Forward

Exec summary: Scroll down for the latest on the CBS board's decision about Les Moonves, two new stories about YouTube and extremism, Apple's latest overall deal, Nielsen's top 10 in 2018 lists, and much more...

What changed this year?

This week we'll look back at 2018 and look forward to 2019 in this letter. You can contribute by emailing or tweeting me. What actually changed this year? In media, business, culture, entertainment, and the places where it all intersects with politics? And what are you predicting in 2019?

Here's my first draft at a look back...

Trump and the media...

If 2017 was an introduction to President Trump, 2018 was a followup. Much of the surprise wore off. Some of the shock wore off too. But the accountability coverage and withering criticism continued. Amid an overflowing amount of falsehoods, journalists became more confident saying "lie" to describe some of Trump's claims.

At the same time, Trump's verbal attacks against the media continued, stirring new warnings that his words are dangerous. He is the leader of a "hate movement" against the press. In the wake of the mail bombs, for example, CNN said "there is a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media. The President, and especially the White House Press Secretary, should understand their words matter. Thus far, they have shown no comprehension of that."

Trump's presidency was consumed by scandals. But many readers and viewers admitted to feeling a form of "news fatigue." I'd second what Chuck Todd said to Jamie Weinstein this week: "I am concerned" that "the collective mainstream media's coverage of Trump has turned into white noise for the public..."

'18 in the media biz

Helium drained out of the digital media bubble. Local newspapers didn't fare any better. Numerous owners looked for exits. Two big old-school brands, Time and the Los Angeles Times, turned to billionaire benefactors. More and more websites pursued subscription solutions to solve ad problems. But there are serious doubts about just how many digital subscriptions the average reader will buy...

'18 in the entertainment biz

More, more, more! Netflix tightened its grip. And its competitors came up with new plans. Conventional wisdom held that Netflix simply had too many shows, too many movies, too much to watch -- yet millions of people kept signing up all around the world. But Apple, Amazon and other tech giants kept Netflix on its toes. AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner closed, and AT&T quickly said it would launch a streaming service at the end of 2019. Disney has a similar late-2019 streaming plan, and it is expecting final approval for its Fox deal soon...

What do you think? What am I missing? Email me... Your additions will shape our year-end coverage on TV and online...

IN TODAY'S NEWS...

CBS says Moonves gets $0

The CBS board of directors -- led by Strauss Zelnick and Shari Redstone -- says its investigation of sexual misconduct is over. Les Moonves "will not receive any severance payment" from the company, the directors said in a statement Monday evening. They believe they had ample reason to fire Moonves for cause, thus denying him $120 million.

The two law firms that looked into trouble at CBS, for CBS, found some trouble. But the board apparently intends to keep the findings secret. Monday's statement kept it vague -- saying that CBS, in the past, did not take "improper and unprofessional conduct" sufficiently seriously. But, the statement said, the reshaped board has "already begun to take robust steps to improve the working environment for all employees." And with that, this chapter in CBS history is closed, as far as the board is concerned.

Will this be enough to satisfy employees, investors and activist groups? We'll see...

Moonves' attorney responds

An attorney for Moonves, Andrew Levander, responded by saying that the "baseless" conclusions of the board "were foreordained and are without merit." Levander assailed the recent leaks to the NYT and said the press reports further damaged Moonves' "name, reputation, career and legacy." He said "Mr. Moonves vehemently denies any non-consensual sexual relations and cooperated extensively and fully with investigators."

So what now? Well, Levander did not signal that Moonves would go to court to fight for the $120 million. But he didn't rule it out, either, when I asked him for comment...

Carter's point

CNN media analyst Bill Carter tweeted: "CBS board had no option on decision to deny Leslie Moonves severance. Evidence of bad acts was overwhelming. Certainly another message here: you can be the most successful exec in your field, but you do not have carte blanche to behave appallingly. And Me Too is powerful force."

🔌: Irin Carmon and I will be covering the CBS news in the 7 a.m. hour of "New Day..."

Channing Dungey joins Netflix

Just one month after stepping down as president of ABC Entertainment, Channing Dungey is joining Netflix as vice president of original content, Frank Pallotta reports: "In the newly created role, Dungey will work with Netflix's other VP of original content Cindy Holland on 'setting strategic direction' for the streamer's original content including overseeing the deals with producers Shonda Rhimes and Kenya Barris, two showrunners who also landed at Netflix after creating hit shows on ABC."

Joe Flint's lead in the WSJ calls this "the latest evidence of the growing rivalry between the streaming-video giant and ABC parent Walt Disney Co..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- BREAKING: "Sprint and T-Mobile just cleared key hurdles to their huge merger," Jethro Mullen reports... (CNN)

-- Margaret Sullivan, mentioning Sunday's "Reliable" segment about Chris Cuomo's Kellyanne Conway interview, says it's "past time" for "the mainstream media to enter the No Kellyanne Zone." She says "the responsibility to bear down on reality is greater than ever..." (WaPo)

-- Steve Krakauer, formerly of CNN, tweeted a very different view: "If you don't think there's news value in interviewing Conway, perhaps the closest individual to Trump, you might as well quit journalism..." (Twitter)

-- Jon Allsop made a great point in Monday's CJR newsletter: "Aggressive reporting" sowed the seeds for interior secretary Ryan Zinke's departure... (CJR)

Tucker and Fox facing a left-wing ad boycott

Tucker Carlson remained defiant Monday night amid an advertiser backlash in which several companies have abandoned his program over comments he made last week suggesting mass immigration makes the country "dirtier." Carlson said at the outset of his program that "the left" wants him to "shut up." He responded, "Obviously we won't." He added, "We are not intimidated." Carlson then seemed to try to back up his "dirtier" comment by contending that mass immigration has an environmental impact on the desert. He showed his audience images of trash at the border to support his point. "Thanks to illegal immigration, huge swaths of the region are covered with garbage and waste that degrade the soil and kill wildlife," Carlson said.

The context: In the past few days, there has been a pressure campaign led by mostly progressive activists, targeting Carlson's advertisers. Several companies -- Pacific Life, Smile Direct Club, Bowflex, and NerdWallet -- have suspended their advertising on his program, according to THR's Jeremy Barr who is keeping a running list in this Twitter thread. But other firms have defended their decision to advertise on Carlson's show, and the overall ad load remains normal...

James Comey speaks

James Comey's pointed remarks -- after another day of questioning on Capitol Hill -- drove the Monday afternoon news cycle. He slammed Trump and "shameful" GOPers who have remained silent about the president's unpresidential conduct.

This line stood out to me, since Comey has been a daily target of the pro-Trump shows on Fox News. "At some point," he said, "someone has to stand up and in the face of fear of Fox News, fear of their base, fear of mean Tweets, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement, but stand up and speak the truth."

Shutdown countdown

"Congress has five days to act before funding for parts of the government runs out at midnight on Friday," per Chris Cillizza and Lauren Dezenski's The Point newsletter. And right now "we're at a standstill." Shutdown countdown clocks coming soon to a cable news screen near you?

"We are mad:" Former Weekly Standard staffers unhappy over note sent to subscribers

Oliver Darcy emails: Former staffers of The Weekly Standard are not happy about a note sent to the magazine's subscribers providing notification that subscriptions are being transferred to the "expanded and redesigned Washington Examiner magazine." I talked to several staffers Monday evening who expressed dismay that Clarity Media Group, after folding the magazine, would use The Weekly Standard's logo (and thus credibility) to explain to readers what happened. Staffers said the note, which effectively implied to subscribers that the Washington Examiner magazine would be better than The Weekly Standard, was insulting and dismissive of the product they had put out for the last 23 years. "We are mad," texted one staffer.

>> It's worth noting, Clarity Media Group's CEO told The Weekly Standard's staff on Friday that the company is legally obligated to fulfill its subscriptions. As a result, he explained that the company had chosen to do so with the Examiner...

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- Brian Steinberg has the backstory about the Google ad that was produced by "SNL" and shown last Saturday night... (Variety)

-- Read Kevin Roose's latest: "Social Media's Forever War" (NYT)

-- Walt Mossberg announced on Twitter (!) that he is quitting Facebook. He said "my own values and the policies and actions of Facebook have diverged to the point where I'm no longer comfortable there..." (Twitter)

Two new stories about YouTube and extremism

1. The Daily Beast's Kelly Weill has a new story about YouTube as a "radicalization machine for the far-right." The algorithm is partly at fault for suggesting "increasingly fringe content." Weill "spoke to three men whose YouTube habits pushed them down a far-right path and who have since logged out of hate..."

2. "We hear a lot about the YouTube algorithm leading viewers to increasingly extreme content. But what about when the algorithm/viewers push a creator to make increasingly extreme content?"

That's BuzzFeed's Joseph Bernstein describing what his latest story is about. "Coyote Peterson made himself into one of YouTube's biggest stars by subjecting himself to the most painful stings in the world," he says. "Now he's making the move to cable TV, and he wants to quit getting bitten. Will his fans stick around?" Read on...

Two new reports about Russia, trolls and Trump

"So, so much of the news cycle now is official reports restating things that were known a year or two ago," BuzzFeed's Ben Smith tweeted on Monday. And he has a point. The two reports released by the Senate Intel Committee weren't full of bombshells. Reporters at CNN, BuzzFeed and other sites had already exposed a lot of the malicious Russian activity on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Still, there's something valuable about seeing everything summarized by researchers, right? The Oxford researchers concluded that "Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) launched an extended attack on the United States by using computational propaganda to misinform and polarize US voters." And "these campaigns did not stop once Russia's IRA was caught interfering in the 2016 election. Engagement rates increased and covered a widening range of public policy issues..."

Whack-A-Mole, but the prize is democracy

The other report, produced by New Knowledge, documented the world's worst game of Whack-A-Mole: When malicious Russian activity was unearthed on Facebook and Twitter in 2017, the group simply "shifted much of its activity to Instagram." There is every reason to believe that this attack is ongoing... and becoming more sophisticated... Here's Donie O'Sullivan's story recapping Monday's findings...

Check out this troll search

Donie O'Sullivan emails: With the renewed interest in Russian trolls, I recommend checking out this database compiled by Professors Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren at Clemson University. The pair have archived millions of confirmed IRA tweets, and you can search them here. 771 results for @brianstelter. 5 for @donie ☺

Russian operatives also unloaded on Mueller

WaPo's Monday night headline: "Russians targeted Mueller on social media, says report prepared for Senate."

Donie O'Sullivan adds: The Clemson troll search shows 5,000 mentions of "Mueller." In October we learned, from a DOJ indictment, that an internal IRA memo directed staff to target the Mueller probe. The instructions read, "Special prosecutor Mueller is a puppet of the establishment. List scandals that took place when Mueller headed the FBI. Direct attention to the listed examples."

BUT: While the Russians were targeting Mueller, they were also targeting Trump. In 2017, the group ran a wildly popular page targeting Mexican-Americans, that derided Trump. While the mission in 2016 appeared to be hurting Hillary Clinton while elevating Trump, the group sent a huge # of posts in 2017 and 2018 criticizing the president. In the case of the Mexican-American page, like many other IRA pages, the effect was two-fold. First, it motivated people who supported the POV the page claimed to promote. Second, it was used for fear-mongering purposes among those who view immigration from Mexico as a threat to the United States...

Media and tech literacy would help...

The New Yorker's Evan Osnos nailed this earlier in the year. He wrote, "At the heart of the Russian fraud is an essential, embarrassing insight into American life: large numbers of Americans are ill-equipped to assess the credibility of the things they read."

The new examples of Russian propaganda double as a pitch for media and tech literacy initiatives. But how can those possibly "scale" to meet the size of the problem?

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

-- John Boehner is working on a book, tentatively titled "Notes From a Smoke-Filled Room," due out from St. Martin's Press imprint Thomas Dunne Books in 2020... (WaPo)

-- Brian Lowry emails: A couple of notable political bookings for Stephen Colbert this week: Rep. Adam Schiff and outgoing Sen. Jeff Flake on Dec. 18 and Dec. 20, respectively...

-- On Monday night Jimmy Fallon and Lin-Manuel Miranda announced plans for a special episode of "The Tonight Show" from Puerto Rico on January 15... (Twitter)

The documentary shortlist!

The Academy released this shortlist for the Best Documentary category on Monday. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that two CNN Films, "RBG" and "Three Identical Strangers," made the cut:

"Charm City"
"Communion"
"Crime + Punishment"
"Dark Money"
"The Distant Barking of Dogs"
"Free Solo"
"Hale County This Morning, This Evening"
"Minding the Gap"
"Of Fathers and Sons"
"On Her Shoulders"
"RBG"
"Shirkers"
"The Silence of Others"
"Three Identical Strangers"
"Won't You Be My Neighbor?"

Lowry's take on "Vice"

Brian Lowry emails: Christian Bale's unrecognizable portrayal of Dick Cheney has already earned well-deserved plaudits, but "Vice" — which opens on Christmas day — feels like a movie that's a little too pleased with itself, an irreverent satire that fails to fully bridge the gap between the realm of prestige HBO movies and a theatrical release. The film is directed by Adam McKay, in a reunion with Bale and Steve Carell (who plays Donald Rumsfeld) from "The Big Short," a film that's similar in tone, but better in most respects.

Read the rest here...

2018's most-watched programs

Brian Lowry emails: Two interesting takeaways from this USA Today story about the year's most-watched TV programs:

-- Seven of the top 10 individual telecasts are sports (and an eighth, "This is Us," followed the Super Bowl), which explains why broadcasters pay through the nose for them. The other two were the Oscars and "Roseanne..."

-- Nine of the top 10 most time-shifted series in terms of percentage increase on a seven-day basis — a roster topped by AMC's "Better Call Saul" — air on basic cable networks. The tenth, "Shameless," is on a pay channel, Showtime...

Top 10 regularly scheduled series of 2018

ABC's "Roseanne" topped Nielsen's list of the highest-rated regularly scheduled shows... All 10 are on broadcast... Two on ABC, four on NBC, and four on CBS:

1. "Roseanne"
2. "Sunday Night Football"
3. "The Big Bang Theory"
4. "NCIS"
5. "This Is Us"
6. "Young Sheldon"
7. "Manifest"
8. "The Good Doctor"
9. "America's Got Talent"
10. "Bull"

Another big overall deal at Apple

"In a massive blow to Sony," the "Fast & Furious" director Justin Lin and his production company "has inked an exclusive multi-year overall television deal" with Apple "to develop, produce and direct TV series 'with a global perspective,'" THR's Bryn Elise Sandberg reported Monday...

Jeff Bridges to be honored at the Golden Globes

Jeff Bridges will be honored with the Cecil B. deMille Award at the Golden Globes on January 6, Chloe Melas reports...

SUNDAY HIGHLIGHTS:

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Running out of ways to say 'boxed in'

I turned Friday night's newsletter item into the lead of Sunday's "Reliable Sources:"Does the public understand just how much trouble the president is in? If not, that's a failing of the press.

There's so much talk about the president being boxed in.... lots of warnings that the walls are closing in... but do readers and viewers know why? I think the press needs to redouble its effort to zoom out, WAY out, and make sure the big picture isn't being clouded by all of the hourly and daily developments.

Will Bunch: The conspiracy is 'hiding in plain sight'

"I think the biggest electoral conspiracy in American history has already been laid out there. It's hiding in plain sight," Philly Inquirer columnist Will Bunch said on Sunday's show. He said the scandal is, already, "arguably worse than Watergate."

Joan Walsh and Matt Lewis were also part of the conversation... Lewis said Trump scandals are serious, but conservative viewers feel "you guys are focused solely" on the controversies while "a lot of things are going right in the country." Walsh responded, "I just don't think that there's a way to balance this and say, well, here's the good news, but the bad news is our president might be a completely and totally corrupt man." Watch the segment here...

How the WSJ exposed hush money schemes

Consider this: It wasn't the NYT or the Post or the AP that broke the news about Trumpworld's collaboration with the National Enquirer. No, it was the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal. I point this out not to diminish the Journal, but rather to raise it up: Despite the fact that Murdoch and Trump are pals, and despite persistent Q's about Murdoch meddling with the paper, the scoops were published and the stories benefited the Journal.

I talked with WSJ reporter Michael Rothfeld on Sunday's "Reliable Sources..." He said it was "a classic journalistic effort of peeling away layers of the onion..." Here's video of the segment...

Is there value in interviewing Trump's aides?

After Chris Cuomo's Thursday night interview with Kellyanne Conway, Don Lemon challenged Cuomo and questioned whether Conway should be booked on CNN at all. So we got into that on Sunday's show... I tend to side with Cuomo on this one... But many, many others are on Team Lemon. "It's very clear," Oliver Darcy said on "Reliable," that when Conway comes on, "she's aiming to deflect, she's deceiving the audience, she's spreading misinformation..."

Later in the hour, we talked about how 2018 has been consumed by misinfo... watch my chat with Darcy and Joan Walsh here...

That's a wrap. Thanks for reading. Send me your feedback via email anytime! Back tomorrow...