Vice President Kamala Harris recently sat down with MSNBC’s Al Sharpton for a two-part interview. The first installment did not receive rave reviews from 1210 WPHT host Rich Zeoli.
“Al Sharpton gave a suck-up sit-down interview to Vice President Kamala Harris on his low-rated Saturday afternoon program Politics Nation,” The Rich Zeoli Show host said Monday. “Dozens of people tuned in. The second half won’t air until August 26. She may go into a little bit of withdrawal. You know what I mean?”
Zeoli later mocked an answer given by the Vice President. After Sharpton asked what the first thing she thinks about in the morning is, she replied “Our democracy”.
“You’re so full of crap. This is why people don’t like you. Because nobody believes that. Nobody believes that,” argued Zeoli. “I wake up in the morning — first thing I think about, I mean, honestly, the first thing I think of — is the coffee, man. That is the immediate first thought that comes to my head. Don’t talk to me until I’ve had a cup of coffee. I’m not addicted to it.”
On Wednesday, August 23rd, anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum will moderate the event from Milwaukee. The two-hour debate will be broadcast from 9:00-11:00 PM ET.
The network has announced a bevy of shoulder programming to accompany its debate coverage. A special 30-minute edition of Jesse Watters Primetime will precede the event. Also, a half-hour airing of America’s Newsroom with Dana Perino and Bill Hemmer will lead into the debate. Fox News commentators Brit Hume, Karl Rove, Kellyanne Conway, Trey Gowdy, and Harold Ford Jr. will appear on the network’s pre-debate coverage.
After the debate’s conclusion, Hannity will air at a special 11:00 PM ET window, with post-debate analysis live from Milwaukee.
In addition to airing on Fox News, Fox Business Network, and Fox News Audio, the debate will also stream live on FOX Nation. Fox & Friends Weekend host Pete Hegseth will anchor pre and post-debate coverage, while Will Cain, Sean Duffy, and Tammy Bruce will also contribute to the streamer’s coverage.
Sage Steele has left ESPN. The SportsCenter host took to X Tuesday morning to announce that she had settled her lawsuit with the network and has decided to move on.
“I have decided to leave so I can exercise my first amendment rights more freely,” Steele wrote. “I am grateful for so many wonderful experiences over the past 16 years and am excited for my next chapter!”
Steele has been at ESPN since March of 2007. In addition to SportsCenter, she also anchored NBA Countdown for the network and contributed to coverage of The Masters and the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Working for Disney also gave her the opportunity to host programs for ABC including the Miss America pageant and several editions of The View.
An outspoken conservative, Steele had drawn the ire of the network and her colleagues for comments made about Covid-19 and President Obama’s heritage during a 2021 appearance on the podcast Uncut with Jay Cutler.
She was off the air shortly after that. While she was diagnosed with Covid-19, she and her lawyers filed suit against the network claiming that she was the victim of bullying and had prime assignments taken away from her in the wake of the backlash to her comments.
Sage Steele is now a free agent in the media space. She will certainly have options. Outkick founder Clay Travis has been outspoken in his belief that she should land at FOX News.
LaDainian Tomlinson is calling it quits in the media business. The NFL Network analyst announced his retirement Monday night via Twitter.
“I’d like to send my sincere appreciation and thanks to @nflnetwork for 10 great years!!” Tomlinson wrote. “Thanks to all my colleagues and friends. It was a blast being able to stay close to the game [and] creating great football shows with you guys. I look forward to all the opportunities that this new chapter in my life will bring!!”
Tomlinson played eleven seasons in the NFL with the Chargers and Jets. He was a six-time All-Pro selection and was named league MVP in 2006. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2017.
He joined NFL Network since 2012, immediately after his playing career ended. He appeared on First on the Field, NFL Total Access and other network shows.
Outside of NFL Network, Tomlinson also covered the Chargers. During the preseason, he was part of the team’s television broadcast.
Occasionally, someone will leave a lasting impression so undeniable that everyone following them is compared to them. In conservative talk radio, that person is Rush Limbaugh. On Monday, Salem broadcaster Chris Stigall reiterated that Limbaugh left an unforgettable impression on the talk format and the world.
“Here’s what I have found to be true. The death of Rush Limbaugh left an indelible hole in all our hearts who loved him as a communicator and a broadcaster, and as a part of our lives for the 30 years he was doing shows,” Stigall said. “He was also this central hub. He was sort of the community watering hole, if you will, for all the Serengeti of conservatives.”
Chris Stigall said not everybody agreed with Rush, but he was the leading authority of conservatism.
“He was the McDonald’s of conservatism,” Stigall said. “Billions and billions served. Everybody else was Five Guys, Burger King, and Wendy’s. They were doing their thing. I’m not saying that they didn’t make a good product, but everybody understood that there was still McDonald’s, and Rush was McDonald’s.”
Like Limbaugh’s impact, Stigall said Tucker Carlson became a rallying point for conservatives when he had his show on Fox News.
“A lot of the conversation was driven by Tucker, his healthy skepticism, his challenging of authority, questioning conventional wisdom, and then Fox [News] fired Tucker,” Stigall added. “Yes, millions of people have followed Tucker over to Twitter, but it’s always different when someone goes to social media. There isn’t a thing anymore where people gather around.”
Stigall said the idea of appointment listening or viewing is gone. He said since Tucker’s firing, he’s heard from numerous people who miss tuning into Tucker to hear what he wanted to share.
“I’m talking about a national figure,” he added. “I’m grateful you’re here, and I do my best, but I don’t hold myself out to be those guys, and I’m not trying to be. I miss them too; I would go to them for their takes.”
Chris Stigall said there are a lot of personalities doing things for clicks, likes, and shares because that’s the only way people in broadcast media can make any money now.
“I am thrilled that the bulk of my career was before that, and in this new space that we’re in now, where everybody is like, ‘Look at me,’ I am probably never going to succeed at the level that some of my colleagues do because I don’t have it in me.”
He clarified that he doesn’t want to wake up every day and project imminent doom for his audience.
“I readily admit that’s what’s selling now, I readily admit that’s what’s getting clicks now, I readily admit that’s the way the world works now, and it’s a ride that, while I’m not getting off it, I’m coming closer to the station than I am just boarding the ride.”
The 18-month stretch from when Michael Smith learned that his edition of SportsCenter with Jemele Hill was being canceled to the time he reached a buyout with ESPN was pivotal in his career. When the network first branded the show, it stressed that it would differ from other SportsCenter programs in that it would explore the intersection of sports, culture and society. Upon its launch, Smith and Hill became the first Black duo to regularly host the program, but it quickly received a deluge of criticism from external viewers and those at the company. Social media users began calling the program “WokeCenter” and began to associate the “Worldwide Leader” with interpolating political discourse and commentary within a program that, at its core, pertains to sports.
Smith, however, knows that the show was ahead of its time and sees how other networks have used it as a template to create impactful programming. The duo added segments throughout the show that differed from what the audience was accustomed to, including unconventional interviews and whiparound discussions. Sports, to them, meant more than just reading the scores of the game or reviewing the Top 10 moments of the day.
“It was very difficult because I knew what we were doing, and I knew that the loudest voices and the loudest critics of what we were doing weren’t watching the show,” Smith said. “But they had different agendas – they had different political and social agendas – and they weren’t really watching what we were doing.”
While Hill began reporting for The Atlantic in early 2018 and reached a buyout with ESPN later that year, Smith’s future was somewhat in limbo. He recognized the power of the brand and took some time to ponder over what could be next. After all, Smith never intended to make it on television, instead studying journalism at Loyola University in New Orleans. There is a chance that none of it would have happened if not for the behest of his high school English teacher, who encouraged him to apply for an internship at The Times-Picayune.
“The business kind of found me more than I found it,” Smith said, “but once I did find it, I found a lot of joy in storytelling and being able to really examine the personalities and the processes behind the people and the teams that I cared about.”
All throughout college, Smith maintained a presence at The Times-Picayune while also contributing to his school publication as a sports editor. Eventually, Smith was brought on to work nights on The Times-Picayune’s copy desk as a night editor, which he feels gave him his best writing experience over his formative years. Cognizant of the invaluable aspect of being versatile, Smith also interned with the local CBS television station where he solely logged tape.
“I was a print major – that was my concentration – so I never thought about going into television, but even that internship with CBS while I was in college gave me some behind-the-scenes experience that turned out to be valuable,” Smith explained. “It also just allows you to meet people and connect with people. It’s not just for résumé purposes and not just even for reference purposes, but you just never know who you’re going to cross paths with again down the road.”
When it came time to graduate and find a full-time position, Smith had an advantage over others in that he had been galvanized to accrue deft professional experience as a student. Because he interned for two summers with The Boston Globe and, once again, left a good impression on the staff, he was offered a job to cover the New England Patriots. As an avid football fan, it was an opportunity Smith could not turn down – even if it meant he would be backing up one of the locale’s most prominent sportswriters.
Nick Cafardo was the primary Red Sox reporter for The Boston Globe and led coverage of the Patriots when the schedules did not overlap. Cafardo was unique in that he consistently demonstrated a sense of humility and worked with Smith rather than trying to bring him down.
“Not only did he welcome me on the Patriots beat; he made space for me and empowered me on the Patriots beat,” Smith said of Cafardo. “I liked to approach it every day like I was the beat guy, but I started out as his backup. He didn’t treat me like his backup at all; he empowered me to cover the beat and share it with him. I’ll never forget that.”
The future of local journalism as we know it is very much in a perilous state, accentuated by reporter layoffs and quarterly losses. The New York Times Company purchased The Athletic in early 2022, and it is now set to utilize it for all sports coverage in lieu of a dedicated section in The New York Times. Moreover, the Los Angeles Times announced that it is transitioning its sports section to resemble a magazine, focused on deeper storytelling rather than daily news. The industry is in the midst of a paradigm shift, which was evidenced from Smith’s first day at The Boston Globe that happened to coincide with its sales to The New York Times Company.
When Smith was a reporter, he quickly discerned how TV networks were beginning to equip print reporters to provide context and become parts of programming. His first television appearance came at just 23 years old on Around the Horn, the roundtable debate show hosted by Tony Reali. Smith was able to give his opinions on various topics and back them up with facts, which helped him appeal to the audience.
Since he dislikes the sound of his voice, Smith neglected to watch tape and instinctively knew where he needed to improve in order to have more chances to appear on television. It led to more opportunities on other ESPN programming, such as The Sports Reporters and E:60.
As Smith’s profile elevated at ESPN, the opportunities he received became even more prominent, culminating in hosting the 6 p.m. edition of SportsCenter with Hill. Upon that program’s cancellation though, he began to feel as if he was no longer valued or wanted at ESPN, which led to him negotiating a buyout and leaving the “Worldwide Leader.” The harrowing 18-month process induced sentiments of bitterness and uncertainty with a glimmer of hope clandestine beneath the surface.
“I always felt like a part of it, but to be ostracized and to be viewed internally, or at least it felt like I was, [as] radioactive was difficult,” Smith said. “At a certain point I was just like, ‘You know what? It’s time for me to take my career into my own hands and take back control of my own story and author a new chapter.’”
For the first time in his professional career, Smith was a bonafide free agent – and he was not necessarily looking to join a traditional media entity. Instead, Smith took steps towards becoming an entrepreneur, which started by joining two startup companies in different roles. He first joined (co)laboratory, a sports media content factory based in Los Angeles to oversee its content production and dissemination; however, the role only ended up lasting for seven weeks before complications forced the company to shutter.
The spin-off startup company, game1, made Smith one of its partners, along with film producer Basil Iwanyk and Greg Economou. Early on, the brand inked content partnerships with NBA all-star guard James Harden and famed racecar driver Danica Patrick, and it has since continued to produce distinct content. After about a year with the brand, Smith felt ready to start a new, independent media venture and grow it from scratch.
“I look at both of those startup experiences as successes personally because it taught me and showed me the ropes, more or less, on how to do this myself,” Smith said. “I’m not saying I have all the answers – by no means – but it gave me the perspective, the insight, the experience and confidence to go at it on my own and start my own company.”
Smith partnered with entertainment lawyer Terrence Williams and entrepreneur Dwayne Bernal to create Inflection Point Entertainment. The name of the company was deviated from the Henry Crown Fellowship Program within the Aspen Institute, which recruits classes of business and community leaders at inflection points in their lives and careers. Smith is a member of the 2017 class of the program and is using his experience to author a climax on the palisade of persistence, remaining prescient that his efforts will pay off in the long run.
By working independently, Smith is able to do what he feels is necessary to actualize groundbreaking, distinctive content offerings amid the crowded multimedia ecosystem. Within the company’s first year, it inked a development contract with NBCUniversal’s Peacock, producing original content through the company. Smith and co-host Michael Holley began the original series Brother From Another, which streams daily on Peacock and airs on SiriusXM.
“It’s podcasted; it has a loyal YouTube following as well, but that’s more a daily talk show; that’s more in the vein of a His and Hers [or] a Pardon the Interruption,” Smith said. “It’s more that type of show with obviously a different vibe because the vibe is a reflection of me and Michael’s relationship – our brotherhood; our friendship [and] our personalities, but it’s more of a news of the day show since it’s five days a week.”
The company is beginning to see the fruits of its labor through a new partnership with iHeartMedia that launched the new Inflection Network, which features a variety of different podcast offerings ranging from fantasy football to resiliency. Charita Johnson, the former producer of the His and Hers podcast at ESPN, is leading the network, which will soon add new personalities and programs to its content lineup. For Smith, the partnership was a “no-brainer” in being able to expedite broader distribution of content and enable people to express themselves. Just as Cafardo did for him in Boston, he wants to provide opportunities for the proliferation of the space and demonstrate his magnanimity towards media’s progeny.
“I felt like it was just a natural piece of the portfolio [and] a natural vertical for this company to have,” Smith said. “We’re making feature films; we’re making scripted television series [and] we’re making documentaries. Audio content felt like just a natural play, and it’s something that I always wanted to do as a talent, which was to identify and nurture up-and-coming talent and amplify other voices that just needed the platform.”
Inflection Point Entertainment views the deal with iHeartMedia as a monumental moment in the growth of its business. The challenge in delivering consistent, premium content is in identifying a target audience and providing a valuable return on investment, expanding the metaphorical consumption profit margin. Smith and his company have eclectic interests and passions, and the evolving identity will define the scope of the undertaking.
“I’m not out to be all things to all people – that’s impossible – you can’t please all the people all the time,” Smith said. “I don’t want to be a ‘Walmart’ podcast network where everything’s under this one roof. I also didn’t want to be so specific to where I was not only putting myself in a box, but limiting both our audience and our opportunities in terms of who we work with.”
Over the course of Smith’s journalism career, his storytelling has become more nuanced and enterprised, a more deficient area than instant news reporting. It is one of the reasons he began contributing to Football Night in America on NBC last season through his series, “Gets It.” Smith, who is continuing the project for a second season, interviews NFL players, coaches and personnel who he feels “gets it,” as the name of the show indicates. He believes that the name of the show is one of the greatest compliments that can be given to sports luminaries, many of whom have consistently tried to find their own way and build a successful foundation.
“People have an insatiable appetite for information, insight and enlightenment,” Smith said. “They want to be entertained and they may not have the same level of attention span as they once did… but they still want the information.”
While helping to grow his company, Smith continued to rekindle his presence with larger media entities over the course of the last year. Ahead of its launch of Thursday Night Football, Smith signed on with Amazon Prime Video to work as a correspondent for its pregame, halftime and postgame coverage. When he first met his colleagues, he could tell that they shared a common understanding and dedication to help grow the streaming giant’s sports footprint and bring it to new heights.
In the weeks leading up to its second season on Amazon Prime Video, the NFL convened a meeting with broadcasters, producers and executives to discuss rule changes and areas of emphasis for the upcoming campaign. For its part, Amazon reviewed its performance from last season as it gears up to embark on the inaugural Black Friday game and utilizes its new flex scheduling ability, both of which are affirmations of the league’s belief in the platform. After one of the meetings, an Amazon executive told everyone, “We haven’t done shit. This is a new year,” emblematic of the collective mindset among those involved.
“It felt familiar and familial,” Smith said of the seminars. “It was like a bunch of rookies who were now going into season two or year two. Everybody’s got their feet underneath them, [and] you can just see the confidence; you could see the chemistry [and] the potential for big things in year two now that we aren’t introducing ourselves to one another.”
TB12 is different. @michaelsmith talks about the QB's journey so far this season.
Success in the industry is often judged by advertising revenue and web traffic, and while Smith understands how fundamental quantitative metrics are, it is not the reason he began working in the field. He is as dedicated to developing relationships with sources and getting to the truth as he has ever been. Standing by these bedrock principles allowed him to be more than just a reporter or a pundit in the background.
“I didn’t want to be limited by the imagination, the vision or lack thereof of somebody in some corner office,” Smith said. “I wanted to be able to not only be in control of my own story, but tell stories the way I wanted to tell them [and] own my… intellectual property as best I could.”
Inflection Point Entertainment has rapidly flourished from an idea to an investment, and its management team is poised to maintain its upward trajectory. Smith desires to be an architect and foster a place through which people can turn the corner and thrive through tergiversation and disquietude. By embracing the process of constructing a viable infrastructure, he is leading a new story where he, munificently, does not view himself as its main character. In this space, however, Smith is able to share his vision for the future to ensure that the company falls outside of the 90% of startup businesses that fail. Instead, he is focused on attaining an opulence of content and chorus of unique voices.
“I want [it] to be something that provides not only entertainment, enlightenment, information or insight to its audiences and its consumers, but I want it to be a platform for people,” Smith elucidated. “I want it to be something that tells stories the way that they need to be told for the people that need to hear them and see them.”
Charles Payne has built a reputation of being for the little guy; a man who represents Main Street much more so than Wall Street. On this point, he may be in the media minority, and he is not afraid to say so.
At the conclusion of his Friday program on the Fox Business Network, Charles Payne took the financial media at large to task, largely for forgetting who they should be looking out for.
He ended the program by recapping the saga of crypto exchange executive Sam Bankman-Fried, the jailed Democratic mega-donor who allegedly stole from investors. Payne referred to SBF as “a boy wonder Birkenstock shoe-wearing kid, who somehow pulled the wool over Silicon Valley’s eyes. And that meant they’re pulling the wool over your eyes.”
He then continued, going deeper into the elite financial media’s opinion of its viewers.
“I think this is a good time in the show, as we end it, to talk about also the role in all of this of financial media, who continue in many ways to let retail investors down. Retail investors, also known as our viewers,” Payne said. “They’ve even gone a step further in the last few years, just totally disrespecting our viewers by calling them dumb. And always, always finding a way to laugh at their expense.”
He discussed the breaking news about WeWork that he watched on CNBC late last week. The fledgling company, which offers office space solutions in cities across the country, has incurred financial losses and recent lawsuits from landlords. The New York Times quoted the company as saying, “Substantial doubt exists about the company’s ability to continue as a growing concern.”
“There was a chuckle,” Charles Payne said. “Someone commented to the effect that the stock had been beaten down so much that it was a meme stock, right? Of course, the inference was that the dummies on Main Street would now start to trade the stock higher.”
Payne said this recent media tune about the company’s stock is completely different than what they were saying just a few years ago. He said it wasn’t long ago that WeWork’s founder, Adam Neumann, was making the media rounds, giving a positive take on the company’s prospects and “selling his vision of the world.”
“He was being lauded. Absolutely lauded. Like Sam Bankman-Fried, they treated these guys like, yeah, they had the answers,” Payne recalled from 2015. “And guess what? You wanted to be part of the action. And, of course, he laid it on thick about growing up, loving a sense of community.”
The company subsequently raised $22B dollars over 23 rounds of funding and became the darlings of many Silicon Valley bigshots. The company seemed to have a promising future, and the media hype was hot. However, the company subsequently failed to pull off an IPO and problems continued to mount.
“It was obvious at that point, Wall Street knew this was a scam. That explains the reason it wasn’t an IPO at a hundred, and it was a SPAC. And the reason they rushed it. They had to get…some people had to make an exit. Remember, you’re the exit. The stench was getting so bad that everyone could smell it.”
Charles Payne, the author of the 2019 book, Unstoppable Prosperity, said it is natural for retail investors to consider investing in the stock now that it has crashed, and natural to speculate about current upside potential. And this is where he has his major problem with the media.
“This shouldn’t be the butt of jokes though, that is despicable,” Payne opined. “By the way, I would rather buy this stock at 20 cents, ok, down 99.9%, than when the media was telling me – the smart money – demanding that I buy it. Demanding that you buy it. Think about that for a moment. When this stock was extraordinarily higher, they said it was a good buy.”
He then detailed some instances over his career where beaten-down stocks were, in fact, able to rebound from the ash heap. He said everyone who invests in WeWork now knows it is a stock that has been beaten down and is in trouble.
“But when the smart money was offloading this junk and pulling the wool over Main Street’s eyes, they were saying get in there! Now you’re dumb for buying it. Same thing with economic data folks, all of this stuff. It just never changes.”
Charles Payne concluded by doubling down on his promise to stand for the retail investor, regardless of what elite media and corporate puppet masters have to say.
“It really is unfortunate that you watch us to learn, for guidance, and the best you can get sometimes out of us is to dis you. To diss you, ironically enough, for buying the crap that was foisted on you by the brilliant folks on Wall Street and often their talking mouths, their talking heads that work for them, not for you. I work for you, ok. I want you to do well. I’m not always right. Believe me, this is a humbling business. But I can tell you right now, you should never be called dumb money again.”
The Johnny Manziel Netflix documentary Untold: Johnny Football has become one of the hot new titles released on the streaming service. But while 98.5 The Sports Hub host Marc Bertrand said he was entertained watching the doc, he took all that was presented with a grain of salt.
On Monday, Bertrand’s Zolak & Bertrand co-host Scott Zolak said he really liked the documentary. He liked that it told a story that was corroborated by virtually everyone interviewed.
Zolak added that people bought the story that Manziel came from money, when in actuality his parents didn’t have a ton of money. He made his money from doing card shows signing autographs.
Bertrand felt like the documentary was a bit disingenuous, and Manziel’s former Texas A&M coach Kliff Kingsbury came off looking the worst.
“I think the biggest fraud going is Kliff Kingsbury, and he exposed himself in the documentary in yet another way, which is to admit that he stopped coaching Johnny Manziel after Week 1 of that first season,” he said. “That Manziel would be better by letting him just play backyard football. OK, so that wasn’t Kliff Kingsbury’s doing. All the praise that Kliff Kingsbury got at Texas Tech was, ‘Oh, guess what, Patrick Mahomes is the man.'”
“He sucks. That guy is a fraud. He’s not any good,” Bertrand added. “And not only that, does he understand how big of a dirtbag he sounds like when it’s like, ‘Yeah, we knew Johnny was a total lunatic and couldn’t keep it together. But we knew he’d show up on gameday.'”
Bertrand went on to say that ultimately the whole story felt completely one-sided.
“It was just Johnny Manziel telling his story,” he said. “This is not like some highly accurate account of everything that went on. This is Johnny’s version of what went on.”
Johnny Football is the first of a new season of Untold documentaries for Netflix.
Two months after the shuttering of TSN 1260, sports talk radio is returning to the airwaves of Edmonton.
The Nation Network and Just A Game Productions have partnered to flip what was known as Stingray Oldies to Sports 1440. The change will be effective September 5.
“We understand the importance of sports in the lives of people in the Edmonton area,” program director Jackie Rae Greening said. “With Sports 1440 on the AM dial, fans can once again get their daily dose of sports content, expert analysis and passionate discussions that they’ve been missing.”
The station will feature live and local programming every day from 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Mountain time. Former 1260 host Jason Gregor will have the reins in afternoon drive.
“It is wonderful to be part of the group bringing sports talk radio back to the Capital region,” Gregor said. “Sports connects us in many ways and I felt there was a big void to fill. Edmonton is an extremely passionate sports market and a very giving community. We will focus on sports and mix in some charitable components.”
The big news out of ESPN last week was that the network was partnering with Penn Entertainment to launch a branded sportsbook later this year. But it turns out The Worldwide Leader could have milked the cash cow for a bit more than what they got.
Reporting from Front Office Sports indicated ESPN only got about half of what it originally sought when trying to ink a 10-year deal to launch a sportsbook. The deal ESPN struck with Penn is worth about $2 billion over the next decade.
ESPN had reportedly been in talks with other potential partners, but it appeared the network wasn’t going to get the deal it wanted.
The goal for ESPN and Penn becomes gaining a larger market share in the sportsbook space. Currently, FanDuel and DraftKings dominate the market share across the country. Penn believes through this ESPN partnership that a 20% market share can be achieved in the next four years.
