| | | | THE SEQUEL: At deadline time, a federal judge in Hawaii placed President Trump's revised travel ban on hold. Nationwide... | | | Another big night for cable news... | | (This headline feels suitable every night of the week right now, eh?)
Along with the travel ban news and Trump's rally in Nashville, Tucker Carlson's interview with POTUS is airing on Fox... and Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash's health care town hall with Tom Price is on CNN... while Rachel Maddow is presumably following up on her big tax return reveal over on MSNBC...
Wondering why we don't have ratings for Maddow's Tuesday night show yet? Scroll down for the irritating answer... | | | Here comes the budget cut to public media | | ...Although it's just a proposal for now. Observers expect bad news for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in the Trump administration's budget outline. The White House will share the budget proposal on Thursday morning... in time for the morning shows... and then the real battle will begin...
-- Related: My two-minute web video setting the scene: Some Republicans have wanted to strip away funding for PBS/NPR/local stations for decades. Is this the year it'll happen? | | | Reminder: How the CPB works | | Callum Borchers has a timely explainer here: The CPB "has low overhead costs..." it distributes most of its $450 million allocation "in the form of grants..." mostly to "local stations in places such as Lawton, Okla., and Texarkana, Tex., not to PBS and NPR." While PBS and NPR will no doubt be involved in this funding fight, this story is really about local broadcasters... | | | Quartz achieves profitability | | Internal memo from Quartz EIC Kevin Delaney and co-president and publisher Jay Lauf: "With the accounts for 2016 now finalized, we can officially confirm what we had earlier conveyed: Quartz was profitable last year, a remarkable accomplishment in only our fourth full year of operation... Today, amid industry hand-wringing about advertising and business models, we are among the rare digital media startups to have achieved profitability...
While the memo doesn't divulge raw $$$ #'s, it says the company "increased year-over-year revenue by more than 60%, which is impressive considering we'd already grown 5x from what we made in 2013..." | | "We're targeting significantly higher revenue and profits for 2017, while continuing the pace of investment," Delaney and Lauf say... writing about "continuous product reinvention," a new "bot studio," and a "research business helping companies get traction with artificial intelligence..." | | If so, swing by my panel discussion on Thursday afternoon... Katy Tur, Dan Rather, Matthew Dowd and I will be talking about "The War at Home: Trump and the Mainstream Media..." 2pm local time at the JW Marriott... | | | Jann Wenner sells Us Weekly | | Tom Kludt reports:
American Media Inc., the publisher of various celebrity tabloids, has agreed to acquire Us Weekly from Wenner Media. The move closes a topsy-turvy effort by Wenner to sell the magazine... The deal is worth about $100 million, according to the WSJ... In a press release, AMI touted US Weekly's "total audience of more than 50 million young and affluent consumers across its platforms..."
-- Why sell? "For Wenner Media, the sale provides more wherewithal to pay off its debt..." Read more from Tom here... | | -- Pamela Paul tweets: "Simon & Schuster is publishing Ivana Trump's book, "Raising Trump" about the childrearing of Ivanka, Eric, Donald Jr..." (Twitter)
-- Important story I missed in Tuesday's WSJ: "ABC News to Face South Dakota Jury Over 'Pink Slime' Story" (WSJ)
-- Ben Mullin interviews media myth-buster W. Joseph Campbell... (Poynter) | | -- Mark Knoller tweets: "Of 13 interviews Pres Trump has given so far: 5 to Fox News. 1 each to NYT, ABC, CBN, Westwood One, Israel Hayom, NBC, Reuters, Breitbart..."
Fox's Tucker Carlson and Jesse Watters weren't the only ones with presidential access Wednesday... Mark Halperin was on board Air Force One while taping the first episode of "The Circus" season two, coming to Showtime this weekend... | | | Is this worse than allowing 0 reporters? | | | Only 1 reporter is traveling on Tillerson's plane | | Rex Tillerson left the State Department's typical traveling press corps at home and invited a single reporter from IJR, a startup news site with a conservative bent. The reporter, Erin McPike, an ex-CNNer, has yet to file any stories about the trip.
You can imagine how this move has stirred complaints. It broke with decades of tradition and may impede news coverage of American foreign policy moves. Some veteran reporters privately described it as insulting. Here's my full story... | | | State Dept spokesman struggles to explain decision | | Mark Toner rationalized the unusual invite for IJR by calling it "an effort to include a broader representation of the U.S. media" and "an attempt to reach beyond the usual suspects." But IJR is a relatively small website founded by two former Republican political consultants... | | | If a show airs on TV, and it's not rated, did it really air at all? | | | No Nielsen ratings for several days... | | TV executives are losing patience. "There is no data, period," an exec emails. "No nationals, no locals. Nothing."
Nielsen has been struggling with a ratings backlog for several days. That's why the industry has no #'s for Sunday, Monday or Tuesday as of Wednesday evening. A "power outage struck Nielsen's main domestic facility," Deadline's Dominic Patten reports.
Nielsen says "the ability to collect data was not impacted by the power outage" but "the speed of our processing systems was..." | | -- "Netflix will explore mobile-specific cuts of its original series," Lauren Goode reports... (The Verge)
-- The New Yorker's poetry editor Paul Muldoon is stepping down... Kevin Young will succeed him this fall...
-- According to the WSJ, this exclusive interview with viral video star Robert Kelly and his wife Kim Jung-A "is the most viewed story in WSJ history..." (Twitter) | | | A Fox, Time Warner, Viacom alliance... | | Viacom, 21st Century Fox's Fox Networks Group and Time Warner's Turner division are "teaming up in hopes of convincing Madison Avenue to accept a different yardstick when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of millions of dollars in advertising," Variety's Brian Steinberg reports... The new system, "Open A.P.," is all about audience-based buying... It will be touted at an event on April 7... Read more here... | | On Trump, Russia and conspiracy theories: "Those of us covering the story and the stew of real information, fantasy, and — now — forgery around it need to continue to report and think clearly about what we know and what we don't, and to resist the sugar high that comes with telling people exactly what they want to hear."
--BuzzFeed EIC Ben Smith in this column titled "Beware the False Temptations of the Russia Story..." | | | Fox News adding a Sunday show about populism | | "Steve Hilton, the pro-Brexit campaigner and ex-confidante of former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, will host a weekend primetime Fox News show focusing on the rise of populism in the U.S. and around the world," Politico's Kelsey Sutton reports. "The hour-long program, called 'The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton,' will debut sometime in May..." Sundays at 9pm... | | | "Literally versus seriously" is back... | | | Another thing Trump has in common with Jackson | | Via CNN's Steve Brusk: During President Trump's tour of Andrew Jackson's house on Wednesday, a curator in charge of the museum said that Jackson subscribed to 16 newspapers and made notes on what he agreed and disagreed with. On one editorial he particularly disliked, Jackson drew a big black X. "We know that feeling, we know that feeling," Trump said, who otherwise smiled and nodded throughout the portion of the visit the pool was able to observe... | | | "Drudge is mysteriously missing in action on the healthcare debate" | | Matt Drudge "has yet to enter the fray on the debate over the House GOP's plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act," BI's Oliver Darcy points out. "The silence is deafening, particularly as Breitbart, which typically mirrors the Drudge Report, moves to savage the healthcare proposal..." | | | Trump's latest Fox-inspired tweet | | Tom Kludt has the latest example of @realDonaldTrump tweeting about something he saw on cable news:
Not long after 6:30am, co-host Abby Huntsman told Fox viewers about "Snoop Dogg's disgusting attack on President Trump." The rapper had caused a stir with a music video showing him carrying out the mock execution of a clown dressed like Trump. Huntsman said the video had sparked "nationwide outrage" and drawn "the attention of the Secret Service." A little more than 20 minutes later, Trump tweeted his own observation, suggesting there would be more "outcry" if Snoop Dogg "had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama..." | | | Trump insults David Cay Johnston | | Trump tweeted at 6:55am: "Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, "went to his mailbox" and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!"
Jake Tapper responded: "Plenty have heard of him. David Cay Johnston won the Pulitzer Prize for his NYT coverage of taxes and tax loopholes..."
-- Related: Here's how the tax return story played in conservative media... | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: Brian, I know you haven't watched yet, but for those who have, I was all over "This Is Us" finale coverage. Here's what the stars said at a screening last night...
And here's what to expect from Season 2.
Also included in the story: On the red carpet, Chrissy Metz broke into song no less than four times during our interview. I can testify she's more than ready for Kate's musical pursuits next season... | | | Lowry reviews "Beauty and the Beast" | | Brian Lowry emails: The summer movie season starts on St. Patrick's Day. Disney's latest live-action version of an animated classic, "Beauty and the Beast," should be an enormous hit. And for once, the movie's worthy of all the hype. Read Lowry's full review here >>> | | -- More from Sandra: Today in renewal news: FX's trippy "Legion," the CBS All Access series "The Good Fight," and HBO's Pete Holmes-led comedy "Crashing" have all received second season pick-ups from their respective networks... | | | What's next for the Academy? | | Megan Thomas emails: This is a good write by THR's Scott Feinberg and Gregg Kilday about what's next for the Academy...
Key graf: "Who will lead the Academy? Though CEO Dawn Hudson has been a polarizing force, insiders believe she will be reappointed when her contract expires in May. Less certain is who'll succeed Cheryl Boone Isaacs as elected president when she terms out in July."
(By the way, Hudson makes $600,000 a year as the Academy's CEO and Boone Isaacs position is unpaid.)
As for the best picture fiasco: "ABC may be the only player in the equation that the Academy doesn't have to worry about, given that its executives were thrilled with the show and even its ending..." | | | For the record, part three | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Send your feedback to reliablesources@cnn.com. We appreciate every email. See you tomorrow... | |  | | We'd love to share our other newsletters with you. Check out Five Things for Your New Day, CNN's morning newsletter. Give us five minutes, and we'll brief you on all the news and buzz people will be talking about. | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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