SPORTS & MEDIA
Dylan Byers
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March 4, 2026
Bari Goes to War
Over the past week, the CBS News chief dispatched Tony Dokoupil to the Middle East, scored exclusives on the back of her pro-Israel bona fides, and is finally making progress on shoring up her staff. All while the Ellisons, and the other news network they’re suddenly lined up to own, have been watching.
Formula One’s Apple Gamble
F1 executives are praying their nine-figure Apple partnership will boost their domestic audience and increase the league’s relevance—but streaming scale and audience growth aren’t always correlated. Just ask Major League Soccer.
John Ourand
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March 2, 2026
Brett Yormark’s Hoop Dreams
In a football world, the Big 12 commissioner has made basketball a large focus of his efforts to keep his conference competitive with its Power Four peers. Now that the undervaluing of college basketball is a fashionable talking point, maybe he was onto something.
Dylan Byers
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February 27, 2026
Bari Apparent & Politico Animals
The WBD–PSKY post-merger dread hit CNN immediately yesterday, as its journalists and producers pondered life under Bari—but only if her CBS misfires haven’t disqualified her from running the combined operation. Plus, the voracious Mathias Döpfner’s global talent hunt.
Dylan Byers
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February 25, 2026
The WaPo Shiva Begins
Just when the slow-motion Telegraph sale finally seemed ready to close, Mathias Döpfner entered the chat. Does Axel Springer’s dark horse bid have any real chance? And why does anyone want the headache of owning a newspaper in 2026 anyway?
ESPN’s One True MLB Outcome
The network is betting its $550 million link-up with MLB.TV will attract a host of new users to its ESPN Unlimited app—and point in the direction of its future as a bundler.
John Ourand
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February 23, 2026
The NHL Gold Medal Hangover
The U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team’s exhilarating gold medal victory may be dampened by an inconvenient truth for the NHL: Olympic success hasn’t usually translated into ratings and attendance gains.
Dylan Byers
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February 20, 2026
The Colbert Market
While Trump sics the F.C.C.’s attack dog on the late-night shows, he’s giving Colbert, Kimmel, and Meyers the relevance they’ve been steadily leaching over the past decade or so. While democracy’s defenders will correctly cry foul, you have to ask: Where would late-night comedy be without Trump?
John Ourand
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February 19, 2026
The NFL Media Rights Industrial Complex
As analysts scramble to calculate estimates for the NFL’s market-busting media rights, the league must consider the long-term viability of its linear TV partners—and whether sky-high, cutthroat negotiations could amount to a mortal wound.
Dylan Byers
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February 18, 2026
Anderson of Anarchy
CBS News was abuzz in all the wrong ways again this week as Anderson Cooper announced his departure from ’60 Minutes.’ But the real story at CBS is not Cooper’s martyrdom (Colbert has that covered), it’s what his exit portends for the show’s future and the coming exodus of news talent.
The NHL’s ‘Heated Rivalry’ Fever
Between the Winter Olympics and ‘Heated Rivalry,’ hockey is suddenly back in the zeitgeist. But with NHL rights locked up in the U.S. through 2028, the league is under pressure to capitalize on the excitement before a potential NFL rights shake-up consumes all the industry oxygen.
Dylan Byers
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February 13, 2026
Bari’s Bootcamp
Last week, CBS News offered buyouts to 40 or so employees, some of whom seized the moment to attack Bari Weiss’s “heterodox journalism” and a culture of self-censorship on their way out the door. But legacy media’s challenges run far deeper than mere credibility—the industry is also losing its connection to the audience, itself.
John Ourand
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February 12, 2026
Inside the NBA’s Tankonomics
With a number of teams tanking and the usual load-management mishegas, the NBA regular season is veering into spring training territory just as the league is trying to justify its multibillion-dollar value to media partners. As one executive recently put it, “The majority of the value of these media deals is centered around the postseason.”
Dylan Byers
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February 11, 2026
Last Will and Testament
The final days of The Washington Post’s publisher and C.E.O. were more cowardly and craven than even the newsroom imagined—with elevator closures and a stealth flight from town. Now that he’s gone, the staff is thoroughly demoralized… and wondering how Jeff Bezos will avoid making the same mistake again.
Goodell’s Bidding War Begins…
The big question plaguing sports media executives who descended on the Bay Area last week: How much will the networks have to pay to maintain their NFL packages when the league opts out of its deals in the fall and the trillion-dollar streamers push their chips into the middle of the table?
Julia Alexander
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February 9, 2026
An NFL World Domination Reality Check
Not content to preside over the most-watched sport in the U.S., Roger Goodell is preparing for an aggressive international expansion. But can America’s new national pastime truly go global?
Dylan Byers
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February 6, 2026
Good Will Hunting
While its executive editor, Matt Murray, was overseeing the fallout of the devastating layoffs on K Street, The Washington Post’s absentee leader and C.E.O., Will Lewis, was pregaming with friends at the Super Bowl. Yes, the optics are terrible, but is an aloof and often remote C.E.O. the right guy to save the Post?