The Press Box - Variety vs. Puck and The Atlantic. Plus, ESPN’s New NBA Team, and Twitter Becomes X.

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

Bryan and David preview the new NBA announcing team at ESPN (0:30) before they unpack the media face-off between 'Variety' and both 'The Atlantic' and 'Puck' (9:10). Then, they touch on Twitter rebranding to X (18:28), discuss Sean Payton’s recent comments in the media (23:40), and Ron DeSantis’s media approach. Later, they introduce a new feature, "Not About the Media," where they share a personal story from their week (39:10). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Erika Cervantes  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Right now on the Ringer game on feet and all throughout the entire month of August, the East Coast bias boys are getting you ready to bet the NFL this season. We're going through each and every single division and revealing our favorite futures, predicting division winners, and even giving you some award winners. Do we think the Kansas City Chiefs will repeat or will they be the throne? Tune in now to find out on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. David? Yes.

Looks like we've got a new. NBA finals announcing crew. Oh, I saw this. This is big news. You remember that Jeff Van Gundy got laid off. I seem to remember that, yeah. For reasons. Chad Finn tipped us off about ESPN's

intentions a few weeks ago. And the New York Post, Andrew Marchand, tells us today it's close to becoming a reality. Mark Jackson is going down to the second NBA team on ESPN. And the new number one team is going to be Mike Breen. Doc Rivers and Doris Burke.

Wow. What do you think about that? It sounds great. I mean, I like all of those people. I mean, Doc Rivers at this point is just sort of a, you know, urban legend that our boss Bill Simmons has passed down to us. He was good.

He actually called a finals like in 2004 with Al Michaels. No, I know. And reputation is great. I have to admit, I don't remember it. as well as I should. Can I just say I'm the same way? You know me, right? You just give me a prompt

and I'll give you, you know, 20 seconds on Dick Anberg and Bob Trumpy in the 90s on NBC. I don't know that I can give you a ton on Doc Rivers calling that single finals without Michaels. Yeah. Yeah, same. But any, but presumably, I mean, he's good at his job.

I didn't take Bill's word for it. And ESPN certainly seems to think so. are good at that job. And Dorsburg is wonderful. The Mark Jackson Demotion seems interesting just in so much as like, what was the point of retaining him if you're not going to keep him? But again, we don't really know how all these things work behind the scenes. And that might be the last time we ever speak Mark Jackson's name on this podcast.

But yeah, that's big news. It's big news. They're not just looking to, it's a little bit more of a rebuild than a retool. And it's, it's, I think it's a little bit interesting for them to be kind of calling the shot of the finals prior to the team working together at all. But I like all the parties involved and definitely intrigued. One thing about Doris Burke, she's become such a big part of NBA television coverage and has done such a great job that it's easy, paradoxically. to skip over what a huge deal this is. You know, the networks have been talking about making the broadcast booth a place for

something other than just dudes for a really long time since at least the 80s and probably before that. That's a big, big deal and a big, big moment in broadcasting for her to be doing this on TV. I know she's done it on radio, but television is a big, big deal. Yeah, television is a light years jump from radio, but, I mean, for any number of reasons. But yeah, it's a huge deal.

I think it's helped that Doris Burke is incredibly good at what she does. It's also helped that ESPN and other networks have gone out of their way to open up the commentary booth, tables, whatever else, across gender lines. And so it doesn't seem, despite the fact that she's sort of, leading to charge, it's not, it doesn't seem like a one person show or one person movement, I guess. But I think the biggest thing is that, you know, it didn't see, it never seemed like that big of a deal, past the announcement, past the, you know, sputters of whatever reaction that, in negative reaction that it got on the front end. I think there were many more people that were just excited about it when she first started calling national games. and, you know, she's great.

She earned her spot, you know, and we, in this era, maybe it's because of the internet, maybe because we see so many different people, have so many different voices coming on literally everything, but sports in general. It's a huge deal, but in a way, it's sort of wonderful. It doesn't feel like the sort of giant pivotal moment that it is.

There was one sentence in Marchand's piece that struck out to me, that stuck out to me, I should say. While Van Gundy was one of the best game analyst in sports, top ESPN executives were wary of his desire to coach again. I wait just one minute here. You're telling me that your way to fix this problem was to hire Doc Rivers, who in one year's time will be the single hottest NBA coaching candidate out there.

And you're also telling me that Jeff Van Gundy calling 17, consecutive NBA finals was not enough loyalty for you. Well, at least with Doc, you know what you're getting, right? There's no confusion there. No, I mean, listen, this is obviously a post-rationalization. You know, some people are making up making excuses.

I don't know if they didn't expect the backlash that came with Van Gundy getting let go. but yeah, this is, I mean, that's just, that just is beyond belief. We talked about the fact that, you know, Van Gundy, when he would tweak the refs and therefore tweak the NBA, that, you know, it creates this idea, wait a second. Was the NBA unhappy to have Jeff Van Gundy calling such high profile games? And it's very tough to connect those dots because if calls like that are ever made, they're made at the very, very top levels.

and if they are made, they are made very much in secret and you can always point to something else and say, well, you know, look, he had a huge salary. That's why we got rid of it. We're going in a different direction, whatever it is.

But when you put stuff like that out there, that what we were worried about is Jeff Van Gundy leaving us in the lurch after 17 years of service. Yeah. To take a coaching job, you're kind of telling us, hey, there's something else here.

There's something else you might want to look in to because that is insane. Worried about Jeff Van Gundy taking another coaching job. Okay. No, I mean, there's, it's not true. It's just not true. I can make fun of it all day. But yeah, so maybe there is something there.

Some teams should just give Jeff Van Gundy, if they're not going to hire him as a coach, they should hire him as a PR director. Just have him be the guy that goes out and gives all the press conferences on behalf of the team. That would be fantastic. Yeah, it's just incredibly bizarre. I mean, it's so weird.

I mean, the perception that anybody, that any powerful person, any powerful organization is so thin-skinned, is so much more damning than what anybody could say about them on a basketball broadcast. You know, it's not like Jeff Van Gunney's out here saying, like, you know, David Stern did some big things for the league,

but a lot of his moves are incredibly problematic, and let's talk about why, you know, He wasn't doing anything that was just like, you know, shocking in any sort of way. He was criticizing referees. Like, that's what we all do at home. That's part of why he was so successful. Yeah, just a really bizarre, really bizarre choice to double down on how, or not double down, like you said, to open the door to the conspiracy theory is that now we all are going to 100% believe. Isn't that when we get mad at announcers, when we see something on television,

and they just don't say it. And if there was a bad call, Jeff Van Gundy would say it. Yep. He would just say it. That was a good thing or so I thought. Coming up on today's pot, it's an old-fashioned,

we demand a correction, or several corrections, media face-off, variety versus puck and the Atlantic. Plus, Twitter has rebranded his ex, but wait, all the journalists are still here. And a bunch of quick items for you, including Broncos coach Sean Payton.

Ron, I love the question. corporate media, DeSantis, and anti-AI spokesman or AI skeptic, James Patterson. All that and much more on the press box. A part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Schumaker and producer Erica Servantus here. There was a big story last Tuesday, David, that pitted Variety versus our Paywald Pals, The Atlantic, and Puck. On Tuesday, Variety published a story by Tatiana Siegel, about the drama at CNN,

the definistration that wound up costing Chris Licked his job. Now, part of that story's reporting, perhaps the main part, had Jeff Zucker, former head of CNN, looking for money

so he could buy his old network. Many of those allegations were very strenuously denied by Zucker's camp. But Variety also went after two journalists who published stories about CNN and Chris Licked.

Tim Alberta, author of The Big Piece, in the Atlantic about Chris Ligt, and Dylan Byers, who wrote many, many pieces about Licked and CNN in Puck. Those also, it turns out,

got strenuous pushback from the parties involved. So I thought we'd go through them one by one here. First of all, I would like to say that as somebody hosts a media podcast, perhaps this isn't surprising,

I'm always happy to listen to an alternative story. Yes. Even when you, have a so-called definitive story like the one Tim Alberta delivered? Oh, absolutely. Maybe someone thinks Chris Lick was good at his job, or maybe someone thinks he really wasn't good at his job, but that Alberta and buyers portrayed him in a way that was somehow unjust,

right? We're, our ears are open. Our eyes are open. Absolutely. But if you're going to go after another journalist, I think you've probably got to bring better ammo than what variety brought here. here's the case against the Atlantics Tim Alberta. Variety says he only had four meetings with Chris Lick to report this profile.

Alberta says nope, he met with Chris Licked on seven different days while reporting the story. Sidebar for you, David. If it had only been four meetings, doesn't that seem like a lot for a magazine feature about a famous person? It does. The only thing that I can think is that the reception of it was that he had this incredible inside inside access and then maybe they were trying to defang that perception or something but again it doesn't it's yeah four is four is plenty seven is you know and to get that wrong is just sort of wild do people know that getting to two meetings with a famous person even for a long profile these days

is something of a get oh gosh yes much less four or do people know that no i mean i don't i don't know if they know that. I mean, I think that most people would assume that it's kind of either one, maybe it's, the assumption is that it's either one meeting or it's like you're embedded for a month. But yeah, I mean, four meetings is a lot, no matter how you look at it.

There was a line that really stuck out in Alberta's piece. He was with Lict, while Lict was working out, which is a very, very funny thing. And Lickt said mid-workout, Zucker couldn't do this shit. so Variety has sources saying that Alberta

the reporter Are you going to say the variety has sources saying Zucker could have done that shit or no Now that would have been a correction sources say that Alberta said the line Or let me take that again Sorry Erica one more time sources tell variety that Alberta

The reporter actually was the one that said the line And then licked merely repeated it Alberta comes back on Twitter and says, nope, he grunted the remark directly to me. That's so weird. It's such a weird thing. I mean, it would be so weird for a reporter to be the one to suggest a line like that. Yeah.

Zucker couldn't do this shit. And one more sidebar for you. Is a repeated line out of bounds? I mean, it's a great question. I think if you're feeding somebody the catchphrase, or, you know, the, the, the, the, just big line of the piece. That's problematic. But it's not out of bounds. You should probably say that you said it first.

If we're doing the mandatory wrestling analogy here, if you were interviewing Ron Simmons about his days in WWF, and you mentioned, let's say, a gimmick that seems a little bit weird in retrospect. And you say, you know, in retrospect, that seems kind of weird. Ron Simmons turns to you and says, in retrospect, it seems kind of weird. You can quote him saying that, right? Like, he has signed off. And I agree with you.

it had been an absolutely killer line that you had delivered and he had then repeated. Maybe you'd think twice about it and admit your own, you know, complicity in delivering it to him. Especially though in the era of podcast interviews, who amongst us is not, you know, sometimes you ask the same question two or three times to get a better answer, right? And if they, you know, they hit on the last one and maybe if they borrow some of the words from your previous questions along the way. I don't think very many reporters are above using that. John Oliver once had this huge reel

of 60 minutes correspondence feeding lines like that to interview. That's really funny. This was a variety's case against Dylan Byers that he played down Jeff Zucker's own complicity in CNN's decline, that Puck, buyer's employer was trying to get Zucker

to invest in it. Puck Journal, which would have then benefited Pug Journalist like Dylan Byers. Byers and Puck editor John Kelly came back and said Dylan Byers did not know about any courting of Jeff Zucker

to invest in Puck so he couldn't have disclosed something he didn't know. Variety also said that Puck and Zucker share a crisis communications firm. Kelly says that didn't result in any back channeling. So minus a few

curly cues here and there. That's about it. That's it. It's okay. yeah i just that's the controversy you know i just again i feel like questioning the results of the portrayal you know uh looking at a piece critically and saying does this really prove x does this really prove why whatever hey you know that's that's what media podcasts are for that's what twitter's for that's what dms are for but when you go at somebody's reporting in a very specific way like that.

It just feels like I'm really left wanting. Well, and to be carrying water for Chris Litts, too, is just a weird place to be. You know, I mean, not that the guy's bad and doesn't deserve, you know, it doesn't deserve defense if something inaccurate or offensive is said about him, but. Or if there's just an interesting case to be made on his behalf, like I said before. Yeah. I'd hear, I'd listen to it. It seems weird to be kind of, it seems.

It feels like you're reading from a memo that the Chris Lick PR department has put out, right? Which is not anywhere anybody wants to be. Two more funny notes that came out of this whole controversy. One was a statement from Jeff Zucker's spokesperson. That is CrisisCom's pro Risa Heller, who careful listeners with this podcast will know about. The statement goes like this, David. There used to be a time when Variety held its content and its reporters to the high standard of truth and facts and journal. Don't you love the statement that praises the previous version of the publication?

Yeah. This is a Saturday Night Live isn't all that it used to be of media indictment, sort of, you know. Just tell. Whenever somebody issues one of those, just tell me, what was your favorite thing about the old variety? What was the careful vetting and fact-checking you most appreciated at old variety? this whole idea of just conjuring up this idea that Army Archer is spinning in his grave even if they had said that then that would have been

I think that would have been a little bit more compelling speaking of statements this one came from puck editor John Kelly in defense of Dylan Byers his statement began this way Dylan Byers single-handedly elevated the CNN story into the popular culture dot dot dot um that might be true

I mean, it certainly, yeah, I mean, the, into the popular culture. So summer 2023, you're thinking Barbenheimer and Puck's reporting on CNN, that's what you're going to take away? No, no, you're probably right. I just think we can say reporting was excellent, reporting was great,

which everybody just take a breath here. Yeah. John Kelly did say, when you're the definistrator, people try to defenestrate you. Now, that's a good line. And thank you for continuing to use our favorite verb when it comes to media shakeups. Yes, it's the best.

Definestrade. Elsewhere in the news, David, Elon Musk has rebranded Twitter as X. Should we say he rebranded X as from Twitter to X since X is now what it's called? And we... Oh, yeah. Yes. What you said. No.

Oh, man. What I... I mean... At some point, you want to feel a little bit sorry for the dude that you can't rebrand his company without it being a total cluster fuck. And, you know, you'd think at least get the, but come on, at least get the visuals right, you know, make sure you got the, make sure you got the right paperwork before you take the sign off your building and replace it with the new one. And that just seems to be the whole way this stuff works. Putting up the new sign was such a funny part of the rebrand. In a world of social media and a world of, you know, limited character count communication,

it's rare that a public figure comes out and gives us a metaphor so beautiful and stark. So I appreciate that from Elon Musk. But yeah, I mean, it's just, it's just ridiculous. I mean, it's like, as the site is like, seems to be falling apart. Like a chunk falls into the, a chunk of the iceberg falls into the freezing water every week. And what we're worried about is rebranding the site as X, which, you know, was the thing that he wanted to do a decade ago with his old website. It's just so, it's, it's just, you know, it's, this is why you need good people around you. So you can just be like, yeah, there's this perception about me that I'm petty.

Is there any part of this move that's going to look petty? And if someone's like, yes, you know, whatever, it might. Then you take a pause. Yeah. Seems to be no pausing here. No pausing at all. No. No.

Speaking of no pausing, how about him, Elon, getting into the Brony James discourse? Oh, God, I didn't even see it. What did he say? With a vaccine tweet, there's no need to see it. But what I want to know from you is the journalists now have all left Twitter, right? I think we're all still there. Because I heard everybody was going to blue sky. I heard everybody was going to Massachusetts.

Don. I heard everybody was going to threads. I saw them posting links to their new profiles. Oh, they'll do that. Hit me up on threads. And then they all left, right? This is it. This is the final straw. They're gone. I think we're all still there.

We're still there. Everybody's still posting their work on Twitter after all that. Yep. That's just so funny how that happened. What month are we in of people threatening to leave Twitter? I mean, Twitter serves a lot of functions, but at the end of the day, it's I don't know, town hall.

I think it's the word that Elon Musk likes to use, but it's still the hangout, you know? It's still the place you go to find out that Paul Rubin's passed away, rest in peace, you know? I mean, it's still got to do the, and that he was 70, you know. But I guess that's incidental. It's hard to replace Twitter, you know,

in its most core function, which is just soaking in. You know, you can't have a piece of that. You can't have 10% of Twitter and get nearly the same result. And I mean, that's why Elon Musk paid a bunch of money for it. You know what's also hard to replace for journalists? All those followers that they earned on Twitter. Yeah, exactly.

That they spent years and years trying to accrue. Mm-hmm. They had two goals, right? Every journalist in our generation do great work, get a bunch of Twitter followers. Yeah. And slicing off half of a decade's worth of work turns out to be harder than perhaps some expect.

Yes. also apparently they're writing checks to do the high profile check mark accounts now for engagement. That'll be an interesting path forward if they actually stick that out. Coming up, David, I want to tell you about Sean Payton,

who suddenly got interesting, 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. They're still here.

Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always great received. Runner up this week is jokes based on Ken's line from the Barbie movie. My job, it's just beach. For example, my job is email based off the Barbie Twitter meme everyone suggested.

Thanks to Chad Orzel, Michael L. Avery, and Michael P. Casey for that one. I have not seen the Barbie movie. Me either. Always fun to read jokes about something you sort of understand. But this week's winner, David, any jokes about Twitter X? including that big glowing sign on Twitter HQ in San Francisco.

For instance, X marks the spot where Twitter went to die. If you also haven't left Twitter and you're still here making jokes, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right. In the notebook dump, I want to talk to you about Sean Payton.

Yes. He's a former Fox broadcaster turned Denver Broncos coach. Former Fox broadcaster feels like you're barking up the wrong. tree here. I don't know. That's the right turn of phrase. But yes. We're setting up the next beat in the segment, David. Here we go. Just here we go. Just roll with this.

John Payton gave a very interesting interview. Interesting is one word, I guess, for it, to Jarrett Bell of USA Today. He ripped Nathaniel Hackett. The Broncos coach he's replacing. Kind of ripped the Jets for being on Hard Knocks this summer.

This was Sean Payton's attempt to crawl back, to row back some of those remarks. Made the papers. I was just wondering why, why are you? Yeah, listen, I had one of those moments where I still had my Fox hat on and not my coaching hat on. Now, is it just me or did Sean Payton never actually say anything that interesting when he was employed by Fox?

Yeah. Where was that? I mean, he was fine, but he was never really overly competitive. You know, I mean, he didn't, that's sort of the hope of when you hire someone, a recently retired player or recently a jobless coach, is that they're going to get on TV and just be like, let me tell you something about this asshole, you know, when somebody comes on TV, they very rarely do.

As far as I can recall, Sean Payton didn't do anything even in that strata. Excuse me. As far as I can recall, Sean Payton didn't do anything anywhere in that stratosphere. but yeah I mean he's interesting now maybe he should maybe he was wearing a

different hat when he was working for Fox and he just found his Fox hat when he was moving offices or something he's like I should have been wearing this all along when I was on television

every week it was amazing awful announcing us did a funny thing where they rounded up all the football people who were assuring us that Sean Payton

doesn't do anything by accident Sean Peyton is very deliberate with everything he does. One thing about Sean Payton, everything is intentional, not accidental. You know, you think he's just like, didn't understand that ripping his predecessor and basically the entire Broncos organization before he showed up would create a ripple. Yeah, I'm thinking, I think it was intentional.

Kind of guessing. Ronda Sanis, David, is talking to everybody. It's not just Jake Tapper on CNN. and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that a new New York Times Siena poll just came out that has DeSantis trailing Trump nationally 54 to 17. According to Alex Thompson of Axios, DeSantis did CBS and ABC last week. He is going to be on Brett Bear show on Fox.

I think Brett Bear was doing the Twitter thing of do you have any questions for Ron DeSantis? Oh, great. Which is always my favorite bit from a media person. Any questions that I should ask that me, the interviewer, should ask this guest. I always enjoy that one. That's my, I have a podcast interview coming up in two minutes. Please help. It's one thing to do it with the overworked Twitter joke.

It's another thing to crowdsource your interviews, folks. By the way, speaking of which, Chris Christie went on Pod Save America. Yeah. It's part of his media tour. I say all this because Max Tanny had a really important. interesting piece in semaphore about what he calls the fragmentation election. So we know the media has been fragmenting for some time. But now we're faced with a situation where candidates are going on very, very, very non-traditional media platforms to get their message out.

Plus, you have a great data point for somebody writing a piece like this, which is that Donald Trump, as of right now, is not participating in next month's. Republican debate. Yeah. He's opting out of the one mass media thing we were supposed to get with all the Republican candidates in the same place. Mm-hmm. I want you to listen to some of these examples that Tanny rounds up here. Ron DeSantis appeared in the last two weeks alone on podcast hosted by Clay Travis and

comedian Russell Brand. Okay. Okay. Also went on with Megan Kelly. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, Tanny Wright, spins. much of his time appearing across faith-based Christian podcasts, radio and television, such as the Christian Broadcast Network and the Trinity Broadcast Network. Okay.

Vivek Ramoswamy is the one person who is basically doing everything. Sure. Then there's Joe Biden. Biden is said to appear tomorrow on a podcast with Jay Shetty, the I-Heart radio host who produces a weekly show on mindfulness and mental health. Wow. and for your kicker Donald Trump is still in talks to sit down for an interview

with Mike Tyson which was scrapped due to a scheduling conflict earlier this month so what do you attribute this to well I mean a couple of these things are there's there's two things that you're talking about

one is trying to hit these niche markets one after the other and some of them are just kind of bigger ideas within the campaign um where to begin Chris Christie is obviously just doing the the

you know middle of the road verging on liberal tour he did a giant interview on on on Morning Joe to like launch his campaign various liberal members of my family may or may not have been swayed

by his sense of urgency and you know, New Jersey charisma. That's going to be his corner, you know? I mean, he's a known quantity. He's got a little bit of a different road, but he's also got a little bit more of, you know, legitimacy if something happens to Trump or whatever else.

I think in, you know, in terms of going on mindfulness podcasts or, you know, going on and even going like the Joe Rogan Show, which is a billion people listening and whatever else, it's a it's it's it's a smart way to market yourself in this day and age um you know people that are people that are listening or by and large people who've opted in to that show and it's almost like retail politics it's like oh look joe biden showed up at my local corn dog shop you know it's like he's just like me and that makes me feel good um the ronda santis thing is totally i mean is its own bird.

I mean, Ron DeSantis is a, his campaign's a mess. All of their big ideas didn't pan out. When people are reporting on your campaign restructuring, instead of actually reporting on your campaign, you're already losing. I mean,

and I think that we all pointed at this from the start, not that we had any sort of crystal ball, but this is still a Trump versus not Trump election. And, you know, DeSantis has not been willing to go all in on being the anti-Trump, because he, first of all, agrees with Trump on a lot of things,

and second of all, needs his voters. But DeSantis was at his most vital, at his most interesting and probably polling at the highest when he and Trump were, you know, slapboxing each other. And as soon as Trump realized he should just stop doing that, then DeSantis just fades into oblivion. I mean, not oblivion. He's still number two in the Republican polls that came out today,

but still he's a distant second. it's oblivion i'd really like your point about the corn dog stand because i think when you look at it the names are different and it feels weird that Biden is going on an i heart podcast but i'm not so sure this is different from the tried and true presidential media tour that took them to good morning iowa and good morning new hampshire and all those local stations well and not at all different from Obama going on between two ferns. I mean, that was for Obama care. But, you know, he knew how did micro-target his audience

too. Oh, totally. He completely understood it. And that's the best way to show that this has been happening for quite a while. But I think as a presidential candidate, there's some big interviews that you probably do, and you do with some trepidation sometimes, especially

if you actually are in the lead because there's something to lose. Yeah. Going front of the big media, and I, by the way, encourage all presidential candidates to line up and do those interviews, especially with the best interviewers. But we also know that they go and do interviews with other people and people that appeal to viewers in different ways. And again, you know, when you go on with the back in the day with the local television anchor, who's very, very familiar to viewers in cities in important primary states or caucus states,

like that's, that to me is not all that different. The fragmentation point is interesting. but you know i think if you look at where we are right now you know ronda santis gave an interview to jake tapper on cnn has given interviews to the networks he has ultimately dropped the whole corporate media thing and said okay i'm just giving interviews like a regular candidate yeah all the other republicans are lining up to talk to mainstream people because they just need attention at this point there's nowhere to go but up Biden is kind of a mystery and Trump, right? It may turn out that Biden and Trump are the two that are not giving major network interviews.

But again, Trump was also on to see an in town hall. So I do agree it's different. I do agree it's a different world, but I do think the new world resembles the old world in a lot of ways. Oh, yeah, they're strikingly similar. The most interesting thing is what you mentioned, that if the two leading candidates just don't do much. I mean, Trump had to do something. Trump will continue to do occasional things just to remind us that he is a candidate,

that he's at least as much a candidate as he is a, you know, courtroom figure. But who knows what Biden's going to do? Biden may do little or nothing at all. I mean, which is not smart. I mean, I think he'll probably do more as the campaign gets closer.

I mean, as the election gets closer. Because there will be a lot of questions that just like can only be answered by his like literal presence somewhere and like real time response to questions or whatever. But yeah, I mean, these other candidates have opportunities to take up the auction, you know, to fill in that void by being on these big programs. And they need that traditional attention. You know, they need people reminding.

I mean, they should be doing the, you know, huge listenership podcasts and, you know, micro-targeted stuff, you know, that have, that have concerted fan bases. But they also have to be doing, I mean, it's more important to them to be doing mainstream media and to sort of be labeled. Listen, the more times their average voter can hear Grande Sanchez be referred to is number two in the polls behind Donald Trump, the better it is for him. I mean, it would be better if they would say, he was beating, he beat Donald Trump in Iowa or something like that. But, you know, for right now, that's really beneficial to him because we talk about him all the time. But does the real, true average voter really have a concept?

of who he is. Yeah. Probably not, and that's actually probably good for Ronda Santas, despite the, despite the wrongheaded place where his campaign started. I would get ID as the number two behind Trump as many times as I could before Tim Scott overtakes me in the polls in Iowa. It seems like that's happening sometime soon. We talked about AI on the show last week, David.

Is it going to make us journalists more efficient or just make journalism so efficient that the people who run it no longer need it? us. There was a big AI piece in the Wall Street Journal, and James Patterson, the crime novelist, mystery novelist, not totally sure how to categorize James Patterson, was quoted. The journal says Patterson said he found the idea that all of his novels, more than 200 of them, were likely ingested without his permission to train generative AI software to do his job, quote, frightening. This will not end well for creatives, he said in an interview. Now, us writers will take all the allies we can get.

Okay. But how do we feel about James Patterson being with us in the case for, you know, writers should be their own unique thing in the world? James Patterson, who's writing novel after novel, often with co-authors. Are we okay with that? I just want to make sure we're on the same page here before I proceed. James Patterson is a transformative figure in the world of publishing. There was a time when his publisher who told him, we only, you know, we're only going to publish one book a year.

Readers will not accept more than that. And he said no. And he kept putting out more and more with co-authors, books in different genres, children, young adult books, all that kind of stuff. Now, I mean, he probably at his peak published. What do you think the most was? Eight books at a year? Do you think he out at eight? But he's publishing a lot.

200, I mean, over what, 50 years, 40 years? We very, very, he publishes a lot of books. Also, I watched along came a spider the other day. Have you ever seen this movie? I feel like I definitely saw it before. Parts of it were interesting to me, but it's been, it's been a long time. This was just the dumbest thing, the dumbest story I have ever read. It was based on Alex Cross novel, and I was just watching it by

at the halfway point, I was like, no, this is what is really about? It was just the dumbest. It was so dumb. Anyway, I was like, wow, this, I hope, this must be James Patterson, right? He's sold a billion novels. They didn't want to change anything. And that's why it's so dumb. But maybe it's not.

Maybe it was the filmmakers. And then I just lost all interest in looking up and finding out because, man, it was dumb. Anyway. So you're saying we have mixed feelings about James Patterson joining us on the AI picket line. No, James Patterson's fine. People read James Patterson. If you're reading a book, it's a good thing. Okay.

I mean, we both read many, many books that people would look down their nose at, whatever. You know, it's like when people, it's during the Harry Potter furor of a decade ago when everyone's just like, oh, my kid finishes the Harry Potter books and just starts back over in the Harry Potter books. It's like, you know, it's okay. They're reading books. You know, we don't need to force another book into their hands that they're not going to read.

Just let them read words. That's okay. Okay. That seems like another discussion, by the way, the Harry Potter books. But I'm going to move on to a new feature here at the press box, David. It's called Not About the Media. Oh. Because I think you and I deserve a weekly feature where we talk about something that's a little bit out of our wheelhouse. Yes.

Why should all the other ringer podcasters have all the fun? I'm going to get this feature started by telling you that I took my son, who is 10, to see Mission Impossible 7 the other day. Nice. Fantastic time of the theater. I completely endorse Chris and Andy's review over on the watch, where they basically said this movie is incredibly fun, even if there are moments where you will not understand who key characters are

or indeed why certain things are happening. Great. Usually that bothers me. It was fantastic. Had a wonderful time. So did Owen. But the movie is too long. I would like to report.

It is just too long. And all movies are too long. Uh-huh. Now, before I get into sounding like angry old man here at this new feature, this is not the way I want to inaugurate things. Like our old friend Josh Malden is actually the appropriate point of view here. It was your friend too, by the way. But yes, he told us that all movies were too long.

We're in high school. Now all movies are actually too long. By the way, this is 163 minutes, Mission Impossible. I want to ask you, what is the original too long movie? of this era. What got us headed down this path? Yeah, because I mean, you're not going to say like Cleopatra or something or dances with wolves.

That's not where this came from. My theory, as we were walking out of the theater the other day, was that the Lord of the Rings' directors' cuts are what put us down the path to two long movies. Remember Lord of the Rings came out? It was great, but it was also like three hours. Yeah, it was. And then the director's cut added like another hour. Yeah.

And you're like, this isn't bad. This is not a bad movie. In fact, this is a really excellent movie in some cases. But why is this, why would this be four hours now? When do the director's cuts come out? They come out simultaneously with the releases of the other movies? Or was that a later release? I want to say early 2000s, I felt I had my hands on them.

I'd remember when I moved to New York for the first time, I was staying in like basically a hostel in Hell's Kitchen and didn't know anybody. I would walk back from work every day and would often go to the movies. I think the third Lord of the Rings movie must have been out because they were all back in the theater. But I think whether or not

those are the director's cuts, they're long movies and they're all playing at the same time, right? Because people want to go back. And I think having three different, three movies that are all three hours in the theater right next to each other. Just kind of change your concept

of how long a movie can be. And it was great. You know, you get to go. At that point, it seemed like, like a luxury. Sometimes you'd go to a big movie and it would be like 88 minutes long, you know, and you'd just be like, I didn't even finish my popcorn. Yeah, you, it's, it's not, it felt good at first. But yeah, it's a lot of Merlong now. And now, I mean, I don't know, I mean, where it came,

but I, but I do remember people sort of being, there was a, okay, there was a feeling with the Lord of the Rings movies that they sort of earned it. The site, the type of movies that they were, the style of movies that they were. It felt sort of appropriate. They were covering a lot of literary territory. When the Hobbit movies came out, that was different. They were each covering like 15 pages of the novel, and they were somehow even longer. But they did seem like they earned it.

I think to me, I always think of the MCU movies, the Marvel movies, when it would just be like just, you know, two and a half hours for Captain America Civil War or like whatever. Like, of course, by the time the end game came out, they were like three hours each. I think that that was much later, but it's also much more trivial, you know, kind of much more,

and I say this as a diehard comic book fan, much more disposable in the grand scheme of things, and that it was just as long as they need to be, as long, you know, whatever, that sort of, I think, changed the calculus. And, you know, I'm sure that there's a lot of people. I mean, Tom Cruise is a thoughtful person about getting people back in movie theaters and stuff.

I'm sure there's some people that believe that if you're going to, go pay $15 or whatever, $20 for a movie ticket. More bang for your buck is a good bang. Yeah. I agree with all that. The reason I point to Lord of the Rings is because it's a, it makes sense because it's a good movie.

It's not a bad movie. It's a very successful movie, but it also felt like at least by the third one, we weren't making decisions anymore. Like we were just like, let's just leave it. The movie has like five endings. Yeah, okay. Let's have five endings. And then when you go to the director's cut on then on DVDs and Blu-rays,

It's like, you know what? There's another 45 minutes of this movie. So we didn't make any decisions at all about length. I don't know. If somebody can convince me in something before that or something after that, I would like to hear. I'm sure there is something. But, I mean, that those were, those. I mean, that was part of the, that was part of the narrative of them at the time, their length.

You know, I mean, that was part of what people talked to them. So, yeah, I mean, they were huge. Next week on Not About Media, we find. the original substack post that was too long. Discussed what happened from there. Now it's time for David Chutemaker guess as the strained pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about a golf champion's thirst for hunting was,

I shoot to thrill. Today's headline, David, comes from me. It's from the New York Post, which I'm still reading here on the East Coast. The New York Mets traded pitcher Max Scherzer to your Texas Rangers on Saturday. Thank you for calling the My Texas Rangers. So the post is saying goodbye to Max Scher, who is a three-time Sy Young winner. What was the New York Post strained pun headline? Max, three-time Sy Young winner.

Yes, sir. Three, good. I'm saying farewell. Goodbye. Goodbye to the Cy Young winner. Adios Three Sighs go No, we're going to start with SIE here

Oh, Sye of SIE Like SIGG-H-S-I No, C-Y Oh, I thought that was the pun Um Sci-O-Nor Remember this is the New York Post

Just want to make Oh, Sionara. Sionara. Sionara. Oh, that's great. Sionara is the New York Post headline. We're also alerted that there was a headline that said, text Max. Tex Max.

For Max. Text Max. Oh, Tex Max. Sorry. Sorry. I'm slow on that one. Yeah. You've been gone from Texas too long, my friend.

He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. I'm back later this week. And then Shoemaker. and I reconvened for more lukewarm takes about the media and movies next week. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.