The Press Box - Pat McAfee Vs. Norby Williamson, the NFL Playoffs on Peacock, the Messenger in Peril, and the Debut of Press Botch

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Bryan and David kick off the show with a discussion about McAfee calling out ESPN executive Norby Williamson. (00:40) Then they get into what is going on with the Messenger (25:15). Later in weekend audio, they discuss Shannon Sharpe reacting to the criticism he faced after his interview with Katt Williams (33:40), the AFC wild-card game being available on only Peacock (42:00), and more. In our brand new segment, Press Botch, they revisit the Embroidery of Brian Williams (47:12). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week 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

Learn more about the albums you love would Dissect, a music analysis podcast hosted by me, Cole Kushna, a lifelong musician. Each season of Dissect dives deep into one album, examining the music, lyrics, and meaning of one song per episode. We've covered albums by Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the creator, Frank Ocean, just to name a few, and our brand new season just launched all about Radiohead's 2007 masterpiece in rainbows. Listen to Dissect on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, because a great art deserves more than a swipe. David?

Yeah? When I was putting together the lineup for this pot on Friday morning, I wrote in my notes, Pat McAfee follow-up if necessary. Turns out it's necessary. Yep. You were coming into this story midstream. Last Tuesday, Aaron Rogers, that is the quarterback Aaron Rogers, went on Pat McAfee's show on ESPN and implied that Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night host who works for the same parent

company as McAfee was somehow associated with Jeffrey Epstein. If you want the reaction to that part of this story, check out Thursday's pot I did with Joel Anderson. Then David a piece comes out in the New York Post by Andrew Marchand, which says that McAfee's ratings on ESPN have been low. So Friday afternoon on his show, on the digital only part of his show, as McAfee pointed out, McAfee picked out one ESPN executive, he said, was not on his side. And folks being very hospitable.

Now, there are some people actively trying to sabotage us from within ESPN. More specifically, I believe Norby Williamson is the guy who is attempting to sabotage our program. I'm not a hundred sense sure. That is just seemingly the only human that has information. And then somehow that information gets leaked and it's wrong. and then it sets a narrative of what our show is. And then are we just going to combat that from a rat every single time? I don't know.

But like somebody tried to get ahead of our actual ratings release with wrong numbers 12 hours beforehand. That's a sabotage attempt. And it's been happening basically this entire season from some people who didn't necessarily love the old edition of the Pat McAfee show to the ESPN family. Sure. Sure. Wow. that is a real call out there. It is. We got our NFL

takes. We got the college football national championship game coming up. And then we are calling out ESPN executives. This is the lineup, the TOC, if you will, of the Pat McAfee program. So the specific allegation is that Norby Williamson, who is a character, I mean, I think his place in the ESPN

and larger media ecosystem is probably worth discussion. but he is an ESPN executive whose name might ring a bell to the average well certainly the average press box listener but the implication is that he has access or very specific unique access to ratings information

that was getting leaked out in a way that from at least Pat McAfee's position could have only been coming from Norrie Williams. That is what McAfee is saying, yes. Wow. Wow. Well, listen, if you and I were in that position and believe something like that very strongly, we might not say it loudly on the air. We'd probably take it to a higher level. But if that higher level was, you know, someone with a, I mean, I guess if you're as powerful as significant as Pat McAfee is,

and certainly if you have the sort of audience and show that he does, maybe it makes the most sense just to say it out loud. I don't know. What do you think? Well, if you're him, you've been like, Like, that approach has served me well so far. Mm-hmm. And getting all the way up to the top of Mount ESPN. And also there's a calculation here, right? Like, what's going to happen to me? If I say this stuff out loud about an ESPN executive.

Yeah. Who, as you say, maybe listeners of the press box, they've heard the name. But to the wider world of Pat McAfee fans, I bet they're going, who, nor be who? Yeah. which brings me to this. Norby Williamson, David. Officially the executive editor and head of event in studio production at ESPN.

Yeah. That is his title. And I feel even outside the press box audience, there's a lot of faux-savvy media watchers that when they see a story, oh, that's, that's Norby. That's a Norby thing. It's probably worth just taking a moment

to explain who Norby Williamson is. Please do. And why there is a mystique built up around Norby Williamson of all people in the sports TV universe. So I got a couple things that explained it, I think. Number one, Norby Williamson is the rare media executive who is known by only one name. Sure. He is the Dom, the Eagle security guy of sports broadcasting. very hard to think of anybody since ABC's Rune Arledge

and no disrespect to Rune Arledge but you could just say the first name. Don't even need the surname and you know exactly what he's talking about, at least inside the industry. Yeah, well, it helps that his name is Norby. I mean, there's not a lot of other Norbyes out there. Not a lot of other Norbyes out there.

That's number one. Number two is Norby Williamson is the ultimate sports TV executive survivor. He got to ESPN in 1985. He has been there 39 years. He was the producer, one of the producers, of the big show with Dan Patrick and Keith Olderman. I mean, we have seen ESPN executives.

Connor Shell, Rob King, they rise, they fall, they leave. Norby Williamson is still at ESPN. Begin his career in the ESPN mailroom, apparently. Unbelievable, right? still comes in. Number three, the somewhat legendary run-ins between Norby and talent.

Right. When I was doing my oral history of Stuart Scott for the ringer a couple years ago, Stuart's sister, Susan Scott told me this. Norby wrote him up. He challenged his scripts.

It was awful. People really don't understand how awful it was, dot, dot, dot. Stewart was desperately frustrated. Stuart Scott, you remember as the guy coming in, changing the way SportsCenter sounded a lot of the time. Going places that Dan and Keith had not gone,

found himself facing off of Norby. If you go to look at Jamel Hill's book, she was hosting SportsCenter at 6 o'clock, the so-called The Six with Michael Smith. Norby was put in charge of SportsCenter. And at that moment, all the unique touches that she and Smith had put into that show, she says in her book,

Norby's the guy who stripped all that away and made it more like standard issue sports center. So that's why you had this very funny thing on Twitter on Friday of this chorus line of former ESPN employees, Jamel, Michelle Beatle, Mike Ryan of the Levitard show, Omani Jones,

people who have, let us say, very little in common artistically with the patent McAfee show, but who are very familiar with executive intrigues at ESPN involving Norby Williams. Yes. All of them coming out of the woodwork. And McAfee said in part of the clip we didn't play that he had once gone to Norby's

office for an appointment and had been kept waiting for 45 minutes. So that's out there too. And then the fourth part of the Norby Mystique is exactly what Pat McAfee said on the air there. This idea or this implication that somehow Norby has planted information in the media. So my question about Norby was always this. How much is he a force inside ESPN? And how much is Norby the guy who is doing the unpopular thing that his bosses wanted someone to do? Uh-huh. because when you hear these stories and you read these stories, there's a little bit of a bad cop element to them. Yeah, sure.

Right? I mean, Jamel Hill, when Norby got put in charge of SportsCenter, when she was there, the sainted John Skipper was the president of ESPN. Yeah. And he knew what Norby was going to do to Sports Center. Mm-hmm. I mean, that's not a surprise. Jimmy Pataro now, these people know what Norby, William, is going to do.

So it always seemed worth asking to me is like, is it him? Or is it the people who are deploying him at ESPN? He's like the hatchet man in that, in that construction. The person who's doing, I think, what the executives want done. At least in the case of Jamel Hill and Sports Center,

absolutely. And again, look at her book if you want more on that. Yeah. Well, somebody, and I won't name names, once called him the little finger of ESPN. And the implication there certainly seems to be that he's operating, at least for his own benefit, if not completely on his own directive. Yeah, but I just, again, I think, I think some of that becomes the mystique part of it, right? This is an organization that has people and then it has people under the people and people under the people and the people at the top are the people that should accept.

responsibility ultimately for what happens in the organization. But when it comes to stuff like leaking ratings, right? Like that's not like what is what is the upside for the people in power for for something like that? Well, let's talk about it generally. Both things can be true. Right. When it comes to, you know, that's sort of more insidious stuff.

I mean, it's not like we're in a contract negotiation with Pat McAfee and we need to make sure the world knows that he's worth a few bucks less than they think. think he is or something. You know, I mean, that's just that that's, if that's true, if any of those insinuations are true, that feels a little bit more pointed. Well, let's let's just, you know, pop out of a second out of this and out of just, just generally talking about television. Why do people talk to the media? Well, they like to talk to the media because they like to talk to the media. They feel flattered when the media calls. But also, I think they want to get their point of view into the press. Mm-hmm. About certain things. They absolutely want to get their point of

view. And let's come back around to that whole idea of stuff appearing about ESPN talent, because I think it is an interesting question. I will say this, dude, the whole idea of Pat McAfee gets bad ratings. Yeah. Just generally, to me, feels a little bit like changing the subject. Sure. Oh, for on Pat's part. No, on, on just the whole way we're talking about the Aaron Rogers, Jimmy Kimmel thing. I mean, there's a little bit of an implication there. that if Pat McAfee were to hit a certain number, it would be okay for something like that to happen on his show. Right.

It's a totally different conversation. It is changing the subject. Yeah. And I totally understand the idea that, okay, you know, you get popular on television or wherever you get popular on, and then there is this long, you earn this right to do things, that people who aren't as popular don't get to do. That's just, I totally understand that as the way the world works.

but it strikes me a little bit of us going from this murky moral issue to the ratings scoreboard and being like, well, look, the ratings don't measure it. Well, who cares? Who cares of the ratings did measure up? When would this be okay to say something like that? And, you know, we've seen this happen at ESPN and elsewhere, oh, it gets good ratings. So, eh, who cares what happens? No, it is important.

Sure. Especially when it's something like this. so all that stuff happens on Friday by Saturday David Pat McAfee is tweeting out a clip from Scarface of Al Buccino just to give you a little play by play here

and then on Saturday night McAfee went to the Colts Texans game the one that Texans wound up winning and on Sunday he posted a picture of his crew at the stadium and McAvey had his arm around ESP and executive Burke Magnus

who is even higher on the ESPN executive totem pole than Norby Williamson. Yeah. So read into that what you will as a statement. Also in speaking of statements on Saturday ESPN which at a corporate level had been nearly silent on all things McAfee minus a Friday afternoon comment about Aaron Rogers put this out

quote no one is more committed to and invested in ESPN success than Norby Williamson. At the same time, we are thrilled with the multi-platform success that we have seen from the Pat McAfee show across ESPN. We will handle this matter internally and have no further comment. Yeah.

So there's that. That's all good and well to say now. I mean, maybe handling it internally would have been the thing to do from the start. I don't even know if you can do that after, you know, the Aaron Rogers, just Jimmy Kimmel fiasco. This thing that has been handled in the most external manner possible,

we will now handle internally. Yeah. It does go a little bit to the Jimmy Patero method that we've seen over the last couple of years. Jimmy Patero president of ESPN, boss of Norby Williams and boss of Pat McAfee. He has styled himself very much as Jimmy. I am a players coach, Patara.

Mm-hmm. At least if you're one of the Max players. If you're Stephen A, if you're Pat McAfee, you can do almost anything. Right. And we talk about those three days of silence after the Aaron Rogers thing, you know,

we're not going to intervene on this, right? Mm-hmm. We're going to handle this somehow. And if you look at his history, if you remember the end of the John Skipper thing, it was Jamel getting suspended. It was Barstole Van Toc, all these very, very public

controversies for, lack of a better word at ESPN. Yeah. Then Jimmy Petarro comes in and Jamel Hill's saying, you know what? I don't think I want to be here anymore. Jamel Hill is, they have a conversation. Jamel Hill gets to leave ESPN and go do the stuff she wants to do outside. Dan Lebitart and friends decide ESPN isn't the place for us anymore.

Guess what? Dan Lebitart and friends get to leave ESPN and they get to take their podcast feed with them. Yeah. Things are handled. Things are handled internally. there is not a massive public locking of horns, which I think was very appealing to Disney after all the very, very public external crises

of the end of the Skipper era. Yeah. So now what does that mean here? Does that mean, you know, Pat McAfee and Norby are giving a table in the ESPN cafeteria in Bristol? Said, you guys get what you want. We'll pay for it.

sit down and have a long conversation and come to some kind of reprochement? I mean, it's a good question. Seems like a tough thing to come back from, at least in terms of relationship, but I guess that's sort of, I don't know. It's just, it's hard to,

it's hard to imagine exactly how they come back to them. So maybe so, but maybe that's exactly it. Maybe it's a sort of phony conversation. They both walk away feeling like they got, um, they got by and that's kind of all that's necessary. but just a deeply weird situation.

I mean, you're right, we haven't investigated. He said it before, changing the subject. We haven't really talked about the Aaron Rogers mess in great detail. And maybe that's part of the plan. I mean, maybe that's exactly what everybody wants here. You know, to be pointing fingers at executives at a time when fingers should be pointed at you, And I don't think that Aaron Rogers thing should have, you know, I don't think McAfee needed to get punished in some sort of like, you know, public way for that. But I do think that there's an obligation to listeners and a sort of conversation about a path forward that probably needs to be had, at least to some extent, publicly.

But, yeah, man, I don't know how, but just to the just to the northern. point. I mean, I don't know. What do you say? I mean, do those kind of lunchroom conversations, is that a thing? Like, is it, is there is, is there, is, is there a, is, is there a, is, is, you think there's a way that they just sort of just table this discussion and, and everybody moves ahead? I mean, I think that's what they would prefer to do is just, just, I mean, look, I think they were going to power through the Aaron Rogers Jimmy Kimmel thing. Mm-hmm. With, you know, maybe again, you know, to, to, to, to, to, uh, to, to be fair, McAfee did address on the show the next day, but it was very much a, we're sorry, this happened

kind of apology, not really addressing the substance of it at all. And, you know, ESPN, again, spent many days not addressing the substance of what happened at all. This is something that happened on ESPN's air that was a guess that yes, that we know that the back of he show pays, right? Like, this is, you know, it was just a real lack of wrapping your arms around it and taking ownership. Sure. The Norby thing, I just don't. I mean, look, there is in an in at old ESPN this would have probably been a different kind of crisis because at new ESPN who are these people's bosses jimmy potaro and probably Bob Iger and that might be the end of the list maybe burt magnus made the list I don't know but you're just not reporting to different people in the same way and the way Stuart Scott was and the way Michael and jemel were and it's not it's a very very different company in that way So does it matter? I mean, to them in the big picture, does it matter?

You know, I guess if he was coming on and talking about Norby every day and he did double down a little bit this morning in comments about that, but said his relationship, this is McAfee I'm talking about and said his relationship with ESPN was good. Does it matter? I mean, just can you just shrug and move on? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I thought that I thought that Pat McAfee's response the day after

the, the, the Rogers interview was on the level, I thought it was honest. I thought it was exactly what I would have expected him to say sort of in real life. But I think that still sort of shirks, it avoids the larger issue, which is that with the platform that he has now, there is a sort of, everything has deeper significance, right? I mean, everything, it's a bigger deal. And is the face of this show is one of the faces of ESPN, and you sort of have to wrestle with it in a more meaningful way. And if your talent's not going to do it,

and that's in some sense, not, you know, wouldn't be a shocking development. That is the place where ESPN executives should be sort of stepping in, you know. I'm not talking about Norby here, you know, just whoever. Like someone's got to sort of a dream. this publicly or not, but, you know, that's the, that's the level where these conversations are occurring. And, and, and you'd like to just hear something. Here's something from someone about how, you know, we're going to try to make sure that this sort of libel doesn't, just

horrific libel doesn't occur again on one of our major platforms. Doesn't it feel like no one can tell Aaron Rogers not to say that. Even if saying that puts everybody in a terrible position. Yeah. And then at the same time, nobody can go to Pat McAfee and be like, hey, don't do that, even if it puts, or don't, you know, don't condone that, right? It's like it's almost this chain of people not being able to tell other people what to do. Yeah, exactly. And frankly, I mean, this is, again, just libelous and extreme, like, you know, extreme, even on the Roger scale. but it's, you know, just an extension of why they're paying Aaron Rogers to come on the show in the first place, you know? Just because he's one of the best quarterbacks in the world, that's not why he's such a, such a get for them.

It's because he's become this, like, total whack job. And this is the sort of, the variety of content that you're expecting when you pay him money and bring him on the show every week, you know? he's not coming to talk X's and O's. Anyway, I mean, you're right, no one can really tell anybody to stop. No one's going to say stop having him on the show, you know,

and no one's going to say stop doing the show. And, you know, I don't know there's any way to stop it short of those things, you know? So it's a kind of bizarre situation. This morning, before we recorded this, Jets beatwriters were doing their final interviews with the team America can't stop talking about. And ESPN's Rich Samini tweeted this out.

Aaron Rogers won't address his Kimmel comments. He says to tune in tomorrow on the McAfee show. Tune in Tuesday, David. It turns out we've all been part of one giant sports radio tease. Yeah. Where no matter what happens, no matter the grass, of the situation, you were just directed to listen to the next edition of the show, which I guess we will be doing. I guess if Jimmy Kimmel and or Norville-Will-Wiamson comes on, then, you know,

we will realize what all been played here. I don't know. I don't know, man. But also at the same time, we will watch that, right? That's what it is. And even if we weren't doing this podcast, we would want to watch that and see what happened. I'll just say one thing about McAfee's response, which is that, or the Norby-Will-Wy-Wyerson part of it, which is, You know, you see a lot with people that do the sort of job that he does. The very intensive broadcast schedule where you're surrounded by, you know, your people that have been surrounding you forever. And most of the response you get is from, you know, ardent followers on social media and stuff like that.

And to look for him to look around at the reaction to the Aaron Rogers thing and then say, see more little finger nonsense from the ESPN executive office potentially shows a real disconnect from the world around them, which is again, wouldn't be shocking because other people in his position have done

have been in that, have done the same thing. But it would be disappointing. And, you know, this might be an opportunity for him to sort of take stock. I think so too. And again, that's why I said the rating stuff just feels to me like changing the subject before I personally am ready to change the subject. Yeah. And before the subject has even really been adequately addressed. That's my point, though, is that if it's changing the subject, I kind of see the chess move there. But if it's not changing the subject, if it's just a total misread, then and that's what he changed the subject because he can't, he didn't understand the subject. Well, that's a problem.

Speaking of Sports Radio Teases, David, coming up on today's show, what in the show. the hell is going on at the Messenger, the startup that has crashed and burned through money. David and I offer some rules for media startups in 2024. Plus, we've got weekend audio from Shannon Sharp and LeBron. Twitter brought back our headlines, the coming NFL playoff streaming apocalypse, the time when newspapers were hiring all the bloggers, and you, the listeners have spoken. We'll have the first edition of our new segment about scandals and moments of general media weirdness.

When we've written, one more time, Brian, three, two, when we revisit the fall of NBC's

Brian Williams. All that much more on the press box, a part of the ringer, podcast network. Hello media

consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker and producer Brian Waters here. David, we got to do another segment

on the messenger. Yeah. It's never good news about the messenger when you and I show up rapping on the door. No.

Got a couple stories last week. One is a report from the New York Times as Ben, I get all the scoops except the ones Maxwell Tanny gets Mullen. He reported that there were layoffs coming as a site faced, quote, dwindling cash reserves. Then there was a second report from semaphores, Maxwell, I get all the scoops except the ones Ben gets tanny. He writes,

the messenger wade shutting down the publication at a meeting on Friday after learning that the company is on track to run out of cash at the end of January. I got some new rules for media startups for you. Oh, great. Rule number one is you need to have a focus. You need to have a thing that you own that is distinct from the things everyone else is trying to own. Sure. Semaphore, puck, and Axios, so they have a little bit of a broader range.

we've seen them come in and have a real particular niche. This is what we are. Which brings us to rule number two, David, for new media startups. Don't try to cover everything. I remember back in the day when I was at The Daily Beast and the Mel Gibson tapes were released. Remember the Mel Gibson tapes? Yeah.

And I remember us as a staff being chastised. Like, why didn't we get the Mel Gibson tapes? I'm sitting there having probably edited a political column that morning being like, I'm sorry, was I supposed to not be out drinking with Shoemaker? Was I supposed to be calling my sources in the LAPD this weekend? Wait, what? We're chasing the Mel Gibson tapes. But I think it's so easy now for people to look at the Twitter machine and go, okay,

we need something on the Japan earthquake. We need something on Wimby going behind his back against the bucks. and we need something on the Iowa caucuses. Yeah. If you're trying to do all that, you're probably not succeeding as a publication. Would you agree? Certainly probably not succeeding any one part of that either.

No. Yeah, you need to have some focus. Certainly there can be some room for, you know, excess in one direction or another. And I'm sure it's like, we know from experience, It can be either exasperating for an editor to watch his writer's timeline and see that he's tweeting about everything except the subject matter, you know, his focus.

And there's also many times where editors look at, you know, writers, look at, you know, writers, Twitter timelines and they're like, why isn't that a piece? I know that we don't cover the Chicago Bears on, you know, D.C. News.com, but you seem to be really excited about them and making a lot of jokes that people are responding to. Why don't we cover, why don't you write a piece, you know? So, you know, there's there's, there's pulls in a lot of different directions, but you're right. Especially when the MO seems to be, let's just do, let's be all things to all people all at one time because we just want to cast as widened as possible. You know, it's like we need as much traffic as we can, even if that traffic comes, you know, if it's five footsteps on a million different pieces, that adds up to more than.

a lot of footsteps on 10 pieces. You know, so it's a bad business model because it's never actually going to come true. Rule number three is related to exactly what you just said. Don't try to compete with Twitter as a news source. I was looking around for press box ideas the other day and I took a snapshot of the headlines on a news website's homepage. Yeah.

I'm going to read the headlines and I just want you to try to guess what news organization oh man served up this platter to its readers recently all right here go tickets sold in Michigan wins estimated

$842.2 million powerball jackpot Michigan and Washington advanced to the college football playoff national championship mom wakes up after kidney stone procedure with her legs amputated

opinion are you better off than you were three years ago. What to expect at work in 2024. And finally, see moment two planes collide at Tokyo Airport. Would you like to take a guess at what publication that is? Was that the messenger? No.

Oh, no. I thought it was a trick question. I have no idea. What is it? It's CNN. Yeah. It's CNN. But that could have been the messenger.

It could have been the New York Post. It might have been the Daily, Beast, it could be almost anything now, which is my point, right? That just sounds like here are a bunch of tweets and here are our write-ups of a bunch of tweets. Yeah. And that just seems like an absolute road to nowhere. And I did, by the way, take a screenshot of the messenger's headlines today, just to give you a little stuff. This is under their latest column. Ruben Gallego's Senate campaign in Arizona. Gypsy Rose Blanchard's tattoos. a Sequin Barclay's future with the New York Giants,

plane crash in the Caribbean, Whoopi Goldberg, Shannon Sharp, and it's just like, what the, who is this for? And again, we know it's for,

it's for people that are looking at Twitter all day, but they're already doing that. They're already on social. You don't need to just replicate their feeds on your website. All right, coming up in 30 seconds, David, weekend audio from Shannon Sharp and LeBron,

the playoff streaming apocalypse and the first edition of our new feature on the fall of Brian Williams. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your

nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. This week's runaway winner comes from a friend of this program, J.E. Skeets. I don't know if you saw a Kerry Mulligan. She's in Maestro. Uh-huh. I haven't seen Maestro.

I have seen Diary of a Wimpy Kid cabin fever, but I have not seen Mestro yet. She was photographed for a Hollywood reporter story wearing a giant gray suit, which I put in our notes here, if you want to take a look at it. Some great jokes here. She looks like she just got drafted by the Charlotte Bobcats. Or you could do this. Carrie Mulligan may ask

herself, well, how did I get here? If you thought these stopped making sense, revisitations ended a bit too soon. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, weekend audio. Got two clips for you. One is on the question. Is Shannon Sharp a journalist?

Shannon Sharp did a podcast interview with Kat Williams. Uh-huh. According to Complex, Kat Williams made, quote, various shocking claims about fellow comedians such as Steve Harvey, Sedrick the entertainer, and Kevin Hart. Uh-huh. there was some criticism of Shannon Sharp for letting some of these claims go on challenge. This is what Sharp said in response. A lot of people have said, oh, Shannon left so much on the table.

Shannon is not a journalist. I never said I was a journalist. If you listen in my intro, I said, normally what I say, the person that's coming by for conversation and a drink, I'm a conversationalist, not an interviewer. It's a different space. Safe place. I've also said on numerous occasions, if you want 60 minutes, if you won't date line, if you want 48 hours, I'm not the place for you.

Go to those places and get those type of interviews. Go to Leicesterhope. Go to Nora O'Donnell. Go to, I'm not Mike Wallace, rest his soul. I'm not Ed Bradley, rest his soul. Or Dan Rather, or Walter Cronkite, rest their soul. Tom Broca, that's not who I am. So first of all, I guess my initial reaction here is I thought we mentioned former 60 Minutes

correspondence more than any other podcast in America. I might have just been proven wrong. Very impressive list there. Also like a Dateline NBC got categorized with this hard hitting serious journalism television shows. It is an interesting question, isn't it, though, when it ties a little bit into the McAfee thing. you're not a journalist, you're not that kind of television or podcast interviewer.

I think viewers understand or listeners understand the difference. But at the same time, if something is said on your show, do you have a little bit of a responsibility to put on the capital J journalist hat and push back at that kind of claim?

Well, I mean, you also have to ask whether or not the journalist or whoever, the hosting question has the ability or the knowledge to push back against that. I mean, you just need to like, does every show have a fact checker that can be scanning these things in real time and waving a flag? I mean, especially if you're going, if you're live, you know, if you're a live program, um, and certainly you see this on news networks and stuff where they'll say, we need to go back to a comment you made 30 seconds ago, you know, I'm not sure that that was

entirely true because that is, you know, that's important and that's part of, there is part of the mission statement there. But I mean, I do think that on the one hand, yes, audiences know the difference. When you're, when you're watching that Kat Williams interview, you feel like you're listening to a podcast interview. You know, I mean, it's a, it is a very free flowing to borrow a phrase enterprise. And you're, and part of what makes it interesting. thing is just totally getting in the, just having the full body, like the, you know, the ocean washes over you experience with this character.

Facts kind of be damned. And I do think that's a legitimate, you know, style. I mean, but the flip side is, I mean, so the audience, I think, is wise to that. Is the audience wise the fact that Shannon Sharp is not that sort of journalist? I think that's more of an open question. I mean, he's been on a sports news channel.

You know, he is a, he's not hosting the, the news broadcast, but, you know, to take another footballer is like Michael Strayhan, less of a journalist than the people he shared a state who raised on Good Morning America or whatever. I mean, we sort of, I don't think people really know what the, you know, the J-school backgrounds of most of the people they see on television. So, you know, I think it's one of those cases. where you get to sort of plead ignorance when it suits you. Yeah, because I mean, I think anybody who's on television, especially anybody who's on television in a debate show, understands our guardrails there.

You can say any opinion you want about how well this guy plays football. But if you go here with your opinion, go here with your opinion, you could get in trouble, right? This whole show could get in trouble. So there probably is at least some, you know, sort of sense of it. But it's an interesting question, especially as everything turns into a podcast. Audio clip number two for you, David, is LeBron James was talking to reporters at his locker on Friday night.

The Lakers had just been crushed by the Grizzlies. I want you to listen to what, quote, one reporter wanted to harvest from LeBron. It is a question not related to the game, if you allow me. Ricky Rubio announced his retirement from the NBA yesterday. What do you think about the career that he has had in the... I'm not really in the mood to answer that question, but I respect Ricky. Congratulations on a hell of a career. If I don't seem sincere when you see this video, because we got our ass with the game,

and I apologize. So it was actually a bad timing on the interviewer asking me this question is not going to be. So congratulations. Well, it was a good explanation. It was a good explanation. I mean, so many things I found funny about it. One is as a reporter, it's tough to go quote shopping after a loss, especially when your story is clearly not about what just happened

with the only thing the player is thinking about in that moment. And the second part is that you understand how different our media world is now when LeBron is not speaking. to the reporter in the expectation that Ricky Rubio will read LeBron's comments tomorrow. Okay, here's what he said about the career, but LeBron is speaking directly to Ricky Rubio. Yeah. Knowing that the only way Ricky Rubio will interact with this is to see the clip of LeBron at his locker. Yeah.

Kind of an amazing moment. We see these interviews all the time, but there's a, there's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty, rare that you get the you can watch one and fully experience the awkwardness yeah of interviewing half naked men um with great earnestness about silly things and you totally understand it was that guy's job probably to go get a rookie rubio quote like this is my chance here's lebron it's just a tough moment lebron you know it's like well i want to make sure that ricky rubio knows but i appreciate it but also just it's a tough time for me to really go into that right now. Twitter headlines are back, David.

You might say Twitter X headlines are back. Elon Musk took them away for a while. That was seen as punishing us in the media. Now they're back and they're very tiny. And they look a little bit like you and I made a website in 1999. As Ringers, Art Maestro, do you have any opinion? opinion on Twitter X bringing back headlines?

Well, I appreciate they did it, but you're right. It just looks, it's, it's, it's kind of hard to read. It's kind of hard to read. And it doesn't exactly look like a headline. I guess it helps identify, once you're used to it, it identifies a picture as more than a picture, which is helpful. But it, they still got a little bit of work to do on the, on the branding. Bill was talking about this on its pod this morning.

There is going to be an NFL playoff game, Saturday 8 p.m. Eastern, Miami versus Kansas City. It's a good game. And it's just going to be on Peacock. Yep. Do we think it's going to be a NFL streaming apocalypse with people trying to find what I think will be the biggest game of any kind that has ever been only available on streaming? Because we did the many versions right on Thursday night. Oh, we can't watch the game. Yeah.

This is playoffs, right? Different. I don't know. I already had a conversation with my uncle Rod, who you know well. He was a little upset about the game being on Peacock. You didn't, is it that he doesn't subscribe to Peacock or can't wrap his head around accessing Peacock? Choices one and two are both valid. So, but if you were just like here, let me get, I'm not borrow my password,

or I'll just buy you a Peacock subscription. that would that solve it or no it's still just it's still a bridge too far there may be a little bit of a digital divide as we used to say about joe byton on this podcast going to be a tough one also bill was wondering what the true shakies game is usually that's the game that he said you know the worst playoff game which is stuck on a Saturday yep so is it the peacock game which actually seems like a good game or he said is it the money night game which is bucks eagles Oof. Kind of much fun one to consider.

Yeah. I think Monday for scheduling purposes makes some sense. It's funny because ESPN got Cowboys versus Tom Brady last year over the Monday playoff game. So this is, they got the Bucks again,

but not quite the glamorous of Bucks assignment. I got this from you from yesterday's New York Times. David, this is what nonfiction success looks like. I have the bestseller list here. This is,

bind print and e-book bestsellers. I'm going to read you the top four authors on the non-fiction list. Number one, David Grant. Number two, Liz Cheney. Number three, Britney Spears.

Number four, David Grant. Wow. Wow. What are the two David Grand books? I mean, besides because of the flower moon, what's number two? The wager is number one. His new book. Oh, I forgot he had a new book out, of course.

And Killers of the Flower Moon is number four. Also on the list, Barbara Streisand and the late Matthew Perry. And Rachel Maddo. Congratulations to everyone. This is a data point for a think piece somebody needs to write. Uh-huh. You said the Washington Post had all the buyouts. Yeah, I did.

Greg Sargent is one of the people that took the buyouts. Uh-huh. He landed at the New Republic. He wrote the Plumline blog for the Post. remember when bloggers were the talent pool? Oh, yeah. The newspapers were hiring from. Mm-hmm. And they brought them in. Why don't you blog for us or do something blog adjacent for us? Yeah. We know there's been like Ezra Klein, some very spectacular successes in there. And I think Sergeant would probably be up in that thing. But is that? Oh, absolutely. Bringing in a Greg

Sergeant, bringing Ezra Klein was like the hiring Pat McAfee of its day, right? And I'm sure everybody at the newspaper had the same reaction was just like, why is this guy getting all the money and attention? I've been here forever. We got media piss test. David and I cataloged reporters declaring that one thing is like another thing on steroids. We got this doozy from Dolphins defensive coordinator Vic Fangio who was trying to describe Bill's quarterback Josh Allen. Alan's just a beast of a guy, a physical specimen, you know, like John Alway was in the mid-80s to the mid-90s. This guy is. the new John Elway on steroids. And I don't mean he's taking steroids.

He's just bigger, faster. Like you, he had to clear up, no, no, no, I didn't mean literally on steroids. Yeah, I think you've got to be careful about that when you're working professional athletes, especially professional football players. Some people might not understand how big media piss test is. You need to know, not literally on steroids. Thanks to scorched one for that one. In other piss test news, David, alert listener, Ryland Alrich,

notes. He says, hey, Brian, I've been noticing a variation of the on-steroids trope, but with more of an edge. One news organization, I believe this is the Philly Inquirer called, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, quote, like Seinfeld on crack. The website Wrestling Inc. has this headline, Thunder Rosa, calls WW's Bloodline storyline, a family feud quote, on crack. A little bit of an upgrade or downgrade from our usual. on steroids. All right, David. It's time for the feature we promised the listeners. Everybody voted.

It was a little bit of an upset, but we wanted to introduce a new feature about media scandals and general moments of weirdness from the past. I propose that this feature be called press botch has a little, nice little pro wrestling overlay there. Love it.

Daniel Miller also said the press mocks. We'll think about this as we go along here. But in something of an upset, the fall of Brian Williams, won our listener poll. People love the story. All right, a little background here. Help me help the listeners understand just what's at stake here. The Nightly News anchor used to be one of the most prestigious and biggest jobs in TV news.

I feel like we need some background music. And you need to say that with a little bit more of a, of a scholarly voiceover tone. This is deep history covered really quickly. Being the nightly news anchor on one of the three broadcast networks was like one step down from being the king of England. Like it was an incredibly important job. And even when Brian Williams ascended the throne,

even when we knew it wasn't quite as big a deal as maybe it once was, and the, you know, from the, the glory days when Walter Cronkite. Walter Cronkite could basically like pick the president by, you know, or just like everybody followed all. Everybody, every, he had the, the ear of the entire country every time he sat down in his desk. It was still a really, really big deal. Brian Williams was also, correct me if I'm wrong, the sort of fill-in anchor on the NBC

nightly news for, for several years or maybe. many years leading up to him taking the job. He was, he was, you know, he was earmarked for the job for a long time. And it was a little bit like watching, you know, Prince William walk around or, you know, see him in tabloids and stuff. You're like, that guy's going to be an important guy someday. The most important thing about that guy is the former prestige of the position he will someday have, right?

Totally. Totally. And he felt like, and I don't know if Prince William is, is the right metaphor here. but the last guy who was going to inherit that job was something like its full power. Certainly in retrospect, that's clear. And I think that was pretty clear at the time, you know? I mean, like just to drag it even further, when you see, you know, Prince William or whoever, like, you know, in his royal gear at some ceremony or something like that, it looks like something of a bygone era. And Brian Williams, whether or not deliberately, always kind of styled himself as something of a bygone era, right?

I mean, he would, like, his voice was a, was what you would do as like a put on newscaster voice, right? But it came out of him naturally, you know, his whole demeanor is his face, everything. He had the, I mean, he, he seems to have a full head of hair, but it somehow comes across on TV like one of those sort of newscaster combovers from the 70s, you know? I mean, it's, he had, you just had the look down. So that's who the TV news anchor was. We'll do a little who is Brian Williams here too before we join in. He's the young. who basically kind of came out of nowhere in the 90s to join this club of Dan Rather,

Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw from the Jersey suburbs, went to college, never got his degree, worked in the Jimmy Carter White House, then went into TV, worked at a tiny station in Pittsburgh, Kansas, made his way to New York, became a local TV star in New York. I had forgotten about that part. This is all according to a Washingtonian profile. And then in 1994, David, when he's still just 35 years old, he becomes what you're talking about. The guy at NBC News who is marked for greatness. Not the anchor,

that's still Tom Brokaw, but he's the weekend act. White House correspondent, the inheritor to the throne. Two things to know about Brian Williams. One, if every anchor is the broadcast news binary, right?

So you're either the Albert Brooks character, Aaron, very bookish, serious guy, or you are the William Hurt character, Tom, possibly smooth behind the desk. Brian Williams was Tom. Yeah. Absolutely Tom.

Exactly. Second thing that's going to become very relevant here. Brian Williams wanted to be the funny news anchor. He did 30 Rock, slow jam in the news with Jimmy Fallon. It was a whole New York magazine feature about his comedy chops. According to New York Times,

he told NBC once that he wanted to do late night, maybe even host the Tonight Show. Yeah. And listen to Williams on David Letterman back in 96 and just listen to him sparring here with the host and Vizier very casually slipping around the question of whether he would one day succeed Tom Brokaw. That you somehow are being groomed to replace Tom Brokaw

when he decides to step down. Tom Brokaw, a fine journalist, a great anchorman, a good friend of mine. And is there any truth to that? I do most of my own grooming. And it's just something I don't think we want this conversation to go down the road of, you know, filling in for network icons, Dave. But you and Tom are friends also, aren't you?

I was kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No, we're very good friends. It's thanks to him that I'm there. And, you know, his house is wild because it's always Macarena night. And he was on it. before anyone else in this country. I can remember, I guess we were doing the Macarena in the late 80s. Is that right? Yeah. Really, quite ahead of yourself. Transits. Oh, it's nuts.

It's nuts. You go in. You're parking the car and you can hear the pulsating rhythm of that song. Listeners can't see this, but Brian Williams is actually wearing the suit that Kerry Mullen was later photographed in in that club. So anyway, Williams realizes his dream. He gets the

nightly news job when Tom Brokhar retires in 2004 or steps aside in 2004. By 2015, David, NBC's number one in the ratings. Yeah. And Williams, according to the Daily Beast, had a contract for five years and $50 million. Yeah. As you can hear from the tone of my voice, this is when the fall begins. It's 2003. He was riding in a Chinook helicopter. It was hit by enemy fire, he said, and forced to land. Here's how Williams told the story to let him. We were the northern most Americans in a We were going to drop some bridge portions across the Euphrates so the third infantry could cross on them. Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire, including the one I was in.

No kidding. RPG and AK-47. What altitude were he hit at? We were only at 100 feet doing 100 forward knots because we had these massive pieces of bridge beneath us on slings. What happens the minute everybody realizes you've been hit? We figure out how to land safely, and we did. So... It turns out that a helicopter in Iraq was hit by enemy fire.

It was forced to land, but Brian Williams, David, was not on that helicopter. He was riding on a different helicopter that arrived an hour later, and then he visited with the people that were on the helicopter that was actually hit. This story was debunked in maybe the strangest way possible, which is that Brian Williams went to a New York Rangers hockey game. with a command sergeant major that had been in that helicopter and according to the times

the public address announcer at the game explained to the crowd that US Army Command Sergeant Major Tim Turpac was responsible for the safety of Brian Williams and his NBC team. After their chin-up helicopter was hit and crippled by enemy fire, NBC News sent a crew to this Rangers game to film this. then they posted the video to Facebook.

Again, they're thinking they're doing something really nice here, right? Yeah. Honoring the people that helped our guy out. And a flight engineer named Lance Reynolds wrote on Facebook this comment to Brian Williams. Sorry, dude, I don't remember you being on my aircraft. I do remember you walking up about an hour after we had landed to ask me what had happened. Stars and Stripes newspaper took it from there. and all of a sudden we have a very big scandal.

Yeah. Also interesting, by the way, and there's a really good Vox timeline of this that Amanda Taub put together is that Brian Williams told the story in different ways over the years. Yeah. Told it correctly.

Told it in which the timeline was slightly compressed a little bit, like the chopper that was hit was hit right in front of him maybe. And then eventually told it the last way that you heard it. So he's telling of it really, really changed over the years. He was doing a lot of it. blogging at the time, which is kind of funny, and the way

he blogged it changed. Now, that wasn't the only problem that was found with Brian Williams' storytelling. It's covering Hurricane Katrina in 2005, right after he became the anchor of the nightly news. So it's a big moment, right? You're the guy now.

He was talking about a man dying by suicide inside the New Orleans Superdome. And initially, Williams said in a documentary, we heard the story of a man killing himself, falling from from the upper deck. But in a video later, William said, we watched dot, dot, dot, all of us watched

as one man committed suicide. Other parts of stories he told from New Orleans were challenged. So then Brian Williams, David becomes embattled. February 2015, he gets suspended for six months without pay, and NBC puts Lester Holt in the big chair. Mm-hmm. Now, it would not be a TV news scandal

if there weren't some anchor man on anchorman politics beneath. Oh, yeah. So June 2015, five-ish months after all these events, Brian Williams needed to break his silence, as it were. He was interviewed on NBC by Matt Lauer two years before Lauer's own embattling. Dude, this is one of the most freighted interviews you will ever see. I encourage anybody who is interested in the stuff to look it up.

It's Mr. Morning News interviewing Mr. Evening News. And Lauer was not going to let Brian Williams off the hook. I worry as you say this, Brian, that people who are going to have listened to your apology on air and in other areas, Facebook and Stars and Stripes, who heard you use words like conflated aircraft or made mistakes with my memory of certain things. They're now going to hear what you're saying now, and they're going to say, he's still saying he didn't intend to mislead. people and yet he didn't tell the truth and he had to know as the guy who lived through those

experiences that it wasn't the truth i see why people would say that i understand it this came from clearly a bad place a bad urge inside me this was clearly ego driven the desire to better my role in a story I was already in. That's what I've been tearing apart and unpacking and analyzing. I've got to be honest. I've always had just probably a ridiculous amount of sympathy for Brian Williams in this story.

And hearing him in that Matt Lauer interview, I don't think Matt Lauer was out of place pressing on that question. Maybe a little bit surprising, given that this was a, this would, you know, as Bill would say, if this game was played 10 times, nine of them would have been, you know, the Today Show host doing everything they could just to let Brian Williams off scot-free. I don't think there's anything wrong with answering that question.

I actually think it got to a more interesting answer. But, you know, I mean, there was a layer of believability under all these lives, right? I mean, Brian Williams was just trying to get one over on everybody. Like, why was he at that game with that guy? Why was he putting himself in position? Why was he pushing it further and further in a way that did not help him at all? You know? I, there was a Malcolm Gladwell podcast, an early,

when a Gladwell's early podcast, he did on this subject, where he went into the intricacies of memory and how Brian Williams might have kind of been telling the truth about not really realizing what he was doing. And I don't know if I fully buy it, but I do think that when it comes to, when it works in our interest, memory certainly works in interesting ways.

And I think you see some of that playing out there. When he says he's trying to understand why he did it, I think that there's, that if you don't believe anything else, I do think it's plausible that someone who got himself into this position is struggling to understand why he did so. Yeah, and you know, the whole idea of like telling a story so many times that you add new details, you make yourself more of a central character in the story than you were the first time you told it. There is something understandable about that.

I don't know that I can get to my helicopter wasn't hit, the other helicopter was hit. totally is that just feels like that feels like the moment this crosses over from you know i'm i'm telling journalism stories which by the way you and i have always heard for our whole careers in newsrooms and almost certainly have been embroidered or at least you know told more uh excitingly i mean that would that but that moment that would be a huge experience even for a war correspondent whose life has been in peril multiple times yep And it just feels like how did you get to that? Unknowingly.

I understand how you can get there, but how would you get there just like subconsciously? I don't get it. One more clip from Matt Lauer and Brian Williams. And again, I just love the performance that is happening in this. Brian Williams is talking like a news anchor in the way you mentioned earlier with those cadences,

even as he's apologizing. The whole urge inside me, by the way, sounds like he's apologizing for something very different the one he's actually apologizing for. Matt Lowerson and Croson from holding his reading glasses. Yeah.

In that classic news anchor pose, anyway, one more cut from Lauer and Williams. Words in your mouth, but had you gone on the air that night and say, folks, I lied, and I'm sorry, do you think the outcome would have been different? Do you think forgiveness would have come sooner? I think perhaps, yes.

I said things that were wrong. Looking back with such clarity now, it is so clear to me, I said things that were wrong. I told stories that were wrong. It wasn't from a place where I was trying to use my job and title to mislead. These were, while it doesn't matter anymore, in some cases years after the event and in many different areas. live discussions and talk shows, discussions with students. I got it wrong. I own this and I own up to this.

Very uncomfortable to listen to. I mean, as much as I said, I was sympathetic to him. I do think from in his job as the nightly news anchor on NBC, this is a punishable and maybe fireable offense, you know. He wasn't necessarily, he wasn't he wasn't embellishing stories that he was telling on the news broadcast he was lying about the news that he was delivering to the people presumably but i still think you know there's a there's very few jobs where i think like abject honesty is sort of part of the contract

and but that you know that's one of them yeah it's like it's almost like the job was about the performance of trustworthiness you know we were not looking at Brian Williams and be like, that's the best reporter in America right there. Therefore, I trust him. It was no, that's maybe the best news anchor in America. Who makes us feel like what we're getting is the right information told the right way. So if you get the job by performance, you can also lose the job, I think, by performance. You know, this is not the worst thing in the world, right? If you can say, look, almost every time I went on the news, I told the story correctly.

I reported the story correctly. It was off the air that I was doing this. You know, there's definitely a matter scale there. But I just think there is, you know, you get the job by performing. You lose the job by performing. Yeah. I do think that there's also sort of interesting juxtaposition, which Brian Williams, the person,

because he talked about all these like comedy chops, his performances, such as they were on nightly news shows and doing the headlines saying, I mean, there was, I think part of what made him, likable part of what made him successful, as you could see on all those things, was the sort of self-awareness that, yes, he was a sort of cookie-cutter newsman, and he was self-aware enough to know that that's what people found funny, right? It's not that like, also I'm really funny. Maybe that's what he felt deep down, but the performance aspect of being a newsman was, is inherently comical,

right? And that sort of self-awareness, that was really key to his success. But what you see in this story is a abject lack of self-awareness, right? I mean, to be, to not realize the, the, the consequences of breaking that trust of honesty with, with, with, with, you know, and with everybody else. It reminds me of the conversations we've had about sportscasters going on, pardon my take, and try and impress everybody and play with that image of, I'm the starchy sportscaster, but I'm also not the starchy sportscaster. I can do give and take with you too. Yeah.

And you can understand in those things. Like that's where some of this stuff comes out, at least that Letterman clip we had. So Brian Williams is replaced on the evening news by Lester Holt. As I mentioned, that becomes permanent. He is sent to MSNBC. Only in television is your punishment

appearing on national cable television. Was there some link, there was some time gap between, those, right? He took some time off. He was off the air, yes. He was off the air for several months, and then he comes back and does MSNBC as kind of a general anchor. By the way, one last known on his trustworthiness is from the New York Times. This firm did a trustworthiness survey, I guess, and they found that Brian Williams was the 23rd most trusted person in America. Very, very specific level of trustworthiness there. So he goes to MSNBC. He starts hosting the 11th hour in 2016.

and has a little bit of a comeback. Because he's really good at being an anchor still. He's just funny enough, just opinionated enough to do that show. And MSNBC, by the way, I mean, my memory could be kind of shaky here. But I feel like prior to the 11th hour taking off, maybe at the beginning of the 11th hour, one of the most central, his most important uses was as the host for election coverage, or other big coverage nights when all the other MSNBC luminaries would be on the, the stage, but nobody, not all of them had like the, the MC chops that he did, right?

The ability to really steer through the entire night. And that was sort of an important role as MSNBC got increasingly personality driven. Absolutely. And I would say at the same time, became way more relevant to people like us than the NBC News. Oh, yeah. Which is this weird kind of accidental revenge here that by being on, in cable. Siberia, he was actually a lot bigger, at least to a certain segment of the population, than Lester Holt was. Because he was on all the time. He was on five days a week and he was doing a more free-flowing show with Nicole Wallace

and that whole gang of analysts there. And as you said, was on primary nights with Lester Holt was not on. Yeah. And that was just a really, really funny way that this whole thing turned out. Williams would leave MSNBC in 2021. CNN's Oliver Darcy would report that CBS came to him and talked to him about hosting the evening news. So essentially his old job except on another network. Darcy reported that Williams quote isn't interested in the evening news job,

which says a lot about not only Williams' turn of fortune, but also the diminishing allure of anchoring a nightly broadcast news program. So chance to get his old job back. and then he says, you know what? I was great at that job. I was, you know, that was the job I was clearly had styled my entire persona in order to get. Yeah. And it's not the job I had, right? It's not the same.

It's not the, or at least not the job I want anymore. That is press botch number one, David. The fall of Brian Williams. Very fun stuff. All right. It's time for a feature that never disappoints, never leaves yours in the lurch. It's time for David Schumacher guesses the strained, pun headline.

Yeah. Last Monday's headline about eating bagels at Christmas time was do you smear what I smear? Today's headline comes to us from the Irish examiners Colin Sheridan and Chris

Dealey. It's from the Guardian, David. Story about the actor Andrew Scott. Scott tells a podcast quote, when I was playing Hamlet, a guy took out his laptop. Not his phone, his laptop. While I was in the middle of the to be or not to fucking be,

said the actor, who said he thought the offending audience member was sending emails. So we've got the to be or not to be soliloquy being interrupted by a theater goer

sending emails. What was the Guardians? Strained pun headline. Hamlet to be or not to be to BCC. Is there a, is there a, is there a joke? We got it. Is that it? Keep going.

To BCC or not to BCC? That is the question or the headline in this case. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Brian Waters. I thought that would take you a while, but you just destroyed that. Come back here Thursday for Press Box final edition

with the Atlantic's Mark Liebovich. As we count down to the Iowa caucuses, Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.