The Press Box - Week 1 NFL Season Audio, the Howard Stern-ing of Cable News, and the Iowa Football Primary

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

Bryan and David discuss Jen Psaki taking over Chris Hayes’s Monday night primetime slot at MSNBC (00:48). Then, they listen to some announcer clips from the NFL and college football (07:03) and talk about the GOP candidates at the Iowa–Iowa State football game (15:14). They also touch on Joe Buck and Troy Aikman’s 22nd year as commentary partners (21:52), the end of ‘Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel,’ Vulture’s piece on Rotten Tomatoes, and more! Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody? It's Brian Barrett from Off the Pipe, where we're gearing up for another exciting NFL season. We'll be with you every Sunday after the Pats with three-time Super Bowl champion James White to recap the game and break down the biggest moments. Plus, episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays to cover all things Patriots with your favorite Boston sports guests, as well as familiar voices from the Ringer podcast network. So follow off the pike with me, Brian Barrett, on Spotify. David? Yes. We've got a lot of football to talk about.

So can we start with the Howard Stearning of Cable News? Okay. What does that mean? Let me tell you. There was a story broken by Axios last week. The Jen Saki, the former Biden apparatchik, only in journalism, turned MSNBC host, is going to be taking over the Monday 8 p.m. from Chris Hayes.

Like the weekday 8 p.m. slot or just Mondays? The Monday 8 p.m. slot, specifically. Just one of the five days. Okay. Hayes' tweets that he is going to be spending time working on vague projects. But he's still doing Tuesday to Thursday?

Tuesday to Friday? Exactly. Okay. Now, listener Vic Caramel says we need a term for not hosting your cable news show every day. He proposes madowing, which is pretty funny.

But here's my instant think piece for you. Linear TV is changing. And in some senses disappearing. Can we say that so is the idea of hosting a show five days a week? Yeah. Because that used to be afforded only to, people with maximum fame and seniority like Johnny Carson or Howard Stern, who can come back and go, you know what, I'm taking Mondays and Fridays off forever.

Yeah. Five day weekend or four day weekend, I am good to go. I'll give you the middle of the week. Sure. But now it feels like you can do that on cable news partly because the world is changing and the way we consume TV's changed. Well, I'm sure there's a real practical side of this, which is that Rachel Maddow had the negotiating power to have the schedule that she wanted. And at that point, it sort of becomes, hey, you know, Brian Curtis is working remotely. Can't I do that too, boss?

You know, like, you know, once the sky doesn't fall and the numbers come in, I'm sure there's some upside to it. I mean, you're right. Maddo in particular has sort of been a post-television performer, even when she was. was on five days a week, you know, it's a similar thing that you mentioned Johnny Carson. I mean, I know there's a lot going on in late night world right now, but, you know, it's the way that that folks like Jimmy Fallon seem to sort of be targeting going, you know, like becoming a meme, you know, like having something go viral as opposed to just nightly content. Yes. And there's a lot of swings, you know, a lot of attempts before you get the real pure thing. And so in some sense, you need

the nightly show, but if you could just do the one pure viral sensation and then say like, all right, week's over, you know, time to go home. I'm sure not only would the hosts take that, but a lot of the networks would take that too, you know, not that you're really making money off of a tweet, but you figure out a way to make it back. I think MSNBCO has a little of the Fox thing where I wonder how important it is who hosts something called the Chris Hayes show. Yeah. Every night, I know there was, there was, with Maddow was going down to one night a week, there was a definite ratings drop off when she wasn't on the air.

But if you only have one day a week without Chris Hayes, yeah, it feels that's a little more doable. And to your point about going viral, when Maddow says, hey, I'm going to go step away and work on podcasts and documentaries and other projects, in old TV, we'd know that as massive vanity stuff, right? I am powerful enough that I can do these passion projects, whatever they are. But in cable news, they're trying to figure out what happens when the cable bundle finally disintegrates. Yeah, which is a real going concern right now.

It seems like it's been in the news lately. So, you know, maybe there is for the network, you know, even more, even if your, if your host doesn't have the juice of negotiating this, there is an idea that you're going to send them out to figure it out. And maybe it's a podcast, you know, maybe it's something else that rather than a TV show that happens at 8 p.m. every single night. Yeah. I mean, to be, to be producing that amount of content is obviously a benefit to the network, no matter what platform you're doing it on. But it also, but yeah, I mean, I think even in news and even in sports to be tethered to not just a new cycle, but an hour of the day can't be like

incredibly beneficial, right? Everybody wants evergreen stuff. And it's impossible in news, but probably the more evergreen, the better, which is why, you know, some of those like Maddow monologues where she went deep into the history of whatever subject or the one. Taxation. Yeah, just stood the test of time. And Hayes does that too. By the way, headline that made me feel, old, Anderson Cooper has now hosted AC 360 for 20 years. Oh my God. Where is the time gone? Oh, my Lord.

I have no idea. 20 years. That's like a Wolf Blitzer number to put up on the scoreboard. Just think about the amount of barbecue you've eaten in that span of time. That is how I measure time, sadly, when I look at myself in the mirror every day. coming up on today's pod, some audio from week one of the NFL season, including a couple of announcer controversies. We tell you who won the Iowa football primary.

We say farewell to HBO's Real Sports and the Ultimate Insider, Chris Mortensen. Plus, we throw a rotten tomato at Rotten Tomatoes. All that much more on the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Hello Media Consumers, Brian Curtis David Shoemaker, and producer Eduardo Ocampo, who is sitting in for Erica here, football's back, David.

Football is back. It is mandatory to tweet on the first weekend of the season that football is back. Oh, I love football. I love watching football. Oh, yeah. I find that the more you cover football

and get paid to cover football, the more mandatory it is to assure people online that you like football. Mm-hmm. It must be embedded in all, all those contracts. I have some fun audio for you from the weekend.

Up first, David, like the first Robin of Spring, we had the season's first call of touchdown, but there's a flag. What a landmark. This is from Vikings Bucks, Andrew Catalan on CBS. Heard 11. Buzzons has time. Indication that it is against the Tampa Bay Buccaneer.

Do you think the guy firing off the touchdown cannon is waiting to know if that flag was going to be on the Vikings of the bucks? It's a great question. Does the touchdown canon guy feel remorse? Or is that maybe it's just, it's really explicitly part of his job. You shoot off that cannon when they cross the line, no matter what. We get the crowd going. Touchdown, touchdown cannon guy. We know the announcer is conflicted.

Mm-hmm. We don't know if touchdown cannon guy's. conflicted. Yeah. The answers have to have to remorse some way or the other. Yeah. I mean, the flag is getting in the way of their call, right? And if the flag ends up being inconsequential, then no matter whatever weight that you give it seems like the wrong amount. Totally. If you're Andrew Catalan, you know that call. Big pass. I think it was a 39-yard pass. That's going to run on the highlight shows. That's going to run on sports radio when they do those nice little embedded clips. It's going to run on podcasts like this one. It's going to be out there. Put on Twitter.

But if you have a flag, that's just not going to be on your Emmy reel this year. And by the way, that was an old-fashioned one. The new one is, oh, but we're going to review the play to make sure it's a touchdown. That was just as a flag. Turned out, by the way, it was on the defense. Touchdown. Thanks to Owen O'Sullivan, our friend at the Irish Examiner for sending that along. Oh, yeah. I would like you, David, to weigh in on the Mike Torrico asterisk controversy. Oh, God.

I said that very carefully. Thursday night, NFL opener, it was Lions and Chiefs, Travis Kelsey and Chris Jones. The Chief's second and third best players were out. One of them was hurt. One of them was angling for new contract. The Lions beat those short-handed Chiefs. By one point, and here is how NBC's Mike Torrico signed off. This has an asterisk because of no Chris Jones and no Travis Kelsey.

But after what you saw at the end of last year and what you saw tonight, can you guess which fan base immediately took to Twitter, as the kids say, to get angry with Mike Tariko suggesting there might be an asterisk on the this game. Would it be the Lions fans? That's correct. Yeah, I don't know that I really disagree with them. I mean, I don't know that there's a real villain here, but, you know, if you're a team like the Lions, then a win like that is significant regardless of the state of things on the other side of the field, right? I mean, you'll take the win. There's no asterisk. There's no, you know, asterisks are handed out pretty sparingly in sports, even the ones that we all kind of agree,

conventional wisdom-wise are asterisks. They're not actually asterisks. So I can understand why you might get your hackles up. But also, yeah, I mean, come on. In Toriko's defense, it was a pretty qualified asterisk that he was backing off of right away.

I also love how fan-based specific it is. Like, let's say the Lions have the kind of hype train season that we heard so much about. before football actually kicked off and they get in the playoffs and Jared Goff gets hurt and they lose a playoff game without their starting quarterback

or without Jemir Gibbs or Amon Rae St. Brown, pick a lion. Would Lions fans then be upset about somebody invoking an asterisk? Kind of think that. No. Yeah, don't go on the record with your Astrosk philosophy

because you'll prove yourself wrong eventually. One more announcer remark that went even more sideways this weekend. This was ESPN's Pete Sousa, not the legendary Obama White House photographer. Pete Sousa was calling Kentucky versus Eastern Kentucky, and he's telling us here a heartwarming story about Kentucky running back Ray Davis. And there is Ray Davis, 51 yards on that drive alone running and receiving. He's a guy transferring over from Vanderbilt. Nine months ago when he jumped in the portal, everybody wanted it. 11 years.

ago as a foster kid, really nobody wanted him. And now here he has found some love, found football, and he has had an amazing journey. Now, David, as you know, I was adopted as a small child. And I have never thought that I was in the transfer portal during that period of my life. What do you make of wanted versus unwanted? I have no comment. You have, you have, you have, you have grounds to make a comment here. I didn't mean to claim standing there. I really don't. I'll give you my take then.

I think, obviously, that comparison, putting those two things in the same breath is extremely faulty and extremely unwise. And in fact, Pete Sousa has apologized on Twitter already. I also think that connecting stories like that, either directly or indirectly is something that people who do feature stories for sports TV and feature stories in print do all the time. Sure.

Let me find something that happened in this person's life, often a very, very unpleasant thing. And let me make that the one thing I tell you about the person. Yes. They used to be here, but now they're here. Yeah. So while I don't sign off on this, I also think what he was doing there

with that slip of the tongue was something we see on sports TV all the time. Yeah. And it works most of the time. But there's some areas you probably just don't. I mean, in a written piece also, you kind of have to earn it, right? I mean, if that you're...

You would think. That would be an essay, not a tweet, right? And what he's doing is just very, tweeting. So yeah, you gotta sort of, yeah, yeah, you gotta earn that a little bit more. And if it was a Game Day feature story, you'd have the violins or the piano music or something that was making that kind of transition. Yes. Yeah, I don't think there would have been, no, I think it's only because of, yeah, if that would have been a Game Day feature story, it would have been fine. It would have been, or at least, you know, I don't think it would have

raised too many eyebrows. That's my point. Not that he's wrong or right, because he's clearly wrong, but what's the difference between that and a lot of the stuff we see on television? Topping number three for you, the Iowa football primary. Yeah. Where two of our big interests converge. There was an Iowa state game on Saturday. And people who don't know a lot about college football may ask, hey, is that one of those regional rivalries that's really cool and really intense and everybody in college football really

gets into. Let me tell you, no, it's not. That is a game that people who are into college football make fun of. It's called El Asico. Spencer Hall and Ryan Nani once wrote, the state of Iowa is usually a punt-based economy because of the lack of offense in that game, particularly from Iowa. But it had the feel of a big game this weekend because Republican president, candidates went to Ames to check it out. Donald Trump was there. Ron DeSantis went to the game. Vivek Ramoswamy, Asa Hutchinson, even Doug Bergam

checked out Iowa versus Iowa State. Now, David, if you run for president, you subject yourself to certain humiliations. You have to take every photograph. You have to kiss every baby. You have to do every interview with Medi Hassan, at least if you're Vivek Ramoswamy. This is the new humiliation. I must attend Iowa versus Iowa State.

And furthermore, be into the game. How many of those presidential candidates have used candidates loosely do you think knew what they were getting into? Watchability-wise. I would think zero. I would have loved to administer the sports quiz to all of them as they entered the gates there at Jack Trite Stadium and said, can you name one Iowa State football player past or present? Yeah.

And then I would have asked him, do you know who Brock Purdy is? And I know there would have been zero correct answers on the first one. I really wonder how many correct answers there would have been on the second one. And you identify the quarterback who played in the NFC championship game, at least for a while last year. Yeah, no. The Trump campaign took their candidate over to a frat house before the game kicked off. It was an agricultural fraternity called Alpha Gamma Row where Trump was photographed cooking hamburgers and throwing footballs. Also, no, Trump was wearing a blue suit.

with a red tie, which we know is the go-to Trump outfit. How many other people in that stadium do you think we're wearing a suit on Saturday? Oh, man. I mean, even like the, I mean, does the A.D. doesn't wear a suit. Does the university president wear a suit? The AD might wear a color-coordinated suit. Sure. Okay.

I feel I saw the U-T-A-D on the field against Alabama wearing orange. Congratulations, by the way. Thank you very much. I have like 20 minutes set aside later in the pod just to brag about it. DeSantis wore one of those sleeveless zip-up things. He loves those. Yeah. That actually looked more like football gear.

Washington Post had this note. A plane flew overhead with a banner asking, Where's Melania? A reference to Trump's wife, who has not been with him on the trail. Flyers in the area also declared Malani a quote missing and directed anyone who found her to call a number that went to Mara Lago, Trump's Palm Beach Estate. Didn't know we were doing that during this campaign.

I didn't either, but that's a nice wrinkle. We will subtract 20 points from your publication's final score if you use the term political football this weekend. Also, off limits. Speaking of unlikely big games, the coach prime content machine is still running strong. Oh, yes, it is. Colorado beat Nebraska, they're 2 and 0.

This week, they play Colorado State. That is not a game anybody had circled as a big game, though perhaps more interesting than Iowa, Iowa State. Fox's big noon kickoff pregame show, which has kind of become the embedded studio show of Coach Prime. They've been with him three weeks in row. They will be in Boulder, and ESPN's College Game Day will be in Boulder.

How far in advance do they make these decisions? Do they just flex that in last this week? Yeah, definitely in the case of game day. I would bet Fox had it as a distinct possibility, but only of Colorado won two games in a row. Yeah. Otherwise, their big game is Penn State this week, so they'd be across the country.

Very, very, very funny. Also, listener Mike Morris notes that Fox announcers were constantly calling Dion Sanders coach prime during the game call, if you're announcing that game, how many times would you allow yourself to call him Coach Prime versus calling him Dion Sanders or Sanders?

It's a good question in general about coach nicknames. Coach Prime is a pretty ostentatious one, but if, you know, that's all that he accepts, then that's all that he accepts, right? Wait, does he not accept being called Dion Sanders anymore? Did I miss that? No, I don't know.

That's the question. I mean, how do you, I don't know how you make these decisions. So Mike Tarrico referred to Giants assistant coach Wink Martindale, and then they graphic for the first time, and I believe my lifetime showed his real name. That was wild. Yeah.

Don Martindale. But it was just like, he's like, everybody calls him wing. I said, yeah. You know, and Toriko had to kind of correct the graphic. Yeah. No, he's like known league wide as Wink. Yeah. Not only is that a, you know, a nickname.

It's like it's an apprable. appropriated nickname, right? I mean, I assume he just got called that because of the other existing Wink Martindale, but who knows? But, you know, nobody has any problem with that. There's nobody's just like, how many, can we not just call him Don? We should call him Don. It's his real name.

I don't know. Coach Brime's pretty egregious, though. I don't know what to do. I'd have a hard time saying that with a straight face. New season of Monday Night Football begins tonight. That's the final game of the NFL weekend. Call over on ESPN is going to be handled by one. Joe Buck and Troy Aitman.

Heard of them. Wrote about them this week. On this occasion, David, this will be the 22nd year that Joe Buck and Troy Aikman have called football games together. That will put them one year ahead of the total seasons

that Pat Summerall and John Madden called football games together. My God. That's even more mind-blowing than Anderson Cooper. longer than Summerall and Madden and then you and I are just at the age where they were not guys on TV so much as just TV.

And they were a pair even though Madd would go on and work for several years with a different partner, Al Michaels, after they broke up. They were just together constantly. Yeah. And it kind of blew my mind to learn that Joe and Troy will have been at it longer.

For sure. Yeah, it's a very strange thing. I mean, I guess should it be, should be taking it? It's like more, it makes more sense in this day and age, just because there's so much more money involved in NFL broadcasts. You know, there wouldn't just be the incidental, like, taking some time off for family, or let's mix up the announced teams. or or or you know the inner inner booth squabbling you know that just sort of drives people apart when now there's like there's 20 million dollars on the line you just sort of you keep going with what you got i think there's something to that for sure that you know it's not like it's not like summer all men had small jobs back in the day even though let's say they're in the 80s they were making a million dollars plus as opposed to joe and truerre making a combined, I believe it's $34 million a year. But there were certainly less competition from, you know, other guys who were coming straight

out of the league and making $10 million a year doing this, right? The bidding had not, it was not at that place, no. Yeah. There were, there were, there were obviously some quarterbacks that became announcer. It certainly became studio guys in those days, but I just think there would be more complacency and sort of these are the lifers, these are the people that do this. I don't know. It would seem like there, though, would be, you know,

be a little bit more footloose and fancy free back then, and they were the real exception to the rule. I got to spend a little time with them in Washington, D.C., where they were calling a Commander's Ravens preseason game. And one of the funniest things I discovered, and this, I don't think, comes through on TV, is that Troy Eggman thinks Joe Buck is incredibly funny. like genuinely incredibly funny he is constantly laughing at the things that Joe Buck says

I remember once I was doing a piece and I got to have he was breakfast with Jimmy Johnson Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long and every time Terry Bradshaw said something Jimmy Johnson would just dissolve in real laughter like uncontrollable laughter wow and I was like oh I always thought on the pregame show that that was a little contrived but he actually thinks Terry Bradshaw is, you know, Chris Rock and his prime level funny. That was pretty much the same dynamic with Joe and Troy. Is Joe trying to make Troy cut up?

Like, does that become part of the schick? Yes, absolutely. He said something like, my goal is to make him laugh during a broadcast. But I think during a broadcast, partly because you and I are so used to courtesy laughs and so used to the contrivance of two partners who are finishing each other's sentences and talking about how the other guy is the best in the business that you sort of forget

that people could actually be friends. Yeah. And the funny part about Joe and Troy, according to them and according to people who've worked with them is they are actual friends and to come around to your point of how do you stay together that long and what's different?

I think the thing that's different is they're almost the same age, 33 and 35 when they started plus 23 years now. So you look at that and you're like, oh, they were sort of in the same life spot when they started broadcasting together. They each had daughters. They got divorced around the same time. They were basically cut out to become adult friends. and you said something on this podcast before that unfortunately I could not steal for my piece because you had already put it out in the airways

but you said Joe and Troy sound like football which is both a testament to their skill and a testament to them being on the air as long as they have. Oh, for sure. And as I was thinking about that sound while writing this and maybe I'm one of the few sick people who ever has noticed this,

but Joe will call a play first down, second down, we're not talking about a huge play in the game. And Troy will just say nothing. Yeah. He will say nothing at all. And it's so funny because we're so conditioned by so many broadcasters that when there's a hole, they talk.

It doesn't matter whether they have something to say or not, they talk. And he's almost laying out in a moment where you expect someone to speak. Yeah. And it feels sort of disorienting at first as a listener. But then the more you listen to it, you like it. Because it turns out people don't need to talk wall to wall for three and a half hours. They don't need this wall of sound where the announcer calls the play and then the analyst

talks all the way up right up to the snap of the ball before handing it back to the play by play guy. Yep. And sooner or later, you really, oh my gosh, these people have just been doing a podcast for the last three and a half hours. Yeah. Rather than picking their spots, letting the images tell a story. And Joe and Troy are good at that.

And I think that's really what makes them unique or part of what makes them unique when you look at all the other top broadcasting groups out there. Yeah, that's really good observation. And it's a funny thing too, because I think it comes directly from their personalities when I was interviewing Aikman, he said, you know, his concern about getting into broadcasting back in now 2001 was he didn't want to talk for three and a half hours. His nature is not like, I have opinions, here we go. It's I don't want to be pushed to say things I don't want to say. I don't think I have three and a half hours worth of material here. So he's built that way. And Joe Buck in the 2010s was calling games beautifully, but was wary of putting too much

much of his personality into a game. So what it does is it creates this really interesting dynamic where Buck isn't making Aikman say something. And at the same time, Buck is not chewing scenery in a weird way that would make Akeman silence stand out. Yeah. So really, it's hard to get your mind around. It's harder to explain than John Madden or Chris Collins were the people that have a different

style of it. But it's very, very unique. 22 years together on television. Remind me again, when they went to ESPN, was there any there was a conversation about them splitting up, right?

Wasn't it initially just Troy going? Or do I have that wrong? You do. You have exactly right. Troy went first, and Buck still had a year left on his contract. So there was this weird moment where he's like, I want to join you there,

but I don't know if I can. Yeah. And then if ESPN and said, okay, well, Joe, we want you in a year because we want to keep

this team together, then there would have been kind of an awkward thing where Troy would have had to have had one of these temporary announcers in waiting, which we've gotten strangely used to in this business,

maybe call games with him for one year. And then Buck would have come over. So it just would have been more awkward. But was that always the way that they were thinking? I mean, I guess my question is, did they ever contemplate life apart? Or was it always such a sure thing that they would be back together that it was just a conversation about timelines?

I think by the end it was probably a conversation about timelines. I think there was a shock within Fox and from Buck himself that Aitman left that Fox didn't put together an offer and say, you know what, you've been our guy for 20 years, we're going to keep you. And that they would let him get to that point where it's like ESPN swoops in. It's like, okay, I'm out of here. There had been some talk. I don't know if you remember this, that Aitman was going to do Thursday nights with Al Michaels

and then also do like the big Sunday games with Buck, not all of them, but the big ones at least and then do the playoffs in the Super Bowl with Buck like normal. So he'd just be kind of splitting his duties a little bit. Yeah. But I think it was a shock that it got to that point. And then it was, okay,

Aitman very much like, I want you to come with me. You know, I'm not looking, I'm not looking to move on here. So we just have to figure out a way to get you over here. Bug goes to his fox, bosses and they let him out of his contract.

And that's how we wind up with those two guys at ESPN, Kevin Burkart and Greg Olson and maybe soon to be Tom Brady on Fox. Interesting world. All right, coming up in 30 seconds, goodbye to HBO's Real Sports and Chris Mortensen. But first let's do the overwork Twitter joke of the week where we celebrated

gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. This week's runner up. New Packers quarterback Jordan Love beat the Bears on Sunday.

It was an overword Twitter joke to write. Aaron Rogers transferred ownership of the Bears to love as part of the trade to the Jets. Thanks to Nick Sandberg for that one. But this week's runaway winner, David. I can't believe this tweet from Ari Merov is real. Quoting here,

The Dallas Cowboys have unveiled an AI-driven hologram of Jerry Jones at AT&T Stadium. Fans can ask about his life, college at Arkansas, and owning the Cowboys. The technology can generate multiple responses creating a lifelike conversation with Jerry Jones. Would you like the best Twitter jokes about hologram Jerry? Please.

First off, finally, Ascent Jerry Jones after all these years, AI Jerry will be running the Cowboys after his death. if you ask AI Jerry what he was doing in that photo taken to the Little Rock Mob it activates Skynet Protocol and finally if I am ever observed asking a question to hologram Jerry Jones please contact my attorney and tell him to execute my living will

thanks to Travis Barnett if you asked why would anyone need a hologram when real Jerry never stops talking congrats you made the overword Twitter joke of the week they should send reporters out They should do a controlled experiment. Just two reporters, the same skill level, roughly the same writing style.

One gets access to Jerry Jones and one only has the hologram. I think hologram Jerry would be less discursive. Because real Jerry just talks absolutely in circles. I mean, the material is often fantastic, but you just have to kind of take the long way around the bend to get there. Yeah. I'm guessing they edited hologram Jerry down. quite a bit. All right, in the notebook,

Dump, David, let's say a pair of media farewells. One is to real sports. The HBO magazine show hosted by Bryant Gumble is coming to an end after 29 years. According to the LA Times

of Stephen Battaglio, Gumble 74 had considered ending the show for the last several years, according to people close to him who were not authorized to comment. How do we feel about the end of real sports? First of all,

big shout out to all the people close to him that went off the reservation and decided to comment despite not being authorized to. Don't tell him I told you this, but. That's the kind of stuff that makes journalism work. Yeah, man. We talked about real sports or story on real sports within the past 18 months, I think. But that's really just it. I mean, if you would ask me how, if that show was still on, I might have said yes. If you would ask me how frequently it came on, I would be lost.

Like, I just don't know. And I guess that's sort of the thing. If you're not part of the conversation and sort of what's the point, although their content, you know, when you watch it, it's still incredibly high level. And it's, and that space is going to be missed. The problem is that the space is dwindling. The space being HBO sports in particular or the kind of, Well, or just in just any, I mean, can you imagine any other platform that would just be like, yes, let's have a show like real sports.

I mean, maybe a show like real sports, but not a show that actually felt like real sports. I don't know that like kind of slow food, deep thought has a lot of advocates in this media age. So can we interrogate why that is? Because I think that's actually a really interesting question. one is it HBO sports, which I think the death of has been declared like three or four different times, and maybe this is the final time, no longer exists.

And it used to be this platform where you were not intertwined in the complicated financial way that the networks were with the leagues they covered, or maybe that even compromised sports writers were with the athletes and coaches they covered because they'd have to go back to them needed to preserve a relationship. So that's disappearing or in fact gone. Do you think there's a different public appetite for that kind of show that when there was linear television? And again, you just had this very finite number of things in the world that people, and I'm sure that audience was never that big, but people would seek that out.

Do you think now we have reported podcasts and different kinds of writing online that are scratching the itch that that show wants? scratched? Yes. I think that on some ways there's more, there's more outlets doing that type of content and you see that type and, and, you know, whether it's a investigative, a written piece that kind of gets disseminated on social media, you still can take it in, or it can be absorbed into the consciousness more broadly. And I think it's hard to get that, you know, I don't, I think you're right. I don't think the audience was ever huge, but it was part of the, the, the, the conversation because it sort of, it was unique. And it doesn't take much for that, you know,

when you're not urgently part of the conversation, then sort of what's the point? I think in general there's less of an appetite for kind of doing good for good sake, right? You know, just like quality isn't an argument so much as what does viewership or impressions or, you know, add revenue or whatever else. So, yeah, I mean,

it's it's it's it's it's not the same place it was then now i mean you could make i don't think you want to reboot real sports but you could see a world in which there were i mean you can you could easily imagine the world of you know that or the sports reporters any of these old shows just like brought back for a new generation of viewers but it i don't know i i think there's i think sports is is despite a lot of the people covering it you know you and i included being a getting on in years. It's just such a young person's game. You know, in the public face of that is, you know, it's always going to tend towards, you know, Tony Romo's over John Madden's in this day and age. Some young, eloquent wrestling writer comes along and David has a little mortality moment.

Well, it's okay when you don't make that much money, but when you're on TV, making lots of money, you know, and they got to realize how they get to talk about allocation of resources and stuff. No, but I think your point's really well taken because when something dies, you can look at it like this specific institution is dying, in this case, real sports. But then there's almost always in this day and age, just because the way the media is set up now, there's almost always even more of whatever that institution was delivering out in the universe. You mentioned the sports reporters.

I used to love that show, but it's like, holy shit, some of the most famous sports writers in America are talking. to each other. Yeah. Well, guess what? Other than the most famous part, you're listening to a version of that right now. Yeah. Turn on any podcast and sports writers are talking to each other.

Yep. You're like, please stop talking to each other. Go find a guest. Just do something else. Stop, stop polluting my life with your sports writer talk. And I think even with real sports, which is a little trickier because they were doing stuff that could be categorized as investigative reporting that maybe isn't going to get replicated in quite the same way in the new media world.

But in terms of having that conversation about human rights and moral issues to sports, that they could very plausibly claim really wasn't happening in newspapers and really wasn't happening all that much even in magazines and other places and that we're having it here. We're not afraid to say it. I mean, again, check out some podcasts. Might not have the reporting muscle. It might not have the polish of a television,

but it's out there. Yep. There's a lot of it. I would look at their emails, and I sort of knew when it was on because they would send me the press releases when they would have new shows. And I found sometimes they would have something, especially when it was those big international in scope stories

that I would perk up at and be like, that's interesting. I want to know more about that. And sometimes they'd have magazine-type pieces about pickleball or whatever it is that I just felt I had read already. Yeah. And it was almost the lag time of television, which wasn't as big a deal. In a different media age, all of a sudden, it felt very slow. It was kind of like 60 minutes feels a lot of the time now where you see something and it's either so basic that you're just like,

this is, I can find this thing you're offering me somewhere else. Yep. I saw like 60 minutes profiling David Grand. David Grand's a great writer, but I'm just like, if you want that, if you want that, you can find that conversation somewhere else in the world. We don't need 60 minutes for that. A little bit like that with Real Sports too. He was on Rosillo's podcast.

So yes. You can find it right here at the ringer.com. I saw people referring to Bryant Gumbull's habit after a piece had aired of writing on those legal pads. Remember they would always come back to the studio and he'd be sitting across from the correspondent and he'd have the legal pad in front of him. Oh yeah. Oh, yes. And he'd always have a few more questions just to tack on. It always reminded me of being called into your editor's office, which I've not been that many times in my life just to talk about something.

But I was listening to an interview he did with Rich Eisen and he would still not reveal what was he was writing on the legal pads. Like that's a state secret for Brian Gumbull. He's like, I've been asked about it many times. I've never talked about. I'm not going to start talking about it now. But the answer was not just questions, like note ideas that occurred to me while watching? The answer must be that,

but he is not ready to say that. He could be drawing, like funny pictures or whatever. Doing like those people you meet on the beach doing caricatures of people who sit for them. Other big goodbye we have, David, is Chris Mortensen. Oh, yeah.

ESPN NFL insider announced last week that he is retiring. In fact, he had retired after covering the draft this spring. Chris Mortensen got to ESPN in 1991. And one of the things about having covered this business for a while is I'm always, I always looked at those numbers. You had a Bobbley that was 1979. Chris Fowler, who's still there.

It's 1987. You just have this group, Berman goes back to 79 or 80. You just have this group of people. that were lifers at ESPN, basically, that had this huge career there. I wonder how many more of those will ever see again.

Chris Mortensen was a participant in, to me, one of the more underrated moments in ESPN history, which is 2009. Mort, as he was universally known, was the NFL insider at ESPN. Right? You do those little sports center things, you know, where you'd have a couple of notes.

speaking of different media ages. He was breaking news and all that stuff. And in 2009, ESPN says, we want to hire Adam Schaefter, who basically does the exact same job you do from the NFL network. We want to hire another NFL inside. Now, let us say there have been times

in the history of sports writing where the person who was in the Mord seat might have said, uh-uh. No. And people have told me that he had enough juice at ESPN at that time, that he probably could have nixed that or at least, you know, offered a very, very, very, very weighty opinion about that. But he didn't.

He blessed the Schefter hiring. And as Schefter told me years later, they go out to a steak dinner in 2009 and decide to rule the galaxy of NFL scoops together. Uh-huh. We're going to work together and we're going to work together. and we're going to get them all. And guess what happened? ESPN owned the NFL scoop business

and still owns the NFL scoop business more than a decade later. Really, really fascinating moment. It tells you what kind of guy Mort was. The other thing about Mort that fascinates me is he's an insider, but he was also like Wojj and like Schefter and a number of these other people,

a newspaper guy before the term insider was really in circulation. His day, it was just, It's like, I'm an NFL reporter at a paper. And this is the day before you could read all the papers online in the country. So Dallas had an NFL insider and Washington, D.C. had an NFL insider. New York had one. And he was the Atlanta NFL insider, the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

And years ago, I called up some of his old coworkers and one of them told me that he would sit in the office. This is the days when journalists actually came to the office. And he'd pick up the phone in his line to his source. on the other end was tell me something I don't know. Every time. Tell me something I don't know. That's great, which is fantastic. The other thing he did was he would go into the sports editor's office every year

because the sports editor at the AJC had a list of the raises he gave out to the sports department. Of course, this was private information because, you know, you did not want sports writer A to know how. much extra money sports writer B got. And Mort, every year would delicately acquire this document, make a copy of it, and put it in his desk. And then when somebody else came to him angry about a raise, you know,

or pissed off or jealous at somebody else in the department, he would be able to look at the document and tell them exactly how much everybody else in the department was making. Wow. There are insiders and then there were insiders. Oh, yeah. Farewell to Mort.

Did you get a chance to look at this rotten tomatoes piece that everybody was talking about that was in Vulture? Yeah. By Lane Brown. Mm-hmm. We need to have a category of piece that we wish we'd have written the Department of Envy, something like that. Because it was a really good story. and Brown specifically reported on this publicity company that represents movies and seeks out critics to review the movies.

According to his sources, sometimes even may pay the critic to review a movie. And then what happens is the Rotten Tomato score for that movie gets goose because they've added critics to the pool. Yeah. But the underlying point of the story really was the way an algorithm has replaced a critic, both for the movie companies,

which count on this kind of stuff, to get people in the theater, and then for people like you and me. Because I would love to say that I seek out my favorite movie critics when I'm thinking about going to the theater once in a while to see a movie. But do I just Google the movie and look at the Rotten Tomato score? Well, I probably do more than I'd like to admit.

Sure. Sure. I mean, if you look at the score at all, I think most of the movies I see now are untethered from critical response. I guess there's an opportunity, if there's a chance that if the response has been just so universally bad, that that would deter me from going. I think it's more like, actually, the theater might be the wrong thing, right? Isn't it when it gets to Netflix? And it looks like an artie movie that you don't remember Sean and Amanda talking about? Oh, sure. And if it's like a 47% on Rotten Tomatoes or less, you're just like, there's just no way.

I'm not going to waste my time. There was one the other day that was about Edgar Allan Poe that Christian Bale was in. I don't think Christian Bail was playing Edgar Allan Poe, but he was teaming up with Edgar Allen Poe to solve a mystery.

I may have completely wrong. I saw that movie. The bluest eye, I believe it's called. Yeah, that's based on a novel. Yeah. That was a rotten tomatoes for me because I'm just like, is this good?

This sounds really interesting. Yeah. Sounds like my kind of movie, but was this good? And I just totally missed it because you miss stuff these days? Yeah. Or does this actually really suck and, you know, everybody hated it?

And that's why it's, it has just a cool little picture on Netflix. That's definitely a rotten tomatoes moment. It's a great question. The point Lane's making in this piece, even if he doesn't say it explicitly, except in a few places, is you're better off sticking with a critic. You should do the old school thing of finding somebody you like, finding somebody whose taste you admire that you're happily willing to disagree with

but that you respect and reading them. Yeah. And using that as your guide to the movies. Because the algorithm. I know and it sounds simple and old fashion but it's like the easy to access thing

may not be saying what you think it says. Yeah. It's true. You know, and he talked about how like the baseline Rotten Tomatoes score has just gone up because they've let lots of different people into the pool, which in the one sense is a good thing because as you and I know, somebody who starts to substack could be just as good as somebody who's credentialed and on a paper.

I know. When you're actually looking at the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, it makes you feel a little bit of hope for the industry that we work in, right? You get me, something you'll just be like, and there's all these outlets are just paying people to review movies? This is crazy. Yeah. Well, it turns out not necessarily. so, but there you go. All right, it's time for David Schumaker guess is a strain pun headline. Yeah. No algorithm necessary for this.

Last Monday's headline, David, about the liberal enjoyment of Trump's latest arrest was Mug Schadenfreude, Mug Schottenfreude, I should say. Today's headline comes from alert listener, The Laundry. It's from Puck. A French company, David, has taken over a majority stake in the agency CAA. I could give you the full Matt Bellany read out there, but I think that's all you need. A French company takes a majority stake in CAA.

What was Puck's strain pun headline? We. What don't we think of the most basic French phrases we know? I know. I'm trying to think of French words. Parley vu Francais. Okay, here we go. Keep going.

Parle vu CAA. Parleu CAA. There we go. See how easy that was? Yeah. I did not put that in the Zoom chat, folks. David came up with that all by his own self. My son likes to say.

He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Eduardo Ocampo. Thank you, Eduardo. I'm back later this week. Shoemaker and I on Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.