Stephen A. Smith went on Cari Champion and Jemele Hill’s podcast “Funny and Flagrant” last week. After the two-part episode was released, Champion and Hill recorded another podcast reacting to the reactions to the original podcasts. They also went on former ESPN personality Joy Reid’s eponymous podcast to discuss the interview.
While Stephen A. Smith seemed to have a fine time during the original interview, everything has happened since has bothered him. Everything from the editing of the original video to what Hill and Champion have said about experience. So Smith recorded his own half-hour about the situation. And then Champion posted a response on Instagram.
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They can all keep going if you like because the truth is this interview was huge for Hill and Champion. As noted by Smith, his appearance gave them biggest audience ever and its not close. The podcast debuted on YouTube back in January and got had 7,566 views as of this morning. An episode from the end of July had 1,970 views.
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Part 1 of the Stephen A. Smith interview is sitting at over 720,000 views. Part 2 has more than 263,000. The follow-up episode about the interview has over 115,000. And their appearance on Reid’s show is over 149,000 views. It’s actually kind of mind-boggling to see the impact he has.
That’s why one of Smith’s complaints was about how Champion said she wasn’t sure if the Smith interview even benefitted them.
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“Really? When I showed up at that show the other night they had nine thousand subscribers,” said Smith. “Since that time, and their largest video was at about 35,000, of any show they have done. Once I sat down with them they picked up over 30,000 subscribers. They’ve had over a million views. 500,000 over YouTube. But Cari Champion is saying she doesn’t know if it did anything. A simple thank you would have sufficed. That would have been nice. I did take time out of my busy schedule. How many people do you know who will sit down with somebody for three hours. But that’s what I do. Because of my respect for two former colleagues. And in the case of one, which is Cari Champion, reciprocation seems to be a hard thing to come by.”
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Smith also said that the interview was supposed to be posted unedited. Instead the “three hour conversation” came in at a total of two hours and 38 minutes between the two parts. So Smith wants a copy of the unedited footage so he can watch it and post it for full context if he desires.
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He also wants them to leave the comments on YouTube opened. The show apparently decided to close it because of the people in the comments were attacking the hosts.
Smith also had words for Joy Reid, who worked with Smith on “First Take” many years ago. “You clearly have a problem with me. Fine. Knock yourself out.”
Now that Smith has responded to everyone, there should be a fresh round of reactions. This will presumably continue until Smith has moved on.
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