Good morning,

Thanks for reading The Backstory, your weekly review of the best new work from Puck.

It was, as is universally the case, an incredible week here at Puck: Lauren Sherman gathered the runway murmurs in Paris and Milan; Matt Belloni philosophized about a Netflix pivot; Dylan Byers penetrated the ABC News crying rooms; Tara Palmeri scooped Mike Johnson’s loyalty oath; John Ourand had the readout from the other NBA rights negotiation; and Baratunde Thurston examined the depths of Biden’s biggest problem.

WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan discerns David Zaslav’s credibility challenge on Wall Street.

SILICON VALLEY:
Teddy Schleifer offers more tea on Marc Andreessen’s attempt to eat Washington.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers explores the power struggles and big-footing within ABC News.
and…
John Ourand has the latest on Pantsgate and an Amazon rights saga.
and…
Eriq Gardner ponders the legal fate of “Spulu.”

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni details Netflix and Disney’s less-is-more studio pivot.
and…
Julia Alexander imagines the fates of ESPN+ and other second-tier streamers.
and…
Scott Mendelson explicates the Marley marketing miracle.

WASHINGTON:
Peter Hamby has a candid chat with R.F.K. Jr.
and…
Tara Palmeri collects the No Labels schadenfreude, and reveals Mike Johnson’s kitchen cabinet.
and…
Abby Livingston gathers all the McConnell succession juice.
and…
Baratunde Thurston conveys the depths of Biden’s problems.

PODCASTS:
Matt and Ben Thompson discuss A.I.’s impact on the movie business on The Town.
and…
Tara and CNBC’s Ron Insana dig into Bidenomics on Somebody’s Gotta Win.
and…
Peter and John Ourand lean into Pantsgate on The Powers That Be.

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Kara is one of those genre-defining multihyphenates whose career has spanned journalism, entrepreneurialism, television, podcasting, and the conference trade, among many others. She’s also reached that rarefied level of near-universal first-name recognition, sort of like a South American soccer star or European fashion designer. And she’s also about the most well-connected person I’ve ever met.

As Dylan and I sprung out of the elevator, we saw everyone in the media business—from New York Times executive editor Joe Kahn to Sam Dolnick, whose family owns the paper, to the most famous people in the building, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Maggie Haberman. In one corner stood defenestrated CNN C.E.O. Chris Licht, while over in another were Don Lemon and Brian Stelter, both of whom he defenestrated, and off in the distance was Allison Gollust, an executive from the previous regime. (Kaitlan Collins was also there.) Amid the scrum were Arianna Huffington, Joanna Coles, Stephanie Ruhle, Bill DeBlasio, Katy Tur, Gary Cohn, and our partner Bill Cohan and a zillion others. The waiters were serving Kistler and Grgich Hills, not your usual book party plonk. It was a swell affair.

My favorite part of media parties is usually watching the action swirl around Dylan—the people desperate to chat with him, those looking to avoid him, etcetera. And I certainly amused myself a bit watching him work the room like a towering figure and old pro. But the best part of the evening was when I could finally push aside the throngs of well-wishers and pay my respects to Kara, whose career I’ve admired since before she even created a paradigm for all of us at Puck as a model journalist-entrepreneur. Long before she held forth on Pivot, she started All Things D, a beloved brand inside The Wall Street Journal and then co-founded Recode, which she later sold to Vox Media.

At some point in the prehistory of Puck, I had badgered Kara incessantly for advice on starting the company. As I recall, we met up on an appallingly hot morning at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, in the late spring of 2019, when we were both attending Anthony Scaramucci’s SALT conference. We had picked a bedeviled hour, some time between last last call and the commencement of food service in the hotel, and we circled the casino floor incessantly, looking for a place to sit down and have a bite.

Eventually, we found some little restaurant, which was teeming with haggard gamblers, adorned in their 5 o’clock shadows, with the vile perfume of watermelon vapes and White Claw in the air. For an hour or so, maybe longer, she grilled me about the business that would become Puck. I’d come in search of advice. I left with a wealth of wisdom from her years of experience. In the span of that hour, she was warm, charming, funny, tough, persuasive, empathetic, and kind. She cited examples of businesses that had succeeded in the space, and offered her perspective on how they’d achieved it. She eulogized others. At the end of the chat, she shot me a look and said, I think you’re going to pull this off, by the way. I held on to those words in the months and years ahead.

The rapid transformation of the media industry, the subject of our conversation that morning and the cocktail chatter at her beautiful party, remains a core leitmotif here at Puck, and this week was hardly any different. In fact, the theme was evidenced elegantly in a handful of fabulous stories. Dylan’s piece on an executive shuffle inside ABC News, What if Godwin Was One of Us?, exemplifies what happens when leaders are searching for the answers. Matt Belloni’s characteristically excellent story, Disney, Netflix, and the Less-Is-More Movie Mantra, documents just how rapidly the pendulum is swinging these days. In Naked Gunnar, Bill reports on Zaz’s prolonged “adjusted EBITDA” crisis and what it means for the future of his franken-conglomerate. Meanwhile, in Blood Diamond, John Ourand explicates how Amazon may be arbitraging the disintermediation of the industry.

But if you only have time to read one piece, I’d turn your attention to Julia Alexander’s perspicacious story, The Streamer Seven Year Itch, which reminds us just how ephemeral this age in media may be. It’s the story of our time, without an obvious answer in sight, which is precisely why it remains our fixation here at Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon