| | | | Thursday was shaping up to be O.J. Day -- with special reports and intensive coverage of O.J. Simpson's parole hearing. The hearing will still get tons of coverage, but half a dozen other huge stories are now competing for air time and attention. Here's what I mean:
Between 5 and 8pm ET, we learned about the CBO's analysis of the Senate bill to repeal Obamacare... we learned that Jared Kushner is "expected to appear before the Senate intelligence committee" on Monday and Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort are "scheduled to testify before the Senate judiciary committee" next Wednesday... and we learned that President Trump sat down for a wide-ranging interview with the NYT.
Plus there was this NYT story, "Manafort Was in Debt to Pro-Russia Interests, Cyprus Records Show..." and a juicy AP story describing "deep divisions" within the Trump administration, as the president's "persistent overtures toward Russia are placing him increasingly at odds with his national security and foreign policy advisers..."
And at 8pm came the devastating news about John McCain's brain cancer diagnosis. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta was briefed ahead of time by McCain's doctors, so Gupta was able to deliver a detailed report on "AC360." McCain's daughter Meghan, a Fox News host, issued a touching and heart-wrenching statement. | | >> Rachel Maddow at 9:15pm on MSNBC: "We're trying to juggle all these stories as they continue to break over the course of the evening..."
>> Fox's Tucker Carlson returned for a live edition of his show at 11pm...
>> WashPost's Paul Farhi tweeted: "Very crazy news night. Reminds me of, I dunno, May." | | Trump's jaw-dropping interview | | "Blockbuster is, I think, too small a word for this interview," Don Lemon said to Maggie Haberman on "CNN Tonight." Haberman, Peter Baker and Michael Schmidt spent 50 minutes interviewing the president in the Oval Office on Wednesday. By now you've seen all the newsworthy quotes -- including his stark criticism of Jeff Sessions and his warning to Robert Mueller -- and the shocked reactions. We're left wondering: Why did Trump agree to do this interview?
Or as Anderson Cooper asked it: "Why on God's green earth does the President of the Untied States gives this interview today of all days when the focus is supposed to be on health care and this is also Buy American Week?"
-- Jeff Zeleny's honest answer later in the evening on CNN: "I don't really know why he did it." My attempts to get the backstory from NYT sources have been unsuccessful so far... | | | @realDonaldTrump on June 28: "The failing @nytimes writes false story after false story about me. They don't even call to verify the facts of a story. A Fake News Joke!" But as I said on CNNI, Trump wants to have it both ways. He wants to bash news outlets like the NYT, but he wants the paper's attention and approval... | | Thursday's NYT Page One headline | | | Hadas Gold tweets: "Kudos to NYT for posting Trump interview transcript AND audio portions." The audio clips are already getting air time on cable news, and they're surely helpful to the morning show producers who are working on packages overnight. Here's the transcript link... | | | Sessions is scheduled to hold a press conference alongside deputy AG Rod Rosenstein at 10am Thursday... They'll be announcing an international cybercrime enforcement action... Will the presser still happen? What will Sessions say? Will he resign or stay put? | | Remember when Sessions offered to resign.... | | | "Reliable" producer Lee Alexander emails: Much has been made about what the W.H. press team won't say on camera. Maybe we should be paying more attention to what they aren't saying on the record at all. This new interview supports the NYT's June 6 report that Sessions had "offered to resign in recent weeks." That article led to several rounds of questions. Some commentators cast doubt on its legitimacy. Sean Spicer declined to answer if the president had confidence in his own attorney general. Wednesday's interview implies that the answer is no... | | -- Is it appropriate for a president to be talking this way? Jeffrey Lord's answer on "AC360:" "There are gasps all over Washington, I'm sure. G-A-S-P-S... To be perfectly candid, I don't think he cares."
-- NBC's Ken Dilanian: "Just when you think your capacity for surprise has diminished.."
-- John Heilemann on MSNBC: "It's also pretty clear to me [Trump is] now at war with everyone in the world of justice and law enforcement in the administration..."
-- BI's Josh Barro: "Trump will throw anyone under the bus. It would seem to be in his political interest to throw Russia under the bus. And yet."
-- NYPost's Seth Mandel: "I like how these stories break at night, too late to do anything really productive with but just late enough to haunt your dreams." | | "Fifteen minutes" versus "almost an hour" | | About that Trump-Putin meeting that wasn't disclosed until Tuesday...
CNN's Jeff Zeleny on "AC360:" "There is definitely a discrepancy about how long that meeting actually lasted. I talked to a top administration official last night who said that it lasted 'nearly an hour.' That's when there were reports out that it was an hour, and this official said 'Look, it was nearly an hour.' The president telling the NYT it was '15 minutes.'"
-- Related: HuffPost's Michael Calderone reconstructed how Ian Bremmer broke the news about the previously undisclosed meeting... | | -- ICYMI in the morning: Here's what the BBC revealed about how much its highest-paid stars make... (CNNMoney)
-- Melanie Buck is the new EP of "State of the Union with Jake Tapper." Katie Hinman is becoming EP of special programming for CNN... (TVNewser)
-- Jason Bateman says "we start shooting" the next season of "Arrested Development" in "two weeks..." (The Daily Beast) | | | THREE RECOMMENDED READS... | | Michael Wolff is out with "Lessons Learned From Roger Ailes One Year After His Fox Firing." Notable quotes:
-- Ailes critiquing the Murdoch brothers for pursuing full ownership of Sky: "Well, maybe they're not wrong. I mean, they're not that bright, so they probably are wrong. But maybe there's a business there. It's just never going to be as good as the one they are giving up."
-- Ailes talking on the phone with Wolff one day before the fall that precipitated his death: "It's strange to be at home with nothing to do but just to see how right you were. The liberals really have had no idea what was going on. But the lesson is, you probably don't want to be as right as I've been. That's not going to make you a lot of friends." | | Katzenberg's $2 billion plan | | Variety's Andrew Wallenstein has an exclusive interview about Jeffrey Katzenberg's "New TV" venture. "Katzenberg's plan involves nothing less than the creation of a whole new species of entertainment targeting 18- to 34-year-olds: short-form video series produced with budgets and production values you might expect from primetime TV, along with top-shelf creatives on both sides of the camera. For example, imagine a drama akin to 'Empire' or 'Scandal' but shrunk to 10-minute episodes made for mobile consumption..."
Bob Iger, Les Moonves, Peter Rice, Mark Burnett, Jerry Bruckheimer and Ari Greenburg are all quoted in the feature. Wallenstein says "there wasn't a single person contacted for this story who didn't profess an interest in doing business with Katzenberg's venture, though no actual commitments are in place so far..." | | "Do Not Bet Against Snapchat And Evan Spiegel" | | | That's the title of Nick Bilton's latest. His point: "Snap is not going to be the next Facebook. But it could become the next Netflix. And that would be a pretty good deal for investors." | | | Snapchat and NBC News are working together on what's being billed as "the first daily news show" for Snapchat. CNNTech's Seth Fiegerman writes: "The show, called Stay Tuned, will focus on issues like politics and international news... There are 30 people working to produce Stay Tuned, including an executive producer and two co-hosts..." | | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman: | | -- Simon Galperin asks: Why don't we fund journalism like any other public service? (CJR)
-- Part two of Perry Bacon Jr.'s wonderful explainer about anonymous sources is out... (FiveThirtyEight)
-- Today in amazing interactives: The Upshot analyzed two years of Trump tweets to find that his best talent is branding his opponents. And ProPublica lets you manipulate data on immigration and see the impact of increases or decreases in immigration on the economy... | | Next gig for "Game of Thrones" EPs | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: With "Game of Thrones" winding down, executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will work with HBO on an alt-history series called "Confederate." It takes place in an alternate timeline in which the southern states successfully seceded from the Union, "giving rise to a nation in which slavery remains legal and has evolved into a modern institution," according to the network's description. The show "chronicles the events leading to the Third American Civil War," with characters ranging from freedom fighters and abolitionists to slave hunters and politicians.
The idea started off as a feature film, but evolved into something more, according to the duo. Production is slated to begin after the final season of "Thrones..." | | "Confederate:" Good idea or bad idea? | | Sandra adds: "Confederate" is already spurring a war of opinions. Backlash to the idea began almost immediately on Wednesday, with many objectors decrying what they said was the potentially harmful nature of the premise, considering the divisions that already exist in American politics.
But to HBO, the allure of re-teaming with Benioff and Weiss, combined with the provocative concept, surely made "Confederate" a fairly easy sell. Read Sandra's full story here... | | New "GMA" executive producer | | "GMA" senior executive producer Michael Corn has a new EP: Roxanna Sherwood. She's moving over from "Nightline."
-- Context: Chris Vlasto, who was the EP of the 7am hour, moved off the morning shift last month when he was named ABC's senior EP for investigative reporting. But Sherwood isn't filling his exact role. She'll be handling both the 7 and 8am hours...
-- Another appointment: Terry Hurlbutt will be the show's new "general manager of digital." James Goldston says "she will work hand in hand with Michael to lead GMA's rapid digital expansion, including content creation, distribution and identifying new opportunities to expand our audience reach..." | | Spotted at Playbook's party | | | Politico is hosting a series of parties to mark Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer, and Daniel Lippman's first full year as Playbook newsletter leaders... Oliver Darcy was at Wednesday's shindig in NYC, and he sent along these sightings: Patrick Steel, Tammy Haddad, Brad Dayspring, Kate Bolduan, Katie Pudwill, Max Tani, Brett LoGiurato, Risa Heller, Jack Bohrer, Joe and Giovanna Lockhart... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- BuzzFeed has launched a "Reporting to You" briefing for Amazon Alexa. It's a two- to four-minute roundup of the news of the day, delivered by a different reporter each day... (Poynter)
-- It's official: In October, Facebook will start testing a way to promote users to subscribe to online news brands... (The Street)
-- Speaking of FB: On Wednesday the site released a new analytics tool for publishers to compare their mobile traffic and that from Instant Articles... (Poynter)
-- (Watch out Facebook?) Google is launching its own version of a personalized news feed on iOS and Andriod, replacing its "Google Now" brand... (CNNMoney) | | About the president and "Fox & Friends:"
"President Trump is the show's subject, its programmer, its publicist and its virtual fourth host. The stars offer him flattery, encouragement and advice. When he tweets, his words and image appear on a giant video wall. It's the illusion of children's TV — that your favorite show is as aware of you as you are of it — except that for Mr. Trump, it's real..."
--James Poniewozik's critics notebook for the NYT... | | Malone looking to buy a stake in Univision? | | | WSJ's team with a scoop: Univision "has been fielding interest from potential bidders after the media company's IPO was delayed, according to people familiar with the matter. Among the suitors has been cable mogul John Malone," who is interested in acquiring a significant stake in the company. The paper says Malone and Greg Maffei "met with Univision backers billionaire Haim Saban and Providence Equity Partners' Jonathan Nelson at the Sun Valley media conference this month," but "the two sides were far apart on valuation, and it is unclear if a deal—with Mr. Malone or anyone else—could be reached." Read more... | | The NYT's followup to the WSJ story also circles back to Tuesday night's news about talks between Discovery and Scripps:
"Malone has approached Univision about a potential investment in the Spanish-language broadcasting giant, people briefed on the discussions said on Wednesday. And Discovery Communications, of which Mr. Malone is a major backer, has held merger discussions with Scripps Networks Interactive, other people briefed on those talks said. In neither case is a deal assured. But both sets of discussions highlight the growing sense among media companies that they must find partners to stand up to increasingly powerful cable and broadband service providers..." | | Marianne Gambelli profiled | | What's Marianne Gambelli's plan now that she's running ad sales at Fox News? Jeanine Poggi's profile for AdAge has some clues. Highlights:
-- "One of her first priorities is to more closely align Fox News' ad sales efforts with those of Fox Networks Group..."
-- "Fox News may also adopt some of the new ad formats that the network group has been experimenting with, like the six-second ads being championed by YouTube. 'In news we can do it even more,' Gambelli said. 'I'm not regulated to 22 minutes of content and three breaks...'"
-- Gambelli complimented CNN's digital efforts, and said she's hoping to be able to sell more TV/online ad packages as Fox ups its game on the web... | | Fox News seeking more long-form and history shows | | | Another notable graf in Poggi's story: "Fox News is also looking to expand into other forms of programming, like long-form news shows in the vein of 'OBJECTified' with TMZ founder Harvey Levin, as well as some history-type programming." You might recall Fox briefly aired a Bill O'Reilly-produced history reenactment series "Legends & Lies..." | | Brian Lowry emails: Ok, add me (mostly) to the chorus of raves. Having seen a number of movies in Imax this summer, none make better use of the format than "Dunkirk," which does nothing to diminish director Christopher Nolan's brand. Read the full review here...
-- Right now on Rotten Tomatoes: 96% positive reviews... | | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: San Diego Comic-Con begins Thursday, which means prepare yourself for a busy weekend of entertainment news and sneak peeks. Panels to look out for tomorrow include Netflix's first-ever film presentation in Hall H, where they will present Will Smith's "Bright" and "Death Note." The latter, based on a famous Japanese manga, has been met with accusations of white-washing and it will be interesting how the team addresses those concerns... | | Comic-Con's digital-age challenges | | Brian Lowry emails: The convention faces some relatively new challenges -- following, as it does this year, Disney's D23 Expo, which showcased news about "Star Wars," Marvel and Pixar; and still grappling with issues about exclusive footage, as studios tease upcoming releases online, somewhat blunting the convention's impact as a place to get early looks at new movies and TV shows.
Check out Lowry's curtain-raiser here... | | Conan's shows on location | | | Lowry adds: TBS' Conan O'Brien, meanwhile, will again take his show on the road to the convention beginning Wednesday night, a shrewd move that gives him access to ripe comedic fodder as well as all the stars in attendance, including the cast from "Game of Thrones," who'll appear Saturday... | | The latest on "Walking Dead" stuntman death | | More from Sandra: As the week continues, all eyes will also be on "The Walking Dead" panel at Comic-Con on Friday. Word is that AMC has cancelled all previously scheduled press for the cast and creative team in light of the on-set death of stuntman John Bernecker last week. There's no doubt everyone on stage will be in an extraordinarily difficult position. Comic-Con is a celebration, and I'm not quite sure how you proceed in light of a difficult loss like that...
-- THR has the latest on the investigation into Bernecker's death in a detailed report here... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- The woman at center of the R. Kelly controversy has a message for her father: please stop. Joycelyn Savage, 21, says her father has taken his concerns about her relationship with the 50-year-old singer too far...
-- Madonna has put a stop to the auction of a letter Tupac wrote to her while he was incarcerated. The pop star won a temporary restraining order to halt the possible sale...
-- Six months after its release, "Despacito" is now the most streamed song of all time, with more than 4.6 billion plays, according to Universal Music Latin Entertainment...
-- Ron Howard has been teasing the forthcoming "Han Solo" film on Twitter, and Instagram...
-- Former child star Aaron Carter tearfully revealed his arrest details... | | | Melissa Yang emails: On National Hot Dog Day, the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky corrected decades of incorrect reporting and confirmed that a hot dog is not a sandwich. Which just proves that it's never too late to make a correction and that no correction is ever too small to make... | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Email us... we're at reliablesources@cnn.com... we appreciate every email. | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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