What’s next for sports and Skydance?; Disney+ gets the Super Bowl; Gotham Chopra talks new Steph Curry documentary

0:00Coming up on the pod, the latest on Skydance, where do Barstool and Fox Sports go from here, and some big new sports documentaries roll out.

0:16Welcome into the SBJ Sports Media Podcast. I'm Austin Karp. And I'm Josh Carpenter. Austin, let's get started with Skydance. It's the hot topic of the week. A lot of changes going on at Skydance, the newly named company. After that, Warner Brothers Discovery, Paramount Skydance merger, a lot of executive changes. What do we need to know? I think this was like, what, a month, maybe two months ago? We were talking about, man, this thing might roll into the spring. Would this thing ever happen? There was a lot of legal maneuverings going on, a lot of politics involved in this. And now here we are.

0:46Here we are. We're at the beginning of October. This deal has closed. Warner Brothers Discovery is now under the Skydance company. That's the company name going forward. But what do we know from a sports perspective? We know that Luis Silverwasser, who has been running WBD TNT Sports over the last couple of years, he's out. David Burson, he's going to be the new chairman of this global sports group under Skydance. What's going to be there? They have a lot of properties there that are coming over from Warner Brothers Discovery and TNT to complement what they already had at CBS Sports. There are a lot of these deals that are going to be coming up in the next couple of years.

1:18You've got Major League Baseball. You've got renegotiations coming with the NFL. A couple of years from now, NCAA men's basketball tournament will be finally back on the market. That's been one of the most undervalued properties out there. What's going to stay? What's going to go? They have a lot of debt, Skydance does. Can they afford? Do they want to keep? So I think you're going to continue to see. There are haves. There are have-nots. What does David Ellison, George Cheeks, and David Burson want to keep in the portfolio? Any surprise with David Burson being selected to run that entity? To me, it's not very surprising.

1:50I know he's only been in that role running CBS Sports for, what, two-plus years since Sean McManus retired? So to me, it seemed like the natural selection for that role. Well, he had been there for a while. He's worked under George Cheeks, who's running that overall TV division now. And David Burson is just a very seasoned, very well-respected sports TV lifer. This is the path that was set for him. Still relatively young. He looks very young, at least. Yeah. A guy always looks incredibly young. and he now oversees one of the largest sports portfolios out there, something that kind of rivals what ESPN has or rivals any of these other companies have.

2:26That's the tonnage that they now have with the combination of CBS Sports and TNT Sports. And so what's next for shut-ins? What can we, any next steps in terms of milestones that are coming up? What's next? Well, they're probably going to go through and figure out, like with any merger, we've seen this time and time again, not just on what properties they're going to want to keep because, yeah, not everything's going to be able to stay. We'll see some of those decisions sooner rather than later. Are they going to keep the NWSL? Also on synergies, you're going to have a lot of redundancies out there in staff.

2:53And anytime you have these sorts of mergers, yeah, they're going to be, unfortunately, people that lose their jobs. We're going to see what that looks like. Is it going to be at once? Are they going to do it in phases? But that's coming to this combined entity. Yeah, for sure. Austin, speaking of CBS, speaking of Skydance, Jerry Cardinal made some pretty interesting comments this past week talking about the media rights negotiation between CBS and the NFL. He said that he didn't think we would see talks between those two parties for, quote, a few years. Lachlan Murdoch made similar comments not that long ago, a couple months ago, about Fox.

3:25And that's all kind of under the context of, for a long time, we thought these NFL deals would go to market super early on these deals. And now with Jerry Cardinale's comments, with Lachlan Murdoch's comments last month, it doesn't seem like that's going to be the case. Well, Josh, why is this important? Jerry Cardinal, he owns Redbird Capital, a key investor in Skydance. They also just put another $4 billion into that company. So he has a lot of sway there. This is interesting because by letter of the law, we'll call it, right? When Skydance bought Paramount, there was a two-year provision there based on the NFL contract.

4:00If there's a change of ownership like that, you have two years to renegotiate that NFL deal. That would have been this coming August, August, 2027, that CBS CBS and the NFL would have had to renegotiate a deal. Jerry's saying, you know, we remain in constant contact there. The relationship is fine. We're going to continue to talk, but we're not in any rush to get a deal done. That is reflective of what Lachlan Murdoch said. Hey, the relationship is fine, but we're going to kind of see this out. We have until the end of the 2029 season before the NFL has that opt out. We want to see what our options are.

4:30Nobody's being forced. And a lot of people thought like we would have had all of the NFL's media partners having renegotiated deals already by this summer. That has come past. Nobody has renegotiated, but I do think the relationships are still strong. Something that Cardinal also alluded to is that the NFL is an equity stakeholder in this new Skydance company. That came through that original Skydance investment before Skydance even bought Paramount. So, like the NFL has a stake in ESPN, the NFL has a stake in CBS. They're comfortable where that sits. Those talks are going to go down the line at least into 2027, maybe even beyond that now.

5:04I'm a fan of this. I think I'm a big proponent know you sign a contract you agree to one thing like stay a little head scratching at first like well the nfl thinks they have that much leverage they were that pissed i think about the nba deals specifically how much like a company like nbc paid for their nba deal they thought that they were incredibly undervalued just the first or second year into a new media rights team yeah i mean this will really be playing out over the next few years and then this has a big downstream effect on all these other properties right that we've talked about with the pga tour going to market here in a couple years the nhl going to market a couple years the nfl and what they do really impacts all those other properties and what's something i want to say about like that espn nfl having the ownership stake in espn you're starting to see more than we had news this week about what disney plus is going to be doing with its super bowl you that will be streaming a simulcast of what you see on espn abc same ad load no unique ads are not trying to sell new ads for that right now, but that's going to be Nielsen counted.

6:04It's going to be counted into the Super Bowl number. That has only happened a couple of times with some of the sports that they've shown on Disney +, some major college football games. That's something new, a new development in terms of another audience that they're going to deliver around the Super Bowl. A lot more of that crossover of sports on Disney +, in recent years. We talked about the launch of SC +, that shorter version of SportsCenter that's specifically designed for younger demos. So Disney and the NFL now really see the power of what Disney Plus can bring for a sports audience. Sure.

6:36Josh, there was a little bit of surprise on Saturday. We heard that Dave Portnoy, who has been a part of Big Noon Kickoff, part of that broader deal with Barstool Sports and Fox Sports, he was booted off that show. Barstool personalities, including Dave, not going to be making any more appearances on Big Noon Kickoff. Were you surprised by the move? I don't know that I was necessarily surprised. I don't know how well this has worked for Fox. I think it's kind of along the lines of what ESPN has done with McAfee. And Fox said, hey, let's bring in a fake, brash personality on our kickoff show. I think Dave Portnoy is a little bit more polarizing than Pat McAfee.

7:12You either really love him or you really hate him. I guess I see McAfee in a little bit of a different light. A lot of people really hate Dave Portnoy. McAfee, I don't know if that's the case. He tows the company a lot. He really tows the company a lot. He doesn't care. He's always in the news. He's always pushing buttons of conference partners, of network partners. I don't know that his presence on that show has really resonated as much as, obviously, a McAfee and what he's on ESPN. So timing-wise, they're only a couple years out of this, right? So maybe it's a little bit earlier than most had expected.

7:42But I don't know that I was too surprised to see where we go. There's separate ways from Big News. I guess, Austin, my question for you would be, what does this mean for the broader relationship between Barstool and Fox? We know that that daily Wake Up Barstool show is going to continue during the week. But what else does it mean for Fox and Barstool going forward? The relationship will continue for whatever the duration of that contract. We had Barstool's media agents on this pod last week. Jerry Silbowitz and Ryan Hayden of UTA, they talked about how there continues to be a lot of respect between Dave and the senior executives at Fox Sports.

8:17It sounds like they do want to do things together. But this particular show, just talking about Big Noon Kickoff, it did feel like it was forced. You didn't really lose anybody from the talent side of Big Noon Kickoff. They were just trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole there. Very different than, I think, how Pat McAfee was worked into College Game Day. It felt a little more organic. There was a big change in terms of the talent that they had in that show. Slow build up to McAfee coming. It just goes to show you, Pat McAfee is not Dave Portnard. These are completely different people, completely different audiences.

8:49I do respect the audience that Barstool has developed there. It's a huge audience. They have a huge audience there, but so does Pat McAfee. But like you just talked about, he does it completely differently. He's becoming less provocative than he used to be. Dave Portnoy is a brash personality. Pat McAfee also is a brash personality, but he's also a football analyst. Yeah. And he can add that into it. I'm not saying Dave Portnoy doesn't know anything about football, but he was brought in not for his football analysis. he's brought in because he's a brash personality and he's polarizing and that's what draws viewers in in many cases but uh yeah totally different from what uh pat mcafee and espeter do awesome speaking of pat mcafee the man that he sits next to on college game day nick saban big fan of his my deep tennessee roots i do have a lot of respect for saban i love his analysis on television obviously a ton of respect for his career coaching and cross college new docuseries out on saban you caught a few episodes of it.

9:46What did you think? I really liked it. This is kind of in the vein of that. It's a six-episode documentary, an hour apiece on each of those episodes. I watched the first three so far, but it will premiere tonight. It is kind of in the vein of, you know, The Last Dance, a lot of current things that were going on, specifically around his last couple years at Alabama, looking back, looking back at his Michigan State days, looking back at his LSU days. Cleveland Brown says? A little bit. There's a little bit of touch there, but what I do like is right from the jump, right in episode one, they get into his exit from the Dolphins and they have him reflect on that.

10:19And I think it's incredibly important in the way in setting that up and setting up that this is, this is going to be an honest look. He's going to give you an honest perspective on what he did, right? What he did wrong and how he feels about those sorts of things. And he's very candid about how he exited the Dolphins and he has regret on that, obviously. And there's also some other things in the documentary that he talks about. Yeah. You know, he has regret. He We should handle things differently. But there are things you're going to learn about Nick. And I know he's been in the limelight a lot.

10:46You'll learn about things in this documentary that you just didn't know about the man before. It goes deep like that. And that's the sign of a good documentary. You have to learn a good story, good documentary, whatever. You have to learn something new about him. It's another solid effort from Words and Pictures led by Connor Schell there. And he obviously did so much around so many ESPN documentaries over the years when he was in charge of that, in charge of content there. He was doing the OJ documentary. He didn't direct it, but he was in charge of ESPN Films at that time. So he knows what needed to go into this.

11:16You see a lot from somebody that you don't see on a lot of forward-facing things, and that's CAA's Jimmy Sexton, who is Nick Saban's longtime agent. He's interviewed a few times. You don't see him in front of the camera a whole lot. So it was interesting to see that angle. You see a lot of talk on sports media about CAA's connection to Nick Saban. It's here. So it's good that they touch on that in that documentary. Austin, speaking of sports documentaries, you caught up with one of the heavy hitters in this business, Gawkum Chopra, for this week's pod. Let's go to the tape. Well, the NBA season is still a few weeks away, but for those hungry for some new basketball content, a new documentary is hitting IMAX theaters on Friday.

11:55It's called Portrait of an Artist, Stephen Curry, which offers a new, well, a portrait of Steph as he approached and hit an NBA record 4 ,000 three-pointers. Here to talk about that film and the sports documentary space overall is Gautam Chopra, co-founder of Religion of Sports, who also directed the film. Gautam, a pleasure to have you on. Yeah, thank you. It's a real privilege to be here and talk about this one. I'm excited about it and really grateful to have some time with you. Well, let's get to your latest project with Stephen Curry. It's the first theatrical release for Religion of Sports, and we'll get to the IMAX portion of all that.

12:30But like, why now for another Stephen Curry documentary, why was hitting 4000 three pointers? Why was that the time to maybe do something like this versus maybe just waiting a couple of years or he will retire eventually in a few years? You know, I wish there was like some scientific answer I could give you or some strategic. You know, what happened was I've worked with Steph a couple of times on different projects over the years. So I got to know him pretty well. And this now going back, I'd say, two years ago, I think I saw him in an event. he pitched me on an idea that he was considering doing that was I would say in some ways the complete inverse of what we ended up doing that idea was more of a reality show he'd be part of an ensemble multiple episodes etc and he just asked me what I thought and I was like like you're Steph Curry like why would you do that like why would you sort of singular player in the history of the game, in my opinion, I wouldn't do that.

13:27And he's like, okay, well, you know, what would you do? And so I was like, I got an idea. So I pitched him this idea. I had had this idea for a while. My, you know, great friend Kobe Bryant, rest in peace, had done a version of this similar with Spike Lee many years ago. Not quite the vision I had, but like, you know, sort of conceived of this idea of documenting a single game. And so I pitched that idea to to Steph, he basically said, yeah, I love it. Let's do it. And so with that, I had the guy, you know, when you have Steph, that sort of definitionally means you got the NBA is going to support it.

14:04The Warriors are going to support it because he's so beloved and such an important, you know, asset to the league. And I had been talking to IMAX about, they had not done a documentary, a sports documentary since Jordan to the max. If you remember that one, 25 plus years ago or something like that. So yeah, it just sort of all started to come together. And I think the idea was like, you know, to your point, there had been other Steph stuff, like the story of Steph's career and his journey, not, you know, it's been told in some ways. So now we had to like sort of come up with a different take, a different way to sort of elevate this.

14:40And that's, you know, what ended up being Portrait of the Artist. You know, I want to dig deeper into that IMAX portion of this filmed exclusively for those theaters. But like you said, there's been not a lot from the sports genre that has really made it to an IMAX film. I understand why I needed to see The Odyssey in IMAX. I felt that experience. That was something very different. Will theatergoers feel the same way about a sports documentary in 2026 in an IMAX theater? I can only hope to compare ourselves to The Odyssey. Dream of that. I think so. I've always believed in this. It's the heart of what we do at this on your religion of sports, which is sports are mythic.

15:19Ultimately, sports are about human potential. Can I be the best version of myself? If you're an athlete, if you're a fan, it's also like I become part of something greater than myself, you know, when I attend a game, when I witness something spectacular, when I witness the miracles that take place on a regular basis, you know, in games. And so I think like, there's also something that's happening, I think in the culture right now about eventizing things, you know, because obviously most of us consume our content, you know, online, on our phones, short form. And so there's, I think there's an attraction to the sort of counter version of that.

15:57And, you know, this movie is an hour and 15 minutes. So it's actually half of the time you act when you go to an actual game, but there's something pretty spectacular about it. And of course, when you shoot it on these big format at cameras and the scale at which you're able to capture some of the imagery is pretty great. And so, yeah, I mean, I guess we'll see how it does, but, and, and IMAX hasn't done. So being able to be, you know, a pioneer in some ways in that genre, like, cause nothing's happened in it in the last 20 plus years, um, is exciting. And, um, and, you know, in some ways we had the perfect subject because Steph is just, he's such a great collaborator.

16:38He's very trusting. Obviously it helps that we've worked together before and really like the direction to Steph was like bro just do what you do like we're not here it's not scripted there's no takes there's no like do that again can you you know it's like no because I'd been around him I've seen his process and I think that to me was the thing that I really wanted to capture was you know the game is the game once the whistle blows and you know that's coach Kerr's like domain it's everything around that that, you know, was really a point of emphasis for us is like to understand his process. You know, the film, and it's in the title, but you're positioning Curry as more of this artist versus maybe just your traditional athlete.

17:20And, you know, if you've seen him play, you definitely understand that. But you weave in these very unique perspectives from artists across the board, musicians, actors, painters, whatever. And these are very famous people. We're talking about the Paul McCartneys of the world, Chuck D, Viola Davis, Rick Rubin, and Patti Smith, so many that are experts at their own crafts. How did you go about selecting which of these experts to place into the film? The heart and soul of the film is Steph and the singular game, and the game itself is an interesting game. Without giving too much spoilers, yes, he hits his 4003, which is not something we planned.

17:55I mean, we saw it coming at a certain point. You could algorithmically figure out, like, oh, there's a good chance that he's going to hit, And the 4003 is a milestone that no player has ever achieved. And I don't know if any player ever, I think he's like, at the time when he did it, he was already 900 three-pointers ahead of James Harden, I think is, you know, second. And he's since, you know, gone on and on. So that's sort of the thread. But then you track the game and, you know, there's kind of a archetypal hero's journey within that game. Steph struggles. Steph is dealing with an injury. There's all sorts of stuff.

18:30So we kind of could see the themes and then it became just this big excavation, this big, you know, archaeological dig to find the right quotes. And, you know, the stuff we found is artists. So when you talk about Rick Rubin or Viola Davis, they're not talking about Steph Curry. They're talking about themselves. They're talking about their journeys and what their process is like for the artwork that they create, you know, the masterpieces that they've created. And you started to see like these patterns across. And, you know, we had a lot of debates like, oh, like, do we need to find artists that are fans of Steph Curry or that Steph knows who they are?

19:06And we kind of concluded actually quite the opposite. Like, let's the language is what they share in common. And it's even better if like Rick Rubin doesn't know who Steph Curry is or doesn't care about basketball. You know, there's a few. Steve Kerr is like the sort of guy who glues it all together because, you know, Steve is such an incredible mind and understands, you know, art and jazz and all that. But he also knows Steph, you know, better than anyone. So there's a few like that. But ultimately, it was finding this common language and sort of going far and wide. I mean, Alan Watts, who, you know, is one of the great philosophers, I would say, of our times, died in the 70s, I think.

19:50You know, we found some recordings of his that we were like, oh, yeah, this stuff is amazing. So it was it was that was one of the most fun parts of the process is finding all that material. It is fun. Steve Kerr play this sort of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Merlin Gandalf type character in Steph's career. He really has guided him that way. Yeah. Michael Jordan's teammate. He hit big shots himself. Yeah. He, you know, coached Greg Popovich. So he has so much perspective. it's it's pretty he's he's such a great guy you know chuck d said something at the end of your film that kind of resonated with me and it's about the journey of an artist never ending but pro athletes just by the nature of the beast whether it's tom brady steph lebron whoever others everyone's journey on the field of play eventually ends so specific to steph like what sort of post playing path do you think is going to make the most sense for somebody that has achieved so much and has that feel almost of an artist that is craft.

20:48He is this artist. He is this singular sort of talent. And I think obviously today, the basketball court in many ways has been his canvas. But, you know, Steph, like some other great athletes, LeBron would be another one that comes to mind, has started to set those, you know, seeds. Traditionally, what's happened is like an athlete retires and then starts figuring out what they want to do. Steph has been very active in terms of building his media company, his media brand. So unanimous media is like our partner in this. Steph's also been very active, not just as a philanthropist, but like his foundation, his and his wife's Aisha.

21:30I mean, they're really a big part of like the Bay community. He's obviously up there involved, you know, Silicon Valley as an investor and entrepreneur. And so So I think he started. So I see him. I think, you know, they're probably, you know, broadcasting is we're just talking before this, but Romo and Sam, like it has shifted. And so as you see, like the Manning cast, you know, different athletes are finding different ways to jump into the booth and do different things. And I just think Steph is a really smart, innovative guy and he's beloved, like truly beloved and has some smart people around him.

22:10So, you know, his challenge is going to be too many opportunities and options and too many partners. And he's going to have to figure out where does he really want to. Because, you know, what you see in an athlete like Steph is his success is largely the result of his intensity of his focus and his discipline and devotion to his craft. And he's like on those game days, like you can just see like everything falls away, like all the noise of it. And, you know, with athletes of his status, the more successful you get, you know, more fame, more fortune. He's obviously older, so he's got, you know, family's got, I think, four kids or five kids.

22:51Like, there's a lot going on, you know. But it all kind of dissipates when he gets on the basketball court. And he's just so, his process is so, yeah, disciplined. It's great. You know, I wanted to ask you something a little more, I guess, broadly about the sports documentary space these days. And it's something I actually got into with your Religion of Sports partner, Amit Sankaran, recently. But like, how would you describe where the overall sports documentary space sits these days? Is it is it vibrant? Is it slowing down? So like, how do you see the business? I'd say it's evolving. It's still vibrant, but in different ways than maybe it was four or five years ago, where it was all about the traditional sports docs, either features or series, and a handful of platforms.

23:37I think as distribution has really radically changed. So while obviously the Netflixes and Primes and ESPNs are still there, there's also the TikToks and YouTube, the biggest player in the space, I would say, in many ways. Live is a big part. Twitch, all that sort of stuff. So you have new platforms, you have new formats. That's, I think, meanwhile, like obviously, right, the sports ecosystem, the live games, the live rights, like the money's incredible. So there's a lot of energy around it, but just how you approach it has to be a lot more innovative. And so we've been testing stuff, trying different things.

24:18You know, I'd say the thing we got most excited about, it was new for us. I mean, this is new, but almost like the opposite. We did this thing with Trevor Noah around the World Cup and it was like a watch along. So a live watch along where Trevor was doing it. And that was on YouTube. And I think, you know, these numbers are crazy. You get like a billion and a half views and stuff like that across the, all the series, but, and all brand funded. So it's just, that is something that didn't exist five years ago. Again, a lot of credit goes to the Manning cast for like breaking the mold. Hey, and there was like no rules that somebody creatively, you know, Peyton and Jamie Horowitz and the team at Omaha came up with this concept and it just, it opened up like a whole new way of thinking about content.

25:03So I think that just keeps on happening and iterating. You know, you go back five years ago and like drive to survive. Like nobody had ever really come up with that idea and then it broke a format and then a bunch of people tried to emulate it. Some with success, others not so much. And that just keeps on happening. So it's an evolution, but um and it's but keeps you on your toes you know you have to keep on innovating yeah you also at religion sports have done some you know a lot of work around branded content recently whether it's cocoa golf and naked juice you've done other work with gmc nike others do you see that continuing to be a growth area for the company yeah well so the trevor noah thing uh i mentioned was all funded by uh brands all brand backed yeah all brand backed and so yeah i think look ultimately that just you know whereas maybe prior to the i mean brands have always been there but their business is transforming so now yeah they're getting into what i guess we would call premium content that's kind of what we still think we do traditionally you had five or six networks so you kind of took a swing and if you got it great but if you didn't you were dead with brands now you have dozens, hundreds of swings, right?

26:17And then distributing it. I mean, YouTube, again, being the place where like, there's no gatekeepers, like you make the content, you can put it on the platform. You're not pitching it to anybody. So there's all sorts of complexities, of course, that comes with brands and have to be really careful in some ways as a storyteller. Like, wait, am I just like, you know, pimping a brand? Or am I telling a story that is important to me with the help of a brand. Those are two very different things. And you have to be very mindful or we try to be very mindful of it because we still take pride in being storytellers and, you know, that being the mission.

26:57But yeah, it's again, it's the evolution of the marketplace. And if, you know, it's adapt or die. And so we're doing our best. All right, we'll get you out of here on this. I'm going to put you a little bit on the spot. You know, outside of your own work, what is the most rewatchable sports documentary or documentaries for you? What can you go back to over and over again? There's three, actually. So the two projects that really made me think like, oh, I can do this? Because my background was as a journalist, actually, and I covered, I was traveling early in my career. You know, I did a lot of war zones and coverage and I was a news reporter.

27:35I was a huge sports fan, but professionally I was a news reporter and news documentarian. When I saw that 30 for 30, this is going back to like, I guess, 2009 launch, and there were two. One was called The Two Escobars. Love that one. It's right. It's about soccer, but it's really told through the Colombian drug trade. And then there was another one called Once Brothers, which is about Drazen Petrovic and Vlade Divac, who are teammates on the Yugoslavian national team. Then there was the war and they became rivals. And I was like, wow, these are my two worlds and they live together now. And so that was a big catalyst for me to be like, oh, I could do this.

28:16So I watched those as a regular reminder. And then there's Senna. It's one of the great, it's very artsy, but about the Brazilian race car F1 driver. And I'm not a big F1 fan. And that's always sort of been the point, which is like, we try to come at it with like, oh, you don't have to be a basketball fan to appreciate this Steph Curry thing. we're trying to actually we know we're going to get the basketball fans it's can we reach a broader audience and i think that's a film you know and this is very creatively done there's no sit down interviews and a lot of stuff like that um and of course then there's like oj made in america an amazing thing the last dance i mean there's there's a lot but i would say those three are probably the lesser known ones that mean a lot to me now could not agree more on two escobars if anybody's listening to this and they haven't watched that from that first volume of 30 for 30s go check it out totally worth your time well the film is called portrait of an artist stephen curry from religion of sports and stephen curry's unanimous media in association with nba entertainment it's in imax exclusively on friday gotham chopra co-founder of religion of sports and the director on this film thank you so much for your time and best of luck with the launch thanks so much austin All right, before we wrap up the show, one more piece of business, our staple, who won the weekend?

29:39Josh, what do you got? Yeah, I've got to go to Scott Hansen, NFL Red Zone. I've talked a lot about Red Zone on these podcasts and how much I love the product. I was just sitting there on Sunday afternoon. You know, it was 4 o 'clock. And that early window, you had four games coming down to the wire. I mean, everything coming down to the last 30 seconds of the game. Quad box, Scott Hansen just in his element. I'm just sitting there thinking, man, like this guy just handles it seamlessly. Obviously, like his producers at NFL Red Zone are on top of it as well, but it doesn't get better than that for me.

30:09The energy that he brings after being on set all day and everything, I just love it, and to me, it doesn't really get better in sports. It's got Hanson on Red Zone. So that's who won the weekend for me. Austin, what about you? Josh, you know I'm heavy into the viewership, and I love talking about numbers. I'm going with CBS Sports, and it's not just one sport in particular. They led on Saturday with Iowa and Ohio State. They don't often get that win in college sports. That is something that has been almost this season exclusively reserved for ABC because they have the majority of those SEC games.

30:40Those are usually the most viewed matchups. Didn't have any big draws this past weekend. And CBS, they don't have the A package for the Big Ten. So for them to get Ohio State and Iowa and lead the weekend among all college football, that's a win for them, especially in the middle of this Big Ten deal. But also CBS on Sunday, the most watched week four national window ever. It was led by Chiefs and Raiders. Just shows you the NFL continues to do it, continues to increase. They had that hole in week one. They were down 13 % coming out of the weekend. I think they're almost either up a little bit or close to flat already headed into the first quarter of the season.

31:15They've already come out of that hole. That's how fast they've recovered. Yeah, and back to Saturday, I mean, that's huge for CBS. Still takes some getting used to for me being a longtime SEC fan. I mean, that's what I grew up watching. 3.30 every Saturday. You have the biggest SEC game of the week on CBS in that 3.30 window. And honestly, it makes me sad. Many Saturdays, tuning in, seeing a couple weeks ago, it's Minnesota and Mississippi State. It's not what it once was. It's like that Godfather meme, you know, what have they done to my beautiful boy or something like that. But hey, this is what ESPN bought.

31:48That's what they wanted. They knew the power of it. And CBS at the time, they didn't have these David Ellison dollars that they're now going to have to really pony up for this sort of stuff. Is college football that they sent? Is that something down the road that they want to get into? The Big Ten is going to be back up in a couple of years. Do they want to go after an A package like that? Can they compete with the likes of Fox and likely Amazon going after things like that? Big packages in college? I would love to see it. It just makes sense for me. You know, again, growing up, for a lot of Gary Danielson, Mike on CBS and on Afternoon Window, So it was the perfect college football Saturday to tune into that 3.30 game on CBS.

32:22So, Austin, that will do it for this week's SBJ Sports Media Podcast. Thanks again to our guest, Gotham Chopra from Religion of Sports. And thank you, as always, to our production team, Chris Mason, Reginald Walker, and A.C. Wyatt. And finally, thank you for listening. Please make sure to like and subscribe to the pod wherever you get your podcasts. For Austin Carpenter, I'm Josh Carpenter. We'll talk to you all again next week. Thank you.