The Press Box - Reporting the Shohei Ohtani Saga, The Washington Post’s Kim Mulkey Story, and ESPN’s Future With Jason Gay.

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

Hello media consumers! Bryan welcomes Jason Gay of The Wall Street Journal this week as David Shoemaker is out on assignment. They discuss week two of Shohei Ohtani’s saga and how the fanbase of his former team, the Los Angeles Angels, are reacting (2:20). Then they discuss Kim Mulkey’s response to the “unpublished” story coming from The Washington Post (17:04). Lastly, they talk about the new ESPN documentary and what this means as far as the future of the company is concerned (31:17). Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Jason Gay Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And stay mage, everyone. Worldwide. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the old press box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here along with producer Brian Waters. David Shoemaker is on assignment today to use our Facebook. favorite euphemism. So let us bring in an old friend. He is a Wall Street Journal columnist. He is the author if I wouldn't try that. If I were me, he is bringing his comedy stylings to

medium-sized rooms from coast to coast. Jason Gay, welcome back to the press box. I'm happy to be here. Thank you so much for the invite. And I want to point out that not only am I filling in for the estimable David Shoemaker, I'm following Jay Caspian Kang. And following Kang, I feel like I'm following James Brown. I don't know what to do. You gave him all the good topics. He hit them all out of the park. I feel very, very insufficient. You notice we're just redoing him today. That's what we do here at the press bags. It's like a bite at that apple. I have some JJ Redick thoughts too. Oh, that was an amazing, an amazing jag within that entire conversation. I mean, they was very honest.

He despises him. He grew up in Chapel Hill, a UNC fan. How can he possibly have an objective opinion about JJ Redick as a player, sportscaster, podcaster, whatever? I admired his honesty. We state school people have to stick together. That's all I got to say. That's why you're here too, Jason.

That's true. Let us begin with Shohei Otani because I think there's a much more to say about this story. some of it remains, or I should say all of it remains unresolved. He is going to be speaking to the media tonight at 545 Eastern. No questions. Just a statement. After which the Angels will play the Dodgers in a game that nobody cares about, comparatively speaking. This whole story, of course, involves Otani and his interpreter Ipe Mizahara,

Otani, or someone posing as Otani allegedly wired 4.4.4. million dollars to a California bookmaker, according to a federal investigation. Where do we start with Otani story week two? I mean, it's crazy that it's week two. We're doing the very awkward dance of trying to talk about something that is a very active news story. And in fact, by the time this probably publishes, we'll get Otani's statement out into the world. And like, I don't know what that statement is. I would be willing to bet that it would probably be rather anodyne and not really advanced the story that much. But hey, maybe it's something crazy. Maybe it's a disclosure we did not expect and we're having a totally separate conversation.

But this is such a unique story in that, A, obviously, the stakes are massive. This is a huge baseball star. The biggest baseball has seen in generations. This is somebody who has been launched internationally as kind of a baseball savior put on the covers of magazines sent over for the Soul series, basically to show off the acquisition here with the Dodgers. And to have this unfold literally as they're overseas is a giant nightmare for the sport, for him, for the team, for everybody who loves the game, frankly, because it brings back to mind lots of unsavory baseball history. And it sort of presses upon sports writers, a lot of creative thinking in terms of like,

where are we going to go with this story? what sort of expertise are we're going to have to rely on? And candidly, you know, sports writers aren't totally always equipped for things like this, as we learned rather quickly when people were trying to explain illegal bookmaking and, you know, credit and wire transfers. And, you know, this honestly kind of falls it a little bit into our wheelhouse. I mean, all credit here to the LA Times and the ESPN, who are the people that broke the story here. But there are tentacles that have enormous appeal to us at the journal because of the financial implications of it here.

I had not used the word bookmaker personally in quite a while. Really did have a 90s kind of feel to it. And I was talking to Kang about this. You know, is this, why does this story hit us journalists in a particular way or how does it hit us? And I think part of it is we are from the Michael Jordan Richard Esquina's generation, or maybe I should say the Pete Rose Field of Dreams generation. We are definitely clearly from that and we can definitely go back to to Pete Rose too.

And Brian, you're old enough to go back to Alex Karris and Paul Horning and, you know, I'm not that old. But, you know, I don't know what the younger baseball fan. You know,

I know that's a laugh line younger baseball fan. But I think that it remains to be seen what the younger generation thinks of this. I mean, they are growing up in an era in which they are, you know, bombarded with advertisements for legal gambling. And so the idea that this is, you know, somehow a great sin might be rather strange to somebody who's growing up in that world. Totally. This was the hidden world of sports or the what was rumored to be the hidden world of sports. The clandestine, the unsavory. And, you know, the sort of minor, you know, asterisk of this

as frankly is the fact that California has yet to, you know, widely legalize sports betting. And, you know, were that the case, would we even be here? I don't know. I mean, it doesn't certainly exonerate anybody for using an illegal bookmaker. But it does raise the interesting question of like, you know, when people were advocating for legalizing, gaming, gambling, one thing that they talked a lot about was the idea of sunshine and disinfecting the unsavory aspects of the trade. and putting all the stuff that used to lurk below the surface,

bring it above board, and give people access to the information, the data, and actually be able to recognize shenanigans earlier than they used to be able to in the past. As a journalist, too, it's interesting. Like, anytime we see a story and then the official story changes right in front of our eyes. Yeah.

Boy, does that make the antenna go up. And in this case, it was Otani's own spokespeople coming out and saying he paid this money to pay his interpreter and his friend's gambling debts. And Mizahara coming out and saying, yes, that's what happened. And then Otani's people coming back and saying, actually, that's not what happened. And then Mizahara coming back and saying, actually, that is not what happened. My first story. Our first story was incorrect.

And then we got that note from ESPN that said, the reason they had put the false story in front of the public was because they were relying on an interpreter. This is Shoah's spokespeople were relying on an interpreter to get the real story. But that was an account, but that was not ESPN's account of why there was the confusion. That was what they were relaying what they were getting from the Otani camp. You know, I think ESPN did a really good job of laying out what was obviously a pretty dense and complicated scenario. And, you know, one thing that's helpful here maybe is to sort of take it out of the realm of

journalism. Were you to have a conversation with your child, for instance, Brian, about what happened at school and why they came home with blood all over their elbows? And they gave you one account. And then they came back to you 90 minutes later with a totally different account in which they had no blame whatsoever. What would you be inclined to believe? I mean, this really presses up against our basic instincts and common sense. And I think that's why they're, you know, in the absence, again, maybe we're going to get something substantive from Motani this afternoon. But in the absence of clarity, we are getting wild kinds of speculation and a lot of cynicism about what we've heard so far.

Absolutely. And there's no way to get a journalist peeking even deeper into a story than changing things up like that. And I totally agree. Exactly. Exactly. And it just feels like with that first story, and when I was referring to there was this was what ESPN was told by Otani's people about why they had switched to stories,

that Otani's people were relying on the interpreter. So again, you're saying like, how in the world could a story that wrong have been put out officially by you? Yes. And then turn into this completely different story. That is still mind-boggling and is still- Yes. And yeah, that is sort of the original, I don't want to say sin, because it's an alleged sin,

But is the original cockamamie moment in the story is that IPE is furnished by the Otani camp. He has brought forward as someone who is going to explain what has shaken out. And after he does that, they subsequently rush to say that no, in fact, that was actually not at all what happened. And they're covering it. And apparently there is a crisis management firm which has been retained. Not such a well done job so far. maybe we'll see signs of improvement this week. And Brian, we got opening day coming up.

I mean, I know they played opening day in Seoul for the Padres and the Dodgers, but we have opening day here domestically. This is supposed to be, again, this was this breakout moment for Otani, who has been a major, major star in baseball for a number of years now, but has finally been given what people dreamed he would be given, which is this massive platform in a team like the Dodgers that is on the, you know, on television frequently and is just a team that sort of penetrates the national consciousness. And more importantly, wins, goes to playoff games, something that Otani is not done. And to have

this all shake out so early is, again, nightmare, I think is the right word. Could we have concocted a more nightmarish story for baseball to be ensnared in, to use the only in journalism word? I mean, it's a nightmare story of because of what it conjures up. I mean, obviously, there are things and offenses that, you know, we don't have to get into that would probably be more regrettable. But and there's always the case that there is a rather innocent explanation for all this, though it doesn't seem to be headed in that direction. It just seems like a huge mess. I think it's a mess for baseball because specifically of the history in the sport with regard to this topic and the volatility of it. And also, and I think, you know, this has been, Brian, one of your favorite things, parade of the think pieces.

Everybody's been out there, myself included, talking about, you know, what this is representative of in a time in which, again, we see just constant barrages of advertising on not just, you know, sports league billboards and floors and fields, but in media partners for legal sports gaming. You know, what are we talking about now when we get aghast at this sort of thing? Are we making just this sort of like small picayune kind of. distinction here between bookmaking and what is now a legalized product, most states in America. We've seen a lot of that. Completely agree. And so much of this rests on, as you said earlier, the fact that sports gambling happens to not be legal in California or mostly illegal in California. So what you have is you have this sort of overhang of a not legal enterprise.

but what we were talking about, here's where the think pieces go is a largely legal enterprise. And I was interested to learn. Like baseball players are allowed to gamble on sports that aren't baseball. Yeah. Didn't know that, right?

So, you know, if you had millions of dollars invested in gambling in other sports, and if you're somebody who's a huge baseball superstar, what does that mean? Kind of fascinating. I always just get a kick, too, out of like, you know, there are this kind of emergency expert that appears in a story like this where somebody says,

have you ever wondered what a multimillion dollar wire transfer situation looks like? Well, let me take you through it. And all of a sudden, we're getting this granular detail about how all the various security steps it takes to make a multimillion dollar transfer. Brian, it's been weeks since I've done that. So it's not on top of mind for me. But maybe you could walk us through. We have million dollar wire. We have million dollar wire. wire transfer dial a quote standing by. It's like the guy who explains the box office numbers. Give us a few lines on wires.

I sent 4.5 million to rev last week for some transcription. I had local news on here, K-Cal after the tournament game ended yesterday. And they were doing a local news report on the Otani story. love when any massive news story then gets filtered into the lens of local news. And of course, they're at a Dodger Stadium talking to fans and, you know, Dodger fans, well, let's see what happens and see what the investigation turns up. They also wonderfully, this is K-Cal, found an angel fan at Dodgers. The team Otani left to go to the Dodgers. And I want you to hear an angel fan taking a little bit of a victory lap after yesterday's news.

Dodgers fired the Starz-Interpre last week after being accused of stealing $4.5 million from him to pay off illegal gambling debts that he allegedly wrapped up with an Orange County bookie. O'Donni's reps say he's a victim of massive theft, but one Angel fan says he's not buying it. Angel dodge a bullet on that one.

Dodge a gigantic bullet. You know, he may get suspended for 100 games. Who knows? The happiest Angels fans have been in years. Yeah. Yeah, the rare upside for the Angels story. I would actually ask you a little bit about the Californianness of this story because it is sort of, you know, though the Dodgers, again, are an international concern very much so and never more so now that they have Otani.

There's a California aspect of this. The Dodgers, of course, you know, being the big franchise in the state, but they have mortal enemies in the Giants, in the Dodgers. I guess, you know, a local rivalry with the Angels, although that's less what the Padres' Giants deal is. There's a lot of Chadenfreude flying around this story, I imagine, too, from NorCal and south of L.A. Yeah, I'd have to locate some Angel fans, an addition to the guy that K. Cal found there to really ask him about it. Angels are not quite in the Chargers zone in Southern California sports, where you're like,

I've never really met an L.A. Chargers fan. but they're not that far away from the Chargers zone. Yeah. And it is, it is fascinating because I remember asking somebody one time who was at the LA Times about the numbers they get for different stories. I'm always fascinated that with different cities. But, you know, L.A. is Dodgers and Lakers are number one,

1A, 1B, kind of depending on the moon. And then there's a huge gap. And then it's USC. And then there's another huge gap. And it's probably UCLA. Then you get to the Rams who won a Super Bowl not that long ago. And then do do do do down the ladder, you find the angels somewhere. Yeah.

So I'd have to go back to Orange County to really give you some string. Somewhere in between is like the Bing Crosby Palm Springs Pro Am. Yeah, the ducks probably somewhere near that to that zone as well. The Bakersfield Condors. Yeah, Rancho Cucumongas, my only team, I think. probably hits the chart somewhere around there. Let's talk a little bit about this Kim Mulkey's story. And I guess we have to say story and air quotes because it hasn't been published.

Yeah. One of the more interesting unpublished pieces of sports journalism I've ever encountered. Saul starts with a tweet from Sports Illustrated's Pat 40 on Friday. He wrote hearing some buzz about a big Washington Post story in the works on LSU women's hoops coach Kim Mulkey. potentially next week, wagons being circled, etc. That goes out into the world. We later learn that the story is being written, or perhaps already has been written,

by Kent Bab of the Post, who does big pieces, big investigative assignments. We have no idea what's in it, other than that hint that it's big-ish. and this story, again, this unpublished story becomes this massive thing on Twitter and elsewhere, merely by a hint of its existence. What did you make of not quite Mulkie Gate, but unpublished Mulkie Gate, as it were? We've seen this movie before, you and I. All of us have seen it. There's a version of this story that happens in politics quite a bit where there's a bombshell story coming that a politician gets out there and denies without going into detail

about what they're actually denying. I mean, it's a rather common phenomenon in, you know, that kind of world. You don't see it in sports so much. What's unusual about the way that this blew up was, of course, Mokie going on the offensive, rather aggressively coming out and saying, not only does she take issue with this unpublished story that she is retaining or in the process of retaining a defamation lawyer and the interest of protecting her interest against the Washington Post. Without getting too far down the road,

I mean, this is not the Washington Post's first rodeo. I don't think they were clicking in their boots about that. They have, you know, they have taken on presidencies, multiple versions of presidencies, and I don't think that this is something that's going to give them nightmares

in terms of opposition. But yeah, this is the sort of, you know, carp or horse, kind of strange phenomenon that you see sometimes where a publication obviously has a plan about when they're going to get something out into the world. They obviously want to do it at a moment when there's a good deal of attention upon the program, which is, you know, obviously the tournament is probably maximum for that. And, you know, I don't think that this takes their story apart or changes their publishing plan, but I think that it's certainly going to increase the eyeballs

on it. And, you know, is another classic example of the Streisand, which I know you've gotten into a great deal of the idea like in the process of denying a story, you actually breathe much more life into the story than anyone would have ever imagined having to the point that I believe you sent me something the other day that a piece that Kim Malky took exception to that was written by Kent Bab about Brian Kelly and LSU shot to the top of the charts of the Washington Post most red list the other day. By the way, it's not this. sort of like hit piece, that is a bunch of baloney. It's not that kind of piece at all. It's actually a really thoughtful piece about life in Baton Rouge around LSU and people who work

the university and live around it. Isn't it all really even about Brian Kelly that much. But anyway, that just goes to show the sort of the nutty nature of this whole thing, shaking out the way that it has in public without the actual story to sort of prop the whole thing up. The good news is that we're going to get it. And then the story will, you know, live or die based on its merits. My suspicion is given Kent's track record, the post track record, it'll be a solid piece of work.

But we'll see. Let's listen to Kim Moky doing a little pre-publication publicity for Kent Babb in the Washington Post. This reporter has been working on a story about me for two years. After two years of trying to get me to sit with him for an interview,

he contacts LSU on Tuesday as we were getting ready for the first round game of this tournament with more than a dozen questions demanding a response by Thursday right before we're scheduled to tip off. Are you kidding me? I love the contradiction there. I didn't do an interview with him for two years and now he expects an answer right now. What about the two years that you weren't responding to his interview requests? A lot of classics of the genre in that press conference. They said accused Kent Babb of trying to quote sell newspapers.

I hadn't heard that phrase since I heard the word bookmaker. Oh, you haven't seen those Washington. You haven't seen the newsies out in front of the women's tournament holding up copies of the Washington Post. Get your red hot post here. Extra, extra. We got all the goods on Kim Mokie and LSU. This is why they don't trust journalists anymore, Malky said. I'm not going to let the Washington Post attack me and the university in my team, which is just classic coach locker room material. They're all against us.

We in Michigan have something in common. They're not going to let the press beat us. Amazing, amazing stuff. This is the formula. We've seen this a million times. And this is how you go about it. She's actually using a pretty common playbook, which is to attack the institution, attack the reporter, attack the idea, the media in modern times more broadly. And look, you're going to get an empathetic audience on that. It works. People do it because it works. And sure enough, you know, pretty quickly after these press conference, there was a lot of swimming around about, you know, what the Washington Post was up to and this being some sort of like contrived hit piece and blah, blah, blah, blah. But look, again, the good news is that you get to see

the story and make the judgment for yourself. So I don't know that this story is a perfect example of tweeting about a piece that another news organization is working on because Pat 40 tweeted it out with Kent Babb's permission. Am I getting that correct? I mean, mine understanding, they're friends and like they're, you know, have known each other a long time. And this, you know, tweet from Pat was just kind of like putting information out there that certainly did not come as any sort of shock or discomfort to Kent, that it was not some sort of like, you know, undermining that was coming or anything of that. nature. And I know that that sort of flew around the internet for a minute, the idea that

somehow Pat was trying to sabotage the Washington Post, but I don't think anything could be further from the truth. I think this was one colleague speaking up for another's, uh, travails. And, and the truth of the matter is that Kent doesn't need Pat. Pat doesn't need Kent. These are, you know, they're just buddies as far as I know. Yeah, I saw Jeff Pearlman, uh, after high horsing the 40 tweet, then had to high horse himself, kind of an auto high horse, which is always a fun position to be in as a journalists. I've been there as a media person myself. But I did want to talk to you about the general idea of tweeting out stories that people are writing about when you hear about them. Because that whole few days of Twitter before maybe the fact were known totally about that, it seemed that

people really were confused about what the proper etiquette there is. So do we think journalists can tweet about their competitor stories? I mean, again, this is not a good specific example of it because of the nature of these guys of being friendly with each other. I think I would not be thrilled if my competition was putting out, you know, Jason intends to write about his cat mug at the NCAA tournament tomorrow before the cat mug story came out and changed the world. So, yeah, I think that that's pretty widely regarded as being something that's not a friendly act. And at the same time, it's kind of the price of business a little bit. Sometimes, you know, there are internecine and competitive rivalries that happen all the time and people step on people's toes and some people like to jam up other people.

And sometimes they're getting it backwash from the sources. Again, this is not what happened here. But sometimes it'll be like, you know, a source preemptively complaining to a reporter from another publication about an impending piece and sort of like grieving off the record about it and trying to sort of establish some sort of like, you know, ballast against which to rail against when the piece eventually comes out. Again, not necessarily the case here. The good news is that, Brian, nobody reads anything anymore. So what's the point and even worrying about any of it? And thank you. Thank you for the price box. Thank you. It's been a great episode.

We're signing off with that idea. It's funny to me because this is, there is a lot of Marquess of Queensberry rules between journalists. Because if you and I, Jason, are competing for a story, if we're both trying to break something. And I find out that you're working on the same piece that I am, I am very well within my rights and my publication. in my rights to try to rush my story into print and beat you. And I don't think either you nor I would begrudge the other one for trying to do that. But if I found out that you were working on a story and I just tweeted about it, that would then be the breach of etiquette.

So we're okay to compete with each other like crazy. But as soon as we just throw that out there on Twitter, hey, you know, Jason's got a big story coming about that cat mug. that is the moment that I have crossed the red line. That's funny to me. I mean, you know, and again, I don't do that as a point of fact,

but, you know, that's funny. That's where the line is. Yeah, and also another part of this is that, you know, Pat 40 is one of these people and Ken is too that actually, you know, share physical space with other reporters. They're in the universities, you know, going to the games,

they're out there in the field, talking to sources, they are not sort of like internet creatures necessarily. And there's a lot of sort of elbowing that happens around stories, I think, less so nowadays. But, you know, in the sort of journalism heyday of Twitter, which I think is long past, there was a lot of sort of forensics about whose story and when story and how story and who had it first and that sort of thing. I think we've now just moved on to just elbowing each other in the eyeballs all the time. But it's you know, it's a fertile ground for that kind of conversation. And there are people who are sort of professional contrarians about it all the time online.

I don't think either of these guys is that kind of person. I've, you know, listen, I've tried to stay away. I really have. It's, it's so funny because journalists love to talk about each other's stories and upcoming stories in private. Like, you know, if you and I are, having a couple of drinks, like a couple of old grizzled sports writers in Las Vegas before a Super Bowl. I don't think we actually did this in Vegas. But if we were and we knew about another journalist working on a big story, that's the kind of information we would share over

drinks because that's gossip, right? Journalists love it as good as they are about finding out information to get into print. They're even better at finding out gossip about other people in the industry. It's one of the great unpublished things. So it's just funny when those things leaked to Twitter. By the way, speaking of etiquette, I get on ESPN's homepage yesterday, and I find the kind of wire story-ish write-up of the whole Mulkey press conference

we just played a little bit of. You know, it's one ESPN plus the Associated Press. And it includes all these unfounded accusations, unvetted accusations that Mulkey made against Kent Bab. Just repeated here. Quoted. And I'm like, so wait a second. So we're talking about journalistic etiquette here.

And I understand this is, kind of a wire story, kind of a vessel for famous person said something. But you're going to print stuff that a coach is saying about an unpublished piece of journalism and a certain, and a reporter's, uh, conduct. You're just going to print that without any verification, without any attempt to go look into whether any of that stuff actually happened. Are you kidding me?

Get out of here with that stuff. I talk about disrespect for a fellow reporter. Why the hell is that on the homepage? If Kim Mulkey had been like, let me tell you about Tisha Thompson and, you know, Don Van Nat and all these other people at ESPN and what they were doing, I sure as hell wouldn't have been on the ESPN homepage. That would have been ridiculous. No, I think that's true. I think it's sort of a speaks to what, you know, cells increasingly is the idea of just ad hominem conflict. It also is, you know, it's an unusual forum for these grievances to be aired. These are college basketball reporters who are very distinguished. in covering college basketball, they might not necessarily be interested in covering the small details of a media dispute.

So it's a little bit of out of pocket for that kind of discussion, honestly. Totally. She should have taken it to the press box, Curtis. Kim Wilkes. I was going to say she's always invited, but I'm not totally sure that that's correct, if we're being honest.

Tell her that barely bearer David Shoemaker is co-host. Yeah. David, David's got his own podcast to have Kim Moki. Oh, that's right. That's true. We've got an ESPN doc to talk about Jason. It's done by Alex Sherman, Fine Media Reporter, who I always enjoy reading. It was on CNBC.

Brought a lot of the principles to the table. Jimmy Pataro, Bob Chappek, the defenistrated former Disney CEO, John Skipper, former ESPN president. It lays out a lot of the challenges that ESPN president. is facing in coming years, which you and I have talked about, which people in the business have talked about, what, did anything stand out to you in that litany of bear traps that ESPN is trying to step around as it runs into the future? Make note here at the top, we had a significant breaking of silence. I believe that was first Chapic that we've seen since de-fetration.

So he broke his silence. He was looking into a camera and as their kind of like change up shot, they had a side shot of him looking into a camera. I just thought was fun. I did not understand just, you know, this particular technological choice was that it appeared that he was doing the interview over Zoom, but there was a cameraman at Chapic HQ, videoing him doing the Zoom?

That's what was confusing. He was, a camera was filming him looking at, at a computer. Maybe there's somebody just doing a documentary, a documentary about the first year of Chepic, you know, at home and just has some stock footage of him doing FaceTime interviews with CNBC. Look, I mean, these people are just following in your wake, Brian Curtis. You were first out of the gate with, I don't want to mispronounce it.

It's honest, horribulus, right? How do we do it? That's right. That was, yes, that's Bob Lee's phrase, yes. Honest, horribulus. I don't want to miss pronounce that. Horribulus, maybe. But you declared this to be their worst year ever again. And, you know, I'm sure you got a little bit of blowback on that. But now everybody's just falling your wake, Brian Curtis. They're coming up, you know, behind you and sort of explaining what you laid out 90 days ago that they are facing all these sort of existential. questions about their livelihood. And look, there's no, this is not a terribly complicated story, really. I mean, it was interesting to hear from these principles here. And I think it really was a valid piece of news gallery for sure, as was the journal's piece about Jimmy Potara, which ran

the same week. I enjoyed that as well. But what's happening here is pretty straightforward. The business of ESPN since inception was getting the people who loved ESPN to pay for ESPN. And, And the people who didn't give a damn or watch ESPN to also pay for ESPN. That was the glory of basic cable. It was how they made all those buildings in Bristol. And when you're talking about shifting over to a format in which it's a la carte, it's pay for what you want. That's a different economic model.

It's something that newspapers have struggled up against. And now it's, you know, candidly cable television's turn. And we're seeing with ESPN being the biggest of the big in the cable news business and the cable television business, the kind of pain that's probably coming. It's interesting, too, because there's a few stories inside of that. One is you'll hear lots of people say, sports ratings haven't fallen like the ratings for the rest of television

haven't fallen. In fact, they've gone up, they say several times in this piece. That is sort of technically true. They count ratings and out-of-home viewers differently now, so you can read into that what you will. But there is a question of whether sports ratings will still be what they are, and particularly probably professional football ratings, when we finally fully leave the cable bundle,

when we fully leave linear television in an order of free-floating appy world. That to me is fascinating. And then there's also the strand in there mentioned about the future of studio shows. And I think that is so interesting because if you think about ESPN's glory days, they didn't have expensive rights. They couldn't afford expensive rights. and in fact what they could afford was really cheap studio programming. They weren't paying the people to do it very much,

asked Dan and Keith or anybody that worked there in that golden age. It was very easy to produce. And they could make lots of money off stores, the shows like that. Now they've completely flipped it, right? They have not only expensive rights, but ultra-expensive rights. Monday night football, the playoff deal they just signed. And they're going into the future sort of wandering, wait a second. We know we have the things people want to watch,

those big football games, the NBA, which they have to then redo here pretty soon. But can we then also have a studio show business around that? So that ESPN, whatever that means in the future, doesn't just mean vessel to show sporting events. And that's fascinating to me because the economics are already unknown. That's probably the nicest word to say. Dicey would be another word to say. How do you come up with things that are cheap to produce, relatively cheap to produce, that people will actually want to watch when they're not watching linear TV?

I think what you're describing actually is more of a behavioral issue than an economic issue, because find for me on streaming things that exist as a successful interstitial programming. That's what these studio shows are. They're the interstitial programming. They're the stuff that is programmed for. for people who just have ESPN on all day. Whether you're the sports fan at home, whether you're somebody who operates a restaurant,

whether you're in the airport, whether you're somebody who keeps it on in the corner of your laptop when you're at work, it sort of is this back soundtrack to your life and you poke your head up and you look at first take or around the horn, so on. Those kinds of things have been very successful because ESPN is such a massive juggernaut at night

with massive ratings from a lot of these games that the stuff that rolls around the next 12 hours, 20 hours in the clock does very nicely for them because they, again, they creatively programmed. They find smart people to do these shows. That does not exist as a behavior in the streaming universe. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe somebody could point it out to me, but the idea of people like logging into Netflix to watch live talk programming, let's take that, you know, Netflix, the big Kahuna for the example here, that doesn't exist. And will people want that kind of programming in their life?

Or are they going to have replacing that with podcast, with TikTok, with other forms of communication, chat, and so on? Is that sort of like interstitial talk show, studio show kind of format a vestige of just the cable television product? It certainly is in news. This is why CNN rather controversially, you know, slam down the door on CNN plus minutes after launch. They didn't believe that there was an audience to justify the expenditure and the roll out there. So I don't know what they'll do with it with regard to EFB.

It seems that they are already in a process of consolidation. I mean, you've written about this. It's more and more feeling like a two-man band. with Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee, and then there are surrounding satellite channels and personalities and so on. But I think the bet here is that at least those two are mega enough that maybe they can make the jump or will be able to bring more than most people could. And that's the bet.

Certainly the bet right now is with Stephen A. and McAfee. They're going to help us figure out how to do studio shows and streaming. But then the problem there is that they're really expensive. So you haven't really solved the cost problem. You're paying, you know, both of them north of $15 million a year, and Stephen A needs a new contract. So I don't know. I mean, I can imagine people doing that sort of passive consumption

you're talking about before a football game, before big events, turn on a game show. I mean, we already see that. Yeah, we see that in streaming sports, that they have sort of created the apparatus program around it, yes. Sure. And that can probably work, even if those shows become sort of less and less useful to sports fans who listen to, say, like, one podcast or listen to one or read one sort of fairly nerdy piece

about football, basketball, whatever it is. So I totally believe that. But yeah, that like 10 a.m. Tuesday morning that ESPN, again, just feasted off up because they were the sports network. Like that was like, I don't know what I'm going to do, so I'm going to turn on ESPN. Well, then there's all the questions about. redundancies if they actually go off and do this thing with the three-headed monster with Fox and Turner and ESPN and all this sports program, Spulu or whatever they're calling it.

You know, there's all kind of redundancies there. Are you going to really need multiple NBA shows, like studio shows, or can you just have one for this, you know, this streaming service? Or will you have multiple ones? I mean, I'm not being facetious. I really don't know what the answer is to that. I'm sure there are people who prefer one versus the other. Yeah, well, but I also. I think, I think the public has voted on the NBA pregame show. But, but, but it raises the question, right? If you're going to, you know, keep them all, you know, you're in a silo them all here and make

this a one-stop destination for an NBA fan or close to one-stop destination. Why do you need multiple NBA chit-chat shows? Totally. Totally. That's again, a feature of the cable dial, right? But I, and let me, let me just raise. you guys as an example here. I mean, not to bring it too close to home, but I always have had this question with something like The Ringer, where you have multiple basketball programs. Like, why don't you have just one basketball program? Well, the answer to that, I believe, I'm not trying to speak for you guys. I don't know what the actual answer is. And maybe you can't answer for me, but like that there are different kinds of audiences with different tastes, hours, lifestyles, interests, you know, idols, tastes, you know, and and you're trying to give

each of these audience is something that they love and that, you know, the idea that you can serve it with one program is arrogant. And so why not spread it around, create all kinds of different talent? And, you know, clearly it's working. But, you know, that runs counter to the idea of what we're talking about here with Spulu because studio shows, of course, are quite a bit more expensive too. Yeah.

And I think also to your, to the point is you want to hear the same topic sometimes filtered through different personalities. I agree. There's stuff to say, right? Bill's going to say something here at the ringer and somebody else is going to say something different. God knows we're going to say something different here at the press box. So, you know, everything, everything can be filtered through

and you can come away with different points and different perspectives. And I don't know. Yeah, it's funny. I just, I don't know. I mean, the studio show has been part of our lives ever since we've been watching sports television. And again, if it's not caboose or, engineered or like an engine to a big popular sporting event.

I just don't, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, like, are you going to watch SportsCenter? I mean, think of the big trick that they always do at SportsCenter. Not a trick, but it's just the standard television tactic, which is to start SportsCenter right in the wake of the Monday Night Football game because you're still in this Monday night football zone. And so you get this sort of big beginning rating because you're lifting off of the vapor of hopefully a great football game.

those tactics have no application in streaming. Or maybe they do, I don't know, I don't know how all this stuff is going to shake out with how they're going to measure success and the metrics of it. I mean, that all is sort of undiscovered country. I should mention here, too, that with regard to ringer shows, I have pitched every year I have pitched,

for those of you are curious, press box junior, which is a kids press box show. And Brian just rejects it out of hand every year. Yeah, he doesn't want any competition. We now send that directly to spam. but thank you very much for continuing. Brian, Brian Waters,

getting a real kick out of Press Box Jr. We need, we need junior Brian and David in the way they do with wrestlers, you know, dressing the same way, wearing the same glasses. Yes,

dressing like Brian and David. It's so good. Little, little balo ties. The other part of this, we should just mention briefly, is that, you know,

some of the speculation around the coverage of ESPN right now is that Jimmy Pata who is the head of ESPN is also potentially, or is it literally being mentioned as a candidate to replace Bob Eiger when Bob Eiger 2.0 ends at Disney when that era ends. And that's an interesting dynamic of that too, because he has been the person who is the change agent here, who has been overseeing this, this is the most dramatic moment in the history of the network, for sure, how it handles this segue. And at the same time, you might lose this guy upstairs,

which, I don't know, I mean, do you follow that world? Who is, you know, who would be the immediate candidate for ESPN? I don't even, I don't understand the Kremlinology enough if they had to make a change right now. Pat, Pat, it's Pat McAfee. It's actually McAfee, yeah. It's actually his producers will be doing it as kind of a joint assignment. Yeah, but no, that's part of it too, right? And that's like, again, the challenge for Patara was,

can you take the thing that was the most successful TV network and series of TV networks in the history of the cable bundle and push it across the bridge into the streaming world? Can you figure out how to do that and still make money and still have it be ESPN that we recognize as this huge juggernaut, this huge thing in our lives? Can you do that? And the potential reward for if you can do that is this other big job.

The NBA negotiations, how that pans out, that's going to tell us a lot. You know, the expectation historically always is that things go up. They just go up, up, up, up, up. And I think they will clearly go up, up, up here again. These will be record deals for the NBA programming. However, the approach to it, how they bundle it, who gets what, how they spread it around, is going to say a lot about what networks are trying to do, what they're ambitious about, what they're skittish about.

You know, there's a way to run a television network, which is just very conservative and cautious and just try to play out the cable bundle as long as it lasts. I mean, that's still, look, the ESPN numbers were broken out in the last Disney report. I mean, this is a profitable company, big time. Yes, absolutely. And that's because, you know, cable television,

you know, despite its steep decline, it remains a very, very robust business. I know that sounds completely in contrast, but there's still a dollar to be made in it. And I think they are being wise and pushing into the next generation. But I think that the way that the NBA package gets sorted out will be a good indicator as to where things are going. I think so.

And for the NBA, too, by the way. I mean, is it going to be two networks again? Is it going to be three, two networks plus a streamer? Is it going to have some hopelessly fractured NASCAR style package where you're never quite sure where the next NBA game is on? Yeah, I think John Aran in his pre-year predictions or his early year predictions column, which has a weird way of coming true,

said that ESPN might wind up splitting the finals or doing alternating finals with another network, which I thought was fascinating. Again, we're sitting here where Mike Breeden has called like seven, NBA finals in a row. Yeah. That would just be a big change in programming. Reggie Miller would be bummed because if he has to go call a finals,

that interrupts his mountain biking season. I know this, that he is very excited when the playoff commitment, returner ends and he can get on his mountain bike and ride it full time. I have a question for you, which is, do you think that the NBA will begin to more aggressively police it's copyright. The reason I ask is that one of the things that has contributed to the NBA's profile on social media and has made it such a phenomenon with young people, including my son, is that they have incredible access to instantaneous highlights and not just highlights that

are coming from official sanctioned NBA and team accounts, but from every corner of the internet. We all know the personalities and the individuals and House of Highlights itself sort of began as sort of unsanctioned highlights. And the NBA's approach to this. I remember talking to them a long time about when this was all starting to kick off was that they were not going to police their copyright, that they felt this was going to lift all boats

and be a good thing. I don't know if their thinking has changed on that. I need to ask them about that. But I'm curious, like in a time when, like, you see newspapers, for example, music, for example, places that, used to think, oh, well, we'll just put everything over the top and, you know, everyone will figure out the business. They've gone back to much more of a subscription-based arrangement. Will Sports? And I shouldn't just say NBA. There should be everybody. You know, will sports

get more aggressive about policing their copyright? It's a fascinating question. And we know, too, with the NBA, that they've had issues with people inhaling basketball without necessarily watching basketball, especially regular season basketball. But, you know, it just feels like it's way, way too late to then cut off the spigot or just too difficult or just too difficult. Like, is it though? Well, you can stomp on bigger unsanctioned partners, but also, you know, unsanctioned media works, I should say, non-partners.

But then, you know, is that really, is that really useful in this day and age? I mean, would it be if you just took a hard line on it and said, we're going to take down every clip we can? What if you tried it and you saw a 3% ratings bump or a 1% ratings bump even? What if you saw something with, you know, there's the technology is all available. It's why you can't put like a copywritten song like running across your Instagram, you know, videos. I know you try that all the time, Brian. Um, you, there are ways in which they can protect this technologically. Um, but again, they have felt that and it's, I think they were right. I think, that they have absolutely built a young generation of followers who, unfortunately for them,

have not been television watchers, cable television watchers in particular, and so less, you know, commodifiable than their prior generations. You know, losers like you and I who sit and watch quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, quarter four, I mean, that's increasingly an acronistic behavior. You know, why do that when I can just flip open my phone and watch the four best dunks that have happened in the last 10 minutes and monitor four games in real time? I mean, did you watch the rollouts that people were showing of the NBA product for the Apple goggles and saying like, oh, this way I can watch four games at once?

Brian, my brain cannot process information like that. hard enough time looking at this computer and talking into a microphone, much less monitoring four basketball games at once. I just, the world is beyond me. We're going to have you watch three games and also do a podcast at the same time. I think you're up to it, actually. Do two podcasts at once. That's the trick, right? Most podcasts done at the same time. Just mute one zoom screen and unmute the other. Lastly, before we go, I want to issue a challenge to all Press Box listeners. We need to have a new little contest here called the Describe a Trump Rally Challenge. You've heard Jason all of the questions about should we show the Trump

rally, should we not show the Trump rally? The only way you understand a Trump rally is to go to a Trump rally and now I'm going to explain it to you. That's become a new subgenre of campaign reporting. Well, Zach Madden sent this along. This is a new NPR piece by Danielle Kurtzenben. Kurtzlben, excuse me. And here's a title, like a fish concert but with more grievance, this is what it's like at a Trump rally.

Fish concert on steroids, you might say, Jason. So if you can top that by finding a description of a Trump rally anywhere in the media, please send it to us at the press box pod. Like a fish concert, but with more grievance.

What are the grievances? What are the typical grievances at a fish concert? like the vegan baked potato line is too long. Something like that. Yeah. They're nice grievances. They're happy grievances. I think it's quite quite the same miz onsen.

Anyway, check out Jason Gay at the Wall Street Journal. Check him out in comedy clubs across the country. He will be playing the laugh factory out here Thursday night at 2 a.m. Assisted living homes. Don't forget. Yeah. Oh, yes. Of course, a complete schedule available on his website.

Jason, thank you for coming on the press box. That's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis, production magic by Brian Waters. Coming up this Thursday, a special episode of the press box, Evan Gershkevich, the Wall Street Journal reporter, has been arrested and detained in Russia now for one year. We will explore his life, his career, what's happening at the Wall Street Journal with that paper's editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker. And then on Monday, David Shoemaker returns from being on assignment for more lukewarm takes about the media.