John Ourand • November 22, 2024

About That Tyson-Paul Netflix Number…

The broadcast guys are calling bullshit on Netflix’s Tyson-Paul ratings. But Nielsen isn’t unbiased, either. Alas, as streaming reorients the industry toward self-reported data, the only constant is that nobody’s numbers really add up.

Dylan Byers • November 21, 2024

Mika & Joe’s Excellent Adventure

News and notes on the real ulterior motive behind the Mar-a-Lago pilgrimage. Plus, all the nail-biting and agita unleashed at 30 Rock in the wake of the Comcast spinco news.

John Ourand • November 19, 2024

The Shape of Silberwasser

A candid chat with TNT Sports chairman and C.E.O. Luis Silberwasser on losing the NBA, winning back some concessions in the afterbidding market, and the mediaco’s realistic expectations for their accumulating grab bag of new rights—Roland Garros, Mountain West football, NASCAR, etcetera.

Dylan Byers • November 15, 2024

The Mark-est Hour

A gloomy company-wide meeting revealed Mark Thompson’s CNN is still caught between the linear past and the digital future, and nonpolitical news versus 24-hour Trump TV. Insiders wonder who’s paying attention to the content while others wonder if a more sinister fate beckons.

John Ourand • November 15, 2024

Is the NFL Falling Hard for Amazon?

For the first time, a streaming service outdrew one of the NFL’s top TV partners in same-week viewership. Now, TV execs are grumbling that the NFL is setting up a future rights battle by giving streamers a taste of potential glory with the choicest matchups.

Dylan Byers • November 14, 2024

How Chris Wallace Cut the Cord

The backstory of Wallace’s self-defenestration at CNN—the latest shoe to drop in an era that won’t stop ending.

John Ourand • November 12, 2024

Will Zaz’s Prayers Be Answered?

Media C.E.O.s are hoping against hope that Trump 2.0 will usher in a new M&A permission structure allowing them to, among other things, finally offload those linear TV assets they should have bailed on 10 years ago, like Rupert did. But, as LightShed Partners’ Rich Greenfield argues, nothing is easy and everything takes forever.

Dylan Byers • November 8, 2024

CNN’s Existential Post-Election Season

With the election in the rearview, C.E.O. Mark Thompson will finally implement his true transformation plan at the network—including the culling of hundreds of jobs. Many of CNN’s own journalists, plenty of whom were blinded by Trump’s significant victory, have evinced similar naiveté about their own fates.

John Ourand • November 8, 2024

Republicans Buy ESPN Subscriptions, Too

During his six years in Bristol, chairman Jimmy Pitaro has carefully pivoted ESPN away from a network that condones political expression to a business-friendly safe space for sports. And he’s not changing his tune now.

Dylan Byers • November 7, 2024

The #Resistance Is Futile

With Trump 2.0 upon us, a number of D.C. media people are cautiously wondering if the highly lucrative, gung-ho cri de coeur, green-room-and-book-deal #resistance marketplace of his last term will return to town with the 47th president. Alas, Trump may not have changed, but the industry sure has.

Eriq Gardner • November 5, 2024

The NBA-Amazon Prenup Contains a Legal Time Bomb

Courtside seating for C.E.O. Andy Jassy is just the cherry atop a highly redacted 35-page contract that gives Amazon the right to adopt future technologies for broadcasting basketball games—a mistake similar to the one the league made with TNT in failing to anticipate streaming. Isn’t that what the lawyers are for?

Dylan Byers • November 1, 2024

Render Unto Cesar…

Inside 30 Rock, word that Comcast is considering spinning out NBCU’s lesser cable assets—potentially severing MSNBC from NBC—has kicked off a furious sequence of questions about the future of both networks, and about the fate of NBC News Group boss Cesar Conde.

John Ourand • October 31, 2024

Dude, Where’s My NASCAR

How America’s homegrown motorsport is branching out: to new countries, new venues, and most importantly, more broadcast partners. NASCAR president Steve Phelps explains how they plan to grow without pissing off their faithful. (Michael Jordan is another story.)

Dylan Byers • October 31, 2024

Bezos’s Inferno

The latest news, notes, and hunger cries from within The Washington Post, which finds itself embroiled in a largely predictable self-immolation of its own design—the latest scandal produced by an owner, management team, and rank-and-file that appear to operate a little too comfortably in opposition to one another.

John Ourand • October 28, 2024

ESPN’s Streaming Squeeze

TV distributors are struggling to play hardball with the likes of ESPN, Peacock, and Paramount+ as sports programmers move their best content to streaming. But distribution executives also realize how much ESPN needs affiliate fees to compete against the deep-pocketed tech streamers that are piling into this space. And they’ve got their own ideas for how to use that leverage to their advantage.