Matt Belloni: what the Oscars tell us about Hollywood
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From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels. Peter Kafka, that is me. I'm also the chief correspondent at Business Insider. And in a minute, we're going to hear from Matt Bellamy, the excellent plugged-in Hollywood journalist. We're going to talk about the Oscars, the movie business in general. Matt is great. You're going to love it. But first, speaking of things you'll also love...

This Sunday, March 9th, I'll be in Austin, Texas to do a live podcast with Dan Clancy, the CEO of Twitch. There's a lot to talk about there. This is part of a big Vox Media podcast event we're putting on, which will also feature conversations with the likes of Kara Swisher, Scott Galloway, Esther Perel, and Marques Brownlee. It runs March 8th through 10th. That's Saturday through Monday at the Convention Center. It's open to anyone with a South by Southwest badge.

Come listen and come say hi. Okay, coming up is my chat with Matt Bellany, which starts with a discussion of Matt's favorite Oscar food. It moves on to the state of the Oscars show and then expands to talk about the state of the industry. But also, while Matt and I were talking about the Oscars and their declining audiences, literally while this was happening, Nielsen recalculated the Oscars audience and found that it actually grew once you factored in people watching on their phones, other devices, and

Basically, they found another 1.6 million viewers that way. So now instead of being a smaller audience, the Oscars can now say they hit a five-year high in total viewers to 19.7 million. That's a lot of preamble, but it's necessary because obviously if Matt and I knew that stuff going into the recording, we would have changed some of our discussion. But I think the general contours of our chat are still relevant, so we're letting you hear the whole magilla. Okay, here's me and Matt Bellany.

I'm here again with Matt Bellany, Hollywood reporter extraordinaire. You can read him at Puck. You can listen to him at On the Town or on this very podcast where we love having him on. Thanks for having me. You had a grueling awards season that concluded Sunday night. I'm like, I should still win it because you're talking to me. It's like the jobs in the world are digging ditches, mining coal, and covering the awards season in Hollywood.

Well, at least one of those jobs is going to be around for a little while longer. We can talk about that. And I want to talk about the state of the Academy Awards and really the state of Hollywood. But first of all,

You were at the awards. Did you go, did you sit in the auditorium? Were you in the sort of press overflow? I sat in the auditorium. My level of juice has declined a little from when I was the editor of the Hollywood Reporter and I was down on the floor level near the stars. They now put me on mezzanine one.

Is that because you have less juice? I have less juice. Because you have more juice and they don't want you to screw up the event. Maybe that's true. Maybe they can trust me less around the celebrities and the important executives. But they put me on mezzanine one center. Pretty good seat in the center. So I have a good view. I can take videos and stuff. And like I'm with the second category.

tier people involved in the nominees, you know, the, the, the producers who worked on it, but aren't nominated the publicity team that worked on the movie, but they're not like sitting next to the stars. So they put me up there and I get a decent sense of kind of the room during the show, what's working, what's not. And I can hang out in the bar and go around inside and move down and up to see what people are actually talking about.

So is this more or less fun than a normal person watching it at home where maybe they don't have a bar, but on the other hand, they can get up and go to the bathroom whenever they want?

Honestly, it's not fun, but it is part of my job to do these things and go to all the different events just because I end up talking to people. I call my newsletter what I'm hearing, and I can't hear anything if I'm not in the room. So I do talk to a ton of people on Oscar night, get sense of not just the show and what people are thinking on that, but general business stuff. I hear...

you know, rumors. I hear news. I hear all sorts of stuff. It's like actual reporting, actual reporting. Some of us still do it. What, what is the personal highlight for you from a Sunday night? The sushi bar, the sushi bar at the governor's awards, the,

the governor's ball after the show. I mean, I've said this before, but what Wolfgang Puck and his team do for thousands and thousands of people that go to that show, everyone goes to the governor's ball. It's the first stop. And the food there is legitimately great. I don't understand how they do it. The sushi bar is amazing. They do like pot pies and shrimp dishes and duck bow bowls and all of these like amazing

amazing little dishes. But aren't you supposed to look up your nose at eating that? Because one, it's Hollywood. You're not supposed to eat in public anyway. And two, you're supposed to be above eating the free food from the buffet line. Are you kidding? Screw that. They're going to sit me in a room for four hours. I'm going to eat their food afterward.

They did give us snack boxes. There were snack boxes under our seats that had a soft pretzel and some candy and a bottle of water. And a note from Conan saying, I wanted to give you gummies, but I couldn't give you gummies. Yes, exactly. But Kimmel started that. When Kimmel hosted, he would give snacks and everyone would love him for it. But they continued it. But it's not the same. The Governor's Ball food is legitimately great.

I know. You had me on to discuss the important business issues of the day, and we're talking about you. This is what I want. This is exactly what I want. So let's talk about the business. The business of the show, the preliminary numbers are 18 million, more than I thought they would get, the preliminary. We're going to see an increase, presumably, when they sort of tally up everything. That includes people who were streaming it from Hulu for the first time.

But it's a decline. It seems to me from the outside, like the audience for this show is going to get smaller and smaller every year just because it's gravity and TV, right? All this stuff is shrinking. Even the NFL seems to sort of hit its head.

Are you surprised that they were able to get 18 million people, give or take, to watch the show? That's about what I thought. It was 19.5 million last year, and that got a boost from the Barbenheimer phenomenon because people were actually interested in the movies. That is the number one lure for viewers of the Oscars traditionally, is have people seen the movies that are nominated, and do they have a rooting interest in the Oscars?

And this year, there just weren't those movies. They had Wicked, which does have its following, but they didn't have a wide swath of movies that people had seen. And Nora's grossed 15 million in US theaters. I mean, the others, Conclave and Complete Unknown did okay in theaters, but nothing on the level of a blockbuster. And the other one, The Brutalist, was a tiny movie that almost nobody saw. So...

It's tough for them when that happens, and I agree with you. It is the traditional linear television story that things are going to go down. This, amazingly, in the year 2025, was the first time the show was streamed live on Hulu. Because of the affiliate deals with their television stations around the country, they had guaranteed the Oscars would be a linear exclusive, and unlike all the sports deals that were renegotiated to add in

streaming for Paramount Plus and for Peacock. The Oscars didn't do that, and ABC didn't do that until this year. We knew they would get a little bit of a bump out of that. They have not broken out the Hulu number vis-a-vis the linear number. I hope some of the third-party services end up doing that, because I would love to see how many people did it. The one interesting data point I

on the Oscars ratings is, yes, it was 18 million, which is down, but they showed a, believe it's 5% increase

increase in the 18 to 34 demo. And they're touting that as like the huge deal. It is a very funny press release they sent out last night because they had every possible data point, including the one you just mentioned that they had their social mentions, et cetera. Nowhere in there was the actual number of viewers. It was, it was, it was sort of like Pravda level hilarity. Yeah. And obviously we know why they did that. And,

I'm curious what you think the reason is for that uptick in a demo that traditionally has not been as interested in the Oscars as the older female demo. The increase, I think, is attributable to two things. First of all, young people have streaming services and young men specifically are over-indexed on streaming services. So just the ability to watch it on streaming probably helped a little. And I also think that...

The core demo for Conan O'Brien is younger men because he is a thing in the podcast and digital world. I was going to go a whole different direction and say some people like to look at Timothee Chalamet. He was in two of the Oscar-nominated movies last year. But men or women? Just people. People.

People are interested. Okay, so you think it's a Timmy effect? I think it's more plausible than anything else, but I'm just guessing. And I also don't put a ton of stock in those numbers, but we'll see. So there's this annual conversation about what to do about the Oscars. And is it just inexorably going to decline like we've been talking about? Is it because of the movies? And there's a long discussion about, well, can we get bigger movies that more people have seen? Question, they've tried to do that with limited success.

You've written about how you think some of the reason these are more niche films that are being featured is because of the makeup of the voting block for the Academy Awards. I guess it could be all three. Are there real serious discussions about

about changing something meaningfully at the awards, whether it's both the show itself, nominations, voting, that would make something change in a meaningful way here? The short answer is no, not seriously. They are, they always talk.

They say, we got to do something to increase the accessibility of the show. They talked about eliminating categories from the telecast. There's currently 23 awards that are given away on the show. That is an insane number of awards that people do not care about that are on the live show. The live action short film and animated short film Oscars are given as much time as the big categories. It's insane.

bonkers. But they tried to eliminate that. People freaked out. They put it on a pre-show and everybody freaked out, so they brought it back. There's all sorts of things that they could do to the Oscars. They could give... They could debut exclusive clips of upcoming summer movies that people actually care about on the show. They don't do that because that would require participation from the studios. The studios would complain that certain movies are getting favored or they're not ready to go public with their marketing campaign. It's just...

There's no one figure that is lording over this. It's a co-production of ABC and the Academy. The Academy produces the show for ABC. And it is internally frustrating to Disney because they know the show is not good.

And there's not much that they can do about it. So we're heading into this negotiation right now where the rights are coming up in 2028. The Academy currently makes about $100 million a year from the telecast. That money is meaningful to them, right? Oh, very meaningful. That's the whole thing. That is...

That is a existential issue for the Academy. They have lots of expenses. They have a very expensive museum in Los Angeles that is, depending on who you believe, not doing great. They want to continue as an organization that gives out grants every year and has events and all these other things. They need that money, and...

ABC would like to pay less. And then you've got Netflix out there kind of stalking around saying, what could we do here? We could take this over, make it global, make it something that younger people cared about. Maybe the Oscars are a year round thing where we have shows and events and all these other things. And or we can overpay.

Yeah, and we have the money and we can overpay for a prestige asset. Do you think that Ted Sarandos loved the fact that there was a constant stream of Netflix jokes during the show? I mean, Conan did a whole video about how great the theatrical experience is.

There was, you know, the big speech of the night from Sean Baker of Enora was about how these distributors need to prioritize theatrical distribution of movies. That must have made Ted Sarandos like cringe and like shrivel up in his chair. Is there a scenario where Netflix comes and says, we are making a deal you can't refuse. It's 2X better than anything else you're going to get.

And by the way, there's a lot of upside and you want films to be more relevant. We're going to broadcast them around the world. We're going to do everything you want. And the Academy goes, no, actually, we don't like you because you're streaming and Netflix and this just goes against what we do. And so they end up taking less from a traditional, from Disney or somebody else who does traditional TV. I don't think it would be because the Academy is necessarily averse to Netflix. I think they would fear the blowback

amongst members and amongst the general media and movie going community that they would sell their show to the outlet that is actively trying to minimize and some would argue kill off the theatrical experience.

Netflix repeatedly says that is not our model. We are not in the theatrical business. We are making an exception for Greta Gerwig on her Narnia movie, but only after a five-month negotiation. And it's only a four-week window with a guarantee of two weeks of her movie for Narnia in IMAX theaters. They don't want theaters. They hate them.

Ted Sarandos is on the board of directors of the Academy Museum. Netflix does a lot with the Academy. They have ingratiated themselves. They have done a lot for the awards community. So they're trying to get in there. But I think if Netflix doesn't get the Oscars, it will be because the Academy and its board of governors fears the backlash.

So let's assume that it sticks on TV, stays on Disney, and the form it's on sort of just erodes. With a global deal. I think Disney Plus can do a global deal. They just did one for the Grammys. But let's say it just continues on the trajectory where it has smaller films that Academy people like, but...

Normal humans don't generally see. I saw way more of these films than I usually do this year for whatever reason. Well, you're a liberal elite. I'm a coastal liberal elite. I saw it on Trump's inauguration day. I went and counter-programmed by watching The Brutalist.

Oh, wow. Which I recommend in case you ever have to go through this experience again. It was a good call on my part. I went and saw it at an AMC theater in Century City. And I will say that the core demo for listeners of the town is people who are standing in the lobby of an AMC theater during the intermission of The Brutalists. I hear you.

I hear. So I got recognized 10 times. So let's say we continue on this trajectory where, where, where they show films that are interesting to, to people who like Matt Bellamy. What are the awards that mean for the people who win them? Um, it, the,

One of the arguments you used to hear was this is a meaningful bump for movies. They get exposure and an award can bring audiences. These are tiny films that have tiny audiences to begin with. What does it mean for Neon, who made Onora, who put out Onora, to have that win? Yeah, the so-called Oscar bump or the...

the financial benefit of being nominated and winning that battleground has essentially moved from theaters to home video and not necessarily on subscription services like Netflix or Peacock or whatever. Although those movies do do well. If you look at the numbers, Conclave has done very well on Peacock. It's been there. And, uh,

Emilia Perez actually not huge for Netflix, which is interesting considering how much they spent on buying the movie and doing the campaign. But it's really this premium video on demand window that these companies are making a lot of money on. Rent a movie for 20 bucks. 20 bucks or 30 bucks sometimes. Electronic sell through is the other one where you buy it on iTunes or you rent it on different platforms.

That is where the money is being made. Tom Quinn, who runs Neon, he came on the town yesterday and he said that it's going to be eight figures.

in their PVOD revenue, which he wouldn't specify anymore. But that's a pretty big bump for a movie that cost $6 million to make. He spent about $20 million marketing it. They made $15 million in U.S. theaters. And then to have that extra revenue on top, depending on what it is, it could be almost double what they made in the theaters. And keep in mind, the revenue

split between the movie studio and the platform is a lot better for the studio on digital platforms than it is in theaters theater I show in the theaters it's 50% yep and it depends on the movie but they generally take 50 50 and if you can get a better split on selling the movie digitally that's

that's money in your pocket. So for neon and a Nora, tiny movie, tiny budget, tiny box office, this is a meaningful amount of money, right? Can put them into profit, can increase their margins meaningfully. If this was a big movie, if, if wicked had one or dune two had one, would that be meaningful to, to Comcast or Warner's? I think with something like wicked. Yes. The fact that this movie has played and played and played and it's,

They put out a press release. They put Wicked on premium video on demand on New Year's Eve, and they put out a press release saying that they had gotten $70 million in the first week or so. I forget whether it was the first two weeks. But was that because it was a nominated movie or because it was Wicked? I think it's all part of a package.

I think probably because it was a movie that had grossed hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in theaters. But the awards attention, I think, does matter. Keep in mind, also, these are movies that then go into the libraries of their respective studios. Increases the value. And it increases the value of a library. I mean, Tom Quinn was talking at Neon about how they have Parasite.

That will always be valuable in their library because they have an Oscar Best Picture winner. And you can fashion a library around those types of movies, put a whole bunch of garbage in them, and then you have an Oscar Best Picture winner that a service like Netflix or whatever is going to want. And you can sell those out forever. I mean, when I was a lawyer, I worked on a case involving profits associated with some library movies from the 80s and 90s.

And the fact that like Chariots of Fire was in this library was a huge deal because you could license it around the world as having an Oscar winner. And they would just put a whole bunch of garbage in with it. We'll be back with Matt Bellany. First, a word from a sponsor.

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So let me, you led me into this question I had about Neon and A24. They're kind of the new Miramaxes, right? These are the guys who kind of year after year now dominate. And they hate each other, which is fun. I didn't realize that, but that makes sense. They're in the same sandbox, right? And they're making...

Critics love them. Audiences generally don't see them that much. But it seems to be working for them, right? And that's counter to the way the rest of Hollywood works, right? Where the majors are making fewer movies, bigger budgets. They only work if they have massive box office. They have to sort of do these moonshots.

What is the future of a Neon and A24? Can they continue to sort of exist in that different stratum? The A24 has raised a bunch of money, so they supposedly have bigger ambitions. Can they continue to just sort of do well-regarded movies that make a little bit of money and they just do that year after year? Or does something change for them?

They need the revenue generators because Hollywood is littered with the corpses of prestige distributors that won a lot of awards but didn't end up being viable businesses going forward. The classic example is the company that released Spotlight, which won Best Picture about a decade ago. And they were out of business within three or four years after all the accolades for Spotlight. And they...

That's what I think Neon has a challenge with. They have had success in the horror genre. They released Long Legs last year, which got to 100 million, the biggest movie in their history. That is the actual business bread and butter of an independent distributor. That's A24 as well, sort of good.

made its mark with horror as well. Yeah, although A24 now has been able to raise so much money that they are now going into bigger budgeted movies, which I think a lot of people in town think is a risk for them. They've had a lot of success. They've been one of the few film companies that actually has a brand for themselves. People care about A24 and will look to see if it's an A24 movie in certain segments of the culture if they're going to be interested in it. And

And they've had success in the genre world. They've had success in the prestige world. But they're making so much now that I think it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out over the next few years. They have this movie with The Rock that's coming out. They have more mid-budget movies, not just the low-budget stuff. They're not making comic book movies, but they're getting up there in budget. Civil War last year, they've got another war movie coming out in April. Totally. Same group.

And they're willing to take those swings. I mean, Neon says they're not willing to do a movie over $35 million budget. A24 is not saying that. Yeah. So, you know, we'll see. And the thing that matters the most to these studios financially is their output deal. A24 is a lucrative deal with Maxx.

And Neon has a lucrative deal with Hulu. That is the holy grail these days. If you are an independent distributor, you have to have someplace guaranteed and reliable to put your movies on home video because the DVD market is gone. Right. So you like people to see the movies in the theaters and your talent wants them to see it in the theaters. And the way you actually make your money is by licensing it for home viewing.

It's the history of Hollywood is that the money, the waterfall, the money that comes in after the theatrical release ultimately is where the profit and the longevity comes from. Fewer people are going to the movies year after year, no matter what Sean Baker says. The box office total revenue numbers keep going up because ticket prices go up. But Americans go to the movies less often every year, basically. And it's not a COVID issue and it's not a strike issue.

Well, it is a COVID issue also. Well, sure. The numbers have not returned from COVID, but they were going down before COVID. That is my point. They were in decline. It seems pretty obvious. People got widespread access to the internet in the beginning of the 2000s, and they stopped going to the movies as often.

Do the people that you talk to in town recognize that or are they still thinking, well, if we just had one more year with better IP and bigger blockbusters and we just got to get our shit together, we can turn this around? Yeah, of course they recognize it. It is the number one topic of conversation is where are we going as a business?

The movie business has been challenged since television was invented, but it had always figured out a way to grow. And whether it was taking advantage of the home video market to fuel bigger and better productions, whether it was the IP push that eventized movies, and lately, whether it's just been raising prices and...

sequelizing things to death that's been the model what next is it is there a growth path in just continuing to focus on IP event movies or is there something next

I don't know the answer to that. And I don't think that people in the business know the answer to that because it's all they talk about is what are we doing? And, you know, yes, I got into this business to make great movies, but I'm now going to make the third spinoff of a remake of a reboot. And that's my job is to figure out how to make movies based on doll IP.

Like that's kind of the job now. And who can I do a deal with that will allow me access to something that is a known property, but we can put an interesting filmmaker on it and try to make the best version of a Hot Wheels movie. Let's talk about the people who run the companies that make this stuff, the big companies, the Comcast and Paramount, etc.,

There was a minute in Hollywood where people were excited about David Zaslav showing up because he was placing Jason Kyler. I'd say like 30 seconds he got. Yeah, it seemed pretty naive to me. But he's now berating his movie makers for not making enough money. Who is sort of held in best regard by the community in terms of the big corporate movie making companies?

That's interesting you say that because I think Iger will always be the town's mayor, so to speak, because he had a long and successful run at Disney. Less successful now, but he's perceived to have righted the ship, at least. And he is one of the creative class. Started as a weatherman, programmed ABC, came up through the ranks, career Hollywood guy, made good CEO. What?

Was considered a stuffed suit who didn't have the talent to make it in creatives, but that now has been-

That's also, I think, part of the reason why they're having such a hard time replacing him is that there isn't anyone that has that specific skill set and background out there. At least nobody that we know of. In Beyond Iger, there's the woman who runs Universal Pictures, Donna Langley, I would say right now is probably the second most respected executive because she's

They just gave her a big promotion at Comcast. She's now running all content for all of NBC Universal, including television.

And what she's done at the film studio, I think is pretty impressive. That universal library and their trove of IP is not very good. They have a lot of monster movies in their past that they've tried to reboot and nobody cares about Frankenstein and Dracula in the 21st century. Although they did just make a Nosferatu movie. Um,

But she, through a combination of deal-making and betting on certain franchises like Fast and Furious and Jurassic, they have Illumination, which is their answer to Pixar and has arguably been more successful than Pixar. Makes all the Minion movies.

Minions movies, they gave them Super Mario Brothers, and Super Mario Brothers was a huge hit. Illumination's track record is as good as any run Disney has ever had. So...

She's built this interesting slate and she's also bet on filmmakers. She has a relationship with Jason Blum who produces horror movies. She stole Chris Nolan away from Warner Brothers after that whole spat over Jason Kylar and his day and date strategy. They have a relationship with Spielberg that goes back decades, Jordan Peele. They're putting together this mix of filmmaker-driven projects

tentpole franchise properties and animation and family movies. They own DreamWorks. That, to me, is the secret formula for a modern movie studio. Are you surprised that Comcast is still in this business? They listened to Wall Street a little bit because Wall Street wants them to get out of media. And they said, all right, we'll get rid of our cable channels. But we're going to hang on to broadcast and theme parks and movies. We're going to continue to make movies and TV shows.

I'm not surprised they're in this business. Why wouldn't they? They've had a lot of success. There have been so many bad mergers over the years of companies acquiring media assets. We saw what happened with AT&T and Time Warner and all the others. But the Comcast acquisition of NBCUniversal, I think, is among the more successful. Now, obviously, the entire television business is collapsing, and they are now moving to spin those assets off.

But they had a pretty nice run with those assets. And the movie studio has gotten them into the theme park business, which they are very bullish on. I think it was and has been additive for their distribution business, the cable channels business, because they're able to use the promotional platform of the networks to plug that. I think that generally speaking, that relationship

has been positive for a company that was, you know, these Philadelphia cable people, that owning content has been good for them, in my opinion. We'll be back with Matt Bellany. First, a word from a sponsor.

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And we're back. As you noted, everyone noted Trump was not mentioned on stage during the awards. He's obviously top of mind for a lot of people. Is he top of mind in Hollywood right now? I mean, he's he's definitely affecting the business, right? He's he's he's inserted himself into this Paramount sale. They're investigating Comcast now. Presumably they will go after other liberal woke studios. I

How much does his name and the current administration come up in your conversations? All the time, but I don't think anyone quite knows what to do. I mean, I was talking about that...

this morning with someone, because if you look at what Jon Stewart is doing, Jon Stewart predictably is antagonizing Elon Musk and the president. And remember, Jon Stewart left Apple and went to Comedy Central, went back to Comedy Central because he couldn't deal with the political pressures that Apple was under with their businesses around the world and in China. Now he's at a company that's got a merger pending. That's one of the reasons, but yeah. Okay, but-

But yes, he definitely was poking the bear on TV last night.

and he's now causing them more problems. And I'm like, how are they going to handle this? Are they going to take Jon Stewart off the air? Are they going to tell him to go easy on Elon Musk? Because this is going to escalate, I'm sure. Nobody in town really knows what to do with Trump this time. They just know that they don't want to be in the crosshairs. And like all these tech guys, they're doing whatever they feel they need to do to stay out of the...

of the government. Whether it's Disney paying off Trump to settle the ABC News case or whether it's getting rid of their DEI programs, which are very popular in Hollywood, and a lot of people are pissed that they're getting rid of them, but you don't see that many people speaking up about it. Are people more concerned about what Trump or his allies like Musk could do to them, or are they more concerned about...

losing their connection to an audience, half of whom voted for Donald Trump and seemed to have been sort of, at least if you believe the chattering class, there's been a cultural shift.

I think it's the former. I think that they're afraid of what this administration could do or the impact of being targeted. You don't want people coming after you, whether it's on social media or in the government. I mean, this is serious stuff where you become a target of the government and people just don't want that. Certainly, they don't want it in the C-suites, but I think rank-and-file creative people also don't want that.

I mean, you look at some of the most active voices of the quote unquote resistance from 2017 and 2018. A lot of those people are not out there now. And maybe they're looking at the vibe shift or whatever and saying people don't want to hear from me. I don't think it's as much that. I think it's more just there's a culture of fear right now. We'll let you go after this. But The Apprentice, which came out last fall, is the Trump biopic, sort of biopic, which

It was nominated for two awards, right? Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor. It doesn't have a... I mean, it has a minimal U.S. distributor. It was very hard for people to see. Do you think people were happy that that...

that movie didn't get an award so they didn't have to worry about Jeremy Strong going on stage and mentioning Trump? Do you think they were disappointed because they actually sort of wanted to sort of poke Trump gently? I think the Academy was happy that nobody from that movie got on stage.

the Academy from the very beginning of planning this year's Oscars. They wanted it to be a controversy-free show. It's part of the reason why they hired Conan. His brand is not political. He had one zinger on the show about Russia, but did not say Donald Trump's name, did not do a political monologue, and that...

apprentice controversy was something that they knew would turn off voters. They very much care about winning back people who watch the Oscars. They know that the Oscars cannot be a successful media franchise without people who love Donald Trump watching the show. So that's there within the community. I don't know. It's just, you have to talk to people individually. I think most people, the, the,

typical liberal Hollywood crowd, they would have liked to see more politics on the show. They liked that stuff. But even amongst that group, I think people recognize the climate right now and how much this stuff becomes a talking point in right-wing media. Do you think this is a status? Is this the status quo for the remainder of the Trump administration? Does it go beyond the Trump administration? I don't think so. I think the cues will come from political leaders, right?

Once there is a organized and loud opposition, I think the Democrats need to figure their ass out. And once that happens, you'll see more people coming out and talking about this stuff. But right now, everything seems to be either in disarray or people are just kind of waiting to let go.

things play out so they can uh they can figure out the strategy all right on that sour note and your phone is blowing up we're gonna let you go matt bellany you're awesome thank you for for eating the sushi that i could not get to for all of us we appreciate it appreciate you yeah i love love your show thanks matt see you around

Thanks again to Matt Bellany. Thanks again to Jelani Carter, who produces and edits the show. Thanks to our advertisers who bring the show to you for free. And thanks to you guys for listening, for offering commentary, sometimes texting me with your commentary. If you guys want to give me commentary to my face, again, you can do that in Austin, Texas, either at my conversation with Dan Clancy, or you can just find me on the stream. Maybe I'll be at Esther's Volleys. Okay, this is Channels. We'll see you soon.

All right, Sean, you can do this promo talking about all the great Vox Media podcasts that are going to be on stage live at South by Southwest this March. You just need a big idea to get people's attention, to help them, you know, keep them from hitting the skip button. I don't know. I'm going to throw it out to the group chat. Kara?

Do you have any ideas? In these challenging times, we're a group of mighty hosts who have banded together to fight disinformation by speaking truth to power, like the Avengers, but with more spandex. What do you think, Scott? I'm more of an X-Man fan myself. Call me Professor. Can I read minds? I can't really read minds, but I can empathize with anyone having a midlife crisis, which is essentially any tech leader. So

Minds are important, Scott, but we're more than that. I think that you can't really separate minds from feelings. And we need to talk about our emotions and explore the layers of our relationships with our partners, coworkers, our families, neighbors, and our adjacent communities. I just want to add a touch more. From sports and culture to tech and politics, Vox Media has an all-star lineup of podcasts that's great in your feeds, but even better live.

That's it. All-stars. Get your game on. Go play. Come see a bunch of Vox Media All-stars and also me at South by Southwest on the Vox Media podcast stage presented by Smartsheet and Intuit. March 8th through 10th in Austin, Texas. Go to voxmedia.com slash SXSW. You'll never know if you don't go. You'll never shine if you don't glow.