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Tuesday, October 14, 2025 |
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Happy Tuesday! Here's the latest on President Trump's triumphant trip and the Pentagon's press pass deadline. Plus: Instagram tightens teen account settings, TiVo stops making TiVos, and the "plus" era ends. Let's get to it... |
At the surface level, the possibility of a deal between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN's parent) is barely making a ripple.
Beneath the surface, however, the thrashing and maneuvering is wild — like something straight out of Discovery's "Shark Week."
New Paramount boss David Ellison clearly wants WBD's assets, but WBD chief David Zaslav and his board are committed to the plan already in motion to split the company into two, believing Warner Bros. and Discovery Global will be much more highly valued that way.
Paramount recently made an initial overture for all of WBD, and the Warner board rebuffed it, two people with knowledge of the matter said, confirming Bloomberg's report from over the holiday weekend. One of the sources told me both sides recognized it was a "lowball" proposal. Another person cautioned that Ellison is "pragmatic and rational when it comes to value and pricing."
Paramount "has several options" now, Bloomberg's team wrote, "including boosting its bid, going directly to shareholders or finding additional backing through a financial partner."
WBD shares have more than doubled in the past six months, largely due to M&A speculation, and the stock is now near $18, so Ellison's reported $20 offer is just the beginning of a tug-of-war. I think our CNN.com headline in September about a "bidding war" still applies today.
However, "the Ellison camp argues" that "without his buyout interest for the entire company — not just its streaming and studio — Zaslav's stock will crater," Charlie Gasparino's wrote for the NY Post yesterday.
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Zaslav playing the long game? |
Deadline's Dominic Patten and Jill Goldsmith recently quoted a streaming exec saying Zaslav is "a dealmaker, that’s who he is," adding, "he's always gauging the possibilities and getting the best value, and that is what I think he is doing here."
To stave off Paramount, Puck's William Cohan wrote that Zaslav has to "make a cogent and effective argument that, in the long run, WBD shareholders will be better off with the breakup plan that he set in motion in June, and which is expected to become effective by next April." He noted that Bank of America's Jessica Reif Ehrlich is making that argument by valuing the streaming/studios side of the house alone at $30+ per share. She was also notably bullish about the Discovery Global side, which will include CNN after the split.
>> Reps for WBD and Paramount are not commenting — that's the way it usually works during these M&A battles...
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Trump praises his Paramount 'friends' |
To some, this media merger chatter is mostly about business; to others, it's mostly about politics. Truth be told, it's hard to know where one ends and the other begins.
Ellison's backscratching relationship with President Trump (remember the apparent PSA deal?) and his installation of Bari Weiss at CBS News have been the talk of the media world — and have made some WBD employees apprehensive about an Ellison takeover. (Look no further than HBO star John Oliver's scrutiny of Ellison and Weiss last Sunday. Yes, he's a comedian, but he was serious when he warned viewers to keep a close eye on CBS.)
Trump's POV on the matter speaks volumes: He told the press pool over the weekend that "Larry Ellison is great, and his son, David, is great. They're friends of mine. They're big supporters of mine. And they'll do the right thing. They're going to make CBS, hopefully they'll" — unfortunately, Trump trailed off there, because we'd all like to hear the rest of that thought...
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News outlets reject Pentagon rules |
Today's the day. The Pentagon says beat reporters have to sign restrictive new rules by tonight or surrender their press passes by tomorrow. In an impressive show of solidarity, virtually every major news outlet (even Newsmax!) is rejecting the ultimatum and saying they will not sign. Here's my story on that.
This means that (barring some last-minute surprise) journalists will no longer be credentialed to enter the Pentagon complex — though, let's be honest, the benefits of a press pass have shriveled up this year, as Pete Hegseth's aides have booted news outlets from workspaces, scrapped routine news briefings, and deemed most of the building off-limits.
That's the big story here: Under Hegseth, the Pentagon has been "systematically limiting access to information about the U.S. military" all year long, the Pentagon Press Association said yesterday. This paperwork fight is the culmination.
CNN has already said that its journalists will not accept the new restrictions. I'm told that Fox News, NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN will issue a joint statement later today saying much the same thing. At the moment, the only media outlet that has publicly accepted the rules is One America News, a pro-Trump organ that stands to the right of Fox and Newsmax. WaPo's Scott Nover has been tracking it all on X.
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The leaks will continue... |
News outlets will continue to cover the Pentagon thoroughly, with or without credentials. In fact, some well-known members of the Pentagon press corps are using this press pass controversy to encourage tipsters to get in touch with them.
>> The Guardian's Hugo Powell wisely asks: "What will Pete Hegseth do when the leaks keep coming even though reporters aren't in the Pentagon? Will he punish the officials he put in charge of stopping the leaks/told him the leaks would stop if reporters were gone?"
>> Read this by NPR's Tom Bowman: "Why I'm handing in my Pentagon press pass."
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The FT's banner headline this morning: "Trump declares 'historic dawn' after final 20 living Israeli hostages freed." The emotional scenes and evocative speeches were covered wall-to-wall by CNN and other networks yesterday. For two "dark and often hopeless years, Israelis rallied to keep the hostages in the headlines. It worked," Matti Friedman wrote for The Free Press in a column titled "They Are Home."
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Trump thanks press (but dings TIME) |
"I want to thank the media," Trump said from the stage in Egypt. "You've been so respectful on this deal." He said he watched "various newscasts" while aboard Air Force One, and "they were all fair." His comment that stood out to me was, "It was so pleasant to watch." (Scroll down for a critical take about his TV addiction.)
Around the time he landed back in the states, Trump wrote a Truth Social post about TIME's new cover, trumpeting his peace plan. The story was "relatively good," he wrote, "but the picture may be the Worst of All Time." It's "a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?" Here's the cover image.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin threw the "party of the year" last night (Emily Sundberg's words) to launch "1929," which is on sale today. I read an early copy over the summer and was captivated by every chapter. In attendance last night: Michael Bloomberg, A.G. Sulzberger, Adam Silver, Maggie Haberman, Barry Diller, Rebecca Blumenstein, Cesar Conde, Ben Smith, Risa Heller, Michael Wolff and too many more to name.
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More of today's new nonfiction reads |
Eric Trump's "Under Siege" is #1 on Amazon's new releases list, indicating huge preorder interest. If you're more interested in reporting, Kenneth Vogel is out with "Devils' Advocates," about DC's foreign lobbying industry, and Ken Belson is out with "Every Day Is Sunday," an engrossing read about the NFL's growth into a cultural "juggernaut."
Plus, veteran editors Laura Brown and Kristina O'Neill are launching a book about a topic close to my heart: "All the Cool Girls Get Fired" is about "How to Let Go of Being Let Go and Come Back on Top." And former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is releasing "Life, Law & Liberty: A Memoir."
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Obama says: Just imagine this |
Barack Obama to Marc Maron: "If I had sent in the National Guard into Texas and just said, 'You know what? A lot of problems in Dallas, a lot of crime there, and I don’t care what Gov. Abbott says, I'm going to kind of take over law enforcement, because I think things are out of control,' it is mind-boggling to me how Fox News would have responded."
Indeed, even unhinged rumors about an Obama-era military training exercise in Texas caused a right-wing backlash cycle in 2015. Right-wing media once treated even imaginary federal overreach as tyranny, yet now shrug at Trump's very real actions...
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Instagram goes PG-13 for teens |
Instagram "is further cracking down on what millions of young people can see on the platform, aligning its 'Teen Accounts' safety settings with the guidelines for PG-13 movies," CNN's Clare Duffy reports. Under these new restrictions, "Instagram will not promote and may even hide posts featuring strong language, or those which could encourage 'harmful behaviors' such as content featuring risky stunts or marijuana paraphernalia." Clare's full story is here...
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"Everything is television," Derek Thompson wrote in an insightful column over the weekend, observing that "whether the starting point is a student directory" (Facebook), radio (podcasting), or an AI image generator (Sora), "the end point seems to be the same: a river of short-form video."
Thompson borrows the word "flow" from Raymond Williams's 1974 book about TV, which described communication shifting from discrete items (like a book or a scheduled newscast) to a continuous stream. In the TikTok age, "it is the flow, not the content, that is primary."
>> Among the many reasons why this matters: "Mastering the grammar of television — especially short-form television — does not feel secondary to political success in America; it is political success in America."
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'Finite is the new premium'
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Anthony DeRosa picked up where Thompson left off and argued that tech giants "optimized so hard toward engagement that they went beyond what people actually wanted." Gen Z is leading the way by moving away from social media, he writes, citing this FT story.
His thesis: Exhausted by the "flow," people "started wanting bounded experiences again. Things that end. Things that happen once. Things that require showing up. The entire economic model assumed 'more' would always mean better. You can finish the weekly publications. Podcasts with final episodes. Events at specific times in specific rooms. Communities that close applications. Products that limit usage. Finite is the new premium."
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Last night I had the honor of presenting awards at the Radio Television Digital News Association's annual Edward R. Murrow Awards Gala. If you want to feel inspired about the state of journalism, check out these lists of the national and regional winners...
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>> Taylor Swift's "The Life of a Showgirl" just enjoyed "the biggest first week in modern music history." (AP)
>> Swift "is keeping the 'Eras Tour' love going with a docuseries and concert film," coming to Disney+ in December. (CNN)
>> "SAG-AFTRA voiced their appreciation for California lawmakers on Monday, after new legislation was signed to protect a performer’s likeness." (TheWrap)
>> Apple has quietly rebranded its streaming platform as "Apple TV" without the + sign. Tony Maglio says it "marks the end of the 'plus' era." (THR)
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