• last year
Transcript
00:00 The popular Twitter account Funhaus, or back after this,
00:03 may be not posting Mike Francesa clips anymore
00:06 after Francesa and the company he works for, Entercom,
00:09 said there will be a cease and desist.
00:11 For more on that, I'm joined by SI Media columnist
00:14 Jimmy Trena, and Jimmy, I know you believe
00:16 this is actually like a complicated sports media rabbit hole
00:20 if you will, with the question being,
00:22 is the publicity good if it's not actually directing people
00:26 to the product, and if it's all negative?
00:29 - Yeah, I think most people these days,
00:32 with Mike being on radio.com, and he's only on WFAN
00:36 here in New York for 30 minutes a day,
00:38 I think most people who consume Mike Francesa now
00:41 consume it via Twitter clips, but unfortunately for Mike,
00:45 I mean, the overwhelmingly vast majority
00:47 of those Twitter clips do not exactly cast him
00:51 in a positive light.
00:52 So, I can see Mike wanting to be done with getting mocked
00:57 basically on a daily basis on social media.
00:59 - What I think's odd about the timing though,
01:02 this week, the clip that really blew up
01:04 was probably the most positively I've seen him
01:07 talked about in a long time.
01:09 You know, he criticized Trump about the response
01:12 to the coronavirus, and that was shared widely.
01:15 It seems to be this is a reaction to that clip?
01:18 - Yeah, I think it is, and it's because that clip,
01:21 if I'm not mistaken, has gotten 2.4 million views,
01:23 and Enercom, which owns WFAN and reader.com,
01:27 they don't get a penny of revenue from that.
01:30 So, while people can make the argument about,
01:32 you know, the relevancy of it, this is a business.
01:36 It's a business where, you know,
01:38 if you're in sports media right now,
01:39 nobody can get advertising.
01:41 You need everything you can get right now,
01:43 and Enercom saw 2.4 million views go to a Twitter account
01:47 where they can't monetize anything,
01:49 and I think this is a direct response to that.
01:53 - Couldn't a counter to that point be that, you know,
01:56 they might've been zero if it wasn't for those 2.4 million,
01:59 so even if you could get a small percentage
02:02 of those viewers to check it out, it would be a win?
02:05 - Do you think anyone who watched that clip
02:06 listened to Mike's show the next day on radio.com?
02:09 - I know, I doubt it's many,
02:11 but maybe more than there was before, I don't know.
02:15 - Right, well, you know, that's the issue for Enercom.
02:18 At the end of the day, it's a business, it's about money.
02:21 - No doubt about it.
02:22 Appreciate your time, as always.
02:24 -All right. Take care.
02:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]