Good morning. Happy birthday 🎂 to our fearless leader Jon Passantino, who edited this edition on his day "off." Cheers, Jon! Now, here's a hand-packed collection of media, tech and entertainment stories you should know about. |
Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images |
One caller asked for help finding her brother. Another needed information about evacuation routes. A third worried if a nearby dam was about to burst. A fourth wondered if another tropical storm was on the way. And many callers to News Radio 570 WWNC expressed the same sentiment: "I'm just so proud of my neighbors."
As Helene's waters recede, the calls and emails to iHeartMedia's radio station in Asheville, North Carolina are giving voice to the crisis – and giving hope to listeners. Communications across the region remain severed; the full scope of the flood destruction is still coming into view. So WWNC and six other stations owned by iHeart are simulcasting their coverage of the emergency, host Mark Starling told me. Starling signed off Sunday at 11 p.m. and started again at 6 this morning. "Please," he said to listeners shortly after sunrise, "please take care of yourselves. If you need help, ask for it." Then he repeated the station's phone numbers and resumed taking calls.
>> Listening to WWNC's live coverage, I was reminded of WWL's essential role in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Radio (whether over the airwaves and, these days, via livestreaming) is a literal lifeline. So I wrote this story for CNN.com about how the stations are serving the community, using Elon Musk's Starlink to stay on the air.
>> Starling and co-hosts Eddie Foxx and Ashley Wilson have even managed to make listeners laugh at an incredibly stressful time...
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Top stories on the Asheville Citizen-Times home page include "where to get gas, groceries, wifi, water" and "how to stay safe during boil water advisory." Blue Ridge Public Radio provided live coverage on the radio and online, including lists of "who to contact" for help with missing persons and power outages.
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People are "facing the daunting challenge of rebuilding" and "some of the roads and bridges they need to do the job aren’t there anymore," CNN's Steve Almasy wrote this morning. "Electricity could be a week away or longer. Emergency services are stretched. Communications infrastructure is in shreds. And neighbors, some of whose own homes are gone, are helping neighbors – all the while worrying about the fate of those from whom they haven’t heard." Read on...
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Donald Trump's autocratic impulses were on display all weekend long. On Friday, he said he wants Google to be prosecuted. On Saturday, during a rally speech that he admitted was "dark," he blasted the "mass migrant invasion;" called VP
Kamala Harris "mentally disabled;" and said Fox News "shouldn't be allowed" to air speeches by Harris. "Trump shifted from topic to topic so quickly that it was hard to keep track of what he meant at times," The AP's story noted.
On Sunday, Trump appeared to call for "one rough hour" of police retaliation to stop criminals. Critics equated it to "The Purge." He also posted on Truth Social that he detests Fox for "constantly putting on Liberal Democrats to counter previous guests from the Right." Then he raged that Harris "should be IMPEACHED, PROSECUTED, or BOTH" while wildly distorting immigration statistics and claiming "The Fake News is helping Kamala to destroy our Country." CNN's Daniel Dale has a crucial fact-check here.
>> Ask yourself: Did you hear about all of this over the weekend? If not, should you have?
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CBS News says it "will be up to the politicians — not the moderators — to check the facts of their opponents" when JD Vance and Tim Walz face off on Tuesday, The AP's David Bauder writes. "The 90-minute debate, scheduled for 9 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday in a Manhattan studio that once hosted the children’s program 'Captain Kangaroo,' will be moderated by" Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan.
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Jimmy Carter, the longest-living former president in U.S. history, will turn 100 on Tuesday. President Biden honored Carter with a video message that aired on "CBS Sunday Morning," the weekend's most popular A.M. show. "I admire you so darn much," Biden told Carter.
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Harris taped an appearance last week on the popular sports and pop culture podcast "All the Smoke." The episode will drop at 10 a.m. ET today. (Here are previews via the NYT and the Washington Post.) Last week, Trump taped an interview with financial broadcaster Dave Ramsey. That episode will drop on Wednesday at 9 a.m. ET.
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DirecTV and Dish agree to merge |
DirecTV and Dish are finally ready to merge. CNN Business has details about this morning's announcement here. Furthermore, AT&T "is selling its remaining stake in DirecTV, as it looks to shift its focus back to wireless 5G and fiber connectivity offerings," Quartz's Rocio Fabbro writes. Private equity firm TPG is acquiring AT&T's 70% interest.
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Amazon attracts millions of live viewers for NFL games. The company also carries A-list concert performances and a seemingly endless number of shopping live-streams. Now... One special night of news coverage?
Yes, NBC vet Brian Williams is nearing a surprise deal to lead election night coverage on Amazon’s Prime Video, marking the streaming service’s first foray into live news. Amazon's plan engendered lots of TV industry chatter when it was first reported by Puck and Variety over the weekend. So what's it all about? Amazon, my sources say, is approaching the election stream as a one-time-only live event, not as a signal about its future intentions. "Amazon executives have told us, ‘We are not building a news operation,'" according to a talent agent who is not involved in the Williams deal. But never say never. Amazon could invest in live coverage of other major news events in the future. Here's my full story...
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>> "E.W. Scripps is shutting down its 24-hour news channel on Nov. 15, another sign of a contraction in the TV news industry," Stephen Battaglio writes. The company's beleaguered stock shot up 24% on the news of 200+ layoffs. (LAT)
>> Notably, Scripps justified its decision by noting that "many brands and agencies have decided that advertising around national news is just too risky for them given the polarized nature of this country." (TVNewser)
>> Puck's Dylan Byers reports that NBC's Hoda Kotb was facing a pay cut when she stepped down from her $20 million-plus-a-year job. "Stratospheric contracts" are "no longer justifiable given the industry's inexorable decline," so a reset is underway. (Puck)
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"A well-known aphorism in the TV sports world is that network executives would sell their souls for Cowboys games. But the Chiefs' sustained run of Super Bowl excellence—combined with the Taylor Swift Effect—is changing the game," Michael McCarthy writes for Front Office Sports. He reports that "Kansas City drew higher prime-time ratings than Dallas last season, and its numbers have been higher early in 2024..."
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Apple's AR glasses challenge |
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says Meta's Orion AR glasses prototype shows that "Apple has lost its way with the Vision Pro." Meta's idea is "to ultimately replace your smartphone with something you can comfortably wear on your face all day." Gurman writes that Meta is "well on its way to executing on this compelling vision," and "based on all available evidence, the company is further along with AR glasses than Apple is in its labs."
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>> Though "OpenAI estimates that its revenue will balloon to $11.6 billion next year," the ChatGPT-maker is also anticipating "to lose roughly $5 billion this year after paying for costs related to running its services and other expenses like employee salaries and office rent," Mike Isaac and Erin Griffith report. (NYT)
>> "Apple is no longer in talks to participate in an OpenAI funding round expected to raise as much as $6.5 billion, an 11th hour end to what would have been a rare investment by the iPhone maker in another major Silicon Valley company,” Tom
Dotan and Berber Jin reported on Friday. (WSJ)
>> Gavin Newsom vetoed an A.I. safety bill that sought to "have established requirements for developers of advanced AI models to create protocols aimed at preventing catastrophes," Wendy Lee reports. (LAT)
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"Universal and Dreamworks look to have a winner on their hands as their new animated film 'The Wild Robot' performed above our expectations with an estimated $35M from 3,962 screens for an $8,834 Per Screen Average to take the #1 position,” Boxoffice Pro reports. The movie far outpaced Francis Ford Coppola’s "Megalopolis," which bombed with an estimated $4 million opening despite its $120 million budget.
>> Coppola’s “Megalopolis” is currently nursing 49% on Rotten Tomatoes.
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>> On Sunday "The Simpsons" imagined its own finale, "satirizing not only the idea that the show could ever end but also the concept of series finales in general," Jesse David Fox writes. "It's proof that, after all these years, The Simpsons can still find new ways to subvert both the sitcom form and viewer expectations." (Vulture)
>> "SNL" kicked off Season 50 "with a predictably star-studded cold open," Sandra Gonzalez writes. (CNN)
>> "Dana Carvey, Jim Gaffigan and Andy Samberg will play Biden, Walz and Emhoff for this entire season" of "SNL." (TheWrap)
>> A setback for Netflix: "A federal court has advanced the key defamation claim in a lawsuit against Netflix over its portrayal of a woman depicted as a stalker in Richard Gadd's Baby Reindeer, while dismissing other allegations." (THR)
>> "Songs by Adele, Bob Dylan, Green Day, R.E.M., Burna Boy, Rush and many others are currently unplayable on YouTube in the U.S. due to a legal dispute between the platform and the performing rights organization SESAC," Jem Aswad reports. (Variety)
>> Zachary Levi endorsed Trump on Saturday after previously backing RFK Jr. Vanity Fair's headline: "Hollywood's biggest Donald Trump endorsement might be this failed DC superhero." (VF)
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