The Press Box - NFL's Mega Rights Deal With Kevin Clark, Listener Mailbag, and Lis Power

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

Kevin Clark joins the show to discuss the details of the monster NFL rights deal and what it means for the media consumer. Then, Bryan and David answer your listener questions including thoughts on embattled governors, the best ways to get fired, and sounding bald. Lis Power of Media Matters also stops by to talk about what life is like needing to consume cable news around the clock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the ringer here. This is the press box. Coming up on today's show, we answer your listener mail. Liz Power of Media Matters joins us to talk about why cable news can't cover immigration or just about anything else. And Kevin Clark stops by to talk about the new NFL TV deals. But David, it's Thursday. So why don't we answer a little listener mail? By all means.

All right, David, listeners, Alex and Ian K. had the same question about Andrew Cuomo. Re-Munday's podcast, isn't the intermediate step between governor and disgraced former governor, actually embattled governor? Yeah, and I was on the verge of bringing it up during the last show. Embattled is a great one. Embattled is fantastic. Embattled is, well, we're talking about trying to figure out words. What is the journalism tool version of a weasel word?

Is it just a weasel word? Embattled, it's not just that embattled is sort of vague enough to accomplish whatever you want, it very pointedly means either this person is trash or this person is under fire for something they don't deserve to be under fire for depending on the rest of the words in the headline or in the lead, right? Like it means totally different things depending on the audience and the subject. Is anybody embattled in real life or are you just, embattled in the pages of a newspaper.

Role playing games notwithstanding, I think that you're only embattled within the pages of a newspaper, and you're really only embattled when you're on the trajectory to being disgraced. Right? Or vindicated. I guess vindicated would be the other option,

but you're only embattled as a sort of like a transitory period that doesn't really hold that doesn't really, you know, hold enough for another descriptor. It's kind of like the word estranged. You see estranged in journalism, but nobody says, oh, my estranged former wife or my estranged uncle Larry.

And you do say estranged wife sometimes, right? But only wife, I feel like. Would you say that to another person to describe someone in your life? I don't know about that. Maybe not. Semi-related question from listener, the epic. Let's say you're a famous athlete or politician in hot water and you need to do a soft ball interview to do damage control.

Who would be your top choices? And I thought about this in the context of a couple of things. One, Donald Trump's choice turned out to be Maria Bartaromo this week, so we can cross that off the list. But is there a safe harbor, David, for Andrew Cuomo? Anywhere in the media from cable news to print to podcasting to whatever you can think of? Oh, man. It's really hard. First of all, Maria Bardo, I don't agree with the career path,

but despite how we may have talked about her in the waning days of the election cycle, she has apparently played this to perfection, right? I mean, she has a five-quarter. Exclusives with the president, you know? It used to be, you know, good morning America or something, or the Today Show, but that's not a specific person, just a platform. But, you know, those have sort of, that's changed in the modern age. Or Ellen, I guess.

But even that is that now under, even though you'd probably still get the softball, I don't think the result would be what you wanted it to be. I don't know. Can you imagine Andrew Cuomo going on Ellen to do the interview? I don't think that's going to happen. I think you pick, you pick the outlet first and then pick the, then pick the, then pick the interview target, right? So, like, maybe the move is to go,

like, who would be the softballiest person that a legitimate, maybe like Michael Strayhan? You get the platform, but you'd also get, you know, maybe not the harshest critic on the other side of the table. So you say that, and I didn't see this interview,

but apparently he was very tough with Chris Harrison of the bachelor, Bachelorette the other day. And then Chris Harrison did not come back to the show. okay well my apologies to michael strahan journalistic uh paragon uh we should also note after we did our quomo segment the other day sienna college released a poll that had 50 percent of new york voters saying quomo should not immediately resign 35 percent said he should immediately resign and 15 percent weren't sure that was conducted march 8 through 12 which i think predates one of the

allegations and also predates all those new york democrats calling on quomo to resign but still an interesting data point knowing this whole discussion of what is Andrew Cuomo going to do. And I think this does have a bearing on the conversation. It is worth mentioning just that a lot of people, particularly on the right, have pointed out the sort of implicit contradiction between, you know, demanding impeachment for Trump or whatever else and then just sort of letting Cuomo's various problematic behaviors or potential, well, whatever else, problematic. behavior slide, the polling about Cuomo just smacks of exhaustion, right? That it's just sort of what we've been through. And I'm not saying there's not some sort of cognitive dissonance between one and the other. I kind of feel like if everything else has been running smoothly, there might be more angst

or anger ginned up around Cuomo in the voting populace, whereas everybody else is just sort of post-election, just ready to take a nap. And it's left to people like us to sort of gin up our angst about it. Yeah, and as we should note, these are very different questions too, right? What should Andrew Cuomo do? What does poll of New York voters say Andrew Cuomo should do, at least immediately? All right, this is from our pal Scott Tobias. Journalists were unanimous in their condemnation of the callous way 47 people were laid off from Huffpo.

So let's set the standard going forward. How would we like to be fired? More specifically, how best to lay off people in mass. you'll remember David the defectors Laura Wagner reported on these layoffs last week and employees at Huffpo were called into a virtual meeting where the password was spring is here then they were told check your email and if you don't get a layoff email by one o'clock you're not laid off that's just ridiculous it's like the hunger games or something I don't understand it's I think first of all the answer is nobody wants to be laid off no one should be

you know, no one should have to go through that. That's really tough. There's no good way to be laid off. There's no good way, yeah, to be laid off. But if you have to do it, it would be nice if there was, you know, some sort of personal touch. Maybe there's no difference. Maybe you get a new boss and it doesn't really matter if they sit you down and tell you

they appreciate you if you don't even know them anyway or if they just send everybody an email at 1259. But I don't know. There's no, I don't think there's a right way to do it. it. I mean, presumably something that doesn't, and I think generally in life, you can have to imagine how this is, how this would sound if it's described to another human being and clearly this was the wrong way, right? I mean, it just, it sounds like the most like inhuman kind of horrific way to go about it. I don't know. What do you think? Well, the password to the virtual meeting probably shouldn't sound like a book I'm reading to my five-year-old daughter where the main character is a rabbit. That's probably where I'd start fixing all this. But yeah, I guess the issue is, let's say that there was a hypothetical world where you brought every single one of those employees in and you had some kind of personal talk with them and said, like, this really sucks.

but as soon as you bring one or two of those employees in, everybody else is going to know it's probably going to be on social media. And then you are essentially everybody at the company is like, oh, wait, am I laid off? So I don't know. And by the way, I am not conceding that HuffPo should have laid off anybody. The HuffPote Union said, quote, this is also happening less than a month after HuffPost was acquired by BuzzFeed.

We never got a fair shot to prove our worth. I've got an update on the Trump book market, David. According to a piece by Politico's Gabby Orr and Meredith McGraw, Trump, quote, is scheduled to sit for a dozen interviews in the coming weeks with authors examining his presidency. Writers who have scored an interview with Trump include Maggie Haberman, ABC's John Carl, Michael Wolfe, and the Washington Post's Philip Rucker and Carol Leoneg, who wrote a previous book called A Very Stable Genius.

Trump guide Jason Miller tells Politico we're tracking nearly three dozen post presidency books where he will be the star love that phrasing so not only is there going to be a flood of Trump books everybody's getting an interview with Donald Trump

apparently for the books yeah wow well I mean clearly he's been convinced of the notion that there is a positive to being you know a part of the process. We've talked about that many times before.

It's a little bit harder to, I mean, most people would say it's a little bit harder to maintain sort of deniability when the book comes out, but Trump is not going to have any problem with disowning anything, even the ones that he's sat for interviews with. He can deny the words that come out of his mouth. And yeah, I mean, I think that for him, you know, it's almost, No press is bad press, right? Whichever one of these books takes off, Trump's going to want to be able to take credit for. And this way he will be able to.

This is from Matthew Schoeneman. This isn't the norm for your segment, but what would be the first piece of advice you'd give to a college student who wants to start a podcast? Top thing for each of you. I mean, I think there's some really basic stuff, right? I mean, one, like, invest in production quality, not even, I don't know how much money you actually have to invest, but I think we all know it's almost like fake. it till you make it, just make it sound like a real podcast and that'll take you a long way. And then also

there's sort of the basic stuff that you'll hear kind of any journalism question, but especially podcasting. You know, find a thing that no one else is doing or no one else is, or that you can do better than everybody else and just stake out your territory. I would just add, too, that if you're doing it with more than one person, and I'm assuming you're probably doing it with a pal, to work as much on your on-air relationship as you do on whatever it is you're talking about. Because whenever I hear a new podcast, the first thing that I am thinking about, not as a critic, but just as a listener, is how do these people get along on air? What's their relationship like?

Because if I'm going to listen to this more than just once, I want to be able to enjoy their relationship. That's like sort of the basic unit of podcasting. It's a basic unit of TV and everything. and maybe they're going to get such great guests that I have to keep coming back because damn that was an awesome booking that's going to be incredible I have to hear that interview but if it's something I'm going to come back to multiple times a week I have to like the relationship it has to make me feel comfortable and happy or challenged in some way

so whenever anybody asks me about that I'm like figure that out spend spend some time on your relationship your podcasting relationship and that will take you to a good place. We got a little note here. We talked earlier in the week about that little picture and picture reaction box that Tucker Carlson was doing during Joe Biden's primetime address last week. According to Adam Wilson, this was actually a bit on Rush Limbaugh's TV show in the 90s, which by the way was produced by Roger Ailes.

And Adam thinks Tucker's embrace of it might have been a tribute to Rush. So I have not seen this, but apparently, and it completely makes sense. something would be happening and then picture and picture Rush Limbaugh was reacting to it. So Tucker is not pioneering a new form of television here. He is merely doing a conservative talker intergenerational salute to Rush. Very interesting stuff from Adam. This is from Max David. Which commentators, writers from the past would you want to read takes from read the current era?

Trump Biden, COVID, etc. wondering what Hunter S. Thompson would make of today prompted this, but there are so many others hashtag i think that's right what do i mean hunter o thompson's obviously the one that everybody would go to what's what is your what's your first reaction there so here's my question about hunter thompson on the one hand 2020 was so fucked up from top to bottom that you're like wow we'd love to read hunter thompson on the other hand it was so fucked up that you kind of asked do we need hunter thompson is that the right key? Do you need somebody who's just going completely off road

and, you know, chewing on it in this very, you know, sort of out there way and pros and everything like that? Or is that actually not the right approach for the events of the last year and change? I mean, it might have just been an abyss of a spiral with Hunter S. Thompson covering the last four years. I feel we had a lot of Hunter Thompson's covering Trump. Yeah, a lot of people.

Yeah, a lot of people trying to be Hunter Thompson. I mean, that's been sort of the way of things. I mean, are there obvious answers to this besides like Chris Hitchens or something that we should be saying here? Well, it's, it's kind of like you'd take any great writer at any time, wouldn't you? I mean, we'd just say, like, if you had a great columnist. We talked about Molly Evans on this show sometime. Okay, Hitch, Hunter Thompson. Wouldn't you just want to read them on anything, generally speaking?

I'm just trying to think if there's somebody that was like particularly for Trump Biden. I don't know. I don't feel Trump was underserved by political writers with literary aspirations. I feel like we heard from just about everybody about 1,000 times. Finally, David from Cade Stone, despite listening to the show for years, I have somehow managed to avoid ever seeing a photo of David. I was shocked to hear last week that he was bald. Brian has mentioned the podcaster looks like what they sound like spectrum from him to Chris Vernon. Is there a term for this divide?

Kate suggests podcast fishing, which is pretty funny. David, do you have any response to the idea that you do not look like what you sound like? I don't sound bald. Well, that's, I mean, we should put that on my tombstone. D didn't sound bald. Yeah, I've been bald for so long. It's hard to even, it's just weird to even say it out loud. But I guess I appreciate that.

I don't know. I mean, for bald people around the world that maybe I should take offense to that. That's weird. That's weird. I guess some of the, I have pictures of what a lot of the podcast. I almost never Google podcast people. It's hard to see what they look like. So I guess that's not that weird.

But it is, I don't know. What do you think, Brian? I don't feel we've ever sold anybody a bill of goods here on the press box. No. No show ever started with David and I saying, you know what we look like today? Matt Damon and George Clooney. That was never mentioned. So yeah, and you'll notice that in the artwork for our podcast, there aren't pictures of David and I.

That's probably on purpose. We figured kind of a microphone icon might sell the pot a lot better than a lot better than a bunch of show. I'm going to do a new logo for the show. I'm going to go for just the head, just two. Two lovely glamour shots of me and you, or maybe one of us together embracing. That should be the, that should be the logo. All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received.

Some news from ESPN, David. Thanks to an investment in the Finway Sports Group, LeBron James has become a part owner. of the Boston Red Sox. It was an overword Twitter joke to write. LeBron now owns two Boston teams. Thanks to Jay Cal, man, and Joe Knight. Hopefully the sports guy isn't listening right now. In other news, this week,

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was, and I know this will blow your mind, using the border crisis as a political prop. Here's McCarthy speaking near El Paso. We asked him, which countries are people coming from? Yemen, Iran, Sir Lanka. The immigrants are coming from Sir Lanka, says Kevin McCarthy.

Sir Lanka. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write soon. The immigrants will be coming from Madam Lanka. Thanks to Luke B. And finally, David, a tweet from Time magazine. I'm quoting here, Mars has much more water than previously known, but there's a catch.

some great tweets about what that catch might be. For instance, the water is Desani. The water is that gross berry flavor of LaCroix. I enjoyed this one. The water only comes out of those public drinking fountains where the pressure is so low, you kind of have to kiss the faucet. Some others, Jeff Bezos already bought the water. The water is racist.

And my favorite, that's the trouble with an inhospitable radiation-drenched, soil poisoned rock, 151 million miles from Earth. There's always a catch. Thanks to Scott Tobias. If you went ahead and milkshake, duck the water on Mars, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke

of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump. It's a treat to welcome in. Liz Power. She is director of media intelligence at Media Matters. She writes wonderfully about the Fox versus handling of everything from election conspiracies to Dr. Seuss.

Liz Power, welcome to the press box. Thanks for having me. It's a wide range of topics. You had a couple of tweets this week about the border crisis that caught our eye. So the old thing is you tweet about something and your boss makes you write a piece about it. Now you tweet about something you have to come on the press box and do a segment about it. But you tweeted this. I watch cable news for a living and I have no clue the reality at the border because cable news isn't designed to be informative. So how is cable news covering the border right now?

I think cable news is currently covering the border through mostly like a political lens. And politics and policy is definitely part of the story. But I think you lose a lot when you frame it in that way, particularly because not all players in politics, it's going to be shocking. But they're not all honest. And so when you frame it through the. this political lens and you're talking about, well, the Republicans are saying this or Democrats are saying that, oftentimes you're framing it through talking points that are already misleading and convoluted.

What examples have you seen from Fox that sort of gets us away from actual news about what's happening into political talking points world? So I think the biggest thing on Fox, well, first of all, they've been fearmongering about migrants coming to the United States for years and years and years. We saw it in the 2018 midterms with their caravan coverage, which started when there was a caravan over a thousand miles away from the border. But if you were watching Fox, you thought like you were about to be invaded by this horde of migrants. And right now, their big talking point is like the border is wide open, catch and release is back into effect. Like, migrants are streaming across the border

and into our country and they're going to be in your neighborhood next. And none of that is based on reality. Most migrants who are coming into the United States are still being expelled back to Mexico. Really, the largest difference right now in the Biden administration is that unaccompanied minors, so children are being allowed. to stay in the country. But if you watch Fox News, that's not your takeaway at all. Yeah. I mean, and there's there is the sort of practical aspect of this, Fox choosing not to, choosing

to lie about it and to disemble when they're not lying and to, you know, be selective in what they're airing. And then there's sort of a broader issue. It's not just Fox, right? I mean, it's when, when the border comes up on CNN or MSNBC, they, They have a, you know, Republican congressmen, a Democrat congressman, their heads pop up and they debate this political issue. There's not even really like a venue for news anymore, right? I mean, it's, I don't mean, it's, we're old men hosting this show, but you don't have to be that old to remember a time when the talking head bits were like the supplement to the news being delivered, right?

And now that's the entire context of everything that you see on those channels, right? Yeah. And it's not just the elected politicians, though that's a big part of the problem, but you have this whole pundit class now. And these people are like supposed to be jacks of all trades and they can talk about anything. But usually it's once again through this I'm a GOP operative pundit or I'm a. And so they're giving a specific talking point from a predetermined point of view. That's really regardless of the facts. And, and, and, areas that they don't honestly know what they're talking about. I think working at Media Matter is one of the things that was maybe like the most shocking to like my naive former self is when I used to watch the news, I like thought everyone knew what they were talking about and were coming from like a good honest place. And like that's just really not largely the case when you're talking about these guests who are being brought on. And that is, I will say, for the

most part, correspondence have done a good job. So when you do have the correspondence segments, so if you can see sometimes like Jacob Soberoff on MSNBC, his segments are really informative, they're fact-based, he knows what he's talking about. He's like made a specialty out of kind of the immigration situation. But largely when you see shows talking, you're not talking about what the correspondence are saying. You're talking about what McCarthy down at the border just talked about, and what he just talked about was usually a lie. We were talking about Seussgate on this podcast. And back on March 2nd, you ran the numbers of Fox's Dr. Seuss obsession. You found out it's an hour and nine minutes, they talked about Dr. Seuss. They spent 26 minutes talking about coronavirus

vaccine developments, 22 minutes talking about the FBI director's testimony about January 6th. Can you just tell us how do you calculate these minutes? I'm assuming you're not watching Fox News with a stopwatch all day, or is that actually the case? I mean, that's kind of close to what it is, honestly. So usually our method for this, and we do this for a lot of different topics, I just never really thought it was going to be so much about children's stories and toys as it has been But yeah, basically we search transcripts on the network for the words associated with the story. And then we watch it. And yeah, we just time everything out.

We use some nice equations on Excel. But we watched the segment. We start it. We stop it. And we just add it all up. A lot of people pointed out in the Seuss coverage that Fox would do this little slide of hand where they would put up a picture of green eggs and ham or cat in the a book that was not, right, all the favorites that are not controversial while talking about books

that actually were controversial in pictures they wouldn't put up. What else did you notice it stuck out to you about their coverage of the whole Seuss thing? The most like deceptive part of it was like they were trying to basically tell you like the left is canceling Dr. Seuss and like, oh my God, like the left doesn't want you to read green eggs and ham. And this was ultimately a corporate decision made by the Dr. Seuss estate to stop publishing those six books. It had nothing to do with the left being outraged. It had nothing to do with this cancel culture that they are obsessed with covering. It was a business decision by the people who run Dr. Seuss's estate. And that's the same with the Mr. Potato Head controversy, which was also a big story on

Fox News for a while. The company decided they were going to overall call the brand Potato Head and basically someone misread a press release and it became this whole controversy about them canceling Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, which didn't happen. Specific to the Dr. Seuss thing, there was a lot of misrepresentation and the side images and stuff. But then, you know, Tucker Carlson did a whole segment where he like read the sneaches from cover to cover. And I was a big fan of the sneaches. I took exception to that. That book is not

being canceled. And there's a lot of sort of metaphorical impact that can be drawn from that. But that's not, that wasn't the problem. But, I mean, Fox has always been quick. And Fox adherence, always been quick to point out that there's this like line between the news shows and the opinion shows. And you can't really say anything about the opinion shows because those are just opinion shows. But they've sort of mastered the art of, I guess, like opinion creep. Um, where, they don't necessarily go as far as Tucker does during the day, but they'll put like Tucker colon and then something that he said during his show on all day long and use that as the basis for what they discuss.

Is there any way to look at that without, how do you view that, I guess? And is there any way to look at it without just being as suspicious as I obviously am? No, I think Tucker creep is actually a really good word for what is happening. And we in my department have started to kind of track this to some extent. But you're absolutely right. I mean, they used to really hold on to this. We have news shows and we have opinion shows. And while that was always nonsense, to be perfectly honest, it's gotten significantly worse.

Segment after segment now on their so-called news shows are entirely premised of whatever Tucker Carlson was outraged. about the night before, whether it was WAP being performed at the Grammys or, I mean, so many segments they have a guest on. And oftentimes it's like an elected member of Congress. And they're like, please respond to what Tucker Carlson said last night. And then they'll air a whole clip of it on their supposed news side show. It's gotten like really extreme. It's almost every episode probably. So Donald Trump used to be Fox News's assignment editor. And now Tucker Carlson is Foxxie. Fox News' assignment editor essentially?

Yeah, largely. And Tucker Carlson had actually basically said this was going to happen. He was like, I'm about to get a much bigger role at the network. And everyone was like, what does this mean? And then all of a sudden, his face is popping up constantly during the dayside. I think David and I were interested in right after the election was, how would Fox News cope with the loss of Trump? You know, Trump was such an organizing principle for them.

Trump says this, great, we say this. And anybody who's against him, okay, we don't like that. them. That's today's show. What have you noticed about the way they've tried to program after January 20th? I mean, to some extent, they're a little loss, and they're a little bit flailing to find something that will honestly stick. And the largest thing they have resorted to is this sort of cultural roar stuff, which includes canceling Dr. Seuss. It includes screaming about Cardi B. But a lot of it, that like dominates their coverage. And I think part of the reason is because they don't really cover the news of the day that like most other outlets are covering.

They tend to ignore a lot of that stuff. The stimulus package passed Congress, a historic bill. And like they pretended it wasn't happening for the most part. Time and time again, like actual news is happening. and they're still stuck on like some high school canceling their South Pacific high school musical. Even their Biden criticism, which there is a lot of, like Biden can do nothing right. But a lot of it seems like kind of just like feeble attempts to get something to stick. And they haven't really learned from the election cycle where they kept trying to paint him as like an old senile man who can't even make a.

And like every single time Biden goes off successfully makes a speech and they just return to the same like tired talking points, hiding Biden, all of this stuff. They're really struggling to find something that sticks and have basically defaulted to fear mongering about migrants and being outraged by some stupid news story of the day. You watch a lot of this stuff, obviously. We do, but you watch much more than us. Let me start with an easy one. What's your favorite show on Fox News? That was an easy one? No, that was a sarcastically easy one.

If you had to keep, if you got a new job, they had nothing to do with this, but the condition was you had to keep watching one Fox News show every day and real time for the rest of your life. What would you pick? I think I would probably go with the five. because it's just absolutely idiotic.

And so I at least could, like, kind of laugh at the stupidity of it to some extent. Most of the other stuff just makes me really angry constantly. So there's at least some joy there. Do you get burned out by all the watching? I mean, what is the, what is your self-care process? And it's not even, doesn't he have to be, like, you know, ideological? It's just a lot of consuming the kind of,

of stuff that sort of can put someone into a funk. Yeah. There's definitely times where I get burnt out and it's like, I know I'm supposed to be like paying very close attention to what's going on, but there'll be a segment where I'm like, I just have to mute you for now. Like, I can't listen to this anymore. And I will say that's probably happening like more frequently the longer I do this. I will say it's, I have a delightful team behind me in the media intelligence department. And so we share the brunt of like watching fox news which helps out a lot and somebody's eyes are on the station all day essentially like live when there's fox programming on or oa n or newsmax somebody somewhere is watching this stuff live yeah from the time we get in until the time we leave

someone's watching CNN MSNBC Fox news ohan we have eyes on but not quite as much because O-I-N mostly plays the exact same thing over and over again all day. It's like really bad programming. But yeah, that's what we do. Do you ever struggle to like narrow down what you're going to write about or put a clip of online? Because I would just think watching an episode of Tucker, there could be like seven things. How do you decide between which things you want to make a story out of or make a clip out of and which things you're just going to let fly into the ether?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think oftentimes, like, clips, we reserve it for, like, either things that are, like, very terrible or on the counterpart, sometimes there's things that are actually pretty good and we'll highlight those. Or if they build on a particular narrative that we know has been, like, problematic on Fox. But we don't really let anything fly off into the ether. We keep a very extensive database of every single segment on cable news. So we always have our notes. We can always go back. We know exactly who is on talking about what. So we've always got our eyes on everything. You mentioned Fox, O-A-N, Newsmax. Has the existence of Newsmax and O-A-N changed your perspective of Fox?

Or is this all a piece of the same product right now? I think it's all a piece of the same product. I will say OAN is like way farther out there than Fox. It's very conspiratorial. It is really just devoid of reality or facts. And while Fox is largely that as well, it's not quite as far out there. But I do think the emergence of Newsmax and OAN is like semi-serious competitors. has actually made Fox kind of go farther to the right in some extent.

We were talking about the news opinion divide earlier, and I mean, right now they're like canceling most of their news shows and just throwing in opinion shows. They got rid of the 7 p.m. news show, the 11 p.m. news show, and they're just putting in opinion and bad opinions at that. We've been reading this morning about the murders in Atlanta and attacks on Asian Americans and people of Asian. dissent. How does Fox handle a story like that?

So one of the things I noticed yesterday was that Fox was talking about it significantly less than CNN and MSNBC. And they weren't really having in-depth conversations like the other networks were about this rise of anti-Asian discrimination and harassment, which the other networks were doing a good job to tie in. But on Fox News, it's really the opposite. Fox is like, why is everyone jumping to this conclusion that it was a hate crime? And they did a similar thing actually, believe it or not, with the mass shooting at the Charleston Church several years back. Their automatic response to that was like, this isn't a hate crime. So why is everyone like jumping to this conclusion? So they really, most of their coverage today,

at least has been about like trying to deflect this away from it being like a thing about race. And I'm pretty sure Tocco Carlson last night was like insinuating that like we were just trying, like people are just trying to divide by pointing out like the anti-Asian discrimination. I see. So Fox suddenly discovers let's not jump to conclusions and let's not divide people with with their, with their use of news in a case like this. This is this is not maybe the most major point. But I, I, for some reason, was just totally shocked by the fact that Fox was just totally accepting of a sex addiction as a problem that people deal with. I'm accepting of that as a potential issue in any situation. But the fact that Fox just wrapped their arms around that as the solution of this was just kind of jarring to me.

The whole thing was... Not only that, but like the guy says he's not racist, so he can't be racist. this is kind of flimsy rationality to me. All right, one more for you, Liz. Your Twitter bio indicates that you are a Philadelphia Eagles fan. I am, I am. Do you find that the mindset required to be an Eagles fan is the same as the mindset required to cover cable news?

It really toughens you up, and you get really good at, yeah, dealing through some nonsense. So I think it's prepared me well in life. You can read Liz Power at Media Matters and on Twitter at Liz Power One. Liz, thanks so much for coming on the press box. Thanks for having me. All right, this episode needed an emergency segment.

Because the NFL TV deals came down today, four TV networks and one streaming service will be paying the NFL $100 billion over the next 11 years. I am joined by Kevin Clark, host of the Ringer NFL show, Slow News. one of the best sports writers in the business. Kevin, since Monday, you've been talking about rosters and free agency and stuff like that. What does a deal like this do for the NFL? So those two things are connected because we're in a very weird spending time. $182 million was the cap this year.

Last year was $198. A decade ago, it was $120. That's what you need to know about the last television deals. And so what does this do for the NFL? Well, it changes the finances. Charles Robinson was on our podcast. from Yahoo a couple days ago. And he said there are teams now modeling five years from now with $260 million salary cap. Well, this year it's 182. Next year, it's probably going to be pretty

flat or just rise a little bit. And so now, if you're a GM right now, the number one thing you're trying to figure out is you're trying to figure out how much can, if I'm Brandon Bean right now, the bills GM, how much can I pay Josh Allen? How much is Josh Allen going to ask for? Does Josh Allen just try to play the franchise tag game for a couple of years and wait until 20, 25 and get that huge contract? I mean, there's so many team building questions. Beyond that, from a league standpoint, they take pride in the fact they almost doubled their money. You know, when I was at the Wall Street Journal, I didn't cover sports business, but one of our TV reporters wrote a story about the old deals. And the headline on it was the league that runs television.

And it was the front of the business section one day. I wasn't even on the NFL beat at this time. This was 2011, I think. And I saw the headline, thought it was interesting. A couple of years later, I was in the league office, meeting with a couple of people. And somebody told me that that headline, the league that runs television,

was not only circulated around 345 Park Avenue, but there were multiple, like, maybe dozens, framed copies in the office. Because they loved it so much, okay? and that's kind of all you need to know. They take some pride in being the league that runs television. There's a reason that they're able to get this much money. It's because you are not relevant as a network.

It's because the NFL is the only thing Americans do in mass anymore. And so any of the – there were – at some points, you know this, Brian of the last decade, there was a lot of doom and gloom. Oh, they're not – TV is dying. They're not going to get these deals or, oh, they need Netflix involved or whatever. And at the end of the day, it's just – this is what America – watches and if CBS and NBC and Fox wanted to stay relevant, they pay up and they did. So I think we can tweak the journal headline even a little bit more after this deal.

They don't just run television. The NFL now is television. Yes. Because when you and I grew up, the NFL was one of a number of popular things that were shown on network television. Now it is the popular thing that appears on network television when you don't have like Donald Trump in a debate in a particular year. And when I thought about these TV deals, you're absolutely right. NBC and Fox and CBS really wouldn't exist

if they didn't renew the NFL deal. They have become a delivery vehicle for professional football. And that's how you get these huge numbers. And you know, it's so funny because I always feel in life we're often blown away by big numbers that don't really mean anything. The movie

made $300 million. I don't know what that means. Let me tell you the number that means something. 100 billion dollars, 100 billion dollars. And all four of these networks paying the NFL of sum every year that begins with two comma, two billion dollars or more from four different network. It's unbelievable. And when you think about the fact that it is television, it's funny. I've told the story before, but an NFL executive on the media side told me that They used to go in every March around now, probably would be this week.

They normally meet with the owners and the coaches and the GMs. They all get together in some resort. And one of the meetings is the media side, hey, how are we doing, how we make our money, all that stuff? And the league executives used to, I don't know, 15 years ago, say, hey, here's how we're doing against other sports. Here's how the Super Bowl did against the NBA finals or here's how the Western Conference finals and hockey did against this, you know, this Bucks game or whatever.

And then maybe 10 years ago, it switched to, okay, here's how we're doing against the Big Bang theory. Here's how we're doing against 60 minutes because the other sports stopped competing. And obviously the NFL has always been the most popular sport. But the Gulf only got bigger and bigger, you know, kind of in this age. And you saw that recently with the declines in ratings across the board. So the NFL was down, I think, 7% this year. Everybody else was down way more than that. So it's just a different ballgame now.

And now, from what I understand, I'm not even sure that they can do the, the, hey, we get more viewers in the Big Bang or the Masked Singer or whatever it is. Because, right, isn't it like 48 of the top 50 shows or just football games now? Like, it's over. You're right. This is television. Like, this is, television is propped up by football. And I think in a little bit, it's vice versa because I think that I've heard people like

John Iran talk about this. if they went streaming only, they would get much less money. People just don't know how to how to pay for that at this point. And I think that it's going to take a little bit. I think the Amazon part of this is fascinating because they'll be able to kind of figure out what that looks like. But they're going to get the most money and the most distribution from this kind of deal. They like this deal. And TV certainly likes this deal.

Totally. It is hard to explain to people who spend their time and no judgments. Watching Bridgeton and watching the question. Queens Gambit that you know how to get a big audience, you put it on channel two, and you put the other games on channel four, and you put the other games on channel five. That's why the NFL deal is so much different than any other sports deal. They have those channels, which are single digit channels on everybody's television, all giving them tons of money.

And, you know, we don't need to get into the weird sports ratings discussion here, but clearly a reason the NFL has, part of the reason the NFL's maintained its popularity is all, so many games are on free television. It's that simple, right? If you're a Cowboys fan, you live in Dallas,

every single game is going to be on free television for you. And all the Sunday night games are going to be free. And you're going to be just to be able to watch a ton of football more of the sport than you would in any other sport. Yeah, and they know that. And that's why even they've been, the rumors have always been, oh, that Netflix isn't involved or whatever.

And I think that they just, you know, the Amazon thing, they eased into that. They had, it wasn't exclusive. They were able to, I remember what, five years ago when they put an early game on internet only, it was on Yahoo. It was a huge deal. It was one of the England games. It was a huge deal. And a lot of people inside the league didn't know how it was going to go and all that

stuff. They're going to ease into this stuff that's not television. I think it's funny because, okay, these deals are over in 2034. well, there were a lot of people in 2015 who were saying, by the time these 2021 deals come around, man, they're going to have to get involved, they're going to have to go away from CBS or whatever. So it's hard for me to make any proclamations

about what the rights battle look like in 2034. But what I will say is this is what they want. I believe they've told me this on the record before and some of the stories have written in the past, that they want the best distribution channels off the record, or on background, whatever you want to call it. When I talk to people around sports, you know, you look at baseball. Okay, well, baseball does have record revenues.

They're doing a great job on certain fronts. A lot of people, a lot of people I care about like baseball. But sometimes huge games are on Fox Sports One. Sometimes huge games are on TBS. The NFL that they don't want that as their business model. And that's just different. You know, hockey. I've been watching a lot of hockey right now.

Got to tell you, Brian, watching a lot of MSG plus, okay? A lot of MSG plus these days, okay? Versus still somewhere on my dial, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, they're going to ESPN, so there'll be more visibility. But trust me, the leagues think about visibility a lot here, and that's what this deal ensures. You mentioned the streaming portion of this, which is fascinating because the NFL clearly while having, let's say, nine toes in the terrestrial, normal standard network television universe is putting one toe or maybe one and a half toes in the streaming. universe. Thursday night football is going to Amazon is part of that deal. Bob Crafts that our media

partners in the league understands that streaming is truly the future. What could football look like, do you think, on a streaming platform versus a standard television platform? From a game standpoint, I don't know. I think it's probably more personalization. This is something they've talked about in the past where you're looking at different camera angles. And you know, you kind of had this a little bit with the coaches room and on college football championship games and stuff where it's like, oh, we'll show you the overhead camera and the love Gus Mouson talking or whatever. I think you can get into that where it's like, okay, almost like when you're playing Madden, you're saying, I don't like this side view.

I'd really like to see, you know, behind or, hey, I'm a big fan. If there's some great defense, if you really just want to see the power of Shack Barrett, why don't we just look at Shack Barrett and just is honing on him? All the Shack Barrett heads out there can see him running off the edge. I want a Shaq Barrett channel on Thursday Night Tripaw. Exactly. I'm just going to toggle over to that and just watch him the whole time. Absolutely.

Even if he's not playing in the game, he was at home that night. Just Shack Cam. No, and so I think there's probably more personalization options. I think you saw that a little bit with Amazon with the feeds last year. I really like the Daniel Jeremiah, Bucky Brooks, Joy Taylor feed. I thought that was that was really cool and really good insight. I'm sure they'll have the professional play-by-play guy in there and all that stuff in the main booth,

but I don't think that that's, I don't think they need to be married to that necessarily. So it'll be fascinating to see kind of what that looks like. I'm intrigued to see Brian, like what the ecosystem that builds around it is. Like I had a thing, when I was in the journal during 2014, when they had all those scandals,

an editor from outside sports was like, can you do a story about what would happen if football stopped being popular? And I was like, okay, well, like ratings were going up that year. Like, obviously football is going to stay. popular. They were like, just do the story. I was okay. So I started calling like advertising executives.

And I was like, what would happen if football stopped being this dominant cultural force? And they were like, I don't understand what you mean. And I'm like, well, okay. And it's like, go through the hypothetical. And they were like, well, you don't understand football, like the beer industry would just have to dramatically overhaul itself.

Because they don't have any place to spend their money on advertising. The advertising industry in general would just go haywire. Buffalo Wild Wing. You know, things you don't even think about. It's like this whole ecosystem based around network television. And obviously this is a small thing, but what I'm saying is just like, what happens is Budweiser and, you know, are they going to be the same volume of commercials?

Just from a business standpoint, I just think there's a lot there when it gets to be on streaming from a business standpoint, just kind of what that looks like, what the presentation looks like. Do they still have the same commercial breaks? They do something else during commercial breaks. Do they have less because, you know, almost this is the big debate in golf, right? With no laying up in those guys is how many golf commercial breaks there are.

And it kind of ruins the flow of everything. Does that change on Amazon? So I guess, you know, they're starting from scratch here. They're not even on television. They can do whatever they want to not only make money, but make a better product on TV. It's going to be interesting to how much they can stretch our idea of what watching a football game is on television, beyond the usual, here is your play-by-play announcer, here is your color analyst with the possibility of these other feeds.

Because I got to tell you, people like you and me watch those alternate feeds of the national championship game, the one Daniel Jeremiah did on Amazon. But normal human life forms, watch football and kind of want somebody to be like, here's what's happening, here's the storyline of the game, if you don't know a ton about these teams,

here's some personality about the quarterback and what he's about. You know, I'm interested to see how much audience you can actually peel off to more specialist stuff and how much a football's audience, because it's so vast, is just an audience. It's like, hey, this is the entertaining thing on TV and I don't want to get too deep into the weeds. There's a reason that a lot of these guys are dominant personalities because they're famous. People like hearing them talk. You know, like on the college football side, if I was in a hospital bed and I was like, you know, on. death's door and Kirk Herb Street appeared on television and he was talking about like South Carolina or something. My family would be like everybody shut up Herb Streets on TV.

You know, they're just like, we got, we got a little standard of this. And I'd be like, oh, I'll help here. They'd be like Herb Streets, Herbstsuits breaking down his top, top five SEC defenses. But, and I think that that's true of Romo. That's true of a lot of these guys. I mean, there's a reason that this, I, I'm someone who still listens a lot to the Fox pregame show. I think there's a lot there. When Michael Drehan's talking, I tend to listen. And I think that that's most of America is conditioned to do that. And so I think, again, it gets back to just this is a national experience.

And I think that there's certain personalities we're going to gravitate towards. And I think that Amazon probably got to develop their own. And the more they try to get away from that, the more they probably realize that people kind of like that. People feel safe with those sort of booths. Well, that's the experiment, right? Is that the best way to watch football that we've just figured out over the years? Or is that just the only way that most of us had to watch every game? So that's what we relied on.

And if given options, we went somewhere else. I really don't know the answer to them. I suspect it's kind of the best way to watch football. The other interesting part about Amazon is they've got to learn how to broadcast football games. This is not something has been done from zero that many times in human history. And just the idea of like, oh, you know, it's not like making a football podcast. You have to figure out, we're going to shoot this game. We got to get really good producers.

By the way, we got to hire announcers. We got to figure out what we're going to do on the sidelines. We got to buy trucks. We got to buy cameras. We got to do all that stuff. That is an exciting idea on the one hand. And on the other hand, that's really harrowing, I think, to do that completely from scratch. So first of all, how dare you suggest that a podcast is not hard to do?

a football podcast. I didn't mean the ring or NFL show. I just meant the rest of it. It's the most, it's like a Nolan movie. It's like Christopher Nolan movie. Every podcast, just extremely intricate. It all ties together. I think that this question is better equipped for you because you did the amazing Fox piece.

You understand better than anybody kind of how, by the way, your piece did a better job of explaining this to anybody, but it's obviously out there that Fox was built on football. and they understood that. And now, listen, Jeff Bezos was not going to be made or broken by this in particular, but this is going to put Amazon sports on the map in a meaningful way. I watched soccer on Amazon sports and I've watched all or nothing or whatever it is, but not like this. So I guess knowing what you know about Fox and knowing what you know about the credibility it brought and the credibility they wanted to have, where do they start?

It's a really good question. Fox, they had the carcass of CBS sports, which had just lost football in 1993 to sit there. And they went and said, who should we get to announce football games? I know Pat Summerall and John Madden, who were announcing the number one game at CBS. And they're going to come over and do it for us. And who should we get to produce and direct games? I know the number one producer and director at CBS, Bob Stern and Sandy Grossman. So there was this easy sort of transition from one to the other.

Amazon doesn't really have that. Now, doesn't mean there's not a ton of football. people that can produce football games. But you are doing it differently. And I think you are, if you want to have something that feels like a special game of the night and not just the fourth game on CBS in a given week or the fourth game on Fox in a given week, got to figure out something different, right? And got to figure out something that's A,

feels really competent. It feels really good. Like you're a viewer and you're like, they're showing me the plays and they're not messing up. And two, that feels like it has some kind of pizzastic. and that's just a fascinating question. I don't know what direction they're going to go.

You know, it's interesting because you talked about how they're going to have to learn this stuff. And whether or not the way things are done now is the best way to show a football game, I don't necessarily know if anybody wants to play around with that. That's why I think that the personalization route is probably best because, you know, when Simmons and I were doing that pot a couple of weeks ago or months ago and we're talking about boxing, you know, I love boxing. Simmons loves boxing. And we were both talking about, well, maybe to get the casual viewer,

maybe you just hit them over the head with the gambling talk or live lines or have Sal on. And we're just breaking down stuff all the time. And boxing has to do that because it's, you know, Caleb Plant does not resonate with within the Curtis or Clark families. Exactly, right? Like we can't just get, can't just have them gather around. Football doesn't have that problem. And so I don't think they need to go adventuring into the unknown.

Exactly. So my guess is they end up with a little more of a brand name production than we would, you know, if I had to, if I had a guess, it would be, you know, Nate Burleson, those kind of guys who are on the cusp of of kind of superstardom, you know, maybe he's never done. Someone like Emmanuel Acho, it was an up and coming guy. He's never done NFL games. But a guy like that would probably work well in the booth. here's a guy you really like. We're going to give him a big job and give him even more visibility. Again, Meshada doing a game of the week. Oh, I love that idea. The other part of the streaming thing that came out today is that ESPN, NBC, and CBS will show games on their streaming arms in addition to showing them on their television channels, which is interesting. But when you mention Amazon Prime and you mentioned the NFL going this route, to me, you can draw a straight line all the way back to the 80s and maybe even before. of every time the NFL needs something to goose the deal just a little bit,

they bring in somebody new, right? In the 80s, it was, I know, you know, the networks are giving us money, but let's get ESPN, and then let's get Turner in here to show the old Sunday night football. That'll get that price up a little bit for us where we wanted. 90s it was Fox, bring in Fox, totally changed the economics. In the 2000s, bring NBC back. So now we have all four, we have four different. NFL packages. And now we're going to five. So, oh, we need to take another jump in the money.

Let's bring in the streaming service. NFL is just an amazing talent for doing that, for finding one more, you know, I don't know what the musical chair's metaphor is, but they always just find one more person. One more bitter than packages. Yep. No, no, but yeah, that's true, but also one more bitter and then one more package. Yeah, well, that's true. Everybody wins. Nobody gets left out. the Thursday night thing was so funny, which I think was in 2014, where they were basically just like, you guys, NFL Network is going to produce these games. You guys can have your own broadcast crew or whatever, but it's not going to be exclusive and you have to pay us a ton of money.

That was always, that was really funny, I think, and everybody paid up. And that was one of the, at least in the last decade, I think one of the moments that the NFL realized it's power. even after the 2011 deals was a Thursday night package. What I will say is the Thursday night package, I believe John Aranis talked about this, not well sought after this time. Just not, they don't like the lack of exclusivity.

They can't make real money off of it. It's just not a thing that, you know, and the NFL is not going to give it up cheaply. And so I just don't think that they're, I think Amazon is probably a good home for Thursday night package. How many good NFL games are there a week? Do you think? Not good for you, Kevin Clark,

but good for like normal person who wants to watch something that isn't playing for draft position. Two, maybe three? I'd say two. I'd say two or three, but I'd also say that that's kind of a moving target because even if it's Bucks versus Chiefs, that might be a 21 to 3 game, right?

Or someone gets hurt or the offensive line. I mean, we just saw the Bucks and the Chiefs and it was a terrible game. But I'm just saying if they run that back in October, But it'll get a good number, but we just don't know. But what I will say is that the NFL in its building has a formula. They know this. And that is that the ratings go up as long as the scores are high and the games are close.

If they have those two things, that is, so if you have two great teams playing a 50 to 48 game that comes down to the last two minutes, you know, kind of easy this all the time with the Saints, right? Like it's just, it's Drew Breeze. He's playing Tom Brady. You know, everybody's put a bunch of points up on the board. That's the ratings bonanza. And so I think you can get when it's not necessarily prime time or whatever,

it's not necessarily the two best teams in the world. You can get to a good number just with that formula, which is just a crazy game that people want to watch. But most of the time, the games that are on at, you know, 430 to all of them. America, at least have some famous quarterbacks or, you know, famous logos in the helmet or famous coach or whatever. I'll let you go after this.

But one thing that was buried in all these negotiations that I was fascinated by and as soon as the press release came out today, confirmed that it didn't happen. And Iran was the first person I saw raised this more than a year ago. He raised this idea that what if the NFL gets rid of the NFC and AFC packages? Currently, Fox produces it gets the NFC games. CBS gets the AFC games. been a split between the leagues. What if they level that and say, okay, Fox, you're going to get some Patriots games and some Cowboys games and some Bucks games and some Chiefs games and

we're just going to split it. But the identity of it that one conference is going to be associated with one network and another with another network is going to be over. I believe from talking to people that that was a very, very real possibility in these negotiations, I believe that was something that people thought really might happen, it didn't happen. And that's probably a win for Fox because they've got the NFC package, the better of the two, the bigger markets and everything. But I think there was a fairly decent chance when this whole thing started more than a year ago that we were going to race that line between those two. Didn't happen. But a fascinating thing that that almost, or let's say not almost, but could have come to

pass. It does make it a little more complicated though, right? Iran knows a million times more than me on this topic. You know a million times more than me on this topic. I don't know a ton about the actual kind of intricacies of the deal. But, you know, if you're going to a draft situation or whatever it is, or hey, I want this game this year, that does make things a little more complicated and a little more, a little more room for anxiety from year to year, right? Absolutely. Not to mention that you have some of these networks own the affiliates in the various cities where the teams are low. So they've invested long term and saying, oh, well, we want to own the affiliate in Detroit because we have the lines. It gets complicated. Anyway, that almost happened. And I would say they already get the the road game when it's the other conference that the road team is aligned with the network. So that basically it gives Jim Nance to an opportunity to call a game in Cowboys Stadium.

Right. Like that's that's what it is. You can see Kevin Clark on Slow Newsday. When is Slow Newsday coming back? When are we doing that again? Well, we were supposed to come back when there was a big NFL trade and that just hasn't happened yet. So we need. We need news.

John Schneider to give the green light. John Schneider, do your worst. We had probably a top 10 most famous NFL player cancel on us a couple weeks ago, which was a very exciting 24 hours, a very exciting 24 hours. I might have gotten a few texts from you in that 24 hours, but we'll keep those offline. Kevin Clark, thanks for coming on, buddy. anytime. And now it's time for David Shoemaker, guess is the strained pun headline.

Yeah. Thursday's headline about watching South by Southwest from home was Couch by Couch West. Today's headline comes from Alex Tolford. It's from the Harper's Readings section. You know those disarmingly personal titles that politicians put on fundraising emails

they send out, David? Oh, yeah. You up? Donate right now to Amy Klobuchar. Well, Harper's did a very funny thing where they took a bunch of those titles from the 2020 election and just ran them as a list. Here are some of them. Hey, so dot, dot, dot, I need to be up front. I see you. I love you. Salivating. I need you now more than ever. We keep emailing. Can I give you a call this week? Almost an obsessive. quality to these titles, wouldn't you say? Yes. What was Harper's strained pun headline? Just for the list. For the list.

Is it like an email joke? Is it like a CC or a BCC? It is an email joke. And I'm also going to direct your attention to a 1992 psychological thriller that may provide some inspiration here. What is 1990? I mean... Obsession.

Unhealthy obsession. The hand that it rocks the cradle? Is that 1990? You're in the right... You're in the right... Like, Cape Fear? Like... How about Bridget Fonda?

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, sorry. I thought that was what I was going for there. Okay, single white email. Single white email. That's great. A little bit of a stretch, but we will take... and he is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic by Steve Allman filling in for Erica. We are back Monday with mystery novelist Harlan Coben and more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.