The Press Box - Netflix Comes for the NFL, the Argument About the College Football Playoff, and a Very Merry Jolabokaflod

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

Hello media consumers! Bryan and David kick off the show celebrating the first holiday of the week, Jolabokaflod!  Then, they discuss the amount of announcers for the Christmas NFL games on Netflix (8:07), and Shannon Sharpe calling out his colleagues on 'First Take' after the first weekend of the College Football Playoff (21:51). And in the Notebook Dump, they discuss media companies pivoting to write for CEOs (35:31). 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

A restaurant's best dishes tell stories. Their flavors embed themselves in our memory like song lyrics or lines from a movie. So much so that a little slice of a restaurant's story can become part of our own. I'm Danny Chow and this is ShiftMeal, a new video podcast from the Ringer where we're sharing a bite and chopping it up with chefs and restaurant people during their off hours. All episodes of Shift Meal are out now on Ringer food. David? Yes. let me be the first person to wish you a very happy Yoloboka flood.

A happy Yolaboka flood to you too. Sadly, my gift to you has not arrived yet. So it's in transit. It's somewhere out there in the world between. Where did it ship from? It was definitely United States. I was definitely careful about picking a United States used book dealer as opposed to one of the many British used book dealers.

that populate the internet. That's always kind of a landmine on eBay. We're like, what a price. And then ships from Australia. We're going to do it like our parents used to do when they got us a Nintendo cartridge, but it was sold out at the store. So you just got a little picture of it in a card under the tree. Yeah.

Hold on. I'm going to send you a picture of it. That's a great idea. So if you missed last week's show Yolo Boko Flood, which David and I are definitely pronouncing correct. is a Christmas tradition from Iceland. It literally means Christmas book flood. And those wonderful people in Iceland give each other books on Christmas Eve and then stay up late and read the books.

That's the key detail here. Not only do you get a book, you have the license to sit around the fire and read the book instead of interacting with your family. Yes. A magical holiday tradition. So David, I believe you got my Yola Boko Flood gift. I did. As David and I had agreed to exchange gifts for the first time ever honoring this holiday. And David, since among many things here at the ringer, podcaster, writer, lead, a.k.a. boss man.

You are our art director. That's true. The art on the ringer.com has been one of the very best things about this website since we've been in existence for low these eight years. It looks amazing. So I wanted to get something from another great art director. George Lois. One of the greats. The best ever, really. The best ever. A million amazing covers of Esquire that he designed during the 60s and 70s.

So if you will open that shiny, not shiny mailing envelope that landed on your doorstep, you are going to find the September Oh yeah, here we go, crunch you're going to find the September 1969 issue of Esquire. Amazing.

This is their college issue. Yeah, the back to college issue. And George Lois for the cover did The Kids versus the Pigs. Mm-hmm. One of the absolute

the time of protest. I'm holding it up right now in front of the camera, which I can see, but it's the, it's the absolutely famous picture of the college student on the ground going face to face with a literal pig and the kids versus the pigs in type on top of it. We're just an amazing cover. So he was like, no, we're not doing cops. We're doing the pigs and it's going to be a genuine pig that we took a picture of. Mm-hmm.

Because this is before AI. Don't you love that cover just like the art. of it where not only do we have this amazing idea for a picture, but we don't have like a tons of type on there that says Charlie Pierce on how the Democrats can get their mojo back. No, the only lead in there in the whole thing is, is freshman orientation package C page 85, which. That's so cool. Yeah, no, no, it's it's very, very subtle, very, very subdued so far as these things go.

And, and, you know, I'm not sure that. this cover wouldn't have more people picking it up even in 2024 than, then, you know, whatever, the six Hugh Jackman cover that you saw this year. That was always the puzzle as we looked at those old Esquire covers, wasn't it? Like, why wouldn't this work now? Yeah. New York Magazine kind of did it for a while. Mm-hmm.

And then they would have, you know, 80 great things to buy New York City, but they would do those kind of arty thematic idea driven covers. Mm-hmm. So now when you're around the fire tonight, I want you to know that there are some articles in here to read too. You're not just admiring the cover. September 1969. We got Gore Vidal writing about his feud with William F. Buckley.

Yeah. We got a Michael Her dispatch from Vietnam. Mm-hmm. Ksson specifically. And we've got a Roger Ebert profile of Paul Newman. Yeah. That is amazing.

It's loaded, baby. That is really great. Do you want me to tease what I, would you should be expecting in the mail at some point in the next two to 14 business days? Absolutely. And you sent me a picture of this so I can, I can see it. You can click on it. It may already be in your library, but it was actually like, but it was on my mind at

the time and also very Esquire related. I was combing. I've been combing through the Esquire archives the past couple of weeks in my semi-annual tradition of just looking for old literary pro wrestling writing and got and got absolutely hit over the head. And I must have read a couple of these before, but I got absolutely hit over the head by a bunch of pro wrestling pieces by this writer Paul Gallico, Galico.

I don't know if I'm saying it correctly. Okay, good. You're nodding. You know exactly who it is. And I was just like, who is this guy? And I started Googling it. I'm just like, oh,

wait, the guy that wrote the Poseidid Adventure of all times, he just had a very strange post, post magazine, post sports writing career.

So, which is to say lucrative. Very lucrative, yes. But yeah, no, so I was looking around online to try to figure.

I mean, also just incredibly, but his sports writing career, obviously was incredibly important too. It was a huge, just because of, I mean, just one of the great early artists,

a big influence on George Plimpton and all this sort of first person stuff. So yeah, just guy, so if you click on that, it's a, I believe that's the correct edition. It is a early hardcover edition of his book called A Farewell to Sport, which is his

all fantastic. Anthology slash his official goodbye to the sports writing genre. It's like you've known me my whole life. Yeah. Yeah. Paul Gallico, A Farewell to Sport. A Book I've never read about sports writing. This is fantastic. First of all, anytime you can use sports singular in a title, you have to go for it. And if you see it in a store, you have to buy it. If you are not British and you're using it in the singular fashion, you have, this is a buy. Yeah. So anyway, I hope you enjoy that when it finally arrives, even if it's not on the holiday that we're celebrating. I will have you know, by the way, and this just goes to how much you and I love old books and old things.

Is it I was explaining this, you know, recently discovered Icelandic tradition to my daughter, who is nine. And her first words were, isn't everyday Yolo Boko flood? I mean, aren't you guys buying all this crap all the time? Yes, yeah. But now we have a reason to do it. We buy ourselves Christmas present-y stuff all the time too, but this is when we can feel okay about it. Thank you so much. This is fantastic.

We've got to do this every year. Oh, yeah, maybe more than once a year. This is my favorite holiday. All right. Coming up on the podcast, David, Netflix is coming for the NFL on Christmas. Are the other networks ready for it? Plus an argument about the college football playoff. Imagine that.

A press box statement of principles. A new inductee into the Hall of Departed Journalists and a holiday feast of your favorite bits. All that and much more at the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.

Happy Yola, Boca Flood. Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Brian Waters with you. David, speaking of holiday, traditions, are you ready to gather the family and watch a little football on Netflix? Oh, yeah. Oh, yes, I am. We've got two games, Chief Steelers, and the Ravens, the official team of producer Brian Waters, against the Texans.

And what is so amazing here is there are kind of two concurrent power plays happening at the same time. One is the NFL's power play. because as you know as a ringer.com employee, Christmas is kind of a time for NBA games. Oh, yeah. Especially Christmas that's on a Wednesday, not a traditional night or day of football at all. Mm-hmm.

And in fact, the NBA's got, you know, pretty nice slate, five games, Minnesota versus Dallas, LeBron versus Steph, Wembe versus the Knicks. Well, the NFL was like, actually, we would like to completely take Christmas away from you. We are eternally the Grinch at the top of Mount Crumpet. Looking at what you have, looking at that lovely roast beast and wanting it for ourselves. So they are just scheduling themselves into Christmas domination.

Yes. And what's funny is they just did the same thing this last weekend because of college football playoff. Hey, our first day ever of the 12 team playoff. We got three games on Saturday. The NFL is like, we would also like to put the chiefs and Steelers up against that too. Just so you don't get any traction. So that's power play number one. Power play number two is Netflix worming its way into sports.

And this is really interesting from our perspective. Let's count off the ways that Netflix has gotten into the sports. game. We got Monday Night Raw. Yeah. Coming on Jan 6. They just announced they've got the next two women's world cups in 2027 and 2031. We had the Tom Brady Roast. Yeah. We had elderly Mike Tyson. We did. Yes. And now we've got Christmas Day football. And not just Christmas Day football, but guess what? The NFL, that massive media rights contract, they just sign, they can get out of it after the 2028 season. And what if there are a couple of giant streamers that have now become as big a

president in people's lives as the networks once were? Yeah. What if they would like to buy more NFL football or at the very least drive up the price for everybody else? Yeah. Driving up the price is that's a significant piece of it. Yeah. And the calculation, you know, I've talked about this was always like,

when will all of humanity, because that is the audience for the NFL, be ready to watch sports on streaming? Calculation is that because, you know, before it's like, look, the networks is beaten down and as small as the networks are now compared to what they were when we were kids. That's still the best fire hose to get our product out there. Yeah. That was the case. We want Thursday Night Football on Amazon, but that's pretty much it. Is that going to be the case in 2028? Yeah, good question.

I mean, that is what it is. But again, you got Netflix sitting here going, not only do we want like a Thursday night football, do we want like the AFC package? Yeah. Is that crazy? No, it's not crazy at all. I mean, the divisions in football make it a little bit trickier, right? I mean, it would be hard to imagine many NFL owners signing off on being totally, you know, off main, off of network television. But as we've seen, particularly like in the NBA, it's like these things are totally fungible, right?

I mean, they talk every offseason about redoing the conference structure and slicing and dicing the packages, albeit with many more games. in a bunch of different ways. But, I mean, I certainly think that when you start talking about things like Sunday night football, Monday night football, potential Saturday night football or Thursday night football, whatever, like the price tag on those is just going to go higher and higher and higher and higher. And, you know, I mean, in some sense, that's kind of all you need. You just need tent poles.

And then you can build up programming around it, you know? I mean, that's what all these. really want. It's worked for the networks for decades. Now, Netflix gave us some idea of what NFL coverage on that service might look like because it hired announcers for Christmas Day. And when I say hired announcers, I mean hired every announcer who is working today. This is like that Bill tweet that he throws out all the time about how there's too many

announcers at the table. It's like that tweet made flesh. Yes. did you see the graphic for this where they listed all the personnel here? Yeah, it looks like I don't even know how to describe it. It looks like

you're going to like a like a conference of some sort. It looks like and these are like all of the speakers that are going to be there over like a five day stretch. Right? It just it's it's sort of incredible. I mean there's there are

first of all, a lot of people who you're just kind of confused as to how they're like contractually available for this, right? But and that and that's part of it. And there's a bunch of people. I mean, there's a handful of people you weren't, you don't expect to see it all. Burke Kreischer, I guess is the top one. Yeah. Yeah. Also made the list somehow.

Anti-Teyo was kind of a, I'm surprised to see him for me. Although he's been, you know, he's been around. He's been. He's back. But yeah, no, it's a, it is a very, I guess on this one graphic, there's what, 5, 10, 15, 22 people, which is a lot. These are two games, remember, two NFL games being shown. Yeah. The announced teams are pretty cool.

Ion Eagle, J.J. Watt, and Nate Burleson. And the other one is Noah Eagle and Greg Olson. Right. Both McCordy brothers are on there. Yeah, this is quite a lineup here. RG3 is back. Oh, yeah, thank goodness. I mean that, seriously,

both Iron Eagle and Noah Eagle are there. Yeah, so, you know, I guess you can still celebrate Christmas a little bit in different locations, right? Drew Breeze is also back. I know there was a groundswell to get him another TV gig. Mm-hmm. I personally cannot wait to hear

how he has grown since his last foray into calling football games. what is Scott Hanson doing there? Are they going to have a red zone specifically for this these games? I mean that doesn't really make much sense, right? No, the games aren't at the same time. You would not show that.

You would not get two games and then show them concurrently. It would make a ton of sense. It just felt like they had to have one of everybody, right? So we got one red zone person. Yeah. We got at least one studio host. So I can actually count three when you have Jamie Eraldol and Laura

Rutledge on there. We got one insider Ian Rappaport. We got one ref in Gene Sterator. Yeah. Yeah, I think we just, we just, we have jobs on NFL TV and we have to fill them with somebody. This is, it's, this is, it's incredible. It's incredible stuff.

What do you think? So if you got, if you got a call, if you got the call from Netflix and they're like, Brian, we'd really like you to appear on our Christmas Day telecast and you told your wife, and she'd be like, oh my God, honey. That's great. That's, I mean, you know, throws our Christmas plans down the, down the pooper. But, like, you know, at least that's great exposure. It's great career opportunity.

And you're like, yeah, I'm one of 23 people who's going to be on a 15-minute broadcast. Yeah. And they're only going to the media criticism desk for 10 seconds. If it's necessary. If it's necessary. Ryan, what are people going to be talking about about this pregame show? I know this is normal in sports broadcasting. It has been forever.

but can you imagine working Christmas Day under these circumstances? I mean, just having the conversation, as you just mentioned, like I need to be in a television studio on Christmas day to be involved in the pregame or post game or in game of a football game.

Yeah. I don't think that conversation was, I don't think I would start that conversation, but certainly wouldn't go well if I did. No. When I see a big list like this, I always think of, the announcers who didn't make the list.

Yeah. Got to be some massive envy and anger, perhaps anger at your agent. It's like there were 22 spots. You couldn't give me one of them. And Richard Deich made this point, which I thought was good, is like, if you're in with Netflix, then imagine in a couple years if Netflix has a major NFL presence.

Yeah. Well, you know, so-and-so was good on Christmas Day, 24. Mm-hmm. What do we bring him or her back? Oh, yeah. So it's not just, you know, a freelance gig. Well, you know, on Netflix works too.

I mean, not just for sports casting. They could just be like, you know, Greg Olson's, the rating spiked. Our internal number show that people love Greg Olson. And the next thing, you know, they're casting him in a, you know, Dutch thriller or something just to, like, keep the synchronicity going. I could totally see him on a subway like pursuing a lost child Mason style. He has that kind of face and build. Also maybe

a rom-com Christmas themed perhaps for Greg Olson. I don't know if Greg Olson has ambitions in that world. But Netflix certainly does have the bandwidth. You also mention that this is just allowed now. This is a very new thing for the world where you're just like, oh, you work for ESPN

but you also get to work for the streamer that wants to steal ESPN's lunch money. Yes. Or CBS or Fox in the case of Olson. It shows you just how much power talent has now compared to what it used to. For sure. I mean, this would have been very, very hard to negotiate. And now it seems like it happens a lot. and that people are just constantly available to be loaned out for duty.

And again, Ian Eagle is calling Christmas Day, awesome. No Eagle? Awesome. Sounds great to me. Greg Olson, love it. It's fantastic. As a viewer, it's wonderful. But it's a big change within the industry.

Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean, it's sort of like the, you know, I mean, you saw this when podcast became a real concern, right? were just like, it was sort of a toss up as to whether or not talent would like, had maintained their podcasting rights, right? And it largely, I mean, from the outside, it felt like it largely depended on how much negotiating power they had going in, how many deals they had going. If you're all in with ESPN, you probably don't retain your podcasting rights,

or you didn't 10 years ago, right? That was just part of audio and everything else. And now it's a, for a while, it was a really popular carve out. Everybody had the ability to their own thing. And then all the companies came back and they're like, no, if you're going to do this, We want you to do it with us because now we have a podcast concern that we're, anyway, it goes back and forth. But the point being, you can imagine the argument, right? It's just like, why would I not do Netflix?

This is a great publicity for ESPN. This is great publicity for, you know, NFL Live or whatever else you're doing. It's a great for publicity for Good Morning Football. This is whatever. But, yeah, it's not one of their broadcasts and they're not making direct money off of it. So how do you, it's not always an easier case to make. and it's directly competing with NBA games on ESPN and ABC on Christmas Day. Yes.

So getting some publicity, but you're also like, hey, you're helping with this whole world domination scheme. Mm-hmm. Mention the college football playoff on Saturday, which I was watching, despite the NFL trying to direct my eyes elsewhere. This was the first weekend ever, the 12-team playoff. Mm-hmm. The favorites won in all four cases. David.

Yeah. And most of them were absolute blowouts. Mm-hmm. Indiana, Notre Dame got close in garbage time. Yeah. But let me tell you the favorite that really paid off at the window. The first weekend of the college football playoff turned into an argument about the college football playoff.

Uh-huh. This stuff usually plays out on message boards and on Twitter. No, no. In this case, it was just a argument between media. members who worked at competing networks. Sometimes even the same network. Awful announcing posted this clip this morning from first take. This is Shannon Sharp letting some other ESPN announcers know what he thinks.

Stephen, I'm going to let it slide. I'm going to be a good teammate. I'm going to let it slide. Everybody's at ESPN because had you not taking the route you taken, I would have lit their ass up. I'm going to let it slide. You know what, guys? congratulations Ohio State.

You won the game. If we're going to be on the same team, if we're going to work for the same network, don't do that. Kurt, Chris Fowler, I promise you, if you ever mention anything, any platform that I'm on again and talking about, I wonder what they're going to say in negativity, I promise you. ESPN ain't got enough bosses to keep me off, y'all, for what I'm going to say. So I'm going to let y'all slide today.

I'm going to turn it over to DO before I get myself in trouble. But don't play with me. Go ahead, Dio. I got a follow. I got to. Go ahead. There's several things about that clip. Dio is, of course, Dan Orlovsky.

David, how excited would you be to get to just speak next? It didn't seem like anybody was that excited. Do you think Shannon Sharp was really letting Chris Fowler and Kirk, Curb Street, off the hook? Was he letting them slide? with that monologue. So if you didn't follow all this, and God bless you if you didn't, Herbie and Fowler were calling the Ohio State Tennessee game Saturday night. They had mentioned during an Ohio State blowout that there was a first take segment

about Ohio State Coach Ryan Day. Yeah. He's one of those guys who's won a ton of games, but then has lost the... Mm-hmm. And then Shannon Sharp responded on first take. like how dare you talk about me on your college football broadcast yeah so that was pretty much a flavor the weekend i mean this was and let me tell you something this was everywhere saturday morning i'm watching game day herbie is talking 11 minutes into the show 11 minutes about how

indiana which lost the night before may or may not have deserved to be in the playoff at all now the thing to know there is that ESPN is not the network of the big 10 where indiana plays it's the network of the SEC. Yeah. So then Joel Clatt, analyst from Fox, which is the network of the Big Ten where Indiana plays is on Twitter

tweeting probably about game day. Yeah. I mean, this is, it was just so many, like, incestuous ties, masks were being ripped off everywhere.

And then you had your like unaffiliated college football people like the Ari Wasserman, Stuart Mandel, who were just like, trying to wander in and play peacemaker and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Are we really doing this on the first day of the college football playoff? Part of the problem was that all four higher seeds won.

Yeah. And in blowouts, as I mentioned. So then the argument became this. And I want to get your take here. So we put SMU and Indiana in the playoff. Yeah, of course. Then we got the result, which was them getting blown out. Yeah.

Does that mean retroactively they should not have been in the playoffs? And that we should pick teams for the playoff a different way? Well, I think it's two separate questions, right? Should you pick teams to playoff in a different way? No, I mean, this, I think, no, the fact that they lost doesn't really prove anything. I mean, you get in the playoff, presumably, because you're the, because you have the best body of work over the regular season. And then if that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be the best matchup for the other teams in the

playoffs, right? If we're just, if we're only picking, if you're basically picking the bottom half of the playoff bracket strictly for their upset potential, you'd presumably be picking some different teams and the ones that would get in just based on win loss, based on strength of schedule, based on whatever else your criteria is, right? I mean, they went out, they went out and they put together a good season. They got to the playoffs. For them, that's sort of the win. That's like playing in a fourth-year bowl, you know, like that's the, that's the, that's the victory. And they should be celebrated for that. But yeah, just because, you know, I mean, it's be like a boxing tournament.

Like, you throw the weight glasses open, but there's only like eight heavyweights in the whole thing, whatever. It's like, well, they're going to smash the little dudes when we get into the playoffs, right? When we get, I mean, it's, well, not necessarily. But, but you take my point, right? I mean, it doesn't mean that, like, we should only pick, like, other heavyweights with terrible loss records, you know, just because they might stand a chance against the big guy in the in the first round. No, just give it to the people that win the most fights or football games

or whatever that I'm trying to say. I completely agree. And that's, this is what happens here. It's like, Alabama lost three games this year. So there were people who were like, well, she'll Alabama be in the playoff because we know that they've got the kind of athletes to compete with the best teams that are already yet. rather than an SMU or in Indiana who put together a better record than Alabama did. That's what it comes down to. And it is, this is like to me,

I think you and I have laughed about this before, but like whenever I would watch college football, they'd be like, you know, that team has two or three losses, but they're playing some of the best football in the nation right now. And I'm like, oh yeah,

well, what about week two and week three when they lost those games? Does that not count ever? No. Does that mean you just get, you can have any like, surely there has. to be a punishment for losing football games.

One would think. Which is the most obvious thing. But it highlights a couple of things. One, how the committee is going to continue to pick these teams, which is a totally legitimate issue. Yes. The second thing is there is clearly, and I mean clearly lobbying from the networks to get the teams that you cover in or defend the teams that you cover versus the teams that

you don't cover. Yeah. And you know what? That's one of those things where I think people would probably deny that the case. I think that's the most natural thing in the world. That if you were the official network of this conference, you've paid this conference tons of money, the goodness or badness of your games every Saturday depend on this conference being good, that of course you're going to look at the world that way.

Sure. At least to give them the benefit of the doubt. And listen, like you said, it probably will. all of this conversation will have an impact on the way these teams are chosen. You know, I mean, if you, when, when they're making coin flip calls about how they're ranking these teams, then yeah, I think this conversation will come into play. If there, if there's anything we've seen over the past decade of college football postseason's changes, it's that they're very affected by the comments, by the, by the, the reactions to the, the, the,

what people are saying about the way it's set up. So, yeah, I mean, maybe if this, if we had to do over, Alabama would get in, but you're, but, you know, they, they didn't earn it. And I think at some point, you just got to be okay. I mean, it was the same thing when it was, when they first started doing the playoffs. When they first, you know, like, you had, you, you, you, you basically, you can make the case to be the number one, number two team. And outside of that, it's like, again, to, to, to go back to the fight game. It's like in MMA where they're just like, if you don't want to lose, you have to knock the other guy out, right? You have to submit.

the other guy. If it goes to the judges, you can't complain. And this is just one of those things. You can, you know, if you're not in the top half of the playoff, then, then don't whine about not getting into the bottom half. It's so funny because it was not much of a pro-Alabama contingent when they actually picked the playoff. Yeah. People were pretty happy. Besides the guy who was wearing Alabama colors on ESPN on the selection show, aka McSabin, nobody was really that upset. Yeah. But now that we have a result, oh, then we retroactively get upset about it.

And part of this, again, it's just a problem of college football. And especially in the days of the super conference where, like, there were teams like Indiana and Texas, which were in what everybody agreed were the two best conferences. But because there's so many teams in the conference, they didn't wind up playing the best teams in the conference. So they had really good records. But what do you do? Just say, like, you don't belong in?

Yeah. Or do you say the playoff? itself is where we figure out who's really good and who's not. Yeah. All very, very confusing. I had two notes. People were really happy because the first round of the playoffs, for the first time ever,

we're at home stadiums. Yeah. As opposed to your sterile NFL stadium. I am very for that. Any college football game that's played at a team's home stadium is better than a neutral site unless the neutral site happens to be the Rose Bowl. Okay, fair enough. I will say just because of the way the draw happened this time, the home stadiums, where stadiums we see on television every week. Notre Dame touchdown Jesus, DKR in Austin, Penn State, white out the shoe in Columbus.

Yeah. I would have loved to have the draw work out again, not to punish anybody, but just like home game in Boise. Yeah. That's cool. Home. Home. game in Tempe, Arizona. That would have been cool and different from what we see in college football. Yes, absolutely. The other, I think most agreed upon opinion was that, hey, why don't we just have home games the first round, which is what the 12 team playoff will. Let's bring that into the second round, too.

Before you get to those neutral site, bowl-y type atmospheres. To that I say, I remember this from my days in college. Dorms are not open on January 1st. Yes, that's correct. So are you going to have the student body, which is, what makes a home playoff game awesome, come back and then what are they going to do? Even if they're coming back from home,

which is always a, as you know, a dodgy thing during the holidays, coming back to where your college is, where are half of these people staying? Yeah, they'd have to reopen the dorms and they'd have to reopen the food halls

and they'd have to, it would be a whole production. By the way, underrated highlight of the week or maybe properly rated, Shane Gillis was the celebrity pick on the Friday game day. First he starts calling Nick Sabin,

who was wearing an Indiana Jones style fedora, Alabama Jones, which is funny. And then he was joking that the SEC was paying players when Sabin was in the SEC. Yeah. And again, just one of those things was like,

whoa, we're now, you could just the look on Sabin's face. I know Sabin knows how to play the part with McAfee. I know a lot of what is like this is TV. He understands that he's supposed to be the gruff, tough, former coach, but that looked real. Yeah.

The kind of eyes he was making it, Shane Gillis. Oh, it was so good. Amazing stuff. Coming up, David, should you write for a CEO or should you write for other people? But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrated a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod on Twitter or Blue Sky. where they are always, always gratefully received.

David, the New York Times reports that a norovirus outbreak linked to oysters sickened at least 80 people who attended an event celebrating the Los Angeles Times' annual list of the 101 best restaurants. Wanted to support the LA Times. Ooh. You found yourself in a norovirus. outbreak. It was an overwork Twitter joke

to write the owner of the LA Times has asked for an alternative story from the noroviruses perspective.

Thanks to Bezo for that one. If you can't wait to see what the tainted oyster makes of the

bias meter, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David,

in the notebook dump as we co-stored the holiday. I read an interesting article in the New York Times by

Katie Robinson. It turns out some media companies are pivoting. And they are pivoting to writing for CEOs. That's right. For CEOs. Yeah. Semaphore was one of the examples in the story. Robertson writes,

the company said Thursday it would start an invitation-only newsletter for chief executives, the CEO signal in January. It will be free, but available only to the leaders of companies with more than five, $500 million in annual revenue. Oh, my God. You know how when you subscribe to some of these media startups and ask you what level you are at the company you work for?

Whether you're in management like David Shoemaker or not management like Brian Curtis. You're like I created that little golf. Throwing it down there. This is the ultimate example because you have to have a, you're not only in management, but you're running a company with 500 million annual revenue. There's a quote in the article from Justin Smith, who is himself the CEO of Semaphore, one of the most important Smiths over at that company.

Mr. Smith said he realized shortly after Semaphore began that its journalists and articles were, quote, tilting our whole model, at least in the initial phase of Semaphore's existence, toward a very, very clear audience segment, which I would call the global leadership class. And you need three examples to write a think piece. So not only does Semaphore find itself targeting the CEO class, we also have the Wall Street Journal and what a shock, Axios. Yeah. Now, there's a couple of ways you target the CEO class, David. You could have a newsletter like Semaphore has.

Yep. You could offer your audience quote unquote briefings, which is one of my favorite words that has crept into journalism. Mm-hmm. I'm not writing an article or making a podcast for you. you. This is a briefing. Yeah. You important person. You can also have events where your journalists interview captains of industry on stage,

which seems to be every journalistic event known to mankind. Yeah. So I got a couple of points about this. One is it seems to be the natural flow of a journalist career to go from outsider to insider. Yes. I would agree with that. You begin thinking more and more how this thing you're writing or this point you're making on a podcast will be perceived inside the industry that you're covering. Now, the upside is you're probably more informed as you become more of an insider because important people are reaching out to you or they're returning your calls.

The downside is everything you do starts to become incestuous. you sort of stop writing and podcasting for readers and listeners and start addressing everything you're saying to the people who already work in the industry. Yes. I remember when I first discovered Nikki Fink doing her Nikki Fink things, the late Nikki Fink. And I was like, who are all these people who work at movie studios that she's writing about? Yeah.

I know movies. I like movies. Who the hell are these people? Mm-hmm. But it really proved that if you just tell readers that people are interesting and important, eventually they will believe it. Yes.

If you just commit to the bid enough. Yeah. And you and I also know there's an aspirational part of all of this, where if you and I ran, you know, Brian and David's auto body shop in Fort Worth, Texas, we might like to read something that is pitch to or recording the whims of CEO. those.

Yes, absolutely. Make us feel good, right? No, you know, we are small scale, but that makes us feel big by comparison. Yeah. That's point number one. And you're getting it, you're getting access to the same info that, you know, only the elites get. You, you were getting the same briefing.

Yeah. That the elites are getting. So that's number one. Number two is just a year in statement of principles, if I may. Mm-hmm. Everything I just described is not what the. press box is about. Yeah. It's also not what my writing on this subject is about. You don't want to address the CEO class, the C-suite, if you will. I'm all for it. That probably is

smart business. Yeah. It's not what we're going to do here. Yeah. It's not the way we're going to cover this particular industry. And I just think like there's a point where you have to remember, or at least if you're us, you have to remember, we're podcasting, right? not for executives, but for actual humans. Yeah. I always think whenever I write like a story about an announcer and, you know, media world's like, this is intended for sports fans. That's the audience.

Somebody who works at a network already reads it. That's awesome. That's awesome. I'm flattered and thrilled. But this is for sports fans. This is who this is who this is intended for. Yeah. It's true.

I mean, is all this just because everybody's got to find new ways to monetize when you're launching a new or, you know, repurposing a media entity? I mean, on the most basic level, it's like, what was the first, like, subscription or like insider club that you remember, like Slate Plus or something? I don't know if they were the first, but like, but of like new media, right? not just like subscribing to a magazine or whatever. I have no idea. You know the slate folks better than I do, but like I have no idea what the conversations were like, we're in there.

But like when you start when you start crafting something like Slate Plus, you're like, well, what can we do that people will pay for? And then you got to first identify who are the people that are going to pay for this? You know, it's like, we can either give away a free, you know, we can either give away a free like a trucker hat

or we can give away a free tote bag. What is our audience? Which of those two things does our audience want? on, you know, and then you start identifying who the paying audience is, and you start in some way crafting your product towards those people, right, or at least pieces of it. And it makes some sense. You'd be like, well, we got enough capital to do this, you know, to kind of get this new startup off the ground. But then how do we keep it going? Like, who's going to be the subscribers of this? Who's going to pay for these newsletters? Who's going to do it? Like, how do we, how do, what's the

target demo? And at some point, you just decide, well, let's just pick these people because they have disposable income or not even disposable income. They have corporate income. This is going to go on the company Amex. Yes. And Robertson makes this point is that media 10, 15 years ago, there was all this lust for scale. People were huffing the fumes of Huffpo. It's like, we're going to be the biggest media or entity in the world. Yeah. That has taken a turn now because we've seen that didn't work for a lot of people. So what you do now is say, oh, we're just going to go find that audience that you're talking about. And the audience maybe we'll find is a really, really rich upscale already running the world audience. Yeah. And we will speak to them in addition to whoever else wants

to subscribe. A lot of puck is like that. Right? This kind of insider conversation for people that are already on the inside. And if outsiders want to listen to it, hey, great. You know, if the check clears we're all for that too. But the but the but the sort of genius of puck and I'm sure that this is like in some ways you say use the word aspirational in different context but this is what companies like this inspired to is that there is an audience big enough for the insider net for the for the insider perspective that you can succeed even it like we're like flying in the face of what the actual insiders the actual power brokers would want you to do, right? You can still thumb your nose at them a little bit, right? Or is it, or is that, or is that in some of these cases, is that just when is the thumbing of

the nose window dressing to maintain the outsider vibe, even as you're an insider? Without bearing anybody specifically, I think it's both at the same time. I think it's doing real reporting and revealing things those people don't want you to know. And reporting on the the, you know, the tattle from the corridors of power. But I also think it's making those people the main character in a American life. You know, it's like why I talk about Nikki Fink. All of us in journalism, you realize at some point, if you just tell people, these are the most important people in the world over and over again, it just eventually

becomes true to some. Yeah. We're journalists. That's part of what it is, right? We're doing this. It's not a matter of the truth or untruth that you're printing. It's a matter of emphasis. So I think the thing you're saying that dividing line,

I think both things can be true at the same time. Yeah. And then you have a festival and you put that person on stage. And maybe you are asking tough questions and nosing around and giving them a really good, tough interview. But you're also saying like you, this is the most important thing in the world is to interview you. Yeah.

You are the place from which all this flows. So anyway, just a little statement of principles here. I also think there's a way to do this from the outside. And so here at the press box, we will not ask to see your tax returns before you listen to this podcast. Your qualification to listen here to read what David and I write is that you are interested in the subject. Yeah. And to come back to your point, David, if we offered ringer listeners,

the trucker hat versus the tote bag, are we sure it's going to be the tote bag? No. No, that would be a pretty good toss-up. I'm not exactly sure. But that is less to do with the demographics and more to do with societal norms. I think there's a lot of people who would have chosen the trucker hat a couple years ago, present company included, that have much more used for a tote bag at a certain phase of life.

And there's a lot of people for whom you can look around and be like, I would have never worn a trucker hat in my life. but suddenly the CEO of my company is wearing a trucker hat. These things are much more socially acceptable now than they once were. So, you know, it flows in every direction. We could also thin slice and say press box listeners versus other ringer podcast listeners. Trucker hat even three years ago versus tote bag. These are the dividing lines here that are very interesting to ponder over the holidays.

Before we go, David, I want to induct a journalist into the hall of departed journalists. we do this from time to time. You remember earlier in the year we inducted Dusko Doder who was a foreign correspondent. Yes. Falsely accused of having KGB ties because it was good at his job. Linda Deutsch, a legendary AP court reporter.

Today I want to induct Gerd Heideman, who is the only journalist on this list who has been played by Jonathan Price in a movie. Gerd Heideman, David, was the journalist at the center of the phony Hitler Diary scandal. Oh, yeah.

Who just died this month. You've heard me talk about this. This is one of my favorite journalism scandal stories, by which I mean the one that I have read the Wikipedia page and other sort of material the most. Yeah. It is like a world historical version of the Stephen Glass scandals. So here's the pot of history. Gert Heideman worked for the German magazine Stern.

and in 1983, Clay Risen writes in the New York Times obit, Heidman revealed what he said were 62 notebooks in which Hitler had written his innermost thoughts. This is 1983, dude, 40 years after the end of the war in Europe. Yeah. We have suddenly found these diaries.

And as with every hoax, there is a real story at the center. of it, which was that as the Allies are closing in on Berlin, there were planes that were really loaded up with Hitler's belongings. And one of these planes, which included some nebulous, important documents, crashed. So as the story went here, oh, at the crash site, a farmer, I believe that in this telling of the story, found the documents. The documents turned out to be private diary.

and that after this and that happened, these were passed on to Gerd Heidman, the journalist, who purchased them with money that Stern had given him to buy the diaries and thus this world exclusive. Well, Stern said, hey, we need to verify that these are the real thing,

appearing as they are out of the midst of time. So they brought in an expert historian from England, Hugh Trevor Roper. Uh-huh. he inspected the diaries and found them to be real. At this point, Stern says, hey,

we want to share the publication of this with other media outlets and other countries. Yeah. Partly because we've been paying a lot to purchase these things. Yeah. They'll help subsidize it. Subsidize it. Right.

Rupert Murdoch got in on the bidding with the Times of London. Newsweek got involved in the bidding. Murdoch wound up winning. And in April 1983, the diaries are set to be published. at the last minute, the aforementioned historian Hugh Trevor Roper tells

the Times of London, by the way, I'm not sure that I believe these are real anymore. At which point, Murdoch is alleged to have uttered an immortal line, which I will paraphrase here,

fuck it, publish. Yeah. And thus they were published. So the diaries come out. They are revealed to be completely phony. the scam was perpetrated not by Heideman, who was duped, but by a forger named Conrad Cujow, who was known to have forged many a thing in his life, including the diaries.

Gerd Heidman, it turns out, wasn't completely off the hook because some of that money that his magazine had given him to purchase the diaries, he kept. so he went to prison along with the forger he went to prison for stealing money out of the coffers well they had said hey how much does this you know last edition of the dollar it was like X amount of dollars and he kept a large amount of it for himself it wasn't just like he ran up the expense

account no no they would have been happy with that he was actually taking the money if that potted history made you at all interested, at least beyond Wikipedia, Robert Harris is in the mega-selling novelist Robert Harris, wrote a whole nonfiction book about this. Yeah. Which is called Selling Hitler. And it's coming to Netflix this fall, starring Greg Olson as, what's the guy's name?

Gerd Heideman. Gerd Heideman. You thought Jonathan Price did a good job portraying him. the movie of selling Hitler is also on YouTube by the way with the aforementioned Jonathan Price if you were interested book is probably not the best yolo flakabod gift but you know very very interesting gerd Heidman david the newest member of the hall of departed journalists oh wow we'll miss him all right we got a few departments here as we shove off America's softest target mm-hmm this is where we pick a subject that

journalists can feel comfortable teeing off on with no possible repercussions for their careers. I'd like to nominate the New York Jets. Are they not already? Have they not been nominated already? I would like to nominate them again then. Okay. Because after that athletic story came out, do we have a pro Jets contingent in America? No. I feel like we've said this before because even the Jets fans in the media are so self-loathing that there's no one to, there's no, there's no, there's no one to defend them. Yeah, even Fireman Ed is not defending them against the fake news.

Fireman Ed just pops up once every like five years to announce that he's been kicked out of a Jets game. I'm not invited back. I saw an update from him this weekend. I didn't realize we were receiving weekly updates from Fireman Ed. Anyway, America's softest target, the New York Jets. You can go no wrong by sticking pins in them. Only in journalism, David. These are words you hear all the time in news stories, but never hear in human speech.

our friend Chris Reed down in San Diego asked chat GPT to give him 10 only in journalism words. Oh, this is a good idea. Good use of AI. Okay. I think we've had some of these, but they are all fantastic. Galvanize, kerfuffle, alleged amid, which is fantastic, rhetoric, scrutiny, debacle, underpin, escalate, and information. infamous. Underpin is also excellent. Yeah. I never underpin anything in human speech, but there are lots of underpinnings. No,

and infamous is not only in journalism, but it is sort of only in the written word. I think it's another weasel word where somebody hasn't necessarily been convicted of something. Yeah. But they're infamous, which gets you off the hook for libel. Yeah.

We've got some media piss test here. This is where reporters say a thing is like another thing except on steroids. Mitchell Tyler over on blue sky says NASA's proposed Mars chopper, which is like a satellite that looks like a or a lander that looks like a helicopter, is ingenuity on steroids. Oh, okay. That's a little bit artful.

I don't mind that one as much. That's from Gizmodo. And then Bill Belichick, as you know, is at the University of North Carolina now. Yeah. And John Arand in his Puck newsletter says ESPN will run the same place. book with Belichick that they did with Jim Harbaugh at Michigan, albeit on steroids. That's from listener Eric San Innocentio. Thank you for sending that, Eric. And now it's time for the feature where nothing is put in the egg knock.

Okay. Except good old-fashioned booze. It's time for David's Shoemaker guesses, the strained pun headline. Yeah. Today's headline, David, comes from alert listener Jeff Miller. It's from racket. Have we had a racket on this? What is racket? Should I know what that is?

Rackett M.N. here. It is a newsletter called The Flyover. Your daily digest of important, overlooked, and or interesting Minnesota news stories. Okay, there we go. This is a story, David, about police horses. All right. horses.

Minneapolis City Council was deliberating about next year's budget and they want to put the police horse out of commission or at least take the police horse out of the budget.

I want you to think of the pro-police slogan back the blue as you ponder. What was rackets strained pun headline? Back the blue back the blue

this is very strained in the best possible way back them back them now the article here notes that the horses are not dying but what happens to a horse

oh glue yes okay so back the glue back the glue is the answer to the strain pun headline

yeah I feel like they get it that better than that really ended 2024 with a whimper huh yeah David bearing

the folks over racket for that headline send your letters to David underscore Shoemaker right he is David they couldn't do something

with nays like any nays like uh the nays have it right yeah the nays have it but that would if the city council had voted yeah see this is why

David gets paid the big bucks he is David shoemaker on I'm Brad Curtis but actually magic one final time by Brian Waters how fun was it to work with Brian Waters He's the best. In 2024.

Our guy. There's a reason his name is mentioned at the beginning of the podcast because we love working with him and he does a fantastic job. Press box schedule coming up. We're not done for 2024. There's going to be no show this Thursday. David and I will both be on assignment. And then David will continue to be on assignment the next week.

Joel and I are going to do shows Monday, December 30th and Thursday, January 2nd. So two more shows, well, I guess one more in. 24. One more in 2025. David, Merry Christmas to you, sir. Thank you. You too. Happy Yola Boko Flood. Yeah, happy Yola Boko Flood to you, to you and yours. I feel like I mispronounced that at least one time during this podcast. And I look forward to seeing you, sir, in 2025. Oh, you will.