Welcome to 2019! To new subscribers: Thanks for joining us. This newsletter is all about the news media and how it intersects with politics, business, tech, and entertainment.
To everyone else: Welcome back! This is a special edition... A guide to 2019... Email me to point out what I'm missing...
We have liftoff 🚀
January always lifts off like a rocket. The NFL playoffs start this weekend... Golden Globes are this Sunday... CES starts next Tuesday... and I'm sure there will be some surprise announcements...
Who needs what
Disney needs the final approvals for its bid to buy most of 21st Century Fox...
CBS News needs a new exec producer for "CBS This Morning" and for "60 Minutes." At "60," Bill Owens has been interim E.P. since September...
Gannett needs a new CEO. Robert Dickey is retiring in May... Headhunting firm Egon Zehnder is helping with the search...
Condé Nast still needs buyers for Brides, W, and Golf Digest magazines. The sale plans were announced last August. The company also needs a new global CEO...
NBC needs a new plan for the fourth hour of "Today," with Kathie Lee Gifford leaving in April...
Questions...
Which of the numerous investigations into Trumpworld will turn out to be the most significant?
As the cliche "walls close in" on President Trump, what will he do? And what will the White House's media strategy be? Double down on the media bashing, lean even harder on Fox, or...?
The first DNC-sanctioned primary debate will take place in June. How many candidates will be on stage?
Will journalists let Trump's insults overshadow the Dem primary process?
When will Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" sequel drop?
Were the fake stories of 2016 just a warm-up for the "viral deception" of the 2020 campaign?
Will more sites go the way of Mic? Is a round of digital media consolidation right around the corner?
How many more digital newsrooms will unionize?
Is the churn at CBS over yet?
Will acting CEO Joe Ianniello get the permanent job, or will the board opt for an outsider? Will anyone else leave as a result of the misconduct investigations? Will Les Moonves fight the board's decision to deny him $120 million in severance $$? According to Page Six, Moonves spent New Year's on David Geffen's yacht...
Can Zuckerberg turn this around?
He posted a joyous "here's to a great 2019" photo, but... | | Hadas Gold is right: "Of all the platforms, Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg has become the poster child for all the ills of the internet." Can FB change that perception in 2019?
Big Tech predictions
"Sheryl Sandberg will leave Facebook as its woes continue." That's one of WaPo tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler's 2019 predictions. Also: "Congress keeps talking about tech — but makes little impact... Trump gets into a big fight with an ever-bigger Amazon..." 5G networks roll out but "wow few at first" because it'll take a few years to blanket the country... And "Apple is going to squeeze more money from you" through "subscriptions for news and video..."
More questions
What's the next earth-shattering media merger?
How will the court of appeals rule in US v. AT&T?
Will The Academy find a new Oscars host? Or go host-less?
Will Netflix enter the Oscar race in a big way with "Roma?"
When will Megyn Kelly's exit deal with NBC News be finalized?
Could the Eagles make it back to the Super Bowl? Have faith, Philly friends!
I'm looking forward to...
The return of the daily W.H. briefing. I'm an optimist!
Jill Abramson's book, "The Merchants of Truth," out February 5...
The finales of "The Big Bang Theory," "Homeland," "Orange is the New Black," "Veep," "Mr. Robot" and surely some other shows too...
"The Lion King" in theaters on July 19...
Preorder these:
Jason Rezaian's memoir about his time in captivity in Iran comes out on January 23.
I'm also looking forward to reading Ronan Farrow's "Catch and Kill" book... hopefully sooner rather than later... and Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey's book about their Weinstein reporting...
--> And: Margaret Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale" sequel is set for September...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Vanity Fair will release its February cover on Wednesday morning...
-- The January issue of Glamour was its last monthly edition in print... That's one of the pegs for Lavanya Ramanathan's piece about women's mags. She asks: "Will we miss them when they're gone?" (WaPo)
-- Awful Announcing has "five sports media stories to watch in 2019..." (AA)
-- IndieWire has a list of "who's poised to win and lose" in entertainment this year... (IndieWire)
-- And Peter Csathy is out with his annual 10 predictions about the media industry... (TechCrunch)
New US managing editor at the FT
In a statement on Tuesday, FT editor Lionel Barber said "America is the land of opportunity for the FT." US managing editor Gillian Tett is moving to a new role, "America editor-at-large," writing two columns a week and helping with editorial strategy. She will also chair a "newly created US editorial board," Chris Roush of Talking Biz News reported.
FT news editor Peter Spiegel is the new US managing editor, effective April 15. Both of them will report to Barber...
Who hacked Tribune and why?
Tribune Publishing said it was the victim of "malware" last Friday and Saturday. The cyberattack resulted in printing and distribution delays at papers like the LA Times, Baltimore Sun, etc. (Here's my full story.)
Some reporters chuckled at the irony of a digital bug interrupting printed papers. But there was also real concern about the effectiveness of the attack. So what was it? Per the LAT, when it comes to this particular piece of malware, "determining the origin of an attack is exceedingly difficult, as is establishing any links to state actors." Tribune told me Tuesday that "we are investigating the nature of the situation and will not comment further..."
2019: The rise of the paywalls
I asked Michael Wolf, the founder of the consulting firm ACTIVATE, what he's expecting in the year ahead... he said: "Major news outlets will break free from the tyranny of social media, largely via subscriptions to premium content. Any news organization that can charge for content, will. Media paywalls will expose consumers' willingness to choose with their wallets, and align with specific news outlets: the winners will be traditional news outlets such as Fox News, Bloomberg, CNN, NBC/MSNBC/CNBC, Washington Post, NYTimes, etc. as well as the strongest digital outlets including Vice, Vox and Business Insider."
Why more deals are on the horizon
MediaLink CEO Michael Kassan told me he's expecting more M&A across the entire media landscape – "The traditional media players need to continue to come together for competitive and financial reasons."
Another part of his forecast: "The advertising agency holding companies need to continue their reinvention – As marketers are in-sourcing more capabilities, the agencies have to address this as a reality and adjust. There will be more consolidation of brands at the holding company level (WPP merging JWT/Wunderman as an example). As the management consulting ( e.g. Accenture, Deloitte etc) firms continue to expand into the marketing space, the competition will intensify."
New year, new shows
Tuesday marked the premiere of "America First with Dr. Sebastian Gorka" on radio stations across the country. Jamie Weinstein tweeted: "Gorka is replacing Michael Medved at Salem, which says a great deal about the sorry state of American conservatism." He said "the good news" is that Medved is still streaming a show here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Glenn Kessler's end of the year count: "Trump averaged 15 false statements a day in 2018." (WaPo)
-- Oliver Darcy emails: Adam Rubenstein, most recently an editor at The Weekly Standard, is the new executive editor at Jewish Insider...
-- The revamped and relaunched Washington Examiner magazine came out on Tuesday... (Examiner)
-- A different part of the Examiner published a Trump press release on Monday. The so-called "MAGA list" of "205 accomplishments," compiled by the White House, was dutifully reprinted by Paul Bedard. Then Trump turned around and tweeted about it, creditiExaminer, like it was their list, not his! 🤦
-- James Rosen, who left Fox News twelve months ago, is joining Sinclair "as an investigative reporter in its growing Washington bureau..." (Twitter)
-- Per Page Six, Hollywood producers are circling Michael Cohen for the rights to his life story... (Page Six)
Key dates on Hollywood's calendar
| | Brian Lowry emails: It's a huge year for marquee entertainment properties by almost any measure, but in terms of circle-the-date items, the hoopla should be especially huge for the final season of "Game of Thrones" (April), and Disney's Arsenal of tentpole movies, topped by "Avengers: Endgame" (late April) and the still-unsubtitled "Star Wars IX" in December, which not incidentally coincides with the launch of a dedicated land at Disney's theme parks — and possibly the studio's streaming service.
January, meanwhile, offers a potential early blockbuster to test whether 2018 box office momentum will continue with "Glass," M. Night Shyamalan's sequel pulling together "Split" and "Unbreakable." And NBC and Fox kick off the year seeking to establish much-needed and elusive new reality-competition hits, with "Titan Games" and "The Masked Singer..." Read on...
CBS v. Nielsen
CBS and the TV industry's standard ratings provider, Nielsen, "are without a contract after their current deal lapsed at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday," Variety's Brian Steinberg reported. "The situation — for now — remains fluid. Talks are likely to continue. But CBS is determined to secure a pact that it feels makes the best economic sense for the company while Nielsen believes the network will find negotiating with advertisers more difficult if it does not have access to its measures of audience viewing..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- This is cool: "Throughout 2019, The New York Times Opinion section will publish an occasional series of essays on the ways in which the events of 1919 shaped the following century." (NYT)
-- What to read in 2019? Brandon Griggs has a list of 10 books that appeared most often on best-of-2018 lists... (CNN)
-- Tuesday marked "the first time in two decades that a large body of copyrighted works" lost their protected status." Alexandra Alter explained it all, right here... (NYT)
-- "The broadcast networks are at crossroads following unprecedented corporate upheaval, with none of the executives who were at the top of each network the same time last year in their posts now," Nellie Andreeva noted... (Deadline)
One last look at 2018... | | The Committee to Protect Journalists was the charity honoree at Monday night's ball drop in Times Square, and a group of journalists pressed the button at 11:59. Among them: Karen Attiah, Alisyn Camerota, Rebecca Blumenstein, Lester Holt, Vladimir Duthiers, Edward Felsenthal, Matt Murray, Martha Raddatz, Maria Ressa, Jon Scott, and Karen Toulon.
Ressa tweeted afterward: "The whole evening was extremely moving and reminded all of us about why we became journalists in the first place..."
The last week, in one paragraph
POTUS visited troops in Iraq, which is great. He lied about their pay raises, which is not great. Otherwise he mostly stayed off camera but on Twitter. The government remained in a partial shutdown mode. The stock markets seesawed. The New Yorker dropped a must-read story about Trump and Mark Burnett. Trump's Tuesday morning message: "ENJOY THE RIDE."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Two heart-breaking deaths over the holidays: Chris Burrous, "a fixture on the KTLA 5 Morning News since 2011, passed away Thursday." And Bre Payton, "a commentator and staff writer for The Federalist, died Friday in San Diego after a sudden illness."
-- Credit where it's due: "Meet the Press with Chuck Todd" dedicated its final show of the year to the climate crisis... (Grist)
-- I guess lots of people went to bed early? "The New Year's Eve countdown shows on ABC, Fox and NBC all suffered year-to-year declines Monday night." But "as usual, ABC's New Year's Rockin' Eve led the way..." (THR)
-- Google used New Year's Eve to make its biggest pitch yet for YouTube Music -- Alex Weprin noted big $$ Google sponsorships on both NBC and ABC's telecasts -- on ABC, the YouTube plugs were part of a new multi-year partnership...
Kelly, Mattis, Haley gone
In some ways Trump's new year is defined by who's not there. His A.G., defense secretary and chief of staff are all now "acting." His new UN ambassador nominee is awaiting confirmation. Mitt Romney brought some of this up in his explosive Tuesday night op-ed for the Washington Post. At the time I'm hitting send, the op-ed is the most read thing on the Post's website...
Here's the thing about Romney...
What's his goal? Why write this op-ed two days before being sworn in as a US Senator? NRO contributing columnist Dan McLaughlin tweeted the question that's on my mind: "The interesting question is not whether Romney is right -- hardly anybody can dispute that -- but what his strategy is for putting this op-ed out just as he is entering the Senate, & what he hopes to accomplish."
Bill Kristol tweeted: "For now at least Mitt Romney has become the leader of the Republican Resistance to Trump."
--> Important: NPR Congress reporter Susan Davis tweeted: "I understand why Mitt Romney's op-ed will drive a news cycle, but trust me when I tell you that House Democrats tonight announcing they will reinstate the 'Gephardt Rule' to make it easier to raise the debt ceiling matters a lot more in 2019 America..."
HIS SHELTER FROM THE STORM... Trump rang in 2019 with Fox News
In case you missed it... Well, you didn't miss much. Trump gave a phone interview to Fox's Pete Hegseth, and the chat aired during the New Year's Eve countdown show on Fox News. For my last story of 2018, I wrote about how Trump and Fox have become even cozier...
But will this coziness continue in 2019? That's a big unknown...
Who gets the next interview?
Maggie Haberman tweeted: "For last few months, since before the midterms, Trump has essentially done his version of starring in his own daily TV talk show, one that has a different interviewer/media outlet each day. Some days there are guest print interviewers. The show is basically the same."
This is worse than "no comment"
Trump and his aides tend to harangue reporters for not calling/emailing for comment. (Even when the reporters did.) The next time it happens, keep this in mind: "Instead of 'no comment,' Trump's press representatives often don't bother saying anything at all," WaPo's Paul Farhi wrote Sunday.
He quoted Peter Baker saying "this is the least responsive White House press operation I've ever dealt with by far..." While some aides try to be helpful when they can, "I've learned not to expect answers even to basic questions."
Farhi's kicker: "What does the White House think of this? It's hard to know. The White House did not respond to a request for comment about its tendency not to respond to requests for comment."
Just imagine...
Oliver Darcy emails: Trump on Tuesday attacked retired general Stanley McChrystal as a "Hillary lover" and someone with a "big, dumb mouth." This, of course, is not the first time the president has attempted to degrade the military service of someone who has publicly criticized him. What's striking is the silence from top conservative media personalities as Trump does this. I know it's a tired mind exercise, but just imagine if Obama had attacked military generals in the way Trump has. Conservative talkers like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh would be up in arms. They'd say he has disdain for the military, point out he never served, and question his fitness to be commander in chief. But when Trump so brazenly does it? Where are they? | |
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
-- Nick Kristof's January 1 message on Twitter: "This will, I think, be a crucial year in America as the Mueller investigation concludes, House investigations proceed, and our institutions are tested as they have rarely been before. May we pass these tests and our institutions prevail in 2019!" (Twitter)
-- Kanye West apparently taped a podcast with Joe Rogan... (Twitter)
Warren's next campaign stop: Maddow's show
Elizabeth Warren's December 31 announcement video did not mention Trump by name, but it used Fox stars as stand-ins: She decried "an echo chamber of fear and hatred" while Hannity, Carlson and Ingraham appeared on screen. Plus clips of Conway, Bannon and Miller.
Later in the day, she held a presser. "Good precedent set by Warren here," NYT's Jonathan Martin wrote, by "immediately taking questions from press. Let's hope other candidates follow suit and don't hide behind prefab videos and statements."
>> Warren's first TV interview will be with Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night...
"Reliable" resolutions
On last Sunday's show, I asked WSJ editor Matt Murray, AP editor Sally Buzbee and CPJ board chair Kathleen Carroll for 2019 predictions and resolutions. | | Buzbee: "I think we should all resolve to spend less time -- or perhaps no time at all -- on horse race polls that project forward to the 2020 presidential election."
She added: "I can guarantee you that not a single one of them in retrospect will prove to be accurate or really that useful at all. I don't actually think that anyone's going to follow my prediction or my resolution... but I think that we all should."
Murray said "we should all resolve to use social media intelligently and in a limited way." More reporting in person and in the field, less yammering on Twitter!
And Carroll had two challenges, one of them for me: To "showcase some of the really great accountability reporting that connects communities." Also: "Anybody who plans to put on a future of journalism conference should scuttle that idea and instead give the money to their local news organizations."
Want to catch up on Sunday's show?
Read the transcript, listen to the podcast, or watch the video clips on CNN.com...
FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX
-- Epic Games "grossed a $3 billion profit" in 2018, "fueled by the continued success of 'Fortnite,'" per a source... (TechCrunch)
-- "A&E's Live PD is finishing 2018 as the most-viewed show of the year on OTT platforms as well as via VOD and DVR, according to a survey of smart-TV data by Inscape..." (Deadline)
-- Krystie Lee Yandoli on how Harvey Weinstein changed entertainment news: The #MeToo reckoning "also proved to be a transformational moment for the news industry devoted to covering it..." (BuzzFeed)
-- What is Kevin Spacey doing? (CNN)
-- And what is Louis C.K. doing? (CNN)
| | Netflix is about to name its new CFO
David Wells said in August that he was ready to step down... And in the last few hours of 2018, Reuters' Kenneth Li broke this news about his successor: "Netflix is expected to announce in the next few days that it has poached media finance veteran Spencer Neumann from Activision Blizzard to be its chief financial officer..."
Summing up Netflix's other news...
-- A few days after Christmas, Netflix shared some impressive data about the success of "Bird Box," saying 45 million accounts had checked it out, the "best first 7 days ever for a Netflix film..."
-- Have you watched the interactive episode of "Black Mirror" yet? I haven't, but I'm intrigued. Here's what Brian Lowry thought of it...
-- Right at midnight ET, the company announced that "Stranger Things" season three will stream on the Fourth of July. Here's Lisa Respers France's story...
Time's Up, one year on | | Chloe Melas emails: It's been one year since more than 1,000 women joined forces to launch Time's Up. Some of those women spoke to CNN to reflect on the past year and what's ahead. In our feature, you'll hear from Tracee Ellis Ross, Eva Longoria, Emma Watson, Shonda Rhimes, Amber Tamblyn and the founders of the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund...
Stelter adds: Chloe's interactive feature is fantastic... Check it out here...
"Aquaman" No. 1 at year end
"Aquaman" "held on to the No. 1 spot in North American theaters" on the final weekend of the year, Bloomberg's Rob Golum reported.
"The DC Comics-based movie collected $51.6 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters, Comscore estimated Sunday." Disney's "Mary Poppins Returns" brought in $28 million.
--> Annapurna's "Vice" "clocked in with $7.79 million to place sixth and fell short of a projection of $9 million..." | |
Brian's personal year in review
I have a couple end-of-the-year traditions... Mostly just for myself, for my own memories, to sum up the year. But I post the lists on my personal website, so here they are.
First: A list of the 401 stories I wrote for CNN.com in 2018.
Second: A list of the stories that were memorable to me.
Third: A list of standout segments from Sunday's "Reliable Sources" program.
It's like an annual self-evaluation. If you're a beat reporter or a TV host, I highly recommend this exercise! It gets me thinking about how to improve in the year ahead...
And that's a wrap on this first edition of 2019. Send me your feedback via email anytime. We'll be back tomorrow! | | | |
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