Good morning from 35,000 feet. Here's the latest on "The View," Google, Sam Altman, "Les Misérables," Jon Voight, Reba McIntire, "Sinners," Rick Atkinson, and much more... |
A win for international networks |
The media beat doubles as a legal beat these days.
President Trump is suing CBS and other outlets. PBS and NPR are about to go to court to fight Trump's defunding plan. The Justice Department is authorizing prosecutors to subpoena reporters' records in leak inquiries. And, as we've been chronicling here for months, US-funded international broadcasters are suing for their survival.
Overnight, the full DC Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling siding with Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks in their parallel efforts to defeat Trump's termination orders.
The administrative stay is just one step in a tangled legal process, but it's certainly favorable for the plaintiffs. Judge Gregory G. Katsas, one of several conservative dissenters, wrote that the move, though just temporary, "effectively requires the government to pay out over $25 million in disputed grants."
In other words, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and some of the other networks may be getting the April funds that they've been denied thus far. Last week, RFA laid off most of its staff and said it would operate its remaining channels with a skeleton crew while the court battle continues.
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'A threat to their control' |
Journalists and advocates from several countries asked me about the state of the Kari Lake-controlled US Agency for Global Media at yesterday's Truth Tellers summit in London. Their primary concern was about the journalists who worked for outlets like RFA and now may face deportation and prosecution.
Liam Scott, the VOA media reporter who was sidelined in March, continues to shine a spotlight on this story by writing for outlets like CJR, as well as his own new Substack, titled The Press Freedom Report.
Scott interviewed RFE/RL journalist Andrei Kuznechyk, who in February was freed after three years in a Belarusian prison. Kuznechyk said the closure of RFE/RL's Belarusian service, Radio Svaboda, "would be a gift to the forces that consider objective journalism, democratic values, and uncontrolled, uninfringed Belarusian culture and language a threat to their control over society and its future."
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'Do you hear the people sing?' |
A significant number of "Les Misérables" cast members "plan to boycott" Trump's attendance at a Kennedy Center performance of the show next month, CNN's team exclusively reported last night. Richard Grenell, Trump's appointee to run the center, responded by encouraging a blacklist of any performer "who isn't professional enough to perform for patrons of all backgrounds, regardless of political affiliation."
"We think it would be important to out those vapid and intolerant artists to ensure producers know who they shouldn't hire – and that the public knows which shows have political litmus tests to sit in the audience."
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Another Gulf name dilemma? |
Trump "is making plans for the United States to begin referring to the Persian Gulf as the Gulf of Arabia or the Arabian Gulf," a decision that "is tied to his trip to the Middle East next week," CNN's Alayna Treene reports.
Over to you, Associated Press. Copy editors at The AP and other outlets will once again have to put public clarity ahead of presidential proclamation...
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Trumpworld notes and quotes |
>> Tech titans gave Trump "seven-figure check," "glowing public praise" and an inauguration photo op. But "so far, those favors remain unreciprocated," Zachary Basu and Ashley Gold point out. (Axios)
>> No mincing words in this headline: "Trump picks conspiracy theorist 'wellness influencer' Casey Means with no medical license to replace Fox contributor as Surgeon General" (The Independent)
>> Following a Trump exec order, the DOJ and the FTC have announced "a public inquiry into the concert and ticketing industries." (THR)
>> Yesterday, Trump belatedly raged against the Emmy judges who nominated the "60 Minutes" interview of Kamala Harris for a best-editing prize. (CNN)
>> Speaking of Truth Social rants, Karl Rove penned a column exploring how "something I said in a seven-minute Fox News segment, probably about tariffs, got under the president's skin." (WSJ)
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The Bidens give their 'View' |
Joe and Jill Biden will be on ABC's "The View" for the full hour later this morning. Ana Navarro, who will be one of the interviewers, said on "NewsNight" that she believes Biden wants to preempt books like "Original Sin," Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's May 20 release about "Biden's decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again."
"There's books that are coming out that are basically arguing that he was practically brain dead and that there was a massive cover-up by his administration," Navarro said. "And I think he wants to get ahead of it and respond and put out his version."
She also quipped that she hopes there is no white smoke at the Vatican during "The View" broadcast...
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (who just named a new CEO for applications, see below) testifies on Capitol Hill at 10am ET.
Paramount reports quarterly earnings after the bell.
The ACM Awards, hosted by Reba McEntire, stream live on Amazon Prime Video starting at 8pm ET.
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Will Murdoch records be unsealed? |
The Nevada Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday on an effort by media outlets, including CNN and the NYT, to "open up courtroom access and unseal records in the secretive legal dispute over who will control Rupert Murdoch's powerful media empire after he dies." The AP's Rio Yamat explained it all here. "The court said it will issue its decision at a later date..."
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>> Warner Bros. Discovery (our parent) posted "mixed" Q1 earnings, "with beats on streaming subs and profit and an anticipated drop in revenue at the film studio, which has since turned around dramatically in Q2," Jill Goldsmith reports. (Deadline)
>> While Comcast's spinoff is in the works, NBCUniversal will still sell ads for Versant's channels for the next two years, Alex Weprin reports. (THR)
>> Variety's team compiled a handy guide to next week's TV upfronts. (Variety)
>> Rick Atkinson's "The Fate of the Day" has debuted at #1 on the NYT nonfiction best seller list. Jeremy Renner's "My Next Breath" is #2 and Christine Brinkley's "Uptown Girl" is #4. In total there are nine debuts on the list this week! (NYT)
>> "At three big publishing conferences this week a recurring theme emerged: we need to be preparing for the end of Google search as the main way readers discover publisher websites," Dominic Ponsford writes. (Press Gazette)
Speaking of that...
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'The beginning of the end' of search? |
Alphabet shares are recovering somewhat this morning after plunging yesterday when Bloomberg reported on some newsy testimony from Apple exec Eddy Cue as part of the DOJ's antitrust suit against Google. Bloomberg's headline: "Apple Eyes Move to AI Search, Ending Era Defined by Google."
Cue testified that "searches on Safari dipped for the first time last month," attributing the dip to "people using AI."
Google pushed back in a blog post. "Still," as Reuters put it, "the Apple executive's comments suggests that a seismic shift in search is likely underway, threatening Google's dominant search business."
So is this, as analyst Michael Nathanson's note to investors asked, "the beginning of the end for search," at least as defined by Google's little blue links? It feels that way, but Nathanson also suggested that Cue wants the judge in the antitrust case to view Google as "much more wounded" than the DOJ asserts. Cue and company would wince if the government forced Google to stop paying Apple $20 billion a year in exchange for making Google the default search engine in Safari...
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>> Late last night The Information caught wind that OpenAI was on the verge of hiring a "senior executive" for a "major leadership role." This appeared to speed up Sam Altman's announcement that Instacart CEO Fidji Simo is becoming CEO of applications. "In this new configuration I'll be able to increase my focus on research, compute, and safety," Altman wrote. "These are critical as we approach superintelligence."
>> This morning Nintendo shared its first forecast for Switch 2 console sales: It "expects to sell 15 million units" between June and next March. (CNBC)
>> Microsoft has successfully appealed the FTC's legal challenge to its $69 billion purchase of "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard. (Reuters)
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Clever move by the Golden Globe Awards: A best podcast of the year category will be added to next January's ceremony. "Only the 'top 25 podcasts' will qualify for the award and the category will include a total of six nominees," CNN's Alli Rosenbloom reports. Narrative, video, interview and news-based podcasts will all be eligible.
>> "It would appear that Joe Rogan, Alex Cooper and Megyn Kelly could soon be invited to 'Hollywood's Party of the Year,'" THR's Scott Feinberg commented...
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Seeing 'Sinners' where it was set |
Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" is set in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a town where the local movie theater closed in 2003. "Locals are asking for a screening," Aallyah Wright reported for Capital B News earlier this week, highlighting 26-year-old activist Tyler Yarbrough's efforts to drum up interest in a screening and public forum.
Yarbrough is making progress: "He and Clarksdale Mayor Chuck Espy have had several discussions with top executives at Warner Bros. to bring a potential screening to the area," USA Today reports...
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Film tax incentives, not tariffs |
Speaking at the Milken Institute's annual conference yesterday, top execs from Amazon Prime Video, Sony, NBCUniversal, and HBO said "the answer is not international tariffs," it's "fixing California’s tax-incentive problem," per Tony Maglio's recap for THR.
Trump "ambassador" Jon Voight's draft plan included "a 10% federal tax incentive for film and TV production," paired with tariffs and other proposals, Variety's Gene Maddaus reported the other day. But Trump opted to only post about the stick, not the carrot.
>> "Thank God the president cares about Hollywood and movies," Voight told Tatiana Siegel yesterday. "He has a great love for Hollywood in that way. We've got to roll up our sleeves here. We can't let it go down the drain like Detroit."
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>> Disney shares rose more than 10% and closed above $100 on the back of an A+ earnings report and a new Abu Dhabi theme park venture. CNN's Becky Anderson interviewed Disney Experiences chair Josh D'Amaro about the plan. (CNN)
>> "The Middle East is the new theme park hot spot," Jacob Passy and Ben Fritz write. (WSJ)
>> Bob Iger told Wall Street analysts that ESPN will unveil its "Flagship" service's name and price next week. (Awful Announcing)
>> Iger also talked about Disney's recommitment to "quality" over quantity: "We all know that in our zeal to flood our streaming platform with more content, that we turned to all of our creative engines, including Marvel, and had them produce a lot more. We've also learned over over time that quantity does not necessarily beget quality. And frankly, we've all admitted to ourselves that we lost a little focus by making too much... By consolidating a bit and having Marvel focus much more on their films, we believe that will result in better quality. And I think the first and best example is Thunderbolts*. I feel very good about that." (THR)
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