Techstrong Gang – August 26, 2024

Happy Monday, everyone. I've got some sad news to report. I've lost a friend of the last 40 years Windows Control panel.

I don't know whether you're shedding tears about it or not, but we'll discuss it. Can AI be your next mayor? Can AI save tech sports viewership?

What else can we talk about with ai? You'll find out 'cause you're watching Textron gag. Hi everyone, it's Alan Shimmel here for Textron Gang.

Thanks for joining us on this lovely Monday. It's an exciting day. We've got a, a good mix of stuff as usual.

There's a little bit, a lot of AI and a little bit of other stuff, but that's the way the tech world is today. We hope your day's going great. Let me introduce you to our gang members for today.

We've got a a just a smaller group today, and sometimes that's a good thing. First of all, joining us from Silicon Valley where he has his finger on the pulse of big tech, little tech and all tech in between. It's our roving editor extraordinaire, John Swartz.

John, welcome. Yeah, hi. It's great to be back again.

Good to have you. John, joining us. I, I, I guess it looks like she's in New Mexico unless it's a fake background of her home that she's been using over and over.

She is the CEO founder of Deploy Hub, uh, board member extraordinaire on on several different, uh, projects and foundations and a regular member here of the gang, our friend Tracy Reagan. Hey, Tracy. How are you?

Hey, Alan. I'm doing great today. Thanks for having me.

Okay, so is that a real background or It's, that's my real, that is my real office. Excellent. It's good to have you.

Chay might See a dog wander through the hallway there. She's ai but there were background, right? The background's real.

She's dog. Hey, anything's possible. Joining us here in our Boca Raton Studio headquarters is our Chief Content Officer.

Uh, he'll, he'll be leaving later this week for VM World, right? That Is true. As as we speak.

I am You're in two places at one time. So are you the AI is the Question. I'm actually a quantum computer.

You're a quantum computer, but your states are mixed. All right. It's Mike Ard, our Chief Content Officer.

Welcome, Mike. So what do we have offered today? All right, well, Let's get started.

As Alan mentioned, Microsoft's trying to kill that Windows control plane one more time. And this time they're serious about it. And, uh, the expectation is that maybe AI is gonna help us find our files.

But I, for one, kind of have been attached to that. And I know that other people are, because every time Microsoft tries to kill this thing, uh, they have to bring it back. But John, you covered this for Techstrong ITSM.

What's your take? Is it, is this a bullwinkle moment this time? For sure.

Wow. Bullwinkle. Yes, Rocky.

You know, it's this, I mean, this seems to have been more than a decade in the making or the undoing, right? We heard about this. I think there've been speculation.

It's been speculation since 2011 and 2015 about its inevitable death. I think we can put it on the tombstone now because, um, Microsoft put out a statement, um, saying that control panel is gonna be replaced by settings in the foreseeable future. They did not say when, but they specifically said this would apply to Windows 11 and 10.

I know the two have coexisted for years, which in some cases led to confusion when they were side by side for consumers. So I reached out to a couple of analysts and ask them why is it happening finally now? And, and one of them, Jack Gold, who's been around probably as long as, as I have covering this stuff, said that he thinks Microsoft needed to simplify and that there are so many controls in Microsoft Windows that some people got frustrated.

I don't know about you, but my, my two questions I'll throw out is why did they stick so long with Control Panel when they said they, or hinted they wanted to get rid of it? And why do it now? Why kill it now?

I, I think those are good questions. Let me just weigh in. First of all, and I, so I was an exclusive Windows user.

Hi, my name is Allen, and I was a Windows user, um, from about 1980 something, uh, 86, 85. This Was, yeah, I saw 85, but around that timeframe. Yeah.

Yeah. Windows three. 0, which was really ugly.

1 was a big s**t move up. And then I, the last eight, nine years, I be, I pretty much use a Mac, but being the best IT guy in my family, including my extended family and my wife's extended family, I, I get exposed to a lot of different operating systems and most of them do use Windows. And I've seen this sort of depre, you know, deprecation of Windows control panel over the years.

It, I used to love going to that app because you could get to everything right there. It was really easy if I needed to do the printer or the wifi networking or, or something else. Back in the days when you had to go look and, and look at my, you know, did I have an IRQ conflict or something like that, um, you could see that they were moving the settings.

And then in the latest versions of Windows, when I log on and troubleshoot stuff for people, I couldn't even really find settings. They didn't make it easy. They didn't make it easy to find control battle.

And there wasn't that nice little gooey where I could click on a print or I could click on the World Network thing or, you know, what have you. I actually had to type in the box wifi settings or something like that, and it bummed me out because I felt like I lost a friend. But I, on the other hand, I, I have to tell you the truth and the world of ai, I, that should be the way we do it, right?

Rather than hunting through my device settings, which is with something in control panel, that was my favorite place where I can do magic trick, you know? And, um, it's a lot easier to just type in the search, bring up device settings or, you know, something like that. Um, so no, I, I'll miss it.

You know, I think when it gets over the bridge, Clippy will be waiting there for it and they'll have a reunion and, and it'll all be good. Here's, here's the part that I don't understand, and yes, I am sitting on my lawn and telling you to get off my lawn, but, okay, um, why can't everybody just have what they want? I mean, there's no need To.

Why is your own damn business? Yeah. Why, Why, why do they feel the need to force me down one path or the other?

I'm sure that there are younger folks out there than me that probably wanna windows that feels more like Mac. Okay, God bless. There are those of us who kind of like the old Windows 10 on structure.

It's what we know is what we've been using. Why mess with it? It's like there's no value add.

And yes, maybe I can use AI and I can go search for things verbally. I'll use that if you make it available. But why are you forcing me down one path or the other?

So just, I, I wanna stick up from back here a second. Be, because you, you know, you gave us that lefthanded Mac does have a control panel. It works pretty good, right?

You go in your back, you hit settings and it brings up it equivalent. But with those control panel that you could click in through all the general, it, it's much like the control panel or settings in your iPhone or iPad. They have a, a GUI for it all.

Maybe we should just, Yeah, I think you all, we all have to get ready for, um, an interfaces that are not icon driven, right? Everything we have seen in the past, everything we do has to have an icon. Uh, and that's sort of our mind model that we have now, and it's hard to get out of that.

But in order to start progressing tools like control panel, uh, I think that's the, that's the best place to start and teaching us a new way. And that's why it has to go. Because otherwise we're gonna be held back by icons forever and we move forward.

Icon model isn't, yeah, we gotta go forward. We, we're not gonna go back. We gotta go forward.

And the icon model is a, an old model, and we, we do have to move off of it. We have to, to start learning it. It Now, I, you know what?

When you put it that way, Chay, you, you, you got my vote. Um, I, I agree. I I think the whole, I can't, I think even the chat GPT typing into a prompt is, is archaic.

I, I think I'm ready for the, you know, what I call the Scotty error of computing. Hello computer. And, and I'm ready for that too, right?

Just tell the computer what you want and it does it and it brings it up for you. You gonna get the One chance New York. How's that gonna work?

You're making fun of my new, you know what? It, it takes a little extra training. But sir, you Know, I'm all, I'm all for freedom of choice.

And I agree with Mike on that. Venus wrote so remarkable that this lasted as long as it did. Uh, most you look at most companies and most technologies like Facebook, latter day technology, they just would break things on the fly and change rules and change things for you all the time.

Yeah. Even Apple would do that with the iPhone, you know, in terms of, um, the headphones. It, it's, it was something that people are accustomed to, and it, it just to me that this is the most, um, interesting thing about this is why they stuck with this all along.

Maybe. 'cause it was popular. It was easy to use.

So why don't Fix what's up broke. Yeah, Exactly. I mean, look at, let's just see that what happened between the Yahoo interface and then Google, right?

Yahoo used to have columns of, of areas that you could do searches on and look for and stuff coming up. And then Google came out with TA an empty box, which we could say anything we wanted. We could ask anything we wanted.

And I, I feel like that has always been a better way to go because our minds is too much. Is too much, right? And it's hard to learn.

So the more we get away from these, uh, more, I, I feel more constricted ways of seeing things, the better. So for example, when you do a, when you, I used to change channels on my, you know, television set. Now I push the button and say, Hulu, find me this.

I don't go through and scroll around. I just ask. And that's where that, that's where technology's going.

But don't take away my command line. Do not take away my command Line. My c he, he and I were both our parents remote control, right?

They said not enough. It was either remote control. I was, it Used to be the remote control, The end of the incentive.

Can you move this way a little? But, uh, but again, Tracy, you're just full of common sense today. But you, you, you're right.

When, when you think about it, um, now I gotta tell you the truth, I kind of grieved for the end of the Yahoo interface two, because I mean, what I wanna search for something specific. Yes, it's nice to just have that search box, but I used to find myself, I'd go to the Yahoo and I'd just see, I would just per peruse and see if something caught my eye. As a matter of fact, even to this day, I love it when I go to Chrome and I do a Google search.

I'm gonna tell you little confession and little insight into my a DD, but half the time I don't even wind up searching what I wanted to search for because I see like the stories that are under the search bar of what's new or what's odd or whatever. And I'll read three or four different things before I say what? And then I don't remember what I was searching for, for, For discovery, Right?

I don't like That. I'll tell you where all this, this is going horribly wrong though. So I took one of the machines at home and upgraded it to Windows 11 and did all that opened up Windows 11.

And all my files are gone. And I'm like, aren't you supposed to move the files over? And no, it turns out that, uh, they are hidden in some subdirectory somewhere.

And then I'm supposed to go search for these files now by the last tag on it, whether it's a dot doc or IMG photos or whatever it is. I'm kind of like, this is not helpful. So if Windows 11 would have the voice thing, at least I could say, where are my freaking files?

And then They would come. It doesn't have the, it no more Cortana And no not hooked up to a thing that you can go explore and find your files with. I thought you could ask Cortana for files.

I wonder if they're Gonna hook copilot up to that then, right? Wouldn't that make sense? Only if you pay extra for the A IPC.

You know, Tracy, when you said, actually, uh, the guy I talked to, the analyst actually thought the same thing you did about copilot. He he was of the same mind. Yeah.

I I think that's the no-brainer, you know? Well, no pun intended. Um, but that's the no-brainer there.

And, and that's where you headed when you'll have copilot to do it for you. So We talked conspiracy several times last week. Is this part of another conspiracy to get us to upgrade to switch the new machines?

Um, well, having, if you need more horsepower for copilot, yes, probably. But I, I think it goes, honestly, JC was dead on, on the first, first round around this. We gotta think about a new way of human machine interaction.

You know, my friend Brad Feld used to be big into this 15 years ago, and he told me this was gonna happen. And I, I said, yeah, I'll be long dead and buried, but maybe I won't be. Maybe we are at the end of the mouse.

'cause think about it, you know, you know, if you, if you, so I use an iPad as a primary laptop these days with a magic keyboard. I don't have an, you know, I use a mouse sometimes, and I'm like, who? It, it just feels foreign to me.

Unnatural, right? I could touch something if I need to, but I, I think moving human machine interaction into a verbal, uh, you know, uh, interface is, is the future. And it's not a far future.

I think it's in the next two, three year future, right? You, your Windows desktop or Mac desktop may be like Google just one box and tell it what you want. And in that it brings it up, your files will be there not to worry.

So will there be a fundamental difference between any of the operating systems then, if it's all a voice interface anyway? I mean, I don't pay any attention to that remote control and how it's construction. I just talk into it.

And If I'm just gonna talk to, well, let me ask, do you think there's a huge difference between the Mac and Windows interface today? Um, I'm psychologically conditioned by, by one. So yeah, I probably prefer Windows.

I don't know how long it took you to make the switch over to Mac, but Five seconds. All right. I mean, the, to me, the only difference why I go Mac over Windows is, and I don't know if it's still true.

So Microsoft, please don't be mad at me, but Mac was much more stable. I never had to reboot my Mac, and I used to have to reboot Windows every two days or whatever. I don't know.

I always felt that Mac was for left-handed people and Windows was for right-handed people. But that's how I got, that's How I got, I went, I went from Mac, I went from Mac to Windows, and it, I'll never go back to the Mac. I just can't.

It's just counter two. Well, we go back, Never go back. Okay.

Well, sorry, I'm still a OS two bigot, so, so What do you I'm still a NOS two bigot. I, I think that that was the saddest that, that You wanna talk sa I had, well, even before Warp, I was running OS two and then Warp came out and I just, you know, again, one of my bigger financial successes in life was I thought Microsoft was done. I thought OS two warp was just going to kill it.

Apple was already on the way out. And, uh, yeah. Well, that's why I was still here, but I don't think OS two's coming back.

Tracy, I don't wanna bum you out. I know, I know. It's not.

It's not. But it was an awesome operating system. It really was.

It was stable. It was, it was the best of both. It was the best of both better Than Windows, right?

You used to go into your DOS box and you'd set up like industry 20. So, uh, megs of memory and, and it like running games and stuff. It was, I know.

Did you ever play with more? Yeah, a long time ago. I can't even remember the experience.

Yeah, no, I, I remember I had a tower. It was about this high off the floor, and it had a four meg cache, IDE controller, which at the time was, and, um, wow. Yeah.

It, it, it launched my internet career, quite frankly. It was, uh, it was, uh, so I did my first, I started doing well anyway. It's not good.

Well, the point is here, it the best technology isn't the one that always wins. Absolutely. No, but no, I mean, look, the, the human machine interface that we've all grown up with and used our whole career, I mean, most of it comes outta the Xerox Park, right?

Well, Labs, yes. The whole Windows Icon Mouse thing, and I think it's a, it's, it's on the way out. We'll be burying that in the next two, three years.

I, in the meantime, we've had a lovely trip down nostalgia lane. It has been, this is gone. You know what?

And, and like I said, rest in peace to the control panel. It was a good run. It was a good run.

Anyway, hey, let's take a break here on our Monday Techstrong gang. Where are you gonna come back? Is your mayor in ai?

I don't know. We'll talk about it. Stay tuned.

Discover Textron Group, the epicenter of tech innovation. We are your go-to for reaching IT leaders and practitioners worldwide. Our secret impactful content that sparks awareness, engagement, and top quality leads with us.

You'll access editorial websites, streaming videos, virtual events, custom content analyst research, and more. Join our satisfied clients. Let's revolutionize your tech journey.

Contact us today and tell your story to the world in the most powerful way with Textron Group. All right, we're back. And we're talking about this mayoral race that occurred out in Wyoming where the candidate initially was trying to say, well, let's just elect ai, but they wouldn't let that on the ballot.

So he got on the ballot, but said he was gonna run the town using AI and, um, he didn't win his Republican primary. So I guess the locals didn't take that idea too kindly. But he did bring up some interesting points, which is to say that a lot of the decisions that are made by not just business officials and government officials might be better enhanced and better through ai.

And maybe this should become standard issue equipment for governments and agencies. 'cause you know, not everybody can be an expert on everything. And maybe we won't have construction crews working on the main road at nine o'clock in the morning when everybody's trying to go to work, and silly things like that.

So my question to you is, um, and we start leaning more on AI and have better government operations. And what's standing in the way in your opinion? Well, you probably, I'm not gonna say anything about that.

But, um, nothing, I mean, and this was Cheyenne, Wyoming, by the way, which is not, you know, it's, I mean, it's not a huge metropolis, but it's, it's a, I think it was about 60,000 people or something like that. It said in the article, um, You know, enough people to fit in the Yankee Stadium. Yeah.

And then some, maybe Mm-Hmm. But, you know, my, my take on it is, I, I think it, again, this is a time who, a, a a thing whose time is coming, maybe not today, but in the near future. And, you know, if you, I, we, Mike and I would just say we're a friend, a friend of ours who showed us a a, an AI or done on Gemini, uh, where he took the, the, uh, uh, the bylaws of his HOA dumped it into Gemini as a PDF, and then created a chatbot that people, you know, residents of the, of the development could say, what do I need to put, you know, do I need to, what do I need to do if I'm gonna put up a new fence?

And boom, it would go through the bylaws and, and give you a step-by-step guide of, of what you need to do, what form needs to get filled out, help you fill out the form to put up a new fence. My, my son spent this summer on, uh, working up in Boston on a federal work grant. Part of it was creating these kind of chatbot interfaces for, you know, people who can't afford attorneys who are in family court or, or housing court with evictions or what have you.

Not really criminal as much, but you know, these civil courthouses because most of the, you know, a lot of people there can't afford attorneys. And this is another great use of AI to help them navigate the system. So I, I think there's two uses of this.

Number one, that AI becomes the interface for citizen to government interaction. Do I have garbage collection today? Is, you know, uh, what do I, what's the code for putting in a car charger in my garage?

Or, or what have you. But then there's also, you could train it if you have the right LLM, the right data set to, you know, how, how best to schedule our road work on Route 25. And it'll do it a hell of a lot better with a, a lot faster, with a lot less greasing of palms than I think people will.

I'm encountering the same issues with the HOA. There are things in the bylaws and then there's things in the Florida State rules for, So put them both in the same, right. You're gonna have to put 'em both in and then just compare them and just, maybe You won't have to compare.

The AI will compare. I know That's what I'm getting at. And it would be nice if it would just proactively send an email to the HOA saying, Hey, the rules are outta date again, and somebody needs to go in and update these things.

I was just say, on the surface, this whole thing initially kind of was, sounded silly. Like this Frank Keppra meets AI screenplay, which is written by a chat bot. But then the more you look into it, I think it, it, as you said Al, I think it's inevitably it's gonna happen in a small rural town within the next decade.

Um, towns, as you said, are gonna become increasingly more dependent on AI to govern. And it's already happening in a sense, on a statewide level, or it's beginning to happen in California, right? Remember Gavin Newsom, who is our governor, just signed a partnership with Nvidia, and they're gonna start using AI to help train workers in agriculture, healthcare teacher students.

And it's gonna go down to the community. College level's gonna be at the state and university level. I mean, it's, it's inevitable.

So what this guy, Victor Miller tried to do, maybe he's a pioneer, maybe we'll, we'll look back on him and, and people look deeper into what he tried to do, but I think it's gonna happen. I think he just, I think he sees the future, right? He, he understands where this kind of technology's gonna go.

gov and getting things set up for a, a a, a contract that we're working on. And I sure would've loved to have some AI that I could just ask, where will I, what, you know, what, what platform do I enter this information on? It's all the, the, the data's out there.

But it took me a lot of PDFs to download and read through and to do all that work on my own. But we do have a trust problem with ai and it's a valid trust problem. And we're beginning to have a trust problem with tech, big tech as well.

So I think before we really move into where government's really going to be using ai, we have to get beyond the trust problem. Because we're gonna have people who are never gonna trust AI to do bigger things like managing dispatch or military operations. Those are really big important things that humans need to have an input into.

And the trust issue is going to stop. It's gonna ke it's a barrier to people accepting AI in these types of, uh, environments. I don't know.

I have trust. The Trust level starts, oh, sorry. Sorry Mike.

The trust level starts probably with some of the task Alan points out, but you know, it eventually it builds. They're building blocks where we get to things that are much more serious. But I think it's gonna be a long, slow process.

And again, it's gonna be legislation on state level, perhaps even one day on a national level. So, sorry Mike. No worries.

But I have trust issues with humans. So I don't know about ai, but if I go to the DMV and I go online there and I listen to the person politely telling me something that they're convinced is absolutely certain, and if it doesn't quite line up with, you know, my general expectations, I say thank you, and I get outta line and I go into the next line and wait for the next response that I know is probably gonna line up with what I wanted in the first, This is why you're waiting on line so long at DMP. But, but no, think about going, but think about going online to a DMV chat bot and saying, I wanna renew my license.

Okay, what's your name? Mike. Okay, Mike here.

Tell me your name, your date of birth, blah, blah, blah. And boom, it does it for you on the back end. And says, Mike, your application's been put through.

You'll have it in the mail in seven days. Yeah. And I didn't have to leave my house to do And you didn't have to leave your house And taxes.

Please tell me right now why the government just doesn't send me my taxes. They already have all the information. Absolutely.

Because if send it wrong, they tell me. So just do it for me and I'll, I will contest it if I have something that they have missed. Mm-Hmm.

Right. So, you know, there are some areas of ai and I don't even think we need AI for them to do my taxes. They could fill that form out now because they have the data that, that, that's The Well, no, they may ask, the AI may ask you a few questions and based upon that, give you some general sort of deductions.

Yeah. And then I would like Yeah, exactly. So send it to me.

Let me contest it with ai. I'm good. I'm all good about that.

Right. I'll create my own little AI agent to go up against their AI agent and the two of them can battle it out and we'll come to the same resolution here. Right.

That would work. We Have a third party AI agent to resolve the conflict too, as meeting. And I'll give you something else though.

Why aren't we using AI to draft legislation? Yeah, Well, so that actually was a suggestion, uh, by somebody I talked to about this California Bill 10 47 that's getting all sorts of pushback. Somebody actually mentioned that.

They said, yeah, have AI write the legislation about ai 'cause it'll be up to date in Kurt and know where it's going. Rather being reactive and thinking about, well, we learned this six months ago, So therefore can we not get to the point where the pace of society is faster? There are more things being voted on.

There is more progress being made through government because we're getting rid of, um, I won't use the term swamp, but the whole notion of, you know, the inertia that results in all this stuff taking so long that we could actually, you know, make a lot more progress faster. Is there hope for us? Yeah.

Someone Sue may be knocking at your door and it might be a mechanical, uh, device that says, hi, my name is Artie Intelligence and I'm here to help. We'll see. And we Won't be using a mouse to point and click on icons.

Yeah. Oh wow. Right.

Well, some of us will still be clicking icons. Alright. We will need to retrain millions of government employees.

Yeah. What was the movie where humans became sort of, they just sat on those server chairs on a rocket ship and got really heavy. It was a Disney movie.

The only Disney sci-fi movie I remember is the Black Hole. And that's, that's dating No, it wasn't. The black hole.

Sounds like four or five different episodes of Star Trek. No, no. There was a Disney movie and then Back On Earth, which had been rendered unlivable.

Wally Wally. Oh. Oh, of course.

Yes, we Are. Is that where we're headed? We're gonna have to do Jumping Jacks at eight o'clock every morning.

Every Absolutely. I'm out there doing it anyway. Are you really here or are you at VM World?

I don't know. Or we both, I have to check with my ai, but Okay. Hey, we're gonna take a break.

We're gonna come back and we'll continue our ai. What can AI do for sports Tuned You watching Techstrong Day. All right, folks, we're back and we're talking about how technology is changing the way we're gonna view sports on television or whatever other device we happen to be using these days.

There seems to be a lot of changes afoot. And now we've also seen commentators or AI bots themselves. And, uh, that's kinda changing the whole experience itself.

But I guess the concern is not enough people are watching sports these days. I know that you're addicted, but, um, Well, you are not. But it seems like a lot, A little kettle, a Lot of kennel.

A lot of folks are, uh, maybe checking out on sports viewership and what do we do to make it more entertaining and engaging? Yeah. Going to be first, I guess.

Well, there's two issues here. The first one is what went on at the Olympics. I don't know how many of you caught this experiment, but they basically created a, a, a bot using Al Michael's voice and then using AI to kind of see what's going on and, and, and animating al Michael's voice to give you the play by play.

And some may find that comforting. I, I, I frankly found it a little creepy and weird. I, you know, I look, I remember being in law school a hundred years ago, and one of the big cases was the case of the, uh, state of Bella Lago versus I think it was MG Out.

And that was the, that's a huge case in law school back then. I think it still probably is that about whether you could use the likeness of someone without their permission or after their death or after your contractual relationship with them had ended. And, and the court, I think we went up to the Supreme Court said no.

Right. People have a right to their, uh, likeness. And the, and so the estate of Be Lago was entitled to damages for MGM using his pictures.

Um, not in the films. 'cause once you're in a film, you sign the rights away for them to use that film, you know, and play it as often as you aren't. You're supposed to get residuals, I guess.

Anyway, the point is, I think it's the same logic that applies here. Now, I'm assuming Al Michael signed off on this and he probably not. He did sign, He did sign off on it.

Yeah, he, he did sign off. They actually, He compensated as well. Got Compensated for not, for not doing anything, basically.

Yeah. Except sign. You know, actually the Alan, what's even creepier is, um, I listened to some, probably some of the same things you did with him.

They actually used Bob Costas as well later. So they had to two of them talking about a segment. It was a highlight.

It was, it was, it was very strange. But, you know, I actually just kind of going back to what Mike said, something dramatic has to happen with the exception of the NFL. Something dramatic has to happen, especially with MLB and to a far, far lesser extent, the NBA, these leagues, especially MLB, have been trying, they're trying to make the game shorter.

They're changing the rules and trying to make it more digestible. Uh, there, with the NFL, there's always that gambling elements, which plays in, if you watch a, a pregame, especially on NBC, it's that MGMI mean that, that's, they have a guy on there who spends as much time on there as anybody else. So that kind of plays into it.

Plus the fact NFL plays so well on television, but something dramatic hasn't happened. I, I just don't, I just don't know if what would reverse this viewership and attendance decline for most sports. So If you Think bring more women in, women love sports too.

Bring more women in, you know, women's sports is so much Fun to watch. Has done a better job of that than so though the NBA's tried, but, so I got a call b******t a little bit though, because first of all, John, if you think gambling is only on NFL games, hello, you know, Oh, I know. I sing Is the, uh, CPO for Caesar's Entertainment.

They make as much, well, nothing makes as much money as the NFL, but they make a lot, there's a lot of action on basketball games. There's a ton of action on baseball games. Oh yeah, no, I, I, I, I agree with that, but I, but go to Tracy said WNBA.

It's much more interesting to watch or women's college basketball or the Around in general. Women, Women. Were the Olympic team.

Listen, my exam, Listen, as a woman who loves sports, I get annoyed by how male dominated even discussions and who they have as announcers. It is, it, it, it, it just says You're excluded. You're excluded.

Even though I love it. Now, the other thing I wanna say about ai, and this is like, don't touch this, and I start seeing it with hockey. 'cause I watch a lot of hockey.

Don't try to predict the play and show these little lines shooting off of where the puck can go. I hate that. And please stop doing that.

It's not a, you know, The AWS cloud says there's a 67% chance that this could be a Oh, at that, that did the last long though. That Was, this is not a great, oh wait, but it's Tuesday and he's hitting 4 97 on Tuesday. Yeah, These are, and this is 20 baseball.

Yeah, that's, it is like the, during the game. Right. If you go on ES, espn, especially on the, on the app, there's a 97% chance they're gonna win out.

And then, then the other team scores two runs. Now it's only a a 58%. It's a 42% topic.

Stop it. Exactly. Let's take baseball for a second.

Right? I think baseball does have a problem. You know, my, oh, it's got big problem.

My son's, well my one son played baseball all the way through high school and down here in Florida, traveled baseball. He played a hundred baseball games a year, every year. So like two games a week and all up and down the state.

Yep. And of course we went with him. Um, and a funny thing happened.

Baseball at the youth level became less and less popular. It was well down here in Florida it was, football was bigger, basketball was bigger, lacrosse was bigger, and soccer was perhaps the biggest. Right?

So baseball was, at least in the US was a bit of a dying sport. And I think it's reflected in who we see on Major League baseball rosters. You have a lot of folks from Latin, you know, south America, central America, you have a lot of folks from other parts of the world.

And, and that's not a bad thing, making baseball more global, by the way. But I, I do think we get less and less, but baseball players who are born and raised here in, in the us. Um, but I do think that shortening as a, as a fan watching, I think baseball's the most cerebral game of all of 'em.

Because every pitch is he throwing a fast baller curve balls, he coming inside or outside? How come the second baseman's shading to the right? He must be, you know, he's a lefty.

He's coming inside. You know, there's so much strategy and thought that goes in the baseball. I think it's the best game to watch.

I could watch baseball all day, but I get that some people think it's paint dry. And so doing what they did to speed up the games where most games now are like two hours and 10 minutes or something, I think has been a huge benefit. However, it's not reflected in the viewership most of the region.

Well, I think about it. Well, it's a generational thing too though. 'cause when we grew up, right, um, I speaks to all of us.

The games were fairly short. They're fairly quick and quick pace. And then, then they, we, we, we reached this era where it was pictures being replaced every, every other batter.

Like they slowed down, especially during the playoffs. And now they're kind of going back to what we remember. But I think unfortunately for the youngest generation, and my youngest son was on a travel ball team, so we, he would play a hundred, a hundred games a year Like your son, probably Alan.

And I loved watching it. That was my favorite sport to watch. It still is, but I acknowledged it.

My son now no longer really even watches baseball. He's more interested in things like international soccer, the Olympics, basketball, especially NFL to a lesser extent. It's just kind of a generational thing.

It's kind of like the pace of the, of the sport. Uh, it, and I hate to say this, but the, the more cerebral baseball is, maybe that turns some people off. I don't know.

Yeah. Um, And yet women all over the United States and probably the world love to go watch on Saturdays in a university level. Women's softball, uhhuh.

It's a, it's a black sport. Watch it become a huge sport. I love softball is huge love too.

Women love softball, but we don't, you know, this is something we don't talk about and we don't see, I don't see it on the evening on an evening sports show. So we have to get more women into the park. We have to get more women.

If they wanna increase viewership, we are ready. So Esp An Athlete, they, they're, they're listening to you though, Tracy. 'cause ESPN has the little League World Series.

They started doing, um, they're doing more softball. They do saw pool on India. They have to do more women's sports.

They have to do more. Yes. They're more women's sports.

There's a new, uh, there's a new sports bar that a woman started, I think out of the east. Um, and she, uh, is FraNChiS again. And it's called Sports Bra.

Really? And it's, it's all designed for women. It's pretty No S's just bras.

It's sports. Bras. Yeah, sports.

Okay. I get pretty, And I wish there was one here because I would be at it every Friday and Saturday watching women's sports. So bring us in the room, right?

I bring us in The room. Look, tap the population you're leaving out like That. Exactly.

Uh, well, you know, back when I was single, you know, after you told me that there was 50 women hanging out Bar The creepy There, you have to like say type to go back. Um, Okay, there we go. But let me just, let me, let me tie a little bow on this a little bit.

Couple things. First of all, the fact of the matter is baseball's national contractors with I think Fox on Saturday and ESPN maybe Sunday night. Sunday Day.

Yes. But the, the, the real wealth of baseball, the real revenue generator of baseball were the regional sports, the Yankees Yes. Network.

Uh, uh, the Dodgers owned their network in LA that now what happened was Fox Sports, and then it was sold and it, it was, it's been owned by a bunch. A lot of these regional sports networks have gone through a lot of ownership changes because they haven't, they paid an exorbitant sum to get the rights to carry every game. And they haven't been able to make the money and they wound up in bankruptcy.

Tracy, I know, I don't know if you're a Diamondback follower out your neck of the woods, but you know, I know the, the, uh, the network that carries the Diamondbacks, I believe went into bankruptcy and walked away from their Diamondback deal. And it's also The Rockies. The was Another one.

Well, yeah, Bally's here was a Ballys, the one who bought it from Fox. Yeah. Diamondbacks.

Um, local. Local. The Marlins have the same issue in the radio.

Right. But they they they did, they Brought it back. Yes.

They, they didn't walk away from the Cartier, they went into bankruptcy and take, take it back. What? My younger son was a a an intern there.

But, um, so baseball does have a problem on the day to day, but it's also a, I think a it's 162 game season. Well, I was at, It's a lot. I was at the Cubs Marlins game Friday night.

You and who else? Me and Rory. My only youngest.

No, I Mean, was there anyone else there? It was about, you know, three to 4,000 of my closest friends. Yeah.

And that's a big crowd for the car. And, and, but as much as I like watching a game, there's no substitute for going on The game. No, it's a lot.

Yes. Look, I still remember being a young boy and, and you know, Shaa Stadium was closer than Yankee Sta I know you were a Yankee Stadium guy was a Yankee fan, but Shaa Stadium was closer. But walking with my dad or or uncles or a friend to come to the Bronx, well, my mom wouldn't let me go to the Bronx.

It was a bad place. But anyway, when you, you get off at Shea Stadium and, and you walk into that stadium and you, you know, you walk kind of, or the periphery where the, the hot dog stands. There they are.

And then you walk, okay, I'm in, you know, section 2 31 and you walk outta section, you walk into section 2 31 and you see that green outfield and the dirt infield. There was nothing as a kid, as a, as a young boy, that was so special to me. I, I, I loved it.

But, and, and that is another thing live gated baseball is, is probably down depending on if you, I think part of the problem with baseball though, is it, it's such a have and have not league. Now that's All these sports are just far too expensive for people to go to. Now.

It, It's crazy. Exp expect, don't even get me started on that. 'cause the NFL has is outta their minds.

But, but you know what I, so growing up in New York, we, we always had decent crowds at Yankee and met games. You go to a lot of these other cities, when the Yankees come to town, they're a huge draw. That's why they love the Yankees to come.

But it's not, but let, let's get off baseball for a second and go to basketball. Viewership down. Are you crazy?

They just signed like an $11 billion TV contract. It, there's, there's this, there's this kind of like, it's erratic at times. But you know what?

It, it's interesting. I think the single most compelling figure in basketball is Kailyn Clark. I mean, if they had put her on the Olympic team, this's another story.

Well, that's a whole nother story why she wasn't, I think the AI didn't pick her. I'm only kidding. I don't know that.

Yeah, I Know. I blame them Too. Basketball is truly a global game.

We see this at the Olympics, right? Ev there are, there used to be the US was here and everyone else was. Everybody plays basketball.

Now, whether the talent Nigeria or a Lao Oreo, yes, you play in basketball To, uh, Jess and Women can dunk. Women can Dunk and women can't dunk. And women's basketball, women Used to be the same.

Women can't dunk To Tracy's point, women's basketball sold out the Boston. It's not TG Card T TDD Garden. He sold out an entire game, which I think was the first time they've done that.

The rating. The rating probably about ratings WB and look credit to the BA because they carried this thing for 10, 12 years. But it's, it's finding it's footing now, ca, Caitlin Clark and, and some of the stars, you know, that you're starting to see there, there's no reason women's basketball shouldn't be a major league sport in the US but, you know, so I, I don't think basketball and, and quite frankly, hockey does a great job of drawing.

And we live here in South Florida. I don't like going to Marlin's game because I feel like I'm in a mausoleum. Even though it's a beautiful stadium and it's far away for dollar, for dollar.

Florida Panthers are the best game in town. I do, I can tell you guys. I agree.

Gotta tell point. If you ever had a chance, go to a Las Vegas Golden Knights game. You Can't get Yes, you cannot.

Oh my God. I worry about how much they are. Just go, I've gone several times.

It is a blast. Oh, in October, go in October. The the tickets are cheaper.

Yes. One of the greatest introductions. Right, Tracy?

The, the marketing, the presentation of that. So much fun. My know, hockey does a great job.

My God, it's so much fun. Hockey just signed a national TV contract last season. I believe so.

And I I Just wanna say one more thing about women in sports. Go. Women can check, women can check, women can play football and tackle.

No. So women's flag football is a thing I've seen on TV now. I don't wanna see flag football.

I wanna see rough and tumble football. Yeah. I, listen, here's somebody who I have, I have a, I have a black belt, I have sparred, I have fallen off of horses.

And when I see that, that, you know, a sport say, well, women can't check and they can't tackle, you know, I think screw you. Women can do a lot. We can both children for God's sake.

Casey Reagan. Alright, let's get a women's football league going. I, I could be the coach.

Hey, there's no crying. Did you, okay. Did you see the women's rugby and in Yes I did in the Olympics.

Did you got back? Women's rugby looked fun. I like A blast.

Let lemme and then please, Can I mention one thing though? Uh, so my son, my oldest son works for SPN but he also broadcast Stanford women's sports. So he does the basketball and he, he's, he has done lacrosse and he loves those games more than any Other type.

Women's lacrosse is big too. Yeah, absolutely Incredible. Good stuff.

I just wanna throw it out. I'll give you the last word. 'cause I know either I, I would just give a shout out to women's basketball because the players set up a play and nobody travels and tries to dunk and then doesn't get called for it.

Unlike men's basketball where, you know, Mm-Hmm. Back in the day, It's that European extra step s like Three and a half to four steps now. And it's like, oh yeah, that was great shot.

You know, You know what was very funny? I saw a clip the other day from the, I think it was the 2003 NBA draft David Stern trying on LeBron James sports jacket. It was like down in his ankles and, and, uh, it was, it was, I got a kick out of it.

Anyway, I don't know where we got off track here on this, but it was good. Was fun. Women's sports deserves more limelight.

And if you wanna increase viewership, you're missing out on half of the population. I, I agree with you Chasey. Let's wrap up today's text on Gang though.

John Tracy, thanks so much for joining us. This was a, a rip roaring, uh, meandering broadcast, but we hope you wiped it out there. Was it the best?

Yeah. You know, Mike, is your avatar gonna be here tomorrow or, uh, it will be here from Las Vegas, so. Oh, you'll be in.

Oh, so you're, I'm, I'm coalescing into one place, one location, bringing back. Cool. The stars are a light.

Uh, John Tracy, we'll see you soon. Hope everyone enjoyed this. Hey, we've got a full text Drunk TV schedule today for you as well, so stay tuned for that.

But until tomorrow, this Alan Sibel for Textron Gang. Have a great day everyone.