World champions
The USWNT arrived at Newark airport on Monday afternoon for the first of several days of media appearances. The NBC, ABC and CBS nightly newscasts all included World Cup stories near the top of the rundown.
Some of the players spoke with reporters, including CNN's Erica Hill, after they arrived stateside. On Tuesday morning the team will be live in Times Square on "GMA." Then comes Wednesday morning's ticker tape parade in NYC and a cross-country flight so that the players can attend The ESPYs in L.A. on Wednesday night. The awards telecast will be live on ABC...
SI's cover
Getty's Richard Heathcote has the cover photo on this "World Class" World Cup edition of Sports Illustrated: | | The ratings
An 11 a.m. ET kickoff on Sunday seemed likely to tamp down total viewership in the US. But the ratings were still quite strong despite the midday time slot. Last year's men's World Cup final between France and Croatia averaged 11.4 million viewers on Fox. The women's match averaged 14 million on Fox and another 1.6 million viewers in Spanish on Telemundo.
That's enough to make it the highest-rated soccer match in the U.S. in four years. In 2015, the Women's World Cup final was played in the evening, giving it a boost, and a massive 25 million viewer #. This time around, viewership during the match peaked at 19.6 million viewers. Here's my full story...
--> More context via the LAT's Stephen Battaglio: "Sunday's World Cup final audience of 15.6 million viewers was also larger than four of the six 2019 NBA Finals contests between the Toronto Raptors and Golden State Warriors..."
Streaming reality check
Sunday's face-off is also a reminder that viewers will choose old-fashioned big-screen TV over streaming whenever possible. According to Fox, the average minute audience (the closest thing comparable to Nielsen #'s) for its web streams was 289,000. So about 14 million people watched via TV and almost 300,000 watched via streaming...
Watters' fictional world
While Fox Sports celebrated the terrific ratings, Fox News commentator Jesse Watters claimed the players were "not helping their case" for equal pay by acting in "unpatriotic ways" and trashing Trump. He said he talked to "many many people" over the weekend who said they were choosing not to watch "because I didn't like what they said." If I had to choose between Watters' anecdotes and Fox Sports' statistics, I'd take the stats any day...
--> BTW, still no word about whether Trump will invite the team to the White House... On Monday's "Cuomo Prime Time," Chris Cuomo urged him to "showcase them..."
"How the World Cup Team Beat Trump"
That's the title on Charlie Warzel's latest opinion piece for the NYT. He says the team "provided a master class in how to wield what is, for many of us, our greatest weapon: our attention." Megan Rapinoe and her teammates turned out to be "an excellent foil to a president with an oxygen-sucking gift for commandeering attention..."
TUESDAY PLANNER
Allen & Company's annual Sun Valley conference for media and tech bigwigs is getting underway...
Felix Sater, who overslept the last time he was scheduled to testify, is slated to appear before the House Intelligence Committee (but behind closed doors) in the morning...
"Aziz Ansari Right Now" is streaming on Netflix...
CBS is launching "Love Island..."
Tuesday's new books include Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino's "Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court," which is already No. 2 on Amazon... And "Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short" by William D. Cohan...
Ed Henry's gift of life
Prayers for Fox's Ed Henry and his sister Colleen -- she has been battling degenerative liver disease for the last few years -- and on Tuesday he will donate part of his liver to her. "I am determined to do whatever I can to give my sister the greatest gift of all, which quite simply is life," he wrote in this column on Sunday. He also shared the news about his impending medical leave on "Fox & Friends."
This is truly inspiring... Read all of what Henry wrote here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- "Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers has agreed to pay Heather Mills and her sister a 'substantial' settlement over claims stemming from a decade-old phone hacking scandal," Hadas Gold reports... (CNN)
-- Elizabeth Williamson's latest: "The United States Agency for Global Media, the government's foreign broadcast service, already struggling to clean house after a series of scandals last year at flagship operations like Voice of America and TV Martí, is now being rocked by two new cases that have raised further questions about its journalistic and financial management..." (NYT)
| | What prompts Trump's fury against Fox
The AP's David Bauder and Jonathan Lemire are out with a new story about the president's anti-Fox tweets. Key graf: Trump "has angrily told confidants he is confused about why Fox News sometimes 'goes negative' in its coverage of his administration when it features an unflattering portrait of his White House, the advisers said..."
Breitbart's White House correspondent joins W.H.
Oliver Darcy emails: Breitbart's White House correspondent joined the White House on Monday, sources told Kaitlan Collins and me. After our story published, a spokesperson for the White House confirmed the hire. The correspondent, Michelle Moons, will work in the office of Domestic Policy.
Breitbart employees were notified that Moons had jumped from the far-right website to the White House on Monday morning. Jon Kahn, Breitbart's chief operating officer, called Moons an "integral part" of the DC team, and said the website was "very proud of her." He told employees not to comment on the hire publicly, but suggested they "reach out to her directly to offer congratulations."
Fake quote, real problem
Trump shared "a fake quote from former Republican President Ronald Reagan on Twitter on Monday." Daniel Dale got to the bottom of it: "Trump passed along a tweet from an obscure account that called itself 'The Reagan Battalion,' which appeared to be impersonating a well-known conservative account of the same name. The copycat account had fewer than 300 followers at the time Trump promoted it."
Here's the thing: "The fake Reagan quote has been debunked by fact-checkers since 2016, when it began spreading in pro-Trump circles on Facebook," Dale notes. Yet the president still went out of his way to spread the lie...
Facebook confirms it has not been invited to W.H. social media summit
Oliver Darcy emails: I reported on Sunday morning that the White House had not extended invitations to Facebook and Twitter to attend its social media summit on Thursday. On Monday, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the company had not been invited to the event.
Of course, the sources I spoke with do not expect the summit to include a serious discussion of issues facing large technology companies. Instead, they expect it to amount largely to a right-wing grievance session. The lack of invitations to major social media companies seems to, at the very least, hint at that...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Norah O'Donnell taped an interview with Jeff Bezos and Caroline Kennedy at the John F. Kennedy library in Boston, marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission... The sit-down will air next Monday, on O'Donnell's first night in the "CBS Evening News" chair... (Globe)
-- O'Donnell and "CBS This Morning" co-host Tony Dokoupil will helm their respective programs from the Kennedy Space Center next Tuesday, the anniversary of the liftoff... (CBS)
-- Eric Swalwell is out of the Democratic race... Tom Steyer is getting in... And CNN's plans for the July 30 and 31 debates are out... (CNN)
-- New parts of Chris Cuomo's exclusive interview with Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden aired on Monday night... (CNN)
Epstein staying behind bars
Jeffrey Epstein will remain in detention at least until next week, following preliminary court proceedings on Monday. Law enforcement officials gave credit to the Miami Herald and reporter Julie K. Brown's work while announcing the indictment at a presser. "We were assisted" by "some excellent investigative journalism," Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said. William Sweeney, the assistant director-in-charge of the FBI's New York office, added, "We work with facts. When the facts presented themselves, as Mr. Berman hinted at, through investigative journalists' work, we moved on it."
While they didn't cite Brown or the newspaper by name, Berman said in response to a question about the Herald, "we are certainly aware of that reporting." Brown was in the room for the press conference...
Revisiting this 2003 Vanity Fair profile...
Per Politico's Michael Calderone: "Journalist Vicky Ward tweeted on Monday that a 2003 Vanity Fair profile she wrote about Epstein was 'far from the whole story,' claiming that the publication's editor at the time, Graydon Carter, cut out first-person accounts of Epstein's treatment of women from a mother and her two daughters... Carter said in a statement on Monday that editors at the magazine viewed Ward's reporting as less bulletproof than her tweets indicated. 'In the end, we didn't have confidence in Ward's reporting,' said Carter, who left Vanity Fair in 2017. 'We were not in the habit of running away from a fight. But she simply didn't have the goods.'"
Maria Ressa's defense team
CNN's Richard Roth and Euan McKirdy report: "International human rights lawyers Amal Clooney and Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC will lead a legal team representing Maria Ressa, the award-winning Philippines journalist who has been repeatedly arrested this year on charges that critics say are designed to silence her..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
By Oliver Darcy:
-- "As the World Heats Up, the Climate for News Is Changing, Too:" News organizations are dedicating more resources to covering climate change, Marc Tracy observes. But "even among journalists who want to convey that climate change is a crisis, there is not unanimity about how to play it..." (NYT)
-- ProPublica is hiring a reporter to cover accountability issues in Youngstown, Ohio, now that The Vindicator is closing up shop... (ProPublica)
-- Media Matters researcher Natalie Martinez examined the random social media comments that Fox News airs during morning show segments… (Media Matters)
"Loudest Voice" ratings update
Last week there was a dust-up about the Nielsen #'s for the premiere of "The Loudest Voice" on Showtime -- with numerous news outlets writing stories about the weak ratings and suggesting that there was little interest in the miniseries about Roger Ailes and Fox News. Showtime said otherwise -- and predicted that the show would top a million viewers through on-demand viewing. Now the network is out with new #'s to back it up: "The premiere of 'The Loudest Voice' has been seen so far by almost 1.6 million viewers across platforms," Showtime PR said on Monday... This total counts the premiere, the TV replays, DVRing, VOD, and streaming...
Lowry reviews "I Love You, Now Die"
Brian Lowry emails: HBO is diving into two-part true-crime documentaries this month, which feels like a bit of a dumbing-down of its brand. An exception would be the first of those offerings, "I Love You, Now Die," director Erin Lee Carr's look at the "texting suicide" case of Michelle Carter -- and specifically, whether the current justice system is fully prepared to deal with the complicated legal and ethical issues associated with social media. In that respect, it's a case with significant implications. And the film raises all the right questions.
On Monday, just as Carr was about to appear on "CNN Newsroom" with Brooke Baldwin to talk about the documentary, Carter's attorneys petitioned the Supreme Court to hear her case -- perhaps well-timed to capitalize on publicity associated with the HBO telecast on Tuesday and Wednesday night...
FIRST LOOK
Variety's next cover
This week's Variety cover story by Cynthia Littleton and Brent Lang is titled "IT'S WAR" -- an in-depth look at the battle between the WGA and Hollywood's largest talent agencies... With Ari Emanuel on the cover... The story will be up on Variety.com on Tuesday morning... | |
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Jessica Toonkel's look at Sun Valley deal action: "Plenty of Sellers but Few Buyers..." (The Information)
-- Mark Bergen and Kurt Wagner's latest raises lots of Q's: "How Facebook Fought Fake News About Facebook..." (Bloomberg)
-- Thrillist has hired Meghan Kirsch, "most recently Vice Media's SVP of marketing and creative, as chief content officer..." (Variety)
-- "'Red Notice' is setting up shop at Netflix. The big budget international heist feature starring Dwayne Johnson and Gal Gadot has moved from Universal to the streaming service..." (THR)
-- "Fox Entertainment's content development accelerator SideCar, launched in February and headed by Gail Berman, has set its executive team..." (Deadline)
| | Netflix touts "Stranger Things 3" record
Netflix tweeted this on Monday evening: "'Stranger Things 3' is breaking Netflix records! 40.7 million household accounts have been watching the show since its July 4 global launch — more than any other film or series in its first four days. And 18.2 million have already finished the entire season."
Usual caveat applies: There's no third party source for this data...
Marvel should slow its post-'Endgame' roll
Brian Lowry emails: As counter-intuitive as it might seem after the big "Spider-Man: Far From Home" opening, Marvel should embrace the strategy that Disney CEO Bob Iger articulated after "Solo: A Star Wars Story" yielded disappointing results -- namely, a bit of a slowdown. Marvel continues riding high, but the company is still absorbing the character losses from "Avengers: Endgame;" pivoting to service the streaming service Disney+; and working to incorporate Fantastic Four and X-Men, two signature properties that had belonged to Fox, into its cinematic universe. That's a lot to process, and one reason the studio should proceed cautiously in the next phase of its admittedly thus far can't-miss box-office streak...
Who wants to host an awards show?
Megan Thomas emails: Here's a great story from VF's Laura Bradley about how no one wants to host award shows anymore.
Bradley quotes a source who says: "If the fans love it, you've probably alienated and pissed off the producers and the network, potentially advertisers. And if the network is super happy, you're probably getting crushed on Twitter for being boring. So then what?"
Her bottom line: "Why do something as involved as emceeing an awards ceremony when you can just as easily cash in on, say, a Starbucks commercial?"
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
By Lisa Respers France:
-- Cameron Boyce's last interview paid tribute to his African-American heritage. The Disney star died this past weekend at the age of 20.
-- Shawn Mendes shrugged off a fan question as to whether he and his "Senorita" song duet partner Camila Cabello are dating...
-- Mariah Carey put a diva twist on the #BottleCapChallenge...
-- Terry Crews wants to play King Triton in "The Little Mermaid" remake...
-- Okay "Lion King" cast now let's get in formation. Disney released an almost full cast photo on Monday...
ICYMI...
Catch up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources"
Read the transcript... Hear the podcast edition via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your preferred app... And/or watch the video clips on CNN.com...
| | | Thank you for reading! Email me feedback anytime. See you tomorrow... | | | |
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