Media Monday: McAfee, Inc. & MS NOW’s Subscription Bet

Jon Kelly (0:02)

That's extraordinary power. That's like 90s film star power getting the studio head can. So they have no other choice.

Peter Hamby (0:14)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Pucks podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby. It's Monday, September 14th, which means it's Media Monday. Today, Jon Kelly and I examine the new face of ESPN, especially heading into football season. That would be Pat McAfee, the network's $60 million man who is driving eyeballs to college game day and actually getting young people to tune in to linear television.

We also break down Ms Now's plan to offer subscription products to its left-leaning audience online, and why this is actually a smart play. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Monday everybody. If it's Monday on The Powers That Be, it is Media Monday. I'm joined by the boss man, Jon Kelly. We're going to talk about Pat McAfee's dominance of ESPN. We're also going to talk about Ms Now getting into the subscription game. Jon, it's great to see you. Let's start with ESPN. Last week, we saw two very different versions of the most trusted name in sports. Barry Melrose passed away after a battle at Parkinson's. And as someone who likes to watch the Scott Van Pelt Sports Center out west here, you had a parade of long time familiar ESPN faces come on to pay tributes to Barry Melrose. He was moving in Sweden and he was a staple of the network for so many years. Okay, that was the ESPN of yore. You also had Pat McAfee sitting at the center of the college game day table in Baton Rouge. He was down there last Saturday as part of the team for LSU's absolute beatdown of Dabo Sweeney and the Clemson Lesser Tigers, the fake Death Valley they have over there in the upstate of South Carolina. It was interesting and Jon Orrin talked about this because Kiffin talked to McAfee and said, thanks for your advice. Kiffin has obviously been under fire. For pushing the boundaries of recruiting, I'll leave it at that. Go Tigers. The other interesting thing was that Saban was off to the side sort of rolling his eyes when this happened. McAfee led the Tigerland audience in a chant of STTB.

If you don't know what that means, you can Google it or if you were watching College Game Day, you would have heard it live on television.

Jon Kelly (2:57)

You did.

Peter Hamby (2:58)

You certainly heard it on television. So look, I like LSU. That's what makes LSU cool. Other cultural teams have. Lame Tailgates, my boys down there in Baton Rouge over at Tiger Island, were there from noon until the rain delay. People were pretty bourbon soaked.

Look, McAfee is a character that has emerged at ESPN, highly paid, who is obviously controversial, but he is at the center of attention and represents the new ESPN, the licenses show. He is a magnet for attention on social media, provocative, but he gets people to tune in. I do want to say one thing that Jon Orrind reported, and Jon wrote a big piece about McAfee of the universe over at ESPN. Another senior media executive from a rival network texted Jon Orrind after the STTDB chant and said, Maybe I'm just a prude.. But is it not that cool for Pat McAfee to lead that chant on TV on a Saturday morning? Does anyone at ESPN want to explain how edgy and hilarious that is? Maybe you are a prude, sir. This guy clearly went to Montana Bible College and doesn't have a good football team. But does anyone really care?

We live in the year 2026 People can be bawdy on cable television. Look, we've talked about Pat McAfee a lot on this show. Jon talks about it a lot, obviously, in The Varsity.

What are your notes on Pat McAfee this college football season? Because it seems like they're putting him front and center when he used to be a couple of years ago. He started in 2022 at the end of the table, and now he's right there in the middle.

Jon Kelly (4:38)

Yeah, and we'll see more and more of him.

Naturally, he came through college, but we're going to see him on Monday Night Football now, and I think that this $60 million a year production deal, which allows McAfee to take in more money himself, but also, I think, pay his team more and invest in certain other production values. We talked about it before. We joked that he's probably not flying commercial ever again in his life.