Good morning, It was yet another incredible week: Matt Belloni presaged the decline of the studio system; Kim Masters revealed a #MeToo reclamation project; Julia Alexander detailed YouTube’s A.I. play; Dylan Byers explained Bezos’s WaPo snub; Bill Cohan delineated Shari Redstone’s latest financial nightmare while Eriq Gardner weighed in on the settlement calculus; John Ourand examined the newest dialectic in the sports rights universe; Lauren Sherman captured the backstage drama at Dior; Rachel Strugatz investigated Meghan Markle’s brand pivot; Sarah Shapiro unfurled fashion’s post–Warby Parker blues; Marion Maneker chronicled the battle for Artnet; and Julie Brener Davich previewed a summer Jenny Saville show. Meanwhile, Abby Livingston covered the dissolution of the Trump-Musk relationship; Leigh Ann Caldwell unveiled Josh Hawley’s higher ambitions; and Julia Ioffe reported on the silent agony inside the State Department. Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

“Beautifully made and genuinely moving, ‘Andor’ Season 2 is one of the greats. This is small-screen storytelling at its best.” EMPIRE “An astonishing accomplishment.” THE RINGER “A fiercely intelligent spy thriller. Andor is a miracle, and we’d be so lucky if we see something like it ever again.” NY MAG A Paleyfest Conversation with Diego Luna, Tony Gilroy & more WATCH

Lauren Sherman dissects two of the industry’s most important partnerships: the union between Kim Kardashian and Jens and Emma Grede, and the dynamic between Jonathan Anderson and Delphine Arnault. and… Rachel Strugatz starts the countdown for the inevitable Meghan Markle beautyco. meanwhile… Sarah Shapiro offers a history of the D.T.C. brands of the aughts.

Marion Maneker chats with Artnet’s new owner and makes his way around the Monets in Connecticut. and… Julie Brener Davich sees what’s popping in London this summer.

Matt Belloni assesses the layoffs at Disney and WBD, among others. and… Kim Masters reports on a cancellation comeback.

Dylan Byers scrutinizes Jeff Bezos’s bizarre Times deal and Karine Jean-Pierre’s disastrous book launch. and… Julia Alexander untangles Netflix’s advertising opportunity. meanwhile… John Ourand documents the Disney-YouTube spat.

Bill Cohan reads the indentures behind Shari Redstone’s $550 million debt crisis, while Eriq Gardner runs down the settlement calculation.

Julia Ioffe examines the inner turmoil in Foggy Bottom. and… Leigh Ann Caldwell previews Hawley ’28. meanwhile… Abby Livingston delivers the CliffsNotes for the Dems’ midterm playbook.

Dylan and Bill discuss Zaz’s credit downgrade on The Grill Room. and… John Ourand breaks down Gerry Cardinale’s latest venture on The Varsity. and… Lauren offers a master class on Jonathanology on Fashion People. and… John Heilemann and former UBS Americas C.E.O. and Obama buddy Robert Wolf study the TACO phenomenon on Impolitic. and… Matt and Broadway producer John Johnson discuss Clooney’s stage bet on The Town. and… Julia Alexander and Eriq discuss a Real Housewives legal bombshell on The Powers That Be.

As a reminder, you can update your profile at any time to get more stories like these directly in your inbox. Click here to customize your email settings.

This week, I was running late to a meeting on a nondescript block in West Chelsea when a Proustian epiphany descended on me. The renovated factory buildings all looked vaguely familiar, and yet I couldn’t quite place it… until I walked by an office lobby that I suddenly recalled entering five years ago. Back then, in the throes of Covid, I’d been pitching an investor on Puck in person for perhaps the very first time. In those days, as businesses were quickly adjusting to pandemic realities and new revenue streams—and the specter that we’d all be in our homes forever—I tried to take a delicate tack. After all, venture capital and private equity firms were consumed with supporting their destabilized portfolio companies rather than deploying new financing. But nevertheless, I persisted with a very simple pitch that operated on two distinct levels.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

“One of the best TV shows of the decade.” THE WRAP “A masterpiece. The performances are riveting throughout, Diego Luna is brilliant.” FORBES “Tony Gilroy and Diego Luna bring the best Star Wars story to an extraordinary end.” THE WASHINGTON POST How Diego Luna & Tony Gilroy’s collaboration revolutionized the Emmy-nominated, Peabody Award Winning series a for a timely final reason brought it back for an even stronger, more timely final season. READ

First, it was clear to me that we were nearing the end of a dreary era in media defined by an addiction to scale and virality. I barely read the output of any of the so-called unicorn media companies that were forged in that time, partly because they were built on the backs of over-Juuled young millennials and older Gen Z staffers each churning out half a dozen pieces of content a day. Editing—once excellently defined as the art of elimination—had been overridden by overproduction. Every brand now covered everything, from the poop cruise and the missing Malaysian airliner to the Mueller report and the Steele dossier. It was a depressing state of affairs, and the industry simply needed to start over. Second, the model had to change in a more nuanced way. For generations, media companies were built on direct-sales advertising models. The primacy of Facebook and Twitter, however, had given rise to a nearly religious fervor for the direct-to-consumer model, which had become all the rage in industries ranging from C.P.G. to fashion. By then, many people my age had overdosed on these brands—Warby Parker, Allbirds, Outdoor Voices, etcetera—before the trend eventually migrated to the media industry. The Athletic, which eventually grew to more than 1 million paid subscribers through hardcore D.T.C. growth tactics, exemplified the bull case for the strategy. And yet, I was pitching a different concept. Puck was going to build a subscription-first business that also leaned into advertising. After all, relevant and exceptional journalism for highly engaged and professional audiences was a great pitch for commercial partners. And I knew, from my own experiences in the salt mines of the industry, that email was the greatest format for connecting since the glossy magazine page in its heyday. I was also skeptical about the future of D.T.C. pure plays, which would be forced to grow by discounting prices—and, inevitably, diluting their content—before being tempted to lurch into areas outside their brand permission structure. The industry had learned a ton from these D.T.C. challenger brands, but I suspected that the next generation would adopt a hybrid model. Anyway, that’s the concept I pitched that morning, all those years ago, in West Chelsea. Earlier this week, my partner Sarah Shapiro published an excellent piece that takes stock of those D.T.C. fashion companies, all these years later. The Millennial D.T.C. Brands’ Midlife Crisis offers a circumspect view of their subsequent challenges and afterglow—and how, with the exception of a few outliers, their promise of bypassing the retail experience turned out to be less appealing than once predicted. Similarly, many of these companies stalled out on channel growth. The costs of acquiring new customers outweighed their lifetime values as consumers, resulting in worse unit economics than owning a store. Sarah explains how the travails of Allbirds and Everlane helped inspire a subsequent generation of companies, from Staud to Toteme, to create their own Goldilocks models based on limited retail and digital points of sale. The data these companies gather from their owned-and-operated channels help inform retail strategy and inventory. It’s a trajectory that mirrors the transformation in media, and if you have a minute this weekend, you should check out Sarah’s excellent piece. Meanwhile, as I cruised through the far West 20s, I happened to be listening to my partner John Heilemann’s popular podcast, Impolitic. John was chatting with Robert Wolf, the former C.E.O. of UBS Americas and Obama’s former economic advisor, fundraiser, and golf buddy. (They still play, I should note.) Wolf is also an all-around mensch, and one of the brightest commentators on this particular tariff-inflected, politically impacted economic malaise we’re slogging through. Trump also happened to be his client at UBS during his investment banking days. Anyway, it’s a great conversation well worth your time. As my epiphany landed and I finally realized where I was, I couldn’t help but smile. Now I remembered… Five years ago, it was actually Robert I’d been pitching to. It ended up not making sense for either of us, for entirely boring reasons, but we stayed friends and I have watched his career with awe. And, these days, we need his voice more than ever. He can narrate as well as anyone the interplay between Wall Street and Washington—the true story of these times, and precisely what you can always expect from Puck.

Have a great weekend, Jon

Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news. You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with . To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St, New York, NY 10006