, you know, I would be interested to see a slightly more evolved version of it where they pair, they can pair the overhead shot with a totally different, you know, with an announced team that you desperately want to hear for a different reason or whatever. I think that there's a lot of ways that you could make, you can sort of do internal competition and really make these things effective.

Yeah. And they have done that with the national championship game. There was one, I think there was like a Marty Smith blimp cast. So we're going to get the blimp shot, but it was going to be somebody else talking over the blimp shot. I think one of the early megacast ESPN did before it was even called a megacast was Colin Coward and a SkyCam. Which, by the way, is not that different than like Stephen A on the NBA finals.

Was Colin Coward in the blimp? See, that's the sort of evil caneval stuff that we really need right now. Piloting the blimp. Marty Smith is suspended above the arena, dangling from the blimp calling this game. Who, like, who would, who would not watch that? I would absolutely watch that. I mean,

the Stephen A. Smith in a cage on a pole match during, during the NBA finals. This is bring, bring the, bring the, bring the, bring the, to sports broadcast and you could really do something good. Can we fill the blimp right now? So we went, we want Colin, we want, who do we want, we in the blimp? We want Marty Smith, Bill Walton. Who else would you like in the blimp? It becomes like an.

episode of Big Brother, like not only we're getting the broadcast, but if you flip to the next channel, you get like the unfiltered stream of them like, you know, fighting for the, fighting for the, the concessions or whatever up there. That'd be fantastic. Yeah, or just, yeah, just kind of, just camera time, really, right? It's television. That's, that's the battle. All right. I'm now fully convinced about these things. I'm really, I'm excited about the possibilities of where this could go. Question from listener, Maddie Wasserman, David. Is there anything more deflating as a journalist or podcaster. And when you ask a guess a question, you thought was really smart and they start the answer by saying, I get that question a lot.

I was joking with somebody the other day who works in a, you know, TV production, that they should, whenever someone says, like, I have a great idea and they say it, then like, your, your reflexive answer should just be like, it's so funny. We were just talking about doing that the other day. Just in case you ever want to steal their idea, you can just pretend that you were thinking about it all along, right? That's sort of like, this is a great sort of defensive version of that too.

If someone asks you a question that you're uneasy answering, just be like, you know what, I get that all the time, and it just totally puts them on their heels. That is interesting, yeah. But to, no, but to answer Maddie's question, yeah, I mean, sure, that's got to be the thing. You've probably had that happen more times than I have just because you've interviewed more people than me.

I mean, you've actually, you know, you interview people that get interviewed all the time. What do you, does that happen to you? Well, it feels, yes, it has. And it's, you know, to me it's funny because it's always, I always, it makes me feel bad. It really does. Because, you know, you think, man, I'm just asking what everybody has already asked. But one of the things I've learned about interviewing the hard way is that you, sometimes you're trying to be way too original with all the questions.

You want to ask different questions. You want to ask questions that challenge them and put them off guard. But when you're doing a podcast interview, sometimes you want to ask the quite like the most obvious question because that's what people listening want to hear. Yeah. And people might not have read or listened to 20 interviews with the person. So I think in a way it's sort of it's probably reassuring. I also think by the way, it's the inverse of the question we, the answer we make fun of all the time where somebody says, that's a great question. all that means is I don't have a ready made answer in my mind for what you just asked me.

So I'm going to give you a compliment. Oh, hey, that's a great, that's a great question. It might also just mean, like, thank you. You've asked me the question that I'm prepped for. I mean, it might just be part of the routine, right? I mean, tell me, like, I've heard celebrities say that's a great question to questions that are being asked on like the, you know, e-entertainment television, like, rope line interview. You know, I mean, it's like, it's just a, it's a way to give positive.

affirmative affirmation to the person you're standing with. Instead of saying, um, um, well, let me think about that. You say, you know what? That's a great question and why your mind reels to try to think of an answer. Yeah, it's true. But you're right about people wanting to hear, I mean, there's some questions you just have to ask and there's some people you just want to talk to. I mean, it's not like, you know, well, the rope line's a good example.

It's not like Ryan Seacrest whoever's going to be like, nah, I don't want to talk to Tom Hanks. He just talked to, he just talked to that other person. You know, I want an exclusive, you know? I mean, you're there because people want to hear your, want to hear these people talk. And if you're their outlet, I mean, if you're the way that, if you're the interview that they're going to watch or listen to, but yeah, you answer the obvious questions. Nobody wants you to interview, you know, if you interviewed Mike McCarthy and you're like,

I'm not going to ask him about Dax Health because everybody's asking him that. Would then you be doing your readers, your listeners, your viewers a real disservice? Absolutely. Absolutely. This is a related question from Brandon Boyd. How does your interviewing style change when you're doing it on a podcast? versus when you're doing it for print. Oh, well, do you have an answer?

I have one thing that immediately comes to mind. Oh, go for it. Podcasting is a little bit, I mean, obviously, we have Erica on here. We have a great production team at the ringer. But podcasting is a little bit one take, a little bit more one take than doing a video interview or certainly doing a written interview. And so what are the things that you see a lot, I mean, that I know journalists, you know, to speak for all of them at once,

we'll use in a written interview and also, you know, in a video interview is you use the power of silence to like, you know, you ask somebody a question, let them sort of suffer in their own silence for a while where they think about the answer. You can't really do that as much on a podcast because it's like radio.

It's a conversation, you know? I mean, it's, it has, you need a sort of perpetual motion to keep it going. And also you got to, you need a little bit of perpetual motion to keep them on the show, right? At some point, you get,

you interview a lot of people for podcasting and it's just like, okay, I've got 20 minutes for you and you cross your fingers and hope you can just keep them blabbing for 45, you know, so it's, that's one big difference. It's more of a more of a conversation and less of a, less of a interrogation. I don't want to make it sound that bad, but you could, but you certainly, you certainly have to have to keep things moving. Yeah, I'm so, I'm so fascinated by the idea of silence. I'm terrible at it.

I mean, if you stop talking right now, I would let you know my kid's social security number in about you know i mean like you like i i it's it's it is a it's it's it's it's it's it's tough so here's the thing about podcasting you and i aren't doing live radio here no so if i'm talking to i don't know bill walton what is to stop me from letting like three or four or five seconds elapse after every one of his answers because we can go through and edit that out later you can tighten up a podcast in a way or edit a podcast in a way that's totally different from like a live broadcast. So in a way, you should be, you're right doing that old journalist trick of just don't say something sometimes. Yeah. Just be silent and see if your

subject gives you more stuff. Because you're looking at me in the Zoom right now, when you stop talking, I'm ready to come in right after you, right? I'm already thinking about what am I going to say when David finishes this answer? And I don't want to let more than like a quarter of a second elapse. It's really interesting. The other answer I had to this question of how does an interview style change on podcast versus print is I think you have to be more of a character as an interviewer when you do an audio interview. Yeah. But I'm interviewing somebody for print. I try to be as small and bland and just I try to be a complete non-entity in that exchange.

Because sometimes I'm more successful. than others, but I want to ask really good questions. I want to be incredibly prepared, but in terms of what I'm actually saying to them, what is picked up on the recorder, I want that to be small and mostly unopinionated as humanly possible. Yeah. Because when I don't listen to those tapes, if I'm sitting there like being funny and making points and, you know, offering up answers for them before they can offer it themselves, I screwed up, right? I was trying to like have this losing. conversation with them instead of actually getting the information I needed from them a lot of

time. It doesn't mean you can't establish a rapport and sometimes you need to challenge them and sometimes making a joke breaks the ice. I get all that. But if I'm trying to like be Mr. Conversation man and try to keep just kind of keep it flowing and going, sometimes you're screwing up. You kind of do need to do that in audio because otherwise it sounds like what happened to the other guy? I'm hearing the person you're interviewing and the person who's doing the interview sounds so boring. Sure. I mean, the best,

when you do an interview on a podcast or whatever, I mean, the best ones more often than not are the ones where they're just like, just totally like go with the flow, stream of consciousness almost. Like, you'd rather, if you got,

if you got, I'm trying to think of who somebody you'd really want to ask a question. I mean, listen, if you, like I said, if you got Mike McCarthy on and you got him talking about as like Chipotle order

for 45 minutes and just like a funny thing that happened to him yesterday. And then it's just all, you know, just a, background, you know, just like locker room hijinks. And then he had to go.

And all of your listeners were like, damn, I would love to hear Mike McCarthy talk for another hour. That's a win for you, you know? But, I mean, you're not going to get them saying, oh, he did. Mike McCarthy didn't ask, didn't answer anything about cornerback depth, you know. I mean, that's, it's the, it's being in the moment, feeling like you're present there for this sort of conversation and sort of humanizing the figures. That's what can be a real, that can be a win on its own in podcasting.

But yeah, I mean, at some point, you do have to weigh those, you know, weigh the opportunities against each other too. Some questions you have to ask or, you know, someone might really feel like that you're missing out. This just came in from listener Ben. Does David host the Mask Mandate show? So we know you hosted the podcast formerly known as the Masked Man Show. Can you change that? It's still called the Masked Man Show, by the way. The stream is now called the Ringer Wrestling Show.

Okay. So I was misinformed. I thought this was going to be just so it's now it's the mass man show within the ringer wrestling show channel. Right. The channel got renamed, but your show did not get renamed. Correct. My show was still on every Thursday. The mass man show is still on every Thursday.

All right. In these challenging times, David, any thoughts of changing it to the mass mandate? That's a great name. We should totally call it the mass mandate. I'll get a new logo drawn up right now. And now, hey, listen, now that the channel has a different name, I can just call my show whatever I want. Shouldn't that be like your Stephen A bit at the end of every's episode? Like you deliver a hot opinion called the mask mandate?

That's a great one. I'm taking that. I'm stealing that right now. I didn't even realize that there was this overlap until what happened. I think I just overheard just very recently. Overheard. So I'm talking about the mask mandate on TV in like my hotel room or something. And I kept thinking because I was in SummerSlam mode.

I kept thinking I was hearing someone talk about me. And I was like, what is happening? right now. Your ears were perking up? The nine millionth instance of me hearing the mask, hearing about a mask mandate on TV. And, and it's the first time it really struck me that way. That's funny. It was a, it was the weirdest feeling. It was like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was talking about me. And he just kept talking about me over and over again. A boy can dream. And he was against me. A boy can dream, Brian. That's great. You and I like to joke about the journalistic term

broke his silence or broke her silence. Oh, yeah. Chris Vinini, reporter over at The Athletic, sends in a very funny one from Sky News. It's about Afghanistan. Tony Blair, former PM over there in the UK, has dramatically broken his silence over the crisis in Afghanistan, dramatically broken his silence. Oh, my God. David.

He accused President Joe Biden of an embecilic decision, quote, unquote, to pull out U.S. troops. Thought that was funny. We have some only in journalism words. By the way, this may be the single most successful bit we've ever done, just at least in terms of readers sending them in. Because I'm now getting some bad only in journalism words or ones that just don't quite fit. Okay. Are you going to read the bad ones? No, no, no.

No, no. I mean, bad is the wrong word. Some that are just like, that's funny, but that's not exactly what we're doing. There's so much interest now that we're getting like the great ones, the good ones. the good ones, the okay ones. There's just too many to read in the segment. We need different designations for them, I think. But let's get into them.

Here's one that I really enjoyed surefire. I feel like people say surefire. You say he's a surefire bet to, that's a surefire bet for my family and I to go to dinner tonight. I think that there are very, there's like a very narrow, very narrow usage of surefire in journalism, but it's also, it also becomes part of our speech, right? Okay.

Like if you were like, well, no, I mean, I feel like you would say, you know, Tony Romo is a surefire hall of famer. You would say that out loud, right? Right. Or are we just repeating the journalistic use of the phrase? But again, that's a separate category. I feel like that's worth pointing out. If something, if you're used to, if the narrow usage might be established in print,

but if it's a, I think, frankly, if it's an easy word to pronounce, it makes its way into a regular conversation. Sure. fire and first ballot are exactly the same in the sense of Hall of Fame. And first ballot was an only in journalism term that has now become like every sports commentator uses it in speech. No, I like this is a,

see, this is what happens. Now we have the subcategories. Yeah. Of only in journalism words. Let me try this one on for size, David, a bullion.

Oh, yeah. Nobody says a bullion. No. I've never heard anything. Nobody knows how to say a bullion, I don't think. So yeah,

go on. You and I, you and I consider ourselves to be kind of, you know, word whizzes, the Oscar Wilde of the Lower East Side when we live there, you know, always impressing each other

with our vocabulary. I don't remember that ever coming out of our mouths. No, never. How about Michigas? Only in journalism, Warren? I don't, I'm looking at it

in the Google Doc right now. I think I might only hear it in journalism, like hear it on like news channels. I feel people do use it. I don't think I've, I don't think if I saw this word in print, it would,

I don't think I would read I don't think I would know what it was if you say michigas I know exactly what you mean I have some friends that might use that but I feel like it's a sort of thing you I've heard on TV but I but I don't know that I I don't know man this might be like one of those words that I just don't that just doesn't work for me but I but I don't feel like I see that in print a lot I've told you what a terrifying exercise this has been as a writer since we started doing this segment I was doing the piece this week and I used the word agita

in a draft and then I just crossed it out and wrote anxiety because I was like you know what that's I'm using an only in journalism word and I should just be using a more basic word. It's the sort of agita

that comes with realizing you're using an only in journalism word right? Did you feel agita or anxiety in that? I did. I did. Only in journalism words give me agita. This week's winner by far from Sam Routher, Ruthier, sorry, Ruthier perhaps, sorry I'm Sam, I'm not pronouncing your name

correctly. I love this. Beachhead. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And Beachhead is great. Is it great only in journalism word because sometimes when you do this, you're just using Mr. thesaurus. I'm using Agita because I'm just trying to think of a creative, more creative word for a more basic word. Beachhead is also as actually a very functional only in journalism word. That means a very specific thing and it can be useful. I would also

like to, I totally agree with the designation of Beachhead as an only in journalism word, but he was also a very awesome minor G.I. Joe character in our childhood. I didn't remember that one. He was, I was, I think, I don't know if he was ever in the cartoon. I had

his action figure and he, I think probably he just stayed in longer than the other ones, but that was one of my favorite action figures. He had sort of a ski mask or, you know, professional wrestling mask as I probably thought of it at the time. Beachhead was a real, was a real cool one. Was he a good guy or bad guy? He was a good guy. He's friends with Dusty and the whole, the whole gang. Yeah, all those sort of semi-aquatic ones. Yeah. According to this, he was, uh, his real name is Wayne Sneeden, and he's from Auburn, Alabama. That's a perfect real name for Beachhead. Yeah, it's fantastic stuff, man. We got this note from Lauren

and harp. Fellow Texan here. I hope to hear how Brian and David pronounce the following only in journalism words. Oh, man. All right, here we go, David. Cyan.

Yeah, cyan. Okay. Phenom. Phenom, that's right. I mean, we, listen. This doesn't sound Texan, does it? No, but also I learned to say it from a Texan, or no, from an Oklahomaan,

Jim Ross. I mean, he's the one, he, the phenomenon. The phenom. The Undertaker. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's, That's pretty much only one way to say that, right? All right.

Controversial one here. Do you say bona fides or bona fides? I say bonafides by def-that's my instinct. And then every time I hear someone say bonafides, I winced because I realize how embarrassing it is that I feel like bona fides must be the utterly wrong way to say it. Yeah. Yeah, I say bono-a-fides. I've heard bonafides my whole life, but I came at bonaf, I sort of came at bon of,

I came at the word for myself through sort of a back door and was just like, oh, that's, you know, like I know it from the origin or whatever. And so I started saying bonafides. And then you realize it's something that people have been saying your whole, like for me, the word rapport is like that. Like I kind of thought rapport, the spoken version and like RAP, P, O, R-T, the written version were different things. Absolutely.

And at some point, I realized I'd. been saying report, you know, and like meaning rapport. And then you hear it and you're just like, oh, no. Like, I've been getting this wrong for how long? I made the same mistake. Yeah. Absolutely. Isn't there a singular plural thing with bona fides? Because I think you could probably, if you told me you're allowed to say bona fides, I'm okay with that. I'm sure I've heard it in the past. That's what I say. But I'm saying is there, if you say singular, you would say that is a bona fide Texas barbecue restaurant. Right. And I think every time I've ever said bona fides, I'm not, not thinking of bona fide. I'm thinking of

this separate island term. If I was thinking about it, I would say bona fides, but who knows? Bonified kind of sounds like an upcoming debate show on ESPNFS1. Bonafide. It's time for David Shoemaker, guess is a strain pun headline. All right.

Monday's headline about a disappearance in a small Australian town was Knives Outback. Knives Outback, which David got alarmingly quickly. Today's headline and comes from our good friend Aaron McDade. It's from the substack of NFL analyst Nate Tice. Yes, Strainpun headlines have come to substack.

Hope there's a think piece or two about that. Nate Tice, David, was writing about how the Broncos decided to go with veteran Teddy Bridgewater as their starting quarterback over the younger quarterback, Drew Locke. What was Nate Tice's substack strain pun headline? Well, there's such thing as like a bridge quarterback, right? So that's water. There's water lock. He's not

a lock to be no longer like bridge lock. Oh like a bridge water to the future is good, but that is not actually what this is. Nor is it a bridge over troubled waters. It's actually the first name we're going with here. Oh, Teddy. And actually Ted.

I have no idea. This is so specific. So the Broncos have decided that the future is brighter with Ted. Ted of Ted's excellent event. Ted. Oh man. I've no. They're not worse.

They're better off Ted. Better off Ted. Yeah. Okay. Not the most creative solution to that problem, but it's substack, David. It's substack. It's okay.

He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis, Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We are back Monday. More lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, Dave. See you later, Brian.