Name: A-lister antics and Schedule A shenanigans | The Vergecast
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Welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of talking about other people eating chicken, but we actually don't eat chicken on this show. I'm your host, Mia Sato, not David

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Pierce. I'm three David Pierces in a Mia Sato trench coat, and I'm going to be taking over the Tuesday show for the next few weeks while David is on parental leave, so it should be really fun. On today's show, we're talking about summer blockbuster seasons. There's movie after movie coming out, and celebrities want to get their project in front of you, or maybe they just want to put themselves in front of you. We're going to be talking to Fran Hoffner, a news writer at Vulture, and a friend of mine who wrote a really excellent piece back in June about the crazy hoops that celebrities now have to jump through in order to get attention in an age of fragmented media consumption and at a time when linear television is on the decline. After that, we're going to talk about the flood of cheap knockoff and copycat products that you have no doubt seen online before. In an age of cheap copycat products, brands have found a way to go after dozens or even hundreds of storefronts that they say are infringing on their IP rights, but what happens when someone is wrongly accused of IP infringement? There's a new crop of lawsuits called Schedule A that's something of a legal trend right now. We're talking with law professor Sarah Fackrell about what these lawsuits do and how they could hurt competition online. Later on, we'll have my colleague V. Song on to help me answer a question about AI translators. But first, I have to go unbox 20 LeBoo Boo blind boxes. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to the Verge cast. My first guest today is Fran Hofner. She's a newswriter at Vulture, and she did a great piece back in June about all the weird ways celebrities try to get our attention in an age when audiences are fragmented into a million pieces. Since it's summer blockbuster season, I thought it would be a great time to talk about how celebrities are navigating this new media circuit and all the highs and lows and weird moments that this has created. Fran, maybe just describe what is the new media circuit?

Who are the main players? Where does this content live? What does it look like out in the world?

The new media circuit lives 98% on the screen of a phone. It is vertical video interviews and video podcasts.

We're on the new media circuit right now. I have to eat chicken after this. And it's talking with, a lot of the time, a kind of internet celebrity that exists somewhere between civilian and fellow celebrity that actors and musicians and people on press tours now talk to. So we have the chicken shows, Chicken Shop Day.

What do you mean all the time? I do other things.

Do you ever eat anything other than this?

Hey everybody, for First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans and you're watching Hot Ones. It's the show with hot questions and even hotter wings. And today we're joined by Owen Wilson.

There are more reels and TikTok-centric shows like Subway Takes.

Fundamentally, everyone is a good person.

100% disagree. I can think of countless examples of bad people. I'm not even going to rattle off.

And part of the new media circuit is to show that the person promoting the project is a person.

It's actually totally, it's frequently at least, project agnostic. They almost don't even ever talk about the project at hand, but instead just talk to whatever host about whatever inanities that they want to talk about.

Anything to more further the name of the person on the show than the project.

Because maybe movies aren't selling as well. Maybe people aren't watching TV how they used to.

But if that person can stay in the zeitgeist, maybe there's still another movie to do or another TV show.

And it's all about trying to establish or reestablish sort of like, who are our A-listers?

Who are people who are getting people to engage with things?

And this circuit is both trying to cement that, but also kind of spreading everyone out in a way where almost no one is able to stand out.

That's so, it's interesting because like the level of celebrity feels like it has really been through the ringer or like the levels of celebrity.

What makes someone an A-lister versus just like very, very saturated or famous or known?

So we'll talk about that a little bit later.

But how does the new media circuit interact with like what we would think of as the traditional media circuit?

You go on daytime television, you do a late night show, maybe you do like a glossy magazine cover or a spread.

Like how do these things kind of collide?

Do they do mostly the traditional thing with a sprinkle of, you know, a TikTok takes show?

I think they're doing about half and half, but it's been interesting to watch the more traditional forms like late night and daytime TV and even legacy magazines now also have to adhere to the new media circuit.

Like you want the late night clips to make it onto TikTok or Instagram reels.

Vogue, Wired, Vanity Fair all have their own video series that are also on TikTok and Instagram.

And this clip will be going around on TikTok.

We're offending the traditional media circuit, actually.

The Spirit Tunnel on the Jennifer Hudson show?

And so stars are still having to do these circuits, but now those traditional circuits have to adhere to what goes on the phone.

I think almost the only unchanging medium to some degree is SNL, which used to be the main place people would go to make fun of themselves.

And now it feels like everything is designed to prove the person in question can make fun of themselves.

We'll talk about what you laid out in your piece, and I actually have a case study that

I think you nailed, but how are PR teams and publicists thinking about the ingredients to a winning press tour?

It really depends on the type of person on the press tour.

For younger stars, and especially musicians, there's a kind of blanket strategy.

They'll do the newsletters, they'll do the video podcasts.

I think traditional media to them, glossy covers and late night sets, feels like the furthest away.

So you'll see those people way more on your phone than you will in those traditional mediums.

I think by the time they usually hit traditional mediums, it feels like it's too late.

I feel like by the time I saw Chapel Rhone on Colbert, I was like, this is already a famous person.

The more established celebrities will do a mix of both, but there usually winds up being at least one silly thing.

You kind of only get to do your chicken thing once, I would like to say.

So it's like, you do it and then you've got to do something else next time.

You get to eat chicken once in your life and then no more.

Yeah, you have to decide when you're going to play your chicken card.

Some of the people who are hosting these shows, writing these newsletters, are celebrities in and of themselves.

That's sort of what's become interesting.

I don't think we can keep feigning that someone like Amelia de Moldenberg, who does Chicken

Shop Date, or Brittany Broski, who does Royal Court, and a ton of YouTube stuff.

These aren't regular people in terms of how you and I are, sort of, I don't know.

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A-lister antics and Schedule A shenanigans | The Vergecast

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