AMC-HBO Entente, Africa’s “Coup” Belt, Cable’s Swan Song

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon bulletin featuring Puck’s best new reporting.

Today, we lead with Dylan Byers’ incisive meditation on the Disney-Charter dispute, and whether this could be the tipping point for cable TV. As one veteran media executive succinctly put it: “The game is over.”

Plus, below the fold: Julia Alexander reveals the calculus behind Zaz’s decision to welcome a handful of AMC+ shows in from the cold. Julia Ioffe diagrams the swell of anti-democratic violence washing over parts of Africa. On Somebody’s Gotta Win, Tara Palmeri and Jim Messina cross swords over how to interpret the pre-’24 Biden polls. And on The Powers That Be, Ben Landy and Teddy Schleifer examine a quixotic tech utopia underway in Northern California.

DYLAN BYERS

Notes on the existential reality undergirding Disney’s white-knuckled negotiation with Charter. (“The game is over,” as one media executive put it.)

JULIA ALEXANDER

News and notes on the hottest topics in the streaming industrial complex: Warner Discovery’s deal for AMC+ shows, the ESPN-Charter battle, and more.

JULIA IOFFE

As the U.S., China, Russia, and the Gulf states compete for power across the continent, Africa’s fragile semi-democracies have grown more and more cynical about the real value of democracy.

TARA PALMERI

Poll after poll shows Joe Biden and Donald Trump neck-and-neck in a potential rematch, but President Obama’s re-election guru Jim Messina says to disregard the polls: Biden is stronger than you think. On today’s episode, Tara debates Messina on whether the warning signs are legitimate.