| Earlier this year, while on a quickie trip down to Washington, I met up with my then-newest partner, John Ourand, at the bar of The Smith—a largely no-frills New York transplant restaurant in the District that’s become a favorite of expat Puck employees. It was that uncomfortable late-afternoon hour between coffee and a beer, as Rick Moody once wrote, and so John and I caught up and kibitzed over Arnold Palmers like two old timers as the post-federal workday traffic began to accumulate on 9th and F. Naturally, I started peppering him with questions about his beat—a true pleasure for me since the sports media business combines two of my favorite subjects, quite literally my avocation and vocation, respectively. In particular, I asked him about a recent back-office micro-drama that had played out on the air at ESPN.
Around that time, Pat McAfee, a former NFL kicker and YouTube star turned ESPN broadcaster and host, had blasted longtime Bristol executive Norby Williamson during a segment of his semi-structured, eponymous chat show. Shockingly and discomfitingly, McAfee accused Williamson of leaking his recent unspectacular TV ratings in the media. It was a surprisingly unprofessional move, even by the evolving standards of the industry, accented by McAfee’s description of Williamson as a rat. John knows everyone at the network, starting with its affable C.E.O. Jimmy Pitaro, and so I relentlessly drilled him on the topic.
The Norby-McAfee episode, on many levels, seemed to be a microcosm of the larger secular trends reshaping the media and the broader economy—the rise of singular talent, the funny things that happen on the way to the forum when the pay TV business model is upended by streaming, and a general insecurity in the marketplace. And yet, this clash was so palpably jarring. Williamson, after all, was a long-serving talent whisperer who had cut his teeth on the iconic Patrick-Olbermann SportsCenter and returned to the show years later to clean up the SC6 mess. He was the fixer, not the person used to seeing his name in the paper.
A generation ago, ESPN would have responded to a public scrape or unpleasant on-air soliloquy by banishing those responsible to Siberia. Bill Simmons, a singular and generational talent, was excommunicated after his harsh criticism of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell—a guy who doesn’t even work at the company. Simmons got the last laugh, of course. Spotify acquired his media company, The Ringer, just before the pandemic set in. (Puck and The Ringer currently produce a pair of podcasts together.)
But this time, ESPN sided with the talent. Last week, it turned out to be Williamson’s time in the barrel. The ostensible catalyst was a growing rift between Williamson and his boss, Burke Magnus, a more future-forward executive who preached ESPN’s manifest destiny in a streaming, multiplatform world. And, yes, that’s a world where Pat McAfee is quite valuable.
In Norby or Not to Be, John lays out the complex dynamics, consequences, and stakes as only he can. And, indeed, an executive shake-up atop ESPN has never been more relevant. In the next year, the business will roll out both its new streaming service and its “Spulu” joint venture with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery as Pitaro will openly (though quietly, and with dignity and tact) compete with three colleagues to succeed Bob Iger as the C.E.O. of Disney. Bristol kremlinology, always a favorite media parlor game, is now market-moving intelligence.
The Williamson kerfuffle, of course, was only the second-most compelling example of recent and highly public media infighting. Last month, NBC News hastily jettisoned former R.N.C. chair and newbie contributor Ronna McDaniel after Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow, Joe & Mika et al. criticized her hiring on their shows. In Cesar Salad, Dylan Byers reports on the post-Ronna landscape within NBC News, where much of the irritation has coalesced around chairman Cesar Conde, a sophisticated yet striving corporate player, who seems to have quelled the unrest in a manner befitting the no-drama style of his bosses at Comcast in Philly. And Tina Nguyen elegantly captured McDaniel’s chilling homecoming on the right in Ronna in No Man’s Land. The story is filled with mesmerizing bon mots, but perhaps the most compelling came in the form of a quote from fellow former R.N.C. chairman Michael Steele. “It’s not about money; the power is your relationships. And she didn’t have the relationships,” he told Tina. “She was always on the bubble with Trump. People don’t get that. The man told her to stop using her family name, and she fucking did. If she had the relationships, he never would have told her to do it.”
The changing dynamics of the television business are also on display, of course, at HBO, perhaps the most storied brand in the history of the business. Julia Alexander’s excellent story It’s Not HBO, It’s Max artfully explains the complications of being a quality player in a scaled world of never-ending choice—a reality that will compel the industry leader to evolve once again.
But if you only have time to read one piece this weekend, I’d urge you to curl up with the second and final installment in Bill Cohan’s chilling and brilliant diptych on former Apollo C.E.O. and Epstein pal Leon Black. In Leon Black From the Ashes, Part II, Bill reports on the affair that led to Black’s departure from the firm he founded. It’s an astonishing story about money and power dynamics that features Paul Weiss attorneys, Four Seasons lunches, a hidden wire, an N.D.A., and the most startling negotiation you may ever come across—along with various definitions of justice and self-preservation. Indeed, in so many ways, it is the story of our time, and precisely what you should expect from Puck.
Have a great weekend,
Jon |
