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Wednesday, August 6, 2025 |
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Happy Wednesday! Here's the latest on "Trump math," Disney, "South Park," Howard Stern, Sam Altman, Ghost, "The Art of the Steal," and much more. But first...
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Some of the top stories on ESPN's homepage right now are about ESPN. In an absolute blitz of news, the cable sports institution is fully transforming into a streaming-first player:
>> This morning, ESPN announced an August 21 launch date and a $29.99 monthly price tag for its eponymous direct-to-consumer streaming service. It will "allow users to get all seven of ESPN's domestic linear networks in addition to ESPN on ABC and several other streaming options."
>> Last night, the network confirmed a complex deal with the NFL that will give "ownership and control of the NFL Network to ESPN, while ESPN will also license additional NFL games, NFL RedZone and NFL Films programming from the league," as CNN's Kevin Dotson reported here.
>> ESPN "will own broad rights to RedZone, including the trademark," which means it could apply the RedZone format to other sports. (The NFL will continue to own and produce the existing RedZone channel, though.)
>> And there's more! This morning, ESPN also announced an extension of its deal to carry the NFL Draft (through 2030, according to Sports Business Journal).
>> And the network also announced a $1.6 billion deal with TKO Group's WWE, nabbing the rights to "WrestleMania" and other big events for the next five years.
It's a lot. It's impressive. But because President Trump is back in power, and wielding power in unprecedented ways, the NFL equity deal raises a question...
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Will Trump interfere with the deal? |
"The wild card in the proposed NFL-ESPN deal is Donald Trump," as Michael McCarthy wrote at Front Office Sports yesterday.
The tie-up involves the NFL taking a 10% stake in ESPN, which means it is subject to the regulatory review process. Specifically, the DOJ will conduct a review, as required by law, which will take months. Given what we've all witnessed during Trump 2.0, this means it "could be delayed or blocked by the president," McCarthy pointed out.
No doubt, Disney and NFL execs will explain how this equity arrangement is pro-consumer and pro-competition. But will any of that rhetoric matter? Some Trump allies are urging the administration to meddle. OutKick founder Clay Travis wrote on X yesterday, "Given ABC News's consistent bias against President Trump why should his administration allow this Disney media purchase to occur? What's more, ESPN is a far left wing political organization." Travis wants "major changes" on "content viewpoint diversity going forward."
>> "Here’s the reality," Mike Florio says. "To the extent that the NFL and ESPN were already walking on eggshells in order to avoid an executive order, they’ll be treading even more lightly now."
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Meantime, ESPN is also facing scrutiny from a different direction — from folks who are raising ethical questions about the NFL owning 10% of a network that employs journalists who cover the league. The WSJ's Joe Flint and Isabella Simonetti raised it with Bob Iger, who said, "Nothing in this deal in any way changes ESPN's approach when it comes to journalism."
>> Big picture: The NFL announcements last night this morning underscore that the NFL is, still, "the most important thing on TV," Business Insider's Peter Kafka writes. He notes that ESPN is getting a few additional games per season, but the league is "holding on to some of them to sell to other media companies..."
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Even more Mouse House news |
Disney's overall performance "topped expectations," but revenue "came in just shy of analyst projections — as the company's streaming business grew and its theme parks saw higher spending from consumers," CNBC's Lillian Rizzo reports.
>> Disney is going to follow Netflix and stop sharing subscriber numbers and ARPU for Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. THR's Alex Weprin has more on that here...
>> The Hulu era is ending: Disney is "fully integrating" it with the Disney+ app in the next year. IMHO, Hulu is the fastest, user-friendliest streaming app on the market, so I hope Disney incorporates that tech...
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Erasing the linear and streaming lines |
"We're asked a lot about linear versus streaming," Iger said on the earnings call just now. "We're at a point, given the way we're operating our businesses, where we don't really look at being in the linear business and the streaming business: We're in the television business, and what we're doing is we're giving our customers or our viewers a chance to watch our programming... wherever they want. If you're watching ABC primetime shows on the linear channel, great. Through a multi television provider, fantastic. Or if you want to go to a streaming and watch it on the Disney+ and Hulu app, that's fine as well."
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Tale of two earnings reports |
Shares of The New York Times Company are rallying this morning after another enviable quarter of both ad and subscriber growth. The NYT "now has 11.88 million total subscribers to its print and digital products," with a gain of 230,000 new paid digital-only subs in the second quarter, as Katie Robertson reports here.
Snap, on the other hand, is slumping 17% this morning despite year-over-year user gains because the company "acknowledged a slowdown in advertising revenue growth," as Kurt Wagner writes. Martin Peers says the earnings report shows a "stalled business."
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"Call it Trump math," Jake Tapper said on "The Lead," documenting the president's "disconnect" from reality. "President Trump has been creating his own equations when it comes to jobs numbers, poll numbers; citing fake numbers to justify actions; ignoring real ones that go against his narrative." Watch the segment here...
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>> Yesterday, Trump gave a shoutout to CNN's Harry Enten (while butchering his last name) and said (in the third person) Enten "went crazy over how well Trump was doing." Enten responded on "NewsNight;" here's the video.
>> The NYT editorial board's warning: "Countries that fudge statistics are basically lying to themselves, and they suffer the consequences."
>> Fergus McIntosh, who runs The New Yorker's fact-checking unit, is out with a new piece this morning titled "The Latest Phase in Trump's War on Data."
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News Corp CEO Robert Thomson lobbied Trump for copyright protections in the AI age by playing to Trump's ego on an earnings call yesterday.
"Even the president of the United States is not immune to blatant theft," Thomson said. "The president's books are still reporting healthy sales, but are being consumed by AI engines which profit from his thoughts by cannibalizing his concepts, thus undermining future sales of his books. Suddenly, 'The Art of the Deal' has become 'The Art of the Steal.'" Deadline's Dade Hayes has the context here...
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'South Park' is back tonight... |
...and the teaser shows some sort of ICE raid, including an animated version of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem holding up a handgun in front of photographers. The real-life DHS took a screen grab from the teaser and posted it on X yesterday with a link to the ICE recruitment website, leading @SouthPark to respond, "Wait, so we ARE relevant?" (That's a call-back to the White House saying the show "hasn't been relevant for over 20 years.") The rest of the "South Park" response on X was profane.
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SiriusXM no-comments Stern chatter |
SiriusXM isn't confirming or denying The US Sun's story saying that "The Howard Stern Show" is "set to be canceled after a stunning 20-year run." As far as I can tell, the company's reps are just hoping that people will ignore the story. But it's getting lots of traction anyway, with an anonymous source telling Jessica Finn that "Sirius and Stern are never going to meet on the money he is going to want. It's no longer worth the investment."
That's conjecture, but Stern has been known to sign five-year contracts, most recently at the end of 2020, so it is indeed time for a new contract negotiation. Maybe this one is going to play out partially in public view, given The Sun story and the ruckus it has caused...
>> Sirius president Scott Greenstein said last year of Stern, "he's a singular talent" and "we hope he continues forever."
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>> Top Trump officials are expected to discuss "Epstein strategy" at a meeting this evening at VP JD Vance's residence, CNN's team scoops. One possibility: A Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche appearance on Joe Rogan's show. (CNN)
>> "There is an information blackout at Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz,'" reports Hunter Walker, who, along with other reporters, keeps getting stonewalled when they request public records. (TPM)
>> "Why I left The Washington Post:" In this must-read essay, longtime fact-checker Glenn Kessler likens The Post to the Titanic, post-iceberg, while "the captain is shouting commands that the solution is a different ship." (Substack)
>> "ICE is urgently looking for a company to help it 'dominate' digital media channels with advertisements in an attempt to recruit 14,050 more personnel," Joseph Cox reports. (404 Media)
>> "More than 2,300 members of the Writers Guild of America have signed an open letter" blasting Trump's "unprecedented, authoritarian assault" on the First Amendment. (Variety)
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What will this 'device' be? |
"Someday soon," Sam Altman wrote yesterday on X, "something smarter than the smartest person you know will be running on a device in your pocket, helping you with whatever you want. This is a very remarkable thing."
"And Jony Ive is going to design that thing," Joanna Stern noted in a reply, pointing out "no mention of 'phone' but instead 'a device.'"
>> Speaking of OpenAI, Bloomberg broke this news last night: "OpenAI is in early talks about a potential secondary sale of stock for current and former employees at a valuation of about $500 billion, people briefed on the investment discussions said, marking an enormous gain in value for the AI leader..."
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>> OpenAI is "freely sharing two of its A.I. models used to power online chatbots," Cade Metz reports. (NYT)
>> How are people using ChatGPT on a daily basis? Well, a researcher "scraped nearly 100,000 conversations" that users had set to share publicly, and here's what showed up in the results. (404 Media)
>> Google has rolled out "Storybook," a new Gemini AI tool that can generate bedtime stories complete with illustrations... and some occasional "AI weirdness," as Emma Roth learned when she tried it out. (The Verge)
>> Speaking of trying it out... Jess Weatherbed tested Grok Imagine, the chatbot's new "spicy" mode, and it "spit out fully uncensored topless videos of Taylor Swift the very first time I used it." She says "spicy" mode "feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen." (The Verge)
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>> Ghost, a Substack alternative, says "publisher earnings have crossed the $100 million mark" on its platform. "Indie media isn't just surviving, it's thriving," the company says. (NiemanLab)
>> Creators on Patreon, a much bigger platform with many more uses, "have received more than $10 billion in payments from fans since the company was founded in 2013." (Axios)
>> The Athletic "has signed two new podcast licensing deals, including one for Pablo Torre Finds Out, in a bid to expand its subscriber base," Ashley Carman reports. (Bloomberg)
>> Linda Yaccarino has resurfaced as the new CEO of eMed, a telehealth startup focusing on weight loss. (CNN)
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>> In an exclusive interview with CNN's Elizabeth Wagmeister, an attorney for Sean 'Diddy' Combs confirmed that "the music mogul's team has reached out to the Trump administration about a potential pardon." (CNN)
>> Lady Gaga leads this year's
MTV Video Music Awards nominees with 12 nods, followed by Bruno Mars with 11 and Kendrick Lamar with 10, Lisa Respers France reports. (CNN)
>> "'KPop Demon Hunters' made Netflix history during the week of July 28, becoming the fourth most-watched English-language movie to date." (TheWrap)
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