| | | | | Facebook launching "Watch." NBC shuttering Seeso. Altice eyeing Charter. We have lots of media biz news to decipher tonight... but first... | | Suspended Fox host is suing the journalist whose story got him suspended | | Oliver Darcy emails: Eric Bolling is suing Yashar Ali for $50 million. The suit comes after Ali reported in HuffPost last week that Bolling had sent lewd messages to female colleagues years ago. "I stand by my reporting + will protect my sources," Ali wrote in a tweet responding to the summons. He added: "It's important to note that Bolling's summons does not include HuffPost - he is coming after me personally. I'm a big boy...but very telling."
Bolling's lawyer called Ali's story story "false" and "defamatory" and said he would "defend Eric aggressively in court." A Fox News spokesperson said the network did not have any comment beyond noting Bolling was still suspended pending the results of an investigation... | | HuffPost indicates it'll pay his legal costs | | | HuffPost EIC Lydia Polgreen said Wednesday afternoon that "Yashar Ali is a careful and meticulous reporter. We stand by his reporting." Later in the day, after Q's about whether HuffPost will foot his legal bills, she said Ali "is a paid freelancer under contract with HuffPost. We have no hesitation about standing by him financially in this case." Here's Darcy's full story... | | For my $$, this next story is the most important one of the day... | | Disney discloses $177 million charge related to "pink slime" suit | | Tom Kludt emails: When ABC News and Beef Products Inc. reached a settlement earlier this summer -- abruptly ending the so-called "pink slime" trial three weeks after it commenced -- it was clear that the South Dakota-based meat processor had triumphed. Now we know some of the details, thanks to a footnote in Disney's latest earnings report.
Disney said it paid $177 million that was "incurred in connection with the settlement of litigation." The total settlement is well north of that figure, and the rest is, presumably, being covered by insurance. But $177 million alone represents the largest amount ever paid in a U.S. defamation suit, according to BPI attorney Dan Webb... | | Tom adds: This is obviously an astronomical amount to pay for reporting that ABC still very much stands by. It would likely represent roughly a year's worth of advertising revenue for ABC's evening newscast.
But what would have been the outcome if the trial had reached a verdict? Remember: Hulk Hogan asked a Florida jury for $100 million in his case against Gawker. The jurors responded by giving him over $40 million more than that. BPI sought damages worth more than $1 billion, and the trial was playing out on the company's home turf of Elk Point, South Dakota (in a county that Donald Trump carried by about 40 percentage points, no less). I suspect that the brass at Disney concluded that a billion dollar judgment was in play... | | Media outlets as "get-rich-quick targets?" | | | More from Tom: Len Niehoff, a law professor at the University of Michigan, told me he thinks this will embolden others to target news outlets. "Large settlements are worrisome because they may lead some plaintiffs and lawyers to think of media entities as easy get-rich-quick targets," he said. "This is wrong, because the legal protections are strong and most media entities are hesitant to settle. But we often see an uptick in cases after big verdicts or settlements, even if those cases do not have merit." More... | | Altice working on an offer for Charter | | The French telecom co. Altice and its U.S. cable subsidiary, Altice USA, which owns Cablevision, "are working on an offer to buy Charter, but have not yet brought a purchase proposal to Charter or its advisors," CNBC's David Faber reported Wednesday morning.
-- Faber's bottom line: "In the last year Verizon, SoftBank and now Altice have all spent considerable time thinking about or trying to buy" Charter. "The only company that has not is CNBC parent, Comcast..." | | Seeso was a big deal when it was announced in late 2015. It was an ambitious attempt by NBCUniversal to create a comedy-centric streaming service. But Seeso couldn't convince enough people to subscribe... when Seeso boss Evan Shapiro left NBC in May, the writing was on the wall. On Wednesday Seeso confirmed it's shutting down...
-- Shapiro tweeted on Wednesday: "Streaming is an Arms Race..." | | -- "Snap is set to report its highly anticipated Q2 earnings on Thursday," and it's "a chance to turn things around after a very disappointing inaugural earnings report in May," Kurt Wagner reports... (Recode)
-- Erik Wemple says the NYT is guilty of a "large screw-up on climate-change story." Here's what happened... (WashPost)
-- "Rachel Maddow of MSNBC is the new champ" of cable news, David Bauder says in this in-depth look at MSNBC's surge... (AP)
-- Tatiana Siegel's scoop: "The Koch brothers have been a silent investor in Warner Bros.' slate of movies for four years..." (THR)
-- Kurt Bardella's latest op-ed for CNN.com: "Breitbart's spectacularly mistimed war on White House adviser..." | | Facebook's video push begins anew | | Business Insider reported Wednesday evening that Facebook's "redesigned video tab," called "Watch," would begin to roll out to users on Thursday. FB responded by announcing the launch a few minutes later. Here's the corporate blog post about it...
"Roughly 40 shows from a range of publishing partners and content studios will be included in the first slate of programming," BI's Alex Heath and Nathan McAlone said. "In typical Facebook fashion, only a small percentage of users will see the new Watch tab in the Facebook app immediately," but FB "plans to slowly make it available to everyone in the coming weeks." | | Here are some of the partners | | | A&E, Quartz, Brit & Co, McClatchy, All Def Digital, Hearst, NASA, NBA, Univision Deportes, MLB (one live game every Friday night), National Geographic, PopSugar, The Dodo, Tastemade, Time Inc., Thrillist... | | Any must-see shows? I don't see any... | | My Q: Where are the must-see shows? Where are the ideas that make you say "wow?" FB isn't sharing the full launch schedule... "We do not have a full list of shows at this point," a spokesman told me, emphasizing that this is a "limited test..." But the partial list of shows released on Wednesday night does not make this seem game-changing. Variety has the list here...
-- From a plugged-in emailer: "This shows that Facebook is having a harder time getting publishers to do something premium for their platform..." | | | As BuzzFeed's Alex Kantrowitz wrote on Twitter, FB's video competitor is not Netflix, it's YouTube... "There's a section in Facebook's new video product called 'videos over 10 minutes.' The fact that long vids merit a special tab is telling..." | | Meantime, where is the real big $$$$ made? Here... | | ...In good old-fashioned television.
I missed Claire Atkinson's story late last night. She says Judge Judy Sheindlin's sale of her 10,400-show archive back to CBS earned Sheindlin "roughly $95 million."
The sale was announced on Tuesday along with another contract extension for Sheindlin, so she'll continue starring on the show through 2021. She is "clearly a shrewd operator," Atkinson wrote. "The deal to sell her library comes just two years after CBS sold it to her in conjunction with her last renewal." So basically CBS paid her a $100 million bonus...?! | | Fox News lifts 21CF's earnings | | | "Americans' undiminished appetite for news during Donald Trump's presidency lifted quarterly results at Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox," thanks to higher ratings at Fox News, the FT's Shannon Bond reports. Her earnings story points out that Q2 was when Fox News ousted Bill O'Reilly and introduced a new prime time lineup. "Viewership nonetheless continued to rise, driving up ad sales and distribution fees. As a result, revenue at Fox's cable networks, which also include Fox Sports, FX and National Geographic, rose 10%" to $4.3 billion, which represents 64% of the company's total revenue. The cable side "offset declines at its broadcast network and film studio..." | | | A bit of news from Fox's earnings call: James Murdoch told analysts that "the company remained confident the Sky transaction would be approved. But he said that would be 'more likely in the first half of 2018 than before the end of this calendar year' as Fox had previously expected..." | | -- Jack Shafer's latest: "Who's Afraid of Sinclair Broadcasting?" (Politico)
-- Partial answer to his question: conservative outlets like Newsmax and OANN. Sydney Ember has this story about the unlikely opposition to the Sinclair/Tribune deal... (NYT)
-- Smart piece by NRO's Elliot Kaufman: "Ben Shapiro's Astonishing Success" (NRO)
-- "Newsweek's top editor Matt McAllester is taking a leave of absence from the magazine..." But a spokesman "said his temporary departure is not connected to a recent lawsuit he was prominently featured in..." (THR) | | | Hadas Gold, who has been scooping media stories for Politico for the past five years, is joining us here at CNN. From Ed O'Keefe's internal memo: "I am excited to announce Hadas Gold will join CNN as a reporter focused on European politics, media, and global business." She'll be writing the Morning Media newsletter for Politico through next week, then get introduced to CNN's DC and London bureaus... TVNewser has the details here... | | Colbert scores first TV sit-down with Scaramucci | | Anthony Scaramucci's first sit-down interview since being forced out of his White House job will be with "Late Show" host Stephen Colbert next Monday.
CBS announced the booking on Wednesday evening... it's a big win for Colbert, since everyone wanted the first interview... Mooch did talk to a few reporters after resigning on July 31, but he hasn't had a TV close-up like this... Here's my full story with Jackie Wattles...
-- Why the "Late Show?" Colbert ridiculed Scaramucci for days... so maybe Mooch wants to be in on the joke?
-- On Wednesday evening, seemingly out of nowhere, @Scaramucci tweeted: "@RyanLizza is the Linda Tripp of 2017. People know. And he is up at night not being able to live with himself." No response from Lizza as of yet... | | Word of the day: "Improvised" | | North Korea "is the biggest foreign policy challenge that's now sitting on the president's desk," Jeff Zeleny said on "AC360" Wednesday night. So how's POTUS handling it so far? That was the primary topic on cable news and home pages on Wednesday... as sources told several W.H. correspondents that the president caught top aides off-guard with his "fire and fury" comments. The NYT's headline: "Trump's Threat to North Korea Was Improvised."
Politico's Josh Dawsey quoted a source saying "Don't read too much into it." Maggie Haberman responded: "So the president's own advisers are saying to discount his words, is where we are now." Jonathan Chait went further in a widely shared NYMag piece: "Ignore Our Crazy President, U.S. Government Tells North Korea." | | Once again, the prez was reacting to news coverage | | | Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman emails: In the aforementioned NYT story, there's an interesting nugget about how negative media coverage upsets the president: Trump "had been told about a Washington Post story on North Korea's progress in miniaturizing nuclear warheads so that they could fit on top of a ballistic missile, and was in a bellicose mood, according to a person who spoke with him before he made the statement..." | | | President Obama's photog Pete Souza trolls Trump on a regular basis by posting shots of Obama. Wednesday's was captioned: "Words matter. Especially from this podium." | | Scoop-o-clock came early on Wednesday: the WashPost reported just before 10am that the FBI conducted a predawn raid of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's home in late July...
Sean Hannity on Fox Wednesday night: Journalists are "foaming at the mouth, hyper-ventilating, jumping to conclusions" about the Manafort news... | | | For the record, part three | | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Bots are overrated: There's "a very human, grass-roots organization" that is using Twitter to promote Trump's agenda (and attack media targets like CNN) via social media. They coordinate via group messages, Politico's Shawn Musgrave reports... (Politico)
-- A must-read: Steven Perlberg on Josh Raffel, Javanka's PR rep who liaises with the press on their behalf... (BuzzFeed News)
-- Bloomberg says it's offering "an entirely new model of media..." by providing consulting services for businesses... (AdWeek)
-- Tribune Media's Q2 earnings are in, and the company's losses look better than this time last year: $30.4 million this Q versus $161.6 million in the same Q in 2016... (THR)
-- Consolidation-wire: New Media Investment Group has acquired Morris Publishing Group for $120 million. Morris' assets include 11 daily newspapers, 30 weeklies and online properties... (Poynter)
-- Mozilla has launched the "Mozilla Information Trust Initiative" to combat fake news and misinformation... (Poynter) | | | "Fire and furry!" It was the source of a lotta jokes on social media on Wednesday... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Howard Cohen:
-- Megyn Kelly is making the rounds promoting her new 9am show... She was in Chicago on Wednesday morning... (TVNewser)
-- How generous. Facebook says it will no longer charge advertisers for "accidental clicks..." (TechCrunch)
-- Android founder Andy Rubin has raised $300 million for his new phone startup, EssentIal Products. Amazon participated in the round... (Variety)
-- Via Sami Main: "The L.A. Times is hoping for its own 'Serial' moment with new investigative podcast..." (Adweek) | | Brian Lowry emails: John Landgraf's appraisal of the TV industry has become an anticipated staple of the TCA Press Tour, ever since the FX CEO suggested there was "too much TV" two years ago. He hasn't wavered from that perspective, citing "major transformation, one might even say disruption" of existing business models, and an uncertain move by several players toward more pay-to-view services.
-- Per Landgraf, 2017 is pacing slightly ahead of last year, which featured 455 scripted series...
-- On another note, fans of "Louie" might have seen their last of the FX show -- at least in its current form -- per star/creator Louis C.K... | | Lowry's latest: Quality TV can't cash in on critical clout | | Lowry adds: Wednesday also marked the final day of this summer's press tour, and as Landgraf noted, the digital changes affecting entertainment journalists have in some ways predicted those impacting the industry that they cover. Yet amid more talk this year about movie critics having a significant impact on box-office results, one fact remains: In TV's new golden age, there's often a sizable gap between prestige and ratings.
-- Quoting from Lowry's latest column: "Many would argue the surge in more ambitious shows has brought out the best in critics. What seems equally clear, though, is that TV criticism still has its limits when it comes to inspiring viewers to sample programs. And if there's a "Rotten Tomatoes effect" in television, it's too small, at this point, to make much of a splat." Read the rest here... | | John Bailey, not Laura Dern, elected Academy prez | | Lisa France reports: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors elected veteran cinematographer John Bailey as president on Tuesday...
-- Related from TheWrap: "Why Laura Dern Wasn't Elected Academy's New President..." | | | For the record, part five | | | -- FX has ordered a second season of "Snowfall..." (Deadline)
-- By Lisa France: Amber Heard and Elon Musk are over...for now...
-- One more from Lisa: Jennifer Lawrence has opened up about her relationship with Darren Aronofsky...
-- Oprah is coming to supermarket shelves this fall, CNNMoney's Jill Disis reports... | | | Email us at reliablesources@cnn.com... we appreciate every message. The feedback helps us craft the next day's newsletter! | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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