THE LATEST ARTICLES
HOLLYWOOD
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April 26, 2022
Cesar’s Ukraine Tour
30 Rock is aflutter with frustration and eye-rolling over the NBC News chairman’s recent trip to Lviv. Is it typical TV news backbiting, or is a larger frustration afoot?
HOLLYWOOD
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April 22, 2022
CNN+’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Months before the deal closed, Discovery executives made it clear to both AT&T chief John Stankey and WarnerMedia chief Jason Kilar that they had questions and doubts about CNN+'s strategy, its cost, and the product itself.
HOLLYWOOD
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April 15, 2022
The Maddow Iceberg
Maddow’s non-surprise surprise announcement has been foreshadowed for months. So why doesn’t the network have a viable solution? Is 20 percent Maddow at 1.25x or so the price really better than nothing? And at what cost?
HOLLYWOOD
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April 13, 2022
Zaz, Licht, & The CNN+ Kilarbomb
The fact that CNN+ is getting clobbered in the trade press is, if anything, a welcome development for the new ownership, insofar as it provides them cloud cover for a do-over. Oh, and they’re targeting Jon Karl, too.
HOLLYWOOD
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April 8, 2022
Norah O’Donnell Makes Her Next Career Move
After plenty of rumors to the contrary, Norah O’Donnell is staying home, and set up to finally become the Peter Jennings of CBS—the star that the news division is built around, which in 2022, naturally, means some streaming stuff, too. So is it all water under the bridge with Neeraj?
WALL STREET
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April 1, 2022
D.C.’s Post-Trump Media Reality-Check Rumbles On
Is there life after the 45th president? Some companies are articulating a new path; others, not so much.
HOLLYWOOD
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March 30, 2022
Notes on Zaz Rule and CNN+’s Debut
David Zaslav’s date with destiny—the endlessly anticipated consummation of Discovery and the WarnerMedia assets—is finally (finally) less than two weeks away. And yet the first major artifact of his tenure—the emergence of CNN+—is already in the market. Herewith, some notes from Hudson Yards.
HOLLYWOOD
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March 25, 2022
The Panic in Zazworld
Discovery and AT&T’s year-long dance will finally be consummated on April 11, replete with a trip to the stock exchange. What happens next is anyone’s guess as tight-lipped C.E.O. David Zaslav has kept his cards close to all those vests of his.
WASHINGTON
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March 23, 2022
Politico’s New Administration Is Taking Office
Fifteen years after it broke onto the scene in an unmistakably disruptive manner, re-defining the stodgy news business with its metabolic frisky style and scoop-bazooka, Politico seems intent on entering its own Washington sinecure of sorts—as the pendulum swings, in the words of one founder, towards institutionalism in D.C. Will its new newsroom leader commensurately facilitate the anti-disruption disruption?
WALL STREET
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March 18, 2022
The Times’ Latest Woke Kerfuffle
How an unsigned editorial upended Twitter, presaged a new Times agenda, and revealed the media company's challenges in the post-Trump era.