Reaction to Squawk Box Re: Roundball Rock

Transcript

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Gib Gerard, welcome to the podcast. And as is, as is what happens usual. What's usual for me in the morning is that I wake up and I have 450 texts about something this time. It was never a good sign. Never.

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This has got to be from my wife, Connie. This is I left something on. I don't know what happens.

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The dog did something.

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It was about, it was about the basketball song. It was about, about round ball rock, the great and what happens with me, with my friends, is it's like, are you okay with this? And they don't even tell me what the heck's going on. It's like, are you okay with this? The same thing happened when Saturday Night Live did a parody of the song right in New York and and I hadn't hit here yet in Los Angeles. And so I get all these texts from everybody, my friend Lenny, like 100 texts, are you okay with this? I can't believe he's I can't believe these guys did this, you know. So it was like that. And so finally, somebody sent me a clip, and it was these guys. It was on a show that I don't I don't watch on CB CNBC, but maybe I should, because it's on at my gym in the morning. So I go to my I do my workout, and I watch Squawk Box.

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I'm watching this. I'm thinking, you know, if I watch this every now and then, my stock portfolio would be better. But that's usually what they talk about, right? Is stocks, yes, and then they have like, 1000 tickers on the bottom, yeah, yeah. It's a regular business.

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And they do business news stories. And I mean, and they picked up a story this morning about you, involves the fact that the NBA is coming back to NBC, right, which we're very excited about, and about the nature of whether or not round ball rock is going to be on the broadcast or not. Yeah, I got to tell you that when I see my name pop up and I see people on the news talking about it. Check your pulse. My gosh. It was like, okay, so should I play this? The first part of this?

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Yeah, go ahead. This is, this is the story. Okay, here we go.

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Remember that let the nostalgia flood in, folks. During the 1990s it was open. It was the open to the NBA on NBC featured the beloved round ball rock themes composed by John tett.

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But with the NBA coming back to NBC, will we once again hear that song blaring from our TVs?

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I hope so. The guy who knows the answer as he NBC, Alex Sherman at the table this morning. What do we got? Let me tell you a little story. Andrew, a few months ago, I wrote a story about how NBC could license this song from John TASH, the composer, when it became clear that NBC was on the verge of striking a deal to bring back the NBA, which starts next season, I love this song. It just brings back everything from it. So everything, when I wrote the story, the the impact on social media was through the roof. So in the back of my mind as a reporter, I remembered that, and was like, Okay, let me check up on how that deal was.

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So in the intermediate, NBC Sports, when they announced that the NBA was coming back. Said, Hey, the song is going to come back too. And there was, you know, internet rejoicing, so I checked up on the deal.

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I hate to break this to you and the audience, but there is no deal yet.

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Even though NBC Sports said the song is coming back, they're still in negotiations with John Tesh, is that? Is that true about the about them not having it and making the announcement?

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Yeah, I mean, what happened was, during right before the Olympics, right I get a call from the music department that NBC, and they, they say, Hey, we just found out that we it's official. We got the rights to the NBA for 11 years. It's back, and it begins in October of 2025, and we want to bring, we want to want to say that we're negotiating with you and your publishing company, and we're going to bring round ball rock back with it. We want to put that in the press release, because we know that that will be one of the big questions, as well, as well. It should be as well as I mean, I was, I was honored when they said, We want to get ahead of all the questions. You can't say this, but I can say this as a viewer of basketball, how exciting it is to have the theme come back and how, what an exciting moment it'll be. Because for me, it connects. You know, I talk about this all the time. I have, I have this group of guys that I grew up with, and we watch sports together, and we text every day about the sports that we watch. And it brings me when I hear the theme, and I hear it whenever I want, when I hear the theme associate with a basketball broadcast, it brings me right back to that feeling of watching sports with my friends, and brings me to this heyday of the NBA. So I do, I love that about it. And it would have been, you know, regardless of any connection I have to it would have been my question.

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When the NBA got the NBC got the NBA, I appreciate it. So when he said this, you know, I said, well, listen, you know, you don't have the rights to the song. And so he said, Yeah, yeah. But we.

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We just, we want to put in the in the press release that we're negotiating with, with, with you and your and your publishing company. And I said, Ah, that's that. I don't think that's a great idea, right? And then he said, Well, we would just hope that you would negotiate in good faith. I said, I guess you're going to do what you you want to do. And he said, Yeah, that's what, that's what the folks here want to do, right? And so when the press release, fast forward, and when the press release came out, was this big thing, and everybody picked it up, right?

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All the podcasters, everything you know, the NBA is back on NBC, and round ball rock is back. The press release actually said we, basically, we have the rights to round ball Rock, and I'm reading this thing, I'm going, what? So I call him back up the guy at NBC, and I say, Hey, you said you're going to say you were negotiating with us in good faith. Because, yeah, we got out a little ahead of our skis. I said, skis. And he said, Well, you know, we just, we hope that you'll negotiate in good faith. And he said, I wish, I hope, that you won't, you know, talk to the press about about this. Because what I said was, I'm gonna get a whole bunch of phone calls now from all these podcasts. Can you just wait until everybody gets back from the Olympics and then we'll start negotiations? And so yeah.

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Chris Roslin, my publicist said, John, we're getting hundreds of phone calls. You've got to get ahead of this. My lawyer says, John, you've got to get ahead of this. And I realized that if I quote, unquote, got ahead of it, and said, Whoa, wait, they don't have the rights that I would have destroyed that while that great press that NBC was getting. And I worked for NBC, I worked, I did the 92 Olympic Games as an announcer, and also the 96 the 96 and a lot of stuff for them. I know all the guys there. And I thought, oh gosh, you know. And I felt like I was frozen in place. And then when it came time to negotiate, it was crickets for, yeah, quite a long time. I think, okay, so I just got cut off at the knees. I mean, look, first and foremost, it is exciting, the idea of it coming back. So that's, that's, that's, that's super great. The other thing is, you're talking about negotiating around the Olympics, but having the theme come back for the Olympics, and having that theme with the NBA, again, with the NBA players that are out there, was, was such a great amount of goodwill, so much excitement. And it really was, was fueling an exciting fire online, of people responding to and talking about it to the point where, you know, we've, we've got, like, new versions of the song, and it's really it, you say, you like to say, it's taken a life of its own. Yeah, the song, you know, what's funny is that the song actually, and we're gonna play some more clips from, from from CNBC, but the song when it lasted for about 1011, years on NBC, beginning in 1989 right? And then there was off for 24 years, right? But during that period of time, because of because of YouTube and people learning how to play the song and it being, you know, people licensing it for commercials, and all that stuff, just took out a larger life than it had, even when it was on NBC during the Showtime era. So listen, I'm a grateful guy. I had, you know, I do, I did that data, you know, eight notes that have, like, you know, I get people singing them to me in the in the airport.

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I'm, I'm totally grateful that's just me. I'm just following around singing it in the airport. And I have to say that once I left television while I left Entertainment Tonight, back then I thought I had left this media madness, but this thing, and now it's like, now I'm in the middle of this thing where it's like, okay, so now what are we gonna do? Yeah, so can we play the next play?

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The next thing? Okay? NBC fully expects to reach a deal still for the song, and we're still in negotiations. Another thing I was told is that test has actually held the conversation with a VC firm where he could sell the song to the VC firm and the VC firm could negotiate with NBC, risk off the table. A little risk off the table.

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Remember, there's, like, there was like, a big SNL sketch about the song. The song is wildly possible, like the theme song to Top Gun, though it just, it brings the you hear it, and it brings back a whole but you also think, honestly, all right, so that's it. I'm leaving now. He just equated it to Top Gun.

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Look, you can't say this because the you know, you wrote it. You're like, oh, it's cool. But as somebody look as somebody that consumes sports and non stop, no, I mean, it's, you know, I try not to be weird about it, but like, I like this, and I like the connection that I have.

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So, you know, I have kids. I when they were before he died, and when he was still the voice of the voice the Dodgers, I had my kids listening to Vin Scully, even though it was like a an older style of voice, so that they could appreciate where, you know, the sports that I grew up listening to, and now they have their own appreciation for the sports that I watch. And that's what, that's what a theme like this will do, in the same way, you know, they talk about Top Gun, in the same way that.

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When Top Gun came back with their with Top Gun Maverick, 36 years later, it was 36 years Yeah, the sequel. And, by the way, fantastic movie. You know, it's like it was Star Wars with, with, with top meets Top Gun.

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And they had, and they had, they had to bring the theme back, because they are inextricably linked in the same way that when you think of the NBA on NBC, you think of round ball rock being there with it, because it brings back the same energy, like you can't watch Top Gun and not hear the theme. You I can't think of the NBA on NBC and not think of the theme and the you know, the connection and the energy and the emotion that it brings. It harkens to another thing, which is your theme was you got, you got you got really lucky, because at a time when when the NBA was expanding, and Michael Jordan was coming into his prime and you had this really exciting time to watch basketball, the theme was associated with the prime time coverage of those basketball games in a fantastic way. And now, you know, and now we think, okay, they, you think of all of these current NBA stars, and they are fantastic. I love watching, you know, Steph Curry and LeBron. I love watching Giannis. I like watching the I like watching these new stars, but every single one of them to the man gets compared to Michael Jordan.

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So the bridging of those eras is a really exciting thing that we have the opportunity to be a part of my favorite thing to see, and it's, it's just so ridiculous, is when, when, when NBC, when Sunday Night Live, did the parody. Oh, it's great. And got my whole outfit right from, from, from Avalon. And also the, you know, the 1000s of people who learned how to play the song, that's, that's when i That's why I knew, like, okay, so people are really connecting to the song. And it is one of those things that only happens.

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I mean, maybe it happens for Hans Zimmer every week, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I didn't mean to correct you. John Williams has some themes. You can't put yourself up there, but I'll put you up there in the pantheon. All right. What's this cut for?

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Yeah, three, four, the other.

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But the other piece of it that I just don't know is the old the younger generation may not care.

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They might not what they've never heard in their whole life.

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And in fact, I suppose if NBC Sports said we want to reach the younger generation, maybe they feel like the song is old and they want to bring in a new song. So there's a lot of different things that look 90s nostalgia is big, like you just look at think about all of the different reboots on the streaming services of 90s TV. So there's absolutely a huge fan base there that I think NBC wants to reach. And it would be weird to hear the song on like ESPN. So yeah, you know, a new theme, fine, but, but that doesn't it loses the connection that I have to watching basketball with my kids. It loses the connection of that's one of the greatest things that sports has. It has this intergenerational ability, and we compare players from different eras to players from other eras eras. So, you know, we're comparing shoyotani to Babe Ruth. We're comparing LeBron James to Michael Jordan.

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And I get to talk to my kids about watching, you know, about watching the Showtime Lakers growing up, and how exciting that was. For me, it's an intergenerational connection that it's not just about appealing to a new audience.

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It's about the old audience connecting with the new audience as the show, as the programming, as the game evolves. We all get to enjoy it together. That is what the that is. That is the real value of sports. The contracts for athletes are so astronomically large, and they are deserved because people consume it in this way. Consume it intergenerationally. So, you know, new theme, smooth theme.

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This is the one that I don't know. Why we don't have to tell you this story, because I went on on this podcast right when, when the news came out that NB might be coming back to NBC, and when this podcast and I said, because that's what we were going to do, I said, we're going to go into the studio in Nashville at Ocean, legendary Ocean Way, with a 70 piece orchestra, and we're going to re record it, do a couple of different versions And and the and Twitter like blew up, said, don't change anything. Because people they because now can now they call the original version the OG version, which has a lot of the old sounds, but now these old sounds have come back, so all the sounds that you heard on the rocky four soundtrack and all the rest of super Jupiter, if you want to get exactly what it's called, yeah, all right, let's try the guy. I think we got one more clip from these guys, but obviously people associated with NBC synthesizer sound is definitely a little dated, like it reminds me of broadcast news when they were trying to look with the new the new. So I think NBC probably is thinking we can either tap into the nostalgia base, or we can, maybe we can create a new song that is a little bit.

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More modern sounding here, the nostalgia.

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I'm sorry, but I did, and I'm trying to be a nice guy here, okay, but, but when she said, and I don't know this woman, God bless you, but the synthesizer sound that you're saying is outdated, is totally back. In fact, I've got synthesizers in this house that people are trying to buy from me, because that sound is is back. And I think a lot of kids, your kids and your generation, that's the 80s music, the 80s sound. And you mentioned super Jupiter, it's that really thick. It's EDM, it's electronic dance music, and it's, it's back so that plus plus orchestra. So I'm sorry, we have an orchestral version with the full, with the full real instruments. And it's okay that everybody wants to hear, everybody wants to hear that that's, you know, that big, giant, mini move, you know, fat sound with oscillators. You know, firing off this morning.

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Sorry, this morning I worked out to the Rocky theme. Oh, yeah. So, you know, I sure broadcast news, but I would say Rocky, yeah, you could reference Rocky. That's the sound that I want to, that I want to connect to. All right, so, so, so, What?

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What? What are we? What? How do we conclude this? I mean, that's the story. Is that we, you know, I think everybody is really excited about the idea of this theme being back on NBC. We want, we want that to happen. I think, you know, they haven't. I don't think we've got an offer yet. I don't think we've gotten an opportunity. I say we, it's really, I think you've gotten an offer. I think you've had an opportunity to actually finish this deal with embassy. I, you know, I this song is, is, is a legacy song for the family. You know, all three of your kids know how to play the song. Yeah, I have, I've lived with this song, and I have become, probably, well, one of the biggest influencers for this song. And I've watched it, wrote it well, because I, I just, you know, so here, you know, it's, there's a, there's a great book called, called Story brand, right? And it's, it's, the book is, it's mostly for sales people. And it's about how, if you're going to sell something, if you're going to get somebody's attention, you need to build a story. Yeah, and I didn't know this was going to happen, but the story, that route you went through the whole thing, the story that round ball Rock has, has, has built, is the halcyon days of Showtime at the end. Yeah. And you can see it if you just go on, you know, like I said, they're like in June and July of 2024, 13 point, 1 billion impressions from people. And I just, you know, when I saw that, like this, this is the most, because it was on, it was on the Olympics, and people got excited about it. So, so, yeah, so I just, I mean, for me, business wise, I was like, I'd say, I think this, I I've seen what this, what the song is, is worth. But I also, I love NBC, you know.

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And I just, I mean, back in the day, you know, Dick Ebersole.

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God bless him. You know he hired me and Terry O'Neill and Van Gordon saw those guys hired me out of CBS News, and they sent me on the Tour de France, and they sent me on downhill skiing, and they sent me with David Michaels Al Michaels, great brother, producer, and that's where I learned how to play this music with that synthesizer music that she doesn't like.

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You're gonna take that first. I love it. I got a call right now.

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I apologize. And so that that sound that on the Tour de France in them. And if everybody knows the story, they've seen it, you know, everywhere where, you know, I wrote it on my answering machine. Yeah? Because when I was that damn sell the tapes.

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You want something new? NBC, yeah, all right. And so, yeah, I guess you know pretty much right now, with the guys on NBC make all these decisions, I'm hearing crickets, but, but I'm ready, and the song is ready, and Gib is also ready. I love the fact I'm excited. I love the fact that you're 30 years younger than me, and I love the fact that you know, 30 year olds, 40 year olds. I just, I just think that I hear from them, right?

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And so I don't, I, I disagree with the guys at CNBC about this that are saying that, Oh, maybe they're going to want something new. Okay, fine, but, but, but the song has lived for the last 24 years without being on television, and it'll go along if they make a decision rightfully so. Look, it is it?

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Is it a it is evocative of an exciting, emotional experience of coming home and having prime time, having Prime Time basketball on your television.

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And, you know, I go to my buddy Eli's house and we'd watch, we'd watch, we'd watch basketball and order a pizza and like that.

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That's that song brings you right back to that, that moment.

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Me too, so And before we end the podcast, I just want to say to those, to those of you who have written to me about it, who have supported me, who have learned how to play the song I Love, the kid who tried 1620 Seven times to play it with a ping pong ball bouncing off of pots and pans, and it has like 17 million views. Hopefully, he monetized that video. It's a lot of work. Thank you for doing that. The people who have been just stay with the song. I mean, I don't take that lightly. You shouldn't. It's exciting. It's a great that's the joy of making any kind of artistic form of expression is that it people react to it, and that's great.

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And when I die, and when I die, you know how to play it. So NBC, whoever you're gonna be dealing with, this guy, all right for Gib Gerard, I'm John Tesh.

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Thanks for enduring us in this this podcast, the reaction to remember how hard it was. I couldn't spell squawk. I've never it's not an easy once you have it, you have it, sounded out. It's difficult. English is a difficult language. Thank you guys.

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I.

Reaction to Squawk Box Re: Roundball Rock

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