The Press Box - The 2020 Media Primary | The Press Box (Ep. 552)

Episode Date: December 14, 2018

Early coverage of 2020 presidential candidates (2:15), Fox's conquest of the NFL (20:00), and the fate of The Weekly Standard (33:15). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, it's Liz Kelly. Here's what's going on at The Ringer for the rest of the week. We're covering award season nominations, TV superlatives for the year, and the best memes of 2018. You can check those out on The Ringer.com. And check out The Ringer's Instagram where every Friday the staff provides their weekend recommendations

and every Saturday, our very own Kate Hallwell takes over with her new show, T-Time, where she offers up her thoughts on the latest celebrity gossip. Make sure to follow us on Instagram at Ringer. David, Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi conducted an argument about legislation

live on TV the other day. What I want to know is what private feud would you like to see play out on television. Oh my gosh. There's got to be a better answer to this than what I'm thinking of. What are you thinking? Everybody hates Chevy Chase, right?

Is that where you're going with us? Chevy Chase. I don't know why Chevy Chase just popped into my head, but wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be great to give him a number? Netflix talk show where he just had to interview all the people that hated him and confront that. It'd be incredible. The problem is like there were three chairs at the White House the other day. And I feel for Chevy we'd need like 50 chairs. Would that be good television? Everybody just like holding up their hands waiting to talk?

It was an incredible fight. And the way that you knew that that was a real fight, at least the way that I could relate to it the most from the occasional fights I'll have my personal life is the constant stipulation that we don't need to be having this fight right now or that this isn't really a fight. Nancy Pelosi would be like Listen we can save this for another time But I just want to make this one last thing And Trump would be like You're right We can save this for another time But I'm going to say something else too

It was fantastic They were like five like overlapping agendas there Of public versus private Wall versus no wall Shutdown that we own versus shutdown that you own It was really It was really incredible Really incredible

And that might have been the most productive 15 minutes of the Trump presidency We are the Hannity and Colms of Media Podcasting. This is the Press Box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. The Press Box is the media podcast. We are not allowed to form an exploratory committee. We are Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer. Three burning issues today, David, to cover first.

It's not even 2019, but people are already writing about the candidates allegedly running for president in 2020. We see who's winning the media primary. Second, we talk about the 25-year anniversary of the Fox Network conquering the NFL, how that changed the way we watch football. And finally, wither the weekly standard magazine. And is there an appetite for conservative writing that's anti-Trump? Plus, as always the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, let's start with the 2020 media primary.

Deval Patrick, former governor of Massachusetts, officially decided that he did not want to make himself into content. but just about everybody else who potentially has a presidential pedigree is ready to take part in this curious exercise where we in the media try to guess how good a candidate they would be before they even declare. I just want to hit you with a bunch of these

that have come up over the last week or so. Elizabeth Warren. Yeah. Have you ever seen, I think I'm stealing this thought from Dave Weigel of the Washington Post, but have you ever seen Washington conventional wisdom flip-flop like how good a job she did

getting out in front of the Native American bit. And now where there was a New York Times story about this this week that now that she misplayed her hand completely. And by the way, we were in the conventional, nobody cares about what we think. But I think we were pretty high on what she'd done, how she'd sort of handled that. And everybody's like, actually, this is the biggest problem she has right now. Yeah. I mean, I think that, and I was forgiving of her when we talked about her last, and I still

think she's incredibly impressive and and may end up being a very strong candidate. But it does feel like that the worst thing you can do is sort of like, insinuate yourself into the, into the conventional wisdom too early. And maybe by, and she, she picked a smart moment to, I mean, an interesting moment to, to release that video. But, you know, it could, and that could have been what launched an amazing campaign, but it does sort of feel like, it feels like it, it landed with thud,

or at least it failed to ignite any kind of grassroots excitement. And maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You know, maybe it was just, maybe, you know, all of these things are being received so, you know, so board. I mean, it's in such a rote fashion by the press corps that like nobody can actually gin up anything interesting. Well, yeah, I mean, there's no, there's no votes on the board, right? There's no primary in front of us. And we're looking at these sort of polls that are sort of semi-meaningful. But this is this kind of stuff she gets graded on.

And to me, it's like I hate to do the thing where we look back at a candidate or an athlete, whoever, and say, here is the way you could have slickly handled the PR to trick us because that's not her job. But if we had to do that, it's pretty obvious that the whole DNA part of her thing was just a completely, different wormhole, right? She, on the one hand, appeared truthfully can say, apparently truthfully can say, you know, my heritage had been talked about by my relatives and I was proud of it and I did something, you know, that I was probably, you know, trying to take advantage of it in somewhere I was trying to, I did something I shouldn't have done. But this is something, this came out of, you know, hearing family stories and a point of pride and I'd like to apologize, whatever. Instead, you went down this whole DNA track, which then opens up this whole question of.

about identity and who's a member and who's not. And that just feels like that's going to be a big, big problem. Because as somebody, again, I'm stealing this idea from somebody on Twitter the other day. But the Democratic primaries are going to be fought on the grounds on the issues of gender and identity. All these things that all these issues that Trump has stoked. And I don't know. It just feels like she has not, she did not, in fact, ace that first test. I mean, and it's, you know, you can read this in either direction, but it did, it does sort of feel in retrospect.

Like she was, she was, she was, that whole thing was, was an effort to show that she could kind of, you know, take Trump on on his own terms a little bit. She's a little bit, you know, she's be a media candidate. I'm going to, I'm going to create media for myself. I'm going to be a media candidate and kind of. Yeah, and to like, and to engage in his nonsense, you know, and engage with his nonsense. I mean, and just to say like, you know, I can do, I can one up him on the. this front. And I think that after the midterms, you know, as everything's sort of settled in, it looks like, you know, maybe, maybe the old Elizabeth Warren would have been more of the

candidate that the Democratic Party would want right now. Like, we don't need to get dirty with Trump. We need to have, we need to be, you know, we need to rise above all that. And, and, you know, I mean, who knows? Like I said, you can, you can look at it either way. But it does, it does seem like she, you know, She was trying to make a move and without it being, you know, since it wasn't received as just some sort of like a rousing success, I think the odds are, I mean, it's going to be perceived as a big failure, even if it was just sort of a nothing. Well, yeah, and I feel it's actually like two overlapping arguments. One is, you know, will this, is Trump just going to call her Pocahontas the whole time? And as gruesome and racist as that is, is that just going to sink her candidacy in the general election? and then also can she get through the Democratic primary, right?

It's like she, even somebody who's going to win the nomination at this point. She decided not to run last time. And, I mean, she allowed Hillary Clinton to run without her opposition. She signed on. And regardless of what you think about Hillary Clinton as a candidate, I just think that's the worst thing you can do in politics right now. I mean, if there's anybody and we're going to get into this list over the next 10 minutes, If anybody is asking if you're thinking about running for president, that is your chance to run for president. It's the one cliche that turns out to be true, right?

Yeah, you don't get to Bob Dole. I mean, he didn't win, but you don't wait your turn. You don't nobody wait your turn. But he ran in 88. Yeah. So he was early. You know, he, when he was ready, he went. Yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, I think now the, it's amazing because Obama seems to have taught everybody that lesson in 2008. but then all the Democrats forgot about it by 2016 and did like, oh, we're just going to we're going to sort of crown Hillary as the nominee in 2016, even though the lesson of 2008 was not only what you said, you should run as soon as there is any interest, but also you should also challenge Hillary.

That was the last thing. Bernie Sanders proved it. I also said interesting about where does the Boston Globe came out with this editorial saying that she missed her moment in 2016. also saying while she's an effective and impactful senator, she's becoming a divisive figure. A unifying voice is what this country needs after the polarizing politics of Trump. Whatever we think of that opinion, I'm always fascinated by the role of the local press plays in the primaries. Right.

Because they know these people. Warren's enough of a natural figure, but these, like the press just knows these people. And they can be this incredible hindrance because all their scandals can kind of come back out. Or they can pick, you know, little things. that they've been covering all of a sudden become national issues. Willie Horton being one of those that we were hearing about a little bit with the, with George H. Chubby Bush's death the other day. How about Joe Biden?

Big piece in, don't sound so excited. Big piece in New York magazine by Gabriel Deben Dettie, who says that over half a dozen Democrats who's spoken with him recently, he's never been more convinced that he's a man for our time. he's also doing he's also conducting this in incredibly slow fashion right because it's it's now a ritual of the media

that you have to be thinking about running for president you can't be you can't you don't go from I am Joe Biden to I am running for president there's a long period where you're written about as Joe Biden is thinking about running for president right and Deben Detti says the man who's grown notorious among his friends for taking his time is weighing

whether the personal toll of yet another campaign is worth it kind of an amazing note in the story is that when Biden left the White House, he turned down a four-year, $38 million contract to give speeches for a speaking agency so that he did not go down the Hillary Clinton path. Also, Devin Debti writes, a Biden candidacy would likely serve as a flashpoint for Democrats' central disagreements in the post-Obama post-Clinton era. Some of his supporters are explicitly talking about it as a chance to win over white work. working class voters who swung to Trump. So then, which I think points out what's a lot of this is about strategy, right? Yeah. Well, and there's a, there's a deeper level of strategy.

And I don't remember, I don't think this was in that piece or this is something I saw on Twitter, but it felt it had it had the ring of truth to it. But there was the idea that that Biden is actually not, he doesn't believe he will be elected president or he will get the nomination, but that he believes that in order for his endorsement to be of great value, he has to have a fully formed campaign. Then he'll step back and endorse whoever the nominee is and can convey to them the full power of what the Obama era and, you know, Biden himself, which maybe that's conspiratorial, but, you know, there is so much strategy going on right now that we're trying to parse that it kind of feels a little bit

legitimate. Another big story is people visiting with people. Better O'Rourke visiting with Obama was a big story. I now see from a couple of days ago, Beto O'Rourke visits with Al Sharpton. Yes. Here are some people you should meet before you think about running for president. A weird twist on that was Mike Bloomberg in Iowa, who was giving an interview about his presidential prospects.

This is from Stephen Perlberg in BuzzFeed News. He said, quite honestly, he was talking about his Bloomberg news operation. He said, quite honestly, I don't want all the reporters I'm paying to write a bad story for me. Bloomberg said through laughter during the interview. Surprisingly, and then he also said maybe he would put his company in a blind trust or sell it if he ran for president. Not shockingly, Pearlberg reports, reporters at Bloomberg News are on edge, that they will be out of a job. These are many of these are political reporters, right?

Financial political reports will be out of a job because their boss decided to run for president. This is like the anti-Trump, right? he actually wants to put it in a blind trust. Yeah. That whole candidacy is so mind-boggling to me. I don't really know what to do with it. It just seems like... Don't you feel reporters are the only people on Earth

rooting for half of these people to run for president? Because they're fantastic... Mike Bloomberg's shaking hands in an Iowa diner is such fantastic copy. A while ago, I think when he first started teasing that he was going to run, I think it must have been the Slate Political Gab Fest. because David Plotz is an unabashed Bloomberg head.

But I think even there, the discussion was like, is it at all possible that he could get enough votes in what New York and California to get a nomination? Because there can't be any constituency for him anywhere else. No. At least in the, you know, in the primary season. We did this two years ago, remember? Yeah.

And that was the whole thing that he was going to come as like a third-party candidate or something like that? So, yeah, so why is it? Why the, I mean, I guess because you see the opening, you see the Democrat has a good chance to win. But, I mean, it seems like if he was really interested in making a difference, wouldn't he could do that in the Republican side. Yeah, I mean, he donated a bunch of money to the midterms. So this is like seen as a, I mean, again, I just feel the media is rooting for this as much as anybody. And by the way, with good reason. Because if you're like a, you know, if you're the, let's call yourself like the fifth or sixth string reporter at the New York Times, you're not getting Biden. You're probably not getting Warren. But if the field keeps going, this is what happened with Trump, right? Yeah. All the ACE has got Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. And if you were kind of down the list, but you got Trump, he's not going to win.

So it's like, oh, this is great, you know. You want as many. Book deals now, yeah. The reporter's incentive is to have as many people in the race as possible, not just because of the ranking system, but just because it's better copy if there's a billion people in the race. not running for President David Michael Avinati. What a shock. After all of that, he had a very strange non-presidential campaign. Remember when Michael Avinati was expertly playing the media?

I mean, he was a master of the media. So good that there was this kind of fake thing out there that Democrats wanted their own Trump. And that Avanotti was the Trump. He could take he get in the mud and and and you know Arguing Trump's own terms or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway he says he finally decided After talking to his family he would not run. He said I did not make this decision lightly and make it out of respect for my family. So he is truly talking like a politician if he's doing it. I want to I we can't get away from this without talking about this piece in Politico. Did you see this by Juliana Glover who suggested that Biden and Romney should run together on a unity ticket? Mm-hmm.

You did see this? Yes. This was kind of wild. And the first thing that stuck out to me about this piece was a reference to Cincinnati. You know, I think we should ban. It's kind of like banning all, you know, lies, damn lies and statistics references in a piece.

We should ban all references to Cincinnati. Glover writes, a Biden-led bipartisan ticket would pledge to serve a Cincinnati-like single term and address all of the U.S. is ticking time moms like Social Security, Medicare, healthcare reform, climate change, money and politics, immigration, gerrymandering, and infrastructure investment in four years.

Wow, it's going to be a great four years. Incredible. Can you believe they're going to get all that done? When you know you have a dentist appointment in like two weeks, so you just start brushing your teeth twice a day and flossing regularly, but just for two weeks, so you're not actually going to keep that up year round?

In political reporters' fantasies, where does the bipartisan presidential ticket rank with the brokered convention? Which is number one and which is number two? Like, we'll never happen in their wildest dreams. But damn it. It makes for a couple of good segments on hardball. That's what matters. Yeah, in the press box too. All right, David, it's time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time.

Our first entry this week, David, comes from our friend of the show, Chris Quattlebaum, who's from Dallas, Texas, so we already like him. he senses this one. You wear that there is a new NHL team in Seattle. That was a big story this week. It was an overwork Twitter joke to say the NHL Seattle team should be named the baristas and all the players' names could be misspelled on the backs of their jerseys. Thank you, Chris, for that one. Actually, kind of funny, right?

That's funny, yeah. Another one from Isaac Chips, another fan of the show, friend of the show. Did you see all the laughs about this Elon Musk? interview with 60 Minutes and Leslie Stahl. Oh my God. That was really bizarre. Yeah, but the pull quote, the sort of semi-unfortunate pull quote from media, it was Elon Musk, colon, I want to be clear, I do not respect the SEC. Now, he was not talking about the football conference, but it was an overword Twitter joke,

and this is our very own Roger Sherman to say, Bama ain't played nobody, he added. Thank you to Isaac for that one. it was did you see the news that Kathy Lee Gifford is leaving the Today Show? Oh my God. Were you reminded that Kathy Lee Gifford is on the Today Show? I feel like obviously I know that, but I just kind of forget it every. I think Megan Kelly has done more to remind me that Kathy Lee is still around, I think. Because people are always like, why do we get Kathy Lee some more time?

Yeah. Kathleen and Hoda are a real force. They're a real force. Matt Cople from L.A. sends in this one he says, can I preemptively call the Overward Tour joke and announce it will be good luck to Kathy Lee as she departs for her role as the White House Chief of Staff. Thank you to Matt for a lot of Chief of Staff jokes this week, by the way. Finally, from the world of court filings, you saw the various filings with Michael Cohen that

referred to Donald Trump as individual one. That was a big deal this week. Yes, of course. It was an overworked Twitter joke to say that today was the day, individual one finally became president. It's like two overworked Twitter jokes dancing and a sultry time. Yeah, that's great. Great stuff. Anyway.

All right, David, topic number two, forgive the self-promotion. I wrote a big piece this week, a big oral history about the Fox Network. 25 years ago this month, Fox came in and decided. decided to overturn the existing network order and pay a giant sum of money to buy NFL rights. This was greeted at the time as something completely insane happening. In fact, it was like it was the overworked Twitter joke of 1993 if we'd had Twitter to say that Bart Simpson was going to call the games for Fox. That Tracy Olman and Bart Simpson would be in the booth and football would never be the same again. Of course, it's 25 years later now.

And having football games on Fox, which I have one here on Thursday night, seems like the most obvious thing in the world. Oh, yeah. But I wanted to sort of go back and see how what happened, first of all, in December of 93, and then just kind of think about

how that moment changed the way we watch football and kind of changed the course of football on TV. It was an incredibly good piece. It was, you know, like the best oral history is it was long, in-depth, but but just I mean it was propulsive we're going to put that on the poster

propulsive thanks David Shoebaker the best oral history since saving Private Ryan the but it was it's incredible I mean it was just really it was just a really

really interesting moment in time and especially watching or watching listening to people kind of relive the moment of awe and where they realize that that you know

football that the that something is sort of ephemeral as the rights to professional football it was going to um I mean kind of became it's a living breathing thing is that is that the way to is that a way to put it

yeah um you know we've all I mean anyone that's done anyone that's you know worked in just about any industry has had their uh has had the experience of like running P&L statements for whatever, you know, for whatever you're trying to buy, whatever you're trying to acquire, whatever your, whatever line of work you're in.

And, and I know, you know, from personal experience way back, just kind of running up against I mean, where you can just see right through the formulas and you're just like, why are we making this decision? Like this doesn't, this isn't a mathematical thing. This is bigger than math. We need to, we need to hire this writer. We need to publish this thing. because, you know, it has deeper value.

And that's really what the story was all about, right? I mean, it was going from the sort of accountant's desk. Like, this is what we can afford to pay based on the ads we've been selling and going to a different space where it was, especially for Fox in its fledgling days, was just saying, you know, if we have football, then we're important, then we're significant. And, you know, a rising tide will lift all boats and everything else. That's exactly right. I mean, Rupert Murdoch said after the deal, he said,

I essentially, I just bought a network, right? The price if I went to buy NBC or CBS would be billions of billions of dollars, but I'm paying $400 billion a year to the NFL. And because I put the NFL on my kind of pseudo semi-network, it just became a network. And the value that it was worth before just went up exponentially. You and I remember what Fox was like in the early days. And I think now in the kind of age of Apple TV and streaming,

it's almost mind-blowing. But, I mean, you know, growing up in Dallas-Fort Worth, all the channels were between 1 and 13. And then Fox was channel 33, and I would physically have to get up and turn the dot, turn a second dial, by the way. There was the VHF dial and the UHF dial. Turn the UHF dial and then get this grainy picture

and then go mess with the antenna so that I could actually see Fox. And it was like, I don't know. But anybody under the age of 30 doesn't understand any of the words you just said. I just saying like I was talking about like, you know, the Wright brothers are getting, you know, or like gathering around the radio to hear like a radio drama of the shadow or something like that. But that was real in the late days. I think that even if some people listening to this, and I can't, I mean, this is sort of how I would experience your piece.

Some people listening this, I think, we'll be able to, I mean, can wrap their minds around UHF, VHF, or just the idea that like, you know, it takes a lot, you know, it's hard to get in on the lower, the lower end of the dial and even now in the era of digital cable um you know it's not like what's the most recent one when like the vice when like the vice tv network became a thing vice land sports network or something like that yeah it's like they don't get to be in in like the first 20 channels that you go across right i mean those are those are sort of reserved for your very basic um almost like utility scale level television channels and um but it wasn't just that it was that that when they got the the tv deal i mean

when they acquired the rights to the NFL, it's not like they just moved up the dial. In a lot of big markets, they just started stealing the local, or they started claiming the local affiliates from CBS. Totally. Like, channel, it would be like channel five, like channel four is NBC,

channel five is CBS, channel seven is ABC, except now channel five was just like, we don't want you anymore CBS because you don't have football. We're going to switch to becoming a Foxnist, a Fox affiliate. And that is crazy to think about. And that's exactly what happened with us in DFW.

It is. And it was so funny because the CBS affiliate, which was Channel 4 there, said, wait, the Cowboys just won two Super Bowls. You mean we don't have the Cowboys games anymore? Because Fox took the rights. Oh, we're going to become a Fox network, KDFW. And then like the next day they were a Fox network. And it was like, oh, okay.

And by the way, to continue your metaphor there with the Vice Channel, imagine if you went all the way to the Vice Channel at number 375 or whatever it is, and then it didn't look clear. Yeah. It didn't look clear. like the rest of the channels because you couldn't you couldn't quite make out the picture yeah that was fox also fox at that period was like some of the best stuff on television some of the absolute worst stuff on television in that like 93 window i think they had just canceled the chevi

chase show which was one of the great disasters in tv history um you know they had in living color they had the x files which had just started um they had the simpsons of course married with children stuff like that but there was just so much junk on that network. And it was only two primetime hours, still only two primetime hours. It just didn't feel real. And I said one of the things that interested me about doing this piece was it almost feels like this is a template for when Amazon or Facebook comes along in a few years and says, we need the NFL and we're going to have to convince the NFL that if they put their games on our platform that people will actually be able to see it. Yeah. Because that's what the Fox thing was. The owners were like, wait, can we can we get these games? Is that going to be? going to happen? Yeah. I mean, and I think that the lesson, I mean, presumably the lesson is going to be to, at least to the, you know, more capitalist owners in the league that like if

there's enough money involved, then, then, you know, then the answer is yes. It's really intriguing that, you know, you saw, I mean, it was mostly in the beginning of the piece that you touched on this, but it was at that point the new generation of owners led by just, you Jerry Jones. Pat Bowlin, LeBroncos. Oh, and Pat Bowlin, who I think you said it explicitly, you know, they, there were a lot of, all the, the, the first kind of generation of NFL owners were, you know, got in a relatively low, you know, small amounts of money and we're just proud to be NFL owners. But then the new generation were interested in as an investment. And that's certainly the way the professional sports is running more and more now.

I mean, half the NBA teams feel like they're owned by hedge fund managers. Yeah, and they just needed the money. Because they'd paid so much to buy the Dallas Cowboys in Denver Broncos compared to, you know, the Mara family that had owned it since the NFL was much smaller. I was also, by the way, totally interested in just this idea of how much creativity happened in that period. Because it's sort of like, you know, if Rupert Murdoch just wrote a bigger check than CBS, you know, at some level the story is kind of like, okay, right? Rupert Murdoch is not exactly a plucky underdog. No. In any sense or his sympathetic character really in any sense.

but he hired all these guys, including David Hill, who was an Australian, who came from Sky Sports in the UK, and essentially said, just create football however you wanted to. And once they'd signed John Madden to this incredible sum of money,

they were able to just essentially say, we're just going to do stuff. We're going to put the score on the screen. We're going to have this wacky pregame show. We're going to hire 25-year-old Joe Buck and say, hey, you call games. Joe Buck had never called a football game in his life. And the first one was going to be on national.

television on Fox. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, honestly, you know, you start the piece by saying, you know, maybe the most shocking thing about what listening to Joe Buck and Trey McCall a Game is how normal it feels, but that can be said about a lot of the sort of technological and advances that Fox made. I mean, imagine they got, they, people thought that they were ruining sports by putting the score on the screen. just, I mean, and just how incremental a change that seems in retrospect, how minor a thing that is, really ends up being, I mean, it's sort of hard to sell it short, right? I mean, that might be one of the most significant advancements in sports.

I mean, in our lifetimes that now you can just look on TV and see what the score is all the time. And you used to be so dependent on the announcers, on, you know, the expectation that you'd be watching nonstop. the producer like when are they going to put it up again essentially like every four or five minutes or whatever it was yeah john madden when i was interviewing he was like we had all these stats on the screen like 10 catches you know for x number of yards and all the stuff and the thing we didn't have was the score and the time which seems like the most elemental thing and and the it's just hilarious but small i mean small but hilarious point everybody that you interview would agree to i mean the first time i read this line i thought it was just like one person

opinion and it was just kind it was sort of a joke everybody seemed to agree that the reason why they used to not have the score was because they thought if it was a blowout nobody would watch right they're like literally trying to to trick the viewer into watching their product and i think in some ways that's the that's the metaphor for just the blindness of group think at that point right because they were they they thought they thought that they had to sell you on the nfl and in fact the NFL was then already, but, you know, and since even increasingly, just an intrinsic part of our lives. Yeah, and by the way, we should also mention just since we're, you know, luxuriating in 1994 again, no NFL package. So if your local game was boring, you couldn't just be like, okay, I'm going to go watch Chargers now.

That didn't exist. You could go for a walk. You can mow the lawn. Also, it was really hard to find what the other scores of the other games were. you were depending on television, right? There's no, you know, I can't, I can't, you know, pull out my phone and find that information. There's no second screen, reliable second screen at that point.

So it just wasn't as easy. To say, by the way, on the Fox Box, this is a fine print that I didn't have room for in the story. But ESPN and ABC used a running clock during the 94 World Cup. Dennis Swanson from ABC told me this is because this is now where we get into everybody's claiming credit for the invention. So I tried to try to strenuously say, I did not say that David Hill invented the Fox Box in American television, but CBS, ABC had used it in the summer of 94.

Fox, of course, blows it out, names at the Fox Box in the fall of 94. And then I think, believe ESPN used it on their NFL coverage like here. Just in case, just in case, you know, I want to make sure I have it. Another one of David Hill's contributions to the form to the art was increasing the pregame show from 30 minutes to an hour. That was Hill, right? They made that call. Yeah, again, ESPN was already doing it on cable, but that was, yes, absolutely. networks. That was a big deal.

But it's just so funny to think that like there was any question about the appetite for people sitting around and talking about the game that was about to happen. It's, it's, you know. It's like we can only hold your attention for 30 minutes talking about football. Can you believe that? And CBS is the NFL today was a big show. You know, Brent Musburger in the old days, Terry Bradshaw and Greg Gumbull. Like, that was a big deal. And yet it was like, we can only squeeze 30 minutes out of this.

because people are just, people don't want to know more about football. And again, again, I just say this over and over again. This is when people aren't seeing around reading Twitter. I mean, this is, if you want to read, if you've already read the paper, the NFL today is the only source you have, and it was 30 minutes for pregame stuff and reading and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, that is the Fox Story. It is on the ringer.com right now. All right, David, let's talk about one more topic, which is the weekly standard. I am reading to you today from a Politico story by Jason Schwartz titled Something, Something,

bad is going to happen on Friday, weekly standard staffers brace for the end. Schwartz writes that staffers at the standard have been told together for an all-hands meeting Friday. They're bracing for bad news about the conservative magazine's future. The publisher of the Weekly Standard Media, D.C. has not sent out an official memo, but word is circulated among the staff. And this comes on the heels of a lot of press reports a week ago, which we're essentially saying that the parent company, Clarity Media, which is the parent company of Media, D.C.,

and the Weekly Standards Publisher, was favoring the magazine of the Washington Examiner. And also that there was this tension, which is, I think, really the sort of interesting story here, that the weekly standard had been so anti-Trump. And there's this whole question of, is there an appetite or to what extent is there an appetite for anti-Trump? writing within conservative media, right? It's been almost totally stamped out on the Fox network. Yeah. Fox News, that is. So, you know, are there going to be people, is there going to be, you know, is there an appetite?

What do you make of that question? Is that what you think the story is here? I think it's a little bit, it's a little bit reductive. It's also a little bit old fashioned, right? I mean, I don't think that the problem with the weekly standard is their political bent. maybe if it's because their anti-Trump stance led them to Googling weekly standard right now, led them to just completely, you know, sleep-inducing pieces like, did Donald Trump really cause the GOP to lose the suburbs,

where you're kind of taking an arch position that doesn't, that both like reinforces your anti-Trump stance, but also doesn't make it, doesn't scream it too loudly so that people will click. You know, I think that, I think that, yeah, if you're, if you're, If your entire mission statement is we are the conservative periodical that's anti-Trump, then, you know, it could get droning after a while. But I think that the problem with the weekly standard probably has more to do with the overall media landscape. And, you know, just the fact that, I mean, you know, it was, it doesn't, it seems like forever ago,

it wasn't that long ago that we were passing around obituaries for the new republic, even though it's still around, but I mean, that the new republic that we grew up on is, you know, cease, more or less cease to exist. There's just less of an appetite for like magazines that, that, that try to be thought leaders and not even thought leaders, like political leaders in the way that they used to. Well, when you say appetite, though, it's the rich patrons appetite because all these things always depended on rich patrons. It's not like the new republic was making money, right? It was Marty Parrots who was deciding to pay for it. And the standard was Rupert Murdoch, you know, in the old days, right?

So before it got sold. And so it's sort of this kind of thing of like these magazines are going to exist to the extent that rich patrons want them to exist and are willing to sustain the losses. And then they're not. And then they don't. And they either cease to exist or exist in, you know, sort of downsized less interesting format. I do think a couple of things are interesting here. One is it I kept waiting, I think finally Jack Schaefer mentioned, but I kept waiting for all these pieces about how the standard had tacked against Trump to mention that the weekly standard endorsed John McCain in 2000. It's like apostasy within the Republican Party is very much in their veins.

And that was a big deal at the time. Because, you know, coming out for McCain, who was sort of nominally running to the left of Bush and sort of embracing this whole American greatness thing and, you know, casting their lot with him was a really, really big deal. And that was, you know, that was, and again, they became later became known as, you know, sort of, you know, kind of this cheerleading for the Iraq War and stuff like that and very in step with how the Bush administration actually behaved. But that in 2000 shouldn't be forgotten. The other thing about the standard to me that's always fascinating is there has been in conservative media, there is, in here, I'm mostly talking about National Review, though, I guess we could sort of blow it out to the websites now. there was always a lack of like good feature writing. You know, you'd open like in the early 2000s,

you'd open the National Review and essentially the feature would be Mitt Romney is awesome. Like it would not be a narrative feature at all. It would just be like, just kind of like either a long version of the columns in the front of the magazine or it would just be some kind of

thinly guys political advocacy. The Weekly Standard had good writers. Yeah. You had really good writers. Andy Ferguson, Matt Labash, Jonathan last, Tucker Carlson, even before he lost his mind. They were really good. And you'd want to like sink your teeth into a piece because it's like, this is just,

this is just well written. It's just a good story. And I always thought that was one of their biggest achievements is that within that space, again, the New Republic did that for a long time and under various regimes. But like, they created something that was just on its own merits, a good read and a good magazine. Yeah. No, I think that's right. But I think going back to what your point about, you know, the wealthy benefactor that always keeps these things afloat. You know, I mean, the New Republic was famously known as the In-Flight Magazine of Air Force One during the Clinton administration. And the

Weekly Standard certainly had that. They will never live that down, by the way, that house ad. Yeah, I know. But the Weekly Standard, you know, along with the National Review, but I think the weekly standard more so had that had some of that that you know that mojo um they were the in-flight magazine of bush's tractor that was driving around crawford at his ranch yeah and i think that that's part of what you know product and loss statements aside i think that that that sort of that sort of reputation is what keeps the wealthy benefactors you know signing the checks and it's just really hard in 2018 to be the official

for anybody to be the in-flight magazine of anything you know I mean there's just there's too many competing voices out there and you don't need

a wealthy benefactor and you don't need you know a hundred year legacy to get people to read your your online screed you know

and and and uh I think I like screeds we need more screeds in the world online screen but yeah and I just think it's hard

to keep that it's hard to it's hard It's hard to keep the level of esteem that will keep, you know, a lot of those wealthy benefactors involved. I will say this about the idea of kind of apostasy and attacking your own party. It has become across the political spectrum, not just in conservatism, but I think also on the other side too. It's just become less, what's the word I'm looking for, marketable. the incentives are all going the other way. Because, you know, again, in that in that world where I worked very briefly, but like, there was, you know, if you worked at the new republic, you were rewarded for your willingness to knife Democrats and knife other liberals.

And that was where all the incentives were. That's how you proved your spurs, right? That's how you did it. And take, you know, for those, for generations of that magazine saying, oh, that Ronald Reagan, you know, he kind of has a good idea. I don't know. When I work there, Andrew Sullivan endorsed George W. Bush in the pages of the New Republic when Al Gore's former professor, Marty Parrott's was owning the magazine. And now I just feel like, I mean, can you partly this is Donald Trump, partly though, I think this is polarization that started before Trump. It's like, just imagine a liberal rights saying, Donald Trump's got a pretty good idea about this.

He's right. I mean, you want to go with that take on Twitter? You want to roll that out there? The incentives go the opposite way, right? Everybody's super polarized. It's really hard. I mean, you saw, I mean, we saw this in the midterms. It's really, I mean, even moderate, you know, there were many more moderate Republicans

who were afraid to run, you know, anti-Trump campaigns or to run in a different direction for fear that he would have made, he would have involved himself in the campaign. But I also think that it's just that, you know, because of the polarization, but specifically because of the volume and centrality of Donald Trump, that it's not, it's harder to do what you're talking about doing at the New Republic where you can kind of take down some people around the edges, right? I mean, it's harder to write the piece where you say, you know, leaving aside my opinion about Donald Trump, these Republicans in Congress are not made, or may, have made a really, you know, trying to pass a really dumb bill. You know, everything is about Trump. So you can't, you know,

You can't really be counterintuitive. And maybe that's the bigger point. It's hard to be counterintuitive when, you know, everybody is just intuitively either rabidly pro or anti-Trump. I mean, like, Barry Weiss and Eve Pyser can't even become friends now. I mean, everybody says, ah, that's terrible. What are you doing? Yeah.

Ratio that. And again, I don't, again, I don't necessarily have a problem with this era. I'm not, I'm not casting aspersions because I think a lot of it, a lot of that, old new republicly stuff i can speak less to the weekly standard but that new republicically stuff was kind of let me show you how independent i am and what a nonconformist dim i am by knifing people in my own party there was a lot of performative parts of that but i do just do think the world has changed and the incentives and journalism have changed and again it's like when i read like what did jonathan chaite do today that makes everybody mad it's because here is

a person from that world and everyone else is not from that world anymore and everyone else is not playing by those rules and well and just just I mean this is not specifically about the weekly standard but this kind of goes without saying that this is how the media landscape has changed that Jonathan Chate is making

people mad by with one tweet about and when you know in response to a subsequent tweet about his experience working in New York magazine vis-save of either recent unionization whereas that would have been a page in the New Republic when he was there, right? And you don't, you don't, you don't have the space anymore. No one's interested in it,

but you certainly don't even have the time because all, every counterintuitive take has already been made on Twitter, see the overworked Twitter joke of the week segment. Every, every, every counterintuitive take has been made 10 to 100 times by the time your magazine is going to hit the press, you know? So it's, it's a, it's a tough, it's a tough job description, though. Can we have a contrarian addition, uh, counterintuitive edition of this press box before the podcast, before we sign off for the year. Absolutely. Both of us just have like extremely unpopular ideas.

So there used to be called Slate Takes, right? What was that? Yeah, slate pitch. Yeah. I forgot about that. That's kind of gone away, hasn't it? All right. Yeah.

Speaking of counterintuitive domains that are not so counterintuitive anymore. All right, David, that's the press box of this week. Jim Cunningham is our ace producer. Chris Almeda on research. He is David Shoemaker. I am Brian Curtis. We're back on schedule next week, on Tuesday, and then we will have Tuesday shows for the rest of the year. See you next week, David.

See you later, man. David, something bad is going to happen on Friday. Uh-huh. What are you thinking? Oh, my gosh. There's got to be a better answer to this than what I'm thinking of. That's exactly right. Huh?

What do you make of that question? Is that what you think the story is here? I think it's a little bit, it's a little bit reductive. It's also a little bit. old-fashioned. What a shock. You could go for a walk. You can mow the lawn. That was your only other other off. And knife other liberals. I think that's right. Great stuff anyway.