The Press Box - The Asteroid About to Hit Baseball, the 'Match of the Day' Controversy, and Seth Rogen vs. Critics

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Bryan is joined by Jason Gay to break down BBC’s response to political comments by 'Match of the Day’ host Gary Lineker. They discuss Lineker’s support from colleagues and the all-too-familiar reaction when sportscasters talk politics (1:53). Then, they weigh in on Diamond Sports' bankruptcy and how this will affect the sport of baseball if it's forced to be broadcast locally (10:56). Later, they touch on Seth Rogen’s commentary about film critics on the 'Diary of a CEO' podcast (24:40) before diving into JJ Redick's response to shows like 'First Take' (33:12) and then Aaron Rodgers’s potential with the Jets and New York media (38:43). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and Jason Gay Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Jason Gay Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's official. One Shining Podcast is back, and I am your host, Tate Frazier. And as March Badness begins, we're covering everything from Selection Sunday all the way to the championship and beyond. We're going to have great guests that are coming through on the show. And look, if you're a friend of the program and you're already subscribed, you don't have to do anything. OSP is back. It's going to be right back in your feed. And if you're not a friend of the program, and this is your first time on the rodeo, then let me tell you this. You need to go to Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. and smash subscribe today because the OSP show is back.

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Servantes, and we are joined by a good friend, an Oscar-nominated sports writer, at least in our minds. He is Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay.

Jason, how you doing? I'm just great for the record. No Oscar nominations. I did once get nominated, for best speech at the Chenery Middle School in Belmont, Massachusetts way back in the day. But yeah, no Oscars. No, no Oscars. There's not a spoken word Grammy in there somewhere?

You know, like, I'm only an E, a G, an O, and a T away from an EGOT, okay? Coming up on today's show, we're going to be able to watch baseball this season, right? Will Aaron Rogers have to deal with the New York medium? Or is he already dealing with it? Plus, Seth Rogen versus his critics, how does tell Stephen A. that you mean, no offense, and taps for the Boston Phoenix. But first, Jason, have you been monitoring the match of the day situation over there in the UK? I have. You know, I will confess, I didn't know a great deal about the history of match of the day and how significant, you know, a thing it is in the UK. but wild, wild past couple of days, Brian,

and some lessons to be drawn from what we've seen over here as well. Some background here for American sports fans. Match of the day is the long-running soccer studio show on the BBC. Gary Lenacher has been the host or presenter, if you will, of that show since the 1990s. He's never been shy about sharing political opinions, including criticism of the UK's migrant policy. And last week, on March 7th,

Linneker weighed in against a new bill proposed by the home office there in the UK. On Twitter, Linneker called the bill, quote, cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s. Now, here in the U.S., Jason, we know what happens when a sportscaster ventures a political opinion. Clay Travis makes a video about them. But in the UK, the BBC is funded by all television. television consumers, and the BBC wears a mantle of neutrality even more proudly than ESPN does. So politicians weigh in, the prime minister weighed in, the BBC took Leniker off match of the day this weekend.

I believe they used a phrase like stepped back for a match of the day. I believe they asked him to apologize and he declined, right? Mm-hmm. And then they yanked him. Let's just pause the story right there for a second and talk about that. because doesn't this feel like a funhouse mirror version of the story we've seen in the United States with ESPN personalities, other sports TV people when they get involved in politics? Absolutely.

But I think it's sort of what happens after Lindeker is removed from the air that makes it very unusual because we did not see this in the States and what we, you know, I mean, you'll, I'm sure go on from here. But it is the reaction of colleagues. and other people that he works with that really sort of, you know, took this to 11. Essentially, everybody said, well, if Leniker isn't going to be on the air, then I'm not going to be on the air. Yeah. This included famous personalities like Ian Wright, Alan Shearer, about a half dozen more people.

So the match of the day program this weekend was not actually a studio sports show, but a 20-minute-long announcerless highlight show. we know the networks love to do the announcerless game. This was the announcerless studio show, truly a new breakthrough in sports television. And that really is the difference here, is that, you know, as you point out, we've had a number of instances of, you know, people in sports commentary weighing in on political issues and their employers getting agitated about that. What makes this very particular is that having colleagues step down or step aside or go on strike in solidarity with them and to the point that you're actually shutting down this beloved program really speaks to

like, you know, the dissatisfaction of the way the BBC handled it, but also that, you know, this is a little bit of a different scenario, a different kind of workplace environment. Absolutely right. Because we remember what Jamel Hill went through with her bosses at ESPN. There was lots of support from Jamel's colleagues over there. I don't remember mass numbers of them saying if she's not on the air, I'm not on the air. Right. Literally walking off. It was was what happened there. Yes. Yeah, because it's always this interesting mix, isn't it, between support for my colleagues, support for my colleagues to specifically talk about politics and policies that they find to be degrading and dehumanizing. And then,

says the sports commentator, my own ambition, my own desire to stay in the good graces of the company. Sure. And people making that sort of business decision in terms of how they want to react to that what was also particular about this, in addition to the colleagues, you know, declined to participate. You had people who were involved in the games themselves weighing in. Yergan Klopp, the manager of Liverpool, you know, speaking in defense, Aleneker and, you know, his right to be heard

and saying that, you know, the opinion that he said, you know, isn't particularly novel, you know, given the context of it, and that, you know, basically standing up in support of him. It's interesting, too, on the subject of the Fun House Mirror version of the American controversies that, you know, when we had the version of this at ESPN, it was always people citing ESPN's

subscriber numbers falling and say, aha, aha, look at that. Go woke, you go broke. You know, you had political opinions. That's why people aren't watching ESPN. Never mind that the cable bundle is crumbling for reasons that have nothing to do with politics at all. The ESPN write-up of this controversy

talked about how will the BBC, in 2023 is trying to figure out what it is. It is trying to figure out how to get people that are not 60 plus to watch the BBC. So I imagine somewhere in the UK there's got to be a commentary, go, oh, this is why people are abandoning you in mass. Right. And we should mention that on a parallel track, there's this other controversy that's been happening with the BBC about,

and I'm going to, I think I have this right. They've declined to air the final episode. or one of the episodes of a, you know, ongoing Attenborough series that deals with aggressive climate change. And the reason cited for, and this was reported, the reason cited for not airing it was, you know, potential significant right-wing blowback. And they just did not want to deal with that kind of reaction. And so we're going to sit on this episode, not air it. And it sort of speaks to, again, sort of the BBC's, you know,

absolute panic about appearing, you know, political on any side, but also, you know, maybe sort of the aggressive overreaction to, you know, critics out there. Mm-hmm. And critics wanting to say that everything is political. Right. Climate change. That's political. That's a political opinion that you're having.

And, you know, you and David have spent the better part of, I mean, the life of this podcast talking about this issue and the politicization of sports and, you know, what is appropriate, what's not appropriate. And I think what has borne out very clearly over these past half dozen years is, you know, oftentimes when people are saying, you know, I don't want politics in my sports, they're saying, effectively, I don't want someone else's politics in my sports. I'm perfectly fine with my politics in my sports. And, you know, it is just sort of another symptom of an incredibly divisive time and, you know, full of a lot of very unconstructive conversation where people are doing little more than sort of playing like hypocrisy police, right? And

we're not actually talking about the issues themselves. I think Lindekir's position, I mean, what's unusual about it is that I'm taking a very principled stand here. He, you know, again, was offered the opportunity to apologize, you know, and how many times have we seen that, Brian? That's sort of like, I use language I should not have and sort of like, you know, the mild walk back to keep the job. And he did not do that. He was like, no, all good. Still feel that way.

Yeah. It is also interesting, too, that I remember this from the Jamel Hill controversies, if that's the word I'm groping for here. But what Jamel would always say is, look, I'm not stopping my sports program to be in. And by the way, I'm going to do 20 minutes on immigration right now. Right. Michael and I are going to talk politics for the next 15 minutes. She was always saying, look, this is my political opinion that I tweeted about.

Yes. I am hosting a sports show that is almost completely about sports. So if you are consuming this as a sports program, you will be satisfied that this is about sports. Also here too, interesting. There's what you do on TV, and then there's Twitter, and then there's people that would like to make those the same thing in both cases. Absolutely. And again, sort of what doesn't happen. happen is any sort of constructive conversation about the issue that gets raised. We just go immediately

to the appropriateness or the lack thereof in our perception of that and have a conversation about the business of, you know, what is, you know, what is the business of these networks, you know, what kind of subscriber loss? We all of a sudden turn into like a broadcasting and cable newsletter instead of actually having the substantive, more important conversation. Can we lean into being a broadcasting and cable newsletter for just one second? Every time. You know, I'm a fan. You tweeted a story from your newspaper, the Wall Street Journal.

And you wrote this. This feels like, don't look up where a big asteroid is headed towards some live sports like baseball, and it's going to have incredible repercussions. What is happening? What is the nature of the asteroid that is headed toward baseball? It's the larger bases. No, no, it's not the larger bases, Brian. It is the, you know, impending collapse of the regional sports network system in baseball and in other sports,

I should mention, Brian. But as careful listeners of this program and other programs know that, you know, these RSNs, as we like to call them, are the sort of local television outfits that, you know, show and pay teams for the rights to show. their ball games over the course of a season, and when you have 162 ballgames, that could be a considerable amount of money. They have been a significant part of the economic puzzle for a lot of teams. However, in the sort of, you know, unbundling era where fewer and fewer people are subscribing to cable and cutting the cord, they are less successful, and they are becoming an albatross upon these companies, and they want out from underneath them. They do not want to be paying these extreme fees to teams.

And so basically, you know, if you look at the things that are sort of holding up major league ball clubs and especially sort of mid-market, you know, smaller market clubs, Brian, you're talking about cutting away a big pillar. You know, you're talking about something that was, you know, a very significant part of the economic puzzle. It's maybe not going to be a crisis for the New York Yankees, New York Mats, Los Angeles, Dodgers, you know, your Texas Rangers, should be okay. But if you're a small market team, if you're a mid-market team, if you're a team that relied heavily upon one of these, you know, RSNs, which is, again, facing bankruptcy if they're not unable to unload these assets, you could be looking down the road at a significant correction to the economic model of your team. It makes me remember what a miracle the cable bundle was. Yes. For the very important reason, which is that what is basically happening here in Brian,

I've heard you say this multiple times. The genius of the cable model for sports was not to get people who love sports to pay for sports. It was to get people who didn't give a damn about sports to pay for sports as well. That was the incredible thing. That people who didn't care, wouldn't watch one second of ESPN, were still coughing up a monthly carriage fee

for the right to have this part of their bundle. And now we are going to what they call, I don't know, is it a la carte or direct to consumers, style where... Listen, you know, like basically, who's going to be holding up your team? Well, it's the people who are the fans. It's going to be the people who are actually the hardcore people because the folks who did not like paying those extra fees, did not like having these cable bundles with lots of

stuff they didn't watch. They have cut the cord. They have moved on to other options. And again, it's going to dramatically, I think, shake up a model that, you know, again, was sort of very fat for very long. that's been significantly changed by the streaming era. Because the economics just don't work without the cable bundle. You need those people who are like,

I am paying for cable so I can watch international house hunters to also pay your baseball team, your regional sports network, I should say, who then in turn pays your baseball team. On top of it, yeah, sorry. No, but I was just to give you one figure here, sports business journal says that the pirates, the Pittsburgh pirates. Yeah.

Nothing wrong with the pirates, but they are not any of the team. you just named. The Pittsburgh Pirates get something like $60 million a year from television. Yes. So let's say we go over the top. Let's say we go to, you know, a la carte and we say, hey, Pirates fans, we got Pirates Plus here for $30 a month. There are going to be some people who will pay that, which, by the way, is way more money than they were paying for their regional sports network within the cable bundle. They were not paying 30 bucks a month for the RSA. There are people that will pay that, but how are you going to get to $60 million with that kind of math?

It doesn't work. It does not work. And, you know, in addition to sort of having the good luck of a system in which people who didn't watch the sport were paying for the sport, the other sort of four-leaf clover that sports had stumbled upon here was having a product that was a day-and-date thing that people had to watch in real time. that appealed to demographics that weren't easy to find in television. You had all these things sort of going forward that was just kind of bum luck for sports. Baseball, the nature of it also is important to point out, Brian, is that this is not a shared revenue stream.

This is not the NFL where the Green Bay Packers take away the exact same amount of money as the Dallas Cowboys in terms of television revenues. This is based upon your market, your support, what people are willing to pay. and it will really be interesting to see how that is, you know, figured out over these next couple of those. You know, a big part of this, too, also is that, you know, baseball is sort of in the wings here waiting to subsume some of these RSAs. You know, that baseball is saying basically, you know,

they're getting prepared for the fact that they will become kind of the clearinghouse of a regional broadcasting for a number of teams. Are you going to pay a much different fee for, say, the Kansas City Royals than you would pay for the Philadelphia Phillies? You know, you would think probably you would, but like how does that play into financial fairness in the sport? This is already a sport, Brian, that has really choked on the issue of financial fairness. You know, the final teams in the playoffs last year, all of them were major market, large salary, hitting that luxury tax franchises. So it's just going to get quite a bit harder for the teams on. the have-not side of things. Two thoughts here. One is that we feel like we're at the end of the age of

streaming naivete. Yeah. And I love it when we read these articles about what's happening either with sports or what's happening with entertainment and those channels or those streaming services. And the article always starts out the same way. It's like the streaming world promised us more choices for a cheaper price. We could watch everything we wanted and pay pennies compared to the cable bundle. I'm like, wait, who was promising that? Right. Can I get a citation for where you were reading that you were going to get the exact same things way cheaper? Right. You know, and it sort of reminds me a little bit of, you know, I was saying, is this like similar to the newspaper business, which had to make

this massive pivot in the last decade from being advertiser dependent to subscriber dependent. You actually had to pay the bills with the people who are reading the product, using the product. It wasn't subsidized by advertisers anymore. Baseball in these regional things, it's a different thing because the actual networks are paying the money up front to the ball clubs. That is just cash in hand. And so they're the ones that have to go out with their hat and get the advertising. And again, in a structure where, you know, you have a whole wide palette of potential audience is much more valuable to advertisers than in some sort of small targeted audience. Totally.

Totally. And then the other thing I love reading is like everybody's like, well, I cut the chord and now I cannot watch my favorite team play. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, because that regional sports network that you were depending on that you're trying to figure out a way around, that is a cable network, right? And by the way, a cable network, and this is my second point, that really doesn't have a reason to exist if it isn't showing live sports. Sure. And we're sort of, you know, Matt Belli makes this point all the time on. the town, but like, you know, we are just increasingly migrating back to a version of basic

cable, right? We, you know, the more that we get away from it, the more that we sort of sit here and say, you know, it would be great. If someone could put all this stuff into a single package and give me a couple options and I'll pick one of them. I'll pick maybe the mid tier or the premium or the premium plus. And like, you know, it, you know, as people sort of sit here and like count the subscriptions that they have and also get agitated about the things. they don't. I mean, how many of us have had situations where, you know, whether it's the TV show or the month or the certain game that you wanted to see and you're like, I don't have that? Like, I'm paying for this and I'm paying for this and I'm paying for this. It's like, you didn't have

that in the sort of peak cable error. If you had paid a certain amount, you had it all. And we're sort of like circling that without saying it, I think. This is why I still have a direct TV dish on my roof because I don't want to be that guy on Twitter who's like, why can't I get this game? that that doesn't work for me professionally or personally. No. Complaining about something is like, well,

that would be fun to do. Maybe I'd get, you know, some likes on that tweet because it's really expensive. But I kind of want and need to watch everything. At least everything is defined by all sporting events. Has old man Curtis ever had to put the ladder up and gone up onto the roof and adjusted the dish ever?

Old man Curtis is way too scared to do that. Old man Curtis would be plunging. off the roof, grabbing at the shingles on the way down. I can't believe. I can't see the longhorns. What's going on? Got a justice thing pointed to the south. No, but it's true.

And by the way, whenever there's one of these renegotiation deals, it's not just the RSN that isn't going to exist if it doesn't have live sports. I mean, TNT is right now pondering its future because Warner Brothers' discovery has made noises. Well, maybe we don't need basketball. Now, I know TNT has baseball and hockey, but are we coming for those, you know, two hour and 45 minute versions of two hour movies because they have tons of commercials in them? Is that why we're going to watch TNT? I was having this conversation with somebody the other day. Like, no, that is not, that's not a, that's not a model. So, and I'd say the same thing with the networks when they were doing the NFL negotiation. If you don't have professional

football, do you have a network in 2023? I don't know. I really don't. And let's put football off to the side because it looks very stable, but like you look at something like basketball and, you know, they get up every so often and make noise about, you know, mid-season tournaments and a World Cup of basketball. And all that stuff is kind of a little bit of like shaking pom-poms for potential bidders on the product because as we've seen repeatedly, basketball is, you know, the numbers are not tremendous, you know, from a standpoint of like, you know, it's certainly not a growth thing on cable, the sort of traditional thing. They have struggled to sort of show, you know, and I know the case is from basketball that, you know,

the audience isn't traditional. They are consuming the product in multiple ways. They are using social media to follow games. It's like, but how do you sort of capture that, monetize that kind of thing, you know, and it is fascinating to see something like, you know, Time Warner, good up there and say, did I say Time Warner? How old am I? But to get up there and say, you know, I don't know if we need it. And then NBC's over here waving up and down saying, yeah, we're going to get back in. Let's get John Tesh, da, da, da, da, da, let's do this. You know? Let's get Costas and Pat Riley back on the studio show. Here you go. Let's get Pete Vessie. Go on. Let's do this. Coming up in 30 seconds, Seth Rogan has a problem with us, Jason. You and me in particular.

But first let us do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. This week's runners up. This one comes from Greg Horowitz. Georgetown will be activating the Ewing theory by firing men's basketball coach Patrick Ewing. That was pretty good. We've been reading a lot about the collapse of Silicon Valley Base. Bank. By the way, one of the most generically named financial institutions in this country, Silicon Valley Bank. I love it. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Imagine raising $100 million for your AI-enabled dog washing app and your bank sets it on fire before you can. Thanks to Andrew Poppus for that one. But this week's winner comes from our good friend Chris Almeida, who points us to this tweet, quoting here, U.S. Auto Safety Regulators have opened an investigation into

Tesla's Model YSUV after getting two complaints that the steering wheels can come off while being driven. It was an overwork Twitter joke to cite this line from the show, I think you should leave. A good steering wheel that doesn't fly off while you're driving.

Indeed, that does not fly off while you're driving. If you think that's the least Tesla could do, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, Jason, we are recording on Sunday afternoon so I wanted to draw your attention to the case of Seth Rogan

and his critics. Or critics generally. Seth Rogan had this riff on the Diary of a CEO podcast. I think if most critics knew how much it hurt the people that made the things that they are writing about, they would second guess the way they write these things. Like, it's devastating. It takes, I know people who never recover from it.

Honestly, years, year, decades of being hurt by, because it's very personal, you know. It's not like, it's not, it is personal, you know. And so it is devastating when you are being like institutionally told that your personal expression was bad. Like, that is like devastating, you know? And something that people carry with them, literally their entire lives.

And I get why. It fucking sucks. All right, Jason, what do we make of an artist being stung for years, decades even, by his critics? I mean, first of all, just perspective here. Wasn't Seth Rogan effectively called an enemy of the state of North Korea at a certain point? You got to figure this guy has had bigger critics in his life. Speaking of institutionally.

Yeah. However, you know, this feels to me like a Hollywood version of a kid. Inslee Gaff, which is like, you know, I'm sure everything he's saying is true. I'm sure that actually he believes this and this is how people feel and, you know, we're all used to, you know, athletes, actors, people in public life saying they don't read their clips. If you believe your bad reviews, you got to believe, I mean, you believe your good reviews, you got to believe your bad reviews and saying they insulate themselves for it. But I am sure the experience is much more similar to what Rogan is describing. And I guess, you know, you can tell from the blowback that he's

received since then, the standard feeling is the return on it is sufficient to justify the backlash. And that, you know, it is particular criticism. It is oftentimes personal. However, the reward on the other end for the successes and the economy of what it's like to be, you know, somebody at that status in Hollywood is so wild that like, I don't know, sort of feels like comes with the territory to me. critics have given Seth Rogen way more than they've taken away from him. Sure. He's a critical darling in many respects, I would argue. He definitely has not had some sort of like perfect record or at each measure. But yeah, he's definitely gotten more good than bad, I would assume. We've seen various versions of this take from Hollywood people,

from athletes, even from authors, perhaps once in a while. And it used to really get my hackles up as a media writer. How dare you deny our place in this ecosystem? How dare you deny our right to criticize? And I still stand, of course, for our right to criticize and write movie reviews of The Green Hornet. But I also think, well, of course he feels that way. Of course movie people feel that way. Of course, it's no fun to get trashed by critics every once in a while. So I just sort of almost come to this detente within my own mind where it's like, of course they're going to say that. And of course, we're still going to write reviews and we should still write reviews. But of course, it's natural.

Of course, he's not going to understand as somebody who is a movie maker why people would write reviews and why a negative review might not be personal. The credit might not be worried that you're going to carry this around literally for the rest of your life, but that we're going to do it anyway. Sure. And to be clear, I don't think that he's criticizing the idea of film criticism. I don't think he's like saying that, you know, we shouldn't have this kind of thing. I think he was, you know, taking exception to what he believed was sort of the personal nature of some of the criticism that he'd received and the sort of like really sort of cutting nature of it. But this is one of these things, Brian, where you and I, you and I are old enough, Brian, to know that the savage review is definitely not a by-profile. of the social media era. We might think that viciousness came into fashion in the, you know, click era, but absolutely not. You know, you and I can both go back and find decades old, generations old examples of literary criticism, film criticism, political criticism, that were just as savage as anything that you could find today. There's a very, very rich tradition of this and Norman Mailer and beyond a very rich tradition of the creators

punching back on occasion literally in some cases and you know it just kind of feels like that's the economy that's the trade here yes in fact it's like one of those things it's very hard to quantify

because there's far more easily accessible savagery in the universe in the social media era but in terms of people actually writing criticism it felt like that was the way you earned your spurs pre-social media to be a slashing, you know, outspoken, big opinioned critic,

where now it feels like the way you earn your spurs is to do that sometimes, but you're also much more invested in like exploring the motives of the showrunner, right? You know, explaining what they're doing, tying it into other things they've done or into a larger universe of content. It just, it just feels like, the motives of criticism generally may have shifted a tad. I mean, they've shifted entirely. They've shifted completely to the consumer. I mean, I was just going to say when you were speaking that are we even living in the era

anymore of the sort of vicious critic? You know, it's gone completely to the consumer now. The backlash that you get now is direct from consumers. It's from readers. It's from people who go to see your stuff in the theater. they can get in touch with you directly. I think of the time of the sort of poison pen critic, the person who could shut down a show or make a movie bomb is long, long gone.

I mean, it's staggering to think about some of the stuff that was very, very common in the past. We have now, sort of, I feel, running alongside it a massive fan culture now where people have their surrogates out there kind of policing any sort of criticism. that exists in print and from publications, you know, and anything that is less than a starry review of something, you know, gets a lot of backlash upon the critic. I think that that has actually changed. I don't think it's more, these are more acid times in terms of actual, like, media published criticism. I mean, listen, if Seth Rogen wants to feel better, go read some of the early reviews of Led Zeppelin published in Rolling Stone. Brian, they did not care for the lead.

They did not care. And somehow, and somehow here we are, 50 years later, Led Zeppelin still is culturally relevant and fabulous as ever. So, you know, these things have a way of fading into the woodwork. But let's say if Seth Rogan had come of age as a moviemaker and actor and screenwriter in the 70s or 80s, and Pauline Kale had decided she did not like him. Not only would the review have been so incredibly personal, it would have been 4,000 words long.

just shot after shot after shot. You'd be going, okay, okay, it's just a comedy. I'm sorry, I didn't. Right. And on the flip side of it, you know, the positive reviews, you're not even terribly aware of now. You know, we both know there was a whole time where the movies would come out and you'd see these double, you know, truck spreads and daily newspapers

of all the positive reviews and the stars. But occasionally you'd see a movie run the industry. entire review, again, in the space of the ad. I mean, the sort of idea that critics are essential to the success or failure of a film, I feel is long since past. I don't think you and I need to dive too deeply into the whole Kendrick Perkins' NBA MVP thing from ESPN last week. But I was watching one clip, and I found myself pausing over a verbal tick that came from J-J-J-J-J-J-J. Reddick set this up for people. JJ Reddick had come on to first take with

Perkins and Stephen A. Smith to talk about Perkins' takes on the MVP voting. Listen to the way that JJ Reddick sets up the point he's making here. I want to say, I want to just say something. Stephen A, I mean no

offense to you, and I mean no offense to first take. Because I think this show is extremely valuable. It is an honor to be on this desk every day. It really is. But what we've just witnessed is the problem with this show where we create

narratives that do not exist in reality. I thought that was so funny because he says, I mean no offense, but then he's like, but here's the problem with this show. Yeah. If somebody came on to the press box, I said, I mean no offense to the press box.

I just an honor to be here, but I find your podcast to be a super spreader of false narratives and bad tags. I'd say, well, I am quite rightly offended. by that statement. If you had told me 15 years ago that Duke star JJ Reddick would emerge

as the Marshall McLuhan of the 21st century sports media, I don't know if I would have gone there, but it is sort of funny how he is playing this role in the show. And listen,

they have him back again and again because they like what he does. Let's make no mistake about it. He is playing this character within the sort of ESPN universe of the, you know, I'm the critic, I'm the ombudsman a little bit here, and I'm going to jump in here, you know, a little bit as a player advocate, but also kind of as like a media maestro here and tell you why the structure of what you do is wrong. And he's, listen, what he said is not inaccurate. I mean, the whole like sort of rhythm of ESPN now in terms of the

way that stories go is that they cook it in the morning, they get it going, and then they blast it out across the megaphone throughout the course of the day and you have, you know, the story, you have the reaction, and then you have the reaction to the reaction and you can get yourself to five o'clock and hopefully to prime time and go back and do it again tomorrow. It's how, you know, those sausages made. And it is funny to sort of see J.J. Redick, of all people, you know, getting in there and calling them on it. But I would say that I don't think that this is some sort of thing where he gets off the air and they're all agitated at him for saying that. I think they know very well, you know, that that's what he's going to do.

I think they say great segment because we know that nothing can really hurt a show like first take. If you go on there and you're like, Stephen A. Smith, I have a problem with your entire approach to sports, if not television. Oh, well, that's a great segment. As you say, there's some heat. That's going to, this was all over Twitter, right? Like, oh, my gosh, here we go. They really mean it. Because the criticism of the show is they don't really mean what they're saying.

They're not either they don't think that or they're not as worked up as they seem to be on television. But when you get something that does feel really close to the bone, then it becomes, oh, yes, they mean it this time. So that weirdly helps the show even more. Right. And listen, and there's this whole ecosystem that exists now in sports media where, you know, there are numerous websites out there that generate content based upon like X says, X in the morning or X says X in the afternoon, Twitter reacts. And basically, it is reaction to the reaction journalism based upon social media. I don't exactly know how, you know, economically viable it is, but it is this whole sort of part of the beast. And it's funny to me that it begins on sort of traditional television, right, Brian? Because like, what are the audiences for morning shows?

Like, these are not things that are like, you know, millions and millions of people are tuning in in the morning. They are, you know, small, select audiences. They are enormously profitable. I get that they are very valuable. But they're not sort of like America's tuning in all at once. It's something that sort of gets stripped for parts over the course of the day for people to talk about and build controversies and keep the ball running. Because, like, we do not live in the era anymore. We're talking about what happened in sports last night is sufficient.

It just doesn't work. have already moved on. We know the standings. We know the scores. We have to have something else. And that's what those shows are terrific at, you know, generating. On Twitter, bare flag fan had a field guide to prepositional phrases and arguments that mean the opposite. For instance, in my humble opinion, if you start an argument that way, not humble. Not humble. Not to be personal. comma means, in fact, what follows will be very personal. I mean, no offense, as JJ Reddick said,

I'm about to offend you. This is my favorite. I'm not the smartest person in the room means that you believe, in fact, that you are the smartest person in the room. Yeah. Two more topics for you, Jason. One also comes out of debate television.

As we sit here on Sunday afternoon, we're waiting word as to whether Aaron Rogers is going to leave the Green Bay Packers to join the New York Jets. Friday's pod with noted Jets fan Adam Gopnik. You can hear his take on Rogers coming to the team. This is on the opposite side of the media universe from Adam. Fox Sports is Shannon Sharp on what Rogers could face in the big bad apple. I just want to see when the game, when the game,

when he doesn't play well and that New York media started asking the question. Because you're not in Green Bay anymore. And they don't lob softball questions. because, oh, they're going to be relentless with it. And you, Skip, how many talk shows and radio shows are you think they're in New York compared to Green Bay and Madison and Ash Wabanon and Appleton? Pretty impressive list of Wisconsin media markets there from Shannon Sharp. We got all the way to Appleton there at the end.

Proud Badger, Jason Gay is nodding right here. Here's one I want to talk to you about. Is there such a thing as the New York media anymore? We know there is a press core New York. We know New York has tabloids that cover sports in a different way, perhaps, in other local newspapers. But is that so different from, for instance, what people like Shannon Sharp are doing on national television every day that Aaron Rogers is really going to face something different? in New York than he faces right now? You know, it's a really good question.

I think that obviously the way that newspapers have changed, the New York media isn't, you know, as vast as it once was, right? But it does still have this, you know, cachet of being one of the places that you can talk about at a national level and get an audience. That is not true for all cities and all franchises. And it is true that if you talk about the Yankees or the Mets or the Nix or the Giants or the Jets even, you will sort of hold an audience in a way that you may not from another part of the country. However, as someone who has spent a good amount of time in America's Dairyland,

the idea that the Green Bay Packers are some sort of, you know, podunk franchise where they have one reporter sitting in an ice fishing shack from January until May, the Green Bay Packers are a signature sports franchise recognizable throughout the world. The New York Jets or a team that has won one Super Bowl since the 1968 season. The idea that somehow the New York media is going to police winning and making the Jets into, you know, they will not tolerate anything less than greatness. You're talking about one of the most forlorn franchises in the history of the NFL with the New York Jets. The idea that somehow Rogers is going to like break under the pressure of the Jets media ecosystem is,

is laughable to me. I mean, he's been a national commodity for a very long time. You know, yes, there will be a whole new different kind of exposure for him? Will he be talking about darkness retreats on The View and Kelly Rippa in the morning? Probably. There'll be a little bit more of that. But the idea that like Aaron Rogers is like somehow got to brace himself for the mighty, mighty New York media. Speaking as someone who has been part of that, I don't know, I think he'll be just fine. And is there really going to be a new audience for Aaron Rogers at this point? The guy who's on McAfee every week and on podcasts I've never heard of who's every utterance about football and public health for the last, you know, however many years has been chronicled?

I don't know. Do you think that Aaron Rogers' agent is sitting him down and talking to him about the potential for like Gray's papaya commercials and like nobody beats the whiz, which doesn't exist? anymore, Dr. Zizmore and Aaron Rogers pairing up for subway ads. Yeah, I mean, the whole structure of it has changed radically. But I just think that, look, the Green Bay Packers, I'm familiar with that world a little bit. That's a hot house too. People care a great deal about the Packers. They are a publicly owned franchise, let's not forget. There is incredible passion around the success and failure of the team, and there's an incredible passion around Aaron Rogers and whether it's time to lose him or not.

I think one thing the New York media quote unquote can do now is take something like the Sam Darnold seeing ghost thing and make it into a much bigger story than if Sam Darnold played in Jacksonville or Green Bay or wherever or Zach Wilson's

shall we say personal life becomes this national story perhaps in a way it wouldn't be if he were somewhere else I think. I think it has a multiplier effect on things like that. But in terms of Aaron Rogers, I just don't like, you know, Aaron Rogers, who's calling up Kevin Van Valkenberg and like, I would like to talk to you for your ESPN story who's posting up in Mina Kimes' living room

to talk to her for a big profile at ESPN, who's on Macfee every week. I just don't, I don't know where we can go at this point. I don't know how we can multiply that so much. Yeah, I think it is becoming a bit of the myth of New York that, you know, you take any athlete who's not in New York and you say like, oh, well, if only X played in New York, their, you know, imprint, culturally would be vastly bigger. They would be massive. They would be a factor of a hundred of what they are now. I don't know if that's necessarily true.

In fact, we saw like somebody like Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, granted, they're going to a franchise in the Nets, which are, you know, a very sort of strange franchise, but they were kind of hiding in plain sight, I feel, for the last four years. Do you really think that there was a pressure cooker around the Brooklyn Nets? I don't get the feeling that there was a terribly difficult place to play. Not a pressure cooker, but certainly, again, I'd say the same thing about KD. It's like he's going to get attention wherever he is. Like he's going to generate his desired or more than desired amount of media coverage.

Yeah. It doesn't matter. Yeah. And like, look, we do it all the time. people in New York love to say like, well, if Zion was on the Knicks, it would just be massive, it'd be incredible. You know, we don't account for the idea, well, maybe he would be like miserable and it would just not be a success. And, you know, maybe Zion's a bad example because he's had such a, you know, up and down the past couple of seasons. But I tend to think we sort of lean a little bit too

much into the old mythology of it. Last thing that struck me about this is that so many of the things we used to think we're unique about the tabloids in New York have been taken over by institutions like, let us say, first take. You know, the back page of the post of the Daily News is now the Chiron on first take. Okay. Taking a couple of facts and spinning them into a highly personal diatribe is what we do on podcasting all the time,

speculating, you know, taking a story. You mentioned the NBA MVP boating. and just shaking it for everything we can possibly get. I mean, the approach that was wonderful and horrible at the same time about the New York tabloids approach to sports, that's podcasting now. That's television now. So I think what may have been in some previous media era,

something reserved for people who were in the Yankees locker room or the Knicks locker room. But let me ask you this. It's now something everybody gets a taste of to a certain extent. Where do you put traditional radio into that? because, you know, still chugging along. Where do you put that into? Because I feel like in some ways, we've all sort of broken off into our little tribes, right?

There's the radio crowd. There's the podcast crowd. There's the social media crowd. You know, they cross over a little bit. But, you know, I don't know if the conversations are exactly the same. Yeah. I mean, I would, FAN's an interesting one, right? Because, like, is there anything that can replicate on a national level, like, FAN

signing on and talking about you for? an entire broadcast day, especially with something like baseball and like a pitching change late in the game, something that would not be on first take in such a way? Sure. And also historically, the radio programs would sort of make characters out of the newspaper calling this, you know, like, can you believe that so-and-so said this morning and like he's way off and like they'd have him on, you know, there'd be like all kinds of, you know, in lots of cities, all kinds of, you know, frenemy to completely adversarial.

relationships between talk radio hosts and local sports columnists. Last one for you, Jason, for we roll here, it is the job of this podcast to observe all kinds of media anniversaries, and I noticed a sad one that will be happening this week. Ten years ago, this week, the Boston Phoenix, the famous Alt Weekly that you may or may not have had some years with, ceased publication. How should we remember the Boston Phoenix? It was a great newspaper. It was sort of part of the heyday of what we called alternative media, which in today's world would be sort of all of media because, you know, the alternatives are right and or in front of us. It produced an incredible list of alumni. I mean, the time that I was there,

I was there briefly in the 90s, late 90s, and I worked alongside people like Ellen Barry at the New York Times, Gareth Cook, who won't a Pulitzer at the Boston Globe, Yvonne Abraham, who's a columnist at the Boston Globe, the one and only Tom Skokka, Mike Crowley from the New York Times. I mean, I was just sort of, you know, the guy in the background there, but it was just an incredible feeder system to a lot of great places, but it also had people who are lifers there who are incredibly engaged and obsessed about what their topics were. They covered a lot of things that traditional newspapers wouldn't touch. But I really feel, you know, it's an old, old story by now. They were very directly threatened very early by what the internet became, whether it was Craigslist,

whether it was, you know, blogging, whether it was people who were able to sort of build audiences covering small topics. It really sort of put the heat on things like the Phoenix. And it's not just the Phoenix. It's a whole world of alternative press around the country that radically changed. It's an amazing list of movie critics, too, that stopped through there, came through there, wrote reviews for that paper. Lloyd Schwartz, classical music critic, won a Pulitzer for the Phoenix.

Kind of a remarkable critic there. Yes, absolutely. And listen, the movie critics, Owen Gleberman, you know, Peter Keough, down the list. Janet Maslin. Janet Maslin. Yep, yep. It's pretty amazing.

All right. It's time for a feature that still survives in the 21st century. Against all odds, it's time for Jason Gaye guesses the strain pun headline. You ready? I have to admit, this is the area where I'm having the hardest time, Brian. You know, you can throw almost anything at me, but I have been whiffing so badly on this thing. I'm going to get sent down to the press box G League. I just know it.

You're going to put me on a two-way deal, and that's going to be it for me. I got a New England-based pun today. Okay. All right. You're laying up. We're keeping a local last Monday's headline about a new single featuring Donald Trump and those who participated in the January 6th siege of the capital was singing the coups. Got a lot of votes for Akupella, Ku-Baya, Ku and the gang.

new insur record drops. Today's headline, Jason, comes to us from Claire, Considine, and Ryan Mahan. It's from the AP. Have you ever taken the Amtrak from Boston to New Brunswick, Maine? I have not. Okay. Well, if you're ever on it, there will be 35 or so miles where the train is trundling through New Hampshire.

And you're going to want to be aware of that because you cannot buy alcohol for those 35 miles as the AP reports it stems from a New Hampshire law that forbids a serving of alcohol that hasn't been purchased in the state. 35 or so miles, you can't get anything. No alcohol in New Hampshire. I want you to think of that state's motto as you ponder the question. What was the AP's strained pun headline? Live free or dry?

Oh, there we go. There we go. See? Did I get it? Just had to keep it local, yes. Oh, my God. I'm so proud of myself, Brian, this is honestly the highlight of my month, nailing that. Eat it, Shoemaker.

He is Jason Gay. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Coming up, big guests from the world of television news, baseball announcing, and even professional wrestling. Plus, of course, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you soon.