Transcript: The Most Blunder-ful Time of the Year!
Revisiting 2023's top snubs, flubs, flops and embarrassing moments
Sean McNulty (00:04):
Welcome to The Ankler Podcast. This is Sean McNulty from The Wakeup newsletter here at The Ankler on the afternoon of Thursday, December 21st, here in New York City. I'm joined by Elaine Low and Richard Rushfield in Los Angeles, and Claire Atkinson is holding down the New Jersey representation. I won't be back there until later in the day today. Claire, thanks for bringing a rep in Jersey over there.
Claire Atkinson (00:26):
Thank you.
Sean McNulty (00:27):
Nice to see you. Richard is, of course, fresh off bringing his Ankler 100 to the printing press. Richard, that's still how you do that list, right?
Richard Rushfield (00:34):
Yeah, exactly. We have little teams that's going to assemble each item one by one, handcrafted each item by our workshop here.
Sean McNulty (00:43):
The image of The Post, the movie The Post when they put all the printing press together every day.
Richard Rushfield (00:49):
More like Santa's elves, I'd say.
Sean McNulty (00:51):
How lovely. How nice. Look at that, holiday cheer from Richard Rushfield. We'll see, of course, what was the standouts from Richard on that list. Claire is sending out a piece this weekend handing out grades to all the studios for their 2023 work. Claire, why does Paramount have incomplete next to theirs? What happened there?
Claire Atkinson (01:07):
Well, everybody is interested in what happens next to Paramount. We had the report yesterday from Axios that said that David Zaslav was having lunch, surprisingly with Bob Bakish in New York, I think at Times Square at the headquarters.
Sean McNulty (01:20):
Men who lunch, Claire. It's fine. They're just exchanging gifts. I don't understand what the big deal was.
Claire Atkinson (01:26):
Well, it's intriguing that it's face-to-face, let's say that.
Sean McNulty (01:30):
Yes, exactly.
Claire Atkinson (01:31):
Everything I heard from folks when I talked to analysts and consultants and industry people was that Paramount actually had, had a pretty good year and had played a very good hand with not much. Their streaming numbers were up. Let me see, they had 63 million subscribers for Paramount+ in November. That's a pretty good number, and they were growing.
Sean McNulty (01:54):
Globally.
Claire Atkinson (01:54):
That's good. That's true, globally. Good distinction. They're the smallest player. We're going to see what plays out here and I think we're going to talk about it some more.
Sean McNulty (02:05):
Exactly. Lots to dive into there, for sure. Then we have the most plentiful time of the year this year, which is Richard's favorite topic, of course. I think it's a bronze plaque of the head smack emoji, but we'll be handing that out as well. Richard, have you prepared your Paramount offer yet, or when is your meeting with Shari?
Richard Rushfield (02:21):
As I always say, it sounds like a lot of work. I'm more interested in-
Sean McNulty (02:26):
We got to get you a new line, Richard. I think you do enjoy, you'd fit out a whole list of a hundred things this week. I think you liked the work.
Richard Rushfield (02:32):
I have liked it and I'm ready to like it less.
Sean McNulty (02:34):
Is the pay cut too much for you, Richard? Is that it? From writing to being a media executive? Is that it?
Richard Rushfield (02:39):
I'm more interested in taking over a company that have monopoly position at top where you can just coast and it's not really much you can do to screw it up for 10 or 20 years or so.
Sean McNulty (02:51):
Well, your time horizon is wrong, but otherwise, you have a pretty good description of being a top of a studio, Richard, I think. I don't know.
Richard Rushfield (02:57):
I'm also willing to, if there's a CEO out there who wants to bring in somebody to make the hard choices and then fire him for all those terrible choices and pay me some millions to not work.
Sean McNulty (03:10):
I see.
Richard Rushfield (03:11):
I'm open to an offer like that too.