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Friday, November 21, 2025 |
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TGIF! Here's the latest from Christiane Amanpour, David McCraw, Casey Bloys, Sara Fischer, Karoline Leavitt, Colby Hall, Grokipedia, Variety, and more... |
Warner Bros. Discovery (CNN's parent) is at a fork in the road. Paramount Skydance submitted another bid for the entire media company yesterday, and Comcast and Netflix made initial offers for the studio and streaming businesses.
"There will be another round, after the particulars are hashed out, when bidders will be asked if they want to submit final, binding offers," Deadline's Dade Hayes and Ted Johnson wrote here.
WBD CEO David Zaslav "was said to be enthusiastic about a potential bid from Netflix" during a star-studded dinner party on Wednesday night, the NYT reported.
Zaslav and co. are aiming to have a decision in hand by Christmas. Until then, treat the bidding rumors like weather forecasts from people who don't have access to radar — plenty of speculation, but near-zero visibility.
Only a few people are privy to what's really going on behind the scenes. Lots of others think they know what's going on, producing a dense fog of half-informed predictions. (At this point I'm just having fun with all the weather imagery, I admit.)
HBO boss Casey Bloys said it best during a press presentation in New York yesterday. "All of that theoretical, it's kind of a waste of energy, because I don't know what's going to happen" with the parent company, he said.
"So I don't spend a lot of time trying to game it out," he continued. "And even when we find out, the process takes a year, or year and a half to close."
Stating the obvious, but the world could look very different in 2027. And in any case, he said, "a lot of it is out of our hands."
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A regulatory reality check |
Trump's relationship with Larry and David Ellison has contributed to a narrative that Paramount has a huge advantage in the WBD competition. But just because Trump could "pressure the DOJ" to block Comcast or Netflix, "that doesn't mean the DOJ would win that fight in court," Sara Fischer points out in an important reality check for Axios. (See her related X thread here.) In fact, there's ample reason to believe the DOJ would lose.
>> "What's more likely," Fischer says, "is that WBD's board will have to weigh any time wasted on the possible regulatory setbacks of a particular bid" against the business value...
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Warner Bros. Discovery "may ultimately decide not to sell itself to any bidders," the NYT's team notes. "This summer, it announced a plan to divide itself into two companies, one owning the streaming service and studio and the other owning the traditional cable business. If the company's board rejects all of the suitors, it may proceed with that spinoff, which is expected to be completed next year."
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'Had any other president...' |
The word "again" really hits hard in this CNN subheadline: "The president suggested, again, his political opponents deserve to be executed, after 6 Democrats cut a video urging military not to obey unlawful orders."
Lawrence O'Donnell argued last night on MS NOW that "had any other president of the United States ever said anything like it, The New York Times would have a six-inch headline about it and a front page devoted entirely to that madness and the reaction to that madness. And tonight, it's not even close to the lead story in The New York Times."
O'Donnell went on to say, "The only way to try to reduce the historic and moral and legal importance of what Donald Trump said is to internalize the notion that Donald Trump's words do not matter. And the American news media has done that."
Well, not entirely. Trump's posts and reshares were covered everywhere yesterday. But it's true, there is no font size or weight that conveys "madness," as O'Donnell (and countless others) would like...
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Kimmel to Trump: 'I'll go when you go' |
Quoting from Jimmy Kimmel's monologue: "I woke up this morning, I'm in bed, my wife comes out of the bathroom. She’s got her phone. She goes, 'Um, Trump tweeted you should be fired again.' I was like, 'Oh.' And then I went downstairs and made bagels for the kids."
"Every five weeks," Kimmel went on, Trump "flips out and wants me fired. If you got this many threats from a neighbor, you'd have no problem getting a restraining order. The judge would be like, 'Yeah, sounds like the guy's nuts.'"
Kimmel pointed out that Trump's latest post came at 12:49 a.m., "11 minutes after the show ended on the East Coast." He said to Trump, "Thanks for watching us on TV instead of on YouTube. We appreciate that. And I'll tell you, it's viewers like you who keep us on the air, ironically."
Then came his main message to Trump: "I'll go when you go, OK? We'll be a team. Let's ride off into the sunset together like Butch Cassidy and the Suntan Kid. And until then, if I may borrow a phrase from you: 'Quiet, piggy.'"
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Defending the indefensible |
At yesterday's WH press briefing, Karoline Leavitt claimed that "quiet, piggy" was an admirable example of Trump being "frank and open and honest to your faces rather than hiding behind your backs." She also suggested that reporters deserve to be insulted, saying, "He gets frustrated with reporters when you lie about him." As always, these episodes reveal more about Trump and his inner circle than about the press corps...
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Takeaways from CPJ's awards night |
CNN's Christiane Amanpour brought up that "farmyard epithet" from the president as she hosted the Committee to Protect Journalists' annual awards dinner in NYC last night. (Thanks to all the Reliable Sources readers who said hi in person.)
"I believe an attack on one, like the NATO doctrine, should be considered an attack on all," Amanpour said. "I believe that collective action and solidarity would have been and would still be appropriate."
The NYT's top newsroom lawyer, David McCraw, received the final award of the night. McCraw spoke against "anticipatory obedience" in the Trump 2.0 era, observing, "There are always good reasons to stand down — you have to pick your battles, you can't jeopardize your institution or business, you want to be seen as a reasonable person — but in the end... history shows that the only thing that anticipatory obedience does is teach those in power what they can get away with."
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Hegseth sits down with OAN |
'While veteran national security reporters can’t get their calls answered, members of the new, MAGA-friendly press corps have a hotline" into the Pentagon, Ivan L. Nagy writes in a new piece for CJR about the challenges facing exiled Pentagon reporters.
>> Speaking of: One America News, "the only outlet that regularly covered the Pentagon in person that signed the recent press access policy," aired an interview with Pete Hegseth yesterday, Scott Nover noted on X. It's unclear if Hegseth really derives any benefit from a sit-down with such a small, albeit slavishly MAGA, outlet. In a sign of OAN's amateurish status, there is no video of the interview on its website this morning...
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A boom in 'politically charged ads' |
Bloomberg is out with a big new look at conservative podcasters and the advertisers who are "using ideology to persuade someone to make a purchase."
Its analysis found that sponsors of right-leaning shows "routinely tapped into political identity in marketing." Left-leaning shows, comparatively, "haven't fostered a similar ecosystem of podcast-oriented ideological marketing." There are lots of interesting findings here...
>> Related: "Advertising spend in the creator ecosystem is expected to hit $37 billion for 2025, according to a new report from the IAB."
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7️⃣ scintillating weekend reads |
>> Susan Glasser writes about seeing Rachel Maddow at Dick Cheney's funeral yesterday, and what that says about our political moment. (New Yorker)
>> Stuart A. Thompson and Tiffany Hsu document how Trumpworld is elevating "once-fringe meme makers to the mainstream." (NYT)
>> Colby Hall says "the Olivia Nuzzi comeback is everything wrong with modern media." (Mediaite)
>> Nicholas Hune-Brown reveals "a possible scammer in journalism's AI era," leading four publications to pull articles from their websites. (The Local)
>> Russell Brandom says "the best guide to spotting AI writing comes from Wikipedia." (TechCrunch)
>> Naomi Nix and Will Oremus detail how "Silicon Valley's ever-changing landscape is blunting the antitrust movement seeking to rein in Big Tech's power." (Wash Post)
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>> JD Vance says he texted Jeff Bezos to urge him to hire Breitbart White House bureau chief Matt Boyle to run WaPo's DC team. (Beast)
>> CBS News EIC Bari Weiss "is expected to detail a more specific strategy in the coming weeks for the newsroom." (WSJ)
>> "The abrupt firing earlier this month of a senior fact-checker and New Yorker union member, Jasper Lo, has set off a swell of outrage among magazine staffers and contributors." (WaPo)
>> TIME has a pact with Galactic to launch a predictions market platform. (TIME)
>> Filmmaker magazine has tapped our former VF colleague and friend of Reliable, Michael Hogan, to reboot the publication. (THR)
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Meta's answer to ChatGPT Pulse |
New this morning: "Meta is building an AI-powered morning brief in push to compete with ChatGPT," WaPo's Naomi Nix reports. OpenAI previewed something similar called ChatGPT Pulse earlier this fall. Meta's product "would give Facebook users a personalized, AI-powered briefing of information relevant to their daily lives..."
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More of today's tech talk |
>> I could devote an entire edition of this newsletter to Elon Musk and Grok's misadventures... but I will spare you. One of today's examples: "Grok has been reprogrammed to say Musk is better than everyone at everything." (404 Media)
>> Researchers at Cornell found that Grokipedia "cites the neo-Nazi website Stormfront as a source 42 times and relies on other websites that experts have shunned as unreliable or hate-filled," David Ingram reports. (NBC News)
>> European regulators are in touch with X "regarding hate speech content on X's Grok, which the EU described as 'appalling' and going against European human rights values." (Reuters)
>> YouTube "discontinued its private messaging feature in 2019," but now it is "reintroducing this functionality for a select group of users." (TechCrunch)
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'Actors on Actors' on CNN All Access |
Variety‘s Emmy-winning series "Actors on Actors" is coming to CNN under a new partnership between the two brands. "The upcoming 23rd season of Actors on Actors will be co-produced by Variety and CNN," and the new episodes will "premiere on CNN's new streaming platform before airing on Variety's YouTube page," Rebecca Rubin explains here...
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>> Universal's "Wicked: For Good" is off to a very strong start: "It's going to break a whole other round of opening records." (Deadline)
>> Among the announcements at HBO's press preview event yesterday: "HBO has renewed 'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' for Season 2" ahead of the first season's premiere in January. (Variety)
>> Looking forward to this one: Pixar has shared the official trailer for "Hoppers." (YouTube)
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Beloved television PR executive Robert Pietranton died this week at his home in Los Angeles. He was 56. Pietranton worked at Warner Bros. Television for nearly twenty years and was widely respected throughout the industry.
CNN entertainment correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister writes: “Robert was truly one of the loveliest PR executives I've ever had the pleasure of working with. He always made time for your call, and was always fair and decent on the other end of the line. I met him when I was an intern at TV Guide Magazine, and even though I was just a pipsqueak reporter, he treated me with respect and kindness from Day 1. I was on a Zoom with him just last week, talking about one of my favorite shows, 'The Pitt.' Of course, he was smiling ear-to-ear during our meeting. This is a tragic loss for our industry, and I will really miss working with him."
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