Hey there. The still-brand-new Paramount Skydance is expected to start a painful layoff process this week, even as speculation about next steps in the Warner Bros. Discovery "auction" consumes much of the media business world's oxygen. It says a lot about the state of the business that the first four or five stories today all relate back to Paramount and David Ellison...
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Jon Stewart wants to stay
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Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for The New Yorker |
Appearing together on stage at The New Yorker Festival yesterday, David Remnick asked Jon Stewart, "Your contract comes up in December. You're going to sign another one?"
Stewart said, "We're working on staying" at "The Daily Show" desk, but then he cautioned, "it's not as clear cut as all that." Stewart started to say the business is changing, perhaps alluding to Comedy Central's parent Paramount. But, Remnick said, "If it's up to you, you're staying?" Yes, Stewart said.
Remnick had brought up the political context earlier in the conversation: Jimmy Kimmel's suspension, Paramount's ownership change, perceptions of media mogul capitulation. So "what do you do" in those circumstances? "You don't compromise on what you do, and you do it till they tell you to leave," Stewart said. "That's all you can do."
>> Bill Carter recently wrote about Stewart and the future of "The Daily Show" for LateNighter here. Scroll down for three more outstanding quotes from Stewart...
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Sheridan gets poached from Paramount |
Puck's Matt Belloni with the big Sunday night scoop: "Yellowstone" creator Taylor Sheridan, the mega TV producer, "has decided to leave Paramount when his film and TV commitments are up." He is setting up at NBCUniversal with Donna Langley, which "suggests that her company is still playing to win," Belloni says.
>> I think the writing was on this wall in April when Sheridan publicly urged Ellison to keep interim co-CEO Chris McCarthy and said "I don't know of another executive that I could do this with." McCarthy left when Paramount changed hands. Belloni detailed some of the related/other reasons for Sheridan's exit here...
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'Moving fast and spending big' |
There are multiple profiles of Ellison in the works right now. The WSJ's version, by Joe Flint, Isabella Simonetti and Ben Fritz, came out over the weekend, and said he's "moving fast and spending big to remake Hollywood."
The trio quoted former Paramount movie chief Sherry Lansing, now a PSKY board member, saying, "The last eight weeks have just been thrilling to watch." And they wrote that the protracted, politically tainted regulatory review of the Paramount deal, "while frustrating, gave Ellison time to plan for his next acquisitions and start considering Warner Discovery so that he could build an entity that could truly compete with Netflix and have plenty of intellectual property to fuel a strong theatrical business."
>> It's a great story, but this typo in the print edition is too amusing not to note: Someone (or something?) at the Journal changed Cindy Holland's name to "Cindy The Netherlands" 😂
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How high will Ellison go? |
This Variety headline asks a key question now: "How High Will David Ellison Go in Paramount's Bid to Bag Warner Bros. Discovery?" The Paramount rank and file, though, want to know how steep the cuts are going to be. And a "Warner Bros. sale could kill even more jobs," as TheWrap notes in this new story...
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Maduro backs out of '60' interview |
Meantime, Paramount's "60 Minutes" brought the heat again last night. Sharyn Alfonsi's lead-off segment featured her rare access to Venezuela, where she was expecting to interview dictator Nicolás Maduro. But "after months of negotiations, Maduro agreed to do an interview with us," she reported. "Minutes before the interview was finally set to begin, it was called off. We were told the president's minister of defense and head of intelligence said it was no longer safe to do the interview." The CBS crew had more time to talk with regular Venezuelans instead...
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Speaking of '60 Minutes'... |
Speaking on stage with PBS "NewsHour" anchor Amna Nawaz while accepting an award from Colby College, former "60 Minutes" exec producer Bill Owens "said he faced intense internal pressure from his corporate bosses to avoid certain stories that had the potential to generate backlash" for Paramount, Jeremy Barr reports for The Guardian. This, of course, was under Paramount's previous ownership.
>> Owens said "at one point I got a phone call from someone that was trying to be an intermediary saying: 'Do you need to mention Trump’s name that often?'"
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CNN's new subscription product, billed as "the most complete way to experience CNN within its existing suite of digital products across web, mobile and connected TV apps," launches tomorrow. Email me if you have questions about the product; I'll answer some of them in tomorrow's newsletter.
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Tonight: CNN launches a new West Coast program, "The Story Is with Elex Michaelson," at 9 p.m. PT/midnight ET.
Tuesday: New nonfiction releases include Abby Phillip's "A Dream Deferred," Jon Karl's "Retribution" and Irin Carmon's "Unbearable."
Wednesday: Google, Meta and Microsoft report earnings.
Thursday: Apple and Amazon report earnings.
Thursday: Trump and Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet. "Hopefully we'll get clarity on TikTok," The Information's Martin Peers notes.
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ICE detains British media commentator |
Immigration authorities have "detained British commentator Sami Hamdi, revoked his visa and said he would be deported rather than allowed to complete his speaking tour in the United States," Reuters reports, citing a Homeland Security official. Laura Loomer is taking credit for the action.
>> Hamdi is a well-known analyst on British TV networks. CAIR, which called his detention "a blatant affront to free speech," has "accused the Trump administration of detaining him over his criticism of the Israeli government."
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New Yorker's lawyer asks: What if? |
It's rare — and always worth reading — when the lawyer for a top news outlet pens a piece. In this one, The New Yorker's general counsel Fabio Bertoni poses a question: "What if the big law firms hadn't caved to Trump?"
Bertoni says "it doesn't require a giant speculative leap to conclude that, had major U.S. law firms not so quickly surrendered to Trump, this spring, he would have been denied early momentum for his lawlessness. Perhaps a united opposition might have even provided the opposite momentum, toward a defense of the rule of law." Read on...
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WSJ: Trump 'grimaced' at teardown photos |
The WSJ's most-read article last night and this morning is a behind the scenes piece about Trump barreling through DC bureaucracy "to get his White House ballroom."
The article includes this telling detail: "Trump himself grimaced at the initial photos" of the East Wing teardown last week, "as he thought they appeared to show the Executive Mansion being demolished. He quickly issued a statement to clarify only the separate structure of the East Wing was coming down."
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ICYMI over the weekend... |
>> Alexandra Bruell described Condé Nast's "strategy for media's new normal: glam events and paywalls." (WSJ)
>> Will Oremus profiled Larry Sanger, the Wikipedia cofounder who "is fueling the right’s campaign against it." (WaPo)
>> Jordyn Holman quizzed Pinterest CEO Bill Ready, who is "shifting the virtual pinboard platform toward shopping and things that 'make you feel better.'" (NYT)
>> The Athletic launched a new 30-minute weekly show. Through a pact with Amazon, episodes are available early for Fire TV customers. (Awful Announcing)
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It's an 'online trust crisis' |
What has the Sora app done with its hyperreal AI videos? Ignited an "online trust crisis," the LAT's Nilesh Christopher writes. (CNN's Jake Tapper vividly demonstrated that in this recent AI-made video.)
>> Amid mounting legal pressure, Christopher notes, "Sora has become more strict about when it will allow the re-creation of copyrighted characters," and "users who aren’t fans of the restrictions have started creating video memes about the content policy violation warnings."
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Weekend box office report |
The Ankler's Sean McNulty summed up the weekend box office with six words and one emoji: "'Springsteen' Doesn’t Deliver, SONY's Anime 🔥 Continues."
A few more words: Sony's Crunchyroll anime flick "Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc" opened to around $17.3 million, “well ahead of expectations in another win for the genre,” while Disney's "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere" had to "settle for fourth place in its debut," Pam McClintock reports for THR...
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Stewart's 'fight like hell' message |
Finishing up where we began today, with Jon Stewart, here are three more standout comments from his on-stage interview yesterday:
>> First, Stewart offered one of the most interesting, concise answers to "why Trump won" that I've ever heard: "Because of the dissatisfaction of an analog system in a digital world."
>> Stewart's fears about Trump's authoritarian grip on the US are obvious — he said we may wind up in "some kind of soft autocracy where news is controlled" — but he said "we have a lot of different avenues. And suppression creates opportunity, and a populace that is thirsty for inspiration and leadership and morality and integrity and lack of corruption, that's fertile ground for that opportunity."
>> Talking about new media stars like Joe Rogan, Stewart said, "it's not acceptable to just say, well, 'I don't like what he does.' Then do it better, beat them at their own game. Go on." Enough with the "deplatforming" rhetoric, he said: "We're all fucking platformed. There's no one in this world right now that isn't platformed. And so if you have a problem with information, then fight like hell to get better information out there."
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