Greetings from Los Angeles, where Paramount has just pushed back the deadline for takeover talks in order to evaluate Edgar Bronfman’s now $6 billion bid for a controlling stake in its parentco National Amusements. The move is another stumbling block for David Ellison’s $8 billion deal to buy the company—and Jeff Shell’s return to media moguldom atop Paramount—or may at least precipitate a bidding war. Never a dull moment in this business.

In tonight’s email, news on notes on Almin Karamehmedovic’s surprise ascension at ABC News, which doesn’t seem so surprising once you consider Deb OConnell’s motivations, and the broader internal politics at play.

But first…

🏰 Disney succession watch: Disney’s board has officially tapped director James Gorman to chair a new committee overseeing the Bob Iger succession plan, signaling a formal process run by a serious pro. Gorman, of course, recently completed his own elegant bake off at Morgan Stanley, which resulted in the ascension of Ted Pick. Iger’s recruitment of Gorman, who joined the board during the Peltz kerfuffle, always signaled the importance of the C.E.O. transition to shareholders. Now everyone is saying the quiet part out loud.

In an interview with Kelly Ripa, on Wednesday, Iger said he was “obsessed” with finding his replacement, a somewhat surprising admission from a usually disciplined C.E.O. Formally, Disney is reviewing internal and external candidates, but the conventional wisdom among insiders is that Iger has been leaning toward Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden, who has Hollywood on her side but has yet to prove that she has the range and acumen to handle the job’s myriad other responsibilities. The runner up is Parks chief Josh D’Amaro, who probably has a better handle on, say, F&B and dynamic pricing, but lacks the talent and creative relationships that Walden has. Of course, Gorman may have his own ideas.

🗞️ Media layoffs, cont’d: Two weeks after Axios C.E.O. Jim VandeHei cut 50 positions at his company to offset ad revenue declines and pressure from new competitors, Time magazine has cut 22 positions, citing similar reasons. Inevitably, there will be more layoffs in the sector in the weeks and months ahead as businesses forecast their fourth quarter revenue. Condé Nast already signaled reductions by noting that the company’s new C.R.O., Elizabeth Herbst-Brady, was going to consolidate the commercial and marketing functions.

We’re still at the beginning of what VandeHei described as “the most difficult moment for media in our lifetime.” Of course, Time owner Marc Benioff has his own unique challenges. Time is a legacy asset that no longer has the necessary scale—or quality, frankly—to be anything more than a generic digital media business that uses its magazine to support the conference business. In her all-company memo, C.E.O. Jess Sibley focused on the business imperative to own leadership—a sort of enigmatic reference to the brand’s desire to presumably connect with a powerful, influential audience. Alas, Sibley probably would have used those two adjectives if the data proved that powerful and influential people still read Time. (In reality, that was never the magazine’s core demo…) Anyway, tough break, but this hard call will keep it alive and allow Time to keep publishing its covers on X.

🤖 Condé A.I.: Condé Nast has become the latest publisher to strike a multiyear licensing deal with Sam Altman’s OpenAI, which will allow the artificial intelligence firm to display content from titles like Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker in ChatGPT, presumably for a multi-million dollar fee. These are sucker deals in the long term, but they provide meaningful short-term revenue for mediacos that have few defenses against the coming swarm of artificial intelligence. Only The New York Times, which has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, appears to have the stomach and financial security to fight for more substantial money.

In 2008, he moved to New York to join Nightline, where he became executive producer, and then World News Tonight, where he has served as David Muir’s E.P. for ten very successful years. “I have had every job you can think of here,” Almin, as he is universally known on West 66th Street, told me by text. “It’s an honor and a privilege.” With colleagues, he has referred to his rise at ABC, from lowly stringer to president of the news division, as “the American dream.”

Of course, the nature of the post has evolved and also diminished somewhat in the late-stage era of linear television news. Almin was hired by David Westin and ascended the ABC ladder in the ambitious and hypercompetitive Ben Sherwood era, when network presidents actually ran the business, wielded big budgets, fought legendary ratings wars, and generally laughed off the existential threats of streaming insurgents and platform shifts. He inherits a much smaller position, last occupied by the infamously small-minded and ultimately impotent Kim Godwin, at a time when the audience for nearly every network news show is declining annually by double-digit percentages. But you still take it when you can.

The news of Almin’s promotion surprised most people at ABC News. He is seen as an extremely talented showrunner and executive producer, but has no experience managing any organization larger than one anchor and one show, which consists of just 30 or so staffers—a similar background to a guy named Chris Licht. Before Monday, many anticipated the job would go to network veteran Tom Cibrowski or Good Morning America E.P. Simone Swink, both of whom have experience managing multiple talents and much larger teams. Almin also doesn’t have much of an identity outside of World News. “No one really knows Almin,” one network veteran told me. “He lives in a tight bubble and very much keeps to himself.”

Still, Almin’s showrunning skills are undeniable. He is responsible for helping Muir turn World News into what is far and away the most successful nightly news broadcast on television—indeed, on many nights it is the most watched show on all television—and all without any of the talent microdramas that are a feature of this industry. (Miraculously, Muir leaves the adoring viewer with no trace of his actual personality.) And though Almin has had a few bumps along the way—a holiday party where he drank too much and cracked his head open; one ambiguous allegation of inappropriate behavior, which network spokespeople declined to address—he is widely admired and respected across the network. In the era of humbled ambitions and lowered expectations, he is still playing to win and often does, even if victory in television news is relative these days.

In promoting Almin, OConnell is essentially assigning him to the role of network senior executive producer—overseeing World News and GMA, programming the debate and the election night coverage, making sure the trains run on time—while she continues to run the actual business, serves as the executive sales manager and maintains ties with the talent. In that regard, Almin may actually be the obvious choice, insofar as he is both the best showrunner in the building (though Swink acolytes would obviously disagree) as well as someone who is not going to challenge OConnell’s leadership. As one ABC News veteran put it, “he will not bristle when she is at the head of the table.”

This may be the best possible outcome for ABC News, actually: A far cry from the Sherwood era, sure—and the Roone Arledge era, obviously—but a massive improvement over the Godwin days. Notably, the latter had been brought in to soften ABC’s hypercompetitive instincts and encouraged staffers to turn off their phones on the weekends. It was a management tactic that might have worked if Godwin hadn’t constantly seemed so consumed with her own image, and her laissez-faire philosophy had not cost the network in the ratings.

Now, the woman running ABC News is exhausting her charges with round-the-clock calls seven days a week, and her new editorial chief is a relentless competitor overseeing the nation’s most highly-rated nightly news show. As one media executive put it, success in television these days consists of keeping your ratings from declining more rapidly than the competition, and managing your decline better, too. In OConnell and Almin, ABC News has two leaders who are actually playing to win this modern game, even if the spoils aren’t what they used to be.