May 23, 2024 • 32 mins
DOJ sues Live Nation Ticketmaster. Pico Rivera Sues Water District over 110% rate hike. Patrick Mahomes doesn’t agree with Harrison Butker but says kicker is a ‘great person. Mark is in the process of buying a second car probably an electric one, his family is currently a single car family // Memorial Day Weekend Travel Jams and summer travel.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It's KMF I am sixty and you'relistening to The Conway Show on demand on
the iHeartRadio app. Mark Thompson herefor Tim Conway Junior, got the whole
crew here. Should you anything crossour desk anywhere we will break in with
it. Should Angel Martinez have breakingtraffic? News will have it for you.
Should Croage have breaking news? Ofcourse I saw today Speaking of breaking
(00:24):
news, this is pretty huge.I think another effort to break up a
major entity, business entity that isinvolved in anti trust legal government crackdown.
I mean, this is huge.I'll remind you even before I tell you
about this one that this Justice Departmenthas broken on Apple. That is to
(00:51):
say, they are suing Apple,they are suing Google. I think they
have two different suits against Google.They're suing Amazon, all for anti trum
us violations. And I think manyof the anti trust violations that they talk
about. Are you demonstrably there rightif you tried are you a small business
if you tried to advertise on Amazon? You know? Do you know how
this works? I mean, there'sa lot of the ways in which these
(01:14):
companies have dominated our life that honestlymake life a lot easier. But also
make life a lot more expensive becauseyou have fewer and fewer options. So
that's what anti trust is all about, right, because a company gets too
big and it has to be brokenup, and the only regulatory instrument there
is the only protection that consumers haveis the government and the Justice Department.
So the latest is something that you'regoing to relate to. It's Live Nation
(01:42):
and Ticketmaster. The Justice Department isseeking to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
Now you think, well, LiveNation and Ticketmaster, those are two
different companies, but they're not twodifferent companies, and that's kind of the
whole point. Live Nation controls thevenues when you go to see any number
of things concerts and the like,and they own Ticketmaster. So when you
(02:07):
go to get tickets to whatever itis at the Live Nation venue, you
are also doing business with Live Nation. Now it doesn't end there because the
artists who then appear in the venuethey have to make deals with Live Nation,
(02:27):
and so Live Nation controlling the venue, controlling the tickets, and now
making a deal with the artist,they can make a number of deals that
they wouldn't be able to make otherwisebecause it's not a competitive environment. So
you can see right on his face, it does seem as though Live Nation
is a company that is right foranti trust legislation or anti trust action,
(02:52):
which would be a major anti trustlawsuit. And that's what's happening. So
the Justice Department steps in. AsI said, I've given you these other
cases that are you know again,Apple, Amazon, et cetera. But
this lawsuit filed by the DOJ andthirty state and district attorneys general accusing the
company of creating a monopoly over thelive entertainment market. And they're saying,
(03:15):
look, this monopoly hurts music fans, artists and promoters around the US,
higher prices and frustrating consumer experiences.There is no place to go across the
street. They own everything. Everypart of the process is owned by this
huge company. And you look,I'm sure they're nice guys, but I'm
(03:38):
just saying they're probably really nice becausethey got the whole thing worked out.
Attorney General Merrick Garland saying in astatement it is time to break up Live
Nation. Fans paying more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts,
(03:58):
smaller promoters get squeezed out, andvenues have fewer real choices for ticketing
services. For too long, LiveNation and Ticketmaster have unfairly and illegally run
the world of live events, abusingtheir dominance to overcharge fans, bully venues,
and limit artists. So they goon and on and essentially articulate what
(04:23):
I was just mentioning to you,which is, you know, when you
control every aspect of an event,concert goers, sports, fans, et
cetera, all pay more. Imean these fees that we pay, the
ticket prices that we pay, we'vesort of gotten used to it. But
think about what we've gotten used to. It's out of control. And one
(04:44):
of the great things about this countryis that there can be competition and a
free market that will a lead tobetter service and be lead little more competitive
prices. But that's not what wehave. Ticketmaster controls more than seventy percent
of the market for ticketing and liveevents, and I believe their website for
(05:08):
Taylor Swift's Eras tour, they crashed. I think in the first day of
sales for Taylor Swift and millions offans were just out of luck. So
what millions of fans did is wentto the secondary market and they paid much
higher prices for that. So Imean the Taylor Swift phenomenon did a couple
(05:31):
of really positive things. Maybe itdid a lot for music, and it
did a lot for the creative arts, but it also did a lot for
just maybe putting into the spotlight someof the stuff that's going on when it
comes to ticket pricing and these venuesand the swifties make a lot of noise
because there are a lot of them. So to the extent that Taylor Swift
(05:55):
can be thanked for this, Ithink it's great. They the ques Live
Nation does the Justice Department of seekingto lock out competitors to protect the company.
In court documents, they call ita flywheel, a self reinforcing business
model that captures fees and revenue fromconcert fans and sponsorship and uses that revenue
(06:20):
to lock up artists to exclusive promotiondeals and then using their powerful cash of
live content to sign venues into longterm exclusive ticketing deals and you start the
cycle all over again. So that'swhat's going on. They just launched this
Justice Department move. It's major antitrustsuit stuff, and it feels as though
(06:44):
it's a long time in coming.And when you look at the contracts,
and you talk to people in thelive concert business, you realize, Wow,
it's pretty tough to find any kindof competitive marketplace with the kind of
dominance that some of these companies have. And many would tell you, Look,
(07:04):
Google's the same thing, Amazon's thesame thing, Facebook and Meta.
These companies we've allowed them to merge. You could talk about it with the
Comcast world, the world of streaming. Merger, merger, merger, and
the bigger they become, the lesscompetition there is. Look at what you're
(07:26):
paying, Look at where you're payingfor internet, look at what you're paying
for cable. So you see onsome level, I'll tell you where it's
competitive. Where they broke up thetelephone. They broke up a lot of
these cell phone providers. Look atall the deals you're getting. I don't
know if those are the deals,if we should be getting better deals or
not, but I know that thereare a lot of different companies coming at
(07:46):
us. And that's because there isn'tone company that's dominant anyway. That's the
latest one, the Live Nation deal. It just broke today. When we
come back Pico Rivera, they saytheir water rates are too high and they're
shoeing the water district over it.You're listening to Tim Conway Junior on demand
(08:07):
from KFI AM six forty. MarkThompson sitting in for Tim Conway Junior and
his anniversary. Yeah, give hima man a day off on his anniversary.
So I'll get to the Pico Riveralawsuit. They're shoeing over a rate
height in that water district. Butfirst, how about some money now your
(08:31):
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(08:54):
Woohoo, it's happy. Happy isthe key and good luck man, Good
luck if you're in Pico Rivera.If you live there, they are hiking
your water rates and listen to whatthey're doing. The Pico Water District voting
(09:18):
to raise water rates by double digitseach year over the next five years.
So the city has filed a lawsuitand they're trying to challenge this. I
mean, it's a projected one hundredincrease in water rates for residents and businesses,
and they're saying, hey, youknow, this isn't justified, it's
(09:39):
not legal, and we're suing.So district officials are saying, well,
actually, we need to rebuild infrastructureand we have to put a lot of
money into various improvements, and we'retreating now for forever chemicals. Now,
the forever chemicals, they've been around, not forever, but since I'm going
(10:01):
to say for decades now. Theyreally came into existence back when that non
stick stuff that they coated pans andpots with, that that stuff became the
rage and those forever chemicals started enteringinto the environment in a big way.
Then. I mean, I thinkthere are other many other sources of it,
(10:24):
but I know that was somewhat controversialthrough the years. It just wasn't
getting a lot of oxygen from themedia community. Now it is. But
now there's this proliferation of these foreverchemicals. They're really everywhere and they are
literally that I mean, you can'tget rid of them, and they cause
all of these various issues and theircarcinogenic and they from a health standpoint,
(10:46):
they're just really awful. So anyway, as you are probably aware, there's
legislation that's been handing down to removeall these forever chemicals from drinking water,
which seems like a pretty good idea, And I'll double back to that in
a second, because it seems tome like there's one problem with that.
But anyway, the forever chemicals inthe systems a water supply. The districtiforts
(11:07):
are saying, we need to makechanges if we want to do that,
if we want to get rid ofthese forever chemicals from the water system.
So that costs money, and that'swhy we need to raise your rates.
People of Pico Rivera. Well,the mayor of Pico Rivera is saying,
I'm deeply concerned about the significant financialburden that the outrageous one hundred ten percent
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hike and water rates imposed by thePico Water District is going to place on
our residents and businesses. Now,this is a city of about sixty thousand
people and ninety percent of them areLatino and the Pico Water District covers about
(11:52):
thirty percent of those people. Soare they justified rate increases and it seems
like extraordinary. You know, thisis again they may need to do all
this work, but one hundred andten percent rate hike over you know,
the next handful of years, thatseems like a lot. The study on
(12:13):
these forever chemicals and on what changeshave to be made. They say that
this entire thing was approved based ona study that was filed earlier than it
should have been, so there's beenno real chance to prepare for this.
The study came in two years earlierthan normal, and they suggest in this
(12:37):
study a twenty five percent increase inthe first year, followed by a twenty
percent increase after that, and thenthree years of twelve percent annual increases.
But over five years, that's onehundred and ten percent more they're paying for
water in Pico Rivera. So thereis a huge, huge battle underway,
(12:58):
and the district essentially is fighting withthe mayor and those who are city managers
are saying, hey, you're goingto have to show us more in the
way of what you need and howthis is necessary. It's a crazy increase
in rates. The city has askedthe courts to stop the implementation of the
rate hikes and asking the district toreconsider the rate hikes, and they say,
(13:22):
look, our lawsuit is trying toprotect the rights of residents and hold
the Peico Water District accountable for itsactions. So that's what's happening there.
I mean, there is tremendous financialburden on these various water districts to remove
these forever chemicals. It's not aninexpensive process. It's always interesting to me
(13:43):
when the end user US has topay for the removal of pollutants that maybe
shouldn't be out there to begin with. If we've got a problem with a
pollutant, why do you not putit out there to pollute rather than charging
me, the consumer, to haveto pay to clean it up. Just
a thought. Maybe catch it onthe front end. I mean, now
(14:07):
that you know about it, catchit on the front end, so that's
not out in the environment to beginwith, and then that way we as
water users and those who pay thebills don't have to catch it on the
other end. Just a thought.There has been reaction from Kansas City Chiefs
quarterback Patrick Mahomes. He is reactingto Harrison Butker. Butcker was the guy
(14:33):
who made those controversial remarks on women'sroles. You know, women should congratulations
graduates. You ladies can get thatdiploma over here and then pick up your
apron over there and head back hometo start that family. And many people
thought, hey, come on,women don't have to just do that now
(14:54):
they can, you know, isn'tthat a little so now Kansas City Chiefs
quarterback Patrick Mahomes is reacting to that, and we'll have that next. You're
listening to Tim Conway Junior on demandfrom KFI AM six forty. Mark Thompson's
sitting in for Tim Conway Jr.Robin is sitting in on the board.
(15:15):
She has her credibility glasses on theway. I have my credibility glasses on.
Put these on for maximum credibility.I have I feel a minimum amount
of credibility already. When I wantto turn it up to max, I
throw these additional glasses on and itdoes give me a measure of credibility.
(15:37):
I do my show on YouTube,you know, and so I wear them
all the time because I feel likepeople are just passing through YouTube, you
know, They're just always swiping,and so I need that swipe. I
need to maximize my look in termsof credibility for just that second that they
may have swiped by. And that'swhy I wear them all the time on
that show. Here, put themon, take them off. You think
(16:00):
I'm going to have him for thissegment, for example, but Robin's got
him rockin' as she sits in thein the Captain's chair. They're in the
engineering lounge that is this mothership ofthis show. Krozer doesn't wear credibility glasses.
Clearly is a sense of confidence.He's got it on the inside.
(16:22):
He doesn't need it on the outside, not only distance for when I drive.
I don't want to get into myastigmatism. It's a mild one,
but it's there. Yeah. Anyway, Look, let's not obsess about what
we need and whatever physical infirmities wemight have with with eyes or not.
(16:45):
The point is we all have credibility. Let's move on. Patrick Mahomes is
defending Harrison Butker. Butcker, theKansas City Chiefs player who was addressing to
be fair. I mean, Iknow we're all looking to bust each other
on something we say, and admittedlyI'm not backing him up. I mean
(17:07):
I wouldn't have said it, buthe was speaking at a small Catholic school
in Kansas, and the idea isI think that in his controversial comments and
his address he made to the graduates, he was trying to represent And I'm
not making an excuse for him.I'm just trying to say that when he
(17:30):
talks about, you know, women, you've got your degrees now and you
can now raise a family, youcan you know, set up a stable
home situation, I think he wastrying to reflect some basic sense he had
of you know, I don't knowold school values and roles, but the
(17:52):
reality is, let's be honest,those roles have evolved and you know old
schools, old school, new schools, news school, and the way society
looks at that is not quite asfavorably. I think society doesn't look down
on that. It's refreshing and greatif you can do it. But there
are a lot of women in theworkforce, and there are a lot of
women who are running companies and startingcompanies and doing things. And you know,
(18:18):
our boss at KFI is a womanwho is not just new to the
game. She's been dominant as someonewho's been successful in this industry for decades
now. Anyway, point is hehas taken a lot of heat this guy,
Harrison Butker, for his remarks inYou Midfield deservedly show it is certainly
a controversial thing to say. SoPatrick Mahomes, his teammate, he has
(18:47):
defended him. Now he's saying thathe doesn't agree with everything that he says,
and he says quote not necessarily agreeingwith his comments, but that he's
a good person. I've known himfor seven years, said Patrick Mahomes.
I judge him by the character thathe shows every single day, that someone
(19:08):
who cares about the people around him, cares about his family, and wants
to make a good impact in society. Is the quote Harrison Butker, by
the way, the kicker there forthe chiefs, and he is someone who's
facing a lot of backlash. Yeah, I might suggest have somebody else look
at the speech before you give it. I think we all need an editor
(19:30):
sometime. I mean it's very possibleif I was giving a commencement speech,
I could say to Krozier, Icould email it to him, go hey,
man, take a look at this. Does this seem right? I
go for this joke? Here isthat off? You know? Tone deaf?
Or it's easy to step in it, I guess is what I'm saying.
But clearly if he did have aneditor or had somebody look at it,
(19:53):
they didn't catch it. Again,he continues, does Patrick Homes quote,
We're not always going to agree.There are certain things that he said
that I don't necessarily agree with,but I understand the person that he is,
and he's trying to do whatever hecan do to lead the people in
the right direction. Now, Imean, I will say this and then
(20:14):
we'll move on. He doesn't justhit male and female graduates. He was,
you know, going after diversity,and you know, again he was
playing to a room that might havebeen friendly toward some of that stuff.
But it felt to me a littleand based on what I saw and what
(20:36):
I read, like again, somebodymaybe should have just reviewed it again.
Nah, dude, you know,it's not quite that way. But maybe
he's one of those guys you can'ttalk to that way. I don't know.
Anyway, Patrick Mahomes defends him asa person and as a teammate,
but takes pains to say that hedoesn't agree with everything that he has to
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say, and the NFL also tookbaby steps back from him and said Harrison,
Butker gave a speech in his personalcapacity. His views are not those
of the NFL as an organization.The NFL is a steadfast partner in our
commitment to inclusion, which only makesour league stronger. Butcker eight season in
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the league. He's twenty eight yearsold, and he's got a Super Bowl
ring. So sort of like,you know, there you go. When
we come back, we're buying acar, and when you buy a car
now it's a little different than theold days. As some of you may
know. I will share our experience. We're like three fourths of the way
(21:48):
through the car buying experience, andI will share where we are when we
come back, and I share itbecause I think it could be instructive.
So you're listening to Tim Conway Junioron demand from KFI AM six forty.
Mark Thompson sitting in for Tim ConwayJunior. Mo Kelly, you just heard
he'll be in at seven here withKrozer and the crew. And we're buying
(22:14):
a second car. Yeah, we'rea one car family right now. I
know. Look, don't look downyour nose at me that way. The
fact is it's worked out and theonly reason we're getting a second car.
Is that so really there can beI guess a sense of you know,
(22:37):
we don't have to check in witheach other going can I use the car?
You know, do you need thecar? Can I have the car
for this period? You know,having to sort of work these windows of
availability. But we don't want tospend a lot of money, so we're
looking into that used car world,and we're looking at an electric car so
(23:00):
you can get And like, Idon't really know much about this, and
I still don't really know much,so what I'm sharing with you is probably
literally everything I know. But afriend of mine is a super ninja when
it comes to finding deals for allkinds of things. And I didn't I
was just talking about something else andwas mentioning this, and he said,
(23:21):
you can get a car, anelectric car, a little commuter car.
It'll go sixty miles or whatever ona charge, so not a lot,
but if you just needed to buzzaround, you can get it for you
know, four or five thousand dollars. And I of course said, well
look at you, mister, fouror five thousand dollars, like there's not
(23:44):
a lot of money, but itwas amazing when you actually go out,
you periscope up to see one thingthat you might know about that I didn't
realize to find an electric car,a simple little putt putt car. Okay,
these are I'm not talking about somethingwhere you want to try to impress
(24:04):
somebody when you pull up to thecurb. A lot of them for that
price. They've got one hundred thousandmiles on them. I mean, it's
not at all uncommon for these electriccars to have over one hundred thousand miles
on them. So I'm used tosort of old school evaluations. When something
(24:26):
got one hundred thousand miles on it, It's like, isn't that getting sort
of close to its expiration date?And the reality is no. The electric
car ruled is a different one.You look at different things like battery life
and whether the battery was replaced,and how many bars it's got, you
know, when you charge it,because that reflects the range that it has.
(24:52):
Again, this is a little commutercar, like you know, you're
just going fifteen miles back and forthtype thing. You're running simple errands,
going over the hill. Maybe you'llgo thirty miles that day. But the
idea somehow that you could drive acar and it's going to get two or
Elon Musk is saying three hundred thousandmiles off of a tesla. Now,
(25:15):
this is not a Tesla that I'mtalking about, but it's just another world
to me. I mean, Icome from the world of combustion engines,
where if you're over one hundred thousandmiles, you better be replacing the oil
all the time and doing the maintenanceon that car, and then you can
get a couple one hundred thousand milesout of it. I mean Conway,
(25:37):
I'm sure you've seen what he drives. That Conway Mobile is old school,
but it's maintained impeccably, I'm sure. And that's what Tim sort of his
superpower is that stuff. Anyway,we may make this deal and we're gonna
end up I'll probably end up drivingthe car and give her of the nicer
(26:00):
car, and I don't know,I'm kind of not this is what happens.
I'm kind of over it, don'tI'll take the Putt Putt car,
you know, and leave go anywhereI want when I want, and put
on another one hundred thousand miles onthe thing. We'll see, but we're
(26:21):
going to make the deal probably overthis weekend, this Memorial Day weekend.
The only thing is the dealership isin Orange County. We're in LA,
and I'm not sure the car canmake it all the way from Orange County,
LA on one charge. We mayhave to work out a whole day
where we you know, recharge ithalfway through. The traffic jams are going
(26:41):
to be intense a Memorial Day.In fact, all of the forecasts,
and you know you get these tripleA forecasts, they say this will be
the busiest start of summer weekend innearly twenty years. They actually put numbers
on it. Forty three point eightmillion people are going to travel fifty miles
(27:03):
from their house to celebrate at somepoint this weekend. TSA is saying up
to three million might pass through airportcheckpoints just on Friday, and the summer
is expected to be maybe one ofthe busiest also in twenty years at the
airports. US airlines expect to carrya record number of passengers this summer.
(27:29):
Their trade group estimates the two hundredand seventy one million travelers are going to
be flying from June one to Augustthirty. First, the big price increases
from a couple of years ago,they helped really drive numbers down. Now
they're actually much more competitive prices andas a result, more people are flying.
(27:56):
And that's why they say with airfaresdown about six percent, hotel rates
are down not much, but likehalf a percent compared to a year ago.
They think that may juice travel overthis summer. Prices for renting a
car or truck are down ten percent, and the nationwide price of gas is
(28:18):
around three sixty a gallon. Imean three sixty a gallon is nothing that
you can find in California. Butanyway, the point is all of these
things may contribute to and will indeedfeed record numbers on the road, and
also over the summer, the entirecountry is going to be traveling in the
(28:40):
air, so it could be avery busy Memorial Day weekend. The screening
at the airport is to me,the biggest draft. I was talking to
somebody last night actually about you know, all the things that we try to
do to get around the screening,but the TSA screening is like the big
I don't know if anybody are youTSA pree. I would think you might
(29:03):
have done that already. Krozer.Are you did you? God, no,
I don't fly nearly enough for that. Yeah, all right, well
I'm not paying that. You know, you don't have to pay Oh you're
not talking about the uh not clear? No, no, no, no,
just just a TSA pree. Butthat what does that consist of?
You go on a government website,You give them all your information, you
(29:25):
know, passport number or whateverever youridea is. You know, I guess
the various information they want. Thenyou set up an interview, okay,
and you go down My interview wason Christmas Day. Okay, it was
at LAX went down there and sothen at least it was yeah, I
was in and out. But anyway, after all of that, they put
something on your travel itinerary number,and you'll you'll have a frequent traveler number
(29:48):
I think it is and or TSApre number, and every time you buy
a ticket, you're TSA pre.You don't have to wait on the regular
TSA lines. You don't. Itreally helps you. You don't have to
take off your shoe, you don'thave to take certain things out of your
bag. It just helps expedite theprocess. Sometimes the TSA pre lines are
really long. I mean probably thisweekend and sounds like the summer they will
(30:08):
be. But so there are threeseparate lines now for the regulars, the
Clear and the and the pre TSA. Here's what it is. Clear will
walk you to the front of theTSA PRE line. Okay, but by
the way, Clear and TSA preare different, so you're there are people
who are Clear who are not TSAPre. So jesus, Yeah, I
(30:30):
know, it's give me all theplane. Yeah, but the idea is
I'm kind of with you, likeit's a lot of money to pay for
that clear or to expedite the line. But when you actually get to the
airport and you see the line,you go, how much is it to
get to the front? Sure,yeah, then you're a player all the
How long is the process to getthe pre I think it took a few
(30:52):
months. I might do it ifI were you. Yeah, it doesn't
cost and it might be cost twentyfive dollars. You basically can go to
the nearest airport to you. Yeah, there are a number of different places.
I think you don't even have togo to the airport to do it.
Now that other places you can dothe interview. The interview is like,
I mean, I don't know whatthey call it an interview. It's
like just a little in person visitto make sure you're the same person as
(31:14):
you know. My wife wants it, wants to the goal this summer is
to get a new passport, soI might do it. When I do
that, I think it's smart.You know, you just it's one more
thing you'll have to try to navigatethese is it Is it in perpetuity?
I believe it is. I believeit might be, but you may want
to double check that. I willtell you that next hour we have the
(31:37):
AI generated voice of Joe Biden andJim Carrey. He did something that's pretty
pretty amazing. We'll get to thatnext hour. Conway Show on demand on
the iHeartRadio app. Now you canalways hear us live on k if I
(31:59):
AM six forty four to seven pmMonday through Friday, and anytime on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
It's KMF I am sixty and you'relistening to The Conway Show on demand on
the iHeartRadio app. Mark Thompson herefor Tim Conway Junior, got the whole
crew here. Should you anything crossour desk anywhere we will break in with
it. Should Angel Martinez have breakingtraffic? News will have it for you.
Should Croage have breaking news? Ofcourse I saw today Speaking of breaking
(00:24):
news, this is pretty huge.I think another effort to break up a
major entity, business entity that isinvolved in anti trust legal government crackdown.
I mean, this is huge.I'll remind you even before I tell you
about this one that this Justice Departmenthas broken on Apple. That is to
(00:51):
say, they are suing Apple,they are suing Google. I think they
have two different suits against Google.They're suing Amazon, all for anti trum
us violations. And I think manyof the anti trust violations that they talk
about. Are you demonstrably there rightif you tried are you a small business
if you tried to advertise on Amazon? You know? Do you know how
this works? I mean, there'sa lot of the ways in which these
(01:14):
companies have dominated our life that honestlymake life a lot easier. But also
make life a lot more expensive becauseyou have fewer and fewer options. So
that's what anti trust is all about, right, because a company gets too
big and it has to be brokenup, and the only regulatory instrument there
is the only protection that consumers haveis the government and the Justice Department.
So the latest is something that you'regoing to relate to. It's Live Nation
(01:42):
and Ticketmaster. The Justice Department isseeking to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster.
Now you think, well, LiveNation and Ticketmaster, those are two
different companies, but they're not twodifferent companies, and that's kind of the
whole point. Live Nation controls thevenues when you go to see any number
of things concerts and the like,and they own Ticketmaster. So when you
(02:07):
go to get tickets to whatever itis at the Live Nation venue, you
are also doing business with Live Nation. Now it doesn't end there because the
artists who then appear in the venuethey have to make deals with Live Nation,
(02:27):
and so Live Nation controlling the venue, controlling the tickets, and now
making a deal with the artist,they can make a number of deals that
they wouldn't be able to make otherwisebecause it's not a competitive environment. So
you can see right on his face, it does seem as though Live Nation
is a company that is right foranti trust legislation or anti trust action,
(02:52):
which would be a major anti trustlawsuit. And that's what's happening. So
the Justice Department steps in. AsI said, I've given you these other
cases that are you know again,Apple, Amazon, et cetera. But
this lawsuit filed by the DOJ andthirty state and district attorneys general accusing the
company of creating a monopoly over thelive entertainment market. And they're saying,
(03:15):
look, this monopoly hurts music fans, artists and promoters around the US,
higher prices and frustrating consumer experiences.There is no place to go across the
street. They own everything. Everypart of the process is owned by this
huge company. And you look,I'm sure they're nice guys, but I'm
(03:38):
just saying they're probably really nice becausethey got the whole thing worked out.
Attorney General Merrick Garland saying in astatement it is time to break up Live
Nation. Fans paying more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts,
(03:58):
smaller promoters get squeezed out, andvenues have fewer real choices for ticketing
services. For too long, LiveNation and Ticketmaster have unfairly and illegally run
the world of live events, abusingtheir dominance to overcharge fans, bully venues,
and limit artists. So they goon and on and essentially articulate what
(04:23):
I was just mentioning to you,which is, you know, when you
control every aspect of an event,concert goers, sports, fans, et
cetera, all pay more. Imean these fees that we pay, the
ticket prices that we pay, we'vesort of gotten used to it. But
think about what we've gotten used to. It's out of control. And one
(04:44):
of the great things about this countryis that there can be competition and a
free market that will a lead tobetter service and be lead little more competitive
prices. But that's not what wehave. Ticketmaster controls more than seventy percent
of the market for ticketing and liveevents, and I believe their website for
(05:08):
Taylor Swift's Eras tour, they crashed. I think in the first day of
sales for Taylor Swift and millions offans were just out of luck. So
what millions of fans did is wentto the secondary market and they paid much
higher prices for that. So Imean the Taylor Swift phenomenon did a couple
(05:31):
of really positive things. Maybe itdid a lot for music, and it
did a lot for the creative arts, but it also did a lot for
just maybe putting into the spotlight someof the stuff that's going on when it
comes to ticket pricing and these venuesand the swifties make a lot of noise
because there are a lot of them. So to the extent that Taylor Swift
(05:55):
can be thanked for this, Ithink it's great. They the ques Live
Nation does the Justice Department of seekingto lock out competitors to protect the company.
In court documents, they call ita flywheel, a self reinforcing business
model that captures fees and revenue fromconcert fans and sponsorship and uses that revenue
(06:20):
to lock up artists to exclusive promotiondeals and then using their powerful cash of
live content to sign venues into longterm exclusive ticketing deals and you start the
cycle all over again. So that'swhat's going on. They just launched this
Justice Department move. It's major antitrustsuit stuff, and it feels as though
(06:44):
it's a long time in coming.And when you look at the contracts,
and you talk to people in thelive concert business, you realize, Wow,
it's pretty tough to find any kindof competitive marketplace with the kind of
dominance that some of these companies have. And many would tell you, Look,
(07:04):
Google's the same thing, Amazon's thesame thing, Facebook and Meta.
These companies we've allowed them to merge. You could talk about it with the
Comcast world, the world of streaming. Merger, merger, merger, and
the bigger they become, the lesscompetition there is. Look at what you're
(07:26):
paying, Look at where you're payingfor internet, look at what you're paying
for cable. So you see onsome level, I'll tell you where it's
competitive. Where they broke up thetelephone. They broke up a lot of
these cell phone providers. Look atall the deals you're getting. I don't
know if those are the deals,if we should be getting better deals or
not, but I know that thereare a lot of different companies coming at
(07:46):
us. And that's because there isn'tone company that's dominant anyway. That's the
latest one, the Live Nation deal. It just broke today. When we
come back Pico Rivera, they saytheir water rates are too high and they're
shoeing the water district over it.You're listening to Tim Conway Junior on demand
(08:07):
from KFI AM six forty. MarkThompson sitting in for Tim Conway Junior and
his anniversary. Yeah, give hima man a day off on his anniversary.
So I'll get to the Pico Riveralawsuit. They're shoeing over a rate
height in that water district. Butfirst, how about some money now your
(08:31):
chance to win one thousand dollars.Just enter this nationwide keyword on our website.
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(08:54):
Woohoo, it's happy. Happy isthe key and good luck man, Good
luck if you're in Pico Rivera.If you live there, they are hiking
your water rates and listen to whatthey're doing. The Pico Water District voting
(09:18):
to raise water rates by double digitseach year over the next five years.
So the city has filed a lawsuitand they're trying to challenge this. I
mean, it's a projected one hundredincrease in water rates for residents and businesses,
and they're saying, hey, youknow, this isn't justified, it's
(09:39):
not legal, and we're suing.So district officials are saying, well,
actually, we need to rebuild infrastructureand we have to put a lot of
money into various improvements, and we'retreating now for forever chemicals. Now,
the forever chemicals, they've been around, not forever, but since I'm going
(10:01):
to say for decades now. Theyreally came into existence back when that non
stick stuff that they coated pans andpots with, that that stuff became the
rage and those forever chemicals started enteringinto the environment in a big way.
Then. I mean, I thinkthere are other many other sources of it,
(10:24):
but I know that was somewhat controversialthrough the years. It just wasn't
getting a lot of oxygen from themedia community. Now it is. But
now there's this proliferation of these foreverchemicals. They're really everywhere and they are
literally that I mean, you can'tget rid of them, and they cause
all of these various issues and theircarcinogenic and they from a health standpoint,
(10:46):
they're just really awful. So anyway, as you are probably aware, there's
legislation that's been handing down to removeall these forever chemicals from drinking water,
which seems like a pretty good idea, And I'll double back to that in
a second, because it seems tome like there's one problem with that.
But anyway, the forever chemicals inthe systems a water supply. The districtiforts
(11:07):
are saying, we need to makechanges if we want to do that,
if we want to get rid ofthese forever chemicals from the water system.
So that costs money, and that'swhy we need to raise your rates.
People of Pico Rivera. Well,the mayor of Pico Rivera is saying,
I'm deeply concerned about the significant financialburden that the outrageous one hundred ten percent
(11:30):
hike and water rates imposed by thePico Water District is going to place on
our residents and businesses. Now,this is a city of about sixty thousand
people and ninety percent of them areLatino and the Pico Water District covers about
(11:52):
thirty percent of those people. Soare they justified rate increases and it seems
like extraordinary. You know, thisis again they may need to do all
this work, but one hundred andten percent rate hike over you know,
the next handful of years, thatseems like a lot. The study on
(12:13):
these forever chemicals and on what changeshave to be made. They say that
this entire thing was approved based ona study that was filed earlier than it
should have been, so there's beenno real chance to prepare for this.
The study came in two years earlierthan normal, and they suggest in this
(12:37):
study a twenty five percent increase inthe first year, followed by a twenty
percent increase after that, and thenthree years of twelve percent annual increases.
But over five years, that's onehundred and ten percent more they're paying for
water in Pico Rivera. So thereis a huge, huge battle underway,
(12:58):
and the district essentially is fighting withthe mayor and those who are city managers
are saying, hey, you're goingto have to show us more in the
way of what you need and howthis is necessary. It's a crazy increase
in rates. The city has askedthe courts to stop the implementation of the
rate hikes and asking the district toreconsider the rate hikes, and they say,
(13:22):
look, our lawsuit is trying toprotect the rights of residents and hold
the Peico Water District accountable for itsactions. So that's what's happening there.
I mean, there is tremendous financialburden on these various water districts to remove
these forever chemicals. It's not aninexpensive process. It's always interesting to me
(13:43):
when the end user US has topay for the removal of pollutants that maybe
shouldn't be out there to begin with. If we've got a problem with a
pollutant, why do you not putit out there to pollute rather than charging
me, the consumer, to haveto pay to clean it up. Just
a thought. Maybe catch it onthe front end. I mean, now
(14:07):
that you know about it, catchit on the front end, so that's
not out in the environment to beginwith, and then that way we as
water users and those who pay thebills don't have to catch it on the
other end. Just a thought.There has been reaction from Kansas City Chiefs
quarterback Patrick Mahomes. He is reactingto Harrison Butker. Butcker was the guy
(14:33):
who made those controversial remarks on women'sroles. You know, women should congratulations
graduates. You ladies can get thatdiploma over here and then pick up your
apron over there and head back hometo start that family. And many people
thought, hey, come on,women don't have to just do that now
(14:54):
they can, you know, isn'tthat a little so now Kansas City Chiefs
quarterback Patrick Mahomes is reacting to that, and we'll have that next. You're
listening to Tim Conway Junior on demandfrom KFI AM six forty. Mark Thompson's
sitting in for Tim Conway Jr.Robin is sitting in on the board.
(15:15):
She has her credibility glasses on theway. I have my credibility glasses on.
Put these on for maximum credibility.I have I feel a minimum amount
of credibility already. When I wantto turn it up to max, I
throw these additional glasses on and itdoes give me a measure of credibility.
(15:37):
I do my show on YouTube,you know, and so I wear them
all the time because I feel likepeople are just passing through YouTube, you
know, They're just always swiping,and so I need that swipe. I
need to maximize my look in termsof credibility for just that second that they
may have swiped by. And that'swhy I wear them all the time on
that show. Here, put themon, take them off. You think
(16:00):
I'm going to have him for thissegment, for example, but Robin's got
him rockin' as she sits in thein the Captain's chair. They're in the
engineering lounge that is this mothership ofthis show. Krozer doesn't wear credibility glasses.
Clearly is a sense of confidence.He's got it on the inside.
(16:22):
He doesn't need it on the outside, not only distance for when I drive.
I don't want to get into myastigmatism. It's a mild one,
but it's there. Yeah. Anyway, Look, let's not obsess about what
we need and whatever physical infirmities wemight have with with eyes or not.
(16:45):
The point is we all have credibility. Let's move on. Patrick Mahomes is
defending Harrison Butker. Butcker, theKansas City Chiefs player who was addressing to
be fair. I mean, Iknow we're all looking to bust each other
on something we say, and admittedlyI'm not backing him up. I mean
(17:07):
I wouldn't have said it, buthe was speaking at a small Catholic school
in Kansas, and the idea isI think that in his controversial comments and
his address he made to the graduates, he was trying to represent And I'm
not making an excuse for him.I'm just trying to say that when he
(17:30):
talks about, you know, women, you've got your degrees now and you
can now raise a family, youcan you know, set up a stable
home situation, I think he wastrying to reflect some basic sense he had
of you know, I don't knowold school values and roles, but the
(17:52):
reality is, let's be honest,those roles have evolved and you know old
schools, old school, new schools, news school, and the way society
looks at that is not quite asfavorably. I think society doesn't look down
on that. It's refreshing and greatif you can do it. But there
are a lot of women in theworkforce, and there are a lot of
women who are running companies and startingcompanies and doing things. And you know,
(18:18):
our boss at KFI is a womanwho is not just new to the
game. She's been dominant as someonewho's been successful in this industry for decades
now. Anyway, point is hehas taken a lot of heat this guy,
Harrison Butker, for his remarks inYou Midfield deservedly show it is certainly
a controversial thing to say. SoPatrick Mahomes, his teammate, he has
(18:47):
defended him. Now he's saying thathe doesn't agree with everything that he says,
and he says quote not necessarily agreeingwith his comments, but that he's
a good person. I've known himfor seven years, said Patrick Mahomes.
I judge him by the character thathe shows every single day, that someone
(19:08):
who cares about the people around him, cares about his family, and wants
to make a good impact in society. Is the quote Harrison Butker, by
the way, the kicker there forthe chiefs, and he is someone who's
facing a lot of backlash. Yeah, I might suggest have somebody else look
at the speech before you give it. I think we all need an editor
(19:30):
sometime. I mean it's very possibleif I was giving a commencement speech,
I could say to Krozier, Icould email it to him, go hey,
man, take a look at this. Does this seem right? I
go for this joke? Here isthat off? You know? Tone deaf?
Or it's easy to step in it, I guess is what I'm saying.
But clearly if he did have aneditor or had somebody look at it,
(19:53):
they didn't catch it. Again,he continues, does Patrick Homes quote,
We're not always going to agree.There are certain things that he said
that I don't necessarily agree with,but I understand the person that he is,
and he's trying to do whatever hecan do to lead the people in
the right direction. Now, Imean, I will say this and then
(20:14):
we'll move on. He doesn't justhit male and female graduates. He was,
you know, going after diversity,and you know, again he was
playing to a room that might havebeen friendly toward some of that stuff.
But it felt to me a littleand based on what I saw and what
(20:36):
I read, like again, somebodymaybe should have just reviewed it again.
Nah, dude, you know,it's not quite that way. But maybe
he's one of those guys you can'ttalk to that way. I don't know.
Anyway, Patrick Mahomes defends him asa person and as a teammate,
but takes pains to say that hedoesn't agree with everything that he has to
(20:59):
say, and the NFL also tookbaby steps back from him and said Harrison,
Butker gave a speech in his personalcapacity. His views are not those
of the NFL as an organization.The NFL is a steadfast partner in our
commitment to inclusion, which only makesour league stronger. Butcker eight season in
(21:25):
the league. He's twenty eight yearsold, and he's got a Super Bowl
ring. So sort of like,you know, there you go. When
we come back, we're buying acar, and when you buy a car
now it's a little different than theold days. As some of you may
know. I will share our experience. We're like three fourths of the way
(21:48):
through the car buying experience, andI will share where we are when we
come back, and I share itbecause I think it could be instructive.
So you're listening to Tim Conway Junioron demand from KFI AM six forty.
Mark Thompson sitting in for Tim ConwayJunior. Mo Kelly, you just heard
he'll be in at seven here withKrozer and the crew. And we're buying
(22:14):
a second car. Yeah, we'rea one car family right now. I
know. Look, don't look downyour nose at me that way. The
fact is it's worked out and theonly reason we're getting a second car.
Is that so really there can beI guess a sense of you know,
(22:37):
we don't have to check in witheach other going can I use the car?
You know, do you need thecar? Can I have the car
for this period? You know,having to sort of work these windows of
availability. But we don't want tospend a lot of money, so we're
looking into that used car world,and we're looking at an electric car so
(23:00):
you can get And like, Idon't really know much about this, and
I still don't really know much,so what I'm sharing with you is probably
literally everything I know. But afriend of mine is a super ninja when
it comes to finding deals for allkinds of things. And I didn't I
was just talking about something else andwas mentioning this, and he said,
(23:21):
you can get a car, anelectric car, a little commuter car.
It'll go sixty miles or whatever ona charge, so not a lot,
but if you just needed to buzzaround, you can get it for you
know, four or five thousand dollars. And I of course said, well
look at you, mister, fouror five thousand dollars, like there's not
(23:44):
a lot of money, but itwas amazing when you actually go out,
you periscope up to see one thingthat you might know about that I didn't
realize to find an electric car,a simple little putt putt car. Okay,
these are I'm not talking about somethingwhere you want to try to impress
(24:04):
somebody when you pull up to thecurb. A lot of them for that
price. They've got one hundred thousandmiles on them. I mean, it's
not at all uncommon for these electriccars to have over one hundred thousand miles
on them. So I'm used tosort of old school evaluations. When something
(24:26):
got one hundred thousand miles on it, It's like, isn't that getting sort
of close to its expiration date?And the reality is no. The electric
car ruled is a different one.You look at different things like battery life
and whether the battery was replaced,and how many bars it's got, you
know, when you charge it,because that reflects the range that it has.
(24:52):
Again, this is a little commutercar, like you know, you're
just going fifteen miles back and forthtype thing. You're running simple errands,
going over the hill. Maybe you'llgo thirty miles that day. But the
idea somehow that you could drive acar and it's going to get two or
Elon Musk is saying three hundred thousandmiles off of a tesla. Now,
(25:15):
this is not a Tesla that I'mtalking about, but it's just another world
to me. I mean, Icome from the world of combustion engines,
where if you're over one hundred thousandmiles, you better be replacing the oil
all the time and doing the maintenanceon that car, and then you can
get a couple one hundred thousand milesout of it. I mean Conway,
(25:37):
I'm sure you've seen what he drives. That Conway Mobile is old school,
but it's maintained impeccably, I'm sure. And that's what Tim sort of his
superpower is that stuff. Anyway,we may make this deal and we're gonna
end up I'll probably end up drivingthe car and give her of the nicer
(26:00):
car, and I don't know,I'm kind of not this is what happens.
I'm kind of over it, don'tI'll take the Putt Putt car,
you know, and leave go anywhereI want when I want, and put
on another one hundred thousand miles onthe thing. We'll see, but we're
(26:21):
going to make the deal probably overthis weekend, this Memorial Day weekend.
The only thing is the dealership isin Orange County. We're in LA,
and I'm not sure the car canmake it all the way from Orange County,
LA on one charge. We mayhave to work out a whole day
where we you know, recharge ithalfway through. The traffic jams are going
(26:41):
to be intense a Memorial Day.In fact, all of the forecasts,
and you know you get these tripleA forecasts, they say this will be
the busiest start of summer weekend innearly twenty years. They actually put numbers
on it. Forty three point eightmillion people are going to travel fifty miles
(27:03):
from their house to celebrate at somepoint this weekend. TSA is saying up
to three million might pass through airportcheckpoints just on Friday, and the summer
is expected to be maybe one ofthe busiest also in twenty years at the
airports. US airlines expect to carrya record number of passengers this summer.
(27:29):
Their trade group estimates the two hundredand seventy one million travelers are going to
be flying from June one to Augustthirty. First, the big price increases
from a couple of years ago,they helped really drive numbers down. Now
they're actually much more competitive prices andas a result, more people are flying.
(27:56):
And that's why they say with airfaresdown about six percent, hotel rates
are down not much, but likehalf a percent compared to a year ago.
They think that may juice travel overthis summer. Prices for renting a
car or truck are down ten percent, and the nationwide price of gas is
(28:18):
around three sixty a gallon. Imean three sixty a gallon is nothing that
you can find in California. Butanyway, the point is all of these
things may contribute to and will indeedfeed record numbers on the road, and
also over the summer, the entirecountry is going to be traveling in the
(28:40):
air, so it could be avery busy Memorial Day weekend. The screening
at the airport is to me,the biggest draft. I was talking to
somebody last night actually about you know, all the things that we try to
do to get around the screening,but the TSA screening is like the big
I don't know if anybody are youTSA pree. I would think you might
(29:03):
have done that already. Krozer.Are you did you? God, no,
I don't fly nearly enough for that. Yeah, all right, well
I'm not paying that. You know, you don't have to pay Oh you're
not talking about the uh not clear? No, no, no, no,
just just a TSA pree. Butthat what does that consist of?
You go on a government website,You give them all your information, you
(29:25):
know, passport number or whateverever youridea is. You know, I guess
the various information they want. Thenyou set up an interview, okay,
and you go down My interview wason Christmas Day. Okay, it was
at LAX went down there and sothen at least it was yeah, I
was in and out. But anyway, after all of that, they put
something on your travel itinerary number,and you'll you'll have a frequent traveler number
(29:48):
I think it is and or TSApre number, and every time you buy
a ticket, you're TSA pre.You don't have to wait on the regular
TSA lines. You don't. Itreally helps you. You don't have to
take off your shoe, you don'thave to take certain things out of your
bag. It just helps expedite theprocess. Sometimes the TSA pre lines are
really long. I mean probably thisweekend and sounds like the summer they will
(30:08):
be. But so there are threeseparate lines now for the regulars, the
Clear and the and the pre TSA. Here's what it is. Clear will
walk you to the front of theTSA PRE line. Okay, but by
the way, Clear and TSA preare different, so you're there are people
who are Clear who are not TSAPre. So jesus, Yeah, I
(30:30):
know, it's give me all theplane. Yeah, but the idea is
I'm kind of with you, likeit's a lot of money to pay for
that clear or to expedite the line. But when you actually get to the
airport and you see the line,you go, how much is it to
get to the front? Sure,yeah, then you're a player all the
How long is the process to getthe pre I think it took a few
(30:52):
months. I might do it ifI were you. Yeah, it doesn't
cost and it might be cost twentyfive dollars. You basically can go to
the nearest airport to you. Yeah, there are a number of different places.
I think you don't even have togo to the airport to do it.
Now that other places you can dothe interview. The interview is like,
I mean, I don't know whatthey call it an interview. It's
like just a little in person visitto make sure you're the same person as
(31:14):
you know. My wife wants it, wants to the goal this summer is
to get a new passport, soI might do it. When I do
that, I think it's smart.You know, you just it's one more
thing you'll have to try to navigatethese is it Is it in perpetuity?
I believe it is. I believeit might be, but you may want
to double check that. I willtell you that next hour we have the
(31:37):
AI generated voice of Joe Biden andJim Carrey. He did something that's pretty
pretty amazing. We'll get to thatnext hour. Conway Show on demand on
the iHeartRadio app. Now you canalways hear us live on k if I
(31:59):
AM six forty four to seven pmMonday through Friday, and anytime on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
Tim Conway Jr. on Demand News
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