Episode 115: NFL Feast, NBA In-Season and SI’s AI dilemma

The NFL set a viewership record on Thanksgiving Day across CBS, Fox and NBC. It also kicked-off the first Black Friday game in its history, which was carried on Amazon Prime. Pod hosts Andrew Marchand and John Ourand discuss the league’s media dominance and whether Black Friday will follow that trajectory. Now that the NBA is through the round-robin part of its In-Season Tournament, Marchand and Ourand dissect what they like and don’t like about the tournament and whether it has the staying power to be one of the NBA’s tent-pole events. Two of the most controversial sports media stories of the last two weeks made it onto the pod’s list of topics this week. One is the Futurism report that Sports Illustrated had been using AI-generated stories and AI-generated bylines without properly alerting readers. The other is Charissa Thompson’s comments to the “Pardon My Take” podcast that she used to make up sideline reports when she wasn’t able to track down a coach. This week also sees the return of the “MandO Mailbag.”