Happy Monday! Here's the latest on Haaretz, MSNBC, Steve Bannon, Kaitlan Collins, Bluesky, BTS, Jon M. Chu, and more... |
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Elon Musk has called MSNBC "the utter scum of the Earth." He has said the channel "peddles puerile propaganda." Just a few days ago he said "MSNBC is going down." And now he is posting memes about buying the channel.
Conventional wisdom holds that Musk and his friends are just joking. But Musk's posts are adding to the anxiety that MSNBC staffers are feeling about the reelection of Donald Trump and the recently announced spinoff of Comcast's cable channels.
I spent Sunday on the phone with sources to gauge what might be going on. I learned that more than one benevolent billionaire with liberal bonafides has already reached out to acquaintances at MSNBC to express interest in buying the cable channel. The inbound interest was reassuring, one of the sources said, since it showed that oppositional figures like Musk (who famously bought Twitter to blow it up) would not be the only potential suitors.
But let's be clear: Contrary to the claims that Trump allies are posting on X, Comcast has not put a "for sale" sign on MSNBC's door. If Brian Roberts really wanted to sell the liberal cable news channel, he could have done that already. Instead, he is moving MSNBC and a half dozen other cable channels into "SpinCo," a pure-play cable programming company. The hope is that spinning off the pressured-but-profitable channels will boost shares of both Comcast and "SpinCo."
Comcast says the transaction will take about a year. At that point, could someone swoop in with a bid for MSNBC? It's complicated. "SpinCo" is structured as a tax-free spinoff, and immediately divesting an asset would have tax implications that could forestall any such sale.
"Typically, we would expect a two year waiting period before any potential further strategic action by the SpinCo to preserve the tax-free nature of the spin although we believe there are scenarios where industry consolidation including SpinCo could happen earlier," analyst Benjamin Swinburne of Morgan Stanley wrote in a note to investors last week. (Morgan Stanley is a financial advisor to Comcast.)
Plus, "SpinCo" executives may well conclude that offloading MSNBC is not in the best interest of shareholders, since the channel's loyal audience is a form of leverage in negotiations with distributors. Executives involved with the spin-off say they intend to be predators, not prey – buying new channels, not selling off old ones bit by bit.
So selling MSNBC to win favor with the president-elect is simply not the plan. I have sensed quite a bit of enthusiasm at MSNBC about "SpinCo," actually, because the new structure should allow for more investment into MSNBC, CNBC and the other brands.
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All that said, Musk's posts shouldn't be ignored. He famously foreshadowed his pursuit of Twitter with a tweet that asked "How much is it?" On Friday, he similarly asked of MSNBC, "How much does it cost?" He was responding to Donald Trump, Jr., who posted a meme that (falsely) said MSNBC is for sale and wrote, "Hey @elonmusk I have the funniest idea ever!!!"
Joe Rogan jumped in and said "If you buy MSNBC I would like Rachel Maddow's job." (He misspelled her name.) "I will wear the same outfit and glasses, and I will tell the same lies." The trio's fans ate it up, and Musk kept posting about the idea all weekend long, at one point promoting a homophobic meme that equated Maddow with Mark Cuban.
By Sunday, Trump Jr. wrote, "I think I started something here. The amount of people that want this to happen is incredible!!!!" Matt Gaetz replied, "I 100 percent want this to happen." The mockery is the point, and maybe it's nothing more than that...
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The 'media capture' model |
While Musk and his friends trade memes and crack each other up, there's a serious undercurrent here. It's known as "media capture." This happened in Hungary when far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán's "close allies also purchased private television and radio outlets to convert them into pro-government outlets," Hadas Gold wrote earlier this month.
>> "Media capture" is a subset of what Protect Democracy executive director Ian Bassin calls "autocratic capture," where "the government uses its power to enforce loyalty from the private sector." On this episode of Vanity Fair's "Inside the Hive," Bassin said "I think we are in danger of seeing that happen across the American marketplace in all sorts of sectors..."
>> In a new essay for Politico Magazine titled "I Watched Orbán Destroy Hungary's Democracy. Here's My Advice for the Trump Era," Gábor Scheiring, a former member of the Hungarian parliament, wrote that Orbán "consolidated media control through centralized propaganda, market pressure and loyal billionaires." In the U.S., he wrote, "liberal-minded billionaires should not sit idly by as they did in Hungary, watching the right take over the media..."
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Mark Cuban sees blue skies |
The aforementioned Mark Cuban was a key billionaire surrogate for Kamala Harris, so would he have any interest in MSNBC? I asked him last night. "I don't think there is anything anyone can do to change the impact of linear TV news. So the answer is no," Cuban replied. "People feel like MSNBC is not doing enough to rival Fox. I don't see that. What could they do differently? Manufacture conspiracy theories? Go all in on crypto?"
Cuban added: "I would rather promote Bluesky and hope it helps them aggregate audience, and create a network affect that gives agency to all viewpoints. I think with the addition of real time news and sports, it could give Twitter a run for its money."
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>> Over the weekend, NPR's David Folkenflik explained why viewers shouldn't expect any "near term" changes to MSNBC...
>> In the medium to long term, the Trump administration "will have ample opportunities to slow or even kill future transactions," CNN's Matt Egan wrote...
>> Joe Scarborough namechecked Musk this morning during a rousing segment deriding influencers who "pop off on Twitter" and pretend to be real reporters...
>> Speaking of Musk: TikTok CEO Shou Chew reached out to Musk "in recent weeks," viewing him "as a potentially helpful conduit to the incoming administration at a time when TikTok faces the prospect of a looming ban in the U.S.," the WSJ scooped...
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Infowars battle heads to court |
Hadas Gold writes: Alex Jones and his allies will try to make their case in court this afternoon that satirical news site The Onion should not have won the auction for Jones' Infowars conspiracy platform. Jones and his allies have argued that the court-appointed trustee, The Onion, and the families of some of the Sandy Hook victims "colluded" with a "frankenstein" bid and asked a judge to halt the sale. The families agreed to forgo a portion of the proceeds from the sale to boost The Onion's bid, which helped The Onion win the auction even though a company affiliated with Jones put up more cash. Jones, of course, owes the families nearly $1.5 billion for defamation.
Bankruptcy judge Chris Lopez did express frustration with how the auction was handled during a previous status conference, so it's entirely possible he could halt the sale as it stands now. But execs at The Onion have been expressing optimism, saying they expected Jones wouldn't react well to the sale, and that they welcome more transparency into the auction process... |
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Back to 'flooding the zone' |
We have seen this show before. Trump is hiring lieutenants from Fox News and setting the media agenda via social media. Pro-Trump media outlets are celebrating the president-elect's swift work filling out his cabinet. To MSNBC's Alex Wagner, the torrent of news is reminiscent of Trump's first term, and Steve Bannon's infamous "flood the zone with s***" comment. "It's not that Donald Trump is some kind of brilliant tactician but, on some level, he does seem to realize that the best way to avoid scrutiny is to simply do a lot of bad things — all at once — to keep everyone's attention divided," Wagner said...
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Slate staff writer Molly Olmstead listened to a full week of Steve Bannon's "War Room," and her takeaways are well worth reading. "On War Room, the battle for the heart of the Republican Party is just as urgent as the battle against the Democrats, if not more so," she writes. A couple other key quotes:
>> "Bannon's great victory on election night was over not the Harris campaign but the idea that Republicans needed to moderate their stances on immigration and far-right isolationism..."
>> Bannon's listeners continually hear that "Democrats are not just rivals in a democratic competition for America's identity but crooks who need to be countered with similarly underhanded tactics." Read on...
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Israeli government sanctions Haaretz |
Here's Haaretz diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Lis covering the news about his own newspaper: "Israel's government approved on Sunday a proposal by Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi that mandates any government-funded body refrain from communicating with Haaretz or placing advertisements in the paper. The proposal was approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu."
Karhi's office defended the boycott by citing publisher Amos Schocken's recent remarks about "Palestinian freedom fighters."
Haaretz "has long been in the crosshairs of the current government," The Guardian's Jason Burke notes. The newspaper responded on Sunday by saying, “Like his friends Putin, Erdoğan, and Orbán, Netanyahu is trying to silence a critical, independent newspaper. Haaretz will not balk and will not morph into a government pamphlet that publishes messages approved by the government and its leader."
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>> Kaitlan Collins, who is very well sourced in Trumpworld, may add CNN chief White House correspondent to her primetime anchoring duties, Max Tani reports. CNN declined to comment. (Semafor)
>> On Sunday's "MediaBuzz" Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall cited her own experience as a rape victim and "made an impassioned case" against ex-colleague Pete Hegseth. (Mediaite)
>> Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene are laying the groundwork for another season of defund-NPR. The effort has never gone anywhere in the past. (TheWrap)
>> Elahe Izadi writes that many Harris voters have tuned out the news and turned inward since Election Day... (Wash Post)
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The humans caught in the AI 'loop' |
Last night on "60 Minutes," Lesley Stahl led a powerful report about the "gruntwork" of "sorting, labeling, and sifting reams of data to train and improve AI for companies like Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft and Google." The work is "often farmed out" to countries like Kenya, she said, and the workers "say they're overworked, underpaid and exploited." Watch/read here...
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>> "Bluesky has 'blown past' its user growth projections so much that it's racing to get more servers to keep the site running smoothly..." (Insider)
>> "The Right Has a Bluesky Problem," Ali Breland argues: "The X exodus is weakening a way for conservatives to speak to the masses..." (The Atlantic)
>> "Australia's government has withdrawn a bill that would give a media watchdog power to monitor digital platforms and require them to keep records about misinformation and disinformation on their networks.” (AP)
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'Glicked' charms the box office |
Hollywood was hoping for a big weekend and "Wicked” and “Gladiator II” did not disappoint. The pair of films, dubbed "Glicked" after the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon last year, pulled in "an estimated $169.5 million in their domestic debut," with "Wicked" "expected to rake in $114 million, while 'Gladiator II' will pull in $55.5 million," CNN's Auzinea Bacon reports.
>> "Wicked" also surpassed Disney's "Into the Woods" to become the biggest opening weekend for a Broadway musical adaptation, according to Variety.
>> Together, the two films "dominated the box office, but didn’t quite reach the level of 'Barbenheimer,'" NBC notes...
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>> "The music industry is entering new era, one driven by a slowdown at the major labels, the growing market for independents and the rapacity of private equity," Lucas Shaw reports. (Bloomberg)
>> "All seven members of BTS have now hit the Billboard 200 album chart's top 10 as soloists,” Keith Caulfield writes. (Billboard)
>> After all the news stories about whether "Wicked" fans would or should sing at the theater, The Rock told fans at the UK premiere of "Moana 2" that they "should feel free to sing" along... (BBC)
>> Rebecca Rubin interviewed Jon M. Chu about "Wicked Part Two," which comes out next November... (Variety)
>> And James Hibberd cobbled together a list of “everything Ridley Scott has said about "Gladiator III." (THR)
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