While the media universe overanalyzes the free speech implications of the tediously drawn out Paramount-Skydance merger—the Colbert-Carr-‘South Park’ of it all—CBS rank and file are pondering a simpler question: Who’s gonna fix the evening news?

News and notes on the latest media industry talking points: The timing, optics, and insider drama following CBS’s abrupt decision to cancel ‘The Late Show’ as the Paramount deal approaches the finish line; and what to make of Substack’s $1.1 billion valuation in a round led by The Chernin Group.

As Paramount prepares to remake itself, David Rhodes has emerged as a likely successor at CBS News, possibly advised by Bari Weiss. And company insiders suggest that the Colbert cancellation was purely economic, but is that buyable?

Times defector Bari Weiss has become everybody’s favorite center-right public intellectual: principled, pro-Israel, not about to get pushed around by the progressive mob, and a damn good hang. So when she sat down with David Ellison (and lawyers) at Sun Valley last week, it set off the usual rumors that her Free Press might be Skydance’s next acquisition. But is it sound business or just savvy virtue signaling in a Trump 2.0 world?

News and notes from the Washington bubble, namely the G.O.P.’s lame-duck War of the Roses and Bari Weiss’s new alt-press stardom.

The evolution of the digital economy has already remade the media industry, allowing columnists like Weiss to circumvent the progressive gatekeepers who signed her paychecks and build her own subscription businesses on Substack. Actually, higher education seems like the natural next step.

Plus: Inside Tim Draper’s quixotic scheme to kill California’s unions and how Blake Masters and J.D. Vance converged on more than just Peter Thiel.