| | | | | Exec summary: President Trump is in a chatty mood... Weinstein Co. is in sale talks... There's a board meeting on Tuesday morning... Scroll down for details... | | Who's in charge at Amazon Studios? | | | Amazon Studios chief Roy Price remains on a "leave of absence," four days after being suspended by the company after a producer publicly accused him of sexual harassment in this interview with Kim Masters. I heard somebody on Fox on Monday say he's been "fired." Amazon hasn't made any announcement yet, so we don't know that's true, or if it ever will be, but it's clearly a possibility. The company declined to comment Monday night... and in CEO circles Price is assumed to be a goner... Albert Cheng is the division's interim head... | | Price's fiancée calls off wedding | | | It's worth noting that Harvey Weinstein's power had been diminishing in recent years, but Price was on the way up. Now he's in a sort of purgatory. Amazon has cancelled this week's event promoting its new shows in London. And Page Six's Emily Smith reported that Price's fiancée, the playwright Lila Feinberg, has called off their wedding. "Feinberg and Price were to tie the knot on Nov. 12 in a lavish ceremony at The Carlyle on Madison Avenue," Smith wrote. Feinberg's manager confirmed the news to Variety... | | Potential replacements for Price | | | On Friday Deadline's Nellie Andreeva reported on the Hollywood consensus that the replacement for him would likely be a woman. Possible candidates: Paramount TV president Amy Powell, former HBO Entertainment president Sue Naegle, A+E Networks CEO Nancy Dubuc, Fox chair Dana Walden... But she reported that "the process is still in nascent stages..." | | Reed Hastings donned a "Stranger Things" holiday sweater (available at Target) on Monday's Q3 earnings video call Monday afternoon. With Netflix stock at an all-time high, he can wear whatever he wants.
Earnings news: Subscriber growth was strong again in Q3. Original content is now about 25% of the company's programming budget. "The long-term trends are clear," the shareholder letter said. "Our future largely lies in exclusive original content." Thus, another increase in spending: "We'll spend $7-8 billion on content (on a P&L basis) in 2018." This year it's $6 billion... we knew Netflix would get up to $7 billion next year... but the talk of $8 billion is new...
-- Alex Weprin pointed out on Twitter that ESPN is said to spend $7.3 billion on content, "so 2018 may be year Netflix spends more on content than any other company..." | | Netflix is gaining about 56,000 subscribers per day | | -- Per Seth Fiegerman's story on CNNMoney, Ted Sarandos said the company plans to release "about 80" films next year. 80!
-- More from Seth: "The company added more than 5 million new members in the third quarter, with the vast majority of them coming from international markets. It now has 109 million subscribers, up from 86 million in the same quarter a year ago..." | | | -- Rich Greenfield broke it down this way: Netflix is adding ">12,000 subs/day in the U.S." and ">56,000 subs/day globally..." | | Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia killed in car blast | | | Terrible and terrifying news. Hadas Gold emails: The Maltese journalist who led the coverage of the Panama Papers in her country, exposing corruption within the Malta political scene, was killed after a powerful blast blew up her car on Monday. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a well-known reporter throughout Europe and the world, and her popular blog, "Running Commentary," was one of the most influential within Malta. Politico had just named her one of 28 individuals who would have a major impact on Europe in 2017. According to the Guardian, Galizia reported she had recently received death threats. Full story by CNN's James Masters here... | | Trump "mixed facts and mirage" at surprise presser | | | Surprise! An impromptu presidential presser on Monday. President Trump bypassed his comms staff, first at a Cabinet meeting and then at a Rose Garden gathering. "He mixed facts and mirage, praise and perfidy in two head-spinning, sometimes contradictory performances designed to convince supporters and detractors alike that everything's terrific, moving ahead of schedule and getting even better," Politico's Josh Dawsey wrote. There was a LOT to fact-check, particularly around his comments about dead soldiers... CNN's Kevin Liptak broke it down here... | | New word for POTUS: "Chatty" | | "The press-savvy president has been particularly chatty with reporters lately," The AP's Catherine Lucey and Ken Thomas wrote afterward. This provoked some responses:
-- "Focusing on the amount of access not the accuracy of Trump's answers is exactly what so many reporters get wrong," former Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer tweeted...
-- "More 'Access' is not an end in itself. More access to deceit and disinformation unaffected by press coverage is no gain," media critic Jay Rosen wrote... | | Chatty... but not on talk radio | | | Oliver Darcy emails: If there ever was a media platform built for Trump -- other than Twitter -- it would be conservative talk radio. Its high-profile hosts are supportive of Trump, their shows reach millions, and their listeners are some of Trump's most loyal supporters. But Trump has mysteriously ignored the medium as president. Why? It's not entirely clear, but I spoke with a number of people who shared different some interesting theories... | | | Darcy adds: As I was preparing this story for publication last week, I asked the White House if the president planned on appearing on talk radio in the future. Today, before this story went up, a White House official told me that Trump has carved time out of his schedule tomorrow to appear on half-a-dozen radio shows. Coincidence? 🤔 | | SNEAK PEEK: Wired's next cover story | | | Wired's November cover story is a 12,000-word feature, its longest in recent memory, double the length of a usual feature... "Love in the Time of Robots" is Alex Mar's profile of "father of humanoids" Hiroshi Ishiguro... It'll be online Tuesday morning... | | -- "A '60 Minutes' and Washington Post report Sunday night about the opioid epidemic in the U.S. reverberated from the White House to Capitol Hill..." Get caught up here... (CBS)
-- Univision is blacked out in FiOS homes... The network says "Verizon pulled Univision's signal from both its FiOS and mobile platforms..." (Univision)
-- In other negotiating news, Viacom and Charter "have agreed to a 'short-term' extension" of their carriage talks, averting a blackout for now... (Deadline) | | Weinstein Co. board will meet on Tuesday | | | The meeting will be a teleconference... sometime in the morning... Harvey Weinstein may phone in... | | Tom Barrack buying Weinstein Co? | | | Last week Weinstein Co. staffers told me they felt like they were aboard the Titanic. Now: a life raft? Tom Barrack's private equity firm Colony Capital is providing short-term funding... and the firm is negotiating "for a potential sale of all or a significant portion of the company's assets." Here's my full story... | | | -- Intrigue: If Barrack, a longtime Trump friend, buys up the assets, what happens to Michael Moore's anti-Trump documentary "Fahrenheit 11/9?" The film was going to be distributed by Weinstein Co. next year... | | | -- For the record: In response to a Q on Monday, Reed Hastings said "it'd be extremely unlikely for us to be a bidder for" Weinstein Co... | | Monday's other developments | | -- NYT's Tuesday Page One story, complete with a shot from the Sunset Tower: "Harvey Weinstein's Fall Opens the Floodgates in Hollywood..."
-- NYPD issued this alert: "There have been published reports indicating that there may be additional victims of sex offenses by Harvey Weinstein in New York City. The Detective Bureau has been following up on this information and conducting a review to determine if any official complaints have been received. In addition, the NYPD encourages anyone with information about any sex offenses to contact the CrimeStoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS."
-- Courtney Love warned women about Harvey Weinstein back in 2005. She claims it got her blacklisted and "banned" from CAA, Lisa Respers France reports...
-- More from Lisa: On Monday Twitter confirmed that #MeToo had been tweeted more than half a million times. The rally cry against sexual harassment and assault also caught fire on Facebook... | | Producer's Guild boots Weinstein* | | | It was a unanimous vote. *But he has a chance to appeal. Brian Lowry has the full story here... | | Brian Lowry emails: Hollywood groups seem to be trying to get ahead of the Weinstein story by moving beyond re-litigating their collective history and focusing on efforts to eradicate the behavior going forward — trying to conjure a positive outcome from all the ugliness. Hence the Producers Guild of America's announcement of a task force designed to address "researching and proposing substantive and effective solutions" in the entertainment industry...
-- Next: The TV Academy board will meet on Thursday... | | | Variety EIC Claudia Eller says the "Game Over" wording "refers not only to Weinstein, but to Hollywood's history of covering up..." | | | Brian Lowry emails: The late-night comics who hesitated before wading in on the Weinstein story -- and were criticized for it, albeit with a degree of political calculation in some quarters -- might have received a measure of redemption in the last few days, when James Corden's remarks at a charity gala and Al Michaels' attempt at a joke during "Sunday Night Football" both fell notably flat. Michaels apologized on the broadcast and NBC backed him up on Monday... | | Continued scrutiny of NBC... | | Tucker Carlson hit NBC News hard again on Monday night for passing on the Weinstein story. "Instead of reporting it, they did their best to keep that information hidden from public view," Carlson said.
In this must-read THR column, Gavin Polone also called out the network, among many other "accomplices." Ironically, he wrote, "the network that brought us To Catch a Predator let this predator go." He asked if Noah Oppenheim spoke with Weinstein while Ronan Farrow was conducting this year's investigation.
--> NBC responded to the column with this new statement: "As Oppenheim said last week in comments that were released publicly, the notion that we would try to cover for a powerful person is deeply offensive to all of us. And, as has been previously stated on the record, Oppenheim has never had any relationship with Weinstein, business or personal." | | Speaking of the peacock network... | | NBC found the O'Donnell tape leaker | | | Page Six's scoop is right on: "NBC has tracked down and fired the staffer who leaked the infamous -- and wildly entertaining -- tape of Lawrence O'Donnell's meltdown during which he swore at his crew because of 'insanity in my earpiece...' The leaker was identified, confronted and fired on Sept. 26. It turned out to be a 'Today' show editor who said he did it because he thought it was funny..." | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Mathew Ingram is joining CJR to cover Facebook, Twitter and all things digital. His first piece is about Trump's tweeting habit, and how newsrooms react... (CJR)
-- Jane Mayer's profile of Mike Pence was the talk of Media Twitter on Monday... (The New Yorker)
-- Agree/disagree? There is plenty of reliable fact-checking out there, but finding it can be tough. "Poor promotion and a lack of consistent labels and tags" by media orgs are to blame, this article says... (Poynter) | | More and more pressure on FCC chair | | On Sunday's "Reliable Sources" I spoke with FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel about Trump's troubling tweets threatening the licenses of TV stations and the lack of comment about it from the FCC's PCC chairman Ajit Pai. "I can't really speak to what he is thinking," Rosenworcel said, "but I do think that history won't be kind to silence." On Monday another Democrat weighed in -- Senator Richard Blumenthal -- he wrote to Pai, said "you have a duty to condemn this attack," and asked for a response by Nov. 1...
-- Related: The National Press Club also spoke out on Monday...
-- Is this really a "bind?" Politico headline: "FCC chairman's bind: Defend Trump or free speech" | | Tuesday: Gretchen Carlson's book launch | | | Gretchen Carlson's "Be Fierce" hits bookshelves on Tuesday... Her first CNN TV interview for the book will be with Jake Tapper on "The Lead..." She'll also be on "CNN Tonight" with Don Lemon... | | | For the record, part three | | | -- "The most dangerous place to be a journalist in America is at a protest," Peter Sterne and Jonathan Peters write... (CJR)
-- Walt Mossberg is writing a book about the "personal tech revolution..." (Recode)
-- What a quote about W.H. aides: "They have an on-the-record 'Dear Leader' culture, and an on-background 'This-guy-is-a-joke' culture...'" (WashPost) | | Clinton injures foot on book tour | | | Hadas Gold emails: Hillary Clinton had to cancel and reschedule some media interviews in the United Kingdom on Monday after tripping and hurting her ankle while across the pond for her book tour. The injury caused lots of disappointed Tweets and Snapchats from British hosts, though Clinton did make up at least one interview, "The Graham Norton Show," which she showed up to with a cast on her foot. Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill tweeted a photo from the set adding "HRC on The Graham Norton Show, joking about how she caught her heel on some steps & twisted her ankle earlier today. Back to the book tour!" | | | For the record, part four | | | By Megan Thomas:
-- Hollywood could use a hero... and Monday it had one in the form of Chadwick Boseman and a new trailer for Marvel's "Black Panther..."
-- This ought to be good: Wyatt Cenac will headline a new comedic docuseries for HBO, executive-produced by John Oliver, Ezra Edelman, and "Daily Show" alum Hallie Haglund. EW has more... | | Frank's talk with Jimmy Kimmel | | Jimmy Kimmel, who's broadcasting from the Brooklyn Academy of Music this week, sat down with me on Sunday, and we talked about Trump, Weinstein, and the late night landscape. Asked whether he feels an obligation to be a moral voice in late night:
"No, I don't feel that there's a moral obligation… I approach it the way I approached my radio show when I was in my many years of radio. I just try to do whatever feels right that night..." | | How AMC is pitching the "Dead" to advertisers | | | Brian Lowry emails: "The Walking Dead" returns this Sunday, which AMC heralded with a full-page New York Times ad promoting its audience as being not just bigger than network hits like "This is Us" and "Empire," but also "the most passionate, most engaged and most ready to purchase..." | | Megan Thomas emails with a recommended read: Patton Oswalt spoke with Vulture prior to the Tuesday debut of his new Netflix stand-up special, "Annihilation." Oswalt talks about grief, surviving and returning to the stage after the sudden loss of his wife, which he addresses at length in the set.
"I was really terrified the whole time. There was no way to describe it. I didn't know if it would work or if I could do it. What's that phrase? 'You don't get the courage to do something until after you do it?' That was exactly what this was for me." | | Listen/watch/read Sunday's "Reliable Sources" here | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... I 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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