November 14, 2025 • 11 mins
Dr. Bob Thompson has the latest entertainment news including a behind-the-scenes look at Taylor Swift's global tour from last year!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, so let's jump over to one of my
(00:01):
favorite guests of all time on this radio station, the
Legacy Retirement Group dot Com phone line, doctor Bob Thompson,
Professor of Pop Culture at Sarah Hughes University. Bob, you've
been doing this with us for twenty five years and
you were probably nineteen the first time you came on the.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Air with us.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
No, but my knees certainly didn't hurt his past. And
I'm so glad you brought up Pee Wee because he
really did. He brought that song to a whole new
audience and I can't hear it to this day without him.
What it was he up on the top of the
bar at the Biker Bar. Isn't that where he performed?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Then that's it. That's exactly it. Yeah, and it's it's
a great piece of music.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I had not heard of Dave Burgess until I read
this story, but yeah, it's a it's a great little
piece of music and one one of the very first
ever Grammys.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Pretty interesting there.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
This is the one the one silver lining to when
people when people pass is that it provides us a
way to go back and talk about what it is
that they did. And here's a perfect example.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, you're right, we wouldn't otherwise be talking about the champs.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And this morning.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I wanted to ask you to get your thoughts on this,
this stalemate between YouTube TV, which is of course the
parent company is Google. YouTube TV had a bit of
a standoff with Disney, which is you know, ABC and
ESPN and other channels, and they're doing this. You know
what we hear about the carriage license fees and all
of these these fees are they're what ultimately ends up
(01:30):
happening is the customer loses out because if you have
YouTube TV, you're not getting ESPN or ABC.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Right, And Disney has just announced that this may not
be solved for a while. I mean they've they've kind
of as much as said, uh, don't be holding your breath.
YouTube TV is offering now a rebate of twenty dollars.
So you've got a certain amount of time to apply
for this rebate. You'll get twenty dollars off. Because a
lot of people get their TV from you know, there's
(02:00):
YouTube which you go on to look at videos and
all that kind of stuff, but YouTube TV is of
course the service that is your major kind of what
your cable subscription used to be like that kind of thing,
and people have different services and YouTube TV is a
big one. And of course when Disney has a has
a beef, as you just pointed out, that's Disney Plus,
(02:22):
so it's all the kids. It's ESPN, so it's anybody
that follows sports, and it's ABC, which has still got
its share of things that people like to watch. So
that's a lot of property that gets taken when when
they pull something, Yeah, all them their whole thing.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
If you're you know what they call the cord cutters,
where you get rid of cable and you just go
to a streaming platform and a YouTube TV a very
popular one. I considered it. It considered it for a while.
It didn't make sense. And I don't know if twenty
bucks is enough. I mean it's I think it's like
eighty bucks a month anyway, and you know, I think
people would probably just prefer to have their programming back.
(03:00):
And it's my understanding that you got to jump through
a couple of hoops you get your twenty bucks. So
you got to get an email, and you got to
you know, do this and that and go to through
this door and jump this hoop and not a good situation.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, no, you're right, You've got to go through all
this trouble. And then, as you point out, it's twenty bucks.
It's the reason one has been subscribing to this in
the first place, so you can see the stuff you want,
and twenty dollars hardly pays for that you mentioned going
through hoops. It is amazing. How Ever, since people quit
(03:32):
getting television by sticking an antenna up on their roof,
the hoops we have to go through. I mean, back
then you plug the thing in and you turned it on.
I remember when getting cable hooked up. You know, they
never show up for their appointment, and they finally would,
and then all that and of course there's now lawsuits
about how much trouble it is to cancel a streaming service.
(03:55):
Very easy to sign up, not so easy to cancel.
So this, all these hoops we talk about are very
very deliberate. The business model is you get people to
sign up for this stuff and you make it very
very difficult for them ever to quit. And of course
they've got your credit card number, which it just easily keeps,
(04:15):
you know, sucking. However much it is each month out of.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
You know, it's kind of a same but different type
analogy of jumping through hoops. I was talking with our
sports director earlier about changing channels. If you're watching a
show on cable, or you're watching a sporting event and
you're on cable and then you want to go and
watch something else, maybe another sporting event, but that's on streaming.
You can't just like punch in the number, or you
(04:42):
can't just hit like last channel on the remote. You've
got to you know, log out, go over to the
new app, the log back in.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
You know, pick what you user you are.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
If you want to make a trillion dollars, Bob, invent
some sort of device or a remote that allows you
to seamlessly navigate between streaming and cable.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Yeah, you remember the joys of channel surfing where you
had a cable box and you would just go bang
bang bang, and immediately each new channel would come. Even
with a cable box. Now there's a two or three
second delay as the digital thing gets all re calibrated.
Not to mention what you point out where you're completely
(05:20):
changing sources and everything, but that old, even the old
period when we get off the couch, and you'd slip
the ship through the dial. You instantaneously could see everything.
You're right that those that channel surfing day is over,
not to mention the fact that you've got so many
options that it would take you forever to get through
them all.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Well, I think you know, going back to those days,
I was a human remote for my dad when we
only have three channels. Say hey, gonna go put on
channel four for me, and you get up and click
click click and put it on and then go sit back.
Then I'll go back to the channel of ten to
click click click click click.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
So yeah, that's.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Why the Baby Boom generation was so big. All those kids,
all those parents needed kids to James, it's the.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
TV channels speaking with doctor Bob professor.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
And then when the older when those kids would get
old enough to quit doing it, they needed younger kids
that were gullible enough to keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
That's right, Bob Thompson, professor of pop culture at Syracuse.
How about this HBO max is The Pit is going
to be on cable TV.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
It's going to be on TNT.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Now, if you don't know anything about The Pit, it
is a very graphic show.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
There's nudity, there's medical imagery.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
It is it is not for the faint of heart,
and it's going to air uncut on TNT.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, and you know, there's nothing that we get this
sense that there's HBO and that has the nudity and
the violence and all that kind of stuff. And then
we had you know, regular table channels like TNT in
USA today, which might be more than network, but still
we're you know, limited. And then of course you have
network TV, which has all kinds of things they can't show.
There's nothing in the law that says a place like TNT,
(07:00):
even though it's got commercials and everything, can't show nudity
or I mean, it can't show unprotected stuff like gets
shoe child pornography, but it can do nudity in all
the language it wants. That FCC indecency rule is for
broadcast television. But surprisingly they haven't pushed those envelopes even
(07:22):
right up until the present time. And now the pit,
which you're right, has nudity and what and I love
the phrase they use graphic medical imagery, which essentially means
a lot of gross.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Stuffy gory.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Right, that's a better word. So anyway, that will is
going to be played uncut and if those who haven't
seen it, it's actually a pretty classy show. It won
a whole bunch of Emmy Awards, including Best Drama This
past time through I Think it got It swept the
TV Critics Association Awards, so it's considered one of the
(07:56):
good programs of this past And now if you're not
paying for HBO Max, you'll be able to get an
unted DNT. I think that starts December first, something like
that in December.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Sometimes, Yeah, I'm sure it'll be heavily disclaimed.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
You know, this program intended for mature audiences only, which
as a kid, I.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Would have been like, oh, yeah, this is the good
stuff when I when I saw it come across the
promo for it's.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Right, and then everyone's favorite Taylor Swift is dropping her
behind the Scenes Era tour series.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Is that that's Disney Plus.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yeah, it's Disney Plus. So if you're on, if you've
got YouTube TV, you find luck. Yeah right, you're out
of luck. That that comes December twelfth, But the trailer
just dropped it. Of course, everybody's all excited about that.
It's amazing what they're milking out of that Era's tour.
I mean they had the tour, they of course had
(08:52):
the album, they had the film, and now this is
a sixth part not just a documentary of behind the
scenes that the aras tour, it's a six part documentary
about it.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Wow. Yeah, just wait.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
It looks kind of interesting actually from what little we've
seen in the trailer.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, anything behind the scenes when it comes to concerts,
I'm always sort of interested in. Now, I'm not a
huge Taylor Swift fan or follower, but I'm always sort
of interested to see how those things get put together.
This was a massive, massive undertaking. I mean, what like
a billion dollar grossing tour and all this other thing.
And then finally before I let you Fly CNN, which
(09:27):
I don't spend a ton of time watching, but they're
doing some product placement using T Mobile.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
How does that work?
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yeah, so the T mobile logo is going to appear
on the screen on all these stories when they're out
of the studio, and the whole idea that mobile helps
with their super row mobile service to connect and all
that kind of thing. But this is always I think dicey,
and it's not the first time.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I know.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
If you remember Morning Joe on MSNBC was sponsored by Starbucks,
and they used to have all these product placements Starbucks
things on it. You know, this episode brewed by Starbucks,
all that kind of stuff. Even the title Morning Joe,
it was Joe Scarborough, but it would also you know,
implied coffee. And way back in the beginning the genesis
(10:15):
of television news, back in the forties, the first major
news story daily news show was called the Camel News Caravan.
It was sponsored by Campbell Cigarettes, and I'm not kidding.
It would open saying, sit back, light up a camel
and get today's news today. And then they'd have the
(10:36):
anchor and there'd be a big ash tray on the
front of the anchor desk with the cambl sign on it,
and he'd be smoking guess what a camel or at
least that's what we had assumed it was. Now that,
of course, was so totally beyond conflict of interest because
what was also happening in the forties and fifties all
the new research about cancer and tobacco and cigarettes and
(10:58):
all that kind of stuff. So I think this is
a bad deal. But news operations are losing money and
they're looking for any way that they can fix that
All right, so let's jump over to one of my
(00:01):
favorite guests of all time on this radio station, the
Legacy Retirement Group dot Com phone line, doctor Bob Thompson,
Professor of Pop Culture at Sarah Hughes University. Bob, you've
been doing this with us for twenty five years and
you were probably nineteen the first time you came on the.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Air with us.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
No, but my knees certainly didn't hurt his past. And
I'm so glad you brought up Pee Wee because he
really did. He brought that song to a whole new
audience and I can't hear it to this day without him.
What it was he up on the top of the
bar at the Biker Bar. Isn't that where he performed?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Then that's it. That's exactly it. Yeah, and it's it's
a great piece of music.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I had not heard of Dave Burgess until I read
this story, but yeah, it's a it's a great little
piece of music and one one of the very first
ever Grammys.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Pretty interesting there.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
This is the one the one silver lining to when
people when people pass is that it provides us a
way to go back and talk about what it is
that they did. And here's a perfect example.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, you're right, we wouldn't otherwise be talking about the champs.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And this morning.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I wanted to ask you to get your thoughts on this,
this stalemate between YouTube TV, which is of course the
parent company is Google. YouTube TV had a bit of
a standoff with Disney, which is you know, ABC and
ESPN and other channels, and they're doing this. You know
what we hear about the carriage license fees and all
of these these fees are they're what ultimately ends up
(01:30):
happening is the customer loses out because if you have
YouTube TV, you're not getting ESPN or ABC.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Right, And Disney has just announced that this may not
be solved for a while. I mean they've they've kind
of as much as said, uh, don't be holding your breath.
YouTube TV is offering now a rebate of twenty dollars.
So you've got a certain amount of time to apply
for this rebate. You'll get twenty dollars off. Because a
lot of people get their TV from you know, there's
(02:00):
YouTube which you go on to look at videos and
all that kind of stuff, but YouTube TV is of
course the service that is your major kind of what
your cable subscription used to be like that kind of thing,
and people have different services and YouTube TV is a
big one. And of course when Disney has a has
a beef, as you just pointed out, that's Disney Plus,
(02:22):
so it's all the kids. It's ESPN, so it's anybody
that follows sports, and it's ABC, which has still got
its share of things that people like to watch. So
that's a lot of property that gets taken when when
they pull something, Yeah, all them their whole thing.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
If you're you know what they call the cord cutters,
where you get rid of cable and you just go
to a streaming platform and a YouTube TV a very
popular one. I considered it. It considered it for a while.
It didn't make sense. And I don't know if twenty
bucks is enough. I mean it's I think it's like
eighty bucks a month anyway, and you know, I think
people would probably just prefer to have their programming back.
(03:00):
And it's my understanding that you got to jump through
a couple of hoops you get your twenty bucks. So
you got to get an email, and you got to
you know, do this and that and go to through
this door and jump this hoop and not a good situation.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Yeah, no, you're right, You've got to go through all
this trouble. And then, as you point out, it's twenty bucks.
It's the reason one has been subscribing to this in
the first place, so you can see the stuff you want,
and twenty dollars hardly pays for that you mentioned going
through hoops. It is amazing. How Ever, since people quit
(03:32):
getting television by sticking an antenna up on their roof,
the hoops we have to go through. I mean, back
then you plug the thing in and you turned it on.
I remember when getting cable hooked up. You know, they
never show up for their appointment, and they finally would,
and then all that and of course there's now lawsuits
about how much trouble it is to cancel a streaming service.
(03:55):
Very easy to sign up, not so easy to cancel.
So this, all these hoops we talk about are very
very deliberate. The business model is you get people to
sign up for this stuff and you make it very
very difficult for them ever to quit. And of course
they've got your credit card number, which it just easily keeps,
(04:15):
you know, sucking. However much it is each month out of.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
You know, it's kind of a same but different type
analogy of jumping through hoops. I was talking with our
sports director earlier about changing channels. If you're watching a
show on cable, or you're watching a sporting event and
you're on cable and then you want to go and
watch something else, maybe another sporting event, but that's on streaming.
You can't just like punch in the number, or you
(04:42):
can't just hit like last channel on the remote. You've
got to you know, log out, go over to the
new app, the log back in.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
You know, pick what you user you are.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
If you want to make a trillion dollars, Bob, invent
some sort of device or a remote that allows you
to seamlessly navigate between streaming and cable.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Yeah, you remember the joys of channel surfing where you
had a cable box and you would just go bang
bang bang, and immediately each new channel would come. Even
with a cable box. Now there's a two or three
second delay as the digital thing gets all re calibrated.
Not to mention what you point out where you're completely
(05:20):
changing sources and everything, but that old, even the old
period when we get off the couch, and you'd slip
the ship through the dial. You instantaneously could see everything.
You're right that those that channel surfing day is over,
not to mention the fact that you've got so many
options that it would take you forever to get through
them all.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Well, I think you know, going back to those days,
I was a human remote for my dad when we
only have three channels. Say hey, gonna go put on
channel four for me, and you get up and click
click click and put it on and then go sit back.
Then I'll go back to the channel of ten to
click click click click click.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
So yeah, that's.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Why the Baby Boom generation was so big. All those kids,
all those parents needed kids to James, it's the.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
TV channels speaking with doctor Bob professor.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
And then when the older when those kids would get
old enough to quit doing it, they needed younger kids
that were gullible enough to keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
That's right, Bob Thompson, professor of pop culture at Syracuse.
How about this HBO max is The Pit is going
to be on cable TV.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
It's going to be on TNT.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Now, if you don't know anything about The Pit, it
is a very graphic show.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
There's nudity, there's medical imagery.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
It is it is not for the faint of heart,
and it's going to air uncut on TNT.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, and you know, there's nothing that we get this
sense that there's HBO and that has the nudity and
the violence and all that kind of stuff. And then
we had you know, regular table channels like TNT in
USA today, which might be more than network, but still
we're you know, limited. And then of course you have
network TV, which has all kinds of things they can't show.
There's nothing in the law that says a place like TNT,
(07:00):
even though it's got commercials and everything, can't show nudity
or I mean, it can't show unprotected stuff like gets
shoe child pornography, but it can do nudity in all
the language it wants. That FCC indecency rule is for
broadcast television. But surprisingly they haven't pushed those envelopes even
(07:22):
right up until the present time. And now the pit,
which you're right, has nudity and what and I love
the phrase they use graphic medical imagery, which essentially means
a lot of gross.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Stuffy gory.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Right, that's a better word. So anyway, that will is
going to be played uncut and if those who haven't
seen it, it's actually a pretty classy show. It won
a whole bunch of Emmy Awards, including Best Drama This
past time through I Think it got It swept the
TV Critics Association Awards, so it's considered one of the
(07:56):
good programs of this past And now if you're not
paying for HBO Max, you'll be able to get an
unted DNT. I think that starts December first, something like
that in December.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Sometimes, Yeah, I'm sure it'll be heavily disclaimed.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
You know, this program intended for mature audiences only, which
as a kid, I.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Would have been like, oh, yeah, this is the good
stuff when I when I saw it come across the
promo for it's.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Right, and then everyone's favorite Taylor Swift is dropping her
behind the Scenes Era tour series.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Is that that's Disney Plus.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Yeah, it's Disney Plus. So if you're on, if you've
got YouTube TV, you find luck. Yeah right, you're out
of luck. That that comes December twelfth, But the trailer
just dropped it. Of course, everybody's all excited about that.
It's amazing what they're milking out of that Era's tour.
I mean they had the tour, they of course had
(08:52):
the album, they had the film, and now this is
a sixth part not just a documentary of behind the
scenes that the aras tour, it's a six part documentary
about it.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Wow. Yeah, just wait.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
It looks kind of interesting actually from what little we've
seen in the trailer.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, anything behind the scenes when it comes to concerts,
I'm always sort of interested in. Now, I'm not a
huge Taylor Swift fan or follower, but I'm always sort
of interested to see how those things get put together.
This was a massive, massive undertaking. I mean, what like
a billion dollar grossing tour and all this other thing.
And then finally before I let you Fly CNN, which
(09:27):
I don't spend a ton of time watching, but they're
doing some product placement using T Mobile.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
How does that work?
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Yeah, so the T mobile logo is going to appear
on the screen on all these stories when they're out
of the studio, and the whole idea that mobile helps
with their super row mobile service to connect and all
that kind of thing. But this is always I think dicey,
and it's not the first time.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I know.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
If you remember Morning Joe on MSNBC was sponsored by Starbucks,
and they used to have all these product placements Starbucks
things on it. You know, this episode brewed by Starbucks,
all that kind of stuff. Even the title Morning Joe,
it was Joe Scarborough, but it would also you know,
implied coffee. And way back in the beginning the genesis
(10:15):
of television news, back in the forties, the first major
news story daily news show was called the Camel News Caravan.
It was sponsored by Campbell Cigarettes, and I'm not kidding.
It would open saying, sit back, light up a camel
and get today's news today. And then they'd have the
(10:36):
anchor and there'd be a big ash tray on the
front of the anchor desk with the cambl sign on it,
and he'd be smoking guess what a camel or at
least that's what we had assumed it was. Now that,
of course, was so totally beyond conflict of interest because
what was also happening in the forties and fifties all
the new research about cancer and tobacco and cigarettes and
(10:58):
all that kind of stuff. So I think this is
a bad deal. But news operations are losing money and
they're looking for any way that they can fix that
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com