Oliver Darcy Thinks the Media Doesn’t Get It. So He Built Status

21:55And for some reason, maybe longstanding relationships he had, he just it maybe could because he was throwing such outrageous red meat to the base. they just were turning a blind eye to it. And at the time, in around 2015, I was very perplexed. And he was saying very offensive things. You know, if you remember, he was insulting John McCain's service record. He was saying outrageous things about immigrants.

22:17Peter Kafka:He did all these things that in a different era and different persons would have ended his political career. Yes. That he got more popular. Especially in conservative media. Yep. And so I was covering it from that angle. And you remember that there was a divide, obviously, a huge divide, civil war between the Glenn Beck's of the world and the Sean Hannity's of the world and they were trashing each other. And I found this to be a very interesting story. And frankly, I felt like the - You are at CNN at this point? No, no, no, I'm still at the place. And I felt like the mainstream press was totally clueless as to how the Republican Party operates.

22:45The Republican Party, I think they still are to some extent, is not controlled by anyone in Congress. The Republican Party is controlled by the entertainment figures that have the audience. And that is in right-wing media. So if you want to know where the Republican Party is going, you pay attention to what's happening on these shows. And I was listening to the show, So I knew where it was going. And so I found that interesting and started covering at the blaze. Turns out it's very awkward to cover the stuff at the blaze. And maybe the powers that be don't necessarily want you covering it there.

23:12So I left, went to Business Insider and was politics editor there and really could cover it there. And I think that because I had unique insight and understanding of the space allowed me to cover it in a different way than, you know, it was being covered at other organizations. And that attracted me. You were a native speaker.

23:31Peter Kafka:Yes. Yeah. And so that was your explicit focus for a while at BI and then at CNN was sort of being a right wing media translator guide. To some extent. And I had access to a lot of these figures. Like, you know, they don't talk to me anymore. At least like they're. Well, I don't say they don't talk to me anymore because they do, too. But, you know, they don't they don't provide on the record access. But the time, you know, Glenn Beck would go on the record. Sean Hannity would go on the record with me. And and that was pretty rare. Like, you know, they don't usually give interviews. And do you feel like you had a conversion moment where you went from being someone whose politics and interest were right of center and you were sympathetic to those figures to it seems like you're not sympathetic at all of those figures and you're highly critical of them.

24:20Peter Kafka:But you tell me, did you have some sort of what do we call it? Road to Damascus. Did you have some sort of conversion moment or is your argument this is always what you thought and believed? Well, I would say no one really knows my politics anymore because I don't really discuss my personal politics, but at least not anymore. And I haven't for a long time. There's just a lot of assumptions about what they are. I would say that I think that we don't even talk about like policy at all. It's just like, are you adhering to basic reality? And that's been a lot of my focus on, you know, reporting and at Business Insider, at CNN and now at Status.

25:00It's like these people are untethered to the truth. And so we don't even get to have proper discussion about like tax policy or whether the government's too big or too small or, you know, even immigration policy or anything like that, because we are now dealing with people who spread conspiracy theories for profit and who are not actually interested in any solutions. I don't think you know you know there's the whole thing about Donald Trump torpedoing the situation at the border when Joe Biden was president if you remember and and so like these aren't policy focused individuals these are people who are really focused on I think misleading the public whether it's for profit like the entertainers or whether it's for political power.

25:52And so I don't know, like, have I matured in my political beliefs, I guess, like over the years? I think I would be, I think anyone who says they haven't grown their political beliefs from when they're in high school to not, like to where I am or to mid-30s, would be foolish because everyone grows and matures and changes if they have new information. But it's not like I became some like woke liberal overnight. I just decided that I'm not going to be partaking in the propaganda push that all these other folks wanted to go.

26:21Peter Kafka:There was this reaction after, particularly after the election last fall in media saying, well, you know, we can't chalk this up to an accident or some weird novelty. A majority of the country or a meaningful number of people in the country think Donald Trump should be their president. And our news coverage should reflect that. And we shouldn't be too woke just to be shorthand for it or strident or yelly. We're just going to relay the facts and everyone gets an equal voice. The way you frame things and your language often sort of makes it very clear how you feel and believe. And again, we can get caught up in describing whether it's woke or left or liberal.

27:09Peter Kafka:And you say it's not ideological. But the point is, you are very clear about, I think this is a good thing or a bad thing. Like you described a carriage fight between YouTube and Fox this week. and the words you use to describe Google putting OAN on their network, you say it's shameless whiplash-inducing reversal. Well, it is. Which might be the way that lots of people who cover that view it. Very few would write that, either because they don't think they can or their publisher specifically would say you can't use language like that. So it's a long way of me saying, How do you think about the way that you talk and describe things versus the way that other media outlets who are covering the exact same thing and probably have the exact same facts in many cases?

27:57Peter Kafka:There's a real difference. How do you how do you think about that difference? I think that we have a voice for sure. I think that's why people like us, because we say the things that everyone else is thinking and no one else saying. So it's like, you know, in this case, YouTube had suspended OAN and just in 2020. They had demonetized the channel. They had even said to news organizations that they did not view it as an authoritative news source. And then a few years later, you know, Neil Mohan is saying he's or not. He didn't say it, but YouTube is saying they're excited to platform OAN and give it access to its millions of of customers.

28:37Peter Kafka:To be the devil's advocate in a world where YouTube can now look around and go, a lot of people do want to get their news from OAN. And also, by the way, these people are now in the White House briefing room asking the president questions. And we tried to sort of adjudicate what was real medical information in 2020, for instance, or what was real information about voting in 2020. And we just failed. Right. No one was happy. Isn't there an argument to say if there's a if there's a market for this programming, we should provide it? I'd love to hear YouTube say that. I mean, they won't. Right. They won't actually answer questions about how they went from this outlet shouldn't even be allowed to upload videos on the user-generated side of YouTube to now we are going to host them and allow them to access millions of living rooms.

29:27I don't actually see how you could square those two things. I think the only reason that OAN is on YouTube TV is because they're afraid of Donald Trump and regulation. And they actually probably put this as part of a larger battle, you know, as a chip, a larger battle with Fox. But I mean, the point is that there is a huge reversal there. It's pretty shameless, I'd say. I don't see how it could not be viewed as that. And so we just say that in the copy. And I think people, that's why people subscribe to status, because we are not shy about saying these things.

29:59Peter Kafka:Was this something you wanted to do and felt you couldn't do at CNN? Or do you feel like you were doing the same kind of work with the same kind of language? I feel like CNN was very generous in allowing me to have an editorial voice, especially for a mainstream news organization. And, you know, another example would be we've always called Fox News a propaganda, a right wing propaganda network. And CNN was totally OK with that for the most part. So I think I was allowed to say the stuff. I think actually, quite frankly, Peter, a lot of journalists can make the case to the editors that this is actually true and factual.

30:39And we should probably not call Fox News a news organization because like look at all these documents where we have, you know, the internal documents where they it's very clear they're not really interested in advancing like fact based journalism. I just think that for some reason it doesn't happen. And so I would take the case, me and John Passantino, we would go and say, well, like, let's look at the facts. And like, do news organizations operate like this? Or if this were in another country, would we call this a propaganda outlet? And I think when you do that, it's very clear that like, you know, like Fox is a propaganda outlet.

31:13It might be uncomfortable to say it out loud, but that's the case. And CNN would look at the facts and say, yeah, you know, like, looks like it is.

31:19Peter Kafka:And do you think that changed in any way once CNN's ownership changed and Warner Brothers Discovery became the owner of John Malone, who's a libertarian, very, very influential figure in media in general and in that company, has explicitly said CNN is too lefty. He said it again in an interview today in The Times. He's held up Fox News as his model. Did you feel any change at CNN when the ownership changed? I, well, I guess I, so I'd certainly say there was definitely a change at CNN when the ownership changed hands. Well, they brought a new leader, Chris Licht. Yeah, there's definitely a softening of coverage at the network as a whole.

32:00I would say that I didn't let that impact my work. And I was still calling, you know, one of the, one of our fellow media reporters, actually, I remember I saw them at a conference before this transaction closed. And they said, you're not going to be able to call Fox News that once when Zaslav and Malone take over. And I said, well, then I won't work there. And, you know, to everyone's credit, they let me continue that coverage when I was there. I think, again, you know, if you make I think a lot of this stuff is self-censorship. And I think that the journalists hold more power than they probably realize.

32:39And so, you know, I mean, I guess, you know, I don't want to say that anyone's invincible. I mean, a lot of people were forced out of the network for their style of reporting, but they can't fire everyone.

32:52Peter Kafka:This idea of self-censorship is an interesting one, right? Because there's a lot of hand-wringing about what's happening to the media and bending the knee, and they're doing this thing explicitly to make Trump happy. And I'm sure in some cases we can point to that. A lot of other cases, I think it's people connecting dots. And the thing about connecting dots is you're not always right. How much of it how much of the way do you think the media is responding to the second Donald Trump administration is a matter of them explicitly, you know, trying to curry favor or stay out of crosshairs versus just sort of a natural sort of way that people respond to things without being told to?

33:28Well, I'd say that like you have to divide this by like the ownership class and the C-suite class versus like the people on the ground. I'd say that the ownership class, again, the Jeff Bezos, the Patrick Soon-Chiong, the John Malone's, you know, the David Ellison's. They want I think they have business interests before the government. It's pretty clear they don't want to be in Donald Trump's crosshairs and they are willing to soften coverage to try to stay in his good graces. They don't want trouble with FCC chair Brendan Carr, who is kind of like a MAGA enforcer inside the federal government at this point.

34:05And so they're willing to soften coverage. It's really quite obvious and pay Donald Trump in many cases to settle lawsuits. But I think the people on the ground see that. And some of them, you know, like it's the industry is very challenging right now and people want to keep their jobs. And I totally understand that. And a lot of people have kids. They have mortgages. And so they, you know, I think they the message is clear from the top and that trickles down and it has a chilling effect. And I would talk to people, you know, I talk to people at these news organizations and they would say like one of the people at the L.A.

34:40Times told me I never used to think at all about what Patrick Soon-Shiong was tweeting or thinking or doing. And now when I'm writing a story about like RFK or, you know, any of these folks, I definitely think about that. And so, like, that doesn't mean necessarily that they've, you know, they've bent the knee anyway, but there's certainly a chilling effect that happens as a result of the owners making these obvious signals.

35:01Peter Kafka:Do you think the media is either missing stories, not covering stories, undercovering stories because of political fear? Yeah. What's an example? I think I think every day there, I mean, are examples of the press. I guess like I don't think that you see the sharp edged coverage that you saw in the first Trump administration. You know, I remember, like, for instance, like you would look at a CNN chyron and it would be like, wow, that is insane that that's an actually fact based chyron. But it's laid out in a way where the facts really like land with a punch. And you don't think there's a market explanation for that that says, look, a meaningful number of people in the country don't want the kind of coverage we were giving them or they like Donald Trump.

35:51Peter Kafka:And when we portray everything in a negative light, even if it's true, we're going to scare off audience. I actually think the opposite is true. I think there's a market void for that kind of coverage. I think if the Washington Post, for instance, were to say that, like, as you look around and all these other news organizations have dulled their coverage of Donald Trump, they're not as hard hitting anymore. We are standing up. We have a backbone. We are not allowing democracy to die in darkness. You know, all that stuff. I think that would actually drive subscriptions to the Washington Post. I think the thing that has hurt the Washington Post is every time Jeff Bezos interferes in a pro-Trump direction, whether it's killing the Kamala Harris endorsement or installing like a new editor who's sort of like on the conservative side or not caring about the newsroom.

36:39Peter Kafka:I think that's the stuff that's actually. I mean, they certainly lost a bunch of their astonishing number, like a kind of unbelievable number of their subscribers as as as Bezos made some of those moves. I thought those couldn't those numbers couldn't be correct. They were correct. That's why it's annoying to me when people like talk about the business. Well, you have to understand the business of this thing. Well, the business of these decisions, like if you're just looking at it from a raw business standpoint, Jeff Bezos has has chased away subscribers. So it's not good business if you care only about The Washington Post.

37:09Of course, Jeff Bezos cares a lot more about probably Blue Origin and Amazon. And so he may be fine with losing a few subscribers to The Washington Post because his business portfolio, he's looking at it from a much larger standpoint. But if you isolate The Washington Post, the decisions he has made recently have certainly not helped. They've hurt.

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38:10Peter Kafka:Oh, yeah, intense. Want to see if you can handle the heat? Then try me. With pickles or spicy mayo and jalapenos. Oh, and it's all just$4.99. That's a deal almost as hot as I am. Almost? Sweets? No. Spicy? See for yourself. $4.99 and only at 7-Eleven.

38:38Peter Kafka:And we're back. Let's do a little bit of a speed round. What do you think is a major undercover story right now? If you could go and play assignment editor in newsrooms across the country, what would you tell them to be focused on? Um, I continue and I know this I've said this for years and I kind of alluded to it Um earlier on the show I continue to think that there is too much of a focus on washington and And random members of congress having power in the republican party when it is that the accountability journalism, I think should be focused on the MAGA media figures who are enabled by big tech platforms to spew and inject toxic waste into the public conversation.

39:26And I think that's the story. And that's the story that for some

39:31Peter Kafka:reason is rarely covered. So name some names. Who should get more scrutiny than they're getting now? Who should get more attention? Well, Neil Mohan, for instance, when he platforms OAN. It's the CEO of YouTube. CEO of YouTube. He should be asked questions about that. I don't really see many stories. You know, I knew Mohan will be on stage, I'm sure, on some conference. I'm hoping he gets asked about this sort of thing. I think he should get hard questions about that. I think that the head of Premier Radio, which platform - Neil's listing, by the way, so - Okay, well, Neil, if you want to do the interview with me, I'm happy to welcome you on Powerlines.

40:02But the head of Premier Radio, which platforms a lot of these right-wing talkers, like maybe they should get a few questions um the advertisers who who go on you know who spend money with these you know they should get questions um and also just like the the actual the actual media figures involved i mean like they should get questions when when um a daily wire reporter is at the white house briefing room uh asking the the press secretary if we can call her that whether the FBI should create a new like terrorism category for trans people, maybe Ben Shapiro should get some questions. You know, like these people are actually allowed to operate very much in the shadows.

40:48And I don't really understand why. And also Rupert Murdoch, I know, you know, I think to some extent, you know, they don't get, they don't really get like hard-hitting journalism, like on a regular basis calling out some of this stuff. These people are allowed to operate in a different universe, I think. I mean, to some extent.

41:08Peter Kafka:But what would the, what would the, just play it out, right? What if someone really scrutinized Fox News? I mean, I don't think Fox News has been under-scrutinized over the years. They are quite clear about what they're doing and why they're doing it, right? Not really, no. No, they're not. They're not. They're definitely not. Lachlan Murak says we're center-right. Yeah. I mean, they're not a center-right news organization. They're a right-wing propaganda network. They have an enormous audience, as they would point out, much bigger than all the other news networks and in some cases broadcast news, right?

41:41Peter Kafka:They're not like a fringe outfit. They would argue that means that they are mainstream, that they're not in the far reaches of the country. They represent what a good part of the country thinks. Well, they've mainstreamed a lot of radical ideas. So, you know, I'm not necessarily even on here. I don't really use the word fringe anymore for Fox because you're right. They have like normalized a lot of extremist viewpoints at this point. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be called out for, you know, operating a propaganda network for profit in this country. I think, again, like if this were in any other country, we would be a lot more aggressive in our coverage.

42:22I'd also say that, like, you don't turn on the NBC Nightly News and see, you know, or ABC or whatever, you know, take your pick. You don't usually see hard hitting coverage of these guys. In fact, for some reason, still, when I see coverage of Fox News, they're lumped in with like CNN and MSNBC, which is crazy to me because those two networks forget their political ideologies. if they, you know, like they're like, they adhere to the facts.

42:48Peter Kafka:The standard thing when you ask someone or even like a James Murdoch back when he was in the family and said, you know, what's going on with Fox News? Well, it's just a counterweight to MSNBC that there's two things and they're on either side of the seesaw, they balance out. And I think a lot of people actually, I hear this all the time. I watch CNN for the liberal point of view and I watch Fox for the conservative point of view and it's somewhere in the middle. And it's that that's not the case at all. They're not two sides of the same coin. I mean, CNN is, first of all, there's a whole news gathering operation there and that collects on the ground, you know, goes on the ground and collects facts and does reporting.

43:19And the news gathering muscle inside Fox is very small, very small. But like they're not they don't operate in the same way. And again, I'd urge anyone who might disagree to read the Dominion documents because the most senior executives understood that they were putting lies on television and were seemingly OK with that. I mean, even recently, we had new documents in the Smartmatic case where like Jesse Waters is talking about like how high their ratings would go if they got it all in on Stop the Steal. Like that, there's a different driver at Fox.

43:52Peter Kafka:And it goes back to my, all right, if you scrutinized it a lot. I mean, the only reason they pulled back from the Stop the Steal coverage, right, is because they were forced to in court, right? They had to do a giant settlement, et cetera. that reigned them in, not coverage from, and again, you, but also the New York Times, right? It's not as if Fox's role in what's happening to politics in this country is undercovered. I still think that like Paul Ryan's a board member of Fox, he doesn't really get hard questions about like his role there. You'd like people to be held more accountable. Yeah, like the board members of Fox.

44:27I feel like when I, I feel like I might be one of the only journalists who's constantly asked the board members of Fox for comment on stuff.

44:33Peter Kafka:This is a very weird podcast for me because I keep having to do devil's advocate on behalf Fox News. I was going to ask you what you thought story, what stories you think people are getting wrong, but it seems like you kind of answered that, that you think people aren't properly addressing what's actually going on when it comes to right wing media. If you want to understand why Donald Trump is in office, you have to understand the information economy in which he works. And I feel like people, for some reason, because it's uncomfortable to go after Fox, and I don't mean to only pick on Fox or a lot of others out there, which we talked about, but there's a, to understand why he's in office, you have to understand this.

45:11And so like, I don't understand why the news networks are so focused on Washington. And as I mentioned in my first answer to you, there's also the tech platforms which are enabling a lot of this stuff. And they just don't get, like, you don't see a, you know, not to pick on CNN, but they have a reporter who stands outside Congress every day. They have a reporter who stands outside the White House every day, maybe the Pentagon or State Department. Why isn't the reporter inside Silicon Valley saying like, well, this is like what Mark Zuckerberg's up to today. It's not like he's not way more powerful than literally any member of Congress.

45:46You know, why isn't Neil Mohan? I hate to pick on Neil, just on top of my head because he brought up that story. But why isn't he getting a lot of questions about like platforming OIN? You know, why isn't like even with Elon Musk, like he gets described with like kitty gloves, like, you know, he's like a billionaire Elon Musk. It's like people don't even call him like right wing anymore or like or right wing conspiracy theorist Elon Musk. Like the standards for these people are are graded on an incredible curve.

46:13Peter Kafka:You can cover whatever you want. What are you most interested? What are you going to cover more of the next year? That's a good question, because we do cover a lot, to be honest. We cover like when you're like, oh, I really got to get at this. I'd really like to do more as status grows. I would really like us to have some additional hard hitting tech coverage. I think, again, like, you know, the fact that like Zuckerberg is in the Oval Office all the time now, apparently. And like there's not like a behind the curtain sort of report on what he discussed with Donald Trump or why he was at the White House and getting a reporter who has that kind of access to be great.

46:54I think that the tech coverage is still a lot. I mean, Wired's doing good reporting and there are some good reports out there, but it's still broadly focused on like the product. You know, what is the new chat?

47:07Peter Kafka:There's a tech coverage which covers products and finance, et cetera. And then there's political coverage which covers who's in the White House. And there really isn't a lot of people who are able to sort of connect the two things. A lot of folks are trying. There's not that much. Yeah. And it's different. It's different muscles and different different strengths. Yeah. And it's it's very difficult to get, I think, that kind of reporting. And it seems to me, I think, you know, I really feel like the more politics focused reporters in Washington should be maybe able to get more of that reporting.

47:41But they, for some reason, again, like if Marjorie Taylor Greene does something, everyone like has their hair on fire and Mark Zuckerberg can just walk into the Oval Office. And like it kind of like might see a couple of tweets about it, but like it's not like a major news story. We don't get a readout usually of what happened, even though like I think you pointed out the other day, Donald Trump has become Mark Zuckerberg's like greatest ally.

48:03Peter Kafka:Yeah, they're very, very happy. There was a minute this beginning of this year after Zuckerberg had done all the public knee bending, and he really did, right? He was at Mar-a-Lago with his hand over his chest singing the national anthem, et cetera, where there was a lot of like, it's fear-based, and he's doing that. And also, by the way, everyone knows that the White House hates him, but they actually see through this, and they actually despise him. If that's true, there's no evidence of it. He certainly, the meta folks feel very happy. with this version of the administration. Yeah, and I'm very curious too, like has Mark Zuckerberg sort of been red-pilled over the years himself or is this a business?

48:46Peter Kafka:Yeah, it's a question I ask a lot of people and the people who are sympathetic to Mark Zuckerberg say, nope, this is the real Mark. He's always been this way. The old version was him sort of swallowing what he didn't really believe because he had to get along with the horrible liberals. I'm like, well, it's a lot to take at face value. And the real question is, if the pendulum ever swings again and we go back to a centrist slash left administration, are we going to see Mark Zuckerberg suddenly have with a new haircut saying, actually, I didn't want to do those things at all. And it was all Donald Trump making me do it.

49:18Peter Kafka:And this this is the new new me. I think that one of the things that Donald Trump has exposed is that a lot of these corporate principles are subject to the political winds that are blowing. And these people are shameless. shameless, to use that word again, in doing gymnastics to pretend like they haven't shifted principles when they clearly have. Or they never shifted principles at all. I just said, all right, if you want us to say we care about diversity, we'll say that. And if you want us to stop saying that, we'll also say that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we don't know what they actually believe because it seems to change every few years at this point.

49:53Peter Kafka:You left CNN late 2023, early 2024. And within weeks of you leaving, your former mentor at CNN, Brian Stelter, who had left, was pushed out, was then hired and basically sort of has his old job, which involves running reliable sources. In a world where that doesn't happen and they don't rehire Brian and that your old role is not filled, just some role where they come to you and say, you are doing an awesome job with status. We would like to buy status slash hire you back, come work within the CNN family Is there a world where that makes sense for you? No, not really. I graduated CNN. Because you're so angry at CNN?

50:33No, I graduated CNN, and I'm very much enjoying not having to deal with a lot of red tape and bureaucracy and call shots on our own.

50:42Peter Kafka:Is there any world where you being allied with a bigger organization, whether it's a media organization or tech art? Someone says, you're doing this thing as a two-man operation. Come work with us. We can give you better funding, blah, blah, blah. You can still have some degree of independence, but you'll be part of our network, organization, whatever you want to call it. Does that make sense to you? I think it would be like, I don't think it would be wise to entirely rule out anything. I think it's certainly have to be a good partner that is not going to attempt to water down our coverage or interfere with the editorial.

51:15And it would be solely focused on giving us additional resources. But at the moment, you know, we're very profitable. We're looking to expand on our own. Um, we have just, you know, we've had people come just to be totally honest and want to invest or, um, you know, um, you have no outside investors, no outside investors. And we've had, we've had interest from investors. And, um, at this point, you know, I, I've, I've told everyone no, because we don't, we don't really need their money and, you know, then it might complicate things. And so, um, you know, it's not to say there couldn't be a partnership down the line.

51:53I don't want to rule that out. So, I mean, there could be a really good partner out there.

51:58Peter Kafka:I mean, this is the new current thing in newsrooms and media organizations. How do we get these influencers to work with us? How do we get these sub-stacker? You're on sub-stacker and B-Hub. But how do we get these voices to work with us? And I think the challenge for them is the successful ones don't really need to come over there. Or if they do, come at an enormous price, like what ESPN is doing with Pat McAfee, where it's an enormous amount of money you have to sort of pay to bring that person in. And they're not even in. He's an independent contractor. Yeah, I just don't see what the upside would be, you know, partnering with a lot of organizations when we are able to operate quite well at this point.

52:36Okay, send your bids in for status to me and I will take a small fee. And we're growing. So that's the other thing. It would be difficult to have a valuation of status at this point because, you know, month to month we grow. And so I don't know. I mean, I think the answer to your question, though, Peter, about like, how do we, how do these news organizations get creators or influencers or whatever you would call this class of journalist? Don't let them leave. I think, you know, I think a lot of cases the people want to stay and they want to work out a deal inside these companies, but they get chased out or there's no interest.

53:12And then they go build something and now all of a sudden there's interest. And by that point, this is every relationship ever.

53:19Peter Kafka:Oh, when you were with me, I didn't appreciate you left and you're not with this person, you look more attractive. You're, it's, yeah. But like at this point, like, you know, now that we've like, for instance, built status into a company that's, that's able to operate independently and do well, like, you know, I would be, you know, you don't really need that money or that infrastructure anymore. We've built our own infrastructure. You know, we have our own lawyers. We have, we do our own payroll. We do our own editorial. David Ellison listens to this podcast as I was going to buy Barry Weiss for 250 million, but actually you've convinced me and you should come bring status to CBS and you can be our CBS news advisor.

53:58Peter Kafka:What do you think? I don't think that's happening anytime soon. Okay. I thought I'd try. I love what you're doing. Thank you, Peter. It's Oliver Darcy from status. You know how to reach him. You know how to find him. If we were on video, I'd show you that he brought me a very nice status hat. Thanks again, Oliver. Thank you, Peter. Thanks again to Oliver Darcy. Thanks again to Charlotte Silver for producing and editing. Thanks to our sponsors for sponsoring us. And to you guys for listening. See you soon.

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