THE NEW CONTENT PLAYBOOK: REWRITING THE RULES OF AUDIENCE CONNECTION
AHMAD RASHAD: Welcome back, everyone. Our next panel is about what's next for Hollywood and the future of storytelling.
L.A. has always been known as the storytelling capital of the world. But right now this industry is going through some major changes. So we brought in some of the brightest minds in media and entertainment to talk about it.
Our moderator is one of the most respected financial journalists in the world. She's known for insightful interviews with some of the world's leading innovators. And she is up first thing in the morning every morning on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
Please give a big hand to Becky Quick.
(Applause.)
BECKY QUICK: Good morning, everybody. It is a pleasure to see everybody here, and it's a pleasure to be invited back. This is an incredible speaking venue to have so many of you here and to have these panelists that we are graced to have today.
I know you probably know most of these panelists, but let me tell you a little bit about why they're here and why you should be listening to them today.
David Blyth Hill is on my left here. He is the president of Hilly, and you probably know he's the legendary producer. He's had oversight of everything from DirecTV to National Geographic. He was the executive producer for three years on "American Idol." But for the purposes of this conversation, we're going to focus on what he did with FOX Sports, which he created from scratch when Fox unexpectedly stole the NFL from CBS back in 1994.
He brought huge innovations to sports. These were things he was already doing at Sky, but then he brought it to the United States with the NFL, things like the FoxBox or, as he likes to call it, the HillBox, where you've got the automatic countdown clock in the corner of the screen of the scoreboard at all times, ground-level cameras and microphones, pre- and post-game shows that are greatly expanded and much more fancy. And we're going to talk about a lot of those innovations and what he sees coming next.
Andre Iguodala is, of course, the executive director of the National Basketball Players Association and a former NBA player who spent 19 years in the league. He had four NBA championships; the MVP title for the 2015 NBA Finals; and right now, not only is he an active investor, he's also the voice of a zebra named Iggy in the movie that's out in the silver screens right now called "GOAT." So listen for him with that.
Candace Parker, on my right, is a basketball analyst with Amazon Prime Video and a former WNBA player who spent 16 seasons in the league. She was the number one draft pick by the LA Sparks back in 2008. She's a three-time WNBA champion, a two-time league MVP, and a seven-time All-Star.
And while her paycheck grew substantially in her years in the league, she really watched the evolution of women's basketball. She once had a paycheck of just $12.34 in her very first year in the WNBA, and she's going to talk about how you get paid for your worth through storytelling, through authenticity, and really watching that evolution.
Also, we've got Steve Stoute, who's down here to my right. He is the founder and CEO of UnitedMasters, which is a music distribution company, and Translation, which is a creative solutions company. It's an ad agency, but he's not calling it an ad agency, and he's going to tell you why, because of the evolution we're seeing in advertising right now.
He is a born businessman who went from flipping houses as a teenager to managing artists, to selling records, to managing the worlds of music and marketing and combining those two worlds.
He was an early lead who was connecting those two worlds. And, in fact, Jay-Z has described him as the bridge between hip-hop and business, and we're going to talk to him about a lot of things as well.
And Hiroki Totoki, who is the president and CEO of Sony, they've made some massive changes over the last year. Last year, they spun off their financial group, and just last month, Sony announced these plans for a joint venture for its television manufacturing business so that it can focus on entertainment alone.
That's a big, huge group strategy. And by the way, it's a strategy that really seems to be paying off based on the earnings that Sony put out last week.
And here's a fun fact for you as well. NBA 2K26 was PlayStation's top download in the United States last year, and that's why he's here on the stage with us.
Now, David, why don't we kick things off, because I don't know whether to call you an evolution or a revolutionary producer, somebody who changes things, somebody who sees things. And all of this comes back to luring in audiences. What's the secret? What is the key to capturing an audience?
DAVID BLYTH HILL: It's the realization of what we're selling, and that's the same as sports and music and movies. And that's two things, emotion and adrenaline. And if you analyze what is attractive about sports and music and movies, it's getting that adrenaline hit and creating an emotion.
And listening to what Adam was saying and his excitement about the future of AI, I feel I started producing when dinosaurs walked the Earth, and it was like we were waiting for electricity so we could create television.
But every technological improvement -- and this gentleman to my left, the Sony company, has been very instrumental in what it's done -- is that every single technological advancement has meant greater advantage for the viewer, for the producer, and for the leagues.
So the stuff like -- one of my little inventions was the first down line on the NFL. Now, we couldn't have done that unless we did the glowing puck --
BECKY QUICK: The blue puck in hockey.
DAVID BLYTH HILL: Which the hockey purists --
BECKY QUICK: Purists hated.
DAVID BLYTH HILL: Hated.
BECKY QUICK: The rest of us could finally see what was happening.
DAVID BLYTH HILL: I thought I got hung in effigy in Canada for that.
But we started with the glowing puck, went through to NASCAR, then it went through to the down line, and that was all through technological advances.
So to me, the future is so exciting, and it's ripe with opportunities.
BECKY QUICK: Let's talk a little bit about that, Totoki-san, the idea of AI and what you all are doing, because you guys are doubling down on entertainment, but you're doing a lot of things with AI, and people who have been digging around in the Patent Office have found some patents that you all have filed to do things like find an AI agent who will play the game for you if you're no good at it.
Where do you see AI taking things? What are you doing at this point?
HIROKI TOTOKI: Actually, AI is definitely a transformative technology, and we are trying to adapt that in speed and technology changes. And now over 50 percent of employees all over the world are using AI, somehow, on a daily basis, and try to hike their efficiency, streamline their business, and also really trying to create things.
And at the same time, we try to use AI as a tool to enhance creators' capability, not to replace it. That's a quite important agenda for us because, at the same time, we need to protect creators' right and human itself. And as such, AI technology is great for the future, but at the same time, we need certain guardrail. That is our basic, you know --
BECKY QUICK: How does it change how you do business internally? I mean, what does it mean? Are there fewer employees that are doing this? Are you deploying it in more ways? What does it look like on a real example?
HIROKI TOTOKI: Basically, for example, in the gaming space, we are using AI heavily to develop some game agent as well as the quality assurance purposes. And as such, we are using AI for creative purpose as well as hiked efficiency purpose as well.
BECKY QUICK: Steve, you said about eight months ago that you thought all this hype around AI was just that, hype; that it's not going to necessarily destroy the music industry. But things have been happening so rapidly. And I just came from Silicon Valley where people said they've never seen a technological innovation that moves this rapidly. Would you still stand by that eight months later?
STEVE STOUTE: Yeah, well, the hype that I was talking about was more about the incumbents talking about how it's going to destroy an industry and putting out in the media that this thing is going to steal IP from artists and that it's going to replace artists, so therefore creative will not have an opportunity to survive.
And to your point, all I've ever seen in history was that every time there was new technology, it created new tools for creation. Whether it was, you know -- you think about EDM music is because of electronic music. It's actually electronic music because there was instrumentation created using digital files and digitization of sound.
So I'm really excited about the doors that it's going to create in creativity for artists of the future to make new genres of music, to add new sounds to things that never existed before. That's what I see.
And the incumbents, they're always going to be scared. I don't care what industry it is. When you see new technology come in, the first thing to do is use the lobbyists and the law and the media to say this is illegal, this is what's going to do wrong.
We've seen it with streaming. We've seen this constantly over time. And then it settles in, and there's a new creation of ideas that creates new financial opportunities that benefits the creator and the fans.
BECKY QUICK: What do you tell the artists right now? The artists, the athlete, the person who this is their brand that's out there, why should they not feel concerned about this?
STEVE STOUTE: I think they should lean in and get excited. It's exciting. Anytime there's change, if you lean into change, you find excitement and new opportunities.
I think we've seen it over and over again. I don't know how to explain that you need to be confident in your ability to find the opportunity in market shifts.
You can't put Jack back in the box. It's not like that's going to go away. In sports, you're going to start seeing new metrics for athletes to be measured. We always look at the athlete, we go catches, yards, rebounds, assists, points.
But with AI and new technology, you can start to measure different things that makes the fan appreciate all of the values of an athlete.
Andre, you know this. Points and assists and rebounds are fine, but that doesn't tell the story of an athlete or the value they have to a team.
So using technology to tell a much more fuller surface story allows fans to appreciate different aspects of the player and the game.
BECKY QUICK: I want to get to Andre and Candace both on this point because you guys are the ones who are seeing this, who have watched the evolution, who have seen what you can do with these things. And I think, with the case of the WNBA, you've watched this evolution to see people coming in, the real interest for this, the fan desire for this.
What made that difference? What is keeping that to the point where, man, people are dying to see these WNBA games?
CANDACE PARKER: Well, first, I think it's visibility, right? I think being judged on something that is 30 years young, you look at all of the major league sports leagues, and a lot of them accelerated between year 25 and 30. So judging the WNBA based off of MLB, NFL, NBA, I feel like from the start was unfair.
But also just in terms of, you know, the NFL right now is trying to get the female viewer and be able to capture that audience. They're doing that through flag football, through trying to lean in to get more viewership with female audience. And I think within the WNBA, you have a league full of women that have played the sport for a very long time.
I think we're seeing it within even our country just in terms of women in leadership positions, and a lot of that has to do with sports. So with that being said, I think it is, you know -- it isn't by chance that, you know, time slots and things like that matter.
So within women's sports, for a long time, they were up against NFL on Sunday. But I think with now streaming coming into play, you're seeing a lot more opportunity for visibility and for women's sports, not just basketball, to be on television. And because of that, you're able to have the metrics, the measurements. And I think social media also has a lot to do with it.
BECKY QUICK: Yeah, for sure.
CANDACE PARKER: Right? Being able to take your story and tell your story. And then now brand C, the engagement and the opportunity for the female fan and the female buying power.
And so just in terms of watching women's sports grow, I think it has a lot to do with the visibility. It has a lot to do with the investment within it.
BECKY QUICK: Yeah.
CANDACE PARKER: Because everybody up here knows it takes money to make money. And I think you're seeing that in the future, and I think the future is bright for the visibility, for the sport, for the investment.
BECKY QUICK: Andre, let's talk about your role as the executive director at the Players Association. When you first took that role, it was an interim gig. And then all of a sudden, you're there for a while. They signed you on for a lot of years.
Was that because you saw the promise of what could happen with this, what could happen with what you could do for the players at this point?
ANDRE IGUODALA: That's a tough -- a loaded question. I don't think anyone signs up for a union gig for a very long time unless you're, you know -- you have your years of service to your industry, mainly lawyers, you know, legal industry.
And so for me, it was just a unique opportunity to -- the players saw me as someone who they could speak to, who can translate -- whether it was business, on the court, off the court -- to them and where we should be heading next. And it was for the short term, and we're still two years. So we're still short term, and it's going to be short term.
But this opportunity has been a blessing in disguise based off the knowledge I've been able to learn.
BECKY QUICK: Okay, explain. What have you learned?
ANDRE IGUODALA: The big piece is the protection of IP.
BECKY QUICK: Okay.
ANDRE IGUODALA: And, you know, we've been able to evolve over time in terms of how capitalism works, where the athlete has always leased out its IP, they've always leased out their talent. And you're hearing more and more conversations in terms of athletes having ownership into the business.
BECKY QUICK: Right.
ANDRE IGUODALA: And then you're talking about, you know, we've seen it in music recently, your market cap and how you help the market cap move for a publicly traded company.
You know, we've seen Michael Jordan do it, and I think he's kind of led the way -- or not he has kind of, but he has led the way in terms of, you know, we see him on NBC having conversations in between games, and he's saying the athlete is moving too quickly to the brand when the performance comes first. You perform; that's how you build the brand.
But I think Michael Jordan has gotten us really excited in terms of what we can do, and then we start thinking about what we can do with our talent and our bravado, you know. And so every player wants a shoe now. Every player wants to have a certain amount of following on Instagram.
And so with this new technology and how we protect the IP, we're trying to get them to slow down on the instant gratification. And it's almost like you have to reverse engineer what you're trying to build for the future.
So, you know, what Mr. Stoute was saying, you want to lean into these technologies, but you also want to give it time to fully develop to have a better understanding of how you're going to play in an ecosystem. Because as everyone up here is speaking towards, emotions, you know, the adrenaline, like that's the arts, and ultimately that's culture.
And our culture has always been leasers of our talents, whether it's music, whether it's sports, whatever we do, whether it's influence, fashion. And now we're seeing the opportunity where we can put ourselves in a position, whether we sacrifice in the short term, to have real ownership of it in the next, you know, couple decades.
BECKY QUICK: I mean, that's interesting, though. You're almost telling the players to kind of slow it down, like give us a reason for why we're going to be investing all of this. You got to put the, you know -- you can't put the cart before the horse, I guess, is the real reason. Is that what your message is?
ANDRE IGUODALA: Well, I think the message is really there's a transaction that you can make, straight cash for your likeness, but there's also an equity play where you can have an ownership of it.
And on the ownership side, obviously there's more risk, you know, obviously it takes a little bit more time, and I think that's, you know -- we have the Legends Awards tomorrow, and, you know, Chris Paul loves to say this -- you know, congrats to Chris Paul on an amazing career, just announced his retirement, but he -- yes, absolutely.
(Applause.)
ANDRE IGUODALA: He always made a great point, is that we're standing on the shoulders of the giants who built the platform of the game for us. So we owe a lot to those who came before us, and they had to sacrifice a lot to get us to where we are today.
And so I always try to tell, you know, the latest generation: There's going to be a small portion that you should sacrifice for the greater good, for those who come after you. And if we don't do that, we end up with these deals that we enter where we're taken advantage of.
STEVE STOUTE: Can I just --
BECKY QUICK: Yeah, please.
STEVE STOUTE: To Andre's point, the idea that you're building a brand and you could monetize that brand is so in vogue that people are moving too quickly, and they're moving to that idea before they actually get a chance to fulfill the God-given gift that they have of their talent.
They want to run immediately to where the bag is, where the money is, which is extra money, or the side hustle, which is building that brand.
The performance does come first, and you have to stick and do the performance. The idea that fame and attention is so important right now is actually a short-sighted idea as it relates to the long-term opportunity.
And you've got to teach athletes that. You've got to teach musicians that, athletes that, many different solo entrepreneurs that, because if they don't get the talent part right and they focus too much on the fame, it will destroy them. They will destroy the opportunity.
The NBA has done a very good job, an amazing job, telling stories of the great athletes. That's why the athletes are highly paid and they walk around and they're very famous. The NBA does a great job of doing that for you. Focus on the game.
BECKY QUICK: Although, wouldn't the argument be that the leagues can do a great job of telling the story for certain athletes? If you're not somebody who's at the top of the heap -- maybe, Candace, back to your point, the idea of having social media where you can tell your own story lets you break out a little bit too.
CANDACE PARKER: I think there's a part of ownership that you have to have within your own brand, but for a very long time, you have to keep the main thing the main thing. Like, people want winners.
STEVE STOUTE: Like you do.
CANDACE PARKER: They want to follow --
STEVE STOUTE: Like you have. Like you have. That's what you got to do.
CANDACE PARKER: They want to follow winners.
But at the same time, you're right, like when you're seeing -- and the NBA, you're right, has done a fantastic job of that. And they've gone through growing pains in the time period of telling stories that maybe necessarily the world wasn't ready to hear.
And so I think that there's kind of a fine line that you have to walk, but you have to win. You have to do well. Like, nobody's wearing MJ's if MJ isn't holding up six fingers and winning championships. You don't want to be like Mike if he's not winning.
And so I think there's a fine line of owning your brand, you know, working for that, but also, you know, keeping the main thing the main thing.
DAVID BLYTH HILL: But picking up on your point about visibility, one of the things we found when we took over Formula -- when Liberty took over Formula 1 in 2017, I was part of a small team that was brought in by Chase Carey to fix television, social media, and what have you.
And what we found was that under Bernie Ecclestone, Formula 1 had not allowed any of the drivers to work on social media. And, of course, one of the many things that we did with that sport was open the floodgates.
But what's going to happen is that there's going to be micro-productions. When you're talking about the artist's brand or the athlete's brand, it's what they present themselves on, whether it's TikTok or whether it's Instagram or whatever, that the world is going to see.
Now, we were very fortunate in terms of Formula 1 that there are 20 drivers, and they all have teams. So they were presenting themselves on social media, and the message they were giving about themselves was all-encompassing, and it obviously struck a chord around the world because Formula 1 has gone from there to what we were able to do with it.
And I think the same thing's going to happen with all athletes, whether they're footballers or baseballers, they are going to have to learn to craft their own production, so it's going to be a micro-production, which is their brand.
ANDRE IGUODALA: I think there's an authenticity to it as well. I think we started to follow this cookie-cutter approach to how we present ourselves. And one thing about the consumer is it's really hard to trick the consumer. They know that you sound just like someone else.
We see it all the time. It's like if you say something -- you know, we say it in hip-hop. We call it stealing somebody's bars or stealing somebody's lines. It's like no, no, such-and-such used that same line 10 years ago.
And so we've got to get back to the authenticity of who we are, and it starts in the grassroots. Now we're starting to see where a lot of our issues are coming from, like who's coaching our kids, who's leading our kids.
There's this huge conversation going on right now between who has a better development system, whether it's the Europeans or whether it's the Americans. And I think as Americans, we over-commercialize our youth. And so the parents and everyone sees the money grab, and so we're raising everybody the same exact way so they can become XYZ.
And it's the same thing where we saw for the first time at F1, this is a different athlete that we haven't been able to see before, and now we're gravitating to something because it's very authentic. We haven't seen something like this before.
DAVID BLYTH HILL: But that's the key, the authenticity. Because the audience knows immediately if you're not being authentic.
BECKY QUICK: Candace, you've talked about that, authenticity and finding that. And you've kind of created your own persona, too, but then opened it up and decided who you were along the way.
CANDACE PARKER: Well, I think authenticity, you're right --
BECKY QUICK: It's hard.
CANDACE PARKER: -- Iggy, like I think you can see through it if you're not being authentic.
BECKY QUICK: Yeah.
CANDACE PARKER: And whether you're on the court, whether you're broadcasting for Amazon and you're speaking to viewers, there's an authenticity layer that you cannot pretend.
And I think sometimes the problem now is we're following athletes from the time they're 14, 15 years old, and you're going through all of these different layers, changes; you don't know who you are at that time.
And so I think that sometimes it is difficult in this day and age to be authentic because you're constantly having followers, you're having to answer to that.
BECKY QUICK: And how can you know who you are when you're 14?
CANDACE PARKER: That's what I'm saying. It's when you look and you have all of these followers and you have the success, and then you go through those growing pains.
And so I think it's just you reach a point in your life where you mature and you really want to tell your story. And so I think that that's something that I try to do, or I tried to do when I played.
And then now as a broadcaster, I don't see the game the same way Iggy sees it. I don't see the game the same way D-Wade sees it.
BECKY QUICK: Describe that, your perspective on it.
CANDACE PARKER: So when I first started television, the greatest advice I ever got was from Kenny Smith. And he came up to me and he said: You have the casual fan, you have the super fan, you have the grandma, right? And if you can speak to all of them and tell a story and reach all of them, then you've done your job.
And with that being said, I don't see the game the same way when I worked with Shaq. Shaq would be like, Just get the ball and score.
I'm like, Shaq, not everybody's seven foot and it's barbecue chicken. Like, some of us have to do moves.
And so being able to --
(Laughter.)
STEVE STOUTE: Shots fired.
CANDACE PARKER: Listen, you could turn around and chicken wing somebody and dunk, that's a luxury.
But at the same time, it's like then being up there and seeing that we all have a different vantage point of seeing the game. And the viewers bring that when they watch television, they bring that to the game. And so when you're able to authentically tell your -- This is what I would do in this situation, and set the stage, I think it speaks to a lot of different viewers.
STEVE STOUTE: So no different than the audience that Kenny told you, right? The passive, the lean in, and the grandma. Brands. And there's brands out here who have that same sort of segmentation of audience.
So I go through this thing where, you know, this idea, like, telling a story is much different than storytelling. And a lot of brands miss that point. They think telling a story is storytelling.
So you're telling a story, you're like, this happened, and then that happened, and then this happened. And that's like telling a story. But with your storytelling, it's how did this make you feel? How did this change your life? And that's what people can relate to. That's the common nature of what people can relate to.
Storytelling doesn't sell products. It sells a feeling. That's the feeling that she's trying to get all three fan segments to understand.
And until you get to that level of sophistication and understanding, I'm not sure if some of this brand-building shit is, like, premature, and you need to really understand what you're doing because you could actually create the wrong brand that's not true of yourself in the process of trying to get that money or doing it too early.
And, David, I think you know that well. Like, it's a very important thing, and to understand what the brand is takes time. And to tell that story, storytelling is important to get that -- understand how to do that.
BECKY QUICK: David, tell us the story of when FOX won the Major League Baseball -- was it 1996 when you won?
DAVID BLYTH HILL: '96, yeah.
BECKY QUICK: And you had to figure out -- you thought it was boring.
DAVID BLYTH HILL: As John Madden said, we were FOX Sport.
BECKY QUICK: One sport.
DAVID BLYTH HILL: FOX Sport. And so we picked up baseball, and I felt the way it was being produced was really, really boring and really, really lazy. And you can tell if a director is working or not depending on the way he cuts.
And so the main theme about baseball back then, that it was too slow. And I felt that the reason it was too slow is that the director would go back to a resting wide shot, showing a wide shot of the field, and while he looked around the monitors for what was going on.
So when I called our very first seminar, and all the various teams that did the baseball games and the announcers came in, and I wanted them to concentrate on what I felt the essence of baseball was, which was mano a mano, pitcher and the batter.
But rather than me trying to explain in an Australian accent to a bunch of Americans who thought an Australian out of London coming to Los Angeles to tell them about baseball was a crock, which I tended to agree with, that what I did was got one of the guys, a guy called John Ward, to go out and get every baseball movie he could find, cut out all the extraneous stuff, all the love bit, whatever, and just focus on how the directors, how these great visualizers saw baseball. And I said, This is what I want FOX Baseball to be, and just ran it.
And sure enough, all it was was mano a mano. It was the eyes of the pitcher, the eyes of the batter, and the constant conflict between them.
And I was very fortunate, there was a director who was way in front of me, a guy called Billy Webb, who unfortunately is gone, and he then covered all our World Series from then on, and it was all about mano a mano. And suddenly baseball changed, and it wasn't slow and boring or whatever.
BECKY QUICK: And that's the drama. That is the human drama that needs to be brought into it.
Totoki-san, you are the only one here who represents one of these major corporations and brands. You hear all about this, about storytelling, about what the athletes bring, and how you do this with the drama. What do you want from all of that as the brand who can take all of that in and make something with it?
HIROKI TOTOKI: I think all the stories, all the dramas, are relating to sports. Let's say, you know, the mood, the people, emotion. And people quite love a story, backstory, particularly.
And what we are trying to do, related to the league, we try to give opportunity to shooting the backstage. It's a great opportunity to make content. And obviously, you know, the audience would like to see that content in behind. That is another way to entertain the people.
BECKY QUICK: And content has really been the driver for you. I mean, what you're doing is getting rid of a lot of other extraneous businesses so that you can invest a lot of time, money, and energy in content. You're a huge believer in that.
HIROKI TOTOKI: We are, of course, making a lot of investment towards music catalogs and IPs. Particularly, recently we are trying to heavily invest towards anime, Japanese anime. And thanks to streaming spread all over the world, anime is kind of booming all over the world now.
And we've got a very successful film, Kimetsu no Yaiba, Demon Slayer. And it's a great hit. And it's, you know, exploring another opportunity.
And if you look at the growth rate of the anime in all over the world, it's double digit and still growing. And it could provide us another opportunity. And it's provided us another opportunity as a merchandising. And fans, you know, they engage at the event and would like to spend that money to buy goods and costume and so on. It's a kind of another entertainment.
BECKY QUICK: David, let's talk about the Olympics because we're in Los Angeles. The Summer Olympics 2028 will be held here. What are your thoughts on how the Olympics have done storytelling? Because, I'll tell you, I could never believe that I could care about curling or, you know, about speed walking or some of these sports that I've never known.
DAVID BLYTH HILL: Get out of here. You don't love curling? Everyone loves curling.
BECKY QUICK: Well, I do now, when you show me the story, when you play it out. And I do think that's one of the things, that if you have good storytelling, you can make people follow along.
DAVID BLYTH HILL: Well, I'll tell you what I think has happened with the Olympic coverage. NBC's Olympic ratings were going down and down, and they had a flash of inspiration, the Paris Olympics, and they put a woman called Molly Solomon in charge. And Molly totally changed the way the Olympics were presented in Paris. And then you can see her magic touch on the Milan coverage.
And what she's done is -- well, she's done a lot of stuff, all of which has been great for the viewer.
But there was one thing last night that really got me about it. There was the girls' halfpipe, women's halfpipe, and there is a California girl called Maddie Mastro, I think. And she is one of these driven kind of athletes that really wants gold.
And Molly just kind of like put these little clips of Maddie coming up to it. And then her first run, she falls. And then her second run -- and it's the best of three runs -- in the second run, she falls.
And then before she goes out for the third run, they ran this incredible clip, just around, say, 2:30, about Maddie and about how much she wanted it. And you are sitting there on the edge of your chair, and it's got emotion, and it's got the adrenaline. And you're saying, Come on, Maddie, do it, do it, Maddie, go, go, go.
And Maddie goes, and she falls on her ass for the third time. And you go, Oh, shit. Oh.
And it was just this perfect positioning of a brilliant piece. Like, you can do -- the reason you do up close and personal is to get an emotional bond between the viewer and the subject.
And most of them do not work because the people doing -- the best person in the world, I think, is Pam Oliver. And Pam Oliver, in three questions, more than any other interviewer I've ever seen, brings out the personality of the athlete, and you feel for that person. And Pam had the God-given ability to create this emotional bond between the athlete. And that's what happened last night with Maddie.
So it's not just the fact of doing a profile of an athlete. It's the way you do the profile, which is absolutely key.
BECKY QUICK: And wins your heart, win or lose.
DAVID BLYTH HILL: It's like last night. I still feel sorry for Maddie.
BECKY QUICK: Yeah.
STEVE STOUTE: By the way, we all feel sorry for her.
BECKY QUICK: Yeah.
STEVE STOUTE: Based off the story you just told.
BECKY QUICK: Right, exactly.
STEVE STOUTE: We were hoping for a happy ending.
BECKY QUICK: We were. You don't always get your happy ending, but you get your drama.
Steve, you're known for kind of telling tough truths to people.
STEVE STOUTE: Where is this research coming from?
BECKY QUICK: I've been digging around about you.
STEVE STOUTE: You've given her the idea -- go ahead.
BECKY QUICK: No, I was digging around and doing stuff, and you are known for kind of giving tough love to people.
If you had to give tough love to the people who are in this room, those of us who are on this stage, what would it be? If you've got this new revolution in technology coming, you've got changes that are coming to all of our industries, what's the tough love that we need to hear?
STEVE STOUTE: Oh, God. You put me on the spot.
BECKY QUICK: Sorry. I should have warned you.
STEVE STOUTE: No, there's nuance to it. But, look, I think in general that when you see change, it's what I said earlier, when you see change, you have to run. And it's the unknown. Right?
So when you see change coming, it is the unknown. You have to run towards darkness. Like, I really fully believe that; that history tells us that when you run towards darkness, that there's light on the other side.
And the reason why industries go out of business or people lose their way is because when they see darkness, they freeze. And they try to protect themselves by not doing anything or using -- they get litigious. That's one of the first signs, you get litigious, you try to sue everybody, you try to use the media and the press to make the new thing look bad.
Meanwhile, if you lean into it -- I mean, Sony's gone through this. Sony's gone through this many, many times. And you have to lean into it, whether it's music going from selling CDs to vinyls or films going to streaming and bootleg.
A lot of the times the thing that you're worried about actually teaches you the new way to do it. They actually become the guinea pig for your business to change and shift. So you could look at these things as threats, but then what you actually do is you have the free learning in order to capitalize off of what you have already moving into this new medium.
And I think AI is one of those things where everyone gets really afraid about it. In film, they get afraid about it. I look at it as a brand-new medium, no different than -- look, since the motion camera, AI has been the most powerful tool for creators, period.
And when you start talking about the fact that it can create a new medium, you can tell stories that defy physics. You can defy physics at, like, 1/50th of the cost. Like, you should lean into that. Don't think that that's going to put your other business out of business.
I think it's another medium. Like, you got television, you got film, and then you're going to have AI. It doesn't compete with that. It's a brand-new medium of brand-new content.
DAVID BLYTH HILL: I would suggest -- I can't remember the French phrase, but it's the more things change, the more things stay the same. It's like, putting it another way, you have to embrace risk. And it's still the ability -- we are, in our own ways, the direct linear descendants of people in caves who would draw a woolly mammoth, and with Ugh, and it's like the hero Ugh took down the woolly mammoth.
We tell the story of heroes and heroines.
STEVE STOUTE: And there's another quote. Change is getting faster. It'll never be this slow again.
BECKY QUICK: That's an excellent point.
Candace, Andre, I'm going to ask you guys in one second one hopeful thought you have about the future.
But first, Totoki-san, tell us if you appreciate Steve's message, if you agree with it. Do you appreciate this message from Steve?
HIROKI TOTOKI: I think things move very fast, and, actually, that's why we have to change and transform ourselves from a traditional electronics company towards an entertainment company. And that's how the technology changes.
And sometimes we lose our foundation of the business, but we need to shift another one. And this is inevitable. And we just, you know, try to grab the opportunity in this new environment circumstances.
But key thing would be, you know, the correlation, we strongly believe. And we cannot change only by ourselves. We need to collaborate with our partner, and like a Netflix and Amazon, and also, of course, the NBA. And, you know, the partnership is kind of the key strategy for us.
BECKY QUICK: That's excellent.
Candace, one thing you're hopeful about or excited about for this year that you think might be coming?
CANDACE PARKER: Well, the thing that I'm excited about from the athlete standpoint is, you know, in years past, it was the actors and the actresses, right? Like our grandparents, my parents, you know, Julia Roberts, the Denzel Washington.
Well, now it's sports stars. It's sports heroes. It's live sports. And I think that I'm excited at now so many different ways that you can tell a story, also so many different ways that fans can be a part of sports.
BECKY QUICK: Yeah.
CANDACE PARKER: You know, I grew up in the Chicagoland, you know, watching the Bulls win six championships. And you had to be sitting down on your TV with WGN, watching the Bulls play. Now there's clips that come to your phone.
I just think that athleticism is off the charts. I think the game is unbelievable. I think the fans are engaged. And I think there's a huge opportunity, like Andre said, to continue to capitalize on this growth within sport, not just in women's sports, but across the board.
And so I think it's just an exciting time to be a part of this process. I think it's a rocket ship. And, you know, I think brands, the more brands that are going to lean in and players want to be a part of that storytelling and are engaged.
BECKY QUICK: Andre, you get the last word.
ANDRE IGUODALA: I'm excited about the NBPA. It's just opened offices in L.A., and I think we calculated 175 players are here a summer.
BECKY QUICK: Yeah.
ANDRE IGUODALA: And so it's a unique way to engage with our players, to educate them on how the business works, and what better way than the content capital of the world, you can argue, in L.A. And hopefully solve the Dunk Contest.
(Laughter.)
BECKY QUICK: Good luck. Good luck with that.
ANDRE IGUODALA: Maybe if Kenny Smith doesn't vote, we'll be good.
(Laughter.)
BECKY QUICK: Yeah. Folks, I want to thank our panelists here today, and I want to thank all of you for being here to watch us today. Thank you very much.
(Applause.)
AHMAD RASHAD: All right. So earlier Adam was talking about how everybody loves dogs. So, you know, it's funny, though, Adam almost didn't let me on stage because he didn't go to Duke.
I'm going to take him out for a break, and I suggest that you all do the same thing. We'll be right back. All right? Come on, buddy.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports