James Andrew Miller on the history of HBO and HBO Sports, and Bruce Feldman on covering college football in 2021

Sports Media with Richard Deitsch

Audacy

News, Business News, Sports, Sports News

4.3 • 721 Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2021

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 171 of the Sports Media Podcast features a conversation with James Andrew Miller, the best-selling author of books on CAA, ESPN and Saturday Night Live, and his latest, “Tinderbox: HBO's Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers.” He is followed by Bruce Feldman, a senior writer at The Athletic covering college football and a college football insider for Fox Sports and The Audible podcast. In this podcast, Miller discusses why HBO was worthy of this exploration; his 757 interviews for the book and how he navigated that terrain; how he approached his chapters on Succession including interviews with Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Adam McKay and Jesse Armstrong; why Dennis Miller did not want to talk for the book; the legacy of HBO Sports; HBO’s Wimbledon legacy; how HBO lost its boxing and documentary monopoly; the future of sports on HBO; ESPN shrinking another 10 percent to end fiscal 2021 at 76 million U.S. households and what that means for the company heading forward and more. Feldman discusses the reporting of the Lincoln Riley to USC story; who talks in college football between agents, head coaches, assistants, boosters and everyone else; why college football fans have an insatiable appetite for news; whether players have more agency with the media in 2021; whether college football gets more value out of a Cincinnati making the playoffs versus a bigger brand-name team and much more. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify and more. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody. This is Richard Deich and welcome to the sports media podcast. My producer's Patrick Antonetti. Two guests this week. First up, James Andrew Miller, best-selling author of books on CAA, ESPN, and Saturday Out Live. He is here to talk about his latest book, Tinderbox, HBO is a ruthless
0:22.0	pursuit of new frontiers. And we talk about, he interviewed more than 750 people on the history
0:30.2	of HBO, talks to a lot of people that you have watched on television from, you know, The Sopranos
0:36.7	to six feet under to secession to Game
0:39.7	of Thrones.
0:40.8	So we get into, Miller sort of really gets into sort of how we put that book together.
0:44.8	And we do do a long segment on HBO Sports.
0:48.4	It's Wimbledon legacy, boxing legacy, how it lost boxing, its documentary legacy, and how it's ceded that terrain
0:55.7	to ESPN and what HBO sports is now. So I think you'll, I think you're going to enjoy that.
1:03.6	He's followed by Bruce Feldman, my colleague, the athletic senior writer there,
1:07.2	covering college football, college football insider for Fox sports co-host the audible podcast with
1:11.8	stewart mandel and we talk about the lincoln riley story and sort of how a big story like that comes
1:17.2	to be when you start hearing chatter um who talks in the sport how you approach it we talked about
1:22.7	college football just the insatiable appetite among fans for information and why that is.
1:28.6	And then we get into just players having more agency and players now in many ways
1:33.8	becoming their own public relations firms to get out and to try to talk to people like Bruce
1:39.8	Feldman.
1:40.2	And then we just finish on a little bit of college football talk in terms of that fourth spot and what it would mean if Cincinnati got in for the sports sort of big picture.
1:50.8	So James Andrew Miller to start, Bruce Feldman to finish on the sports media podcast.
1:58.2	All right, as I said at the top, James Andrew Miller.
2:01.6	Jim Miller's been a frequent guest to this podcast.
2:03.9	He's got bestselling books on CAA, ESPN Saturday Night Live, and his latest, and the reason he's here, Tinderbox, HBO's ruthless pursuits of new frontiers.
	...

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