May 6, 2023 • 35 mins
Larry and Thomas discuss Ed Sheeran winning his copyright infringement trial, in which he fought allegations that he stole music from the 1973 Marvin Gaye hit "Let's Get It On". Then they talk about Adidas being sued by investors who claim the firm knew about Kanye West's problematic behaviour years before it ended their partnership. They also chat about other sponsorship issues like the Bud Light controversy after a ban on the beer was called when they featured Dylan Mulvaney (a trans model) on their can. And lastly - they wonder about the current Writers Guild of America strike which is an ongoing labor dispute between the Writers Guild of America labor union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to secure better compensation and equity structures for TV and Film Writers. They also discuss how the writers strike affects the late night talk shows and James Corden of The Late, Late Show leaving after it was revealed that his show lost 20 million dollars a year.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello, fellow entertainment brother Thomas Valentino, Hello, brother Hackett, how are
you. You know, for ourallegians of fans, they may notice something
a little different this week, whichis that we're not in our ordinary studio.
They decided to take this on theroad that would be our respective homes.
Yes, it does, however,not change the content of what we
want to discuss. In fact,it might make it better in some way.
We'll figure that out or you'll liftthe listeners will figure that out there.
(00:21):
We only do things that get better. We like to think that.
Yea. But we have a lotof stuff to talk about. We haven't
been doing several weeks, and somevery interesting stories from the kind of legal
personality publicity standpoint, and we're goingto get to them all. We may
not be live in Times Square,but we still are the Entertainment Brothers,
(00:41):
and we're in you know, inNew York City exactly. So the ladies
and gentlemen, we're back and weare the entertainment Brothers. Okay, ladies
(01:03):
and gentleman again. We are backand loss to talk about this week because
we head into deep spring. ThomasAllentio, The most important thing or most
interesting thing I think in the pastweek in the kind of world that we
traffic in, was the decision bythe court here in Manhattan to basically a
quit Ed Shearing in the plagiarism claimthat was brought against him by the family
of Ed Townsend. Ed Townsend hadbeen the writer of the song Let's Get
(01:26):
It On, which of course wasa huge hit in nineteen seventy three from
Marvin Gay, and it's a verybeloved song and a very well known song,
which I think is one of thethings that makes it interesting. What
also made this case interesting, andwe'll get to the specifics, was that
this was the second very high profilecase in recent years involving a Marvin Gay
song, maybe maybe not written byMarvin Gay, but performed and made famous
by Marvin Gay. The last one, of course, was Got to Give
(01:49):
It Up and the Blurred Lines case, which the jury ruled in favor of
Marvin Gay and Farrell and Robin Thickehad to pay I believe it was some
over five million dollars. At firstit was seven and then it was reduced
to around five million dollars correct.And of course that case came up in
this case, and what was interestingabout this case, besides the technical aspects
(02:12):
of the chords that were used andthe frequency of these chords used in popular
songs, was I thought the incrediblyaggressive defense that Ed Shearon himself put on.
This was not a study in musicology. It was to some degree,
and obviously the people on behalf ofit Townsend wanted to make it such,
but instead it became a kind ofcry of the heart from Ed Shearon about
(02:36):
the agony he's been undergoing for thepast eight years over this lawsuit, the
idea of how daft he thought itwas that he would rip up such a
classic song and such an identifiable song, and despite video of him doing a
mashup of his song Thinking out Loudand the Marvin Gay song, he said
the idea that he would rip thisoff as ridiculous. He basically pointed out
(02:57):
to both music people and to peoplewho don't understand us, that there's only
so many chords in the Western musiccannon. There are only so many chords,
right, I mean, there's youknow, there's seven notes been a
scale, and there's twelve notes inthe entire scale. And to make songs
out of that, particularly in popularmusic, which has a much more rigorous
format. It's very difficult, andI thought that it was in fact his
(03:20):
defense on the stand and his decisionto defend himself that helped him win.
What do you think, I thinkhe's a lawyer in disguise. That's how
brilliant he was. I mean herein this singing lawyer. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, he didn't miss anote in his own defense, not
one thing. If he had cometo me, I would have said,
(03:43):
this is what you need to do, right down to wearing a suit,
which is always important, right downyou know, your appearance, right down
to being respectful, but also sayingI know more about music than anybody in
the world. He really had thatattitude and people embraced it. And for
(04:05):
him to go at the musicologist,I mean, the musicologist is an expert
witness. So it would sort ofbe like one of the cases we saw
in the summer, the Murdoch case, where if he was sitting there being
cross examined, and sometimes he didwhere he goes back after the attorney asking
him the questions. Right, Soyeah, aggressive, smart, very intelligent,
(04:30):
didn't appear too cocky, was alsohumble and like, excuse me.
One of the biggest stars of alltime. I mean, he's on the
mount rushmore of musicians and artists.As far as I'm concerned, it's indisputable.
Certainly in the present day, that'sfor sure, right, right,
Absolutely. I thought there were severalthings that you and I have discussed that
I think are important and that listenersought to know. One is that this
(04:54):
lawsuit was about the sheet music.It was strictly about the chords that were
played and in a sequence that theplaintiffs, the family of Headtowns and said
were similar. Right, the musicwas not played. Now you could argue
that playing the music and the basslineand the groove could have either worked four
(05:16):
or against Sharon. Right. Onceyou hear these things, if you look
if you looked at the sheet musicof anything, you know, there's a
online there's all kinds of places whereyou can see the chords for songs if
you're a guitar player, if youhave a player, and you'll find out
that it's shocking they don't collate itthis way. But if they collated it
by kind of like you know,give me a one, four or five
and c. There are hundreds ofsongs that use that pattern, right,
(05:40):
And you may not think that SafeEuropean Home by the Clash sounds anything like
Please Please Me by the Beatles,but in fact they use the same chords
correct, and that we could givehundreds of examples like that. So I
think, on the face of it, the similarity of the chords probably didn't
bode well for Sharon, but hisdefense and again, like I said,
(06:00):
the fact that they didn't play thesongs, and I personally don't think.
I think when you do play thesongs, they actually don't sound that much
alike. You can hear the chords, I agree with that, but you
know, lots of these songs kindof sound the same, so I think
it's interesting. What I also thoughtwas interesting was in a lot of these
cases, whether it was the ledZeppelin case over Stairway to Heaven or whether
it was in fact that Farrell caseover Got to Give it Up, you
(06:21):
didn't get much commentary from outside thecourt room while the patrol was going on.
I saw at least two op edpieces with people talking about this case
as having a potentially unbelievably chilling effecton songwriting and saying that the idea they
basically believed at sharing completely said thatthe if you find that these chords in
(06:42):
this sequence are plagiarism, you mightas well turn the radio off, because
no one is going to risk writinga song like that in the future,
because they're going to say it soundslike something else. Right, And so
my response to that is a couplethings. Right. You have to remember
that first, he did see themash up as far as I know,
right of his concert performance. Yes, right, So you say, well,
(07:05):
what if the original recording was played, right, does it really matter
when they're seeing the mashup? Imean, I don't think so as much.
And I think a lot of whatmight have this song might have been
about was that the arrangements, thearrangement of the Marvin Gay song made it
(07:26):
sound like it made it sound likeEd had taken that it was based more
on the arrangement than it was onthe chord structures and the actual song itself.
But of course that was not allowedin, right, It wasn't allowed
in. But I think if itwas, I don't think it would have
been negative for Ed. Okay.And then the other thing, He's right,
I mean, at a certain pointI didn't agree with the blurred lines
(07:47):
decision. Okay, and I thinka lot of that was about a lot
of other factors, and you couldsee this trending going the other way towards
the defendants, meaning the person who'sbeing sued, And so he was right.
If he lost this, I thinkthat people would have still kept writing
songs, but I think they wouldhave been a little more scared. And
(08:11):
I was glad to see that themusicologist, that this case was not about
a musicologist, because that's what everybodydoes when they get sued, they go
out and hire a musicologist, andthat this one was left to the artists
to finally carry the day. AndI also think that's good, because you're
really I respect him for his intelligenceand for everything that he did. He
was a perfect witness. He toldan interesting story about having written a song
(08:35):
with someone else and it's sounding tohim like a Coldplay song, so much
so that he called Chris Martin aColdplay and said, listen, can you
clear this? And Chris Barne said, I know you didn't steal this,
so no, I'm not going toclear it because I know you didn't do
anything wrong. Then I thought thatthat was very interesting. But I think
you're absolutely right, and I thinkit's probably I think the decision was the
(08:56):
right one. I think you'd behard pressed to say that this song sounded
like that, and you would worryabout the future if he had lost.
I think artists everywhere, you know, somebody, the people would be crawling
out of the woodwork, and again, just to engage them. I think
one of the things that drove edShearon crazy was not so much perhaps that
he was getting sued by the familyof this Well, first of all,
let's remember one thing there was thefamily. And if I understand this correctly,
(09:20):
Townsend's catalog and songwriting are owned bysome private equity firm, and they're
the ones that wanted to sue right, right, Because these guys are looking
to maximize their money, right,an opportunity at any heating exactly including suing
artists, right right, And sothat actually has a lot to do with
it. At one point he wentover and hugged her, yes, which
(09:41):
I thought was very, very classything to do. But you can imagine
a world where all of these catalogsare being bought by these private equity firms,
right, and these private equity firms, you know, like they're gutting
newspapers out there in the world andtaking from the assets. They'll look at
someone's catalog and sue someone else andsay, hey, they can't think of
(10:03):
anybody particular. I don't want togo right, Well, you wouldn't,
but okay, So here's the thing. They buy a catalog, right,
and they've spent twenty four times themultiple in other words, twenty four times
the value, okay, of whatthe catalog is really worth. And if
they're not in the music business,they may be all fired up. Oh
I just bought the estate of soand so, and you can see it
(10:24):
because it comes out and they're bragging, I have this, I have that.
It's bragging rights, right, Andthen six months later they're sitting there
and they're like, how much moneyhave we made back? Because we owe
the debt on This is so insanethat we have to figure out a way
to make money. And guess what. You find out that you're overpaid and
you don't know what to do,and people made promises and they don't fulfill
(10:46):
those promises, and all of asudden, you're like, what are we
gonna do. Let's go out andsue somebody. Let's go out and sue
ed Sharing, and I know alot of these companies are thinking that way
when they buy the catalogs, right, So that's an another factor to consider.
I also want to say this,My background is such that I teach
(11:07):
music publishing one on one at Berkeley, and I worked at Broadcast Music Incorporated,
and then I worked for Will Jennings, a bunch of big songwriters,
and all my life, in allmy life working with well known songwriters and
songwriters who are just amateurs starting out. I've never ever seen one situation where
(11:30):
when someone wrote a song that theywere even thinking about someone else. Right,
They go in and they think theyare writing a new song, and
if it turns out that it soundsidentical to someone else's song, it was
not done intentionally because they have toomuch pride to do that, even if
they're not well known. Of course, but you have said yourself, ignorance
(11:54):
of the law is not necessarily no, it's not. George Harrison didn't think
he was ripping off the Cherrell's whenhe wrote sweet Lord, which sound like
She's so fine, but he basicallyacknowledged, I mean, that was exact
dollars. Later on, it's likeI must have been an unconscious thing in
my head, right, right,So that's my point. I mean,
I don't think anyone deliberately goes outand does this. Well, let me
ask you the flip side of thatcoin. Are there songwriters now or then,
(12:18):
but maybe more now who live infear of this happening to them more
and it inhibits them in some way? I believe it or not, I
don't think so, I think it. Let's say that ed had not won
this case, I think that everyonewould still carry on the same way.
I don't think it would have changedthings as much as people do. And
I'm on the inside, so peopleare looking at the outside, right,
(12:41):
I don't People will always write songs, people will always create art. We've
seen that throughout the history of civilization, right. I mean, you know,
Matisse when he was on his bedwas painting with his mouth. So
they believe in the art, andso I don't think this would have had
a negative effect. But you know, it might have made some people think
(13:03):
twice. And I think some ofthe more established songwriters who were more or
less retired now we're fearing it.But obviously, if this is what you
do for a living every day,you're just going to go back tomorrow and
write another song. It Also inthe world we live in now, whether
it's painting or art or film.Look, there is a line between an
homage or a reference or a kindof symbolic kind of nod to something,
(13:24):
and we see that in films andin music and music all the sampling.
Well, that's exactly I'm playing.So there's a line between like sampling and
ripping off. Right. I waspointing out to my daughter that there's a
song on the New Boy Genius albumthat sounded exactly like The Boxer by Simon,
a Garlf uncle. In fact,my daughter said, well, you
(13:45):
know, Paul Simon got a songwritingcredit. Now, at first I thought
that they had written a song withhim, and then you enlightened me about
what really happened. Probably in thiscase, right, they were, they
had good representation, They gave himcredit because they knew that their song sounded
like his. They went out andgot permission exactly, And that's what you
do, right, that's the rightway to do it. In terms of
again, you know the other stuff, I didn't see it in this case.
(14:05):
So I'm glad for him and gladfor everyone you know in the community.
Well one last thing that it doesn'treally belong on the Coore room.
But one of the delights about lovingpop music is when you hear those connections
between songs, when you hear somethingthat sounds like something else and you think,
oh, that person heard the samesong I heard, and they liked
that song and they have now takensome inspiration or fragment of the structure and
(14:28):
done it. And I think that'sone of the delights about listening to music.
You know what. I've been blessedenough to have really gotten into all
of Marvin Gay's music, a lotof it, and I've been blessed to
be close to Ed's music on alot of different levels. And all I
know at the end of the dayis that they're both great songs and their
(14:50):
own right. They stand on theirown and when I listen to them,
they both make me feel better.Right, So people come on it's music
right at a certain point, andyou, as a veteran of Nashville,
if people in Nashville suit each otherbecause chords were the same, there'd be
blood all over the streets because there'sbasically about four different songs, and you
(15:11):
know, country music correct, andit worked. People respect each other,
right, there's a respect there.So all right, let's move down the
hall to another courtroom, this onebeing rather it's not a court room yet.
(15:35):
It's probably still in the clerk's office. It is a lawsuit that's been
filed by investors of Adidas claiming thatthe shoe company, which famously cut ties
with the disgraced rapper of Kanye Westover his anti submitted comments. The lawsuit
claims that Adidas knew years ago thathe was problematic, and that they didn't
do anything about it, and thatthey should have cut ties. And I
(15:56):
guess inferring. I guess they're inferringand should have stopped taking investments because they
knew that this guy was a timebomb who was going to blow up,
and they're now suing the company,adding to the woes of Adidas who have
lost I believe the estimates are overa billion dollars thus far, and they
have warehouses around the world a littleshoes that they can't sell. So it's
not as if the investors think theymade a bad decision by not cutting ties
(16:19):
with them. They think they shouldhave cut ties earlier, and that they
should have known that, and thatwas a storm cloud on their rise,
and they could have managed became anabsolute tornado that they can't manage, and
now everybody's at a dough What doyou make of this in terms of several
things, One, can they winthis lawsuit and to what it might say
(16:40):
or does say about the perils ofcelebrity partnerships with companies that have other clients
and other constituencies to answer to.Well, most times celebrity partnerships work right.
In fact, I can't think ofvery many times when they haven't.
So this was one case where itdidn't work in their mind. They made
(17:00):
a decision, they let him go, the investors turn around and sue.
So I'm not so sure that Ireally think Adidas had a good reason to
let him go. I mean,he was bordering on anything he said next
was going to be really, reallybad. I think that he took whatever
he was about to a place thatwas so far that they felt that they
(17:22):
had to let him go. Sonow if the investors want to come back
and try to sue on that,I think there's a lot of things that
they're going to have to prove thatthey may not be able to prove.
In other words, I think thatthe company has the better argument of saying
he was making us look bad.Eventually, the damage that could have been
(17:45):
done if we hadn't had done ordid what we did, would look a
lot worse than what you're looking atnow. But what about the argument that
they seem to be making this lawsuit, which is that you knew in twenty
eight teen this guy was a timebomb, and you did nothing, and
you kept him, and then itbecame that much worse in twenty twenty two
(18:07):
and you finally had to unload him. In other words, can you sue
on some counter factual that you didn'tmake a decision in twenty and eighteen and
therefore your liberal that seems a toughone, tough, tough, tough.
Here's the thing. In two eighteen, I think we all would agree that
what he was doing insane was notquite as outrageous and not quite as offensive
(18:30):
as what he was saying in thesix months before he got terminated. I
think he'd already been to the WhiteHouse. I think he'd made mentions of
being a presidential candidate. I think, and we've told well, that's that,
but that's I agree presidential candidate isnothing. No, I know.
I think maybe there's his behavior waserratic. I mean, I think he
was exhibiting We put about this before, he was exhibiting some symptoms of his
(18:53):
bipolarity, and maybe that's what they'rereferring to. But to say that because
the company didn't do so, andthen two years later the guy becomes a
flaming, filthy anti semi it's hard. Yeah, well, okay, you
brought out a great point, whetheryou realize it or not, right,
the bipolarity. Well, then heturns around and says, you've fired me,
(19:15):
which still might be his defense righttoday now. And I have mental
health issues, and you've fired mein spite of my mental health issues.
Therefore I have a case against you. And more and more, by the
way, this mental health issue isbecoming paramount. I'm actually dealing with a
case that involves that right now,okay. And it's a very very tough
(19:38):
area because if you fire someone becausethey're acting erratically or doing certain things and
they have a documented history of mentalhealth, then you have to be very
very careful because the person may literallynot know too much what they're doing,
even though they're on medication. Theymay not be on the right medication right.
(19:59):
So there's a lot of variables inhere, and we're definitely seeing it
in this case. Do you thinkthe idea of sponsorships needs to be revisited,
particularly in the world of social mediawhere things can absolutely explode at a
moment's notice. I'm thinking of severalthings. I'm thinking of a couple of
years ago when Pepsi had I thinkit was Kendall Jenner in a commercial that
(20:25):
was a kind of disnified version ofa street protest. This was in the
wake of George Floyd and it hadKendall Jenner and it seemed to be really
capitalizing in an incredibly awkward and hamhandedway on issues of social justice and social
outrage and protest to sell diet Pepsi. And it was a debacle, and
I believe some executives left the companybecause it was such a mess. Fast
(20:49):
forward to what's been going on inthe past several weeks with the bud Light
controversy involving a trans influencer, Dylanmulvaney, and reports that bud Light has
just cratered on the market and haslost tens of millions of dollars, and
people have protested wildly over the useof this transgender person. I don't want
to get into that. I thinkit's obnoxious that people are reacting this way
(21:12):
and as that goes of all kindsof you know, prejudice from the seventies
and things like that. But that'snot what I'm talking about. What I'm
talking about is in the world thatwe live and the kind of stuff we
cover, does the idea of sponsorshipsneed to be rethought in some kind of
way because frankly, everybody's endorsing everything, particularly online and particularly I mean the
(21:33):
whole reason that the word influencers existsis because they endorse stuff, right,
That's what they do, that's whatthey exist for. At the same time,
social media is such a wildfire atany given moment that this can really
come back and hurt particularly the brands. Not so much the stars. The
stars and the celebrities do what theydo, and they do it that themselves.
It's the brands that try to recoverany thoughts on that. Yeah,
(21:56):
of course, well you just saidit right. With social media an influencers,
if anything, it's moving in thedirection of more people sponsoring more and
more people who may not even befamous, right, I mean, what
is an influencer. Well, there'ssomeone of a certain generation that you know
has a brand, and so we'regoing to do a sponsorship deal with them.
(22:18):
Right. You're never going to getthe perfect celebrity or the perfect star,
or the perfect person to do this. There's always going to be a
chance someone can flip out, orif you haven't vetted them properly, that
something may come up that you didn'tknow about. So you sort of take
the suspect as you find them,right. In this case, you sort
(22:41):
of take the celebrity as you findthem. All right, But I don't
see this slowing down sponsorships. There'stoo much money involved. I mean I
think that's been proven, right,So if your bud light all right,
you made a mistake, and thenmaybe you go back to the drawing board
and you either go back to youknow, the horses in the old image
(23:03):
of everything, right, or youfind someone who's not as controversial, You
find a topic who's not as controversial, that's not as controversial, and then
you do that. I don't thinkpeople are going to step away from this
concept. This is rooted in Americancapitalism from the day of creation. Well,
it's interesting. You know, oneof the movies this spring was Air,
(23:26):
which was basically the creation story ofthe air Jordan's and it centered on
these executives at Nike and the creationof the shoe. I must confess when
I saw a trailer for this,I thought it was a parody. Yeah,
I didn't think it was a realpoint good point. Oh my gosh,
this is now a movie that we'remaking them a sneaker yea. And
two things to say about that.That is the absolute you know, pinnacles
(23:48):
zenith of corporate sponsorship, right,I mean, they created a shoe out
of whole cloth. Partn u punI started it, that it started.
It was this And famously one ofthe things one of the criticisms of Michael
Jordan are called during his career wasthat he was not outspoken on behalf of
African Americans. And he famously saidI'm not sure if it's apocyphal or not,
but that white people buy sneakers too, and real, real good point,
(24:11):
right, because people he was misterclean. Yeah, to the point
where people were saying you should speakout, and that be got Basically,
what I see is Lebron James rightsays what's on his mind and still has
He has more sponsorships than anyone imaginable. Okay, So it's ironic that we
went from Michael and hey, Mike, you're not saying anything to where we
(24:33):
are today, where you know,basically anyone that if you were asking me,
any celebrity that came in could gooff the rails and you have to
be prepared to deal with that.So I mean you worked in communications,
you know, right, like,Okay, let's handle it from the legal
side. What happens if it goesdown legally, and how are we going
to pitch it to the rest ofthe world in terms of the press and
(24:56):
communications if it does happen. Well, I think some things that are instructive
here. Right. In the caseof Nike, they were a you know,
a big shoe company, but theyweren't the biggest shoe company their world,
and they wanted to be bigger.So they decided to take a risk
with Michael Jordan, and they becamethe Nike that we know. When you're
Adidas or when you're bud Light,the risks are much much larger if you're
some correct, cosmetic little cosmetic companyand you want some influencer to you be
(25:22):
your spokesperson, and you go fromsales of one hundred thousand to let's say,
twenty million. Good on you,well done. Right, you're a
small brand, it doesn't matter.Right. The genders are kind of a
case in point, but somewhat differentbecause they create their own brands. Right,
if you're a worldwide global brand,you know, I don't know all
the different markets here, but howmuch more market share do you think you're
(25:42):
going to get by signing someone evenbefore he or she says something anti semitic
or something crazy, do you thinkyou're gonna get? And again, that's
the risk you take. And Ithink any of those decisions when it comes
to these massive, massive, massiveconsumer companies are huge, and in the
case of Adidas, and it lookslike in the case of Budweiser, they're
(26:03):
finding that out. So it's fascinating, tough, yeah, and it's a
good point. You know, thesize of the company and the size of
the sponsorship is very very important.You know, ultimately, will will bud
Light recover from this? I thinkis the years go on, maybe,
but in the short term they've alreadytaken a hit and they might take more
of a hit. Yeah, Iguess so, I just find the whole
(26:23):
idea of where this person has beentreated as just ghastly. Yeah, And
that's the other that's the other sideof it. It is right, that's
the other side of it. Absolutely, So we'll see. Yeah, there
(26:48):
are other podcasts that cover this morecomprehensive than we do, and we are
not an industry podcast. But let'stouch briefly on the writer's strike and what
that might mean for the world thatwe cover. The Hollywood writers. The
Writer's got to be America is onstrike. I believe it was ninety eight
percent of their rank and file votedfor this strike. So this is a
very committed union, at least asof now. And the thinking is that
this will go on until well throughthe summertime, until the pain starts to
(27:10):
be felt by the studios and thenetworks and the streaming services because they start
running out a product. The issuesare the usual stuff. They want money.
They live in a new world rightnow with streaming services. The idea
in the old days when you gothooked out to a sitcom or a drama
and you worked there for many,many years and it was a success,
and then you've got residuals when theshow went into syndication, into repeats,
(27:33):
that doesn't exist anymore. Writers aresaying that they work for these kind of
mini writing rooms, that even inthe most successful streaming program is very short
and it doesn't last that long,and that they just cannot get a leg
up, and they're basically being treatedlike uber drivers, quite frankly, and
that's a problem for them. Sothat's what they are, that's what they're
concerned about, right. This happenswith every union, Yeah, and you
(27:56):
know, every group of workers,which we consider the writers a part of.
And it's too bad that it takesa strike to figure out a compromise,
which eventually they will, because noone's stupid here, right. I
have a saying, I have manysayings, actually share them with us,
(28:17):
and you know, they're all reallygood to mind it for this one is
that there's always a magic number,okay. So the writers know what their
magic number is, okay, Andthe unions and the networks and the streaming
services they know what their magic numberis. And right now they're very very
far apart. They may be sixtyfive percent apart, right, but at
(28:38):
the end of the day, theyboth know what they're going to take and
there's a magic number and they canget there right away. But no one's
gonna put their magic number on thetable right away. Okay, So they're
going to go back and forth andback and forth and do the dance until
they finally realize here's the magic number. I mean, how long can you
go without TV shows without writers?Maybe six months, maybe a year.
(29:02):
I think that's a stretch a littlebit. But somewhere within three to six
to nine months, this thing isgoing to settle like it always does.
Well, you know what's interesting aboutthese strikes is that they have collateral damage
or collateral change that no one anticipatesat the time of the strike. Back
in two thousand and seven, whichwas the last writers strike, or what
happened was you had an absolute thentsunami of reality shows because reality shows don't
(29:23):
really need writers on them, andrat of course then began to populate not
only cable but the streaming services andthe networks. One of the things I
think that's interesting here, and itkind of happened simultaneously to this, and
I haven't seen people necessarily connect them, but the James Cordon Show ended after
eight years. Then it was seenas a huge success. He was seen
as a delightful host its franchises likeCarpool Karaoke that people could remember. He
(29:48):
was unbelievable with an unbelievable source ofbits that appeared on social media, that
appeared in Instagram and on TikTok.The show had lots of ancillary bits and
lives to it other than the showyou watched at twelve thirty. I would
argue that not a lot of peopledid. And in fact, there was
a story in the La Times,not at a long ago that not a
lot of people did, and thataccording to the La Times, CBS was
(30:10):
losing twenty million dollars a year onthis show. It cost sixty million and
was only making about forty to fortyfive million. CBS has said that's not
true. What they haven't said ofsilt Troop number is right, it could
be. My point is this,the first victims of the writers strike are
the late night talk show hosts.James Cordon was popular, but I'm guessing
(30:30):
that he was the fourth among thefifth among the five in terms of getting
paid. If people get used todoing something else in the three four six
months it's going to take to resolvethis strike. And if networks find whatever
they replaced these talk show hosts with, get decent enough viewers, it could
(30:51):
spell the end for some of thesetalk shows because these guys are expensive.
Putting on these shows is expensive.And if you can put on something cheap
and you're a network, and you'rea network in the era of declining viewership,
why wouldn't you do it? Okay, it's real estate, right,
Welcome to the real estate business.So you're bringing up James Cordon, right,
So he moves out for whatever reason, whatever it is, we don't
(31:15):
really know exactly, but probably wasn'tmaking enough money. There's a new trend
of late night show and that isthat a person sits behind a desk and
just basically delivers the news. Andit may be funny, and it may
be not funny. It's usually funny, it's usually satirical. And I guarantee
you the production costs or about seventypercent less because you don't really what you're
(31:37):
doing there is you're selling the personwho's giving you the information, but you're
not selling the guests who are goingto be on the show. Did you
watch Jimmy fallon if whoever, whoever, whoever, I mean, you're not
you sit through this format of amonologue only to get to Okay, who
you having on the show? That'sa star that we want to see,
(32:00):
or lately the bits right, thecarpool karaoke and yeah, which is basically
geared towards social media more than morethan television, right, And it maybe
a lot of money to pay toget Michelle Obama do so, either it's
a natural occurrence of the divine orthe people in Hollywood started to realize that
(32:20):
these talk shows, which are basedon Jack Parr and Johnny Carson are getting
old and they're really really expensive,and we can get somebody like Chelsea Handler
not anymore, but who kind ofI think was one of the first people
to start the trend right where you'rethere and you're by yourself, and you're
not really looking at this person.You're not watching them for who the guests
(32:42):
are. You're watching them for themand what they bring to the table.
And even if Chelsea Handler is thedraw, she's not making the kind of
money that's Stephen Colbert or Jamie exactly. That's number one, exactly there's talk
right now. You know, they'veyet to name a replacement to Trevor Noah
on The Daily Show, and somepeople are speculating that they're not going to
They're just going to have a revolvedguest hosts who guess what costs a lot
less? And what does that do? What does that do? You?
(33:04):
You get somebody in who's not aswell known, but who's looking for the
exposure. And if your numbers arethe same, if you're in ratings are
the same, and you may maybeyou have a huge social media following,
and guess what do you do?You say, you know what, each
show that you come on, I'llgive you fifty grand, okay, And
you're saving money right there, rightthere. You're not paying someone twenty million
(33:28):
a year. Right. It isamazing, you know when if you go
online and you're going down some wormholelike I have done lately, and you
find like Jerry Lee lewis doing youknow, good golly Missilmali or yeah,
oh great balls a fire rather sorrysorry little Richard um on the Steven on
the Steve Allen Show. Yeah,aside from the fact that you know,
it looks like I was shot throughthe end of a coke bottle. Yes,
(33:51):
it's the same show that these showsare now. But they but they
all that. Yeah, that's mypoint. I know they go back to
Steve Allen. But here's the thingabout Steve Allen. Allen's interesting. He
was able to at least do someother forms of entertainment besides just sitting behind
a desk doing a monologue that,let's face it, it's you can tell
that it's been written, you know, twenty times over right, and then
(34:14):
having guests on what Steve he waslike. He played the piano, he
cracks, I mean, he dida lot of sort of different bits.
But still the format's the format.It was him, Jack Parr, Johnny
Carson. That's the format. Andit's been going for how many years?
I know? Yeah, I know, yeah, but it's not gonna last.
You know what I love about talkingto you? Who would have thought
when we began that's what we've beentalking about Steve Allen, you know what.
(34:36):
I love that, And for anyonewho doesn't know who he is,
go on YouTube and watch him becausehe's a genius. He started it all
he did right, and he alsodid some interesting stuff with Timothy Leary.
I wanted to point out, Well, that's for another there are rumors of
yeah, late Night Aaron Rodgers,six nations, more chemicals and less naturals
involved. So will I leave thatfor another day as we build the coronation,
(35:00):
which will be on the other endof this podcast, we'll talk about
that when that happens. We havesome other cases coming up. It's some
other interesting stories as a couple ofthe Disney lawsuit and Ronda Santis, which
we should tackle. But for thisday, I think we're done. It
was good seeing you again. Youtoo. I like our new setup.
Me too. I hope our listenersand viewers do, me too. And
we will talk to you in twoweeks time. Because I say that if
(35:21):
we announced last time, we're gonnado this every two weeks now going forward.
If demand becomes such would be becausewe become crushed under the demand for
more, we'll consider it. Well, you know we were talking about sponsors,
right, so let's make a pitchright now. My pitch is any
sponsorship, come in, sponsor us, and then we'll be on every day.
I don't have any shoes in thereright now, but some shoes on
(35:42):
my feet. I'll take that allright member brother. We'll see you in
two weeks. Yes, absolutely,Thanks everybody, we'll see you later. Bye bye
Hello, fellow entertainment brother Thomas Valentino, Hello, brother Hackett, how are
you. You know, for ourallegians of fans, they may notice something
a little different this week, whichis that we're not in our ordinary studio.
They decided to take this on theroad that would be our respective homes.
Yes, it does, however,not change the content of what we
want to discuss. In fact,it might make it better in some way.
We'll figure that out or you'll liftthe listeners will figure that out there.
(00:21):
We only do things that get better. We like to think that.
Yea. But we have a lotof stuff to talk about. We haven't
been doing several weeks, and somevery interesting stories from the kind of legal
personality publicity standpoint, and we're goingto get to them all. We may
not be live in Times Square,but we still are the Entertainment Brothers,
(00:41):
and we're in you know, inNew York City exactly. So the ladies
and gentlemen, we're back and weare the entertainment Brothers. Okay, ladies
(01:03):
and gentleman again. We are backand loss to talk about this week because
we head into deep spring. ThomasAllentio, The most important thing or most
interesting thing I think in the pastweek in the kind of world that we
traffic in, was the decision bythe court here in Manhattan to basically a
quit Ed Shearing in the plagiarism claimthat was brought against him by the family
of Ed Townsend. Ed Townsend hadbeen the writer of the song Let's Get
(01:26):
It On, which of course wasa huge hit in nineteen seventy three from
Marvin Gay, and it's a verybeloved song and a very well known song,
which I think is one of thethings that makes it interesting. What
also made this case interesting, andwe'll get to the specifics, was that
this was the second very high profilecase in recent years involving a Marvin Gay
song, maybe maybe not written byMarvin Gay, but performed and made famous
by Marvin Gay. The last one, of course, was Got to Give
(01:49):
It Up and the Blurred Lines case, which the jury ruled in favor of
Marvin Gay and Farrell and Robin Thickehad to pay I believe it was some
over five million dollars. At firstit was seven and then it was reduced
to around five million dollars correct.And of course that case came up in
this case, and what was interestingabout this case, besides the technical aspects
(02:12):
of the chords that were used andthe frequency of these chords used in popular
songs, was I thought the incrediblyaggressive defense that Ed Shearon himself put on.
This was not a study in musicology. It was to some degree,
and obviously the people on behalf ofit Townsend wanted to make it such,
but instead it became a kind ofcry of the heart from Ed Shearon about
(02:36):
the agony he's been undergoing for thepast eight years over this lawsuit, the
idea of how daft he thought itwas that he would rip up such a
classic song and such an identifiable song, and despite video of him doing a
mashup of his song Thinking out Loudand the Marvin Gay song, he said
the idea that he would rip thisoff as ridiculous. He basically pointed out
(02:57):
to both music people and to peoplewho don't understand us, that there's only
so many chords in the Western musiccannon. There are only so many chords,
right, I mean, there's youknow, there's seven notes been a
scale, and there's twelve notes inthe entire scale. And to make songs
out of that, particularly in popularmusic, which has a much more rigorous
format. It's very difficult, andI thought that it was in fact his
(03:20):
defense on the stand and his decisionto defend himself that helped him win.
What do you think, I thinkhe's a lawyer in disguise. That's how
brilliant he was. I mean herein this singing lawyer. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, he didn't miss anote in his own defense, not
one thing. If he had cometo me, I would have said,
(03:43):
this is what you need to do, right down to wearing a suit,
which is always important, right downyou know, your appearance, right down
to being respectful, but also sayingI know more about music than anybody in
the world. He really had thatattitude and people embraced it. And for
(04:05):
him to go at the musicologist,I mean, the musicologist is an expert
witness. So it would sort ofbe like one of the cases we saw
in the summer, the Murdoch case, where if he was sitting there being
cross examined, and sometimes he didwhere he goes back after the attorney asking
him the questions. Right, Soyeah, aggressive, smart, very intelligent,
(04:30):
didn't appear too cocky, was alsohumble and like, excuse me.
One of the biggest stars of alltime. I mean, he's on the
mount rushmore of musicians and artists.As far as I'm concerned, it's indisputable.
Certainly in the present day, that'sfor sure, right, right,
Absolutely. I thought there were severalthings that you and I have discussed that
I think are important and that listenersought to know. One is that this
(04:54):
lawsuit was about the sheet music.It was strictly about the chords that were
played and in a sequence that theplaintiffs, the family of Headtowns and said
were similar. Right, the musicwas not played. Now you could argue
that playing the music and the basslineand the groove could have either worked four
(05:16):
or against Sharon. Right. Onceyou hear these things, if you look
if you looked at the sheet musicof anything, you know, there's a
online there's all kinds of places whereyou can see the chords for songs if
you're a guitar player, if youhave a player, and you'll find out
that it's shocking they don't collate itthis way. But if they collated it
by kind of like you know,give me a one, four or five
and c. There are hundreds ofsongs that use that pattern, right,
(05:40):
And you may not think that SafeEuropean Home by the Clash sounds anything like
Please Please Me by the Beatles,but in fact they use the same chords
correct, and that we could givehundreds of examples like that. So I
think, on the face of it, the similarity of the chords probably didn't
bode well for Sharon, but hisdefense and again, like I said,
(06:00):
the fact that they didn't play thesongs, and I personally don't think.
I think when you do play thesongs, they actually don't sound that much
alike. You can hear the chords, I agree with that, but you
know, lots of these songs kindof sound the same, so I think
it's interesting. What I also thoughtwas interesting was in a lot of these
cases, whether it was the ledZeppelin case over Stairway to Heaven or whether
it was in fact that Farrell caseover Got to Give it Up, you
(06:21):
didn't get much commentary from outside thecourt room while the patrol was going on.
I saw at least two op edpieces with people talking about this case
as having a potentially unbelievably chilling effecton songwriting and saying that the idea they
basically believed at sharing completely said thatthe if you find that these chords in
(06:42):
this sequence are plagiarism, you mightas well turn the radio off, because
no one is going to risk writinga song like that in the future,
because they're going to say it soundslike something else. Right, And so
my response to that is a couplethings. Right. You have to remember
that first, he did see themash up as far as I know,
right of his concert performance. Yes, right, So you say, well,
(07:05):
what if the original recording was played, right, does it really matter
when they're seeing the mashup? Imean, I don't think so as much.
And I think a lot of whatmight have this song might have been
about was that the arrangements, thearrangement of the Marvin Gay song made it
(07:26):
sound like it made it sound likeEd had taken that it was based more
on the arrangement than it was onthe chord structures and the actual song itself.
But of course that was not allowedin, right, It wasn't allowed
in. But I think if itwas, I don't think it would have
been negative for Ed. Okay.And then the other thing, He's right,
I mean, at a certain pointI didn't agree with the blurred lines
(07:47):
decision. Okay, and I thinka lot of that was about a lot
of other factors, and you couldsee this trending going the other way towards
the defendants, meaning the person who'sbeing sued, And so he was right.
If he lost this, I thinkthat people would have still kept writing
songs, but I think they wouldhave been a little more scared. And
(08:11):
I was glad to see that themusicologist, that this case was not about
a musicologist, because that's what everybodydoes when they get sued, they go
out and hire a musicologist, andthat this one was left to the artists
to finally carry the day. AndI also think that's good, because you're
really I respect him for his intelligenceand for everything that he did. He
was a perfect witness. He toldan interesting story about having written a song
(08:35):
with someone else and it's sounding tohim like a Coldplay song, so much
so that he called Chris Martin aColdplay and said, listen, can you
clear this? And Chris Barne said, I know you didn't steal this,
so no, I'm not going toclear it because I know you didn't do
anything wrong. Then I thought thatthat was very interesting. But I think
you're absolutely right, and I thinkit's probably I think the decision was the
(08:56):
right one. I think you'd behard pressed to say that this song sounded
like that, and you would worryabout the future if he had lost.
I think artists everywhere, you know, somebody, the people would be crawling
out of the woodwork, and again, just to engage them. I think
one of the things that drove edShearon crazy was not so much perhaps that
he was getting sued by the familyof this Well, first of all,
let's remember one thing there was thefamily. And if I understand this correctly,
(09:20):
Townsend's catalog and songwriting are owned bysome private equity firm, and they're
the ones that wanted to sue right, right, Because these guys are looking
to maximize their money, right,an opportunity at any heating exactly including suing
artists, right right, And sothat actually has a lot to do with
it. At one point he wentover and hugged her, yes, which
(09:41):
I thought was very, very classything to do. But you can imagine
a world where all of these catalogsare being bought by these private equity firms,
right, and these private equity firms, you know, like they're gutting
newspapers out there in the world andtaking from the assets. They'll look at
someone's catalog and sue someone else andsay, hey, they can't think of
(10:03):
anybody particular. I don't want togo right, Well, you wouldn't,
but okay, So here's the thing. They buy a catalog, right,
and they've spent twenty four times themultiple in other words, twenty four times
the value, okay, of whatthe catalog is really worth. And if
they're not in the music business,they may be all fired up. Oh
I just bought the estate of soand so, and you can see it
(10:24):
because it comes out and they're bragging, I have this, I have that.
It's bragging rights, right, Andthen six months later they're sitting there
and they're like, how much moneyhave we made back? Because we owe
the debt on This is so insanethat we have to figure out a way
to make money. And guess what. You find out that you're overpaid and
you don't know what to do,and people made promises and they don't fulfill
(10:46):
those promises, and all of asudden, you're like, what are we
gonna do. Let's go out andsue somebody. Let's go out and sue
ed Sharing, and I know alot of these companies are thinking that way
when they buy the catalogs, right, So that's an another factor to consider.
I also want to say this,My background is such that I teach
(11:07):
music publishing one on one at Berkeley, and I worked at Broadcast Music Incorporated,
and then I worked for Will Jennings, a bunch of big songwriters,
and all my life, in allmy life working with well known songwriters and
songwriters who are just amateurs starting out. I've never ever seen one situation where
(11:30):
when someone wrote a song that theywere even thinking about someone else. Right,
They go in and they think theyare writing a new song, and
if it turns out that it soundsidentical to someone else's song, it was
not done intentionally because they have toomuch pride to do that, even if
they're not well known. Of course, but you have said yourself, ignorance
(11:54):
of the law is not necessarily no, it's not. George Harrison didn't think
he was ripping off the Cherrell's whenhe wrote sweet Lord, which sound like
She's so fine, but he basicallyacknowledged, I mean, that was exact
dollars. Later on, it's likeI must have been an unconscious thing in
my head, right, right,So that's my point. I mean,
I don't think anyone deliberately goes outand does this. Well, let me
ask you the flip side of thatcoin. Are there songwriters now or then,
(12:18):
but maybe more now who live infear of this happening to them more
and it inhibits them in some way? I believe it or not, I
don't think so, I think it. Let's say that ed had not won
this case, I think that everyonewould still carry on the same way.
I don't think it would have changedthings as much as people do. And
I'm on the inside, so peopleare looking at the outside, right,
(12:41):
I don't People will always write songs, people will always create art. We've
seen that throughout the history of civilization, right. I mean, you know,
Matisse when he was on his bedwas painting with his mouth. So
they believe in the art, andso I don't think this would have had
a negative effect. But you know, it might have made some people think
(13:03):
twice. And I think some ofthe more established songwriters who were more or
less retired now we're fearing it.But obviously, if this is what you
do for a living every day,you're just going to go back tomorrow and
write another song. It Also inthe world we live in now, whether
it's painting or art or film.Look, there is a line between an
homage or a reference or a kindof symbolic kind of nod to something,
(13:24):
and we see that in films andin music and music all the sampling.
Well, that's exactly I'm playing.So there's a line between like sampling and
ripping off. Right. I waspointing out to my daughter that there's a
song on the New Boy Genius albumthat sounded exactly like The Boxer by Simon,
a Garlf uncle. In fact,my daughter said, well, you
(13:45):
know, Paul Simon got a songwritingcredit. Now, at first I thought
that they had written a song withhim, and then you enlightened me about
what really happened. Probably in thiscase, right, they were, they
had good representation, They gave himcredit because they knew that their song sounded
like his. They went out andgot permission exactly, And that's what you
do, right, that's the rightway to do it. In terms of
again, you know the other stuff, I didn't see it in this case.
(14:05):
So I'm glad for him and gladfor everyone you know in the community.
Well one last thing that it doesn'treally belong on the Coore room.
But one of the delights about lovingpop music is when you hear those connections
between songs, when you hear somethingthat sounds like something else and you think,
oh, that person heard the samesong I heard, and they liked
that song and they have now takensome inspiration or fragment of the structure and
(14:28):
done it. And I think that'sone of the delights about listening to music.
You know what. I've been blessedenough to have really gotten into all
of Marvin Gay's music, a lotof it, and I've been blessed to
be close to Ed's music on alot of different levels. And all I
know at the end of the dayis that they're both great songs and their
(14:50):
own right. They stand on theirown and when I listen to them,
they both make me feel better.Right, So people come on it's music
right at a certain point, andyou, as a veteran of Nashville,
if people in Nashville suit each otherbecause chords were the same, there'd be
blood all over the streets because there'sbasically about four different songs, and you
(15:11):
know, country music correct, andit worked. People respect each other,
right, there's a respect there.So all right, let's move down the
hall to another courtroom, this onebeing rather it's not a court room yet.
(15:35):
It's probably still in the clerk's office. It is a lawsuit that's been
filed by investors of Adidas claiming thatthe shoe company, which famously cut ties
with the disgraced rapper of Kanye Westover his anti submitted comments. The lawsuit
claims that Adidas knew years ago thathe was problematic, and that they didn't
do anything about it, and thatthey should have cut ties. And I
(15:56):
guess inferring. I guess they're inferringand should have stopped taking investments because they
knew that this guy was a timebomb who was going to blow up,
and they're now suing the company,adding to the woes of Adidas who have
lost I believe the estimates are overa billion dollars thus far, and they
have warehouses around the world a littleshoes that they can't sell. So it's
not as if the investors think theymade a bad decision by not cutting ties
(16:19):
with them. They think they shouldhave cut ties earlier, and that they
should have known that, and thatwas a storm cloud on their rise,
and they could have managed became anabsolute tornado that they can't manage, and
now everybody's at a dough What doyou make of this in terms of several
things, One, can they winthis lawsuit and to what it might say
(16:40):
or does say about the perils ofcelebrity partnerships with companies that have other clients
and other constituencies to answer to.Well, most times celebrity partnerships work right.
In fact, I can't think ofvery many times when they haven't.
So this was one case where itdidn't work in their mind. They made
(17:00):
a decision, they let him go, the investors turn around and sue.
So I'm not so sure that Ireally think Adidas had a good reason to
let him go. I mean,he was bordering on anything he said next
was going to be really, reallybad. I think that he took whatever
he was about to a place thatwas so far that they felt that they
(17:22):
had to let him go. Sonow if the investors want to come back
and try to sue on that,I think there's a lot of things that
they're going to have to prove thatthey may not be able to prove.
In other words, I think thatthe company has the better argument of saying
he was making us look bad.Eventually, the damage that could have been
(17:45):
done if we hadn't had done ordid what we did, would look a
lot worse than what you're looking atnow. But what about the argument that
they seem to be making this lawsuit, which is that you knew in twenty
eight teen this guy was a timebomb, and you did nothing, and
you kept him, and then itbecame that much worse in twenty twenty two
(18:07):
and you finally had to unload him. In other words, can you sue
on some counter factual that you didn'tmake a decision in twenty and eighteen and
therefore your liberal that seems a toughone, tough, tough, tough.
Here's the thing. In two eighteen, I think we all would agree that
what he was doing insane was notquite as outrageous and not quite as offensive
(18:30):
as what he was saying in thesix months before he got terminated. I
think he'd already been to the WhiteHouse. I think he'd made mentions of
being a presidential candidate. I think, and we've told well, that's that,
but that's I agree presidential candidate isnothing. No, I know.
I think maybe there's his behavior waserratic. I mean, I think he
was exhibiting We put about this before, he was exhibiting some symptoms of his
(18:53):
bipolarity, and maybe that's what they'rereferring to. But to say that because
the company didn't do so, andthen two years later the guy becomes a
flaming, filthy anti semi it's hard. Yeah, well, okay, you
brought out a great point, whetheryou realize it or not, right,
the bipolarity. Well, then heturns around and says, you've fired me,
(19:15):
which still might be his defense righttoday now. And I have mental
health issues, and you've fired mein spite of my mental health issues.
Therefore I have a case against you. And more and more, by the
way, this mental health issue isbecoming paramount. I'm actually dealing with a
case that involves that right now,okay. And it's a very very tough
(19:38):
area because if you fire someone becausethey're acting erratically or doing certain things and
they have a documented history of mentalhealth, then you have to be very
very careful because the person may literallynot know too much what they're doing,
even though they're on medication. Theymay not be on the right medication right.
(19:59):
So there's a lot of variables inhere, and we're definitely seeing it
in this case. Do you thinkthe idea of sponsorships needs to be revisited,
particularly in the world of social mediawhere things can absolutely explode at a
moment's notice. I'm thinking of severalthings. I'm thinking of a couple of
years ago when Pepsi had I thinkit was Kendall Jenner in a commercial that
(20:25):
was a kind of disnified version ofa street protest. This was in the
wake of George Floyd and it hadKendall Jenner and it seemed to be really
capitalizing in an incredibly awkward and hamhandedway on issues of social justice and social
outrage and protest to sell diet Pepsi. And it was a debacle, and
I believe some executives left the companybecause it was such a mess. Fast
(20:49):
forward to what's been going on inthe past several weeks with the bud Light
controversy involving a trans influencer, Dylanmulvaney, and reports that bud Light has
just cratered on the market and haslost tens of millions of dollars, and
people have protested wildly over the useof this transgender person. I don't want
to get into that. I thinkit's obnoxious that people are reacting this way
(21:12):
and as that goes of all kindsof you know, prejudice from the seventies
and things like that. But that'snot what I'm talking about. What I'm
talking about is in the world thatwe live and the kind of stuff we
cover, does the idea of sponsorshipsneed to be rethought in some kind of
way because frankly, everybody's endorsing everything, particularly online and particularly I mean the
(21:33):
whole reason that the word influencers existsis because they endorse stuff, right,
That's what they do, that's whatthey exist for. At the same time,
social media is such a wildfire atany given moment that this can really
come back and hurt particularly the brands. Not so much the stars. The
stars and the celebrities do what theydo, and they do it that themselves.
It's the brands that try to recoverany thoughts on that. Yeah,
(21:56):
of course, well you just saidit right. With social media an influencers,
if anything, it's moving in thedirection of more people sponsoring more and
more people who may not even befamous, right, I mean, what
is an influencer. Well, there'ssomeone of a certain generation that you know
has a brand, and so we'regoing to do a sponsorship deal with them.
(22:18):
Right. You're never going to getthe perfect celebrity or the perfect star,
or the perfect person to do this. There's always going to be a
chance someone can flip out, orif you haven't vetted them properly, that
something may come up that you didn'tknow about. So you sort of take
the suspect as you find them,right. In this case, you sort
(22:41):
of take the celebrity as you findthem. All right, But I don't
see this slowing down sponsorships. There'stoo much money involved. I mean I
think that's been proven, right,So if your bud light all right,
you made a mistake, and thenmaybe you go back to the drawing board
and you either go back to youknow, the horses in the old image
(23:03):
of everything, right, or youfind someone who's not as controversial, You
find a topic who's not as controversial, that's not as controversial, and then
you do that. I don't thinkpeople are going to step away from this
concept. This is rooted in Americancapitalism from the day of creation. Well,
it's interesting. You know, oneof the movies this spring was Air,
(23:26):
which was basically the creation story ofthe air Jordan's and it centered on
these executives at Nike and the creationof the shoe. I must confess when
I saw a trailer for this,I thought it was a parody. Yeah,
I didn't think it was a realpoint good point. Oh my gosh,
this is now a movie that we'remaking them a sneaker yea. And
two things to say about that.That is the absolute you know, pinnacles
(23:48):
zenith of corporate sponsorship, right,I mean, they created a shoe out
of whole cloth. Partn u punI started it, that it started.
It was this And famously one ofthe things one of the criticisms of Michael
Jordan are called during his career wasthat he was not outspoken on behalf of
African Americans. And he famously saidI'm not sure if it's apocyphal or not,
but that white people buy sneakers too, and real, real good point,
(24:11):
right, because people he was misterclean. Yeah, to the point
where people were saying you should speakout, and that be got Basically,
what I see is Lebron James rightsays what's on his mind and still has
He has more sponsorships than anyone imaginable. Okay, So it's ironic that we
went from Michael and hey, Mike, you're not saying anything to where we
(24:33):
are today, where you know,basically anyone that if you were asking me,
any celebrity that came in could gooff the rails and you have to
be prepared to deal with that.So I mean you worked in communications,
you know, right, like,Okay, let's handle it from the legal
side. What happens if it goesdown legally, and how are we going
to pitch it to the rest ofthe world in terms of the press and
(24:56):
communications if it does happen. Well, I think some things that are instructive
here. Right. In the caseof Nike, they were a you know,
a big shoe company, but theyweren't the biggest shoe company their world,
and they wanted to be bigger.So they decided to take a risk
with Michael Jordan, and they becamethe Nike that we know. When you're
Adidas or when you're bud Light,the risks are much much larger if you're
some correct, cosmetic little cosmetic companyand you want some influencer to you be
(25:22):
your spokesperson, and you go fromsales of one hundred thousand to let's say,
twenty million. Good on you,well done. Right, you're a
small brand, it doesn't matter.Right. The genders are kind of a
case in point, but somewhat differentbecause they create their own brands. Right,
if you're a worldwide global brand,you know, I don't know all
the different markets here, but howmuch more market share do you think you're
(25:42):
going to get by signing someone evenbefore he or she says something anti semitic
or something crazy, do you thinkyou're gonna get? And again, that's
the risk you take. And Ithink any of those decisions when it comes
to these massive, massive, massiveconsumer companies are huge, and in the
case of Adidas, and it lookslike in the case of Budweiser, they're
(26:03):
finding that out. So it's fascinating, tough, yeah, and it's a
good point. You know, thesize of the company and the size of
the sponsorship is very very important.You know, ultimately, will will bud
Light recover from this? I thinkis the years go on, maybe,
but in the short term they've alreadytaken a hit and they might take more
of a hit. Yeah, Iguess so, I just find the whole
(26:23):
idea of where this person has beentreated as just ghastly. Yeah, And
that's the other that's the other sideof it. It is right, that's
the other side of it. Absolutely, So we'll see. Yeah, there
(26:48):
are other podcasts that cover this morecomprehensive than we do, and we are
not an industry podcast. But let'stouch briefly on the writer's strike and what
that might mean for the world thatwe cover. The Hollywood writers. The
Writer's got to be America is onstrike. I believe it was ninety eight
percent of their rank and file votedfor this strike. So this is a
very committed union, at least asof now. And the thinking is that
this will go on until well throughthe summertime, until the pain starts to
(27:10):
be felt by the studios and thenetworks and the streaming services because they start
running out a product. The issuesare the usual stuff. They want money.
They live in a new world rightnow with streaming services. The idea
in the old days when you gothooked out to a sitcom or a drama
and you worked there for many,many years and it was a success,
and then you've got residuals when theshow went into syndication, into repeats,
(27:33):
that doesn't exist anymore. Writers aresaying that they work for these kind of
mini writing rooms, that even inthe most successful streaming program is very short
and it doesn't last that long,and that they just cannot get a leg
up, and they're basically being treatedlike uber drivers, quite frankly, and
that's a problem for them. Sothat's what they are, that's what they're
concerned about, right. This happenswith every union, Yeah, and you
(27:56):
know, every group of workers,which we consider the writers a part of.
And it's too bad that it takesa strike to figure out a compromise,
which eventually they will, because noone's stupid here, right. I
have a saying, I have manysayings, actually share them with us,
(28:17):
and you know, they're all reallygood to mind it for this one is
that there's always a magic number,okay. So the writers know what their
magic number is, okay, Andthe unions and the networks and the streaming
services they know what their magic numberis. And right now they're very very
far apart. They may be sixtyfive percent apart, right, but at
(28:38):
the end of the day, theyboth know what they're going to take and
there's a magic number and they canget there right away. But no one's
gonna put their magic number on thetable right away. Okay, So they're
going to go back and forth andback and forth and do the dance until
they finally realize here's the magic number. I mean, how long can you
go without TV shows without writers?Maybe six months, maybe a year.
(29:02):
I think that's a stretch a littlebit. But somewhere within three to six
to nine months, this thing isgoing to settle like it always does.
Well, you know what's interesting aboutthese strikes is that they have collateral damage
or collateral change that no one anticipatesat the time of the strike. Back
in two thousand and seven, whichwas the last writers strike, or what
happened was you had an absolute thentsunami of reality shows because reality shows don't
(29:23):
really need writers on them, andrat of course then began to populate not
only cable but the streaming services andthe networks. One of the things I
think that's interesting here, and itkind of happened simultaneously to this, and
I haven't seen people necessarily connect them, but the James Cordon Show ended after
eight years. Then it was seenas a huge success. He was seen
as a delightful host its franchises likeCarpool Karaoke that people could remember. He
(29:48):
was unbelievable with an unbelievable source ofbits that appeared on social media, that
appeared in Instagram and on TikTok.The show had lots of ancillary bits and
lives to it other than the showyou watched at twelve thirty. I would
argue that not a lot of peopledid. And in fact, there was
a story in the La Times,not at a long ago that not a
lot of people did, and thataccording to the La Times, CBS was
(30:10):
losing twenty million dollars a year onthis show. It cost sixty million and
was only making about forty to fortyfive million. CBS has said that's not
true. What they haven't said ofsilt Troop number is right, it could
be. My point is this,the first victims of the writers strike are
the late night talk show hosts.James Cordon was popular, but I'm guessing
(30:30):
that he was the fourth among thefifth among the five in terms of getting
paid. If people get used todoing something else in the three four six
months it's going to take to resolvethis strike. And if networks find whatever
they replaced these talk show hosts with, get decent enough viewers, it could
(30:51):
spell the end for some of thesetalk shows because these guys are expensive.
Putting on these shows is expensive.And if you can put on something cheap
and you're a network, and you'rea network in the era of declining viewership,
why wouldn't you do it? Okay, it's real estate, right,
Welcome to the real estate business.So you're bringing up James Cordon, right,
So he moves out for whatever reason, whatever it is, we don't
(31:15):
really know exactly, but probably wasn'tmaking enough money. There's a new trend
of late night show and that isthat a person sits behind a desk and
just basically delivers the news. Andit may be funny, and it may
be not funny. It's usually funny, it's usually satirical. And I guarantee
you the production costs or about seventypercent less because you don't really what you're
(31:37):
doing there is you're selling the personwho's giving you the information, but you're
not selling the guests who are goingto be on the show. Did you
watch Jimmy fallon if whoever, whoever, whoever, I mean, you're not
you sit through this format of amonologue only to get to Okay, who
you having on the show? That'sa star that we want to see,
(32:00):
or lately the bits right, thecarpool karaoke and yeah, which is basically
geared towards social media more than morethan television, right, And it maybe
a lot of money to pay toget Michelle Obama do so, either it's
a natural occurrence of the divine orthe people in Hollywood started to realize that
(32:20):
these talk shows, which are basedon Jack Parr and Johnny Carson are getting
old and they're really really expensive,and we can get somebody like Chelsea Handler
not anymore, but who kind ofI think was one of the first people
to start the trend right where you'rethere and you're by yourself, and you're
not really looking at this person.You're not watching them for who the guests
(32:42):
are. You're watching them for themand what they bring to the table.
And even if Chelsea Handler is thedraw, she's not making the kind of
money that's Stephen Colbert or Jamie exactly. That's number one, exactly there's talk
right now. You know, they'veyet to name a replacement to Trevor Noah
on The Daily Show, and somepeople are speculating that they're not going to
They're just going to have a revolvedguest hosts who guess what costs a lot
less? And what does that do? What does that do? You?
(33:04):
You get somebody in who's not aswell known, but who's looking for the
exposure. And if your numbers arethe same, if you're in ratings are
the same, and you may maybeyou have a huge social media following,
and guess what do you do?You say, you know what, each
show that you come on, I'llgive you fifty grand, okay, And
you're saving money right there, rightthere. You're not paying someone twenty million
(33:28):
a year. Right. It isamazing, you know when if you go
online and you're going down some wormholelike I have done lately, and you
find like Jerry Lee lewis doing youknow, good golly Missilmali or yeah,
oh great balls a fire rather sorrysorry little Richard um on the Steven on
the Steve Allen Show. Yeah,aside from the fact that you know,
it looks like I was shot throughthe end of a coke bottle. Yes,
(33:51):
it's the same show that these showsare now. But they but they
all that. Yeah, that's mypoint. I know they go back to
Steve Allen. But here's the thingabout Steve Allen. Allen's interesting. He
was able to at least do someother forms of entertainment besides just sitting behind
a desk doing a monologue that,let's face it, it's you can tell
that it's been written, you know, twenty times over right, and then
(34:14):
having guests on what Steve he waslike. He played the piano, he
cracks, I mean, he dida lot of sort of different bits.
But still the format's the format.It was him, Jack Parr, Johnny
Carson. That's the format. Andit's been going for how many years?
I know? Yeah, I know, yeah, but it's not gonna last.
You know what I love about talkingto you? Who would have thought
when we began that's what we've beentalking about Steve Allen, you know what.
(34:36):
I love that, And for anyonewho doesn't know who he is,
go on YouTube and watch him becausehe's a genius. He started it all
he did right, and he alsodid some interesting stuff with Timothy Leary.
I wanted to point out, Well, that's for another there are rumors of
yeah, late Night Aaron Rodgers,six nations, more chemicals and less naturals
involved. So will I leave thatfor another day as we build the coronation,
(35:00):
which will be on the other endof this podcast, we'll talk about
that when that happens. We havesome other cases coming up. It's some
other interesting stories as a couple ofthe Disney lawsuit and Ronda Santis, which
we should tackle. But for thisday, I think we're done. It
was good seeing you again. Youtoo. I like our new setup.
Me too. I hope our listenersand viewers do, me too. And
we will talk to you in twoweeks time. Because I say that if
(35:21):
we announced last time, we're gonnado this every two weeks now going forward.
If demand becomes such would be becausewe become crushed under the demand for
more, we'll consider it. Well, you know we were talking about sponsors,
right, so let's make a pitchright now. My pitch is any
sponsorship, come in, sponsor us, and then we'll be on every day.
I don't have any shoes in thereright now, but some shoes on
(35:42):
my feet. I'll take that allright member brother. We'll see you in
two weeks. Yes, absolutely,Thanks everybody, we'll see you later. Bye bye
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