TGIF! Here's the latest on "Fox & Friends," Netflix, Elon Musk, Meta, Brian Williams, ESPN, CNN's town hall plan, and a "Swiftie" Snapchat filter... |
"It's the First Amendment, stupid." |
"To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it's the First Amendment, stupid."
That's what a judge wrote as he sided with local TV stations in an extraordinary dispute over a pro-abortion rights television ad.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker of the Northern District of Florida granted a temporary restraining order against Florida’s surgeon general Joseph Ladapo yesterday after the state health department threatened to bring criminal charges against broadcasters airing the ad. State officials are now effectively barred from intimidating local stations for airing the ad. Liam Reilly and I wrote about the unusual situation here.
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The controversy's origins |
The controversy started when Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group behind the "Yes on 4 Campaign," which promotes a ballot measure that seeks to overturn Florida's six-week abortion ban by enshrining abortion rights, produced an ad featuring a brain cancer survivor named Caroline, seen above. Caroline said the state law would have prevented her from receiving a life-saving abortion. The state health department said the ad's claims are "false" and "dangerous" – and tried to intervene.
The legal threats were so chilling that WINK, a CBS affiliate, pulled the ad from its broadcasts, Florida Politics reported. Other stations have continued to air the ad, some as recently as this morning, according to my TVEyes searches.
>> The health department continues to assert that the ad is "unequivocally false and detrimental to public health in Florida." Some experts say otherwise. "Florida's extreme abortion ban has created an unworkable legal landscape that endangers both patients and clinicians," the nonprofit group Physicians for Human Rights stated in a report last month.
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Harris and Trump's next interviews |
Trump: Yesterday, Patrick Bet-David's podcast chat with the former president made news. This morning, Fox News contributor George "Tyrus" Murdoch released a sit-down with Trump (taped at Trump Tower) on his OutKick show "Maintaining with Tyrus." And Trump is on "Fox & Friends," one day after blasting the network's boss Suzanne Scott for allowing Democrats on the air. Steve Doocy raved about Trump's jokes at the Al Smith dinner and said "who helped you with it?" Trump replied, "I had a lot of people helping, a lot of people, a couple people from Fox – actually, I shouldn't say that, but they wrote some jokes."
Harris: MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton will be taping an interview with the VP this weekend. The segment will air on Sharpton's MSNBC show "PoliticsNation" on Sunday.
>> Yes, podcast industry expert Ashley Carman says, this really is the first real "podcast election." Here's why.
>> For his new article, NOTUS reporter John Seward reviewed "more than 12 hours of Trump’s podcast interviews" and found the former president quoting Viktor Orbán and warning about the possibility of World War III.
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Years ago, in my former life as a TV anchor, I learned that the first question sets the tone. Interviewers make a choice every time they begin talking with a newsmaker. Do they start by warming their subject up or go straight for the jugular?
Fox's Bret Baier chose the softball way when interviewing Trump last year, and the hardball way when interviewing Harris earlier this week. I reviewed both segments and found that Baier 1) challenged both candidates; 2) generated lots of newsy clips; and 3) treated Harris differently than Trump. Baier interrupted Harris a lot more often and interrogated her from the get-go. Read all about it here.
>> The ratings were remarkable: Harris' first ever formal sit-down on Fox "drew an estimated 7.1 million viewers," Deadline's Ted Johnson wrote. That's more than three times the average audience for Baier's program.
>> "She got exactly what she wanted out of it," Dan Pfeiffer said on MSNBC, noting that the #1 local market for the interview was Pittsburgh.
>> The interview "was grievance theater, not political journalism," Margaret Sullivan writes, but Harris "still injected some reality into Fox News’s world."
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No Trump town hall on CNN |
The window has closed on CNN's offer to hold a town hall with Trump and voters. Last week, the network proposed back-to-back town halls on October 23, and Harris accepted the invite, but Trump did not. "His campaign has not committed to participate, so we are moving forward with a Town Hall event with VP Harris taking questions from a live audience of Pennsylvania voters who say they intend to vote in November," CNN said in a statement this morning.
>> As far as I can tell, Trump has no other TV town halls scheduled, but he seemed to enjoy his experience with Fox's rah-rah crowd earlier this week...
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>> "Gov. Tim Walz will continue the Harris-Walz campaign media blitz with debut appearances on 'The View' and 'The Daily Show'" on Monday, Variety's Marc Malkin scooped.
>> "NewsNation's Chris Cuomo will moderate a town hall with Sen. JD Vance in Detroit on Oct. 24, broadcast on the network and live-streamed exclusively on X," Sara Fischer reported for Axios.
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X owner and billionaire Elon Musk, in first solo town hall Thursday night with Pennsylvania voters, peddled several debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election in support of Trump. "There’s always a question of, like, say, the Dominion voting machines," Musk told a crowd. "It is weird that, I think, they’re used in Philadelphia and in Maricopa County, but not a lot of other places. Doesn’t that seem like a heck of a coincidence?” Dominion, which won a historic $787 million settlement from Fox News last year over its airing of false claims, immediately pushed back on Musk's assertion, stating its software was not in fact used in Philadelphia. CNN's Marshall Cohen has more here.
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Political media notes and quotes |
Spencer Platt/Getty Images |
>> "The Trump book boom:" Oliver Darcy reports that ABC's Jon Karl is working on a Trump-focused book for Penguin Random House, due out next year. (Status)
>> The DNC has bought a Taylor Swift-themed Snapchat filter "to remind Swifties to register to vote and make a plan to cast their ballots." (Variety)
>> Amazon Prime Video has confirmed that Brian Williams will helm "Election Night Live" for the streaming service. (THR)
>> "Google will block election ads across all of its platforms after the last polls close." (Axios)
>> TikTok recently approved ads "that contained election disinformation even though it has a ban on political ads," Barbara Ortutay reports. (AP)
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Liam Reilly reports: Netflix gained five million subscribers in the third quarter, upping its total number of subscribers worldwide to 282.7 million. The company "eclipsed Wall Street's expectations on every major financial metric despite a new programming slate constrained by last year's strikes in Hollywood," Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw wrote. Shares are up about 6% in premarket trading this morning.
>> Improving offerings for advertisers "will be a priority over the next few years," Netflix said, reminding shareholders that it takes time to build out the $$ stream.
>> On a call with investors, Ted Sarandos said the company is "moving closer and closer to a more normalized output schedule now."
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The Disney-owned sports network "'apparently willfully and repeatedly' violated FCC rules concerning the Emergency Alert System in an NBA promo spot last year," when it aired the tone, the commission said Thursday, Variety's Todd Spangler reports. The FCC is proposing a fine of $146,976 for six apparent violations. "Transmitting EAS Tones in the absence of an actual emergency is not a game," FCC Enforcement Bureau chief Loyaan A. Egal said in a statement.
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– "I want to apologize to America" because "I helped create a monster," former NBC chief marketing officer John D. Miller writes. The "monster" was Trump and the creation was "The Apprentice." Miller now says Trump's campaign promises are an "illusion." (US News)
– Trump fans sometimes shrug off his distortions by saying he's "directionally accurate." Ben Mathis-Lilley penned a "brief history of a phrase the right uses to justify Trump’s BS." (Slate)
– Brian Steinberg looks at how the broadcast networks have taken new steps "to merge the business of their TV stations with that of their national newsgathering units." (Variety)
– An incredibly eye-opening column by Geoffrey Fowler: "How Instagram hides your political posts." (Wash Post)
– Meghnad Bose has the lowdown on Election Betting Odds, "a site tracking the election betting market, made by journalists." (CJR)
– Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is building something really interesting with USAFacts. He talked with Jake Tapper about the project earlier this week. (CNN)
– "Spanish-speaking voters are in the crosshairs of disinformation agents," Derek B. Johnson reports. (CyberScoop)
– Sean Craig says some Democrats are coming around to the idea that they should court Joe Rogan. (Daily Beast)
– It's no wonder why people are losing trust in media: "Fossil fuel interests are working to kill solar in one Ohio county. The hometown newspaper is helping." (ProPublica)
– "Anyone can turn you into an AI chatbot," and there's little you can do to stop them." (WIRED)
– Lucy Schiller writes about "the final flight of the airline magazine." (CJR)
– "In a podcast landscape where famous people are always talking to each other, 'Podcrushed' tweaks the formula and, for good measure, adds some adolescent angst," Jessica M. Goldstein writes. (NYT)
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>> As Meta has "backed away from news, Microsoft's LinkedIn has leaned into it," doubling down "on its long-standing efforts to promote news articles and work with news publishers." (The Information)
>> "Meta has fired about two dozen staff in Los Angeles for using their $25 meal credits to buy household items including acne pads, wine glasses and laundry detergent." (FT)
>> Separately, the company has laid off some staffers and moved others to "realign its resources." (AP)
>> "Instagram says it's rolling out a suite of new settings to fight 'sextortion,'" Tatum Hunter and Naomi Nix report. (Wash Post)
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One Direction fans in mourning |
Agustin Marcarian/Reuters |
"As the reality of Liam Payne’s death sets in, his family, friends and former One Direction bandmates are still trying to make sense of the devastating loss while authorities press forward in their investigation into the circumstances surrounding Payne’s final moments and fatal fall," CNN's Alli Rosenbloom, Dan Heching and Sandra Gonzalez report. One Direction fans gathered at the Obelisk in Buenos Aires yesterday to pay tribute as investigators search for answers in Payne's death.
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>> Hitting theaters this weekend : "Anora," "Smile 2," and "Goodrich."
>> Netflix will launch "Stranger Season" ahead of the fifth and final season of "Stranger Things," Alex Weprin reports. (THR)
>> Putting Baby on Stage: "Lionsgate wants theatergoers to have the time of their lives, so the studio is adapting 'Dirty Dancing' as a Broadway musical," Rebecca Rubin writes. (Variety)
>> Max dropped the official trailer for “Dune: Prophecy,” set to premiere on November 17. (YouTube)
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