The Press Box - The Coach Prime Content Machine. Plus: The "What Do We Cover Now?" Campaign and a Musk Mega-book.

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Bryan and David begin this week with Deion Sanders’s coaching debut at Colorado and how the team has already become a content machine and then look into the lack of horse race coverage so far in this election cycle (13:54). Later, they discuss this year’s NFL announcing booths (26:41), Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography of Elon Musk (35:56), and more! Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone. This is Craig Horlebeck from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Join me, Danny Hifitz and Danny Kelly every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to help you win your draft, win your league, and most importantly, avoid that last place punishment. Follow the Ringer Fantasy Football Show on Spotify. David, the University of Colorado football team was awful last year. They went 1 and 11. We'll enter Coach Prime, otherwise known as Dionne's. Sanders. It comes from Jackson State. He pulls the lever on the transfer portal like it's never been pulled before. There are 86, yes, 86 new players on the Colorado roster. Only 10 players

left from pre-Dion Colorado. And CU football, which no network cared about at all, became a content machine. See, for me, Colorado football is perpetually stuck as like the 1990, what was it, 6-97, Bill Walsh College football video game edition with Cordell Stewart as the running back.

You could just run the option, just run around the line every single time and do the half-back toss. Man, that was great. For a guy that didn't know how to play a video game, the team was supreme. But yeah, nobody cared about this team. Dion Sanders goes there,

and now people care. as if people care, and I'm speaking to the sports media here, people are upset that they're obligated to care. They're upset they're obligated to care or they're like, hello, hello new content opportunity. I think it's a huge content opportunity, but there does seem to be a lot of just noise around it, like friction around it. Like, we know this is content and there's a slight,

and we know it's going to be great for us, but there's a slight resentment that like Dionne Sanders figured out the one neat trick to get all the attention on your college football team, right? Yes. It did solve a very big problem for reporters and networks alike on week one, because other than LSU, FSU on Sunday night, week one was terrible. So Colorado, which is a hypothetically interesting football team going on the road to play ranked TCU, offered a solution.

Hey, we got something to watch at noon Easter. Dion did a pregame interview with Troy Aitman for college game day. He did an interview with Aaron Andrews for Fox. This is NFL style treatment here. Yeah. Nobody thought Colorado was actually going to win this game. They're 21 point underdogs. This was the rare, genuine, nobody believed in us that was real.

Yes. This may be the first time that has ever been real, in fact. then what happens, David, when the game starts. Dionne's son Shadour goes out and throws for 500 yards. Travis Hunter, who was this number one overall high school recruit a few years ago, played both offense and defense in the game and was awesome. You know Colorado is now a content machine because Dion Sanders managed to even make the obligatory halftime interview interesting.

Oh, yeah. Travis Hunter has advertised over 60 snaps. How do you keep him fresh? in the second. He is him. We missed him on two deep balls. He gets those two deep balls. The Hizman is in his crib, chilling right now. God bless. Thanks, coach. Every coach should guarantee

the Hysman to one of their players before halftime. Otherwise, just walk to the locker room. I don't need to hear from you. Colorado beat TCU 4542. Whoa. We don't feel obligated to cover it anymore. This is now a huge story. Yeah.

Then came the post-game presser, where we found out, David, that Dion was taking this nobody believed in a storyline fairly seriously. And he had some thoughts on a reporter who he said was one of the doubters. What's up, boss? You believe now? Hold on. Hold on. Oh, no.

Do you believe in that? Huh? Oh, no, no, no. I read through that bull junkie wrote that. I read through that. I sipped it through all that. Oh, no, come on. Do you believe?

You don't believe. You just answered it. You don't believe. Next question. I have three observations about that press conference. One, how much do you love the word bold junk? I'm not worried about showing up a reporter in front of all of his peers, but I insist on saying bold junk. Anybody from the wrestling world ever called something you wrote or said bull junk?

No, I wish they had. I would take that as a badge of courage. Yes. I think that for Edward or maybe for every reporter that's interacted with Dion Sanders, this has to be one of those moments where you realize he's never read anything that he claims to have read. Anytime you said something nice about something you wrote, you've been really good the past few months. He's just saying a thing.

But that's great. That's probably what every interaction with someone on his level is like. Can we stop and underline that Ed Werder television reporter for ESPN? He sifted through it. Ed has not been writing a ton of copies since he was covering the Cowboys with the Dallas Morning News back in the 90s. But Dion Sanders read something he wrote, read some bull junk. Ed did cover Dion back in the 90s, so I'm wondering, maybe Dion's not reading something now, but maybe during his playing days.

Yeah. He's still got a clip on the fridge by Edward that he's projecting from. More seriously, and this is my third observation, Deon Seder is not the first coach to be a big jerk to a reporter in a postgame press conference. It's sort of rare after a win that you would do that. But if I were Werder or anybody sitting in that press room, I think what would bother me the most is not that, but the fact that he wouldn't answer my question.

Yeah. Like, you want to go after me? Okay, that's fine, but I'm going to go write something. I'm going to write whatever I want. It's not going to be approved by you. And you need to answer my question to help me write that. Yeah. Like, that is kind of part of the deal here.

Yes. And the whole, do you believe, oh, you don't, next question. I don't know if that would work for me. Well, you know, the end gets to ask questions, too. Speaking of content, Fox's big noon kickoff show and A announcing team is going to be at Colorado Nebraska next week. Yeah. We're riding this thing. This month, Colorado is playing at Oregon and at home against USC.

More coach prime content machine. to come. Of course. A couple of short things for you about college football. Very rough day for Gus Johnson who called that game. TCU, Colorado on Saturday. This has been the case for a few years where there are long stretches of games where Gus is just not seeing the field very well or his spotter isn't seeing the field very well because there'd be a fumble and everybody on the defense is pointing this way

and it's just not acknowledged on the broadcast. Right. But the interesting riddle of Gus Johnson is there are these mistakes and there were a bunch of them in the first half TCU Colorado and then the game got really close and exciting at the end. Yeah. And it's not that simple, right? Because you're like, who would you rather have calling this game right now

than Gus Johnson? No money. Who can acknowledge the nuttiness and the excitement of a college football game that suddenly perks up right at the end. But you think, minus the ending, you would be calling for his job?

It's funny because I think he's always been a little bit of a Twitter favorite. Yeah. Going back to his days calling NCAA basketball games. On Twitter, those are the moments that you're paying attention to, right? The ones where he's at his peak. Those are the moments.

It's funny. Awful announcing sort of started cataloging, the miss cues. And I think that got the machine revved up. And college football fans don't need much to be prodded. And they're right. By the way, and it's been happening for a bunch of years now.

Yeah. It's just kind of gotten glossed over because, again, he'll have moments in the fourth quarter where the game is berserk. He is matching the energy of the game. And everybody's like, this is great. Maybe he should just be a closer. Kind of a fireman, major league baseball style reliever.

Yeah. Just have him, just just pop into the booth when the game gets good, when it gets tight at the end. I curse the Saturday night football team, which is ESPN's A team. I said, this is the best produced game ESPN puts out there. NBA finals and all.

Here we go, baby. Guess what? Fourth quarter starts, FSU, LSU. There's a huge interception, and they are caught in a sideline reporter interview with a coach. So we got the split screen going on and we're watching this enormous play going back the other way and we're still interviewing the coach. Whoops. I apologies to the ESPNA crew.

I will never, ever tweet about you again. The other big surprise of the weekend, David, came from Sean McDonough, also of ESPN ABC. He was doing a game near and dear to your heart, North Carolina versus South Carolina. The Battle of the Carolinas, won by the Tar Heels. Tar Hills have a receiver named Tess Walker, who transferred from Kent State and was ruled ineligible by the NCAA, at least for game one. The obvious question being, are we still doing this? Yes, we are still doing this, at least in some cases. Here is Sean McDonough expressing his opinion in a way you might not hear an announcer, do it very often.

Posted a letter that he wrote to Charlie Baker, the new president of the NCAA, on Instagram, very emotional, very hard felt imploring Charlie Baker do the right thing. And again, I know there's a process, but if Charlie Baker has that kind of power, please do the right thing. Charlie Baker was our governor in Massachusetts. He was very well like this. I don't mean to make this political at all. He's a smart guy.

You know, part of what he needs to do is clean up nonsense like this that's happened for decades at the NCAA. Somebody please do something. His grandmother had never seen in play in person. We're all hoping that was going to happen tonight. Shame on the NCAA. This is the broadcast of an NCAA football game. I'll remind you.

Usually when Sean McDonough talks like that, it's about the refs. Yeah. Which I love. There was like a Texas Georgia game a couple years ago, and the reps were calling this penalty in the fourth quarter, and we're just having this conversation that went on forever, even though the game was over. I remember Sean McDowderna just goes,

please stop talking. Well, I guess if you need proof that the NCAA is losing power steadily to, you know, the conferences to the players to just the professional sports world at large, that's your proof right there. Because if that had happened in an NFL game or even an NBA game, Sean McDonough would be, he would be Frog March Saturday. Yeah, worse than Jeff Van Gundy.

He would be out of here. It's where you realize that the instance. And again, it's a little different, right? Because the conferences are making deals with the networks rather than the NCAA as a governing body. So there's less like an Adam Silver figure that you need to please, at least in quite the same way. But you just realize that the NCAA might be the single juiciest, safest target in America. Oh, yeah, because they're just like, you know, like the hall monitors out there, you know, like, they don't have a constituency. There is no pro-N-CAA constituency.

No. Like Scott Sternberg was one of our listeners was asking us to talk about this. I'm like, dude, I've been on message boards for 20 years. Everybody hates the NCAA. They may disagree why they hate the NCAA. Yeah.

It may be, hey, they're letting all the teams cheat or, oh, wait, they need to pay the players, whatever it is. But anyway,

good on Sean McDonough, because you don't see an announcer say it in quite those terms. No. Broadcast. Coming up on today's pod, David, political reporters have hit a campaign lull that makes Ron DeSantis' lull look mild. What happened?

An announcing booth preview of the NFL season, an Elon Musk megabook, and how Jernos treated Jimmy Buffett and Taylor Swift. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the ringer! Podcast Network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis David Shoemaker and producer Eduardo Ocampo, who's sitting in for Erica here. David, I have a report from the campaign trail.

there's a little bit of restlessness, I detain among political reporters. On the one hand, in every story they write, and unlike Edward, they are writing stories every week, they get to describe the events as historic, quote unquote. Former president, been indicted four times. On the other hand, there's been no horse race now for a month. And there's no single story, at least at the moment, that reporters can credibly point to and say, here's why we're not cruising toward a Trump Biden rematch. Right.

We're in a period that reporters might call the what do we cover now campaign. Mm-hmm. I want you to consider some of the news cycles over the last week and change. After the first GOP debate, we had a, who is Vivek Ramoswamy? news cycle. I remember like six days after the debate, I read a Michelle Goldberg column in the New York Times like, okay, okay, I know who Vivek Ramoswami is.

Question has been answered to my satisfaction. Then we had a related but separate Vivek Ramoswamy fact-check news cycle. People were paying a little more attention to what he was actually saying on the trail. By last Thursday, we had gotten to Tim Scott. isn't married and Republican donors are worried. Yes. That was an actual mini news cycle. And over Labor Day weekend,

I saw political reporters trying to make this work. Mike Pence to give major speech. Mike Pence is at 4.2% in the national polls. The major speech story, even when it's like a real prime candidate, You know, if it's the party nominee is always just a junk story. It's always a junk story. And his story is about his speech, excuse me, is about conservatism versus populism.

Reaganism versus Trumpism, which was a big think piece after he and Ramoswamy got into it at the debate. Folks, that's been the think piece since 2016 when Donald Trump started running for president. And it's over, too, the contest. Populism won. Yeah. Well, I mean, the speech itself is meaningless once you sort of leak the, you know, you leak the script to the, to the reporter or whatever. The speech is so secondary. Nobody's watching it. They're just reading the pieces about it. That's why they do the speech so that people report on it. But it's a sort of like, you know, this meeting could have been an email of the campaign variety or this, you know, this email should have been a Twitter thread. Yeah. Mike Pence's campaign could have been an email. And this is what you're getting at. Here's a challenge. for political reporters.

The polls have not moved in a month. Trump is at or above 50%. The Santos is at 15 or thereabouts. Everybody else below 10. Yeah. It's somewhat closer in Iowa, but Trump still has a pretty big leap. There is no Democratic primary

despite the efforts of RFK Jr. In this Minnesota guy, Dean Phillips, to try to get one going. If we're doing shameless horse race journalism here, how many pages in the game change 24 book do you think will be devoted to Dean Phillips deciding whether he wants to challenge Biden for the Democratic nomination? We're getting a whole chapter on Dean Phillips? I'm thinking no.

Just the mini section within the chapter for the page break. The other problem for political reporters, David, is that the two frontrunners are not campaigning. and I mean not campaigning at all. Joe Biden went to a Labor Day parade in your neck of the woods, Philly. But do you want to guess how many campaign rallies he has had since announcing he was running four months ago? Oh, let me guess. Is it none? None is an excellent guess. The answer is one. You basically had two guesses here, one or none.

He has had one rally. That's according to the AP's Jill Colvin and, Will Weissard. Do you want to guess how many times Donald Trump has campaigned since August 12th? Since August 12th? Oh, so it's less than a month. Remember, two guesses, two

possible guesses. I know. Is it one also? It is one. Okay. Oh, no, sorry, it's not. It's none. Oh, dang. I thought I'd seen it. I'm zero. I'm 0 for two. That's terrible. It'll be better on the headline later, I think. Plus, of course, Donald Trump skipped the first

debate and is probably going to skip more, including the one that's in SoCal later this month. Now, a reader, David, a particularly, you know, enlightened reader might say, well, this is good. We're not doing any of this BS horse race coverage. I want to read about policy. I don't want to read about polls. To which my answer is bullshit. You want to read about polls.

You want to read about who's up and who's down. And number two, it's obviously such a false choice. It's a classic the media isn't. covering. Go out on the interwebs, you will find tons of writing about what the candidates are actually

proposing and what they believe in. Yeah. Dave Weigle at Simafore is doing it by himself. Plenty of things to read about that. Horse race coverage is one of those things where it always gets beat up,

but at the same time, as Jack Schaefer wrote this in a column several years ago, the candidates are trying to win. Yeah. They're not trying to have the best policy papers. Well, okay, for 2024, let's put the asterisk on that, right?

The candidates who are not trying to become Trump's VEP or a conservative thought leader are trying to win. Yeah. Is that fair enough? Yeah. I mean, theoretically, yes. The point is that you're trying to win the race. And that's, it's, yeah, it doesn't leave a lot to cover when the poll numbers like you said are so static. and there's probably a million reasons for it.

But I think just having two institutional figures at the top just leads to a lot less of the sort of sometimes incredibly meaningless noise that polls especially like state polls have. There's just no room for a Ramoswamy news cycle beyond the first one. If he's not, if we're not seeing him like miraculously get to like 12% in Iowa or something like that, right?

I mean, if everything's just so static, then what are you going to write about? There's an inevitability to it. There's an inevitability. And even if you have like Tim Scott is surging in Iowa, that opens the door for policy stories. Tim Scott's appeals to evangelicals. Tim Scott's position on abortion. Why is it resonating? And then you go off from there.

But it's hard for journalists to do this when there are not meaningful changes. changes or in this case changes at all in the larger polling picture. Again, that might sound like it's, you know, oh, we should be, we should be writing about the important things. Folks, that's how a lot of campaign journalism works. You need that day to date. You need at least the appearance of doubt that the inevitable is not, in fact, inevitable. Yeah.

Second part of the story is, haven't we just assumed that the job of political reporter is one of endless crazy changes? changing content over the last seven years. Oh, is that just become the expectation? Yeah. Yeah. It has, right? I mean, it's a, I mean, it's about, it's, it's reactive, right?

I mean, you have to have something to cover. But yeah, and it's incredibly unusual in the political sphere that you'd be out, that you have to, like, search out the story, you know? I mean, it just, it's, it's, especially in the Trump years, just, like, served up to you in a silver platter. If you just sat at your computer and read Twitter, you would have lots to write about and talk about. And you almost forget that a journalist output is, to some extent, dictated by events.

You can go find news. You can be clever. You can come up with great angles. You can go report certainly on things that nobody else is reporting about. but to some extent your your output is going to be tied to what happens. And again, the big asterisk here is this will almost certainly change at some point. Even if it doesn't change, Donald Trump is going to be on trial in March and the world of political journalism or at least campaign journalism will suddenly get very busy. Well, yeah. I mean, there seems to be this question mark about to what degree we cover Trump.

whether or not, you know, his political or his legal issues, Trump, I guess, pun intended, his campaigning. But it's not, I mean, and it's a holding pattern, you know, until we actually have a nominee. If he were the nominee in this exact time of year, and there would there be, I think, a different sort of coverage. But it's the sort of, it's the lack of, you know, there's no, we don't know what's going to happen, even though we all know what's going to happen.

That's what creates the paralysis. Again, it's fairly unique to me that he's not on the campaign trail making news. Yeah. And both candidates, I mean, both, you know, both Trump and Biden are, you know, just happy to just fast forward, just to, like, you know, hold serve until, until primary season's over. And that creates an incredibly weird dynamic. If it is Trump and Biden next year, this campaign could have a really interesting dynamic where Trump is limited in campaigning because of his legal woes that he physically has to be in a courtroom. And Biden is limited in campaigning by his desire not to go out on the stump and talk a bunch. And he runs a version of his 2020 COVID campaign where his events are very, very limited.

Leaves a lot of it to surrogates. And you could have like Nixon and 72 running the campaign. from the Rose Garden except it would be both Canada's. Yeah. Which would be an interesting challenge for reporters. Coming up in 30 seconds, some notes on the NFL TV season, which starts

Thursday night, is a Romo is great again, news cycle inevitable. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always

gratefully received. We got a bunch of submissions this week. Runners up include the news story, David, that the Miami Dolphins cut wide receiver Chosen Anderson. It's an overwork Twitter joke to say that Chosen was not. Thanks to Ben Axelrod for that.

The entertainment world today, David, is mourning the death of smash-mouth lead singer Steve Harwell. It's an overwork Twitter joke to write, damn. I guess the years do stop coming. thanks to Dr. Brad Reinfeld for that one. Speaking of entertainment, Hollywood is mourning the death of Weekend at Bernie's screenwriter Robert Claim. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write,

well, I guess his family has one option now. Thanks to Scott Tobias. But this week's winner, any joke involving the people stuck in the mud at Burning Man and Kendall Roy, for example, I can't stop the intrusive, vision in my head of Roman and Kendall Roy screaming into iPhones trying to get out of a mudlogged burning man.

Thanks to Matthew Zitland. If you have an idea for the Succession Christmas special, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, let's talk NFL announcing booze. CBS is the Super Bowl network this year. And I was talking to Richard Deich. Richard on the more positive Tony Romo is. cool side of things.

Me on the, eh, are we sure Tony Robo doesn't have some big flaws in his game side of things. And Richard pointed out something that that was really funny. There was a huge Romo backlash

last year on Twitter. Again, probably something that was coming, was certainly, the fuse was lit by people watching him called big AFC playoff games and be like, eh,

is he great or is he just kind of, getting excited about football. Richard said, aren't we pretty sure that the Romo is back angle is going to be the story

of 2023? Well, I'm not sure how gone, how is gone the opposite of back in this usage. I'm not sure how I'm not sure how much he has to get back from.

Because, you know, we talk about him a lot. on the show. People like us talk about them a lot. But we always say, like, the goal of this job is to become an institution, to become 75% invisible, just, like, not invisible, but part of the fabric of the broadcast. Yes. But yeah, sure.

Let's go with Ramos back. More engaged, more excited. This is exactly what we need. He prepped harder. Yeah. You could see that being part of it. He's putting in the work. putting in the reps.

I've always thought that, as I say, in wrestling, that he is a top guy. That's never been inevitable of me. It's not like Tony Romo's going to get fired. It's just that he's one announcer if Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow are throwing 60-yard touchdown passes on alternating drives, and he's another announcer if the game is like 20 to 10. And he sort of powers down a lot.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's also, listen, you know, armchair psychologist, etc., etc. But it does seem like a lot of what he does is natural.

I mean, he's reacting in a very natural way. When something gets him going, he's right there. He's like, you know, it's like, you know,

Brett Favre when the fastball stopped working. I'm really mixing metaphors here, but it's like, man, that past, I never thought about it for one second before my life. And it always landed right in the breadbox, you know,

And then suddenly it doesn't. And now you've got to start thinking about it. It's like Tony Romo was just such a natural at it and is such a natural at it, that sometimes when if the thoughts aren't popping into his head, I'm sure he's just like, well, I guess I just sit here then, right? I'm waiting for inspiration to strike. If it comes a little bit less often, less frequently, then maybe it stands out a lot. It's the people that are watching because he's not trying to jam his, you know, just words in there.

Totally. Or maybe there's not a bunch of alternate storylines written down on the spotter's boards in front of them. Yeah, exactly. If Patrick Mahomes is not great today, oh, what are we going to talk about? Oh, I don't have another place to go here to just take the audience. Yeah. But that's, you know, that's prep, right? I mean, that's part of the work.

Yeah, when you say reactive, it reminds me of when you hear a podcast or say, I don't want to do an interview with this famous person. I just want to have a conversation, which is code for I don't know what I'm going to ask. Romo just wants to have a conversation on the broadcaster. That's what it feels like sometimes. Another story this year. It is year two of Kevin Burkart and Greg Olson as the top guys at Fox. Yeah.

I was thinking about this over the weekend. Remember that at the beginning of last year? Joe Buck and Troy Aikman shockingly leave and go to ESPN and Monday Night Football. Yeah. Fox not only has to replace their top 10. but it's a Super Bowl year. So everybody's going to be watching those guys. Can we look back now with the distance of one year and say,

wow, that worked out miraculously well? Oh, it really did. As well as it possibly could have. We not only introduce people to Olson and Burkhart, but by the end of the year, people including our boss, we're like, these guys are great. These guys are top guys. In the business.

Yeah. I remember somebody saying something to me last year before the start of the season. And I'll always go back to this quote. They said, is an A team in broadcasting a measure of quality? Like you are one of the best play-by-play announcers or analysts on television? Or is an A-team what we tell them an A-team is, meaning the viewers? I think it's both, right? It's both, right?

both, right? But I think also, and Olson and Burkhart both did a fantastic job last year. Burkhart was already great. And I thought Olson took a big jump over the course of the season and just got better or better. But there is something about like Kevin Burkhart and Greg Olson are calling the NFC championship game. That makes them in addition to how good they are an 18 broad, an 18. They're calling the Super Bowl.

Ah. Yeah. in my mind watching television, they're now in 18. Well, they were the 18, you know, on Fox before that. You know, there's a little bit of an institutional, like, like sometimes we take quality for granted because people are put in the position. I mean, because we think that that determination has been made before they get on the air. Does that make sense?

It's like, it's like, is it, is it, is it delicious cheeseburger? The, the, is it the chef or is it the cleanliness of the restaurant? It's like, well, the cleanliness of the restaurant was factored in. But, you know, that's why it's able to open its doors every morning, right? It gets inspected. But, you know, it's, it, yeah, you give all the credit to the chef. Yes. Or the burger.

I don't know which one works here. Yeah, but it goes back to the, to what we're talking about Romo. Like, there's no scoreboard for these guys. You know, at the end, at the end of a game, it's not like Kevin Burkhard and Greg Olson, according to PFF, graded out at 97.2% for their call at the game. It's incredibly subjective. Some of it is vibes. I'd like to think you can watch a game and actually understand the quality of what these guys do.

But when I look at what happens with viewers and Twitter, sort of institutionally, it often feels like it's very random. And it coalesces, but it coalesces around big moments. Everybody's watching the NFC championship game, which by the way, last year, they had to do some heavy lifting. if you remember Eagles versus Brock Purdy's arm that didn't work. Yeah. That was not a great draw for an announcing. Third thought on the NFL season is Monday Night Football's new producer director. That is a broadcast that has production-wise, I think, lagged behind certainly Sunday night football on Fox.

Yeah. Production is also often really hard to explain to people. And my way to explain to people is watch the game. and see if you're seeing the things that you think you should be seen. Is the right replay coming up? Are there angles and replays you never thought the broadcast would give you? Does it intuitively feel like they're covering the game and telling you the story of the game? Or do you feel like you're lost a little bit?

And you don't know what's happening. and sort of allow yourself to tune out the announcers and just think about the pictures. That's good producing. Right before the, I cursed them, the ESPN A college football team, there was a great play where an LSU receiver is running down the sideline. And like seconds after the play's over, they show this guy's heel being perched right above the sideline. Like his toe was in bounds and he got his heel up so he did not step out of bounds.

Didn't even know I wanted that angle, didn't even know he was close to the sideline. And boom, there it is. And you're going, oh, wow. That's wizardry right there. Yep. And if you watch Monday Night Football, especially during the Steve Levy years and before that, the Joe Tessitore years,

it did not seem like it was produced on the level that the other broadcast was. Just didn't. Didn't seem like it had new ideas. Didn't seem like it was just distinct. Mm-hmm. So I'm interested to see if Monday Night can get to that level. Again, all of this is prelude

to the fact they have a Super Bowl in 2020. Yeah. How about the Super Bowl of nonfiction books, David? One week from today, September 12th, the book Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson is coming out. Isiskson is the guy who brought you the book Steve Jobs, which also has a black and white cover with a tech genius placing his hands near his chin. Mm-hmm. Elon Walter Isaacson has a type,

you might say. Yeah. What should we know about the release of a mega nonfiction book or is an Isaacson mega book its own category? Um, I think

I mean, I think there is a category for just like epic, epic books, right? I mean, just news setting epic books. It's sort of separate from anything else. It's very rare to get something that's both kind of quintessential and newsy, with the exception of a handful of news magazine writers that write about current events, you know, that will grab, that will almost, you know, look into a topic kind of as it's happening. This is a really, really rare occasion. I mean, the amount of time and care that Isaacson puts into his writing almost necessarily precludes a book being.

as newsworthy as this one is. And yet, it's hitting it exactly the right time. This is kind of, you know, this is one in a million. That said, you know, it's a 700-page book or something like that. It's incredibly long.

And, you know, there's no shortage of irony about the fact that this book is going to be consumed by the vast majority of people and like screen grabs posted on Twitter. Right? Yes. All of the juicy bits are just going, and I'm sure Elon Musk doesn't care about it.

He's not, he's not in on the royalties or whatever, but all the juicy bits are going to be, but I'm sure there'll be parts of the book that he's not going to be excited or out there and they'll be disseminated on his platform. Isaacson will be losing money. Elon will be,

we'll be losing a little bit of credibility and it's all just going to be, it's all just going to be those like tweets with four separate screen grabs and and haphazard highlighting on Twitter or X, I guess, but I'm going to go there. I always wonder about that

when these big books come out. Prince Harry's was probably the last nonfiction book that was this big or had this kind of anticipation. Yeah. And, you know, of course, the British tabloids are trying to get it.

Everybody, you know, on Twitter is excerpting different things about, you know, Harry in the Arctic and all this stuff. And you're like, man, who's going to, you know, I felt like I read the book. I don't need to read the book. I'm sure everybody just skipped the book. And then you look and it just sold so many copies. Well, okay, so that's the thing about books.

Books don't suffer as much as you would think. Or big books don't suffer as much as you would think from the, I saw everything in the trailer syndrome. Although, I guess big movies don't either. You know, you can give everything away in the trailer. trailer and it's not like people like, eh, I don't need to see Jurassic Park 5 or whatever. You know, it's people, a lot of people are still going to go. So I guess that is the same thing.

Books are just not that many people buy books. I mean, even the big books, it's not, it's often not just an astronomical number. You can get to number one in the New York Times bestseller list without, you don't have to sell 10 million copies or something to get there, you know? So if there's enough attention behind a book, if the publisher gets enough copy, of the book into the Barnes and Noble. So everybody walking through is like, oh, there's that book that I've heard about. Maybe that would look good on my coffee table, you know, or it's not even that. I don't mean to be dismissive. It's like you buy a book. I bought, I went to the bookstore

this weekend, this used bookstore and bought 12 books, you know, like how many of those am I going to read this month? Well, maybe one or two. How many are going to get read ever if they'll last beyond the month? Yeah. Reading is a, reading is a hypothetical endeavor as much as it is an active one. But yeah, you can get, you can sell tons of copies of books without, even if there is a huge, a huge element of market cannibalism, you know, I mean, you're still, you're still selling a lot. We, I mean, we used to like publish, you know, the novel that a movie was based on, you know, that nobody cares about. And like the, or like, the novel that a movie was based on or whatever, the movie could flop,

but the novel would still do really well because comparatively, you only need like a fraction of a mediocre movie audience to catapult a book up to charts, you know? And there's so much awareness versus how many people would be aware of this novel, if not for the fact that there was a lousy movie

coming out about it. And comparing it to a movie is the Mugs game. You just compare it to the next book on the show. Well, it's doing a lot better than that one. The Must thing is so amazing to me because it touches so many potential readers. As you said,

this is a live news story. The biggest news story in tech, one of the biggest news stories in business. So you're getting people that are just really interested in current offense. There's getting people that are interested in him in particular because he is just his own weather system. You're getting people that read Musks, or excuse me, Isaacson's bio of Steve Jobs and are just like,

oh, here is another Walter Isaacson. book that I am very excited to read. I think in this case, it legitimizes it more. You know, obviously, obviously legitimizes it, but it legitimizes it as, as for a percentage of the people you've already mentioned, right? It's not just a, you know, grocery store checkout line, Elon Musk paperback. Or I guess in this day and age, it's the Elon Musk issue of People magazine. I was going to say, we don't do the Quicky bio anymore, but we do do a very special issue

of life devoted to the career of Elon Musk. Got the PayPal years in there, got all the nice pictures that we pulled from the wire service. There's also, and you and I have had people like this in our lives before.

There's a certain kind of person who probably works in business, though they may work in other fields that wants to read the bio of the genius. Yeah, of course. To figure out how they made it

so that they can look back at their own life and say, what can I learn from this? Mm-hmm. About when as I pursue my own career. Oh, absolutely. So there's that certainly aspirational quality to a book like this. I mean, that's a lot of Elon Musk's charm, at least in the pre-Twitter years, I think, more broadly, that sort of aspirational thing. There's also going to be, I mean, a not entirely distinct, but, you know,

another group of readers who just sort of want to keep up with the conversation. You know, I mean, we do this podcast. I've had numerous people when, you know, they're like, hey, what are you talking about? I'm, Elon Musk and Twitter, what, they're like, what's going on with that? You know, like, you know, a lot of people that are just sort of like, just kind of not avid Twitter users that just sort of hear about it echoing through rooms. And now this is, you know, a potential way in. And even the people that are avid Twitter users, they don't want to be left out of the conversation. That might be picking up the book, too.

It's a 688 page explainer if you don't know very much about Elon Musk and no shame if you don't. I was reading the excerpt which ran in the Wall Street Journal. First of all, this book is going to be incredibly unique in the sense that Isaacson had unbelievable access to Elon Musk. And there are quotes in here that like Elon texted me in the middle of the night as he was thinking about buying Twitter. Yeah. It is a level of embedding that would even make Michael Lewis jealous with his upcoming book about Sam Bangman-Fried. Yeah. He is there.

There's also a certain life of the tech billionaire quality, at least to the excerpt. Mm-hmm. Here's one couple of sentences. He then flew to Larry Ellison's Hawaiian Island, Lanai. He had planned the trip as a quiet rendezvous with one of the women. He was occasionally dating the Australian actress, Natasha Bassett. I mean, just lots of stuff like that. you find out what it is like to be Elon Musk, which is separate but related to the whole

aspirational quality of the book. Yeah. Then there, this book is also going to set a world record for wild quotes. This is one from the excerpt about what Musk calls the woke mind virus, something I believe, David, you were diagnosed with a couple of months ago. quote, unless the woke mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit, and anti-human in general is stopped, civilization will never become multi-planetary,

he told me gravely. Yeah, that's the point. All of us with the woke mind virus have been gathering in groups for years trying to keep people from exploring other planets. They like it on Earth, damn it? Yeah, this is going to be a weird one. It is telling, I mean, it's not, this is not shocking, but it's interesting that that Wall Street Journal excerpt is, is potentially one of the juiciest parts of the book.

The Twitter stuff. The Twitter stuff. I mean, that's what everyone's going to want to read. Now, Wall Street Journal might have been like, we don't really care about, you know, we don't want to pay you money to run it, or so much money to run an excerpt about the PayPal years or whatever. But there are definitely, sometimes books like this, they will hold that in reserve, right? And maybe they're probably still holding a lot in reserve. They couldn't possibly publish it all in the Wall Street Journal. And the journals, obviously, you know, gets to choose their headline to make it seem as big as they want.

But yeah, they're just putting it all out there because they know that people will come to the book regardless. It's not they don't care about how much you've already read. And if you go back and read this, I think you'll find that the even the journal excerpt about the Twitter stuff is pretty, it's a small part of what's got to be a huge part of the book. it feels very like we pulled a paragraph here, we pulled a paragraph here, we pulled the one scene here. It feels like there's a much longer and juicier part to come.

Anyway, I'm excited about this. I'm genuine, not excited in a podcast way where people are excited about everything, pumped up for everything. Yeah.

I actually want to read this book. We might finally have another, I read something. Yeah. Remember when we were going to do that either of a podcast way? Would you say? For my part,

I'm only excited in the podcast way. You don't want to read this? You don't want to read 688 pages? I was kind of joking, but I am, man, I am at that stage, at some stage of my life where I am a strictly paperback reader at this point. I'm actually the person. This is one of the hugest life shifts. September 5th, 2023, David has an announcement to make.

He's only reading paperbacks. I will see a book in the bookstore and say, I can wait a year until it comes out in paperback. This is why I tried to get you excited. about the European model where the hardback and the paperback come out at the same time. Yeah, I know. And you can choose. Then David doesn't have to wait

a year. You don't have to wait for video. If I really want it, I go digital rather than going hardcover a lot of the time. I feel like I hardly know you anymore. I know. That's crazy. A couple of music notes for you. Oh, that's unusual. Okay. Noah Pransky is a correspondent at NBC News

and he set out to investigate one of these funny economic, and I use that term advisedly stories you hear once in a while, which was that Taylor Swift had generated $5 billion for the U.S. economy, as he put it, five billion dollar economic impact for her eras to her. She's a job creator. She's a job creator. Now, you've seen stories like this before. Remember the one about how many man hours the U.S. economy lost because people were watching the NCAA tournament?

Oh, yeah. I believe there was also one about how many avocados people eat on Super Bowl Sunday. Whenever you see a story like that floating around, you should probably exercise maximum skepticism. Yeah, who planted that story? And Noah Pransky did some research. he was able to get a hold of the study which turned out to not quite meet the level of rigor that we would want to declare that Taylor Swift had a $5 billion economic impact. So he put all this out there and then guess what?

He got swarmed by Taylor Swift fans. I was about to say he better duck for coverage reporting on this. Yeah, who did not totally appreciate. the level of scrutiny that he was applying, the fact-checking, important fact-checking that he was doing over for NBC News. Anyway, check it out on his Twitter feed. And speaking of music, David, were you anywhere near Twitter when Jimmy Buffett's death was announced? I was, yeah. On Friday night, did you notice a lot of your favorite sports writers and sports commentators casting Jimmy Buffett as a kind of er Jason Isbell of the press box?

Yeah. Sam Farmer, who's the NFL reporter at the L.A. Times, said he was my Taylor Swift. Golly. Now, is that, is that like a sports writer? Is there a sports writer Jimmy Buffett connection that's worth mining? Or is this like sports writer? He was a sports fan, you know, and I think that the Isbel comparison is telling. I haven't even read Harvilla's piece on Jimmy Buffet yet, which I'm sure is going to be illuminating and enlightening.

Perfect guy to read it. But with my much narrower worldview, there wasn't element of Jimmy Buffover. It was sort of like country music for people that didn't want to think they were listening to country music, you know, and that coincides, as we know with Isbo with a lot of the sports writing community.

All right, here we go. The think piece is going. Keep going here. I like this. But I don't know. I mean, Buffett's whatever. I mean, I cannot claim to be a big, Parrot Head or even Buffett

Officianado, although have stayed at Margaritaville Resort and recommend it to anyone that comes across one. This is the second big announcement on this pod. Paperback books and now this. I didn't know that either. It's a fantastic

waste to stay. I say when I went when I was down at at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge. Wow. You went to Dollywood, but stayed at the Jimmy Buffett resort? I don't think there's an official. Is there official Dollywood hotel?

Well, there's like different. Dollywood's a little bit separate. You know, but you went to visit Dollywood, but then stayed at a branded hotel of another musician. Yes, correct. I just want to make sure we're getting all that.

Did you go to Toby Keese? I love this bar and grill for lunch. No. No, but we did go to Blake Shelton's Red Dog restaurant. For real? Yeah, yes, for real. Absolutely for real. This has been a great piece.

It's a great place to visit. It's like, it's like, you know, country music in Disneyland. Everybody should check it out. I was whenever, you see like sports writers saluting somebody like Jimmy Buffett, I'm always like, is this, is there really a connection here? Is it like sports writers love Bruce Springsteen? We're like, well, everybody loves Bruce Springsteen. Mm-hmm. So I don't know that this is specific to sports writers, but I like your connection.

with country for people who don't love country. Speaking of Jimmy, we have an only in journalism submission sent in by listener Paul Henry. This was the headline of the New York Times Obit. Jimmy Buffett, roguish bard of island escapism is dead. Robish bard. Yeah. That's a great one. Some more only in journalism via listener James Adair.

saw the coverage of Hurricane Adalia last week. Why are hurricanes always lashing the coast of Florida? It's a good question. I did see a couple of instances of slamming into the coast of Florida, but lashing is definitely the word the press reaches for to describe hurricanes. We also got this one from Mr. MediaX, famous reporter who's a listener of this show, prefers to be anonymous.

You know how I love journalist euphemisms. Oh, yeah. when they see a piece from one of their colleagues and they say, quite the read from David Shoemaker or read David Shoemaker. Yeah. Which doesn't explicitly say the piece is good or even that they've read the piece necessarily. I guess quite the read. Quite the read does imply it,

but I think it just sort of read, read Brian Curtis, read David Shoemaker, is that I didn't read this, right? But this person is always worth reading. Yes. Or he's my friend.

and he'd be mad if I didn't tweet this. Quite the read should be read as I didn't read this piece either, but it's a lie that has the least on the line, right? It's not a lie that can be proven wrong, you know? Brian Curtis got real offensive about two-thirds of the way through this. Quite the read doesn't ignore that fact. Brian's going to get canceled for this one. Yeah.

I always see Quite the Read when it's a news. piece that's written in something slightly more interesting than newspaper ease. Like the person snuck a few adjectives past the copy desk or it's kind of a mean story in a newspaper.

Yeah. It's quite the read. It's not quite up to magazine level pros but it's like really good newspaper pros or slightly spicy newspaper pros as the kids like to say that's quite the read. Yeah, and should be acknowledged different than quite the ride.

right? This piece is quite a ride. Yeah. Also, not necessarily a measure of quality. No, not at all. So Mr. Media X, this famous reporter who prefers to remain anonymous, hits us with a podcast host euphemism. Oh. How do you read it when a podcast host ends an interview, often with another journalist or podcast host by saying, this was fun?

I'm so bad at Outros I have nothing to say here Like when the thing When it's over you're just like There's this sort of deflation Yeah It was fun This was fun

It feels it feels yeah There's a little bit of the We're at the end of a one hour performance here Yeah So I'm just a little tired But to me I always hear a little bit of This was good But it wasn't quite as great as it could have been

This was fun The problem with podcast Both for those of us that do it the people listening to it is that there's no not a real time constraint i mean i guess if you have a celebrity on they might say you got 20 minutes if you if you have if it's just a free flowing conversation maybe your bosses say keep it under an hour or whatever but for the most part it's you never going to end a podcast interview with the sort of electricity of a tv interview where it's just like we got three minutes and at the end is oh we're just getting the good part oh my god that was so great you know

like whatever you it always whine it always winds down on its own and you you're just sort of, just sort of, you know, done by the end. Did Stephen A tell Shannon this was fun yesterday at the end of first take? After he called him Skip a couple of times. That was funny, by the way. That was great. Speaking of features that are always fun, it's time for David Shoemaker. Guess is a strain pun headline.

Yeah. Last Monday's headline about an accused NBA trader was Ben and Nick Arnold. Today's headline comes to us. from Joseph Bertolini. It's from Pod Save America, a podcast title at Pod Save America. It's about that Trump mug shot down in Georgia, David. Yeah.

And how liberals feel about it. I don't want to say much more. What was Pod Save America's strain pun headline? Liberal. Now liberals feel about it. is it like I mean liberals love it obviously

or kind of smug self-satisfied about it yes they love they love it and they love how Trump feels about it

they love taking stock of Trump's feelings about it oh like the discomfort that it's causing Trump the pain that it's causing Trump the pain that it's causing

Trump's fans. I literally can't think of this word. What is this word? Shadenfreude. Shadenfreude, right. Okay. I know I thought this where I was trying to go. Schottinfreude?

Yeah, it's a mugshot, so it's Mugshot and Freud? Mugshot and Freud. That's that's right. Shot and Freud? Mugshot and Friday. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Eduardo Ocampo.

I'm back later this week with Pressbox final edition. By the way, got yet another DM from people who are confused by Press Box Final Edition. Sometimes people think we're getting canceled.

We're not getting canceled. It's not the last edition of the show. Just newspaper term. Yeah. You have your early edition, you have your final edition. It's like our grandparents

talking about penny postcards. Press Box final edition, but not final edition. Coming later this week, Shoemaker and I return with more lukewarm, about the media on Monday. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.