Greetings from Los Angeles and welcome back to In the Room. There’s been plenty of postgame
analysis of Zohran Mamdani’s big win, but this piece of cultural-media commentary stands out: “Addicted to their screens, strapped for cash, spiritually unmoored and socially stunted by the pandemic, young New Yorkers needed a reason to get out of the house,” the Times’s Emma Goldberg and Benjamin Oreskes observed.
“They found it in Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral run.”
This perspective—take it or leave it—fits neatly into a renewed cultural anxiety around screentime. Scott Galloway is hawking a book about how the addictive influence of technology neuters young men, Brian Chesky is staking Airbnb’s future on the belief that people will spurn digital simulacra for real-world experiences, etcetera. It’s probably too soon to tell whether these are just random blips or the first signals of an impending cultural turning point, but the vibe shift is palpable.
Anyway… In tonight’s issue, news and notes on MSNBC’s long-awaited transformation into MS NOW. Sure, this rebrand may only be the latest humiliation in the cable industry’s never-ending
degradation, but don’t tell that to the folks at 229 West 43rd Street. They’re genuinely galvanized by the new digs—a reminder that, for all their talent pontificating on politics, they’re often the last ones to understand the nature of their own business.
🍸 Plus, on the latest edition of The Grill Room, LightShed’s Rich Greenfield joined Julia and yours truly to take stock of the WBD bidding war as Paramount and Comcast circle the
prize while Netflix and Amazon lurk on the sidelines. We gamed out who needs it the most, what each is willing to pay, how they might integrate their assets, and much more. Follow The Grill Room on Apple, Spotify, or
wherever you prefer to listen.
Mentioned in this issue: Rebecca Kutler, Rachel Maddow, Mark Lazarus, Brian Roberts, David Zaslav, David Ellison, Bob Iger, Jim Bankoff, Joe and Mika, Jen
Psaki, Stephanie Ruhle, Michael Steele, Chloe Malle, Versha Sharma, and many, many more…
Let’s get started… |
- The
Warners race: David Zaslav and the Warner Bros. Discovery board are targeting a mid-to-late-December deadline for their sale of the company, per CNBC’s Alex Sherman. David Ellison, still standing firm at $23.50 per share, has sent multiple letters to Zaz & Co. seeking to convince them that Paramount’s offer to buy the entire company would deliver more value for shareholders than any post-split deal. In one letter, Ellison argued that “the
planned break-up would generate a present value to WBD shareholders of less than $15 per share on a trading basis, or ~$18 to ~$20 per share including a robust, yet highly uncertain, M&A premium for Warner Bros.”
In related news, a rumor surfaced on Reddit this week that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund was
preparing an all-cash buyout offer for WBD at north of $70 billion. I can’t get any of the principals or folks close to the principals to confirm or deny, so… do with that what you will. - Bankoff spinoff: Jim Bankoff and Vox Media’s board of directors are exploring whether to spin off the company’s podcast network from its broader publishing business, per Axios’s Sara Fischer. The logic here is pretty straightforward:
As Bankoff explained on The Grill Room several weeks back, Vox’s audio division is its fastest-growing business unit and would likely command a far higher multiple as a stand-alone entity. Meanwhile, Vox’s largest shareholder, Jay Penske, is said to be interested in acquiring the publishing assets outright. How do the other shareholders feel about this? And what’s the exit velocity for a podcast studio in the YouTube era? Sounds like we’re about to find out.
- Staffing up the West Coast Post: The New York Post has tapped Breitbart alum Joel Pollak to serve as opinion editor of its forthcoming Los Angeles–based venture, The California Post. News Corp veteran Nick Papps has already been named editor-in-chief of the publication, which is expected to launch early next year. Look, I get the logic of trying to launch a media property in the underserved Los Angeles
market, but the agonies of the L.A. Times suggest that not even a liberal-inflected media organization can make the economics work. Good luck to everyone involved, but perhaps the good people in the Murdoch-sphere might have wanted to start this as a Substack before going full-blown Messenger.
- And finally… In an Axel Springer town hall this week, C.E.O. Mathias Döpfner said media companies should treat
journalists the way music labels treat artists, supporting and growing each one individually (hat-tip Max Tani). Welcome to the party, Mathias! Alas, that philosophy is slightly discordant with how the company’s top American properties have executed their strategies. Axios enjoyed a $500 million-plus plus exit because
Politico couldn’t placate its founders. Morning Brew often seems like it’s been created by a bot, and Business Insider hasn’t ever been able to pivot to a platform befitting name-brand journalists. But hey, Mathias is a very smart guy and perhaps change is afoot…
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And now, here’s a quick word from Julia Alexander on Disney vs. YouTube TV... |
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| Julia Alexander
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- The YouTube-Disney war:
Like death and taxes, carriage disputes are a perennial fact of life in the TV business. I’m not going to attempt to predict when the battle between Disney and YouTube—which began October 30, when ESPN and ABC were pulled from YouTube TV—will end. After all, most contract fights are resolved quickly and then immediately forgotten. But in many ways, the power dynamics surrounding YouTube TV’s relationship with the channels it carries are unique. And, like the government shutdown, this could
become more complicated than most observers expect.
After all, while YouTube TV generates a fraction of the overall revenue flowing into YouTube proper, it’s also now the fourth–largest TV provider in the United States. Meanwhile, YouTube itself accounts for just under 13 percent of all viewing across all TV screens in the U.S., up two points since last year, according to Nielsen. In other words, Disney probably needs YouTube more than YouTube needs
Disney. …
If Disney goes dark on YouTube TV permanently, it risks losing just under a reported $2 billion a year in revenue—about 20 percent of its entire cable business. Forgoing views on YouTube could impact additional digital advertising revenue and hurt subscriber engagement, too. … This is the reality facing Bob Iger as he countenances a new
chapter for his company. Carriage disputes are no longer battles between partners like DirecTV and Disney, which are equally reliant on each other for their businesses. YouTube, a company that generated $10 billion in advertising revenue this past quarter alone, and a subsidiary of a company that pulled in more than $100 billion in revenue in the same period, is no such equal. (You’ll need to be an Inner Circle member to read the
whole thing.)
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...and a quick word from Lauren Sherman on Teen Vogue… |
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| Lauren Sherman
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- Is youth wasted on the
young?: The first, and probably not last, string of autumn reductions has come to One World Trade Center in the form of Teen Vogue, which is being folded into Vogue.com. Six people lost their jobs, including Versha Sharma, the editor-in-chief.
In its heyday under Amy Astley, Teen Vogue was the perfect mix of aspirational market reports and revealing looks at the way young rich people lived. (The best page, as we all know, was “A
Room of My Own,” featuring the private spaces of some of the most privileged women in the world.) Dozens of Line Sheet’s bold-faced names passed through Teen Vogue: Eva Chen, Andrew Bevan, Sara Moonves, Laurel Pantin, Sierra Tishgart, Danielle Nussbaum, and Nicole Vecchiarelli, plus a bunch of designers who were Teen Vogue interns. Anyway, we’ll talk more about
Teen Vogue and its impact another time.
There is certainly going to be a lot of online anger about the fact that Condé cut jobs held by diverse staffers. (Sometimes I cynically wonder if they’ve maintained Them, Phillip Picardi’s former digital brainchild, because they don’t want to deal with the online backlash from shuttering it.) But the truth is Teen Vogue should have probably closed years ago. Yes, Gina Sanders once sold its ad
pages like Powerball tickets, but it has long since become a shingle of the Vogue masterbrand. If Vogue Business is moving under the Vogue URL, then Teen Vogue should, too.
This is likely the first of many course corrections and cullings that Chloe Malle, the new U.S. head of editorial content, will witness in her first year—she has been asked to cut significantly from American Vogue, in particular. I heard that she messaged the transition well in yesterday’s
meeting. She also promoted Nicole Phelps, head of Vogue Runway and Vogue Business, indicating that she’s starting to build out her own inner circle as she cycles out some Vogue lifers.
Elsewhere at Condé, there have been layoffs in other departments. Chris Chen, V.P. of global architecture and data governance, is out. So is Vikram Palicherla, S.V.P. of engineering. (Both were close with C.T.O. Sanjay Bhakta.) Anyway,
there will probably be more soon.
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Spirits are uncharacteristically high at the post-spinoff MS NOW, but this is still a
late-stage linear operation that’s shedding (mostly geriatric) viewers at a steady clip. Despite Versant’s money and Rebecca Kutler’s ambitions, is it just a matter of time before the realities of cable’s decline drag them under? |
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On Wednesday morning, MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler treated around 15 media reporters to a
tour of the network’s new studios at the old New York Times building on West 43rd Street. The trade press event, which featured a several-tables-long charcuterie display and summit-style interviews with Joe and Mika, Jen Psaki, Stephanie Ruhle, and Michael Steele, was part of a broader messaging effort for the impending MS NOW rebrand necessitated by NBCUniversal’s spinoff of its cable channels.
Versant, the new parentco, has also unveiled a $20 million ad campaign to preempt any confusion around the name change. In one spot, Rachel Maddow reads the preamble to the Constitution; another features Maya Angelou reciting a poem at the U.N.
The reporters appeared to appreciate the spread, since I’m told they took much of it home. But the messaging seems to have resonated most effectively with the MSNBC employees themselves. Most of the sources I spoke
to there this week said they were optimistic about the network’s new independence and even invigorated by the quality of the new studios and the esprit de corps among their colleagues. For months, Kutler and her boss, Versant C.E.O. Mark Lazarus, have sold the cable spin as the dawn of the network’s golden age—noting that MSNBC can now invest its $500 million-plus annual profits back into itself, funding new digital products and live experiences—and the staff
mostly seems to have chugged that Kool Aid.
Over the long term, the reality may prove more depressing. Brian Roberts offloaded his declining cable assets for a reason, and MS NOW’s path toward a robust post-linear future is a long putt. In essence, Kutler & Co. would need to sustain linear profits amid industry decline and use that capital to transform their still-archaic digital product into a pillar of progressive media—a tall order for a cable news company that
draws around a million mostly septuagenarian viewers every night while younger audiences get their Mamdani discourse fix from other sources on other platforms. |
The more likely scenario, as I have
written before, is that Kutler will try to maintain a healthy-enough linear business until Nexstar or Sinclair comes knocking, or until a private equity firm like Apollo takes over and expedites the value extraction. Or maybe David Zaslav successfully splits WBD before the Ellisons get hold of it, and there is a
shotgun public markets marriage between Versant and Gunnar Wiedenfels’s debt-ridden Discovery Global.
In the meantime, Kutler may stand up a meaningful podcast network and live-events business in the process—some Ari Melber stans will pay as much as $1k to attend MSNBC’s daylong conferences—but that revenue can’t cover the losses brought on by linear’s decline. (Nothing can ever truly replace the cable money spigot, alas…) This, of course, is the story of
late-stage pay TV; even ESPN, with its NFL, NCAAF, and NBA rights, faces a steep climb toward post-cable durability.
Inside the building, however, that future still seems eons away. And for TV news veterans who could never countenance taking a job at Fox News or Bari Weiss’s CBS, much less being offered one, there are few better places to go. Kutler, an ambitious and competitive programmer in the Zucker
mold, is widely seen as the best leader a cable news network could expect to have in its smoke-and-embers era. She has made real investments in staff, studios, and production infrastructure, which has been reassuring to the former 30 Rock denizens who feared they might be forced to anchor from barstools in front of projector screens. And as CNN continues
to plod along in its ennui, MS NOW at least seems to beat the alternative.
There is also some upside potential. MSNBC has lost more than a third of its audience so far this year, which executives attribute to the usual post-presidential-election drought—a trend cable networks bucked only in 2017, the first year of Trump’s first presidency. Most of Kutler’s long-term planning revolves around the network’s strategy for the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election,
which should yield greater engagement. Conveniently, this week’s MS NOW unveiling coincided with the start of a new chapter in progressive politics that has already buoyed spirits: On election night, MSNBC drew an audience of nearly 3 million, beating Fox in total viewers, which almost never happens, and besting CNN by the widest margin since 2019. Perhaps that’s a harbinger.
As always, however, the more salient detail was that a mere 15 percent of MSNBC’s audience was below the
age of 55. That data point underlines the true challenge before Kutler. Notably, while MSNBC and CNN suffer double-digit annual ratings losses, Fox News has grown its audience by nearly 20 percent this year, attracted a slate of blue-chip advertisers, and maintained its influence over America’s conservatives even amid an increasingly fragmented media landscape. No one without an AARP card would argue that MSNBC maintains a similar influence over progressives, whose affinities span a
buffet of alternative sources and platforms. At the very least, Kutler needs to bring MS NOW closer to that level of influence on the left, then introduce a suite of digital products that can extend its influence to a wider— and hopefully, younger—audience.
Needless to say, one night of Maddow a week won’t get her there. Increasingly, MSNBCers wonder aloud about who Kutler might try to acquire or license—Meidas Touch? Crooked Media? The Bulwark? It’s hard to look
at the ESPN-McAfee or Fox-Portnoy deal and not think that MS will follow a similar playbook. Until then, the existing bench just seems happy to have a place to call home. |
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Puck fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman and a rotating cast of industry insiders take you deep behind the scenes of this
multitrillion-dollar biz, from creative director switcheroos to M&A drama, D.T.C. downfalls, and magazine mishaps. Fashion People is an extension of Line Sheet, Lauren’s private email for Puck, where she tracks what’s happening beyond the press releases in fashion, beauty, and media. New episodes publish every Tuesday and Friday. |
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A professional-grade rundown on the business of sports from John Ourand, the industry’s preeminent journalist, covering the
leagues, players, agencies, media deals, and the egos fueling it all. |
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