The Press Box - The Cringey MSNBC Rebrand, Gavin Newsom’s Twitter Account, and the Death of the Longform Podcast

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David discuss the end of summer and showing pop culture treasures from their youth to their children. Then they tackle the headlines, starting with the MSNBC rebrand (8:30), before talking about a Rolling Stone article about the death of the narrative podcast (26:28). Then in the notebook dump, they talk about what’s been going on with Gavin Newsom’s Twitter account (40:20), the UFC deal (46:49), sheep puns, and David guesses the strained pun headline of the week. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David ShoemakerProducer: Isaiah BlakelyAdditional Music: Epidemic Sound, Anna Landström, Anna Dager, and Hanna Ekström Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, everyone, it's Amy Polar, and I'm launching a new podcast called Good Hang. In preparation for that, I asked some of my friends to send in some videos and give me some advice. Just be yourself, and the guests will come. Don't be the celebrity that this is their, like, sixth thing they're doing. I love true crime and cooking podcasts. Is there any way you could combine the two? Well, everyone has an opinion and a podcast. So, join me for Good Hang. It's rough out there. We're just trying to lighten it up a little. David? Yes.

It's almost the end of summer, or as I like to think about it, the end of the season in which parents thrust the pop culture treasures of our youth onto our children. Oh, wow, I have a story about this. Go ahead. Continue, please. My wife and I were watching the new Netflix documentary about the biggest loser. I'll withhold my judgment on that one. But as we were watching, I was like, oh, look, it's J.D. Roth. And she was like, I think I know who that is, but who is that? And I was like, he was the host of mini, of game show, kids game shows when I was a kid.

She's like, what, I don't think I got to see any of those. So, of course, I figured out where Funhouse was streaming and queued it up on YouTube for my six-year-old to enjoy, maybe the most amazing thing he's ever seen. I mean, it's a dream come true for any child. I don't know how that fell out of favor. There should be new generations of Funhouse and whatever, the hidden temple. and all those things where you just got to go to places, finders keepers, was that the name of one,

where you just got to go in and just destroy things. Like, that's the most fun you could possibly have as a kid. What if I went to a McDonald's Playland or a Chuck Echee Cheese ball pit, but there were cash and prizes at stake? Exactly. There are things hidden in there. You could just, oh, look, just destroy the chair. There might be something inside the chair.

That's fun stuff, man. So a while back, I had a night alone with my son, Owen, who's 12 years old. years old. And I'm looking around at all the old movies showing in Los Angeles that night. And as you know, one of the cool things about LA is on weekends, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of old movies screening all over town. Sure. Yeah. Now, on this particular night, Batman Forever was playing. And that sounded kind of fun. But then I worried somebody would call child protective services if they saw me taking Owen to Batman forever. Okay. Yeah. So I looked

at the listings of the Philosophical Research Society of Los Angeles. Yes. I don't know if you're familiar with that institution, David, but it's a beautiful building up on a hill. It's a kind of place that has tarot readings and sound baths and a beautiful library full of books about esoteric subjects. And the Philosophical Research Society of Los Angeles was showing an episode of Mystery Science,

Theater 3000. Okay. Now, dude, you and I, both children of the 90s, I know we love the movie of mystery science theater, which came out in 96, but I feel like we kind of missed the high period of this show. Yes. We were catching up on Comedy Central, but never sitting down and going through these episodes like we would have done with another television show of the time.

Mm-hmm. So I bring in Owen who loves fantasy movies, sci-fi movies, adventure movies, and he is explosively laughing at mystery science theater, not dad made a joke and I have a charity laugh because it makes dad feel good. Mm-hmm. But that uncontrolled laughter. Yeah. that I had a few times during the naked gun reboot just for comparison sake here.

The hardest I remember laughing in our, let's just broadly say, in our 20s, was there's something about Mary. Were you there when we saw the preview for that? I was with some mutual friends, but I just remember we got screener tickets to it. None of us had any idea what it was. So it was like before it came out, before we were prepared for that sort of humor. and mystery science theater, the movie, which I think I must have just seen on home video or something. I don't think I went to the theater for that.

So like you said, we were a little behind the curve. We were a little behind the curve. And this mystery science theater, if people don't know, a man was a couple of different men, but a man and two robots watch terrible movies and make very high-tone jokes about. Is that a fair assessment? Yeah.

The man is on a satellite hovering above Earth for reasons that are a little complicated to explain. But all like the red letter breakdowns of terrible recent Star Wars movies, those are children of mystery science theater. Yes. And let me tell you something, dude, this is a crucial right turn at Albuquerque moment in parenting here. Because I don't know about you,

but when my kids were watching movies when they were really young, I didn't want to come out and analyze the movies. Yeah. I didn't want to be the Kevin Smith of dads. We were watching three men and a little lady as a family this weekend. I know, I know. And I'm not going to turn off the movie like, well, that was quite inferior to the original. Starring Steve Gutenberg, Ted Danson and Tom Selleck.

But Mystery Science Theater is kind of a bridge between childhood, which is about cool movies, and adulthood, which is about analyzing those movies. Yes. Having fun with them. picking them apart. Yep. Which is something you want to do with your kid too. Yep.

At the right age. So like, you know, you have to be a certain age to give your child the first beer, a certain age, maybe to take them on a roller coaster. Let me tell you something. Age 12, that's the mystery science theater safe space. That's great. There was only one hiccup. And this came when we got home and we're watching another famous episode,

which is devoted to the Canadian movie, the final sacrifice. A truly wretched movie about a lost civilization and a devil cult and all these things. But a character in the last sacrifice, David, pulls out a picture of a middle-aged

man with a mustache. And one of the robots says, oh, it's Larry Zonka. I laugh. My son does not laugh. Of course not. But then the robots proceed to make a dozen more jokes about Larry Zonka.

And finally, I have to push Paul. It wasn't just like, okay, let me tell you who Larry Zonka is. He's still with us. Let me tell you that he played for the dolphins. Let me explain to you that while he's way before my sports watching age, people in 1998 when this episode aired knew who Larry Zonka was. Yes, correct. Now we can push play again and proceed.

Yeah. You will have moments like that. Oh, yeah. This was funny in 1998. I would assume that's like half the things. It's funny when I watched this sort of reference. stuff with my six-year-old. I get anxiety because I'm like, oh, God, this is going to be a lift just to watch this.

But it turns out just like when we were kids, it's like, you know, it's like watching National Amprone's Christmas vacation when I was a kid. It's like the Jack Daniels joke just sails right over my head and I just laugh at the funny physical humor. You just, it's okay. You're not, you're not like, as a kid, it doesn't like necessarily slow you down. Although I guess at Owen's age, you might be wondering if you should know who Larry Zonka is. Yeah, I got you.

But when you watch it for the 15th time, then you have a nice appreciation. You appreciate it to do. Oh, that's why that was funny. That's where my dad started explosively laughing during that particular episode. Sure. All right. Coming up on today's episode of this podcast, David, a big story for liberals and fans of tortured acronyms. MSNBC is rebranding.

Plus the death of the narrative podcast, the UFC's new deal. and Gavin Newsom has completed his molting process and turned into a Twitter account. We also have some only in journalism words and local news puns just for you. Trust me when I say that joke will eventually pay off. All that much more on the press box. A part of the rigor. Podcast Network. Oh, media consumers. Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Isaiah Blakely, who's sitting in for Kyle here.

David, you remember when Comcast spun off MS. SNBC and other cable assets into a new company. That company named itself Dversant. That was, I think, the right voice to be saying that in, but it almost deserves a little sort of orchestral, a light melancholy orchestral tune in the background. Let me see if Isaiah can conjure up some music here.

Because MSNBC has also rebranded. And the results, David, are even more tortured. Going forth the home of Savvy Rachel Maddow and that nice young man, Chris Hayes, will be known as MS now. I'm just going to give that a minute. There's nothing wrong with your podcast, folks. We're just letting that sink at. Let the music play, Isaiah, David, is cogitating on this one.

MS now. MS now. Like, is it helpful? I mean, I guess at the end of the day, they probably, there was probably a whole lot of weight given to the fact that a huge percentage of the viewership is old. I'm not even going to couch that in some sort of more euphemistic phrasing. And that a total rebrand, if we wanted to call it just now,

or, you know, newsmax or something terrible like that. Was that taken? would might might deter some of the legacy viewership right you turn on Nicole Wallace in the afternoon except it's during a commercial or whatever it's someone's talking and it says it says super news on the bottom and you're like this is the wrong channel and you just turn it off and start calling your cable company or your grandchildren to figure out what's going wrong yeah I guess so you the MS in um you'd want to carry that over but I'm sorry

as someone who's watched a lot of MSNBC over the years, what is the Microsoft component to it? Like, why is the MS? MS just seemed like like a prefix on NBC. Like it was a variable added to the NBC formula, not the other way around, right? So why would the MS be the last thing standing? It really is strange because the network was founded in 1996 when we were all using Microsoft operating systems. Mm-hmm.

And some people still do. Yes. They uncoupled with Microsoft a long time ago. But kept the name. But kept the name. Because, of course, MSNBC, just rolls off the tongue. But then they, but now they've uncoubled from NBC and they, I mean, I guess legally you probably couldn't continue on as MSNBC even if they wanted to, right?

Even if you came up with another rationale for the acronym because you could conceivably damage the name, the good name of NBC. More on that in a second. doesn't the now part remind you of how people thought about the internet back in the days when we were using Windows? Oh, yeah. Like you had to over, you had to explain. This can be access now.

Yeah. You don't have to wait for 7 p.m. Eastern. Or just sort of the streaming app theory of not that long ago, you know, no, no, this isn't CBS. This is CBS right this minute, you know, like when. Okay. So a poor review from David for MS Now. What if I told you, David, that all those letters stand for something?

I'm just going to get this out of the way. Did neither of the letters stand for multiple sclerosis? And that is a problem with the way that this title reads. But I will never mention that again. They do not stand for that. Thank God. Here is MSNBC's. Now MS Now's Joe Scarborough with the big reveal.

This morning, a new name for the network by the end of the year. We will become MS now, which stands from my source for news, opinion, and the world. That is just amazing. They did all the letters. Are you sure that that's true, first of all? I don't mean, I'm not being ironic. Like, was he just making that up? It's real.

It's true. Brian Stelter says it's true. If you can't trust Joe Scarborough with news about his own network, let's trust Brian Stelter at another network. Damn it. My Source for News, Opinion and the World.

The weird thing is there's like a space between the S and the N. So it's like my source. Pause. Our news opinion and the world. This could really be like a 20 second segment on the show, but I just, it's a, I feel like we're never going to

stop talking about it. If I ask you, can I change, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I'm clicking on the Google news, when I search MS now. Oh, oh, it's all pictures of the logo. I looked yesterday and I was going to ask you, whose face you think was most common on the news stories about MS now before the new MS now logo started started, started. Am I saying that right, MS now or MSNOWW? you?

In MS now. MS. Pause now. I guess the pause is so you say the word now. Okay, whatever. Whose face do you think was most common? Not mad out? That is mad out.

But it's funny, the lead story on Google News. The lead story on Google News was Joe Scarborough. Maybe because that's right when the piece came out and it had the most traction. Then there was like a several split. screens with Maddow Scarborough and I don't even remember who I still have it screenshot it here somewhere and and yeah some of the logo too but Matt I mean it's it's interesting I guess there's nobody except for Maddow who would be the face of the network despite her not Chris Hayes well I think no you can make the case for Chris Hayes I'm just saying if you're pulling an image

if you're pulling a still that's she's still number one she's so matter how many nights she's on the She'll get the most clicks. Can I sidebar two here? Yeah. You and I personally, just among us boys, we love ourselves a tortured acronym. Oh, yeah. And I think the leading tortured acronym in our lives, do you remember what it was to this point? In all of our lives, the most tortured acronym?

That we spent like the last 15 years laughing about. Oh, God, I can't even remember. So I hate to sidebar to wrestling here, but there was a wrestler. There was a wrestler in the WW named Amy Dumas. And she came out with a memoir. You'll remember, David. Oh, I know what you're going to say. Lita.

Lita is who you're talking about. She was a real that her wrestling name is Lita. Yes. And the memoir was called a less traveled road, which sounds like a fine, generic title for a memoir. But then you look closely and you realize that Road stood for the reality of Amy Dumas. Needed the acronym forced in there. Before we leave this entirely, I just want to say there are two other great wrestling acronyms that we've not laughed about enough.

One is the Job Squad, Al Snow's jobber faction from back in the day, job was always an actor. I never knew what it stood for until recently. And it was apparently, I think it was just to look like, I think it must have been like MS now, a post-rationalized acronym but apparently jobs stood for just over broke but the other one the one that the one that lives on in my memory

is the union the short-lived baby face faction of people who were non-ironically unionizing against Vince McMahon union was not the acronym they called themselves they had a separate acronym which was up yours which stood for

the union of people you ought to respect comma son. Oh my God, the comma phrase puts that over the top. Yes. Anyway, go on. Back to what matters. You mentioned the MSNal logo. The Washington Post Scott Nover tweets,

Is MS now a good name? Not necessarily. Is the logo much, much, much worse? Yes. And dude, this looks like an art request came to the ringer, and you and your entire team of professionals were on vacation. And Fennacy or Bill said, hey, Curtis, can you handle art this week? I was like, well, I'll do my best.

And I came up with this logo. This is horrendous. And it's just nothing. Another friend of the show, Kirk A. Beto says, this looks like a doomed Mississippi Democrat statewide campaign poster, because you went MS. in a certain direction, but MS is also Mississippi. It looks exactly like a bad campaign poster, which I, yeah, that's never a compliment, right? And also I wonder in the post of, I mean, in the, not the aftermath, but in the sort of

Mamdani era that we're living in, I was very interested as a designer, how quickly his aesthetic was going to start to catch on. The answer is not yet, or at least not in a sort of national news sort of sense. Yeah, it's a, it is a, it is a, it is a, it is a not great logo. Not great. I mean, this is the most basic. I think that's Helvetica and I mean for the main logo. And then it always, the official logo actually has my source news opinion world

underneath and a seraphon. It's just, it's very. And also I guess if you take, if you don't sell. separate them than it looks like M. Snow, which incidentally, M. Snow is a registered trademark of a synthetic snow company. Oh. I'm guessing they got a payoff here. Does that have a higher upside than cable news going forward? I think so. Do we want to bet on who lasts longer M Snow or MS now? Yeah. This whole process began late last year when Comcast spun off MSNBC and a bunch of other cable networks, and then MSNBC began to divorce itself from NBC News.

And in some cases, reporters had to choose which way they were going to go. Mommy got custody of Steve Kornacki in the divorce while Daddy got Jacob Soberoff. Yeah. There is a story that this didn't have to happen, this rebranding. CNBC, which is also part of the spinoff, is not changing its name. And the status newsletter said that Maddow, inside. the company was saying, let's not change this. Yeah. But NBC Universal,

which still has custody of NBC News, was like, eh, we don't know if we want you to keep it anymore. We don't know if we want you to have NBC in your title. But CNBC was okay because it's... CNBC was okay. Do you know what CNBC stands for? Corporate? No, uh, uh, uh, uh,

uh, no idea. I've learned this today. The Consumer News and Business Channel. Oh, it's not. NBC, but not technically NBC. See, that's what MSNBC should have done. Just be like, oh, you thought we were associated with NBC, the network. We actually have a different acronym.

It's Microsoft. No, it's my source for nothing but chatter. That actually works. Yeah. You know, you have to tamp down some of their news. news gathering, you know, ideals, but I think that could work. But when they were faced, and I'm talking about MSNBC here with pushback from the former parent company, they said, and this is quoting the status newsletter, F it, let's do it.

And they changed to MS now. And the semi-serious thing here, David, is if you're in mess now, God, that does not roll off the tongue, but if you're MS now, you are. attached to a crumbling cable model, you have struggled to come up with other revenue streams, with the exception of this new festival business they have? Yeah. Which is the go-to source for income if you're a struggling media entity. Or a successful media entity, but it's always just so it's a kind of a long tail thing.

You can make a ton of money, especially for legacy media, print media, just online magazines can make a ton of money compared to how much they normally make, in theory. but it's obviously still tethered to your to I mean it's like it's like you know live concert money for like a date for the you know an aging rock and roll band you know it's still if you stop if you stop existing people will obviously stop going their festival by the way is called MSNBC Live. So now will be known as MS now live. Oh my God. That's so urgent. See you at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York and October, everyone. But I would think what that company has is a name that has 30 years of brand equity or thereabouts.

And it has big stars in that world. Maddow, Scarborough, Nicole Wallace, R.E. Melbert, we listed a bunch of them. But now you've taken half of that... equity that you have and you've just kind of flushed it away or confused people. And as you say older people who are the kind of people that watch cable news and might actually come to your live event, I don't know. It's strange. I mean, obviously it's strange.

It was necessity. But yeah, I mean, part of the, part of the, and I'm sure I know that we've talked about there kind of being like internal, you know, light conflicts about it or whatever. but like on election night on the night of a big presidential debate and the night of a big political moment, part of the allure of having Brian Williams, I think, on the network for so long as you'd flip to MSNBC, and you're like, this is, this must be the official NBC postgame show, right? I mean, it felt very much like the political arm of NBC news, even if they were airing something at the air, airing a similar show at the same time. And the crossover of people, like you mentioned, Jacob Soberoff.

I mean, listen, one of the luxuries, I'm sure that a cable network like MSNBC has is the ability to go to all these NBC employees and say, you're having a slow week? Why don't you come do that for us too? You know, like, whatever. Just to fill the time. And potentially get people platforms to go way deeper and stuff and to do different things.

Obviously, it's not going to be a good thing. Here's a question for you. Just a hypothetical. What do you think would be a better name for this company in terms of just pure, success over the next calendar year if they were MS now or the maddow network um that's a good question listen let's establish that MSNBC historically has had awkward relationships with a lot of their former big star face of the face of the network people are you talking about keith olberman in particular

um but let's just say that maddow is just like yeah fine take my name i'm trying to think is there an MS now viewer who doesn't want to watch the Maddow network? It feels smaller. Is there a Maddow? Well, I guess in the other scenario, they're retaining all the Maddow viewers because it's already MS now. It's hard to imagine somebody's like, well, I love Rachel Maddow, but I'm not watching this anymore because it changed its name. It might just be really confusing. That's a good question.

is there more upside in the Maddow network in this world we live in where podcast companies and other companies are built around a singular big presence? Yes. And this is an identifiable brand. I think the real mistake here, and whatever, hindsight's 2020 is not, they should have changed the name three years ago to something with like the MSNBC colon and then the new name in big letters. And then you can just transition to what the new thing is and not try to not be trying to claw back the to just you have to change your name. based on holding on to your dwindling existing viewership instead of actually looking forward. Another story I wanted to run by you. It's by Eric Benson.

It's in Rolling Stone. And it's called Who Killed the Narrative Podcast? Oh. A true crime headline for a genre that was often about true crime. Benson writes a recent report from Edison Research estimates that 55% of Americans over the age of 12 consumed a podcast in the last month, an all-time high. But the podcasts that are thriving are talk shows, increasingly celebrity-driven talk shows that are cheap to make, can easily be turned into streaming YouTube videos and command big ad dollars. Narrative podcasts, the multi-episode investigative

journalism-fueled shows that boomed after the release of serial in October 2014 have followed an inverse trajectory. And Benson notes the layoffs at Spotify, Pushkin Industries, the closing of Pineapple Street, which was shut down my Odyssey this summer. And that's in addition to Amazon shutting down Wondry this month, which it once paid $300 million for. Let's walk through this. Initially, 10 years ago, when cereal was still all the rage, what was exciting for journalists about the narrative podcast movement? It was a chance for real journalism, real work, real investigation to reach a broader audience, to the stories to be told in ways that sometimes only exist inside your head.

You know, I mean, there was always, always the, man, this podcast or this article should be a movie is the reaction that you would get a lot. But it was, but the distance between that podcast and a movie was, unfathomable, right? But like a podcast was like attainable. And sometimes the podcast would lead to the movie deal. Sure, sure. Some of these felt like plays to get movie deals. Journalists like money.

I've probably made this crack before, but I think there's also a little bit of like, for a journalist, I don't mean this exclusively, explicitly be snide, but there is a little bit of like the best, narrative podcasts are like three, two thirds of an actual good journalistic story. And then it's like two thirds journalism and one third performative sigh at the end. Like I guess we'll never know. But there is a lot of like, I mean, but I say this part, unironically, every journalist has that story that they would love to tell.

They just couldn't fit. They couldn't, you know, they couldn't source out the ending, right? They couldn't get it to print. and probably some of the best stories that you've ever done. And there's a little bit of like, man, this is the best, this story is the best story I have at a bar, at a dinner party, telling it to my friends. And there's a real, now there's a real platform for that kind of stuff.

But I do think it was more than anything, just the, the excitement around something you're talking specifically about cereal that was just real journalism. And in the case of cereal, at that point in time, I think it would have amounted to like real, like small board journalism. Like that's like, what if that was a written piece, that would have been in like the free weekly in a semi-major city. You know what I mean?

Like that wasn't like a national story. And yet it became a national obsession. It was taking true crime, which had fueled those dateline type shows. Yeah. And on a national level, in fairness, but saying like, what if we could take a very specific crime, something you've never heard of, sometimes in a place you don't know anything about and make that into something so compelling that you'll want to. to click episode after episode. Yeah. To see how the case ends.

Question for you, Brian. Again, an aside, does, when you say getting people to like tune back in week after week, when you're crafting on the editorial side, we both have some experience with this, when you're crafting the script, when you're crafting what the reveal, what the tease will be to get to the next episode and then the reveal at the following episode, does any of this spell any kind of like journalistic and test? integrity issue. I know that this sort of stuff happens in print too, certainly in serialized print, but even in print just to like keep people reading to the end. But if you're just like, you have all

the information and you literally don't reveal it till the last episode because that's what a narrative is. Is there, is there any point where you would have compunction about doing that yourself? I think it's less an ethical issue than it is trying to fit stories. into a frame that they don't fit into. Like a lot of these podcasts, and I'm speaking really broadly here, but a lot of these podcasts remind me of a scenario in which every long print article had to be 8,000 words long. Sure.

And it had to be divided into 1,000 word chunks that propelled you to the next section. Yep. You and I, having written long articles, no, that isn't the case. sometimes you sit down with what you have and like, I have 3,500 words. Yeah. I have 4,000 words. This isn't really a narrative story. It's more of a story that looks at a person, right?

It doesn't have like a headlong rush to it. It looks at a person in a different way or it's broken up in a different way. Yeah. And so I just think like when I was listening to a lot of these, I'm like, I'm interested in the hook. Okay, you got me. But like two episodes in, I'm like, all right, this feels like this is being strong. stretched, or it's just, it's being placed into a template that it doesn't belong in. Yeah, that's the problem.

It gave, narrative podcast gave you this giant space to explore in a certain sense from, as the journalist. And it very quickly became just a cut and paste, you know, job where you just do exactly what the previous podcast had done. Yeah. And also just like, I think this, journalists have this problem. And I have certainly had this problem many times. see my archives if you don't believe me.

But you're like, you know, you start out writing an article like, dude, this is going to be big. This is going to be fun, expansive. And you try to make it that way or fit it into kind of a conventional frame. And then you're like, actually, that was the totally wrong way to do this. And now I'm left with something that just doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like it fits there. You're right. The thing that and right, in the writer's point of view or the writer's comparison, this is just like you feel terrible about yourself.

if you have to send your editor a really just direct a DM or an email that's really hard to write. I just, you know, and then you tear it up and you start over again. And maybe that means an extra all-nighter for you. And the case of a podcast, if you get two-thirds of the way in and you're like, we're doing this all wrong, that's like four people's job, you know, like it's a huge, it's just an enormous amount of work. And what if you've spent a year on this? Yeah. What if you've sold one of these things?

And Benson gets to some of these details in the story. But what if you've sold one of these things as a six or eight episode series? You can't be like, actually it's just an hour. Yeah. I could tell the whole story and like one thing, just don't worry about it. I mean, that's kind of part of the magic of doing journalism on the internet as opposed to the old days of print is that a thing could be as long as it needs to be.

Yeah. And a thing can be what it is destined to be rather than how many pages it needs to fill. And I feel that with these podcasts, that was part of the problem. Other problems, I mentioned they're slow, they're expensive. there was a lot of true crime in these things. A lot of true crime. Not all of them, but, you know, it's just one of those things. And I'm a kind of person like, man, if you tell me a great story of any kind, I will read it.

Of course. But at some point, this feels a little like murder of the week. It feels a little, even if it's done incredibly intelligently and it's about as much the place and the time and all those kinds of things, I, you know, I sort of hit my limit with that. Sure. I mean, part of the, part of the issue also was. the algorithm too. It thinks you like serial, so it gives you other true crime, and that ends up being all that you see. I mean, also, obviously, that algorithm encourages other people to do a lot

more true crime. There's tons of it, tons of it. A lot of the highest rated podcasts, nonfiction podcasts are true crime related. I mean, to go back to the earliest question, you're like, whatever happened to the narrative podcast. I mean, sometimes the answer is just you get the same audience and the similar return in a lot more volume. for a lowest common denominator version of it. You know, all the great, I mean, it's the same question of what happened to the documentary. All the great, like, kind of formative documentaries of the streaming era, the Tiger King, all the stuff that came before that,

have created a world in which now our feeds are absolutely chock full of, like, junk, short form versions of that, right? But we push it, we say, hey, this isn't as good, and yet we watch the whole thing anyway, right? and even more explicitly your interest in some prestige premium absolutely flawless true crime documentary now literally leads you to episodes of Dateline

NBC on some of these streaming services right or just like the crappy TV show version of it that we avoided in our real life before and that's not so bad when he said Dan you watch without commercials yeah but I mean that's what a lot of the podcast stuff you ask why did narratives beget sort of this giant world of just two dudes having a conversation shows or two ladies

it's because it's easier to produce i mean it's just so so much easier and you can sit here and say why don't we like i wish i had more cereals in my life we all do um but that's like you know a team of people between four and twelve people and that is their full-time job for six months in a, we're in a world with a decent work-life balance. That's their full-time job, or at least half of their job for six months. And these shows take us much less time and effort to put together. Absolutely. And it's always been that way in journalism.

Go back to the newspaper days. People bought the newspaper for beat writing in columns. The newspaper in its heyday may have had lots of money to send somebody out and say, hey, take a month to do this story. And the story was awesome and amazing. Yeah. But that did not put butts in the seats. Yeah.

Buts in the seats has always been stuff that happens pretty quickly. It really has. And I totally understand the allure of this period. Evan Ratliff, who's so good is quoted in this article. And, you know, you're like, look, if you're sitting there, if you're put on this earth to do what we call long form journalism. And it was getting harder and harder to do that in print. And all of a sudden this medium opens up.

Oh my gosh, I can tell that kind of story in a podcast. You're not do it like Pablo Torres trying to do it where it's like, I'm going to tell a story to my friends, but just kind of tell it like I would more or less in magazine form. That's awesome. That sounds exciting. It still is exciting. It's not going to go away totally. But it is sad that so many of the avenues to do that have closed up.

Yeah. there's definitely a period where I mean listen if you invest that much in a podcast and I'm just going to keep going back to serial because it's a great example and because it was

hugely successful in the first season any company would be happy to have 10 cereals on their network but if the cereal but if they don't work out

then you've just invested a whole lot in you know very minimal return right I mean you just got to put all that in the bank and then at some point

there's someone who's going to come along some bean counter some front office executive. Some suit. Who's going to say, why are we doing all these easy, profitable podcasts to subsidize,

I get the theory, doing a bunch of easy profitable podcasts to subsidize the potentially great, hard-hitting, brilliant, literary, you know, thoughtful narrative podcasts that could conceivably take off?

But why instead? Why don't we just not do the second half and just do all the ones that are making, that are sure-fire money? And, you know, about it, right? And then that's kind of the direction that things go. Coming up at 30 seconds, David, Gavin Newsom like you've never seen him tweet before.

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 on Blue Sky or Twitter where they are always, always gratefully received. Two days ago, David, Donald Trump got onto social media and spat out this word Bella B-E-L-A It was an overworked Twitter joke to write

Back to his roots Donald Trump is posting about Kristen Stewart again I'm actually not sure that's overworked But it's a very funny deep cut to the days When Donald Trump was tweeting about Stewart and Robert Pattinson's relationship Over and over again Thanks as ever to alert listener Nick Field

If you wish Trump would go back to trying to settle international disputes like that, congrats. You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, some quick ones in the notebook dump for you. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, is locked in this gerrymandering battle, and he has started tweeting in a particular way. These are coming from the Governor Newsom Press Office account at Gov Press Office, they're often in all caps

they are clearly doing Donald Trump yes he's doing it in Trump voice you're doing it in Trump voice so the Bella tweet from Trump this is the reply from Gov press office Donald Tiny Hands has written his autobiography this morning unfortunately low IQ he spelled it wrong beta soon you will be a fired beta

because of my perfect beautiful maps thank you for your attention to this matter. GCN, that is Gavin C. Newsom. So what's funny about this is the bit and then also conservative media in some cases has taken them seriously like what's wrong with Gavin Newsom? Is it weird that he's tweeting this way?

Do you think Donald Trump reads it and it just immediately understands 100%, not the joke, but understands the words, like understands the message? Or is this like, is this like, you know, one of our parents trying to speak in Spanish without knowing Spanish to a Spanish speaker? Do your parents do that? Not mine. Never would. But you know the bit. I know the bit. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. I think, I think Trump, I want to, I want to think that Donald Trump has some part of his brain that can appreciate or at least understand parody. Yeah.

And he surely is aware that he tweets in a particular style. No one comes up with thank you for your attention to this matter purely is like, oh, that's a good way to end a tweet. Yes. There is some part of your brain that is functioning in satire mode. But I'm not sure he fully gets the joke. And I'm not sure conservative media fully gets the joke. There's a good story by Edward Isaac Devere in CNN on CNN's website. I'll always love reading his stuff when I find it on the desert wastes of CNN.com.

But he writes, his press office, that's Newsom's press office, social media account, has become a multi-aid operation itself and shifted to a Trump-Aping full-time troll, complete with the schoolyard nicknames, and thank you for your attention to this matter. Sign-offs. Asked last week by a reporter to defend the tone he's adopted online, Newsom said, if you have issues with what I'm putting out, you sure as hell should have

concerns with what he's putting out as president. Snap. Isn't this all about Gavin Newsom just trying to overcome his Gavin Newsomness? Go on. Tried the podcast. Sure. He's now trying Twitter bits. And all of this is saying, hey, look, I am Fox News's perfect idea of a Democrat to make fun of.

Sure. I have slick back hair. I talk in a particular way. I had a scandal and it involved French laundry. Yeah. That really happened. So what am I going to do? I'm just going to lean into it and try to convince you that I am fighting Democrat.

That if I have all these liabilities as a general election candidate a couple of years, at least I'm fighting, making news, being a thing online. Okay. I think I agree with that. I think there's a couple of parts that I would like to hone in on. One, it may be that in some ways he's an ideal candidate for the moment because his problems, like you alluded to, are so significant that he does have to. Well, he doesn't have to. A lot of people have done the opposite.

But he's choosing to go hard in another direction to try to distract from them, right? that like he's actually trying stuff that most people, most candidates of either party be too conservative to try because he's in a position where he has to do that. Right. Two, though, I do think that there's

like, I do think that it is important for someone to stand up. I mean, I think that he's getting a lot of bonus points for being willing to do what Republicans have already been doing. Not just tweeting like a Republican, which is sort of they are

tweeting like Trump, but obviously in a more specific way, actually pursuing gerrymandering because it's worked for the other party for so long. It is a, it is a real thing and is also symbolic of the thing of the, of the move to say we're like, if they want to go low, we'll go low to. This is a rejection of Michelle Obama. Exactly. Why don't we fight like the Republicans do? That's something you hear among Democrats all the time, all the time. And it and and there's, you can still build in a we go high if they go low or whatever to the whole thing. thing in a more philosophical, you know, you can post-rationalize again. I used that term earlier, however you want.

But yeah, I do think that he is, he is, I think that you're right that he's trying to become this sort of new version of himself. But I think more importantly, he's serving as a kind of a test market for whether or not this can really be a sustainable position platform for, you know, a liberal candidate for office. I mean, it's also, he's a really interesting, he's a really, we've been talking about him forever, I feel like, but he's a really interesting candidate for so many reasons. I mean, the retrospective, whenever it comes, I think, you know, is going to be really interesting because, like we said, he was running for, he was running for the office of presidency,

of the president last time. he was kind of waiting to get the call and it never came, right? But he was out there. He wasn't just showing up on Fox News just to like help Joe Biden or to help Kamala Harris. He was he was trying to be the president. And it's interesting that now he feels the need to sort of reposition. I think it's a savvy move, whether or not it was specifically because of his own backstory.

Because this is a time for repositioning. I think more than anything, if you're a known quantity, you have to be shown. You have to show that you're willing to adapt. And that's what he's showing. Any quick thoughts on this new UFC deal? Yeah, I think we should probably say something, right? I mean, it's a huge deal.

Huge, it's a huge amount of money. $7.7 billion over seven years. Moving, we should say, from ESPN to Paramounts streaming platform. I think the most, you and I have both seen a little bit behind the curtain at ESPN, you a lot more than me, although I was, you know, three degrees away from Privy to a lot of the previous conversations had there about the UFC and pro wrestling. And we should note that UFC is owned by TKO, which also owns WWE, they go hand in hand, and WWE is moving their big events to ESPN.

Yep, these two transactions. occurred about a week apart. You talked to Jimmy Petaro about this. There's a lot of, there's a lot of mine, I mean, a lot of ground to be, to be covered here. But a lot of it overlaps. I mean, I think if you're UFC, no matter what the big talk is about who they need

and who they don't need, the most difficult thing in their short existence has been to be accepted as a real sport. And UFC and UFC fans can say, we don't need that mainstream coverage. Like people who care will find out the news. It is very important that UFC be covered by ESPN as a real sport. And their partnership with ESPN was hugely important, obviously because ESPN had a vested interest

in covering them. The question with them and with every other sport that leaves ESPN streaming is going to be, will ESPN continue to cover them? One would assume that the deal that ESPN has with WWE came with some sort of like implicit handshake or wink that we will continue to cover the UFC. But that is the big question mark here. If you can still get that coverage and get the giant friggin' planet-sized brinkstruck full of money that comes with the Paramount deal, then I think you take it.

Also different, though, from the pro wrestling wing of TKO in WWE is that WWE has been farming out its assets to as many different places as they possibly can. They're on Netflix, they're on NBC. Universal. They're, of course, now on ESPN. They were just on Peacock. They have Saturday main event on NBC Universal as well. Smackdown is on the USA Network. They still have their library, their video library that used to be attached to the PLEs, but didn't go directly to ESPN as part of this new deal. That's going to be another asset that they can sell.

The move is really to put your feet down, I mean, to put, you know, a footprint down in as many different places as you can to squelch any potential competition, to have these like existing relationships, to have the conversations for the next paycheck, like whatever it's going to be. And UFC is obviously part of this too. Now they have the Paramount Network, but it's interesting that UFC took the giant check to go all in at one place. We've wondered what that number would have been for WWE if all of their rights were available at the same time. It would be interesting to compare it to the UFC. I'll just say that. It would be. And also like you said, but maybe they wouldn't want. Maybe Nick Kahn says, I don't want to do that for the benefits that you

just out one because we want lots of media companies talking about us. Yeah. Not just one. Yeah. So yeah. So, I mean, it'll be, but I think for the UFC, I mean, they have a really dedicated audience in some sense, maybe a more, a more kind of siloed audience than WWE, because WWB is always in the mindset of expansion, of reclaiming old fans, of indoctrinating new young fans. And I think there is a sort of difficult no one wants to have to have a set fee to have any access to your product, right? That's the brilliance of what WWE's doing,

also what the NFL is always done. You have some stuff that's on basic cable or it's on broadcast television and then you've got to pay more and more and more depending on how you get your TV to see more stuff. But one subscription to Paramount Plus is not that forbidding, right? It's not that difficult to get every single thing,

particularly if you were a fan was already buying pay-per-views, UFC pay-per-views through the ESPN platform. This is a huge price drop. We should say that. It's a huge price drop for existing fans. And if you're a new fan, if you're, say, a 15-year-old boy

who's getting into the UFC because your friends watch it, and you're going to, well, you can see a lot of this stuff online for free, legally or no. Yeah. And then you could watch it somebody says. You can find a way in to watching the next big UFC event.

And I think you'll back and, I mean, you can go listen to Bill Simmons' podcast talking to Ariel O'Wani, who have to deal with signed. I mean, they had some really insightful stuff to say about the way they kind of construct their shows. But I think it allows them to sort of reconceptualize the shape of the company, of the business, of what their matchmaking plan looks like.

And it could be really great for the company. And more than anything, it is an incredible amount of money. It's an incredible amount of money. And to spell out those cost savings, this is from front office sports, the numbered events, those are the biggest UFC events at ESPN cost you $79999 on pay-per-view. 7999.99. You can buy a subscription to Paramount Plus for $7.99 a month and get all those events. Yeah.

Or $12.99 a month without ads. So it's like $150-ish. You can just watch all of UFC as opposed to $80 per event. Yeah. So that's what's coming with this, right? Is this the first streaming platform to go all in on an identity? The sort of like just the very mailness of like, you know, the Sheridan slash UFC world that a lot of people are pointing out. Taylor Sheridan.

It's a great point because I think the other ones that have gone that made big buys, Netflix or ESPN, they've had an identity. Oh, sure. ESPN is definitely one. Netflix has an identity, but it's sort of a. will meet you where you are identity a little bit. It is, but there's just a lot. I think Netflix, the brand is so big, especially compared to Paramount Plus. Like, what do you think of?

Oh, that place I can watch. Disney, I guess, is pretty specific. But that sort of came pre-packaged with Disney. But yeah, I mean, the question in a certain way. I think UFC's identity is so big and there's so much money in this deal that it does kind of eat Paramount in a way.

You know, it becomes just such the biggest attraction on there. Which I'm sure is a detractor to a lot of people despite the desire. I mean, listen, Paramount Plus is still in the growth phase, right? So they want those. That's a nice way to say it, sure. But they want, I mean, that WWE's value to Peacock is the same as their value to Netflix. It's like, we are bringing 1.5 million viewers with us. Yep.

And they're coming with us for, and they're not going to leave. Yeah. They're not going to turn it off in February. They're going to stay on all year. And that number of viewers is, whatever UFC's bring is incredibly significant at a certain point in a company's growth. So I think it's, you know, it will be worth it to them. But it also, it was not, I'm sure it was not a detractor. It was not negative to say, look at the kind of viewers these are because a lot of those

people are already watching the Taylor Sheridan shows, right? I mean, that's that they come together. It would be different. I mean, I know historically there have been a lot of just TV channels that were reversed to airing wrestling and UFC because of like, how does this mix with the viewer that we are ideal viewer, you know, are they going to be interested in this? and it was only kind of in recent years with the way that the ratings were so much more

than everything else in those channels that anybody would be open to those things but I remember back I mean 15, 20 years ago every cable network had an identity right, had like a point of view, you could draw a picture of what their perfect viewer was and there's less of that obviously in the streaming era because everybody wants to be a monolith

but it would be kind of wild to see like HBO Max just lean in or HBO whatever it's called Go just lean in on whatever 30 to 50 year old women that's who we're for basically just like the viewership for

and just like that is now the only viewership that we care about MS Now could really take some notes MS now should have been for the UFC that would have been a good way

to reach across the ideological spectrum a couple of final things before we get out of here we have some only in journalism words yeah listeners know these are words

that you never hear here in human speech, but always read in news articles. This one, David, comes from Matt Brickman, a meteorologist at the NBC affiliate in New York. He is a member of Storm Team 4. I love all the storm teams. He loves to be a member of a storm team. This appeared in the New York Times today. It's about Trump's relationship with Europe.

The European Commission, a longtime bugbear for Mr. Trump. Yes. Bugbear, I had to look this up, means an imaginary goblin or specter used to excite fear. It's also a creature from Dungeons and Dragons. I was going to say, it's not just an only in journalism word. It's also a diabolical mythological creature that can kill your paladin, yes. Tim Creeden also gives us a good one. I'll read you the sentence here.

In contrast to the notorious White House visit by Vladimir Zelensky in February, when the Ukrainian president was traduced. and essentially escorted out after a volatile meeting. I had to look this one up too. Traduce means to expose to shame or blame by means of falsehood and misrepresentation. So you could use a bugbear to produce someone. Potentially, Mr. Zelensky himself.

And then finally, David, alert listener, Belinda Schultz of Chicago, she knew that when she saw a local television story there in Chicago about a sheep on the loose, she needed to send it to us. I want you to listen to reporter Marissa Sulek making sure she got all her puns in. Your eyes do not deceive you. That is a sheep running around the West Loop.

He caused quite a commotion for hours with people following the animal with their phones to see what was going on. Our Marissa Sulek is live with more on how this happened, Marissa. Joe and Erica witnesses tell me that the sheep somehow escaped this butcher shop and slaughterhouse here behind me on Halstead, and he was on a mission to save his own life. Apparently there's just a sheep roaming around Chicago. It was sheer madness Monday afternoon around lunchtime, a wild sheep chase of sorts all around

the West Loop and Fulton Market District. I pulled up to the stop sign and I literally thought I was like tripping or seeing something. I could not believe I was looking at a sheep. Bobby Greeley saw the sheep on the lamb himself before he trotted down Green Street. People following the woolly animals say he got the flock out of this butcher shop. The Halstead packing house. Was it funny because as we got to Halston Street, the butcher came running across the street. Butcher is seen in TikTok videos going after the sheep, which they

corralled into this parking lot. The butcher was like hiding behind a car to like sneak up behind it. There's so much there. So I'd like to congratulate CBS Chicago for that whole local news presentation. Yeah. Which has the anchors introducing the story,

which has Marissa Seulak reeling off the puns. It has that amazing Benny Hill-style music cue that just needle dropped right in the middle of that story. Mm-hmm. And also the important detail that this sheep was on the loose from a butcher shop. So spoiler alert in case you don't visit the website, the sheep is now in an animal sanctuary. Apparently, if you break out of the butcher shop, you have urged your freedom. It's not like jail where you have to go back.

My God. What an amazing piece of television again, CBS Chicago. Check it out. On that note, it's time for a feature that is always on. the lamb. It's time for David Shoemaker guess is the strained pun headline.

Yeah. Last Monday's headline about a romance between Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson was Bay Watch. Gave David a little trouble. He's going to rally this week.

Terrible. Today's headline comes to us from alert listener Justin Silva. It's from the BBC. Oh, those clever Brits. It's about a topic near and dear to your heart, David. Bulletproof Wood.

I'm going to read you the article by Chris Baraniac. The U.S.-based company has developed superwood, a modified wood that claims is stronger than steel. During lab test, a gas gun fired a bullet-like projectile at thin pieces of wood. While the projectile blasted straight through the natural wood, it failed to penetrate the heavily modified version. Got to give you a little help here.

I want you to think of a famous line from Clint Eastwood, as you ponder. What was the BBC's strained-pun headline? Make my day? Like, uh, Um, it's a question. What you're going to do, punk? What's your going to do, trunk? Or wait.

Do you feel lucky trunk? Oh, do you feel lucky trunk? Not trunk. No, another, another word for a slab of wood. Do you feel lucky hunk? No. Maybe this is something the pirates made, made you walk. Plank.

Walk the... Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Walk the plank, the galley... Do you feel lucky? Plank. There we go.

Oh, plank of wood. Right. I'm sorry. Yeah. Do you feel lucky plank? Yeah, that's great. Superwood. I want to get some super wood.

We need some super wood around here. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Plexi magic by Isaiah Blankley. Thank you, Isaiah. Joel is back on the show on Thursday. David, we're doing a special episode about the Dallas Cowboys. I've heard of them.

They got a big new Netflix documentary that just came out today. Oh, and our guest is going to be a man who's in that documentary. His name is Edwarder. Oh, love Edwarder. A great Edwarder is going to be on this podcast. I cannot wait for that. Also, we've got lots of press box buttons that I was,

I'm sending some more out this week. I would love to send you one. You just got to write me, Brian.curtis, theringer.com and have a great idea about this podcast. When I say great idea, sometimes an out-there idea is a good idea. For a theme show, something David and I could do, you could write me and say,

hey, you guys should interview Maggie Haberman. I'm going to tell you, there's a good chance we have thought of that and perhaps even tried to do that unsuccessfully. Be creative, be wacky, be off the wall. And David, I'm going to offer a special button to anyone who can predict next Monday's guest on the podcast.

So Edward is here Thursday, next Monday's guest. And I will tell you this, It's a sports media personality who in an interview we taped last week compared another sports media personality to the legendary wrestling manager, the mouth of the south, Jimmy Hart. If you can come up with personality A and personality B, write me at bryan.curtas the ringer.com. If you're first, I will send you a beautiful new David Shoemaker design press box button. David, you're back next Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. later, right.