Brian Stelter here. Reliable Sources is back after a brief summer vacation — and we're morning people now! We're trying this new time slot and expanding to five days a week. Monday through Friday, the Reliable team — including Hadas Gold, Jon Passantino and Liam Reilly — will preview the day's top media headlines and curate all the stories that are worth your time.
When I launched this newsletter nearly a decade ago, I sent it out late at night, sometimes so late that it became a morning read. I also let the newsletter get too long. As I told Semafor's Ben Smith last night, I feel like I'm getting a once-in-a-career chance at a do-over by returning to CNN. So, this version of Reliable will be shorter and sharper. We'll answer your Q's about the media and send out special editions when news warrants. We'll also try some new things. Starting... now!
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It's Apple day in America. At the company's annual hardware event, Monday at 1 p.m. ET, the tech giant is "set to introduce the first lineup of iPhones purpose-built for generative artificial intelligence," CNN's Clare Duffy reports. Apple will likely also highlight changes to various products and services like AirPods, but "everything is about the iPhone upgrade cycle. Everything else is subplot," D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria told Duffy...
>> Looking ahead: "On Monday, Apple will announce the iPhone 16. On Tuesday, it might be ordered to pay $14 billion in unpaid taxes back to the European Union," Bloomberg's Mark Gurman notes...
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The Post's much-needed facelift |
Last spring, on assignment for The Atlantic, I spent months studying the problems that have beset The Washington Post. One complaint I heard again and again from staffers was about, of all things, the Post's homepage. Reporters and editors hated it. Will Lewis, who became publisher in January, heard the complaints, and he green-lit an overhaul. The facelift rolled out last week, adding more space for top stories and moving Opinion pieces higher up the page. The redesign is the first "of several planned enhancements," exec editor Matt Murray told the newsroom. I wrote all about it here...
>> Signs of progress? On Friday, Lewis told staffers that last week was the Post's "highest net growth week of the year for subscriptions."
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Huge NFL season opener ratings |
David Eulitt/Getty Images |
"NBC Sports came out of the gate strong with its NFL Week 1 audience numbers, including the most-watched NFL Kickoff game on record," Sports Business Journal's Austin Karp writes. Chiefs-Ravens averaged 28.9 million viewers across multiple platforms on Thursday. Eagles-Packers scored 14.2 million viewers on Peacock on Friday night.
Sunday was Tom Brady's big debut in the Fox broadcast booth. The overnight headlines report "mixed reviews" (USA Today) and "negative reviews" (SI). He "sounded like a rookie out of the gate," The Athletic's Andrew Marchand wrote. "His syntax was stilted. His interesting thoughts were limited. It was a bit awkward." But he warmed up later in the game, Marchand wrote, and the reality is, "Fox and Brady just need Brady to build during the season so he is at his best when the playoffs and Super Bowl come around."
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Liam Reilly reports: The week-long blackout of Disney channels across DirecTV's lineup will likely continue through Monday – and impact ESPN's "Monday Night Football" – as carriage negotiations between the duo remain stalled. The New York Jets-San Francisco 49ers game was initially believed to be a secondary deadline for the two companies after they failed to reach an agreement the prior week. Yet both sides over the weekend offered customers alternate ways to access the much-anticipated game, underscoring that the parties are possibly willing to indefinitely prolong the outage barring concessions from the other. What's more, DirecTV on Saturday filed a complaint with the FCC, arguing that Disney has not negotiated in good faith. More here...
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How Iger outmaneuvered Chapek |
Speaking of Disney, New York Times reporters Brooks Barnes (who has covered the company for decades) and James Stewart (who wrote "Disney War" in 2005) teamed up for a 13,000-word Sunday Business story titled "The Palace Coup at the Magic Kingdom." The story – "about how Bob Iger undermined and outmaneuvered Bob Chapek, his chosen successor, and returned to power at Disney" – is full of lessons about big egos, corporate governance, and media industry upheaval. Make sure it's at the top of your to-read list...
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Harris trolls Trump on Fox |
One advantage of this new morning release time: We can curate overnight and early a.m. news. At 5 a.m. ET, the Kamala Harris campaign rolled out a new campaign ad titled "The Best People" highlighting former Trump officials that have distanced themselves from the former president. Politico, which had the ad first, calls it trolling: "The ad will run nationally on Fox News and in West Palm Beach — home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort — and Philadelphia media markets on Tuesday, the day he will debate Harris for the first time. It will continue to play throughout the week, according to the Harris campaign."
>> The newest issue of New York mag, out this morning, is a two-part cover featuring a Rebecca Traister piece, "The People for Kamala Harris," and an Olivia Nuzzi interview with Trump.
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Ahead of Tuesday's debate in Philly, this may be the single most important stat about the 2024 presidential election: The NYT and Siena College's new poll "found that 28 percent of likely voters said they felt they needed to know more" about Harris, "while only 9 percent said they needed to know more" about Trump. Will the debate satisfy voters' questions?
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The ABC News anchors and producers in charge of Tuesday's debate are approaching the assignment much like CNN's Jake Tapper and Dana Bash did in June. Rick Klein, ABC's political director, told the NYT's Michael Grynbaum that moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis are there "to facilitate a discussion" between the candidates. Klein, asked about fact-checking, told Grynbaum, "we're not making a commitment to fact-check everything, or fact-check nothing, in either direction. We're there to keep a conversation going, and to facilitate a good solid debate, and that entails a lot of things in terms of asking questions, moving the conversation along, making sure that it’s civilized." Muir and Davis were in Philly over the weekend for prep sessions...
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Tuesday: A Nevada court has scheduled a hearing in Rupert Murdoch's secret succession battle.
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Tuesday: New nonfiction releases include "Who Could Ever Love You" by Mary L. Trump and "Reagan: His Life and Legend" by Max Boot.
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Wednesday: The 2024
MTV Video Music Awards.
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Thursday: Gov.
Kathy Hochul speaks before a media insider crowd at the Paley Center in NYC.
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Thursday:
Puck celebrates its third birthday.
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Sunday:
The Emmy Awards. (I'll be there; let me know if you will be too.)
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Hadas Gold writes: Last week the Justice Department unveiled a stunning indictment: The Russian government, via staffers at Russian propaganda outlet RT, funneled millions of dollars to pay some of the biggest names in the online right-wing space (without their knowledge) via a Tennessee-based company that was ostensibly a host for some of their shows and content. I published a deep dive over the weekend about who these commentators are and what they were saying.
>> Key point: While the influencer, podcaster, and online content creator space is booming, the indictment shows how open the new media ecosystem is to infiltration, where independent creators operate with few guardrails and little transparency.
>> The next question Gold is asking: What will these commentators do with all the money they received from the Kremlin? All six have said they've been contacted by the FBI as victims of the crime, but will they choose to give the money back, or donate it to charity as a symbolic gesture?
>> Show idea: Anthony DeRosa asks on Threads, "Who is going to be the Colbert Report for YouTube right-wing social media influencers? That’s gotta be a thing, right?"
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"The Angst and Sorrow of Jewish Currents" |
In this week's issue of The New Yorker, out this morning, Gideon Lewis-Kraus visits the journalists at Jewish Currents, a small magazine that "wants to criticize Israel while holding on to Jewishness." A recommended read...
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>> About 4,000 MSNBC fans filled the Brooklyn Academy of Music for a day-long live event on Saturday. Oliver Darcy interviewed Rachel Maddow about how it went. (Status)
>> Netflix has snapped up Scott Galloway's "House of Cards-style thriller set in Silicon Valley" starring Rosamund Pike – making "a big 10-episode commitment without a single script written," Matthew Belloni scooped. (Puck)
>> Media mogul row: Bobby Kotick, Elon Musk, David Zaslav, and Barry Diller were all sitting together at the US Open on Sunday. (Twitter)
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>> Wall Street Journal veteran James V. Grimaldi is joining the National Catholic Reporter as executive editor, reporting to CEO and publisher Joe Ferullo.
>> TheWrap media reporter Natalie Korach is jumping to Vanity Fair.
>> CNN vet Tommy Evans starts work Monday at NPR, where he'll be the managing editor for editorial review, leading the creation of the outlet's new "Backstop" system.
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Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures |
>> Good news for Warner Bros.: "The first event pic of the fall season," Tim Burton's long-awaited sequel "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," "opened to a monstrous $110 million, coming in on the high end of expectations," Pamela McClintock reports. (THR)
>> The big winner at the Creative Arts Emmys "was sweeping samurai epic Shōgun, which shored a whopping 14 wins (plus another win for companion movie, The Making Of Shōgun), setting a new record for most Emmy wins in one year." (EW)
>> "Kendrick Lamar will be the headlining act for the Super Bowl LIX halftime show," Alli Rosenbloom reports. (CNN)
>> Don't Tell Comedy's innovative approach to stand-up is changing industry norms. Leah Asmelash explains it all here. (CNN)
>> My wife Jamie and I got hooked on Netflix's "The Perfect Couple" over the weekend, and judging from the social media chatter about the show, we were far from the only ones.
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Thank you for reading! My CNN email address is back up and running, so email me any time at brian.stelter@cnn.com. For the next two months, through the election, we're publishing in "beta" mode as we try out some new things, including this new morning window. So don't hesitate to send along your feedback. |
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