Forward

Exec summary: Scroll down for updates from the CNN NYC newsroom, Snapchat's earnings call, the Knight-Bagehot gala, and much more...

The Megyn Kelly era at NBC is over

Who ever thought Megyn Kelly's career at NBC would end like this?

I mean, yes, many observers thought she made a mistake by joining NBC in the first place. Many also thought NBC made a mistake by taking a $69 million risk on her. I hate saying this, but in some ways her 9 a.m. show was destined to fail. Still — all of that said — who thought she'd leave the network without even saying goodbye on the air? Because that's how this breakup is shaping up...

Here's the latest:

-- Kelly and NBC News execs are negotiating the terms of her departure from the news division.

-- Contrary to some news reports, her exit is not official yet. But it will be soon. It's a foregone conclusion among all the players involved, multiple sources told me.

-- The blackface controversy sealed Kelly's fate, per sources, but her show was already vulnerable to cancellation.

-- NBC ran a pre-taped episode of her show on Thursday. That's the plan for Friday too.

-- What's the plan for the 9 a.m. hour next week? I don't think anyone knows yet.

-- Kelly's newly hired attorney Bryan Freedman was reportedly flying from L.A. to NYC to meet with NBC execs on Friday. But I'm told that he is no longer making the trip.

-- NBC is declining to comment on her fate. And Kelly is staying silent.

-- A resolution could be announced on Friday, or it could take several more days.

-- 🔌: I'll be on CNN's "New Day" with analysis in the 7 a.m. hour on Friday.

"Prepare for a few days off"

NYT's John Koblin and Michael M. Grynbaum report: With another repeat episode "scheduled for Friday, Noah Oppenheim, the president of NBC News, and Jackie Levin, the show's executive producer, told staff members on Thursday to prepare for a few days off. Mr. Oppenheim and Ms. Levin also informed them that they would be moved into new jobs at the network if the program was canceled, according to two people familiar with the meeting..."

Lowry's analysis

Brian Lowry emails: There are a few mischaracterizations circulating in regard to the Kelly story, beginning with the one that she might lose her morning show — and even leave NBC — because of the blackface comment. That's obviously a big source of friction, but it clouds the broader issue, which is that Kelly was miscast virtually from the get-go, and that there was ample skepticism from the beginning about her ability to translate her Fox News profile and skill set into something that would work on NBC.

A good example of the naysaying can be found in Caitlin Flanagan's March 2017 piece in The Atlantic, 'Can Megyn Kelly Escape Her Past?,' in which she wrote, 'You can't become a Katie Couric or a Diane Sawyer or a Barbara Walters at Fox, so Megyn Kelly is off to the big time, which will crush her. She's a strong, strong woman — but she won't be one at NBC. She'll be like everyone else."

So now has Flanagan's question been answered?

Back to Fox? Not so fast

Just now a cable news vet emailed me and said "she'll be back on Fox in two years I predict. Too damaged now, but not forever." But others think there is no way Fox would hire her. "Still burned by their breakup, Fox doesn't appear to want to take her back," VF's Gabriel Sherman wrote.

Thursday's guessing game prompted Fox News to respond with a short statement on Thursday: "We are extremely happy with our entire lineup."

The Pro-Kelly argument

Kelly is being criticized from all directions. But she's getting support from people who feel like NBC management failed her time and time again. Oppenheim and NBC News chair Andy Lack are under renewed scrutiny as a result of this shakeup.

Important point in Lisa de Moraes and Dominic Patten's latest for Deadline: Kelly recently "seemed to be setting up a storyline that she might be on the outs at NBC News because of her coverage of the #MeToo movement, telling Us magazine, sphinx-like, 'I know too much that others don't know' about Matt Lauer's continued employment and then sudden ouster from NBC News, when asked whether Lauer might make a comeback. Today, in what had all the earmarks of a desperate effort to distract from her blackface remarks and cast her ouster from the Today show as another #MeToo moment in NBC News' history, Kelly's lawyer reportedly demanded that Ronan Farrow witness Friday's scheduled meeting between Kelly's camp and NBC brass to talk about her future."

"Management has to take some responsibility"

That's what CNN's Don Lemon said Thursday evening. Kelly "made some mistakes and now she's suffering the consequences of those mistakes," he said. "But I also think that it is partially the fault of the people who hired her... They knew exactly what they were getting when they hired Megyn Kelly..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- Alexandra Alper, currently a senior correspondent in Rio for Reuters, is joining the company's W.H. reporting team...

-- Sarah Frier reports: "Condé Nast is shutting down its Wired, GQ and Vogue channels on Snapchat, cutting some employees who worked on them. (They've still got Self and Teen Vogue channels on Snapchat)..."

-- Ryan Pauley is Vox's new chief revenue officer...

-- Dan Abrams is adding a weekday show on SiriusXM to his plate... He'll be on after Chris Cuomo's radio show...

THE MAIL BOMBS

Domestic terrorism

Law enforcement officials are classifying this week's apparent mail bombs as domestic terrorism, CNN's Kara Scannell and Evan Perez report.

In news coverage, we need to keep zooming out to show the audience the big story here -- a serial bomber or bombers trying to stoke fear and terror by targeting former presidents and other leaders.

Thursday began with a predawn discovery at Robert De Niro's office in Tribeca. The day ended with a scare at Time Warner Center. Parts of the building (like the mall, but not CNN's NYC offices) were evacuated after two suspicious packages were found. "The NYPD's bomb squad declared the scene to be all clear just after 8:30 p.m.," per Scannell and Perez's story. "Two small boxes had been left unattended and the packages didn't match the description" of the apparent bombs...

>> The latest from CNN's team of reporters: "Missing postmarks add to mystery of bombs sent through the mail"

What it's like at CNN NYC

Most of the TV news crews have left the streets surrounding CNN's New York offices. On Thursday, work was mostly back to normal, though employees recounted their evacuation experiences and talked about what they'd do differently next time. (Bring a coat! Bring a charger!)

CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker held an informal town hall for New York employees, to share security updates and answer questions. When he thanked the company's security team, there was a long round of applause. "Thank you for an incredible job," he said to the security personnel.

Show of defiance in Tribeca

Chloe Melas emails: After the suspicious package was removed from Tribeca Enterprises, De Niro's business partner, Jane Rosenthal, told me, "This is not what free speech should look like." A few hours later she gathered the company's staff for a photo. De Niro wasn't there, but the staff gathered around a giant photo of him from a "Little Fockers" movie poster. Rosenthal captioned the pic: "we are safe! We are #TribecaStrong! Vote! #whydoyouvote."

Let's get real

I'm borrowing Margaret Sullivan's words for that headline. "Let's get real," she wrote on Thursday. "Everyone targeted by the pipe bombs had been the subject of endless hours of Fox News commentary. The list of targets read like Sean Hannity's pre-broadcast crib notes: Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama and former CIA chief John Brennan -- and, as the representative of evil mainstream media -- CNN. As usual, Trump himself projected blame everywhere but where it belongs."

RELATED: The targets of the bombs have "all been targeted by President Donald Trump and made into bogeymen for the far-right, often on Fox News by opinion anchors like Sean Hannity," John Avlon wrote. He brought the receipts for this column...

POTUS or Fox News host?

When Trump posted some fresh anti-media tweets on Thursday morning, I reacted by saying on CNN, "Where's the president?" Because those tweets weren't the words of a president, they were the words of a ranting and raving Fox News host...

-- Maggie Haberman summed it up this way: "Trump gave a statement in East Room sounding a theme of unity, felt he didn't [get] credit he deserved for that, resumed faulting media..."

-- Obviously Trump and Sarah Sanders are portraying themselves as the victims to change the subject from the serious concerns about their own rhetoric...

Notes and quotes

-- Chris Cuomo on Thursday night: "If the President can't rise above his worst traits even now, the question that... confronts us is 'Are we doomed to politics that are an ever-accelerating rate to the bottom?''

-- Carl Bernstein responding to Sanders' newest complaints about negative news coverage: The press is report on his lying. That is why the coverage appears so negative. But it's been factual..."

-- More from Bernstein on "AC360:" No president "has ever spewed the kind of consistent hate, disdain and division as this President of the United States has... It is basic to who he is..."

-- "The Situation Room" produced an excellent montage: "Trump's rhetoric on vs off prompter..." Watch it here...

-- Trump will be holding another rally on Friday... This time in Charlotte, NC...

AT&T donates $250,000 to CPJ

This is a very timely donation by CNN's parent company — though it was in the works before Wednesday's incident. AT&T is donating $250,000 to support the Committee to Protect Journalists' efforts all around the world...

--> Randall Stephenson's statement: "Leaders may not like everything that is written about them--I know I don't. But journalists serve as an indispensable check on power." So "threats to journalists are, at the very core, threats to freedom and liberty..."

Dobbs' dreadful behavior

I really don't want to waste much time on these "false flag" claims. Life is too short. But it's important to see how these fringe ideas are being mainstreamed by figures like Fox Business host Lou Dobbs. As Oliver Darcy reports here, Dobbs posted and then deleted two tweets on Thursday which he asserted without evidence it was "fake news" that explosive devices were mailed to various targets. "Fake bombs," Dobbs wrote. Per Darcy, the tweets left several employees at Fox News in dismay. One senior Fox News employee told him, "It's people like Dobbs who really ran it for all the hard working journalists at Fox." Read Darcy's full story here...

I can't believe I had to deny this...

Here's a small example of the nonsense that's spreading: Someone found a one-year-old photo of me and Jamie smiling in our apartment; used Photoshop or some other program to insert a picture of a pipe bomb picture; and posted it on far-right Reddit message boards and Facebook pages. I suppose this was a twist on a "false flag" conspiracy theory. I didn't know about it until a fact-checker for The Associated Press emailed me. I appreciated their efforts to debunk a despicable lie that was showing up on Facebook... And/but it's awfully strange to have a headline out there that says "NOT REAL NEWS: Brian Stelter not pictured with pipe bomb..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

By Julia Waldow:

-- In a big new investigation, the NYT reveals that Google gave Android creator Andy Rubin a $90 million exit package back in 2014 and invested in his next venture "while keeping silent about a misconduct claim." Daisuke Wakabayashi and Katie Benner report that Rubin "was one of three executives that Google protected over the past decade after they were accused of sexual misconduct..." (NYT)

-- YouTube Live is sneaking up on Twitch in terms of live streaming market viewership... (TechCrunch)

-- Mark Duplass will play Megyn Kelly's husband and Alice Eve will play Ainsley Earhardt in Jay Roach's upcoming film about Roger Ailes... (Deadline)

-- The fifth and final season of "Broad City" will premiere January 24 on Comedy Central... (THR)

BIG EARNINGS DAY

"Tech troubles"

That's the banner headline on CNN Business right now. Among the stories:

-- "Snapchat continues to lose users amid ongoing backlash to its app redesign and growing competition from Instagram," Kaya Yurieff reports. Revenues grew 43%, however. Details here...

-- Alphabet missed revenue expectations, "even though it was a 21% jump from the same time last year..."

-- And Amazon stock slipped 9% in after hours trading despite posting a record profit...

But: "The online ad market is still surging"

"The online ad market is still surging, based on third quarter results from Google, Amazon, Twitter and Snap released Thursday," The Information reports. "That raises the stakes for Facebook, which reports next week amid intense questions about whether advertisers or users have been scared off by negative publicity."

-- EYE ON AMAZON: The company's Q3 "other" revenue — primarily ad sales — is up to $2.5 billion, a 123% increase from last year... (Digiday)

Comcast's call

Hadas Gold emails: On Thursday Comcast held its first earnings call after successfully acquiring Sky – though it didn't give a ton of details yet on what big changes may be coming to Sky.

While the company's competitors are jumping into the streaming business – CEO Brian Roberts seemed to scoff a bit at the whole trend -- though he said it's "going to be a part of our business."

"There's been a little of a rush to 'Oh the traditional television business is over and we have to get into streaming,'" Roberts said. "We think it's challenging economically and we don't want to rush into anything." AKA: We're making good money off of broadband services and traditional TV. Why change that?

-- ALSO: Sky chief Jeremy Darroch joined the call and made it clear "I intend to stick around."

Inside Apple News

How does Apple News really work? How involved are human editors? The NYT's Jack Nicas has the answers in this must read story. He says the app's editor in chief, Lauren Kern, "has quietly become one of the most powerful figures in English-language media." That's because "the stories she and her deputies select for Apple News regularly receive more than a million visits each..."

Facebook election ad transparency isn't so transparent

Donie O'Sullivan emails: CNN found an anti-Ted Cruz meme page spending thousands of dollars on political ads on Facebook, with no information about the ad buyer. That is despite the ad transparency initiative that Facebook has been touting for months.

Sure, someone might say you can run a full page ad in The New York Times as a PAC and the audience may not know who paid for it, but in reality Facebook makes this sort of stuff a lot easier to do. This page was able to reach thousands, maybe even millions of Texans before Facebook took action on it when CNN pointed it out...

WSJ's deep dive into Netflix's corporate culture

Daniella Emanuel emails: Shalini Ramachandran and Joe Flint spoke to more than 70 Netflix employees for this story on the company's culture and the recent firing of its PR chief. One of the takeaways: "Netflix takes its culture seriously, believing it a crucial ingredient in the success the company has enjoyed en route to becoming a behemoth with 137 million global subscribers. To many Netflixers, the culture, at its worst, can also be ruthless, demoralizing and transparent to the point of dysfunctional..."

Netflix's "transparency?"

Brian Lowry emails: There's a lot of good detail in the WSJ's story — including the surprising number of people who know their coworkers' salaries — but the most wildly ironic tidbit is the company's emphasis on "transparency." That's going to produce howls of laughter from the more traditional TV industry, which has chafed at the streaming service's steadfast refusal to provide user data that would quantify how many people are watching its shows...

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

Via Daniella Emanuel:

-- Nielsen is going to start identifying "same gender spouses and partners and their households" in ratings reports... (Deadline)

-- "A Private War," starring Rosamund Pike as deceased war journalist Marie Colvin, had its premiere Wednesday night... (Variety)

-- Hadas Gold reports: "A UK newspaper was prevented from publishing the name of a man at the center of new #MeToo allegations – until a British politician stepped in..." (CNN)

IWMF honorees

Lesley Stahl received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Women's Media Foundation's annual Courage in Journalism Awards on Thursday.

Other honorees included journalists Nima Elbagir, Zehra Doğan, Meridith Kohut, and Rosario Mosso Castro. Phil Griffin received the IWMF Leadership Award and Karen Toulon received the Gwen Ifill Award. Norah O'Donnell and Cynthia McFadden co-hosted the program for the third straight year...

--> Elbagir is one of CNN's true greats. During her acceptance speech, she remarked, "I really hope this award sends a message to any other women out there, who are struggling. That we do belong back at the frontlines. That we get to decide where we belong. Because right now we can't afford to lose any women's voices..."

Seen and heard at the Knight-Bagehot dinner

Thursday night's gala raised $$$ for the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism. Spotted: Jessica Lessin, Matt Murray, Mark Thompson, James Bennet, Steven Perlberg, Sara Fischer, Erin McGrath, Rich Barbieri, Alex Koppelman, Laura Vigilante, Gerry Smith, S. Mitra Kalita, Lucia Moses, Robert Delaney, Danielle Rhoades-Ha, David McCraw, Adam Isserlis, Tucker Bounds, Nabila Ahmed, Lex Haris, Christa Robinson, Robert Gifford, Tim Race, Jennifer Ablan, Davia Temin, Roger Cheng, and many more...

The highlight of the night was Kara Swisher questioning A.G. Sulzberger on stage. A few notable quotes:

-- "The internet is overflowing with opinions." What's needed are more facts. "People have been opinionated about President Trump's finances -- that there's something shady there -- for a long time. But what actually caused multiple investigations to be opened? It's digging. It's reporting..."

-- "Our business strategy today boils down to: Make stuff that's worth paying for. It's that simple..."

-- There were cheers when he said "The New York Times is not for sale..."

Speaking of Sulzberger...

He's my guest on this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast. We converted my recent conversation with him -- from the CITIZEN by CNN forum -- into an audio format. Check it out via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your preferred app...

Lowry does not recommend "Heathers"

Brian Lowry emails: The "Heathers" TV series reboot was postponed because of the Parkland shooting, and the Paramount Network then shopped the rights around, without finding any takers. Now, it's finally airing, in a consecutive-night burn-off of the episodes that merely underscores how tone-deaf and ill-conceived it was...

That's a wrap on today's newsletter... Email me here anytime, and see you tomorrow...