Zaz’s Fresh Hell, D.C. Media Murmurs, Harris’s TikTok Election

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon dispatch from Puck HQ.

First up today, William D. Cohan decodes Linda Yaccarino’s bizarro plea to advertisers to return to X, and evaluates whether her “open letter” to potential commercial partners will have any impact in the wake of Elon Musk’s decidedly counterproductive appearance at the DealBook conference late last year.

Plus, below the fold: Marion Maneker reveals why Sotheby’s owner Patrick Drahi needed a billion-dollar capital infusion from Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund. On The Town, Matt Belloni gets LightShed analyst extraordinaire Rich Greenfield on the horn to assess the biggest losers of Hollywood’s Cable-pocalypse. On Somebody’s Gotta Win, Tara Palmeri is joined by Politico’s Meridith McGraw to make sense of Kellyanne Conway’s potential boomerang back to Mar-a-Lago. And on The Powers That Be, Jon Kelly reunites with Peter Hamby for a check-in on the Harris-Trump TikTok election, an assessment of David Zaslav’s nightmare du jour, and to discuss how D.C. misinterpreted the Axios news.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

News and notes on Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino’s bizarro world “war” on the advertising community.

MARION MANEKER

Caught between a slowing art market and $1.88 billion in debt, Sotheby’s owner finally landed the investment he needed to see his art world adventure through. What will he do with the money?

MATTHEW BELLONI

Matt is joined by LightShed media analyst Rich Greenfield to discuss the newest and most dire stage of the linear TV meltdown, with multibillion-dollar write-offs at Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount. They get into why these companies are only now acknowledging their TV assets are such a problem, debate whether or not anyone should be paying billions of dollars for NBA rights in 2025, and whether David Zaslav is on the hot seat.

TARA PALMERI

Tara is joined by Politico national political correspondent Meridith McGraw to share their reactions to Donald Trump’s wild Mar-a-Lago press conference, and Kellyanne Conway's possible return to Team Trump. They dive into Meridith’s new book, ‘Trump in Exile,’ which shines a light on Trump’s political comeback from the January 6 debacle and the calculated machinations of his inner circle.