| | | | | Exec summary: Disney wins the Fox assets, Comcast seeks Sky, Sinclair suffers a huge setback, and Lin-Manuel Miranda announces his directorial debut... | | "I have never seen such a civil war within the Executive Branch," Dan Rather commented Thursday night. "President Trump is at war, not only with the truth, but many people in government."
Evidence of the war: Dan Coats' comments to Andrea Mitchell. And this detailed WashPost story about the "tensions within the administration." And Susan Glasser's New Yorker story about Trump's secrecy re: the talks with Vladimir Putin. Per Glasser, "Trump did not brief his own diplomats on the Helsinki meeting."
So... we all remain in the dark.
In Friday's NYT, GOP congressman Will Hurd has an op-ed titled "Trump Is Being Manipulated by Putin. What Should We Do?"
My question: What should newsrooms do to express the enormous stakes here? I really think "traditional" journalism norms and structures are failing us right now... | | Andrea Mitchell for the win | | On stage at the Aspen Security Forum, DNI Coats said he doesn't know what happened in the one-on-one meeting earlier this week.
All the cable newsers carried the live stream of Mitchell's excellent interview. Do you think it's a coincidence that Sarah Sanders sent out a tweet during the event about Trump inviting Putin to DC? I don't. Thankfully, someone slipped Mitchell a note about the news... And she told Coats about it... And he was clearly caught off-guard.
"Trump was deploying a familiar tactic: barreling into the next news cycle by supplying the next bit of incendiary programming," the NYT's Katie Rogers and Maggie Haberman said.
For the rest of the day, Coats' warnings about Russia's ongoing attacks competed for attention with Trump's outreach to Putin... Further illustrating the divide between the president and his own administration...
An hour later, on CNN, Jake Tapper asked a simple question that summed up the state of play. "What the hell is going on?" he asked his panel... | | | David Axelrod tweeted Thursday evening: "Convenient timing for a visit because if Putin visits in the fall, he can personally survey the progress of his efforts to disrupt our elections..." | | Thursday's CNN.com headlines | | -- The lead story right now: "Why on earth would Trump invite Putin back for more?"
-- "Reversals and clean-up deepen questions about Trump and Putin's one-on-one"
-- About Coats: "US spy chief says he doesn't know what happened in Trump-Putin meeting"
-- About Rod Rosenstein's appearance in Aspen later in the day: Russian attack on 2016 election 'one tree in a growing forest' of cyber activity"
-- And Kirstjen Nielsen's appearance: "DHS secretary dodges saying Russian interference was to help Trump" | | Reactions on the left and right | | Immigration, not Russia, was the hot topic on Fox's pro-Trump talk shows on Thursday. So was Hillary Clinton. No joke. When I looked up at 10:40pm, the banner on screen read "HILLARY CLINTON'S E-MAIL WOES."
Meantime, over on MSNBC, Dem congressman Eric Swalwell was saying this: "Putin attacked America. When your house is broken into, you upgrade your home security system. You don't invite the burglar over for dinner. All we can do now in Congress is to make sure we upgrade the security system, and that includes, right now, protecting the US against our own president and his relationship with Putin..." | | -- Ivanka Trump will be on "Fox & Friends" Friday morning...
-- Sean Spicer's book tour is underway. He appeared on both the 7 and 9am hours of "Today" on Thursday... The book is out on Tuesday, but so far he hasn't cracked the top 100 on Amazon...
-- Big new CNN profile of alleged spy Maria Butina: "The Russian accused of using sex, lies and guns to infiltrate US politics..."
-- In Friday's Page Six: "Whoopi Goldberg and Jeanine Pirro get into explosive argument backstage at 'The View...'" | | Trump calls the press the "enemy of the people" again... | | | Trump reverted to calling the press the "enemy of the people" on Thursday. The context, this time, was a tweet defending his "Summit with Russia." This stood out to me because Lenin and Stalin used the "enemy of the people" phrase to crush political dissent in Russia. | | ...And Cuomo says "it is an admission that you hate your country" | | Chris Cuomo had a strong message for Trump on Thursday night. The "enemy" talk, he said, "is ugly and it is unoriginal. Most importantly, it is an admission that you hate your country."
Cuomo continued on: "A free press is a metaphor for what makes America great. So you have now admitted that you are against what we are all about. And the real problem now is for you to convince people that you don't hate what makes America truly great."
🔌: I'll be talking more about this on CNN's "New Day" in the 8am hour on Friday... | | -- Was Jeff Glor's interview with POTUS a big success or a serious missed opportunity? That's the debate in TV newsrooms... Glor, for his part, says he feels good about it: "The fundamental questions that we wanted answered, I asked him, and got answers..." (THR)
-- A harsh assessment of Trump by MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace: "I have a 6-year-old and I don't leave him alone to play with matches or fireworks. They left this president alone with Vladimir Putin and it is akin to leaving a 6-year-old alone to play with matches and fireworks. They're going to be cleaning this up for months..."
-- This is even harsher, by The Atlantic's Megan Garber. She says Sarah Sanders has "set a new precedent: Partisanship over patriotism. Victory over truth." | | Rupert Murdoch, shadow media regulator? | | If I didn't know better, I would say Rupert Murdoch is in charge of media regulation in the United States. Why? Because everything seems to be going Rupert's way.
Hadas Gold has the story: "Three times this summer, government regulators have had to make major decisions regarding media ownership. Three times, the decision has gone the way that Murdoch and his company, 21st Century Fox, would have wanted."
As BTIG's Rich Greenfield said: "Everything seems to be falling Rupert's way."
As we all know, Murdoch speaks with President Trump all the time. And Murdoch's Fox News Channel is Trump's biggest TV booster. Gold's story notes that "there's no evidence that either of those things led to the regulators' decisions, or that the decisions coming together this way are anything but a coincidence, but Murdoch's string of good fortune has set some tongues wagging." A Fox spokesperson declined to comment. Read the rest here... | | Disney prevails in hunt for Fox | | Thursday's good news for Murdoch AND Bob Iger:
Comcast boss Brian Roberts dropped his pursuit of the 21st Century Fox assets. Disney's winning bid stands at $71 billion. Roberts issued a statement congratulating Iger... | | -- "Iger may be just days away from securing his prize," Dylan Byers says. Per his PACIFIC newsletter: On Friday, July 27, "Fox shareholders will gather at the New York Hilton in Manhattan to vote on Disney's takeover offer, which has already won approval from the Justice Department... "
-- Joe Pompeo's latest: "A new era is dawning on the media landscape -- one that pits old stalwarts against incipient behemoths, and one that has united the strangest of bedfellows..."
-- Fox TV gurus Peter Rice and Dana Walden "are slated to relocate to Disney in senior posts overseeing TV operations," Variety's Cynthia Littleton reports. Nothing has been set in stone yet... No deals or final decisions. But Littleton says "current Disney/ABC TV Group president Ben Sherwood is expected to transition to a new role at Disney, although the specifics of that role are still unclear..." | | | Comcast says it's still pursuing the British broadcaster Sky. Disney/Fox wants Sky too, but Comcast "leads the bidding for Sky," Friday's NYT story notes. And "Sky's independent board had already recommended Comcast's new terms." Is a Sky/Hulu asset swap in the offing? | | Disney's battle plan? Just look around Comic-Con | | Brian Lowry emails: If you want to understand Disney's corporate battle plan, look no further than the halls around Comic-Con, illustrating the studio's strategy of tapping into fan bases willing to ante up for marquee properties like "Star Wars" and Marvel, and using those brands to bypass the middle man. And Disney appears to have taken one more step toward that goal with Comcast dropping its bid for 21st Century Fox, which — with properties like "Avatar" and wayward Marvel titles X-Men and Fantastic Four — will only strengthen Bob Iger's already enviable arsenal.
Just to underscore the point, on Thursday Lucasfilm announced a revival of the animated series "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" only this time to play on Disney's planned direct-to-consumer service. More... | | Sinclair's takeover of Tribune is heading to an administrative judge hearing. The FCC's hearing order, published on Thursday, "called into question" whether some of Sinclair's divestments in the deal were "'sham' transactions," Hadas Gold reports. Details here...
-- NYT notes that "the merger agreement allows either side to walk away from the deal if it does not close by Aug. 8..."
-- Big Q: Will Sinclair look to buy something else now? If so, what?
-- Charlie Gasparino hears that Sinclair is out "looking for a Washington D.C. lobbyist in the aftermath of this stinging defeat..." | | | For the record, part three | | | -- Paramount TV president Amy Powell has been "fired over inappropriate comments," THR's Kim Masters and Lesley Goldberg report... They're citing sources who say "the comments included racially charged language..." (THR)
-- ESPN's Linda Cohn, the longest-tenured anchor of "SportsCenter," has signed a new deal... (USA Today)
-- Kevin Roose's scoop: The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty "has used Facebook to target ads at United States citizens, in potential violation of longstanding laws meant to protect Americans from domestic propaganda." This sounds like a genuine mistake... And an example of the challenges of ad targeting... (NYT) | | Zucker taking leave for elective heart surgery | | CNN president Jeff Zucker ended Thursday's CNN morning editorial meeting with news of his own: He will be taking a six-week leave for elective surgery to address a heart condition he has had for 10 years.
Zucker assured staffers that he is going to be just fine. EVP Michael Bass will be in charge during Zucker's absence. All of us are wishing Zucker a very speedy recovery... | | Another day with no W.H. briefing | | | There was a press briefing on Wednesday... But no briefing on Thursday, and there's not one scheduled for Friday either. For context, there have only been two briefings this month... and Friday is July 20... | | | Brian Lowry emails: Bret Stephens' latest NYT column calls on Trump foreign-policy officials to resign, but it also includes a rather tart assessment of the president's media enablers, and specifically Tucker Carlson, referring to them as "simpering mouthpieces..." | | | What'd you think of TIME's latest cover? At first I thought it was just of Putin... Then I realized it was an eerie blend of Putin and Trump. The artist behind the facial composite said she wants readers to "stop and think" about their similarities... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Julia Waldow:
-- Mark Zuckerberg secretly called Trump after the election to congratulate him on the win... Plus, internal FB docs show the company used lessons from the campaign to fine-tune its marketing methods. Ultimately, the docs "reveal the degree to which the company views Trump not just as a potential regulator or a source of misinformation, but also, above all, a valued customer..." (BuzzFeed News)
-- Facebook and Instagram will lock the accounts of any suspected underage user they encounter on the platforms... The decision could affect ad dollars, user counts, and kids' relationships with the brands... (TechCrunch)
-- ICYMI: Senators in Hawaii and South Dakota are introducing a bill that considers broadcasting emergency alerts on services like Netflix and Spotify... (TechCrunch) | | PROGRAMMING NOTE! My next CNN prime time documentary premieres Friday night.
Last time we looked at late night TV... This time, we're examining how POTUS is changing prime time TV. We're calling it "The Trump Show: TV's New Reality." We spoke with top producers... from "The Handmaid's Tale" to "Homeland..." Plus TV critics like James Poniewozik, Melanie McFarland and Bill Carter... for a look at how Hollywood is dramatizing and satirizing this moment in history. The doc will premiere Friday at 10pm ET on CNN...
>> And here's my companion web story... | | "Washington Week" makeover | | | "Washington Week" will debut a new set, new logo and new music this Friday... Host Robert Costa tells me it's the 50-year-old reporters' roundtable show's first new set in two decades... Margaret Brennan, Dan Balz, Yamiche Alcindor, and Jonathan Swan will join him on this week's program... | | | For the record, part five | | | By Daniella Emanuel:
-- What a way to announce a media deal! Chance The Rapper announced through his new single "I Might Need Security" that he has bought Chicagoist... (NYT)
-- Brian Steinberg has a look at how the broadcast news networks are turning to streaming services in an effort to "chase their future viewers -- and the ad dollars that follow them..." (Variety)
-- AMC Theatres and FB are teaming up for a service that allows customers to purchase their movie tickets on the social network... (Deadline) | | Lin-Manuel's directorial debut | | | Megan Thomas emails: Lin-Manuel Miranda announced on Thursady that he'll be making his directorial film debut with "Tic Tic Boom!" for Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment. The movie is an adaptation of the autobiographical musical by the late Jonathan Larson, who wrote "Rent" and tragically died the night before the show's first preview performance... | | Lowry reviews the "Mamma Mia" sequel | | | Brian Lowry emails: "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again" isn't necessarily high art, but it's infectious and fun — a decade-later sequel to the ABBA musical that almost feels like a tonic for all the gloomy headlines and bad news, anchored by a sensational performance from Lily James as the young version of Meryl Streep's character... | | Late-night ratings race update | | Megan Thomas emails: "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" enjoyed its most-watched second quarter, according to Nielsen live plus 7-day ratings for April through June. CBS shared the #'s on Thursday. "During the second quarter of 2018, 'The Late Show' averaged 3.63 million viewers, beating its closest competitor by +51% and +1.2 million viewers, which marked its largest margin of victory ever in the second quarter," the network said...
"The Tonight Show" averaged 2.41 million viewers and "Jimmy Kimmel Live" averaged 2.10 million... | | | Thanks for reading! Email your likes, dislikes, thoughts straight to me: brian.stelter@turner.com | | | | | | |
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