Good morning,

It was another extraordinary week: Lauren Sherman chronicled the restlessness at Condé Nast; Matt Belloni broke the news that Shari Redstone is entering deal mode; Julia Alexander divided the spoils of the Suits phenomenon; Dylan Byers glimpsed at some of CNN’s new challenges; Bill Cohan presaged Jeff Zucker’s next steps; Julia Ioffe dug into the latest horrors in Gaza; Teddy Schleifer captured the agony of the G.O.P. donor crowd; and Peter Hamby kibitzed with Chris Christie. Meanwhile, Eriq Gardner detailed an oligarch lawsuit for the ages, while Baratunde Thurston thought magically about our year with A.I. and Tara Palmeri reported on Trump’s latest loyalty oath.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan inspects Ari Emanuel’s take-private and gathers the latest intrigue on the Zucker-Telegraph deal.
and…
Eriq Gardner considers a breathtaking Sotheby’s lawsuit.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers reports on David Zaslav’s year of living dangerously.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni breaks the market-making news on Paramount’s talks with RedBird and David Ellison.
and…
Julia Alexander details the next wave of the Suits phenomenon.

SILICON VALLEY:
Baratunde Thurston marks the ChatGPT anniversary.

WASHINGTON:
Teddy Schleifer chronicles the G.O.P. donor heartache.
and…
Peter Hamby has an honest chat with Chris Christie.
and…
Julia Ioffe conveys the latest atrocities in Gaza.
and…
Tara Palmeri explains the new Trump loyalty oath.

PODCASTS:
Matt Belloni and Ted Hope, the former Amazon Studios executive, discuss streaming’s impact on the movie business on The Town.
and…
Tara Palmeri and James Carville chat about the various emerging ’24 narratives on Somebody’s Gotta Win.
and…
Peter Hamby and Julia Ioffe weigh in on the hostage horror stories coming out of Gaza—and the ways that they have been politicized—on The Powers That Be: Daily.

Meanwhile, I also encourage you to take advantage of our article gifting feature. You can share our work with your colleagues, friends, and family. Subscribers are entitled to 5 article gifts per month.

It was an unseasonably warm night in the district, and the rooftop views of the town decked out in its yuletide best were unmatched. Maybe it was the holidays, but the vibe in the room was significantly more genial than many expect of this often cantankerous city, especially as it embarks upon a national election season. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, very likely our next speaker, offered a moving soliloquy about the importance of the bill. His partner in the legislation, former Rep. Doug Collins, also spoke movingly, and the two men—one a Republican from rural Georgia and the other a Democrat from Brooklyn—embraced afterward. It was a reminder that our politics aren’t always as divided as they seem.

Meanwhile, as you might imagine, Puck sure knows how to throw a swell party, and so there was plenty of mirth in the air. It was fun rubbing shoulders with Rep. Kelly Armstrong, Holly Harris, Jonathan Capehart, Van Jones, Grover Norquist, Kelli Rhee, and my many generationally talented partners—Julia Ioffe, Tara Palmeri, Abby Livingston, Teddy Schleifer, and Tina Nguyen, among them. (I was going to hang with Peter Hamby the following night at the people’s house.)

But on that Wednesday Zoom call, my headspace was fully occupied by Puck’s other power corners. On my computer screen, I was editing Bill Cohan’s brilliant fresh reporting on Jeff Zucker’s ambitions with RedBird IMI, his new roll-up fund. Zucker, as loyal Puck readers know, is embarking on a $1.4 billion, all-in conquest to buy The Telegraph and The Spectator. (Zucker and his partners are paying about $750 million for the assets—approximately 10x EBITDA—with the rest coming as an outside loan in a very clever deal architecture.)

Despite Zucker’s new identity as an investor, Bill mused at the end of the piece about whether he’d one day, again, find himself as an operator. Bill then posited, as he has before, that he’d be an excellent leader at Paramount Global, the fading Redstone family heirloom, should Shari Redstone eventually decide to sell.

This was lurking in the background on my weekly Wednesday Zoom with Matt Belloni and our various partners about his growing empire at Puck—his thriving What I’m Hearing newsletter, podcast The Town, and events business. (He was hosting a private event in L.A. the following night. These are busy days here at Puck…) On the Zoom, I asked Matt what he was working on for his Thursday night edition of the newsletter. He responded that he’d been tipped off that David Ellison was homing in on an acquisition attempt of Paramount. My eyes widened. This was huge news. Matt said he had to jump to pin down the reporting. I started to salivate in anticipation of his newsletter draft the following night.

Sure enough, by Thursday evening, Matt had gotten the goods. His piece, Shari Inches Toward Parting With Paramount, reported that Ellison was indeed kicking the tires on the media conglomerate—and, in a new wrinkle, he was working with RedBird C.E.O. Gerry Cardinale. (Could Bill’s prophecy have been right all along, a relic of his two decades as a dealmaker at GE Capital, Lazard, Merrill Lynch, and JPMorgan Chase?) In a sign of Matt’s influence, his newsletter was published at 10:02 p.m. on Thursday evening. Soon after the market opened the next day, Paramount’s stock was up more than 14 percent.

In addition to Matt’s phenomenal scoop and Bill’s prescient Ari’s Deal & Zucker’s Next Steps, I want to turn your attention to another superb piece of Puck journalism. As I rode the Acela back to Penn Station on Thursday, I began top-editing Lauren Sherman’s probing dissertation on Condé Nast, a company I know and love, which finds itself in the midst of another layoff cycle. Much like Sumner Redstone built Viacom and CBS through shrewd deal-making before his daughter merged them into what is now Paramount Global, the Newhouses have also built and controlled Condé Nast from its modern inception.

In the most profound ways, the fates of these companies are intertwined with their ownership structures. And it’s a useful reminder that it’s not always the market that drives business cycles, but often unique individuals themselves. That’s a story as old as time, and precisely what you should expect to read about here at Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon