Good morning. C-SPAN has found its "Ceasefire" host, Roblox has reported another quarter of huge gaming growth, and Glenn Kessler has published his final Fact Checker column. Plus, the latest on WIRED, "South Park," WaPo, and more. But first... |
Meta booms — thanks to AI |
Shares of Meta are rocketing to another record high this morning, one day after releasing what investors might call an impeccable earnings report. The WSJ's Page One headline sums it up this way: "Soaring Meta Ad Revenue Fuels Push Into Artificial Intelligence."
The company's quarterly #s may leave you feeling awe, envy, fear or some mixture of all the above. "Daily active people for Meta’s family of apps grew to 3.48 billion in the second quarter... up from 3.43 billion in the previous quarter," CNBC's Jonathan Vanian writes. Ad impressions were up 11% year-over-year. The average price per ad increased by 9%. Meta is crediting AI with some of these gains.
"AI is significantly improving our ability to show people content that they’re going to find interesting and useful," Mark Zuckerberg said on the earnings call. "Advancements in our recommendation systems have improved quality so much that it has led to a 5% increase in time spent on Facebook and 6% on Instagram just this quarter."
TechCrunch's Sarah Perez digested the news this way: "While consumers are increasingly complaining about the prevalence of 'AI slop' — or low-quality AI-generated content flooding social apps — Meta says that AI systems are getting better at helping users connect with recommended content."
Analyst Gene Munster concluded that Meta's Q2 was the "best example to date of AI having a tangible impact on revenue and earnings growth at scale."
>> Bottom line: Meta is spending eye-watering sums to build out AI capabilities, but "Meta can pay for this thanks to its booming ad business," The Information's Martin Peers wrote. BTW, if you missed Zuckerberg's "superintelligence" blog post yesterday, here it is.
>> Microsoft's earnings beat, meantime, "sent the stock soaring post-market, putting it on course to become the second company to reach a $4 trillion market cap," Bloomberg noted.
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I keep close tabs on Roblox because I view it as a key player in the "attention war." This morning Roblox shares popped nearly 20% after the gaming giant "raised its forecast for annual bookings" and "crossed 100 million in daily active users on its videogame platform,"
Zaheer Kachwala reports for Reuters. Average daily active users jumped 41%. 🤯
Comcast shares are rallying this morning too, up about 5%, with earnings that topped analyst estimates "despite broadband customer losses," CNBC's Lillian Rizzo reports. Peacock's subscriber total was flat from the first quarter, but revenues were up and losses were narrowed as a result.
>> Apple and Reddit are two of the companies to watch after the market close today. At Reddit, investors are scrutinizing "how changes to Google Search's algorithm could affect the social media platform's daily active users," Yahoo's Laura Bratton writes.
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'South Park' touts ratings gains |
"Show biz and television is a very simple business," Trump said earlier this week. "If you get ratings, you can say or do anything. If you don't, you always become a victim."
If that's the yardstick, then "South Park" can keep saying whatever it wants about Trump. Last week's season 27 premiere attracted 5.9 million viewers across Comedy Central and Paramount+, a stat that Paramount touted in a press release yesterday. The episode garnered the biggest "share," meaning the share of available cable audience, of any "South Park" season premiere since 1999.
Here's my story about the #'s. Truth be told, I probably wouldn't have filed a full write, were it not for the fact that the White House hit back at the episode's "Trump takedown" by saying "this show hasn't been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread..."
>> Re: next week's episode, here's a preview via Variety: "Trump Gropes Satan's Leg in New ‘South Park’ Footage"
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Trump keeps talking Epstein |
President Trump has made "several inexplicable moves that have kept Epstein in the news cycle and fueled speculation," Mediaite's Michael Luciano writes.
"I think that he can’t find a way to stop talking about it," Maggie Haberman said on "The Source with Kaitlan Collins" last night.
But he say he wants others to move on, and some MAGA media outlets are "starting to fall in line," as Erin Burnett said on "OutFront," introducing this Donie O'Sullivan report from the White House. Donie talked with some of the pro-Trump personalities who have changed the makeup of the press corps this year. The Trump fans who "say they're done, they're not done," Brian Glenn of Real America's Voice remarked. Here's the video...
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Glenn Kessler's farewell fact-check |
The Washington Post's fact-checker Glenn Kessler is out with his farewell column this morning. "In reviewing many of the some 3,000 fact checks I have written or edited, there is a clear dividing line," he says: "June 2015, the month Donald Trump rode down the Trump Tower escalator and announced he was running for president." Read his reflections here...
>> Related reading: "Newsrooms Need to Get Tougher on All That Lying," Dick Tofel writes in his latest Second Rough Draft column.
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C-SPAN casts 'Ceasefire' host |
Politico WH bureau chief Dasha Burns will host the inaugural season of C-SPAN's forthcoming program "Ceasefire," which will pair up leaders and lawmakers from different sides of the aisle for civil conversations. If you're thinking "that's going to be a guest booking challenge," well, Burns has proven able to book Trump admin officials and allies for her Politico podcast in recent months.
>> "As polarized as this country may seem, Ceasefire will show that we can still work together as a nation to find common ground," Burns said in a statement. The show will launch this fall...
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Wemple and Jenkins exit WaPo |
Another day, another set of big names exiting The Washington Post via buyouts — this time it's longtime sports columnist Sally Jenkins, who is heading to The Atlantic, and media critic Erik Wemple, who is jumping to The New York Times to cover media from DC for the Business section.
"By getting rid of everyone who can contextualize and analyze the news, they are making themselves into more of a bland commodity," Chris Cillizza wrote on his Substack yesterday, observing that the Post isn't the only place doing it. From Post management's POV, though, this is all part of the plan. Under WSJ veteran Matt Murray's leadership, the paper is importing a Journal-like de-emphasis on reporters-as-brands...
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An MLB-like rebuild underway? |
In a hopeful farewell note to colleagues (worth the full read here), Jenkins wrote that she sees a "glimmer" of the "new" WaPo — "one that moves. It has to be right-sized, and young trees planted, but when the clocks all start chiming at the same time, it will be glorious. I believe that and you should too."
Post baseball reporter Chelsea Janes called Jenkins' exit a "gut punch" and likened the mass exodus to a ball club going through a tough rebuild. "It’s devastating," she wrote on X. "That being said, if WaPo's in a rebuild I can promise you one thing after 10-plus years here: Plenty of talent still on the roster, and everyone on that roster plays to win." Military affairs reporter Dan Lamothe posted a powerful note about why he's staying put, as well...
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Shannon Sharpe's last take |
ESPN has cut ties with NFL star turned "First Take" regular Shannon Sharpe, "less than two weeks after Sharpe reached a settlement with an anonymous woman who filed a lawsuit against the famed tight end, accusing him of multiple instances of assault, sexual assault, battery and sexual battery," CNN's David Close reports.
>> ESPN "did what they felt they needed to do, and I’m at peace with that," Sharpe said on a podcast last night, while bemoaning the timing...
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>> TikTok has publicly launched Footnotes, "a crowdsourced fact-checking system similar to X’s and Meta’s Community Notes feature." (TechCrunch)
>> Free Press (the media reform group, not the Bari Weiss startup) is launching a newsletter called Pressing Issues. "So often in media and tech coverage, the public-interest perspective is relegated to 'the kicker' — the last paragraph in the story. We'll work to flip that approach," Craig Aaron says. (Pressing Issues)
>> Interesting experiments: "Publishers like The Philadelphia Inquirer are bundling New York Times content into their subscriptions." (NiemanLab)
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WIRED plans AI Power Summit |
Today WIRED is announcing its first AI Power Summit — what it calls "a live forum bringing together leaders across technology, politics, and media to break down the White House's AI Action Plan and examine its sweeping implications across industries." The event will take place September 15 and WIRED subscribers "will get exclusive first access to the livestream of this critical conversation," the publication says.
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Become your own showrunner |
"Would you want to make your own TV show using AI?" Fable Studio "is betting the answer is 'yes,'" Business Insider's Lucia Moses reports. "The company just raised undisclosed funding from Amazon for Showrunner, its AI streaming platform," and it's "slated to open to all users on Thursday." The platform lets paying customers "create their own animated shows or build on others' existing IP, by doing things like inserting themselves as characters into a show or adding a scene." Read on...
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Hollywood notes and quotes |
>> Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, which has about 1,000 staffers, is cutting around 10% of employees, Pamela McClintock reports. (THR)
>> Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White are Aaron Sorkin's "top choices to star in 'Social Network Part II,'" Justin Kroll reports. (Deadline)
>> Ozzy Osbourne's 2011 memoir "I Am Ozzy" is back on the NYT best seller this week due to a surge of orders after his death. (NYT)
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