Greetings from San Francisco, and welcome back to In the Room. I’m en route to the San
Juan Islands for the Fourth, then out to Sun Valley for some very off-the-record meetings with those of you at the Allen & Co. conference. If we haven’t made plans yet, just drop by Konditorei for a kaffeeklatsch.
In tonight’s email, news and notes on NBC News’s uncertain future in the wake of the Comcast–NBCUniversal split. Brian Roberts’s assets—the film and TV studios, sports rights, theme parks, etcetera—all have obvious strategic value for a range of
potential acquirers. News, on the other hand, throws off relatively modest profits, depends on an expensive operation, and comes with political exposure—and, frankly, its apparatus was built for a world that is going away. So who wants that?
🎙️ Plus, on the latest episode of The Grill Room, former Meta executive and news anchor Campbell Brown explained how her latest venture, Forum A.I., aims to evaluate the nation’s leading L.L.M.s for bias and
accuracy. Follow The Grill Room on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen.
🇺🇸 Scheduling note: Julia and
I will be gabbing in The Grill Room on Friday at our regularly scheduled time, but In the Room will be off for the holiday. I’ll be back in your inbox next week.
Also mentioned in this issue: David Ellison, David Zaslav, Ted Sarandos, James Murdoch, Mathias Döpfner, Mike Cavanagh, Cesar Conde, Almar Latour, Emma Tucker,
Barbara Peng, Bill Maher, Carolin Hulshoff Pol, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, Jody Quon, Nina Totenberg, Robert Dippell, Dianna Russini, and many more. |
- Springer season: Mathias Döpfner has completed his $761 million takeover of The Telegraph and tapped longtime Axel Springer veteran Carolin Hulshoff Pol to serve as its chief executive. Carolin is currently C.E.O. of Springer’s German paper Bild, the largest tabloid in Europe, and sources familiar with her C.V. described her as a trusted operator with quality newspaper expertise.
As anticipated, Mathias has given
Carolin a mandate to expand the Tory broadsheet to the United States and make a play for what he sees as an underserved center-right audience—which, depending on how one defines these things, puts her in competition with Bari Weiss. I imagine Almar Latour and Emma Tucker have some feelings about that thesis, given the Journal’s own claim on that market, too. But it’ll be fun to have another player in that space.
It will also be
interesting to see how The Telegraph and Politico coexist in the U.S. market. In theory, the former will be a consumer-facing brand for affluent independents and conservatives, while the latter plays in the Washington influence lane. They’ll be in adjacent, not entirely overlapping areas when it comes to courting subscribers and advertisers, and could even be complementary. Since it moved headlong into the U.S. market, Axel has diligently allowed its portfolio companies to
operate independently, and there shouldn’t be any aspersions about The Telegraph’s political leanings impacting the knife-sharpening warrens in Arlington. But one suspects there might be from time to time.
Finally, Carolin’s transfer means Mathias is now searching for new chief executives at both Bild and Business Insider, the latter of which had been mismanaged under former C.E.O. Barbara Peng. (And, if we’re being honest, was probably
done a disservice in the waning years of Henry Blodget’s tenure via its pivot from its O.G. business domain expertise to become a mass publisher. Anyway, things happen…) At the time of Barbara’s exit, I noted that Mathias could hand BI to Morning Brew C.E.O. Robert Dippell, a highly respected operator, or off-load the asset entirely. No movement on either front yet, but I’ll let you know what I hear. - Hey T, it’s me: My
partner Lauren Sherman has the scoop on the next editor of The New York Times’s T magazine. Per Lauren, “New York magazine’s incredibly well-respected, much-heralded creative director, Jody Quon, is in the process of working out her deal to be T’s next editor.” T’s gain is New York’s loss, of course, and probably not ideal for that magazine’s new owner, James Murdoch. Jody is an essential
emissary of the Adam Moss vision, which top editor David Haskell has largely followed during his successful tenure. Jody originally worked with Moss back when he was the editor of The New York Times Magazine, which effectively gave birth to T, so this is a homecoming of sorts.
- Maggie & Swan’s way: Sincere congrats to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Their highly
anticipated Trump tome, Regime Change, sold more than 300,000 copies in its first week, per Simon & Schuster, the best week-one sales of any hardcover nonfiction book this year. Their feat is all the more notable when you consider that nonfiction sales have been in decline for the past four years. Maggie and Jonathan will be my
guests on The Grill Room next week. Let me know if you have any questions for them.
- All things reconsidered: Tough break for NPR! The public broadcaster was forced to retract an article in which Nina Totenberg erroneously reported that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito had retired. Several member stations and other outlets also picked up the report, forcing them to issue their own retractions.
On
Tuesday, Nina wrote an apology to Justice Alito, which she read on All Things Considered: “Dear Justice Alito, there are no words to adequately apologize for today’s error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my fault. I rushed out of the courtroom after the opinion announcements, and when I realized that the usual rush of folks, after a few minutes, had not happened, I asked somebody what was going on inside, to which the answer was retirement announcements. I didn’t hear the
S on announcements and assumed—something no reporter should ever do—that you were retiring. It was the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism. I could go on, but I don’t know what else to say, except that I am so, so sorry.”
Humiliating, yes, but hardly a fireable offense or a ticket to the electric chair. Indeed, Nina and NPR should be commended for the full-throated mea culpa. - And finally…: Remember
Dianna Russini’s story about letting a traffic cop FaceTime an NFL coach to get out of a speeding ticket? Even that wasn’t true.
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The Comcast–NBCUniversal breakup is raising a familiar, possibly existential
question about the historic yet vulnerable NBC News: Who really wants to own a linear news operation in an era of declining profits, increasing political risks, and a wide web of new competitors? |
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On Sunday night, Ted Sarandos was at the Kennedy Center, in Washington, honoring
Bill Maher at the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. During the afterparty, I’m told, one attendee asked Sarandos whether Netflix would ever get into the TV journalism game. “Ted firmly slammed the door on it, saying very directly that he has zero interest in being in the news business,” a guest present at the event told me. Among other things, Ted cited “the problems it can cause with global governments who are unhappy with the coverage.”
Ted declined to confirm the
discussion, but the refrain was not unfamiliar to those who know him. Indeed, why would anyone steer their $300 billion streaming pure-play giant into a declining, risk-prone business that so many of their legacy peers are trying to unload? Nevertheless, the very next morning, after Brian Roberts announced his intention to split Comcast and NBCUniversal into separate companies, a torrent of industry analysts and reporters began positing that Netflix might make a play for the
soon-to-be-spun-off media assets. After all, Ted had pursued Warner Bros. Discovery before losing out to David Ellison. NBCUniversal could give him I.P., library, super-premium sports rights, and even a theme park business at a considerably better price.
Of course, Ted wanted only WBD’s studio and streaming assets, such as HBO—not CNN or any part of the linear business. His aversion to those legacy properties is hardly unique. There is scant appetite at Amazon,
Apple, or any of the other ostensible buyers for linear television assets, to say nothing of news. As such, it’s hard to imagine a serious strategic buyer taking on the whole company without first insisting that its new C.E.O., Mike Cavanagh, separate those businesses—much as David Zaslav did while positioning Warner Bros. Discovery for its eventual transaction. Only Ellison was willing to acquire the linear business, which, in retrospect, makes him something of
a unicorn.
Before you weep for NBC News, it’s worth noting that, in the grand scheme of things, Comcast was already starting to tack away from the news business. Brian’s earlier spinoff of his cable properties into Versant took MSNBC and CNBC out of the portfolio. The business that remains is largely fueled by Today, a lifestyle show that rarely focuses on hard news outside of the A-block and could very conceivably be folded into the Entertainment division. In recent
months, it has leaned ever more heavily into corporate sponsors and “Steals and Deals” home-shopping segments, and featured less of the hard news segments or interviews with political newsmakers that were a staple in the Katie Couric and Ann Curry eras. On the other hand, NBC News’s actual news shows—Nightly News, Meet the Press, etcetera—are more or less immaterial from a revenue standpoint and exited the zeitgeist long ago. Could the
average Netflix viewer pick Tom Llamas out of a lineup? |
Since Brian announced the split on Monday, some media executives have told me that they
anticipate NBC’s linear and streaming assets will eventually fall to private equity, which will break it up and sell the pieces—potentially reaping massive rewards from sweating the existing assets and doing the unholy work of auctioning off component parts to various suitors. That would be consistent with the direction of the industry, but one wonders where NBC News would find a home. Universal’s film and television studio, the sports rights, and the theme parks all have obvious strategic value
to a range of potential acquirers; NBC News throws off relatively modest profits, depends on an expensive newsgathering operation, and comes with political exposure that, as Ted pointed out, few seem eager to assume.
Anyway, as I noted earlier this week, this is all a long way off, as it will take Brian a year to even unwind these companies. But, presumably, NBCU News Group chairman Cesar Conde sees the writing on the wall, which may explain his recent foray into
The New York Times’s Corner Office column. Naysayers in the building have often misjudged and underestimated Conde because he’s not one of them—not an ink-stained wretch or political junkie or armchair historian who can cite his favorite scene from What It Takes. And they’re right. Instead, he’s a brainy technocrat who keeps his thoughts to himself and will be handsomely rewarded by the Roberts family and the market for neatly disassembling the family’s assets
in a profitable and orderly fashion.
Meanwhile, some of the news talent who stayed on the NBC side of the Versant split may be rethinking that decision. My informal surveying in recent days revealed a lot of confusion and/or a tendency to defer anxiety among those ranks. Nothing will change anytime soon, of course. But, in time, none of it will look the same. |
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A professional-grade rundown on the business of sports from John Ourand, the industry’s preeminent journalist,
covering the leagues, players, agencies, media deals, and the egos fueling it all. Plus, the latest intel from Eriq Gardner on the sports legal beat. |
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Join Puck’s chief political columnist, John Heilemann, as he roams the corridors of power and influence in America on
this twice-weekly interview show, taking you beyond the headlines with the people who shape our culture: icons and up-and-comers, incumbents and insurgents, moguls and machers in the overlapping worlds of politics, entertainment, tech, business, sports, media, and beyond. The conversations are rich and revealing, unrehearsed and unexpected… and reliably impolitic. A Puck-Audacy joint, new episodes drop every Wednesday and Friday. |
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