| | | | It's almost Saturday night | | Hey, Happy October! Monday night was the most anticipated debate ever. So is Saturday night's debate parody the most anticipated episode of "SNL" ever? Maybe not, but it's definitely more newsworthy than any episode of "SNL" since Trump guest-hosted last fall, since Alec Baldwin is premiering his Trump impression. Frank Pallotta reports that Baldwin is committed to the role at least through Election Day. Some other details via Frank:
-- Usually "SNL" runs for three weeks in a row before taking two off, but this year it will do four shows in a row in October before taking a week off and coming back for a show on the Saturday before the election...
-- There were no significant ratings bumps in 2004 or 2012, but "SNL" did see a big jump in audience during the 2008 season, the recent election that's probably most comparable to this year's, in terms of potential for satire and surprise guests... | | Roger Ailes reportedly buys $36 million home in Palm Beach | | DailyMail.com's scoop: "Roger Ailes is the secret buyer of a house in the swanky town of Palm Beach, Florida, bought earlier this month for $36 million… The breathtaking modern-style beachfront house could become a way for Ailes to shield a part of his personal fortune from future sexual harassment lawsuits… In Florida, courts cannot force the sale of someone's home to pay off judgments, and troubled tycoons have routinely used the state's law to invest in real estate…"
— Gabriel Sherman tweets: "Trump's new neighbor..." | | | Trump is wrong about "sources" | | Speaking as someone who wants to restore trust in media, the worst thing about Friday was Trump sowing doubt about anonymous sources. This was his very first tweet of the day -- 3:20 a.m. -- so early that I thought I was imagining it: "Anytime you see a story about me or my campaign saying 'sources said,' DO NOT believe it. There are no sources, they are just made up lies!"
"There are no sources" was bad enough. But he followed up, even more explicitly, at 8:50 a.m. "If they don't name the sources, the sources don't exist," he said. This is about as blatantly false as it gets. And while it's tempting to just write it off as "Donald being Donald," comments like these have consequences. Journalists do not just go around making up sources. All major news organizations have guidelines in place about when anonymity is granted, and editors typically know the identities of reporters' sources. Heck, my editors know that Trump aides have been crucial sources for my stories (and 100s of other reporters' stories).
-- More: As Callum Borchers pointed out, "the real irony here is that Trump actually loves unnamed sources -- when they say things he wants to hear..." | | | A tweetstorm for the morning shows? | | Trump's early morning tweetstorm (about "sources," but mostly about Alicia Machado) was perfectly timed for the morning shows and the A.M. digital news cycle. Do you think that was intentional on his part? It certainly received blanket coverage on TV throughout the morning, partly (though certainly not fully) crowding out David Fahrenthold's latest scoop about the Trump Foundation.
But most political reporters seem to think Trump is impulsive with his tweets, not strategic. NYT's account: "Like a car careening down a highway with no guardrails, Mr. Trump on Friday sent out one message after another..." | | | Brian Lowry's observation | | | Brian Lowry emails: Trump and his aides must know what catnip this story is for TV simply because of the visuals. How many stories give news networks this much cover to run tons of beauty pageant footage? | | | Sunday's "Reliable Sources" guest list | | | Sketching out Sunday's show on the whiteboard: | | -- Tim Graham, executive editor, NewsBusters
-- John Avlon, editor-in-chief, The Daily Beast
-- Kristen Soltis Anderson and Margie Omero, co-hosts of "The Pollsters" podcast
-- Margaret Sullivan, media columnist, WashPost
-- David Zurawik, media critic, The Baltimore Sun
-- Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor, WashPost | | | Wave of anti-Trump editorials | | Local and regional papers "frequently endorse Republicans. Yet this year, an astonishing number are telling their readers something different," The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf writes, noting the wave of anti-Trump editorials in recent days. We'll be talking about this in detail on Sunday's show...
-- BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski notes that guests at several of Trump's hotels "woke up to a complimentary copy of USA Today's blistering" anti-Trump editorial on Friday...
-- Also: The Chicago Tribune's endorsement of Gary Johnson has exposed the paper to mockery... | | -- "Newsweek suspects that hackers are to blame for the crash of its website on Thursday night, after it published an article about Donald Trump's company secretly conducting business in Cuba in the 1990s..." (Politico)
-- John Elkann, who has been an independent board member of News Corp since 2013, is stepping down effective immediately. Too busy doing his day job… (Press release)
-- WWOR chief Dianne Doctor is adding a second job: manager of affiliate relations for Fox's affiliate news service, Fox NewsEdge... (TVSpy)
-- Mental Floss is ending its print edition at the end of this year… (Politico)
-- I missed this earlier in the week: Pittsburgh is becoming a one-newspaper town. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is going online-only, effective November 30. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette rolls on... (Post-Gazette) | | | Sumner recovering after hospital visit | | | According to the fearsome trio of Keach Hagey, Joann Lublin and Joe Flint, Sumner Redstone "was in the emergency room on Wednesday with a respiratory infection, his first visit to the hospital in months, and was home recovering on Friday, according to people familiar with matter." | | | Special committees have formed | | | More from the WSJ trio: One day after National Amusements urged Viacom and CBS to think about getting back together, the boards of the two companies named special committees to "review a potential recombination." Viacom's committee consists "largely of newcomers handpicked by" Shari Redstone... | | | New exec editor for Time Digital | | | Sam Jacobs is now the executive editor of Time Digital. Quoting the internal memo: "This promotion reflects Sam's role steering day-to-day online coverage across all verticals and platforms, including video, photography, social, data and newsletters." He'll also oversee the "news digital desk" for collaborations with other Time Inc. sites... | | | Recommended weekend reads | | — Lynn Vavreck's "So Just Who Are These Undecided Voters?" Here's her answer: "They are less interested in politics and the news, less partisan, and less likely to hold opinions on issues dominating campaign discussions. Essentially, they think less about politics."
— Who is China's richest man, Wang Jianlin, and why has he "been on a buying spree in Hollywood?" Ryan Faughnder and David Pierson profile him in the LATimes this weekend…
-- This weekend's NYT Mag cover story, by Robert Draper, on the "civil war" within right-wing media...
— Ben Dolnick, writing for Slate, says "No One Understands Donald Trump Like the Horny Narcissist Who Created Dilbert" | | "There were issues regarding Donald Trump's audio that affected the sound level in the debate hall." That one line statement from the debate commission surprised a lot of people on Friday afternoon. It didn't exactly confirm Trump's claim earlier in the week that "my mic was defective within the room," and it sure didn't confirm Trump's speculation about intentional interference. But it showed that Trump was on to something — and it puts even more pressure on the commission heading into the VP debate on Tuesday and the presidential debate next weekend…
-- Former DNC spokeswoman Mo Elleithee responded on Twitter: This "didn't impact audio levels for television audience. People watching at home heard every word he said. That was his problem."
-- Late Friday, Trump told the NYT that he "spent 50% of my thought process" dealing with the mic issue during the debate... | | | Shock jock smack dab in the middle of a shocking election year | | Only in 2016 would Howard Stern be a central character of the election. Trump's many visits to "The Howard Stern Show" are now fodder for attack ads, BuzzFeed stories and even a Stern name-drop during Monday's debate. In some way it's fitting, right? The shock jock radio host smack dab in the middle of a shocking election year. But Trump and Stern are no longer just entertainers — they're both newsmakers now. Stern is considered one of the best broadcast interviewers in the country. Oh, and he's supporting Hillary Clinton, not Trump.
My piece about Stern's role in this political season is coming up on "CNN Tonight" on Friday night… | | | Wait, WHICH home repair show? | | | Speaking on the Clinton campaign's "With Her" podcast, Bill Clinton was asked what he wishes people knew about Hillary. His answer: Hillary has "an endless fascination with what I would call positive reality TV shows. I don't know how many nights I have to watch that home repair show." No word on WHICH home repair show... | | | Any Trump pressers between now and election day? | | | ICYMI in Thursday's letter: I noted that Trump's last full-blown press conference was on July 27. The GOP nominee is not showing any signs of rethinking his Fox-centric strategy. I expanded on the point with this story. HuffPost's Sam Stein asked the pertinent question: "Does Trump last another 40 days without doing a press conference?" | | | Abby Brooks, Logan Whiteside and I made a video looking at what Fox's Trump interviews are really like. What's missing, time and time again, are FOLLOWUP questions. Watch here… | | | Trump's alternative to flying with his traveling press corps... | | CNNPolitics' Jeremy Diamond sent along this intel: The Trump campaign has repeatedly told reporters that Trump does not fly with his press corps -- in a break with presidential campaign precedent -- because his private Boeing 757 cannot accommodate them due to the way it is configured. But on Friday, that rationale was called into question.
Trump's plane is in maintenance for the next week, but rather than joining his traveling press corps on their Boeing 737 "chase plane," he is borrowing his running mate Mike Pence's campaign plane, which is also a 737. Trump will be using Pence's plane next week as well as he heads out West, while Pence is in debate prep.
Pence -- like Clinton and her running mate Tim Kaine -- typically flies with his traveling press corps, raising the likelihood that journalists can ask questions during trips. Clinton took questions on board her plane on Tuesday and Thursday, for example... | | | First night of the New York Film Festival | | | The New York Film Festival is underway! On Friday night Ava DuVernay's new documentary, "13th," about the mass incarceration of African American men in the United States, opened the festival with a premiere at Alice Tully Hall. Chloe Melas will be interviewing DuVernay on Saturday. The film will be available on Netflix starting next week... | | | "Amanda Knox" doc now streaming | | | Netflix's new documentary "Amanda Knox" is streaming now. Sandra Gonzalez talked with filmmakers Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn about how the doc takes the media to task. Blackhurst said "we want people to consider how they consume these types of stories and how they turn these real people and real situations into entertainment..." | | | Brian Lowry emails: With HBO's "Game of Thrones" heading into its final two seasons, and "Vinyl" being canceled, the expectations for "Westworld" have been magnified. While "The Night Of" earned raves over the summer, the network could use another signature drama. While the reviews have tilted toward positive, even after screening four hours, the jury's out on the show's legs. Here's Brian's full review... The show debuts on Sunday night... | | | NBC reversing course on "Mail Order Family" | | NBC is scrapping development of a sitcom called "Mail Order Family" amid online protests, THR's Lesley Goldberg reports: "Two days after putting the comedy about a widowed single father who orders a mail-order bride from the Philippines to help raise his two daughters, the network has reversed course..." | | Via Lisa France:
-- There are reports that Angelina Jolie's team has brought crisis management expert Judy Smith on board as a consultant as the actress wades through her divorce from Brad Pitt. But don't expect the woman who served as the inspiration for "Scandal's" Olivia Pope to confirm that...
-- Amber Rose says she was body shamed on "Dancing With the Stars" by judge Julianne Hough. Hough denies it...
-- Happy "Luke Cage" Day! The new Netflix series dropped Friday and its showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker is ready for any and all geek critiques about his version of the bulletproof black Marvel superhero. "I'm either really right or really wrong about this," he says... | | Tell us what you think... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We appreciate every email. We'll be back Sunday... | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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