| | | | | Exec summary: To the newsletter reader who introduced himself at the Fontainebleau hotel pool and asked about tonight's edition: This one's for you! I'm back in NYC after a few days off... Scroll down for details about Comcast eyeing Fox and much more... | | Weinstein Company sale in jeopardy | | On Sunday morning Maria Contreras-Sweet's investment group was on the verge of a deal to buy The Weinstein Company's assets. Key word: WAS. It is unclear what's going to happen now.
On Sunday afternoon New York AG Eric Schneiderman filed a civil rights lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein, AND the company. As a result, the investors are saying that the deal is now in peril.
On Sunday night, the WSJ said the deal "fell apart" and the sale has been cancelled.
As Deadline's Anita Busch and Mike Fleming Jr. wrote, "there is a lot of spin being thrown around right now." One side says "the AG's office has effectively killed this deal and this was the only deal that ensured that victims would receive compensation." The other side says "there was no dedicated victim compensation fund" in the deal terms reviewed by Schneiderman's office. Back and forth, back and forth... Here's our CNNMoney story...
Bottom line: A bankruptcy proceeding is not in the best interest of either side, right? But that's the risk here... | | On the record from the AG's office | | | Schneiderman press secretary Amy Spitalnick emails: "We expressed to them how important it is that any deal adequately compensate victims, protect employees, and not reward those who enabled or perpetuated this egregious sexual misconduct. We were surprised to learn they were not serious about discussing any of those issues or even sharing the most basic information about how they planned to address them..." | | Unilever's warning to Google and Facebook | | "Unilever, the world's second-biggest marketing spender, is threatening to pull its advertising from digital platforms such as Google and Facebook if they 'create division,' foster hate or fail to protect children," the FT's Shannon Bond reports.
Unilever CMO Keith Weed is speaking at the Interactive Advertising Bureau conference on Monday... The company shared portions of his speech ahead of time... Two key quotes here:
-- "Unilever will not invest in platforms or environments that do not protect our children or which create division in society, and promote anger or hate. We will prioritize investing only in responsible platforms that are committed to creating a positive impact in society."
-- "As one of the largest advertisers in the world, we cannot have an environment where our consumers don't trust what they see online. We cannot continue to prop up a digital supply chain -- one that delivers over a quarter of our advertising to our consumers -- which at times is little better than a swamp in terms of its transparency." | | All those rumors about Comcast still seeking to buy 21st Century Fox despite Disney's deal? The WSJ is putting some meat on the bones: Comcast IS "contemplating reviving its pursuit" of Fox, Amol Sharma and Shalini Ramachandran reported Sunday night, citing "people familiar with the situation."
--> Here's the key detail: Fox accepted Disney's offer of $52.4 billion in stock, but Fox "turned down a Comcast offer that was in the low-$60 billions range." That's at least a 15% difference. How are Fox shareholders going to react to THAT? | | | More from the WSJ story: "Fox's primary concern about the Comcast bid was that a tie-up between the companies would face significant antitrust risks..." a la the pending AT&T-Time Warner deal... "But Comcast believed it had offered substantial protections in its offer against antitrust risk..." | | | From Comcast, Fox or Disney... | | "Today" in PyeongChang starts Monday | | | Two weeks for the "Today" show to capitalize on the Winter Olympics ratings bump: Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, and Al Roker will host the 7 and 8am hours from PyeongChang starting Monday. The 9 and 10am hours will remain in NYC... Jenna Bush Hager will fill in for Kotb at 10... | | Lowry's take on the ratings | | | Brian Lowry emails: NBC isn't just bragging with its Olympics ratings releases, which are making a point of comparing the network's numbers to rivals. (On Saturday, the preliminary overnight rating more than tripled ABC, CBS and Fox combined.) The clear goal is to put the audience in context, providing a picture of why the Games are so valuable -- even if they wind up lagging behind 2014 -- precisely because the broadcast landscape has grown more fragmented and reaching this sort of mass audience is increasingly rare... | | Spotlight on "spotlight" headlines | | The North Korean regime smiled for the cameras and sought positive P.R. from the start of the Winter Olympics in South Korea. Even before the opening ceremonies, Jean H. Lee wrote in the NYT that "North Korea has already hijacked media coverage of the Games."
Journalists rightly wrote about this effort over the weekend. Some of their headlines and tweets of their stories were strongly criticized, primarily by conservative social media voices. This CNN headline said "Kim Jong Un's sister is stealing the show..." ABC: "North Korea's 200-plus cheerleaders command spotlight..." Reuters: "North Korea judged winner of diplomatic gold..." NYT: "Kim Jong-un's Sister Turns on the Charm, Taking Pence's Spotlight..."
My impression, as someone who was happily on vacation: The actual stories conveyed the regime's brutality and accurately described diplomatic strategy. But this "Ivanka Trump of North Korea" talk is ripe for criticism -- even if, as the NYT noted, South Korean media were doing it too. Just as in covering domestic politics, journos can't let substance get overwhelmed by style... | | Devin Nunes' campaign created a "news" site... | | | Politico's Devin Siders exposed this on Saturday. "The campaign committee for House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes has been funding a website billed as a local news outlet," CNN's Eli Watkins wrote. The site was called CARepublican.com... | | Soon after the Politico story came out, the site came down. The URL is now redirecting to a Facebook page for the site, which claims "heavy traffic and an attack on our servers" is to blame.
My two cents: Sites like these are inevitable. More and more campaigns, companies and individuals will operate like media companies. It's incumbent on real newsrooms to help people distinguish between SacBee.com and CARepublican.com... | | Media week ahead calendar | | -- Monday: Apple's annual shareholder meeting...
-- Monday: Peter Kafka and Kara Swisher's Code Media conference begins in Huntington Beach, CA...
-- Tuesday: The Goldman Sachs Tech Conference kicks off...
-- Wednesday: Valentine's Day! Do you have reservations yet?
-- Thursday after the bell: CBS earnings...
-- Friday: Chinese New Year celebrations... | | | -- The other day I wrote about how the "fake news" plague is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. This new Charlie Warzel piece articulates WHY. A must-read... (BuzzFeed) | | Sunday started with this Axios headline: "Rob Porter telling different story than John Kelly." Jim VandeHei tweeted: "Either the White House spokespeople or the president's chief of staff is lying. It's a stunning display of incompetence..."
The WashPost's Philip Rucker tweeted in response: "It's Day Six of the Rob Porter saga and the White House still doesn't have a consistent timeline of events. The accounts continue to shift." His colleague Mark Berman added: "What happens when there's an external crisis and the White House needs the American people to believe what it says?" | | Margaret Sullivan's latest | | On Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | Swalwell's argument for the "Journalist Protection Act" | | | "I really wish I didn't have to introduce this," Rep. Eric Swalwell told Sesno. Watch/read the discussion about the proposed legislation here... | | More highlights from the show | | -- Sesno and Hadas Gold discussed the recent UK parliament hearing about "fake news..."
-- Ken Doctor made his "Reliable" debut, talking about the fates of the LA Times and Newsweek... | | Pirro's pro-Trump talking points | | Oliver Darcy emails: I tuned into Fox News host Jeanine Pirro's show on Saturday night (yes, that is how I spent my evening), and watched as she misled her audience about how the White House -- chiefly, General John Kelly -- handled the Rob Porter scandal. Based on a conversation with a "senior White House official," Pirro exonerated Kelly and dubbed Porter a liar, resting almost all of the blame on him. The rest of the blame was seemingly reserved for the intelligence community tasked with conducting the White House background checks, as she spent the rest of her program entertaining wild conspiracy theories suggesting senior officials had no knowledge about Porter's history of abuse (CNN and other media outlets have reported that such allegations were, in fact, known by senior officials, including Kelly).
--> Darcy adds: On the show, Seb Gorka somehow found a way to connect the scandal to the supposed "deep state" -- we'll give him a few points for creativity -- by suggesting there was perhaps a "deliberate minefield put in place" by the investigators doing the background clearances "where they know somebody like this has skeletons in their closet and they slow roll everything just to make things like this explode a few months later." Later, Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert told Pirro, "John Kelly's only problem was he trusted the FBI..."
--> Speaking of Pirro: The NYT says Trump has agreed to be interviewed for Pirro's next book... | | -- Here's Eve Peyser on what happens when an obvious joke made on Twitter gets picked up by the right and ends up on "Fox & Friends..." (VICE)
-- Super Bowl was a week ago, but the celebrations continue! Over the weekend Matthew McConaughey took out a full-page newspaper ad for Eagles QB Nick Foles... (SI) | | "Who Will Replace Jennifer Salke at NBC?" | | | With NBC Entertainment president Jennifer Salke taking over Amazon Studios, who will Bob Greenblatt hire to replace her? "The internal candidates to replace Salke aren't as myriad as you'd expect," THR says. The network "is expected to have news about Salke's successor" by the end of this week... | | Writers Guild Award winners | | Brian Lowry emails: Sunday night's Writers Guild Awards had a strong political bent throughout (Rep. Adam Schiff received a standing ovation), including several honors recognizing works or individuals associated with LGBTQ rights. Among those was the gay love story "Call Me By Your Name" -- and its 89-year-old writer, James Ivory -- winning the award for adapted screenplay, one of the night's most closely watched prizes given its proximity to the Oscars...
--> Original screenplay winner: Jordan Peele for "Get Out," which also produced a huge ovation. "If I was really afraid of white people, this would be the scariest moment of my life," he said...
--> In TV, it was another big night for "The Handmaid's Tale," named best drama and new series... "Veep" was named best comedy... | | "Fifty Shades Freed" #1 for the weekend | | | "In one of the more awkward box office pairings in memory, the rough-sex sequel 'Fifty Shades Freed' was No. 1 at North American theaters over the weekend, while the cuddly-cute 'Peter Rabbit' did well with children in second place," the NYT's Brooks Barnes writes... | | | The seventh season premiered on Sunday night... Brian Lowry writes that "the latest plot, driven by an overreaching female president, somehow feels relatively pallid compared to the shenanigans playing out in Washington," but he says there's "entertaining tradecraft..." | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
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