The Media Odyssey

Marion Ranchet: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Media Odyssey podcast. That is Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: And that is Marion Ranchet.

Marion Ranchet: We're back at home recording this week's episode. And boy, we have a lot of ground to cover. We're gonna be talking about Jimmy Kimmel and I'm gonna use Evan to actually explain to everyone you know what's really behind this, right?

Because beyond just the commentary about what happened, I think we need to understand in a bit more detail, maybe, what does the FCC do and why we ended up where we are.

Having said that, it says a lot about what's going on within the media ecosystem in the US and it's hard not to think about Paramount going after Warner Bros.

And of course to make it even fun, more fun for us, we got potentially Netflix in the bid. So we're gonna be covering that and much more on this week's episode.[00:01:00]

Alright, Evan, so I will give you the floor because of course, I've read a lot about what happened last week, this past week around, Jimmy Kimmel being fired, then reinstated. I think we could use, a bit of that explanation on the regulation behind it all. What does the FCC can actually do? Who's this guy Brandon Carr? Tell us, teach us.

Evan Shapiro: Sure. It's interesting. I was actually in Turkey when I found out about Kimmel being yanked off the air. So what happened was Charlie Kirk who runs a political action committee called Turning Point USA, which is really focused on young people on the right taking their voices and their power to elect officials and change policies.

And he is been very effective. Agree with his point of view, don't agree with his point of view. He's been enormously effective in changing points of view within the Republican Party and as a [00:02:00] political activist one of the most vocal supporters of the current president of the United States, who shall go nameless.

He also became enormously popular without the benefit of more traditional media. He has a podcast and a radio show, but it's much more of a podcast on something called Salem Media. He has around somewhere between 500 and 700,000 downloads or listeners per week.

Marion Ranchet: Whoa.

Evan Shapiro: Not a million, not 10 million. He's not on broadcast television, but he became a political movement unto himself as a very young man. He started in his early teens actually doing all this stuff.

And then he was killed. He was murdered by someone who was clearly unhinged for what seems to be unclear motives, it is very confusing. There are people who are saying that he's aligned with the right. There are people who are saying he's aligned with the left. There's a lot of confusing things about his personal communication, so I'm not gonna wait into that 'cause I don't know what the facts are, to be blunt.

But he was slain unfortunately killed [00:03:00] with a gun, which is a problem in the United States. Then he became a kind of cultural icon almost over overnight. For or against him, he became this, the flashpoint of conversation globally.

A couple days later, Jimmy Kimmel went on air and made some commentary about how the people on the right in the MAGA movement were trying to A, distance themselves from the killer, and B, use the killing itself as a political tool to gain political advantage.

That created a firestorm in and of itself. Now it should be noted, Jimmy Kimmel has been very political on this late night talk show for a number of years now, since the first time the current president ran for president in 2016. So this is nothing new. And he didn't say anything unusual compared to what he said in the past.

But Brendan Carr, who is the head of the Federal Communications Commission, which is the regulatory body that governs broadcast television, importantly, it covers [00:04:00] broadcast radio and television.

It does not cover, pay TV, it does not cover certain other aspects of it does not cover YouTube. It does not cover the laws of YouTube. Except, and unless companies wanna merge and at that point, if American companies want to merge and consolidate voice and limit the number of voices in the marketplace, then the FCC can get involved and can block that merger or approve that merger as they just did with the Paramount-Skydance merger a couple of months ago.

They also have the ability to penalize local broadcast affiliates or national broadcasters, either on radio or television if they break certain regulations. For example, you're not allowed to say the word fuck on broadcast television.

Marion Ranchet: There you go, you've said it.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, but I can say it. We're not governed.

Marion Ranchet: We're on YouTube.

Evan Shapiro: Exactly. We're not governed by those rules, however, if you say fuck or you show nudity or you show certain other acts or [00:05:00] say certain words. The most famous case is George Carlin's seven dirty words you can't say on television. And it created a firestorm and a set of lawsuits and action by the FCC a long time ago, which ended in fines, right?

So usually, for a violation actually factually for a violation, if the FCC chair believes that there are violations they have to file an NAL a notice of violations, then the person who is accused or the company that is accused of those violations has a window to respond.

If the chair then decides that response is not adequate, they can then penalize, usually through fines. Every instance is usually a $250,000 fine. So it can add up. If the person says fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. That's a million dollars, right?

Marion Ranchet: Man we're gonna be broke. Stop.

Evan Shapiro: But also in the instance of a broadcast affiliates the FCC could actually find not just A, B, C for the violation, but then each affiliate.[00:06:00] For the violation for rebroadcast. So that could add up to millions, tens of millions of dollars.

But then after that decision, if they decide that the response is not adequate and the chair wants to continue to penalize them, then the accused, in this case it would be the Walt Disney Company, has the a chance to appeal that first to the US Court of Appeals in Washington dc which has often found against the current administration.

And then if they lose there, they can appeal it all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States. It should be note, so Jimmy Kimmel said these things. Brendan Carr, who also is responsible for writing the chapter in Project 2025, which is the strategy document that guided the current president's campaign for president and is guiding almost all of the actions they've taken since. He wrote the chapter in 20, the project 2025 on the FCC and how it was too harsh on voices from the right and that it needed to be transformed.

He's also someone who is gone [00:07:00] after, waging lawsuits against broadcasters and other outlets in the US because he deemed them not sufficiently behind the president of the United States.

He went on some podcast and said if Jimmy Kimmel isn't fired, we're gonna have to take action. He wasn't exactly clear on what that action would be, but it's very clear what he meant because the only actions he can take are either fines were a re-evocation of licenses, and he named ABC and also the affiliates associated with that.

Minutes later, Nexstar, which is the largest broadcast affiliate in the United States. So they own local stations in cities across the country, some of which run ABC some of which run NBC, some of which run Fox and some of which run CBS. But he said, or they said, Nexstar said that they would take Jimmy Kimmel off the air [00:08:00] if Disney refused to. They would refuse to re-broadcast it in their markets. And then Sinclair, which is another major affiliate owner in the United States, also said that they would take it off.

Now, it should be noted that both of those companies have deals that need approval. That are currently sitting in front of Brendan Carr, the head of the FCC.

So he goes on and he says That's a very nice merger there, be ashamed if something happened to it. And then Nexstar announced that they're gonna yank the show and then Disney after a very short period of time, like hours later, yanked the show suspended Jimmy Kimmel indefinitely.

Then there was a huge backlash. All of the people from the Avengers movies, all these famous people, said that they were canceling Disney plus. Tom Hanks came out against it. Michael Eisner, the former head of Disney, came out against it. People who had never seen Jimmy Kimmel, it should be noted, Jimmy Kimmel gets about [00:09:00] one and a half, lower than 2 million people a night on his broadcast show, he gets many more, tens of millions more views on YouTube in clips, but his actual audience on television is relatively small. It's one half of 1% of the American population.

But people who have never watched him on television or never even watched him at all we're canceling their Disney Plus subscriptions, canceling their Hulu subscriptions, canceling their ESPN subscriptions, canceling their tickets to Disneyland and Disney World.

The market capitalization of Disney fell by $4 billion in about a day and a half.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Of course they went against the First Amendment, right?

Evan Shapiro: Yes. They absolutely went against the First Amendment, and they did so exclusively for their own financial interests. They didn't do so because Kimmel actually violated any FCC regulations that I can find. I can't find any. He didn't say something that was factually incorrect. [00:10:00] He didn't say a curse word. He didn't do a sex act. There was no violation that could be found.

And even if he had the penalty, would be a fine. It would never be a revocation. That's my personal opinion, but it's very well educated by the history of the FCC.

They've never revoked a license for something like this. They have fined companies if there was a found a violation. But if you read the regulations which are available online on the FCC's website. There was no violation that I can find. So they decided, go ahead.

Marion Ranchet: And you wouldn't fire, you wouldn't fire anyone without investigating.

So when they actually

Evan Shapiro: He was suspended. He was not fired. He was suspended.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. So that was my question. So he was suspended? Yeah, but so it's not like they said suspended until further investigation.

Evan Shapiro: No, they said indefinitely. Yeah, they said indefinitely. And so there was all this backlash and then it became very clear that Disney was desperate to fix this. They realized that they fucked up. Yeah. [00:11:00] And they started negotiating with Kimmel's team.

I have written numerous times, especially on a substack piece I wrote this week that this would be. I don't understand why Jimmy Kimmel goes back. I don't. I don't. I cannot conceive. I know the people who run his production company. I said this to them personally, I do not understand why you would agree to go back. First of all, broadcast is dying. Late night on broadcast is absolutely dying. But on top of that, why would you submit yourself to the whims and obviously biased actions of the FCC Chair ever again?

And I compared Jimmy, so Jimmy got his start hosting a show First Win Ben Stein's money, but then a really kind of crass show called The Man Show on Comedy Central. A long time ago he was replaced by Joe Rogan, right? So both of them have subsequently left that show. Jimmy Kimmel went to host Jimmy Kimmel live on ABC he's made about a quarter of a billion dollars in salary over the last 20 some odd 25 [00:12:00] years in hosting that show. A nice living right?

Yeah, but his audience has declined.

Marion Ranchet: I'll think that.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it's not bad. But his audience has declined every year. He, it peaked, in the 0s and in the early teens. But then it's been on a steep decline ever since because the whole of broadcast has declining, and late night in particular is in steep decline.

Joe Rogan, on the other hand, hosts a podcast, which is not regulated at all by the FCC because if it was, he would've been fined multiple times for just absolute bullshit. Just conspiracy theories and curse words and all these other kind of things. But he made in his last year as an independent podcaster, in his last year as an independent podcaster, Joe Rogan made $30 million a year in advertising. He then signed a quarter of a billion dollar deal with Spotify, and then renewed that for another $200 million a couple of years later. So just from Spotify, he's made $450 million.

Marion Ranchet: Because he's exclusive to them?

Evan Shapiro: He's, no, you can, yes, he's exclusive to Spotify, but [00:13:00] he, but they distribute him widely and they sell a lot of his advertising, but not all of his advertising. But, during the height of COVID, he was accused of, basically misleading people about vaccines.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: And not only was the FCC never involved, Spotify never even came close to firing him, despite many protestations.

Neil young took his music off of Spotify to protest Joe Rogan's podcast and Spotify's like "bye Neil." And then, by the way, Neil came back.

He has never been in danger from anything he's ever said. He's never lost an advertiser because of anything he's ever said. And he's made probably well north of a half a billion dollars over the same period of time that Jimmy Kimmel made a quarter of a billion dollars. Yeah, so two x.

He also gets about 10 times the size audience of Jimmy every week. More than 11 million people a week. And one could argue that both of them are very political, but Joe Rogan decided the last presidential [00:14:00] election. I think most people in the United States believe that that last interview with Trump that last week

Marion Ranchet: Made a difference was

Evan Shapiro: Was one of the deciding factors in the presidential election.

Jimmy Kimmel, for all his ranting and raving against the current orange president of the United States has never changed anything. This guy has been president twice. Despite Kimmel's kind of, deep and vocal and loud protestations for the behaviors of this man, he never has changed the outcome of an election.

So I don't understand why he's turning down more money, more audience, and more power by going direct to the audience on platforms like YouTube or Spotify as opposed to sticking with ABC, which is a broadcast network, which is a dying format on late night television, which is a dying format. And not just take his power up and then be free to say whatever the hell he wants to on creator platform.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, because that's the thing.

Evan Shapiro: That's the shortest version of the story I [00:15:00] could tell.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. How do you go back after that and keep doing your job without being, without fearing, that you could get suspended or fire or whatever else again. So in terms of that creativity is so again, he's being, I don't know, silenced in a way, in ways he's gonna say or not.

Evan Shapiro: This is a microcosm of everything that we've talked about. Has there ever been anything like this in France? Like Charlie Hebdo that whole terrorists shooting there, like that was instigated by the cartoon that they put on the cover.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. No we're trying to do the opposite of you guys. That is to remove people who are actually causing arm to, freedom of speech, pluralism, et cetera, et cetera.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah.

Marion Ranchet: Because you mentioned Charlie Hebdo, which is interesting because what happened was last week a journalist I think on the radio, I can't remember which station, he wrote a mini piece. And he used the term, We Are Charlie.

And we are Charlie was [00:16:00] actually linked to Charlie Hebdo, right? So when Charlie Abdo happened, it was our way of saying, everyone is Charlie Hebdo. We're all Charlie.

The only thing is that this time around, he made the comment about Charlie Kirk, which honestly for us represent the opposite of Charlie Hebdo.

So this, he melded the two. And that was like a oosh moment. And, but what did he do? No one fired him. He just apologized and said that he shouldn't have said what he what he said that it was a poor choice of words and comparison, no one got fired.

Evan Shapiro: Yesterday it was announced that Disney and Kimmel had made a deal for him to go back on air tonight. Yeah. This is Tuesday, September 23rd. So I forgot that part of it. Disney yesterday announced that the suspension is lifted. Although they are "very upset about the things that he said on the television. They were wrongly timed and insensitive."

And remember he didn't make any comments about [00:17:00] Charlie Kirk. He commented on the killer.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: That's really a major difference in it. So now he's going back on air. So your point was about him going back on air.

Marion Ranchet: You're saying I don't understand why he is going back and I think okay, I'm, let's say I'm in his shoes. You are not putting this business that you've been working on for 20 years all of a sudden find a new home and crash it.

So my thinking is he's being pragmatic for him and his team, potentially, and all of those families, living from that show. He's doing that now, but thinking about what's gonna happen later.

We don't have, do we know anything about the terms of that deal? Is it like, he's back, and therefore the deal he has right now is up until XYZ?

I've been thinking that it's preparing the future, right? If I were him, I would maybe go back. It's when you are in a bad relationship or in a bad job, for a moment you endure. Then you prepare your plan for what [00:18:00] happens next.

Like this grand gesture of saying, I'm gonna say fuck on this podcast, fuck them all. I'm gonna do my own thing. I don't buy that. I don't think that's pragmatic. Not today.

Evan Shapiro: I see what you're saying. And he is this is a guy during the writer strike that paid his staff out of his own pocket.

Marion Ranchet: Yep.

Evan Shapiro: During COVID, he took care of people like he is a notably generous, thoughtful employer and human. That is a universally accepted truth. I can't say the same for Joe Rogan or Brendan Carr.

Marion Ranchet: I know.

Evan Shapiro: That said, if he were to go to Netflix tomorrow, there's no question they would make him a deal that probably is as lucrative and help him keep a lot of those people employed.

But it should be noted that Mr. Beast has a massive operation. Joe Rogan doesn't have a massive operation. He records in his basement, which probably smells like shit. And he doesn't have a massive team. But you look at other folks who operate Mythical Entertainment has a massive [00:19:00] production company. Dude Perfect has a massive production company.

If Jimmy Kimmel wanted to go out and raise money to start his, and by the way, he's entwined with Wheelhouse. So Kimmel Lott, his production company, is part of a much larger Brent Montgomery's production company houses his production company. They're in partnership together. They have multiple shows on the TV. And so there, someone would help him fund what would be necessary to keep a version of that show alive.

One would argue that perhaps that version of that show has passed his expiration date. Do you really need that big an operation? Do you really need that big a band? Do you really need Guillermo? Yes, you need Guillermo. He's his comic foil, but my larger comment would be there's a version of this show where most of those people stay employed and can continue to operate.

But more importantly, you know what it says about freedom of speech. He's not gonna be able ever to say the word fuck on his show. He's not, [00:20:00] he's going to be, the Disney standards and practices team will be on set every single day from this point forward. They will be watching over him.

And by the way, his audience just shrank, so he's now not going to be on any of, Sinclair announced that they will refuse to air this this show from this point forward. So there is, he's just lost a suction of his audience. And he may, the audience tonight will probably be the largest audience he's had in a decade. But how long is that actually gonna last? How long is that peak, this new interest?

'Cause the format is the format is the format. He's still gonna have big movie stars on plugging their movies and bands I've never heard of playing music and comic bits that go on too long. No offense, Jimmy, but like the format is dead. And so I just,

Marion Ranchet: But I agree with you on the outcome. Where I don't agree is the timing. So I think that, fine, let him go back, see what happens. But, [00:21:00] think hard about what comes next and my bet that's would be that by next season he's gone.

What's, speaking about Colbert, right? So this guy knows that by the end of next season, this season, he's gone.

Evan Shapiro: May, by May.

Marion Ranchet: Or email you. Yeah. He's doing that job right now. But I think that timing wise, you don't just flip over overnight.

Evan Shapiro: And I think it should be noted how that happened. There's David Ellison who is the son of Larry Ellison, who is the founder of Oracle, one of the richest people in the world. If not he soon might actually be the richest person. I think he's the richest now

Marion Ranchet: Since this summer.

Evan Shapiro: It's between him, Musk and Ellison on a regular basis, but they made a deal. David Ellison went to both Brendan Carr and the White House and made a deal, and I don't have paper on this, but it's very clear that they were gonna fire Stephen Colbert in exchange for that merger being approved by the FCC.

And we know this because they fired Colbert and then a week later, their [00:22:00] FCC approval came through. They're not even trying to hide.

Marion Ranchet: That was the CBS lawsuit as well?

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And they settled. Sherry Redstone, another nepo baby she settled, helped settled the lawsuit with 60 Minutes and the current president of the United States.

All of these things fell into place. It's very much a Putin-esque, quid pro quo oligarchy and set of chess moves. And now hat same nepo baby, David Ellison, is attempting to purchase Warner Brothers Discovery who owns CNN.

Marion Ranchet: Yep.

Evan Shapiro: And also controls John Oliver on HBO or HBO Max or Max, or whatever the fuck it's called.

And so John Oliver's next in line. That's the next head on the chopping block. Figuratively speaking, I don't wanna be accused of talking about violence on our podcast.

So there is a winnowing of freedom of [00:23:00] speech, but not even so much from a standpoint of dogmatic disagreement. Which it is. People see things differently and their opinions are being fought out on the air, but it is much more transactional. It is all about money for almost all of these folks.

And it's a real, Michael Eisner called it a chilling moment in a, ironically, in an X post and this is the guy who used to run Disney. This is a very pragmatic businessman. So I'm, it's very concerning that free speech has basically gone up for sale in the United States.

And then we were talking about this before we started recording. It's the exact opposite happening the outpouring, Channel 4 ran a documentary about the misstatements and fabrications by the current president of the United States while he was over there visiting.

BBC did an interview with me about this whole Jimmy Kimmel thing on the air the other night. But we were talking about this just seconds ago, it seems like the [00:24:00] opposite movement is happening on broadcasters in Europe, while America seems to be clamping down on free speech on the public airways. The broadcasters.

Marion Ranchet: So the equivalent of the FCC in France would be ARCEP, right? And so they are supposed to make sure that whatever's on the air, again, abides by a certain set of regulation and you said it, violence, sex, et cetera.

And so what happened this past year is actually interesting. And yes, we're going the opposite route. That is, that we're trying to take away from TV and from broadcast channels. Folks who are actually behaving the opposite, which is, again being either aggressive, violent, or, just like Joe Rogan misrepresenting facts, et cetera.

And so we've had this TV host called Cyril Hanouna and he's been on the air for years and every year there's something new happening and he's being fined and fined. But what's worrying is that yes, we're going [00:25:00] at it, but it seems that we're not going at it strongly enough that he stops, right?

So he kept at it. He is been on the air for many years. What happened actually was that the TV channel where its program was hosted, they lost their broadcast license. It was not renewed. So it finally happened.

For a brief moment, he actually went on YouTube, tried to have his own Hanouna TV. And that's when I was saying about timing is you don't improvise doing that overnight. That did nothing.

He just got hired by another broadcaster. So essentially he was within the free TV portfolio of Cannel Plus, and now he's within M6. He's supposed to be on his best behavior, right? Let's see what happens. The bad habits die hard.

But we're doing the opposite of you guys that we're trying to make sure that these people who are, actually on the other side of the spectrum, because you

Evan Shapiro: What they say is legitimately [00:26:00] researched, even if it's, even if it's a matter of opinion that it's based in truth and fact.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, exactly. But there's less and less of of that.

We have the same challenges as you guys, and some TVs hosts are, there's another one again, on a TV channel owned by Cannel Plus. So clearly Cannel Plus could be doing a better job at that.

Evan Shapiro: And we know they listen so.

Marion Ranchet: And he was a presentation and now he's like, so all of these guys are taking a very right wing, very extreme approach to the way they treat news, et cetera. And so we're trying to fight that back. We're not firing hosts and comedians for saying very, transparently, something that you either agree yes or no, but there was no violence, there was no, there was nothing, right?

He just expressed his opinion about how this assassination was was used by the right wing.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And it was an opinion and it, people differed with it, but it was in no way, shape, or form a violation.

I will say, I'll give you a number of different examples of mainstream figures who had [00:27:00] pretty large platforms in traditional media who have either been fired or left and almost immediately started their own thing to much greater success, much greater influence, and in fact, substantially more money than they were making.

I'll use Bari Weiss. Bari Weiss was an editorial writer, is what is an editorial writer, but she was an editorial writer for the New York Times. She is very polarizing. She would be what I would call a right-leaning libertarian very much in the Joe Rogan spectrum of opinion and personality types.

She started something called the, she left the New York Times where she, I think she was making somewhere between a hundred and $200,000 a year. She went and started The Free Press, which is a newsletter on Substack just like us.

Marion Ranchet: Just like us.

Evan Shapiro: And she is now massive.

She's now one of the biggest Substacks out there. She's making, I think, tens of millions of dollars a year between Substack subscriptions and [00:28:00] other deals that she has. And she's so popular now and so influential and so big that David Ellison is hiring her.

Marion Ranchet: Are you joking?

Evan Shapiro: On CBS news basically. Oh, and the rumor is that if they wind up buying Warner Brothers Discovery that she will be running CNN.

So I, she makes my point, like she is the perfect case study for the point I am making. I'll go another one. Jim Acosta got fired by CNN after David Zaslav had just had enough of hearing him take on the current president of the United States, he went out and started a Substack newsletter.

I don't know if he's making more than he was making on CNN, but he is not making less and he is substantially more free to say whatever the heck he wants. He has a tremendous amount of influence.

Oliver Darcy is another one. The news agents left BBC. These are a bunch of reporters from BBC who did not like, I wouldn't say they thought that they were being censored, but it was a layers and layers [00:29:00] of bureaucracy that they weren't happy with at BBC, and they went out and started their own podcast.

They're now some of the most influential voices in the UK with regards to what's going on in the news. And by the way, crucially, they're real journalists who do real research and real reporting, and the average age of their audience is generations younger than it was on the BBC.

So they're not just reaching their audience directly without any interference from a bureaucratic organization, they're also reaching an audience that is in desperate need of fact and truth right now.

This is where the misinformation is spiraling out of control is in generation A and generation Z because they're getting most of their news from social media and not from legitimate news sources.

And and I can go on, Chuck talk.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. I'm not challenging the fact

Evan Shapiro: Tucker Carlson in particular, was fired by Fox News. I think people think he was de-platformed because he is a right wing. Nut [00:30:00] job, frankly. But he was fired by Fox News because they lost the dominion vote fraud case to the tune of a quarter, three quarters of a billion dollars. And they knew he was a liability.

He's now much bigger and getting paid more than he was on Fox News. So it's, there are case studies for it.

Marion Ranchet: I agree. No, I agree. I'm not saying the opposite and honestly, I see a parallel with us, right? So we left corporate media and we decided to build something new from scratch.

But again, I did not do that overnight, right? So I had to go through something traumatic or, super difficult to make that decision. But then there were like maybe six to nine month in the making while I was finishing up where I was before and then I launched. So I have no doubt that

Evan Shapiro: And for me it took a number of years. But the difference between us and them is Jimmy Kimmel is now the most famous person in the face of the earth.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I see what you mean. Colbert, Stephen [00:31:00] Colbert is with the timing to yeah. I get that.

Evan Shapiro: Like what, I say this to the folks at PBS all the time, and I hope they're listening.

Donald Trump? Yes. He rescinded $1.1 billion, but he also gave you the greatest advertising campaign. More people care about PBS today than did two years ago.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: And if you can get outta your own goddamn way, PBS, and start talking directly to your consumers, PBS, and to the consumers who you don't yet talk to PBS.

Marion Ranchet: I know they're listening. We met a PBS listener when we were in Denver. Yeah. So hopefully

Evan Shapiro: It's time for you to give up on the broadcast this of it and stopped submitting yourself to the FCC and the government, which obviously hates you. And go out directly to your consumers and find that next generation of supporters. 'cause in the United States we don't fund public media like you do.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: In Europe and socialist countries, [00:32:00] we force them to basically, they take a very small amount of funding from the government, but the rest of the money comes directly from consumers and foundations who support the work that they do.

PBS is losing its battle not because the president of the United States is more powerful than them, but because they don't control 100% of their voice in the marketplace.

Marion Ranchet: So I think that's a great segue into what could come next, right? Because, so this happened and now we have Paramount interested in buying Warner Bros Discovery.

So to your point, maybe John Oliver is next. That's a shame because I love him. That's the only one I watch, but it's because he's a Brit. I love Brits.

But and then now potentially Netflix is interested as well. Honestly, I, given the, what everything has been happening, I don't see why Netflix would wanna have anything to do with broadcast TV.

Evan Shapiro: So Warner Brothers doesn't have any broadcast television. [00:33:00] We should note that. They are not regulated by the, other than if they decide to merge, they are not governed by the rules of the FCC. They are governed by the rules of the Justice department because there's a difference between, there's a difference between broadcast and pay TV.

So broadcast is

Marion Ranchet: But CNN. Is that Pay TV?

Evan Shapiro: CNN is a pay TV. So they're not governed by the rules of the, they're governed by the rules of the Justice Department. So if they violate laws like real laws, like fraud or anything like that, then they are subject to penalties and even imprisonment by the Justice Department, which runs, all the attorneys general, which is the correct pluralization of attorneys general, and the FBI and things like that.

But, any merger of Warner Brothers Discovery with another company or sale of that company to another company is subject to approval by the FCC. Any deal to own them, whether it's Paramount or Netflix, would have to go in front of Brendan Carr and at anybody who buys Warner Brothers Discovery [00:34:00] is going to be grilled.

Grilled by who I call McCarthy, M-C-C-A-R-R-H-Y a reference to Joe McCarthy over CNN. I mean, it will, they will be held over the grill on CNN.

And it wonders what does, Ted Sarandos, who is a notably liberal and big donor of Obama. Best friend with Obama, actually. Is he gonna want to go in front of Congress and in front of

Marion Ranchet: And go through that?

Evan Shapiro: I don't know, man.

Marion Ranchet: A business equals dead on arrival, a dead weight, but, okay. One thing though is that Warner is splitting, right? So is there a scenario where Netflix goes after the studio business and then, whatever's left, that famous generating revenue business that is still a liability long term?Could that go to someone else?

Could that be that Paramount takes that piece and then Netflix the rest?

Evan Shapiro: Yeah [00:35:00] you also have to step, let me step one step back before I get to that answer. Any day now we're gonna find out that there's a deal between the current orange President of the United States and Larry Ellison to take over TikTok.

Marion Ranchet: Oh yeah, that's true.

Evan Shapiro: That's coming. And it's also rumored that like Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch are gonna be slipped in there as well. I don't know if that's actually gonna be true. I don't know that Lachlan Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch want the trouble of owning TikTok, but I could be wrong.

But there's no question Larry Ellison is gonna wind up controlling a large part of TikTok, certainly doing all of the backend with Oracle 'cause that's a very profitable business for him and it's very conceivable that him and his nepo baby David, are gonna own a large portion of TikTok, like one third to one, one sixth, to one third of it in some form or fashion at with some other folks.

And then what would be very clear is that nepo Ellison [00:36:00] is going after CNN to please the current orange president of the United States and Brendan Mc-Carr-thy. And it, there's no, it's just it's so they're not even trying to hide it. That's the thing is used to be back in the day, like when they did these deals in smoke filled rooms, behind closed doors, they pretended that this wasn't happening.

But now they're just overt about it. Like yep, this is what we're doing. We're going after CNN, so we can either shut it down or turn it into Fox 2 so that we can bend the knee and please the emperor who has no clothes.

I just don't, I don't, it's gonna be a very interesting set of things to happen, but I think Apple, like I don't understand why Apple didn't try to buy Paramount.

Marion Ranchet: I know.

Evan Shapiro: I don't understand why Apple doesn't try to buy Warner, like they need the library.

Marion Ranchet: They need the library. I do think that Netflix needs the library too. At this point in time.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Agreed.

Marion Ranchet: They need it. And they have a shot at, making it something.

It's also great [00:37:00] to take HBO on the go and then

Evan Shapiro: A hundred million subscribers, man. You've got Game Pro.

Marion Ranchet: There must be an overlap between the two. That would be interesting. Do we know that? Who is both? 'cause people are stacking right? Netflix sub and then HBO sub.

I had read a few things when Disney and HBO did their bundle. And the bundle is great and apparently it's battling churn and it benefited HBO more than Disney. And they were saying that half of Disney plus people did not have HBO Max either way.

So of course

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, that's a, I believe that's an Antenna. I think that was Antenna.

Marion Ranchet: That was Antenna who looked at that. But yeah, I'll take the studio business, lots of library. I'll take HBO Max and take whatever portion of those subs that I don't have.

And especially in, maybe in international markets I'll take all of that, especially the net addition, like this last quarter, I think HBO grew more than Netflix did it, right? So 15%

Evan Shapiro: It's a lower, it's a lower bit.

Marion Ranchet: Of course, but in terms of net [00:38:00] addition 15% for HBO, 11% for Netflix. That would be like such a great deal.

The big question of course, is theatrical what happens, right? Because Netflix does not like movie theaters. They don't buy it.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. I think though there is evidence that movie theaters and streaming success are not mutually exclusive and I think in Netflix

Marion Ranchet: But who? No one told Netflix or Netflix doesn't buy it because they haven't changed their strategy and policy on this in years.

Evan Shapiro: They're also not making very good movies. Let's be honest.

Marion Ranchet: No, they're not. They're making the worst movies.

Evan Shapiro: Their movies would fail in the box office.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: But they look at Sinners and they look at Barbie and they look at some of these other titles that Warner Brothers has had out in the last couple of years. And they've done I think Weapons was also a Warner Brothers movie as well. And those are original IP.

So I do think Netflix, and I think you have a much larger point, which is, it's very doubtful that Paramount and Warner Brothers, the movie studios would be allowed, even [00:39:00] by these oligarchs in power, to coexist. 'cause that is a limiting of voices.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: That is a slimming down and winnowing of consumer choice.

So I think you could see where Paramount would be allowed to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, Disco Brothers, but have to divest themselves of Paramount. But what's interesting is Warner Brothers, the movie studio, and HBO Max are being separated into that unit, whereas CNN and the rest of the cable networks are being separated into another unit.

So you're divorcing the library to a certain extent from the property that you would most want. So it's a complicated, you could see Paramount and Netflix making a deal where Paramount takes CNN and a couple of other properties and Netflix takes the movie studio. But where does HBO max go in that continuum?

And that's a difficult

Marion Ranchet: Paramount needs it more than than Netflix. I don't know how many sub they have in the US.

Evan Shapiro: Without the [00:40:00] library, HBO Max doesn't really have a business. Without the studio, that becomes a very difficult business to run.

Marion Ranchet: So I looked it up and on the French market, if you bring a Paramount and an HBO together, so both have a lot of pay TV channels still. So I think the portfolio would have something around like 25 channels.

They are very present within what we call in France, thematic channels, right? Western and et cetera, et cetera. All of those. And they still pull, together all of those, still pull around 20% of viewing market share, right?

So it's small in the grand scheme of thing across all of the TV universe, like maybe closer to one or two percent, but so that would be a big pay TV business in, on the French market alone. And I suspect that this would be the case in many of the other European markets.

And when it comes to the SVOD piece, Paramount Plus is tricky. They're in France, in other markets it's within SkyShowtime. I don't think they're [00:41:00] doing really great. So HBO

Evan Shapiro: Solves a lot of that for them.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, it does solve it.

Evan Shapiro: And it's all upside because HBO Max, while it is appearing a lot of places, it has, it's not in the UK.

Marion Ranchet: It's in the UK. Paramount Plus.

Evan Shapiro: No, HBO max.

Marion Ranchet: Oh, HBO max. No, but in January of next year, they will. Same in Germany.

Evan Shapiro: Right, so there's big growth.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, there's big growth coming.

Evan Shapiro: Right on the horizon. So that's a big win for whoever picks them up. Probably less so for Netflix and more so for Paramount. So that gets to the big question of the week which is now our last chapter of every episode.

What do we think the aftermath of the Jimmy Kimmel affair will be? And I don't think, I don't mean just for Jimmy Kimmel and for ABC but what do you think the larger effect on the ecosystem will be? Let's start with you.

Marion Ranchet: So I would hope that anyone within the media and entertainment ecosystem is rethinking their strategy right away. And to the point that you were making at the top start thinking about life outside [00:42:00] of Hollywood, so to say.

That would be my, almost, not a guess, but more a wish. I wish a lot of stuff. I have this tendency and that I hope that people hear it and start thinking that it is the way to go. I think this is what's needed, right? At the end of the day, we still have what, three more years of this going. There's no, we have no certainty that who, whoever's gonna come next is not just gonna be the heir of your orange president.

So is that the new normal? If it is, then, start looking outside of Hollywood to make a living, et cetera.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. So I think, I think it's not just a wish. I think it's, it is actually a good prediction that this is gonna make everybody who operates in traditional television rethink everything.

One, do we really wanna be, what's the point of broadcast? What's even the point of having a broadcast license anymore if it can be revoked based on a political decision as opposed to a factual decision. So I do think that is going to start having people [00:43:00] reexamine the Disneys of the world, the NBCs of the world. The people who in this country have to go before this collection of oligarchy and morons to get approval for mergers and things like that. I think it's gonna start to have them rethink.

But more importantly, I do think it's gonna have a specific effect on the Colberts, the Kimmel's, the Fallons, the Olivers, the Trevor Noahs. The people who are hosting these shows and they look at Alex Cooper making $125 million in a, in one fell swoop.

Or they look at the Smart List, kids getting a hundred million dollars for their podcasts. Or they look at Dak Shepherd getting

Marion Ranchet: These guys are 60 years old.

Evan Shapiro: No, they're younger than me. They're all younger than me. Everyone's younger than me. I, oh, and Dak Shepherd for Jiminy cricket's sake. Come on, like Dax Shepherd's not a notable talent, no offense, Dax, but he's a fine guy who hosts a okay podcast. He got $80 million for his podcast.

The Kelsey Brothers [00:44:00] got nine figures for their podcast. So I think they see these deals being made in the creator economy, and I think the next generation, they're, late night is over. I've, I think this is the death knell.

I've written about this. I think this is the death knell of this corpse called broadcast and Late Night talk shows. I think there'll be this spurt of attention between now and when Colbert leaves, but I think that's the end of it. And we're gonna see these shows, the Daily Show. It's only moments till they fire John Stewart. Only moments until they fired John Stewart.

'cause that's the same nepo baby who fired Colbert. So it's, we're just waiting for these heads to roll. So I do think this is the end of broadcast and specifically I think it's the end of late night TV.

Marion Ranchet: So one thing is, you've said it right multiple times. Every time we get the data from Nielsen on the Gage, you are saying that, even if the viewership, is steering more and more towards streaming, the advertising is not.

Evan Shapiro: That's and that's because more ads are being seen on broadcast.

[00:45:00] What the advertising community fails to realize is more ads are being seen on broadcast and cable, the two of those combined, because it's the same 10 million very old people, half of whom have been dead for two weeks and their televisions are still running. They're just seeing the same ads over and over and over again.

It's not because there's a reach there. The top 10 broadcast shows in the United States do not equal the audience of the number one show in 1975. And so it's not, yes, you get frequency, but you're not getting reach. It is a very specific, old audience that's watching the same ads over and over again.

So the advertising community really needs to get their act together and stop wasting their money on cable and broadcast because it's just not doing them any good frankly.

Marion Ranchet: No. What's fascinating is that indirectly they've shot themselves in the foot and it's only gonna accelerate [00:46:00] streaming.

Regardless of what Colbert and others are doing, it does show that broadcast TV is not what it used to be. And audiences who've been long gone, never coming back, and those who were maybe dabbling. Like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna be watching this if I don't know whether I'm being served something that's censored, right? Yeah. Moving to streaming, moving to social, et cetera. Yeah. That's fascinating.

But man, your house is on fire, right? Yeah. Your house is on fire.

Evan Shapiro: I know I'm trying to get out. I think this will be looked back on in the moment when broadcast officially died.

And we won't know for years, but I think that the audience exodus will accelerate, which is saying a lot 'cause it's been stampeding away in dramatic fashion from pay TV and broadcast here in the US dramatically over the last five years. I think it's, I think it's actually gonna pick up steam because why would I continue?

Marion Ranchet: September, 2025. Yeah, we'll see in a few years time.

Evan Shapiro: We can look at the we can look back in a year [00:47:00] and look at the numbers. This has been a great conversation. Thank you for helping me unpack all of this.

Marion Ranchet: And I've learned a lot of stuff actually, which,

Evan Shapiro: See? I have something to offer Marion.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, you do have something to offer. I'm changing my mind, one episode at a time.

Evan Shapiro: There you go. That is Marion Ranchet.

Marion Ranchet: and that is Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: Thanks for listening to the Media Odyssey Podcast. We'll see you or hear you next week.

Marion Ranchet: See you next week.