President Joe Biden delivers an Oval Office address for the ages, The NYT publishes an explosive report on Rupert Murdoch's succession mess, Fox News proposes a debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, a federal judge declines to dismiss Trump's lawsuit against ABC News, Google becomes the only search engine that can scrape Reddit, Ofcom slaps TikTok with a $2.6 million fine, Pixar's "Inside Out" becomes the highest-grossing animated film of all time, Searchlight teases Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, and so much more. But first, the A1.

NBA Deal in Overtime

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The stage is now officially set for a high-stakes showdown between the NBA and Warner Bros. Discovery.

The league on Wednesday rejected WBD's offer to match a $1.8 billion per year bid from Amazon to broadcast games, an expected move that pits the David Zaslav-led entertainment conglomerate against the Adam Silver-led league and sends the parties careening toward a messy legal fight. 

"Warner Bros. Discovery’s most recent proposal did not match the terms of Amazon Prime Video's offer and, therefore, we have entered into a long-term arrangement with Amazon," the NBA said in a statement.

WBD, which paid for matching rights when it struck its previous deal with the NBA, has argued that it should be able to match Amazon's streaming agreement with the league, since it can air the games both on cable channel TNT and its Max platform, which boasts about 100 million paid subscribers. 

The NBA, however, apparently disagrees. The league sent a letter to WBD on Wednesday, first reported by CNBC's Alex Sherman, contending that its "internet distribution" deal with Amazon was exclusively for streaming. In doing so, the NBA argued that WBD's offer was not a legally valid match since it would also be broadcasting the games on TNT.

Citing that contractual provision seems odd, to say the least, given that one would think the NBA would want the added exposure of TNT, which features "Inside the NBA," widely recognized as one of the top sports programs of all time. And it should be noted that the contractual paperwork giving WBD matching rights is pages long and not simple. Zaslav and his deputies believe that they have a robust argument to make and that they are indeed entitled to use their contractual rights to match Amazon's bid.

What everyone probably can agree on is that this negotiation has gotten very messy — and that's not good for either party.

Each side, however, is dug in. And now their legal arguments will almost certainly be tested in court as the dispute between the league and its longtime broadcast partner veers toward ugly litigation. A person familiar with the matter told me Wednesday evening that WBD is preparing to take legal action "soon." And I'm told the prospects for an out-of-court settlement between the two parties appears slim, given WBD's confidence that it has a strong case.

"We have matched the Amazon offer, as we have a contractual right to do, and do not believe the NBA can reject it," a TNT spokesperson flatly said in the company's official statement. "We think they have grossly misinterpreted our contractual rights with respect to the 2025-26 season and beyond, and we will take appropriate action."

In addition to its deal with Amazon, the NBA also struck deals with NBCUniversal and Disney. In total, the combined package will send some $77 billion into the NBA's coffers over the next 11 years. For a while, industry insiders focused on how NBCU had swooped in and struck a deal with the NBA for a package that included many of the games WBD's TNT currently airs.

But WBD ultimately declined to match NBC's $2.5 billion per year bid. Instead, WBD opted to target Amazon's smaller package for a match, given the lower price tag and belief that it contained more-coveted games. If Zaslav can manage to ultimately win the rights to air the games in court, it will amount to quite a coup d'état for the WBD boss. Of course, if Zaslav does not prevail after waging an unprecedented fight against the NBA, it will be a major black eye.

And there is already plenty of finger pointing going around. 

"TNT dropped the ball here," ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith said Wednesday. "I'm talking about the brass at TNT. It started years ago when they alluded to how unimportant the NBA was to the brand itself and the resistance that they gave in reaching a new deal."

Regardless of who ultimately emerges victorious, the face-off raises a host of questions about the industry and whether it is only the first of the major sporting leagues to opt to send a bulk of their games to Big Tech platforms instead of the traditional media business.

In the years ahead, tech goliaths such as Amazon can — and likely will — offer large sums to sports leagues to win the lucrative rights to air the games, sweetening the allure of their bids with promises of infusing the viewing experience with newfangled technology.

Within the next decade, will Amazon, Apple, and Google be the primary homes of live sports? If so, what does that mean for traditional media companies that rely on those assets as a key engine of their businesses? And, given Big Tech's less-than-ideal record on issues such as privacy, what does that mean for society at large?

CNN Photo Illustration/Evan Vucci/Pool/AP

An Address For the Ages: The nation's eyes were fixated on President Joe Biden Wednesday evening, with every broadcast and cable network carrying his address from the Oval Office. The president, after astonishing the world with his Sunday announcement that he would exit the 2024 race, explained why he felt it was time to step aside and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president. "I revere this office, but I love my country more," Biden explained, telling the nation that "history is in your hands" and "the idea of America lies in your hands." The speech was only the fourth Oval Office address Biden has delivered. CNN's team has more here.

🔎 Zooming in: The reaction from the media was what you'd expect. The speech was widely praised by journalists and mainstream commentators. On CNN, Van Jones grew emotional as he spoke about "the kid with a stutter" who became president, adding that Biden willfully giving up power came in stark contrast to Donald Trump, who did everything he could to remain in the White House. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow hailed the address as a "timeless speech about a very specific moment." But, unsurprisingly, in right-wing media, the reaction was different. On Fox News, the speech was trashed, with Jesse Watters arguing it was "damage control for a failed presidency."

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Murdoch's Succession Mess: Rupert Murdoch "is locked in a secret legal battle against three of his children over the future of the family’s media empire, as he moves to preserve it as a conservative political force after his death," The NYT's Jim Rutenberg and Jonathan Mahler reported Wednesday, in an explosive and scoop-filled story. According to the duo, Murdoch attempted last year to amend the family trust to ensure that his eldest son Lachlan, who he has anointed heir of his kingdom, will retain control over the family's media assets after his death. Murdoch's argument is that securing Lachlan's spot atop the assets will ensure their continued success and cement its right-wing editorial positions.

The move by the 93-year-old comes after speculation that Murdoch's other children, led by his younger son James, would try to wrest control of the empire away from the more conservative Lachlan, and moderate the right-wing voices that currently define the outlets. Murdoch's efforts to tweak the trust, which he apparently has privately referred to as "Project Harmony," has set off a war within the family, Rutenberg and Mahler reported, pointing out that only Lachlan attended their father's recent wedding to Elena Zhukova. While on bad terms with Murdoch, children James, Elisabeth, and Prudence are taking legal action to fight his attempt to tweak the trust, setting up a legal battle that is expected to go to trial in Nevada later this year, Rutenberg and Mahler wrote. Read the full story here.

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Google's Reddit Search Pact: Looking to search Reddit for something? You can now only do so on Google, 404 Media's Emanuel Maiberg reported Wednesday. Attempts to search Reddit on other sites, such as Bing and DuckDuckGo, no longer return helpful results from the last week. Old archives are available, but fresh content cannot be crawled and used by search sites not named Google. That's very likely due to a pact Google made with Reddit, allowing the Silicon Valley titan to train its A.I. off Reddit. Read Maiberg's full story here.

🔎 Zooming in: "The news," Maiberg observed, "shows how Google’s near monopoly on search is now actively hindering other companies’ ability to compete at a time when Google is facing increasing criticism over the quality of its search results."

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Pixar's 'Inside Out' Phenomenon: It's official! "Inside Out 2" has set a record as the highest-grossing animated film of all time, surpassing "Frozen II" with nearly $1.5 billion in global box office receipts. The smash hit from Disney's Pixar, which has helped power the summer box office, is now sitting at No. 13 on the top global hits of all time, sliding past "Barbie" on Monday. Now, the film is not far behind "Top Gun: Maverick," "Furious 7," and the original "Avengers." Daniel Loria of Box Office Pro said the animated juggernaut "really breathed new life into the global box office and reestablished a momentum that we haven’t seen since the 'Barbenheimer' craze of last summer." CNN's Erika Tulfo has more.