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SPORTS
&
MEDIA

Lachlan Murdoch, David Zaslav, Bob Iger

Sports Media’s Three-Headed Monster

Here in Vegas, on the protracted eve of the Super Bowl, everyone is talking about the Disney-Fox-WBD deal and what it means. Is this a cable killer? An experiment? And who is really in charge? The only consensus is that everyone is pissed that they weren’t looped in sooner.
John Ourand • February 8, 2024
Dylan Byers • February 8, 2024
Less Than Harlow
Phil Mattingly Poppy Harlow
The readout from the CNN bunker as Mark Thompson reshapes CNN’s morning schedule, signals diminished interest in linear, and leaves his company of TV stalwarts wondering about the next shoe to drop.
Eriq Gardner • February 6, 2024
Elon’s Legal Options & Byron’s Edge
elon musk
Notes from the legal bar, in Wilmington and Washington, on Musk’s latest board entanglement and Byron Allen’s political play for Paramount.
Timothy Forbes, Steve Forbes and Christopher "Kip" Forbes
Dylan Byers • February 3, 2024
Capitalist Tools
Forbes, which is now up for auction one more time, has had a fascinating afterlife since the family sold their control. And it might be a harbinger for some legacy brands, but for one pesky detail.
Jimmy Finkelstein Pamela Gross
Dylan Byers • February 1, 2024
Jimmy’s Quibi
News, notes, and reflections on a totally predictable, ego-driven, anachronistic media tragedy.
Netflix reportedly paid $20 million for the recent hit ‘Beckham.’
Julia Alexander • January 31, 2024
Are We Living In a Sports Content Bubble?
Conventional wisdom, spurred on by Netflix, suggests that it is smarter to invest in sports-adjacent documentary content than exorbitant and ephemeral sports rights packages. But, obviously, it’s much more complicated.
As part of the deal, the group will start off owning about 40 percent of the club.
John Ourand • January 30, 2024
The Orioles Prepare for Private Equity Control
The Angelos family is selling the team to two P.E. billionaires, David Rubenstein and Mike Arougheti, for $1.725 billion.
Even Jeff Zucker and his American partners may have underestimated the depth of the reaction in Britain to his proposed takeover of The Spectator and The Telegraph.
Dylan Byers • January 26, 2024
Lord Zucker’s Vassal Revolt
The public outcries continue over Jeff Zucker’s quest for two venerable center-right British news brands. Are they reasonable critiques about the potential influence of his Emirati partner, or just sanctimonious and Anglocentric rumblings about two properties in need of fresh ideas and (lots of) fresh cash?
The layoffs at the LA Times, staggering as they were, belied the true extent of the damage the paper has endured under Patrick Soon-Shiong.
Dylan Byers • January 25, 2024
A Tale of Two City Papers
A talmudic reading of the agony and anxiety bubbling around the L.A. Times, and the cautious optimism brimming from Will Lewis’s post-layoffs Washington Post.
Mark Thompson
Dylan Byers • January 19, 2024
After the Thompson Manifesto
A spirited and polite disagreement evinces CNN’s new lay of the land, old anxieties, and the latest power dynamics.
Mark Thompson
Dylan Byers • January 17, 2024
Mark Thompson’s Fourteen Points
After months of anticipation, CNN C.E.O. Mark Thompson has finally unveiled his shrewd, diplomatic, and resolute manifesto articulating CNN’s digital transformation. So what does it all mean?
The Ackman vs. Axel fight, wherever it goes, is only the latest manifestation of a broader tension between public figures and news organizations in the digital media age.
Dylan Byers • January 12, 2024
The Declaration on the Rights of Ackman
More news and notes on the hedge fund manager’s very public crusade against Business Insider, Axel Springer, and KKR.
Bill Ackman responded to the B.I. pieces by essentially placing the media company, which is owned by Axel Springer, at the center of his next activist campaign.
Dylan Byers • January 11, 2024
A Season of Ackman’s Life
News and notes on the media holy war of our time: Bill Ackman’s pressure campaign to persuade Business Insider’s investors and executives to disavow a report detailing improper attributions in his wife’s academic work.
Raúl Martinez, Anna Wintour’s favorite creative director, is returning to Condé Nast after a two-year stint at Victoria’s Secret.Raúl Martinez, Anna Wintour’s favorite creative director, is returning to Condé Nast after a two-year stint at Victoria’s Secret.
Lauren Sherman • January 8, 2024
As I Lay Designing
Notes on the third, and likely final, creative collaboration between Anna Wintour and her favorite (print) designer, Raúl Martinez.
The New York Times is trying to sell a court on the notion that ChatGPT, the chatbot operated by Sam Altman’s OpenAI, is a plagiarist, mimicking their unique expression of facts.
Eriq Gardner • January 8, 2024
Will OpenAI Eat The New York Times?
Gaming out the motivations, the countermoves, and the likely endgame of the Times-OpenAI legal fracas.
will lewis
Dylan Byers • January 6, 2024
Post Modernism Theories
Does Will Lewis, the Brit who just took over The Washington Post, have the hardest job in media? One week in and Alex MacCallum is off to CNN, and it turns out that his company’s traffic has dipped by more than 50 percent in the past few years.
CNN C.E.O. Mark Thompson has been in extensive talks with Alex MacCallum, the well-regarded digital product guru who served with him for eight years at the Times.
Dylan Byers • January 3, 2024
When Mark Met Alex
The newish CNN C.E.O. has his eye on Alex MacCallum, the Washington Post C.R.O. and his former Times disciple, to help him enact his drastic digital transformation effort.
Mark Thompson
Dylan Byers • December 28, 2023
Zaz’s Whale, Zucker’s Chase & The British Guys
As the year ends, a talmudic reading of the four most consequential plotlines bewitching the media industry as it enters 2024.