Fox Stands Up to the NFL, a Big Change to TV Ownership, and Ellison Commits to 30 Movies

This episode of The Town is presented by HBO Max. HBO Max presents Hacks, nominated for 25 ME Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series. In the aftermath of mistaken news reports that Deborah passed away, she and Ava returned to Las Vegas, determined to secure Deborah's legacy as a comedian. Don't miss the series' variety is calling one of TV's best comedies ever. Hacks is now streaming on HBO Max. It is Monday, August 10. Couple big moves last week in the TV business. Yes, the old-fashioned television business still generates about $300 billion a year worldwide, while people like me ain't talked mostly about streaming. Anyway, the FCC, the government agency that regulates the broadcast networks, they voted to rescind the rule that bars local broadcast station owners from reaching more than 39% of US TV households. Remember, these are TV stations like your local Fox or NBC affiliate. They're usually owned by a big station group like Sinclair or Nextstar, but not the networks themselves. The FCC, led by Trump's guy, Brendan Carr, he will instead consider applications for TV company mergers on an individual basis to determine if they are in the public interest. The result here is that we will likely see a bunch of M&A in the space. The FCC already approved the $3.5 billion sale of Tegnah to Nextstar, and Carr thinks this will give stations more leverage against national networks, which tend to be owned by the bicostle Hollywood studio conglomerates that may not share Trump's politics. That case is held up in the courts right now. And speaking of Trump, Fox did something pretty rare and extraordinary this past week. They stood up to the NFL. Lockland Murdoch, on his earnings call, he said, quote, "We will not be making any amendments to our existing contractual relationship, which extends to the completion of the 2029 season." That's a big deal because the NFL had wanted to reopen its deals with Fox and other partners to get more money in exchange for more guaranteed years of live games. So, what's going on here? Does this mean that the NFL might not be as powerful as they think they are? Doubt that. We're getting into that today and the FCC move and more with Lucas Shaw or Monday Guy, will also hit the latest in the WarnerMount merger saga, but mostly it's the big moves in TV and how dare Fox stand up to the NFL. From the ringer and puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is the town. All right, we are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg, our Monday Guy, Lucas Big Week on the town. It's our annual trip to the Dodger game. I am finally taking you guys as penance for losing the box office draft last year to you. So, we have decent seats, unlimited soju, and Japanese octopus balls for you and Craig. Unfortunately, it is the night before my annual physical. So, I think it's, I'm going to have to be a little restrained. It's also Hello Kitty night. So, all of us can just come home with the Hello Kitty swag that I'm sure you both want. All right, enough about that. Speaking of sports, we're going to go through a couple topics today. And the first one I want to get into is this pretty big middle finger that Lockland Murdoch extended to the NFL this past week. He said that he's not interested in doing another deal, re-opening their deal and is going to choose to wait it out until after the 2029-2030 season. I feel like the NFL is the most powerful media owner in this country. It has the most compelling product. They usually get what they want. And they have put it out there that they want to re-open these deals. They saw that the NBA tripled its media rights revenue. Got an 11-year $77 billion deal that they struck in 2024. The NFL wants a piece of that. They want to raise their own rates. Why did Lockland do this? Can I ask you a question first, could something you got to? Have you ever seen the NFL get pumped in public like this before? At least in the last 10-20 years. And we're not talking self-inflicted. We're not the very scandals they've had around concussions and player behavior. Like a business negotiation. It was part of a strategy here. Because Rupert Murdoch pretty clearly was seeding the waters for the past six to eight months, getting these politicians to talk about how sports is too expensive. There's too many games on streaming services. And that all goes back to Fox. That was their strategy. Maybe the Ellicins and Paramount. But I don't think the Ellicins were doing that. This is Rupert saying that we need to keep our deals. And you have a responsibility to put these deals on linear television, where your fans can all watch them and not extract more money from streaming services that coincidentally have way more money to outbid Fox. So this is not like out of nowhere. No, but even even in that situation, you know, I think there was an expectation like, oh, you have NFL owners like your Robert Kraft who are friendly with Trump. And so if they'd, you know, if the NFL really wants to push back on this Murdoch Fox narrative, they can go that way. Or there's the counter to all that, which is yes, there are issues with how expensive and fractured the sports media environment has become. But NFL is actually sort of like the least problematic. Maybe it's the most fractured in terms of games, the most places. But most of the games are still on broadcast TV. Yeah, but they have the most demand for their games. Yes, but it's not it's not like like I was debating with my wife for the weekend. Like, oh, do I want to keep peacock right now? Apologies to match that. And peacock folks, but like, I'm not, I don't use it all the time. And then I remember, oh, but there are a bunch of peacock that's what you debate at the dinner table. It wasn't at the dinner table, but I was I was like, oh, but they do have a bunch of exclusive NBA games, which makes it hard for me to get rid of peacock. The only thing that's that's like that in the NFL would be Thursday night Amazon. And most people don't even think of paying for prime video because they're paying for prime. Yes, but there was a peacock exclusive playoff game. Sure. And everyone lost their shit when they couldn't watch it on linear. And there will be more of those. And that's what they're talking about when they put that out there that is too expensive. And people want to watch NFL so badly that it's much louder than if there's a random NBA game or five or 10 on peacock. The NFL signed their most recent deal in 2021, $100 billion. So it makes sense that they would want to exert, exert leverage here. They have this out with CBS Paramount because of the change of control. But that is now on hold because of the Warner Brothers litigation. So not a great week for the NFL. Their big partner Fox said, no, we're good. What you haven't answered the question, why is Lockland doing this? Is it just that he, why is Lockland doing it or why? Yeah, why is Lockland doing this? Because in exchange for reopening the deal, he could have gotten additional years, which would give some security and stability to the company heading into, you know, the next couple of years of the streaming wars. And they chose not to do this and play their percentages in 2030. I was a bit surprised by this. I think it's relatively straightforward. If you can put off paying an extra billion dollars a year or whatever, it's going to be for Fox to keep those rights and not get locked in some kind of bidding war with Netflix or YouTube or Amazon or anyone like that, you do it. And especially if you're Fox and you're in the middle of buying Roku. So you're spending a bunch of money and a bunch of energy on that. You want to buy Roku fully digest that. And then by the time that the negotiation comes around, you're hoping or believing that you not only still have one of the broadcast networks, but you have like a real streaming alternative to offer them. Because right now what they have is to be, which is nice. But it's not the same as some of these other streaming services. You don't think this is them throwing up their hands and saying, you know what we've acknowledged that we are likely going to get out bid in 2030. So we're just going to milk this for when we, while we can. And even had some language in his statement saying we're going to be disciplined. We're going to, you know, is this the equivalent of David Zazlov saying, we don't have to have the NBA because he knew he saw what was coming and where the economics were going. Is that Lachlan doing that? Or is it the opposite? He's riding high right now because they have this amazing quarter thanks to the World Cup. They've got, you know, by most accounts, the most stable and growing business of the major partners other than the streamers. And he is confident maybe. I don't think that Fox is in a position to walk away from the NFL and Lachlan knows that because it's the, it's the most, you brought it up. It's the most valuable programming they have. I've had people over the years tell me if you want NFL rights just by Fox because it'll, you know, pre-Roku deal at least basically cost the same amount of money and you've got a lot more than just the NFL rights. How dare you? You're, you're really discounting Hannity and his ability to sell catheters and my pillows and all sorts of things. Look, Fox News obviously has value. But I think that the NFL is the single most important property that they have and they're not in a position to walk away from it. But they did feel like they had some leverage. They'd created sort of this political ground swell against the league. And to your point, one of the things that the NFL was going to use to exert leverage on the other people to come back in was by getting paramount to pay more money through the change of control. And so they got paramount up some certain amount of money than they could go to NBC and Fox and Disney and say, "Yeah, we're not paying us enough now." They were discussing an increase of about a billion dollars there's per year with Paramount. And now that's off. It's interesting that Paramount can just say, like, yeah, we're gonna wait on this. We have this other big deal going on. If I was the NFL, I'd be like, guys, you know, that's great that you have this other big deal, but we would like to be paid now, right? Well, look, though the NFL is a bully that can usually push anyone around, it is these are partnerships, right? And so they don't want to completely screw over everyone that they're in business with. And look, the new players, there's still a little bit of uncertainty, right? Netflix is still in that we only want big events. And so they're reluctant to just take any old package. Amazon already has a big package. I think most people think they'd like to add to and maybe upgrade, but how much they do that we don't know. And YouTube, they have the Sunday ticket deal, but other than that, YouTube still hasn't been like a big buyer of sports rights. And most people think that Sunday ticket lose is money. And now that YouTube is ingesting peacock, it's going to have Sunday night football for its premium customers in the US. Maybe that takes them out of the bidding for their own NFL games or reduces the need. Michael Morris, the analyst at Guggenheim, he put out a note this past weekend, basically saying, you know, questioning the desire by these potential bidders to get into this race. So it might be that Netflix and Amazon are not the bidders that the NFL wants their needs. And then who is? It's not warranted discovery if they get ingested into Paramount and it may not be YouTube. So where are these bidding wars going to come from? I happen to disagree. I think that by the time we get to 2030, Netflix is going to realize that it needs a real package of NFL games, not these stunts that they use as acquisition moments for subscribers and that they can sell as one off. They will need the regular cadence of that NFL audience to maintain and grow engagement. So I think they will be a biter, but never know. I tend to agree and that would be the biggest reason for Fox to do some lock it in now. Yeah, can Fox even compete with Netflix? But also we don't, but think about what we'll look three, four years from now, where is NBC going to be, right? NBC Universal, if Comcast goes ahead with this split, NBC Universal will be a standalone company. It won't have the same resources. Maybe they'll need to not opt out, but partner with somebody. We don't know what will happen with Paramount and Warner Brothers between now and then, even if David Ellsson gets the deal, he's going to have a ton of debt like what happened to that company. There's just a lot of uncertainty. Yeah. So you think that Locklin is essentially just reading the room and saying it doesn't benefit us to lock in more years now if we're going to have to pay more. We can play the percentages and see what the landscape looks like in two, three years and then re-approach. Even if it pisses off the NFL. Yeah. And of the biggest players, they're in a relatively stable situation. They know what numbers are going to have to get to. They know what numbers they have. It's interesting, though, because what this is setting up is that we could see a complete reset of the NFL landscape in 2030. If these deals, depending on what Paramount does, and Disney has an extra deal, an extra year on their deal. But the NFL could just go back to the drawing board and just completely redraw the landscape. Say, OK, we're going to create a national game at 1 o'clock on Sundays. It's not going to be this regional stuff that we've been doing. You're going to have to pay extra for the regional games. We're going to do-- I don't think they'll do that because that would enrage fans in their local markets, but it gives them an opportunity to redraw their rights for the modern streaming age. They could, but the NFL does not tend to take dramatic steps with its programming like that, because it wants its customers to know where to find it. It took them a couple of years just to train people to go to Amazon for Thursday. If you start scrambling everything, I don't think the average NFL fan is going to like you. And they will eventually have a football game every day in December and January. And Craig will go crazy and jump off of it. But we are already almost there. I mean, Tuesday is the only day of the week of the NFL game this year. Tuesday also known as Craig's Sleep In Day. This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios, The Dog Stars, only in theaters August 28th. Visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott returns to IMAX with The Dog Stars. In a world shattered by catastrophe, a lone pilot's isolated existence is transformed when a mysterious radio transmission crackles through the silence. Setting out into the unknown, Higg embarks on a dangerous journey in search of something more powerful than survival, hope. From the legendary director of Gladiator, The Martian, and Black Hawk Down comes the riveting post-apocalyptic thriller, The Dog Stars, starring Jacob Ellority, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualie, and Guy Pierce. Based on Peter Heller's acclaimed novel and adapted for the screen by Mark L. Smith, The Dog Stars delivers breathtaking visuals, an extraordinary ensemble cast, and a deeply human story about resilience, connection, and the choices that define us. The Dog Stars, only in theaters in IMAX, August 28th. Get tickets now. All right, let's move on to second topic. Our buddy, Brendan Carr, at the FCC, he did it. He has been telegraphing this for months. He led a vote. It was two to one. Shockingly, the Democratic appointed commissioner did not vote in favor of lifting the cap on ownership. Do you think that's a big deal? Because I've sort of downplayed this. I don't-- you know, in this modern media landscape where so much of what we consume is not governed by the FCC, I have downplayed the impact of consolidation among station owners. And I've gotten some feedback, negative feedback, from listeners and readers that, you know, I'm not thinking about the grandma's and Peoria, who are all going to be subjected to the same local news now, and that the consolidation of power in local news is really going to impact what we see and what people think in this country. Do you think that's alarmist? No, I think it's a big deal. I don't-- I guess I'm torn on it. On the one hand, I agree with your sentiment that considering the concentration of media in the hands of a few companies, like the idea that the number of people that Facebook reaches or that meta owns Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, and we're worried about next star owning another 30 local TV stations in the US seems kind of silly, right? Which company has more power to influence hearts and minds, or that Google owns both Google and YouTube, and obviously many other things? That's the one. I don't understand how the government lets that happen, but that's another show. So do I think that it's sort of-- this gives-- would give any local TV station owner the level of influence of our tech overlords? No. But local TV remains very powerful. It's why politicians spend a lot of money targeting people that way, and for a certain generation of viewer. I mean, we were just talking about it with football, right? How do most people watch football? It is technically still broadcast by local stations in all of these markets, right? Or at least if we're talking about the broadcast that works. And they put on their terrible local sports guy to commentate after the game. And then it feeds into the local news. And I've been watching Colleen Williams on Channel 4 in Southern California, since I was like eight years old. And she's still there. And I have a connection to Channel 4 because of Colleen Williams. There you go. So I think it does-- especially if you have these local station owners with political agendas, which it seems like at least one or two of them do. And so that's where I think people get really nervous. Well, that's the thing is that Brendan Carr's pretty explicit about this. He thinks that these bicostle liberal elite network companies owned by the liberal elite Hollywood studios have too much power. And we saw it in the Jimmy Kimmel showdown, where ultimately these station groups back down against ABC Disney. And he's essentially saying, we need consolidation in this space in order to battle big media and give these station groups more power. But if there's only one or two or three of these, that's a lot of power. Yeah, well, the funny thing about that or the silly thing about it, I guess I should say, is if you look at it, OK, of the broadcast networks, kind of Fox, Unavowedly, Conservative, CBS has an owner who's talking all the time about being down the middle. And so you're really complaining, I guess, about NBC and ABC. You look at the broadcast networks, like Fox's Conservative, NBC is now progressive. CNN is kind of down the middle. And you're talking about Warner Brothers Discovery is a company that's like Kino, or at least John Malone very influential over the years. And John Malone is fairly conservative. So I think all of that stuff from Brendan Carr is mostly BS. He's just complaining about the late night host. Yeah, it's Kimmel. And I guess, although Fallon's not really that political either. OK, Kimmel and Colbert are in Colbert is gone. So yeah, Seth Meyers. Seth Meyers is coming to get the hearts and minds of Americans. But yeah, I guess going back to the-- Kymel situation, since that's where this matter the most recently and the FCC got involved. One of the differences between the time where Kymel briefly went off the air and the time where he didn't was the complaints from local stations. Do we think that either one of those plays out differently if there's more concentration of power in the station groups? Like the second time where everyone was just like Brendan Carr go home like you've over reached here. Yeah, that was the Melania joke, but the Charlie Kirk joke where Disney thought we now know Bob Eiger thought it was over the line and Disney took Kymel off the air. They said, quote, indefinitely, which caused everybody to freak out. Turned out to be not indefinitely or turned out to be just a few days. But I do think that plays out a little differently. If you have a station group that is overtly conservative or standing up for, you know, conservative values or whatever and they decide they are not going to air Jimmy Kymel live, it's a lot different if they represent 20% of stations, then if they represent 70% of stations. It just is. You have to listen to them. Yes, but they were the ones who in some cases forced Kymel off the air the last time a little bit. Yeah, they all got together and you're right. But I just think it's easier to do that. It's more a question of what would they have like welcomed him back as readily. Yeah. Interesting angle on this to bring it back to sports too is that if there are these consolidated station groups, they could be buyers for sports rights. Maybe not NFL or the A level stuff, but I could be like sports or let's say there's a consortium of stations in the South that band together or owned by one company and they go after SEC rights or they go after certain sports like NASCAR or whatever that are popular in the South. NASCAR is more possible because of just how SEC is still really expensive. That's true. That's true. Or maybe the CDE package for SEC where you're getting like the Vanderbilt games, you know, or you go after like, you know, hockey in the northwest or something like that. My point is, yeah, if these companies, these station groups get big enough with enough money, maybe they go after some sports rights. I actually think doesn't the CW have NASCAR rights? Yeah. And the CW has some pretty B level sports. They have a couple college football games and now they just did a deal to put CW on ESPN on the app. Right. So, but CW is a network. It's not a station group. Oh, it's owned by next star though. You're right. Interesting. You will see station groups emerge as a sports buyer. Not sure. All right. Final topic. The latest in the Paramount saga got to get into this. You reported on some of the terms that Ellison is offering for the theater owners. Three years. Thirty movies. Yeah. He's, he's privately doing written contracts that reflect what he's been promising publicly, which is thirty movies a year. The news was not that they were doing, if the news was that he sort of got AMC and regal to come out and publicly support the deal in part by saying, I will put this in writing. There will be penalties like I, you know, I mean it when I say it. This is not just rhetoric. A couple things here. First, you reported that he's offering three years, which to me seems like not that much. Yeah. I think he's going to have to raise that. It's probably an opening offer like he expects to get to five, seven, ten, something like that. Secondly, what are the penalties? That is the big question here because if it's, you know, five million dollars, ten million dollars, whatever, if they breach this deal, who gives a shit if you're David Ellison, promise them the moon to get your hundred and ten billion dollar deal clothes. And then if business is the business changes and you have to screw them over, you only owe a small fraction of that. So I really want to know what the penalties are. The penalties are where I struggle. So I've had conversation with a few people about them and there it is something, you know, it is financial in nature, right? But if you are one of these theater chains, then this deal happens. And there's a year where David Ellison gives you 27 movies instead of 30 movies. Are you really going to penalize him? Of course. That's the other aspect here. This is your biggest supplier if you're a theater owner. Are you going to sue your biggest partner? No. They're going to work something out. Right. The other element here is we don't know what these movies are. It could be about that. Top Gun Maverick re-release. It could be Scream Seven re-release. I was told that they had to be like, they had to be big wide releases. Okay. With marketing, I'm sure there are marketing commitments. Yeah. I mean, to your point, you know, David Ellison is getting to his 15 movie threshold this year by including it, I think there's like a one or two re-releases. There's a couple of things where you're, it's not really 15 movies. Especially now that he's firing up this low budget arm with the Warner's producers and they're going to have a fire hose of million dollar production budget horror movies coming out of that studio. And in no time, you know they are going to start doing that. Three to five a year. The expectations there are just not as big. And it also does, you know, Rob Bonta, the attorney general, he responded in a statement or call him this morning where he says essentially, you know, we don't care about your side deals. We don't care about any of this stuff. And he raises this issue of the calendar. And I've talked to many people about the calendar and whether you can promise 30 releases a year, but are you going to essentially compete with yourself or are you going to choose amongst your releases which movie to support and which one to essentially bury? Bonta gives the example of Minecraft and Mission Impossible 8 that came out near each other and were Warner's and Paramount and they were very much competitive. I was thinking back to three years ago when Barbie came out from Warner Brothers. That was a week after Mission Impossible 7, right? And that Barbie movie really hurt Mission Impossible. Oppenheimer also hurt Mission Impossible, but Barbie was in a competitive situation with the company that is now going to be under one roof. And how is Ellison going to manage that? We'll just think about the numbers. If you're releasing 30 movies a year, that is more than a movie every other week. It's hard to market that many movies. Some of those you're just not going to take as seriously, especially when just in general if you look at the movie release calendar, these studios basically quit for like a few months of the year. Between now and mid-September, there's not a lot. There's stretches earlier in the year where there's just not a lot going on. Now if they're telling me we want to take it seriously and program the full year aggressively, that's different. Or maybe they will, maybe they'll have to, because if you're making these big tent pole type movies that Ellison says he cares about, there's only so many weekends per year that you could release those without starting to cannibalize each other, especially when you're still trying to reboot a lot of the IP. So obviously this is the first salvo in what Ellison hopes will be a negotiation. Well, there's been, I mean we've talked about this previously, but he's having kind of messed up the last couple of months in terms of this deal and trying to get it across the finish line and taking a bit of a beating in the public sphere. He is, yeah, he's doing the counteroffensive, he's got the op-eds, there's the press part of it and then there's the behind the scenes negotiations part of it. But there is no negotiation, Bonta is not negotiating. Yeah. Well, again, I don't think Bonta will negotiate until he feels like he has to and he doesn't feel like he has to right now. He can afford to sit more than David can. Exactly. That's the problem. And David knows that if this last seven months and the judge takes two months to issue a ruling and June 2027 rolls around and there's no resolution to this and David, David Zazloff decides to take his $7 billion and walk away, then Ellison will have lost his father more than $10 billion given the money that they had to pay Netflix and he will have gotten nothing for it back to the drawing board. Yeah. I don't think either side, I don't think either David wants to walk away. I don't either. I agree that Zazloff will likely do an extension to make this deal happen if he needs to, although you could argue that $7 billion would do a lot for the debt load at Warner Discovery. But as we saw with their earnings this past week, they never expected these numbers to be public. They expected to be sold by now. And the studio slate not working, streaming, doing well at Warner Discovery, but the linear stuff keeps cratering like they don't want this to go on, they want this deal to happen. I agree. So the negotiation is going to necessarily have to start focusing on what Ellison is willing to do. Because I think that's the only way he's going to get Rob Bonta's attention is if he puts forth real structural remedies, can't be behavioral, can't be behavioral. He's already said that's not enough. So then it gets to like, you don't buy this notion that Ellison would just start dismantling these companies to create Enough assets like spin-off Harry Potter and the TV networks and CNN and Something else into an entity that could create a new studio. You don't believe that I think picking and choosing IP is is Complicated I told I've told you what I think the obvious answer is but but that I don't think I'll ever do Which is that he should spin out Warner Brothers the studio. Yeah, he already has a studio in Paramount You don't need two studios. I get that you want the library I get the library in the IP. I know that you want the library and the IP but between Paramount and HBO and and all their cable networks There's a lot of library and IP that you can still have and you don't need all of it I get he's not gonna do it. I just that would be the that would immediately address like the biggest criticism of the deal And you know a million people would show up the buy Warner Bros Yeah, it's a trophy asset Yeah, including Netflix, which would be hilarious for the anti-merger crowd But Yeah, the but it also doesn't solve the politics because he would keep CNN. Yeah I don't see how that Solves much of anything. It doesn't really tie into the anti-trust case. So no, but it's all politics. We know that I think that's part of it Well, we'll see. All right. Thank you Lucas. Thanks, man All right, we are back with the call sheet except Craig no call sheet today We are going to plug like the best of the Hollywood promotion system. We're going to plug our own stuff That's right. What everybody loves to listen to on podcast plugs for other events Yes, but you know what we never do that we never plug ourselves and we have some cool stuff coming up. So first up I am going to the Edinburgh TV festival the big TV festival event I went last year and I did a great panel there going back this year and we are doing a special event on August 28th at the Edinburgh TV festival me and Richard Osmond who hosts the rest is entertainment Which is one of the biggest podcasts in the UK about Hollywood and entertainment We're doing a crossover called the rest is the town and we are going to record it live in front of an audience at the Edinburgh TV festival on August 28th. Yep, and that will be out a few weeks later on Spotify and YouTube and all that good stuff. Yes We'll post it on the the town feeds, but we're doing it live So if you want to be there you can go to the Edinburgh TV festival website and find tickets there then Before I go to that on the 21st I am doing I think I mentioned this before I'm doing an event Introducing the movie election one of my favorite comedies of all time for the American Cinematheck They are doing friends of the festival events around LA. I think the big picture is doing one I'm doing I'm introducing the film election on Friday the 21st at the Los feel is three So you can get tickets on the American Cinematheck website for that and come here me introduce one of my favorite movies of all time Yep, the link to those tickets will be in the the description of this episode and then We're going to Tiff you and I going to Toronto first time for me never been to Toronto Never been to the city. No. Oh, that's right. There's no NFL team there. So there's no reason for you to go Well, you know, it's not the only reason I travel but it is a big one You've seen the the cultural highlights of Cincinnati many times All right, so yes, we're going to tip. I love tip. It's my favorite festival great city great movies fun movies and they do cool events like this I'm going to be doing a live episode of the town on September 12th in this new market that they're doing the tip is launching an Industry market to kind of promote sales of movies and movie packages and different projects And they're doing programming there and one of them is me. I'm doing a live episode of the town with Matthew Greenfield Who is the head of searchlight one of the biggest independent distributors Indy we call him Indy even though it's owned by Disney He's gonna talk all about their slay. They have a great Martin McDonough movie this year and Just talk about what it's like to run a specialty division within a big company like Disney So it should be a good event you can go to the tip website and get tickets for that there Lastly after that we will be bringing back the town college tour We can't announce the schools just yet because we're still finalizing that but we're I think we're gonna do Three more schools this fall and then we're even planning more for the spring so we're very busy Very busy Craig's been working over time all summer very much appreciate this because I'm negligent and don't follow up on emails Typically fun because that's also week one of the NFL so it's gonna be a busy weekend I know we're gonna have a lot of people go to one of the sports bars there in town And like there's a whole Sunday crew that watches games between the screening so I'll make sure you're taking care of You're like a celebrity in the football world so they will like part the waters and give you whatever table respect You require at the sports car. Oh, I'm sure yeah, definitely. No, they will. I'm telling you man People know you for football. They come up all the time Ring or fantasy football pod so you were gonna be a big name there sure. We'll see. Yes All right, that's the show for today. I want to thank my guest Lucas Shaw producer Craig Horoback All right, there's Jesse Lopez and Stephanie Sanchez and I want to thank you. We'll see you a couple more times this week