|
Thursday, October 30, 2025 |
|
|
|
Good morning. Here's the latest on Comcast, Radio Free Asia, Tubi, HuffPost, Perry Sook, Cosm, YouTube, "The White Lotus," and the two Bill DeBlasios... |
For all the American TikTok users who woke up this morning wondering if President Trump's meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping would bring clarity about the future of the app: Maybe not yet.
"The remarkable thing... was what wasn't in their announcements" after the meeting, NYT correspondent and CNN analyst David Sanger said on "CNN This Morning." China has "the fastest growing nuclear capability. It's got technological competition with us in AI and semiconductors. There's the TikTok issue. There's Taiwan. We heard about none of that."
Trump didn't mention TikTok at all as he hailed his "truly great" meeting with Xi on the flight home. Thus, despite Trump's assurances to American TikTok addicts — sorry, I mean users — "TikTok's future in the US remains uncertain," CNN's David Goldman wrote here. Consortium investors like Larry Ellison and Rupert Murdoch remain waiting in the wings...
|
Bessent's timetable: 'Weeks and months' |
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has repeatedly touted what he has called a "final deal on TikTok" without any confirmation from his Chinese counterparts.
Speaking on Fox Business this morning from South Korea, Bessent said that during trade discussions in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last weekend, "we finalized the TikTok agreement in terms of getting Chinese approval. And I would expect that would go forward in the coming weeks and months, and we'll finally see a resolution to that."
China’s Commerce Ministry said after the Trump-Xi meeting that in the trade discussions, "the US side made positive commitments in areas such as investment, and the Chinese side will properly address issues related to TikTok." Possible translation: There's still more work to do.
>> FYI: MSNBC's Vaughn Hillyard reported overnight that the TikTok terms "were not discussed during the Trump-Xi meeting."
|
Radio Free Asia going silent |
Radio Free Asia stopped broadcasting earlier this year. Now the US-funded news operation says it will have to stop publishing online tomorrow "amid a funding crisis brought on by the Trump administration and cemented by congressional inaction," WaPo's
Scott Nover reports.
RFA president Bay Fang says she is trying to conserve what little $$ the nonprofit has left to "preserve the possibility of restarting operations should consistent funding become available" in the future...
|
Busy morning of media earnings news |
Fox Corp "topped Wall Street’s expectations for its first fiscal quarter of 2026, despite a profit decline," per THR's Tony Maglio. Fox announced that Tubi has achieved quarterly profitability for the first time... SiriusXM also beat expectations... Comcast recorded a record number of new mobile customers, while continuing to lose broadband and cable subscribers...
>> Speaking of Comcast, this is new and insightful from Alex Sherman (of the Comcast-owned CNBC) this morning: "Analysts think Trump would block a Comcast-WBD deal. Comcast executives aren't as worried..."
>> Coming up: Apple, Amazon, Roku, and Reddit all report earnings after the bell today...
>> Scroll down for yesterday's takeaways from Google and Meta...
|
Larry Bushart is out of jail |
Yesterday morning, I led Reliable with the shocking case of Larry Bushart, who had been locked up in a Tennessee jail for more than a month over a Facebook post in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination. Yesterday afternoon, the charges against Bushart were suddenly dropped — a reversal that I suspect had a lot to do with local TV pitbull Phil Williams' Monday report about the case. The Intercept also deserves a lot of credit for giving the case national attention last week.
"Prosecutors did not specify why they had abandoned the charges," the NYT's Rick Rojas reported.
I briefly spoke with Bushart and his wife on the phone last night. "I'm glad to be out," he said, and grateful to those who supported him. The couple wanted to refrain from commenting further until they consult with their lawyer — and some First Amendment scholars have already said that Bushart may have a strong case against the local authorities...
|
'The Battle for New York' |
This morning's new cover of The Economist looks past next Tuesday's mayoral election in NYC: |
Meantime, don't miss this NYT story about Andrew Cuomo's failed pivot to a podcasting career. The headline on Nicholas Fandos' story: "How Andrew Cuomo's Dreams of Becoming a Radio Star Fell Apart." The kicker involves Laura Ingraham... |
Solving the De Blasio debacle |
Semafor's Brendan Ruberry and Max Tani got to the bottom of it: "The man at the heart of a high-stakes political mixup that rippled through global political journalism in the final days of the New York mayoral campaign was neither 'falsely claiming' to be former Mayor Bill de Blasio — as the Times of London suggested — nor, as the NYT wrote, a 'de Blasio impersonator.' He is, instead, a 59-year-old Long Island wine importer named Bill DeBlasio, who merely responded to an email from a journalist seeking his views on Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s policies."
>> Even better: Ruberry interviewed the other DeBlasio "through his Ring doorbell in Huntington Station, Long Island, from his current location in Florida."
>> The ex-mayor de Blasio reacted on "Erin Burnett OutFront" last night. He said it's hard to imagine "seemingly serious reporter has a long dialogue" with someone "and prints it without checking at all if it's the real person..."
|
CBS News layoffs went deep |
Yesterday's layoffs at CBS News reached almost every corner of the organization, from streaming to radio, "CBS Saturday Morning" to "Evening News Plus."
The Saturday show's anchors and producing staff were cut, Variety's Brian Steinberg writes. Numerous correspondents were dropped, too. The network's Race and Culture unit, an internal point of pride when it was created in 2020, was "gutted," a source told The Guardian's Jeremy Barr. And two streaming extensions of the network's weekday morning and evening newscasts are being cancelled.
|
Leveraging 'your mom' for reader support |
Erik Wemple's NYT profile of HuffPost White House reporter S.V. Daté, who got in a highly public social media spat with Karoline Leavitt, notes that HuffPost used Leavitt's "your mom" insult "to promote its membership program" last week, and it worked: "The site received 66 percent more revenue for the program than it does on a typical day."
|
>> New this morning: Nexstar has reupped chairman and CEO Perry Sook through 2029. (Variety)
>> John Malone "is stepping down as chair of his media and telecoms empire, marking the end of an era in which the 'cable cowboy' reshaped both industries," Kieran Smith and Daniel Thomas write. (FT)
>> We alluded to this yesterday, and now it's official: "Disney has completed its acquisition of a majority stake in Fubo, which will create the No. 6 pay-TV operator in the U.S. when combined with Hulu + Live TV." (Deadline)
>> Fox Sports "is making a strategic investment in Shadow Lion, the entertainment and marketing studio co-founded by Tom Brady, Fox's lead NFL analyst," Alex Weprin reports. (THR)
>> Apollo Global Management "has reached a deal to sell AOL to Italian tech holding group Bending Spoons in a deal valued at roughly $1.5 billion," Sara Fischer reports. (Axios)
>> The DOJ indicted social media influencer and Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh for allegedly blocking a gov't vehicle during anti-ICE protests in Chicago. (Block Club)
|
"Through three games, Fox is averaging 11.5 million viewers, its second-best World Series audience since 2019, behind last year's Dodgers-Yankees series," Awful Announcing's Drew Lerner writes.
And what about the end of Monday's 18-inning thriller? "Eight million people were still watching Game 3 of the World Series when Freddie Freeman walked it off at 2:45am ET," Fox's Michael Mulvihill wrote on X.
|
I've been intrigued by Cosm, "the IMAX-esque experience" showing sporting events on 87-foot-diameter, 12L+ LED screens "that have gone viral for offering a first-of-its-kind experience for fans." This morning, CNN's Kyle Feldscher reports that the NBA has struck "an extended partnership to air live NBA games in Cosm's domes." Read all about it here...
|
'Sweeping reorg' at YouTube |
Yesterday's Google earnings showed that YouTube "continues to flex its muscles as an advertising powerhouse, again delivering solid double-digit growth for the third quarter of 2025," Variety's Todd Spangler reports.
YouTube also announced "a sweeping reorganization of the streamer’s leadership team" yesterday, as first reported by Alex Heath at his new publication, Sources. Some US employees are being offered buyouts. Neal Mohan's internal memo said "the next frontier for YouTube is AI," and "we need to set ourselves up to make the most of this opportunity."
>> As CNN's Clare Duffy notes, "it was not immediately clear whether that refers to focusing on AI offerings on the platform or AI doing more of its work..."
|
Meta shares fall after earnings |
Meta shares are down more than 10% this morning after "third-quarter net profit dropped by 83% due to a tax charge implemented as part of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act," TheWrap's Tess Patton reports. "Excluding the charge, net income would have risen in the quarter as daily active users rose year over year." Mark Zuckerberg defended Meta's stratospheric AI spending and said "we're seeing the returns..."
|
>> Universal Music Group has settled its lawsuit against AI music generator Udio and signed a deal "to launch a new subscription service for fans to create music based on licensed songs." (WSJ)
>> Disney and YouTube "have settled their legal feud over the latter's hiring of the former's platform distribution president Justin Connolly." (TheWrap)
>> "The White Lotus" producers have been "actively scouting swank locations in two iconic locations: Paris and the French Riviera," Elsa Keslassy reveals. (Variety)
>> Nintendo "is issuing its first release of a video game soundtrack outside of its native Japan with vinyl sets of the music in 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.'" (WaPo)
|
|
|
|
® © 2025 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved.
1050 Techwood Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30318 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
