Media Moves

[Kendra]

Chris Cuomo's forthcoming book (originally titled DEEP DENIAL) from a HarperCollins imprint has been pulled. "We do not intend to publish the Cuomo book," a HarperCollins rep tells me.

[Kendra]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/i-thi ... d=msedgntp

Alan Dershowitz said he hopes Chris Cuomo wins a potential lawsuit against CNN after the network fired him on Saturday. The Harvard Law School professor also said that CNN president Jeff Zucker, not Cuomo should have been fired.

Cuomo is reportedly preparing to sue his former network if it does not pay him the remaining $18 million to $20 million remaining on his contract. He was terminated after CNN was alerted to an allegation of sexual misconduct against him by a former colleague during his time at another network.

Choose Your Delivery Plan - No Subscription Required
The former host had a tumultuous year at CNN. In May, he was revealed to have assisted his brother, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), in trying to combat allegations of sexual misconduct. Five days before being fired last week, the New York state attorney general’s office released transcripts of correspondence showing Chris Cuomo wanted to dig up information on his brother’s accusers.

Appearing on Spicer & Friends on Newsmax, Dershowitz defended the former CNN host and eviscerated Zucker.

“The person who should be fired is Jeff Zucker,” said Dershowitz, who happens to be suing CNN for $300 million for allegedly depicting him as an “intellectual who had lost his mind.”

[Kendra]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... hp&pc=U531

Close allies of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, including his top aide and his former CNN anchor brother, plotted to find ways to discredit Fox News meteorologist and host Janice Dean after she became one of the most vocal critics of the governor's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter.

Melissa DeRosa, who had served as secretary to the governor, was among the Cuomo aides who ripped Dean behind the scenes and sought to craft a public messaging strategy that would paint the Fox News personality as merely a right-wing commentator, people familiar with the effort told CNBC. Dean's criticism of Cuomo stemmed mainly from the 2020 deaths of her husband's parents, whom she said died of Covid in their elder-care facilities.

It remains unclear if DeRosa or Cuomo's team ever went ahead with initiating such a plan.

Andrew Cuomo himself was present during some of the strategy sessions during which Dean was mentioned, one of the people said. These sessions mainly focused on the governor's response to Covid.

Chris Cuomo, who was a CNN anchor until he was fired last week, was encouraged to find information that would focus on Dean's political leanings, according to a person familiar with the matter. It's unclear whether Chris Cuomo ever went ahead with digging up information on Dean, or who encouraged him to seek the information. Dean started criticizing Andrew Cuomo on air and in columns during 2020, before the sexual harassment scandal exploded.

The people cited in this article declined to be named in order to speak freely about private conversations.

[Reality Check]

Chris Wallace is leaving Fox News effective immediately.

https://deadline.com/2021/12/chris-wall ... 234889585/

I am surprised he stuck around this long.

[AndyinPA]

Eighteen years too late.

[Luke]

Chris Wallace is going to CNN+. That's so bizarre when they have the 9pm hour open on Actual CNN. This July story has the basics of CNN+. Put two stories about CNN+ in spoiler if you'd like to know more about what CNN+ is all about.

► Show Spoiler

What is CNN+ and why would you pay for it?
The newest streaming service doesn’t make sense, but it’s happening now anyway.
By Peter Kafka Jul 19, 2021, 2:50pm EDT

What is CNN+, the cable news channel’s new streaming service? Let’s do the short answer first: CNN+ is not CNN. Think of it, for now, as CNN Jr. Slightly longer: If you want to watch Actual CNN, CNN+ is not for you. Actual CNN is still limited to people who pay for the news channel as part of a pay-TV bundle. So CNN+, which will launch next year for a yet-to-be-disclosed price, will be ... something else. That is, stuff that’s like CNN, but not on CNN (disclosure: Vox Media is producing a series with CNN Originals and I’m working on that project). Here’s the full story: CNN+, like lots of other attempts from big TV programmers to move into the streaming world, is an in-betweener: It wants to leverage the old TV channel’s brand to create a new revenue stream, without cannibalizing the thing that generates enormous revenue and profits. You can see why CNN and its owner — for now, that’s AT&T, which owns WarnerMedia but plans to dump it into a new company, which will combine WarnerMedia with Discovery Networks — want this to happen. Whether consumers will want it is another question. But since lots of other Big TV networks have tried similar “have your streaming and eat your TV, too” gambits, we at least know some of the options CNN+ is looking at:

Give your most hardcore fans more of what they already get. This is the Fox Nation strategy: If you like the cynical misinformation Tucker Carlson’s peddles on his nightly Fox News show, you might also want to watch Tucker Carlson Today, his streaming-only show. I like Discovery’s Guy Fieri, but not enough to subscribe to Discovery+ so I can also watch Guy: Hawaiian Style, which Discovery tells me will feature Fieri and family “rolling through the Hawaiian Islands for a deep dive into the tradition, the adventure and all types of great food.” You, on the other hand, may want to pay up. There’s a lid for every pot. Give hardcore fans something they want but aren’t getting already. You can’t watch college lacrosse on ESPN because college lacrosse doesn’t attract enough viewers to take up precious airtime on a linear TV channel. But on ESPN+, which has unlimited shelf space — you can watch college lacrosse and at the same time I can watch German soccer — it makes perfect sense, as analyst Ben Thompson laid out recently:

Very good @benthompson on ESPN/ESPN+ strat: One goes for biggest audience bc ads + cable fees, other goes for lots of niches bc direct subs. https://t.co/Shjhgd86sl pic.twitter.com/uLrM3BrjFV
— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) July 13, 2021

Other versions of this include Paramount+ running exclusive episodes of The Good Fight, a spinoff of the CBS series The Good Wife. It’s not for everyone, but if you liked the first show on regular TV, you might pay up to watch the streaming sequel. Give everyone almost everything, and spend a ton of money doing it. This is the Disney+ proposition: The company is streaming (just about) its entire film catalog, plus a roster of big-budget, high-profile streaming-only shows (The Mandalorian, Loki, etc). It’s an expensive bet — because it requires paying a lot of money for new stuff, as well as forgoing money you can get selling your stuff to other outlets — but so far it appears to have worked for Disney.

The problem for CNN/WarnerMedia executives is that CNN+ looks like it’s none of the above. And it may be that CNN’s product simply doesn’t work as a standalone streaming product: Maybe there are passionate Jake Tapper or Anderson Cooper fans willing to pay extra to see more of them, but it’s hard to believe there are a lot of them. Meanwhile, it is a very good bet that the Jake Tappers and Anderson Coopers of the world will continue to put most of their energy and focus on TV because that’s where the audience, fame, and money is. And while CNN does excellent work (again, see disclosure), it famously does best when there is breaking news and you need to know what’s happening now, in real time. The rest of the time, it is straining mightily to find something you’ll want to watch instead of news, while you are flipping through channels. And in an on-demand streaming world, if you’re looking for something to watch besides news, you have unlimited options. Even more worryingly, it may turn out that in an on-demand streaming world, when you do want to watch real-time news, you may have many other options.

The best-case scenario for CNN+ is one that officials are already hinting at: that it’s something you don’t pay for directly, but as part of another bundle. Record scratch here: Wasn’t the whole point of streaming TV to break up the cable TV bundle and replace it with a menu of networks and shows we could pick and choose from whenever we want? Well, yes. Except the people who make and sell entertainment like the bundle — and they think you will like it, too. That’s why Disney lets you buy Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+ together at a discount, and that’s why HBO Max exists at all — because WarnerMedia thinks you’re more likely to buy HBO if it comes with a lot of other stuff as well as HBO. (You can credibly argue that Netflix, meanwhile, is its own bundle.) In this case, there’s a good chance CNN+ gets folded into HBO Max, WarnerMedia’s “HBO + some other stuff” service, which is already likely to envelop Discovery+ (another tweener service) if and when the WarnerMedia/Discovery merger goes through. So Warner Bros. Discovery could use CNN+ as justification to raise prices for HBO Max — or it could simply get it for free so you feel you’re getting additional value for streaming dollars. You can see other examples of this in the wild already: You can buy a standalone subscription to the New York Times Cooking app for $5 a month — or you can buy an “all access” subscription that gives you the paper’s cooking app, games app, and all of the paper itself for $17 a month. And if that’s CNN+’s future, you don’t need to worry about whether or not you’re paying for it — you’ll simply get it alongside a bunch of other stuff, whether you want it or not. Just like good old-fashioned TV.

https://www.vox.com/recode/22583584/cnn ... bundle-hbo

This Nov story is from (ready?) WND. I was part of the original AOL Time Warner merger, it's been so insane it's almost impossible to keep up with what they are doing. Now it's WarnerMedia Discovery. CNN+ must be planned for Discovery+.

As $48 Billion WarnerMedia Discovery Merger Looms, CNN+ Ramps Up
“They weren’t taking it too seriously early in the year,” says a CNN source of the company’s streaming play. “The merger announcement comes and CNN+ becomes a really big f--ing deal.”
By MARISA GUTHRIE NOVEMBER 17, 2021, 12:07AM

The race to plant a flag in the streaming market went into overdrive during the pandemic, with homebound consumers in search of new content and delivery systems. But it took a proposed $48 billion merger to create a sense of urgency at CNN. As rival news organizations, including NBC News and Fox News Media, were funneling resources into streaming, the media narrative at CNN swirled around tension between CNN Worldwide chief executive officer Jeff Zucker and WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, who became Zucker’s boss when AT&T CEO John Stankey put him in the job in May 2020. The former went so far as to announce publicly that he intended to “move on” from CNN at the end of 2021, eliciting a chorus of lament from the network’s top stars. To many at the news operation, the long-gestating CNN direct-to-consumer service, officially announced as CNN+ last July, was more closely aligned with Kilar, the former Hulu CEO. Not anymore. When Stankey and Discovery, Inc. CEO David Zazlav (Zucker’s Hamptons neighbor and golfing buddy), sent tremors through Hollywood with the surprise announcement last May that AT&T would spin off its WarnerMedia unit in a $48 billion deal with Discovery, Zucker’s future at the company was immediately recast. When the deal is consummated — as soon as mid-2022 — Zazlav will be in charge of a behemoth content company boasting dozens of cable and digital networks, storied film and TV studios and a global sports business. “They weren’t taking it too seriously early in the year,” says one CNN source of the company’s streaming play. “The merger announcement comes and CNN+ becomes a really big f–king deal.” And a matter of survival.

The cable bundle is staggering toward implosion as viewers continue to cut the cord — and younger consumers continue to be completely allergic to the antiquated cable subscription. Market research firm Kagan predicts that cord-cutting will cost U.S. cable, satellite and telecom companies more than $33 billion in annual revenue through 2025 with revenue declining from $91.1 billion in 2021 to $64.7 billion by 2025. CNN’s U.S. subscriber base is expected to dip about 5 percent to 80.5 million this year compared to 84.9 million last year, according to Kagan. As the industry awaits a reordering of its delivery systems, streaming is an essential hedge for a future when all content is streamed on demand. And Zazlav has characterizing CNN as a “core asset” of the future combined companies, calling Zucker a “hugely, hugely talented” executive. “We are committed to CNN having the greatest editorial integrity and success globally,” Zaslav said during a press conference in the wake of the deal announcement. For its part, Discovery has a growing portfolio of international news assets, including GB News, launched last summer in the U.K. as an alternative to the BBC and Sky News. Among Zazlav’s ambitions, he has said, is to “be the world leader in news.”

Since news divisions cannot duplicate the programming they serve up on their linear channels, care of lucrative distribution agreements, CNN will experiment with some facsimile of its core product. On CNN+, there will be eight to 12 hours of live programming each day, some with an interactive component, offerings from the CNN archives, original series (Amy Entelis’ CNN Films has been on a buying spree of late), and new daily programs developed for the platform. Hence, CNN+ will launch shows hosted by former NBC News Washington correspondent Kasie Hunt, who joined CNN last August. The company has also hired NYU marketing professor and entrepreneur Scott Galloway, who hosts the podcast “The Prof G Show” and cohosts “Pivot” with Kara Swisher. (Galloway appeared in a bizarre Twitter video last July; bare-chested, wearing a hardhat and with a mattock slung over a naked shoulder, he copped to “erectile dysfunction” and a propensity for “one-night stands.” The video was ostensibly to promote what was supposed to be a show on Bloomberg. Plans for the show were nixed. Apparently, CNN executives are not as squeamish.)

And CNN confirmed a report that Zucker made an overture to the popular MSNBC host Rachel Maddow to join CNN+. (Maddow re-signed with MSNBC last August.) CNN’s streaming play will be rooted in news and documentary; there is no intention to stray into scripted content. Without mentioning CNN, Zazlav used his appearance at the Paley Center’s International Council Summit on Nov. 10 to draw an implicit distinction with rival Fox News, which launched its Fox Nation subscription service in 2018. “I think Fox News is much more of an advocacy network,” he told interlocutor Ken Auletta during the online conference. Zazlav also said he would move to Los Angeles — he is restoring Robert Evans’ famed Woodland mansion, which Zazlav bought for $16 million shortly after Evans’ death in 2019 — so that he can be “very hands-on” in running Warner Bros. Discovery. And he has said that he hopes to keep Zucker, a famed empire builder, at the company. There is speculation that Zazlav could tap Zucker to run the merged company’s global news and sports assets. But those who know Zucker wonder if that would be enough to satisfy his ambition. (If and when Zucker does get kicked upstairs, he has made it known that his pick to succeed him at CNN is his chief marketing officer Allison Gollust, say sources. The two have had a close association for decades, and first worked together at NBC.)

Meanwhile, Andrew Morse, CNN Worldwide chief digital officer, and his team are busy hiring hundreds of new employees for the direct-to-consumer platform. There will be a handful of additional CNN+ talent announcements before the end of the year, while the network’s New Year’s Eve coverage hosted by Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon will include big talent reveals, said a person familiar with the company’s rollout plans. A 30-second spot, which bowed in October, hearkens to the network’s launch in 1980 with archival footage from iconic events (Tiananmen Square massacre, Operation Desert Storm, Hurricane Katrina, the Miracle on the Hudson). Of course, CNN+ is launching as many legacy streaming services are confronting the specter of post-pandemic churn. Disney added 2.1 million Disney+ subscribers for its recently ended fiscal fourth quarter, down from 12.6 million the previous quarter. WarnerMedia’s HBO and HBO Max ended the third quarter last September with 45.2 million U.S. subscribers, down 1.8 million after the company’s decision to remove the HBO subscription from competitor Amazon Prime. But there are few news brands with the global reach of CNN. Which means, if the company can put out a reasonably good product and offer it at a non-objectionable price point, it could be a major player in the global streaming news space. Some day. “There is immense potential,” notes former CNN chief Jon Klein, who is the cofounder of subscription streaming platform Tapp Media. (Discovery is an investor in Tapp.) In a fragmented environment, strong brands rule,” adds Klein. “We first saw that at CNN with the advent of the internet. The online explosion in 1995 should have cut the legs out from under CNN because its brand proposition was about 24-hour news. What happened? CNN dominated online news and does to this day. Their strong brand has lured news consumers on every platform that came along. That became true of digital, it became true of social, and I have no doubt it will be true of streaming.”

https://wwd.com/business-news/media/as- ... 234995980/

[Kriselda Gray]

Chris Wallace is going to CNN+. That's so bizarre when they have the 9pm hour open on Actual CNN. This July story has the basics of CNN+. Put two stories about CNN+ in spoiler if you'd like to know more about what CNN+ is all about.

I know a lot of news people have "non-compete" clauses in their contracts which prevent them from appearing on another broadcast/cable network for a period of time - usually several months to a year - after leaving the one they're currently working for. Perhaps going to a streaming service doesn't "count" under that kind of a clause since it doesn't create direct competition with his former network?

[p0rtia]

I don't think Chris Wallace is quite the brand they're looking for to replace Maddow.

[filly]

Chris Wallace is going to CNN+. That's so bizarre when they have the 9pm hour open on Actual CNN. This July story has the basics of CNN+. Put two stories about CNN+ in spoiler if you'd like to know more about what CNN+ is all about.

I know a lot of news people have "non-compete" clauses in their contracts which prevent them from appearing on another broadcast/cable network for a period of time - usually several months to a year - after leaving the one they're currently working for. Perhaps going to a streaming service doesn't "count" under that kind of a clause since it doesn't create direct competition with his former network?

Or perhaps Fox was anxious to be rid of him and agreed to waive any non-compete he may have had?

[MN-Skeptic]

I know a lot of news people have "non-compete" clauses in their contracts which prevent them from appearing on another broadcast/cable network for a period of time - usually several months to a year - after leaving the one they're currently working for. Perhaps going to a streaming service doesn't "count" under that kind of a clause since it doesn't create direct competition with his former network?

Or perhaps Fox was anxious to be rid of him and agreed to waive any non-compete he may have had?

Reportedly Wallace's contract was up at the end of this year, so all Fox had to do was not renew it. I can't imagine Fox waiving any non-compete clause.

[filly]

Businesses can and do waive non-competes for many reasons. OTOH, maybe the non-compete is in force but the calculation is that virtually nobody will see him on CNN+.

[RTH10260]

Angry smoke clouds from the windows of a FL real estate as a real billionaire gets presented

Elon Musk named Time person of the year

Nina Lloyd
Monday December 13 2021, 5.00pm GMT, The Times

Elon Musk has been named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, having become the world’s richest person and “driving society’s most daring and disruptive transformations”, the magazine said.

“Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too,” Edward Felsenthal, the magazine’s editor, wrote.



https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/elon ... -vwsh8t23x

[Foggy]

... few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth ...

That's just a wee bit grandiose, IMHO.

[pipistrelle]

... few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth ...

That's just a wee bit grandiose, IMHO.

No difference in my life.

[bob]

Angry smoke clouds from the windows of a FL real estate as a real billionaire gets presented

Elon Musk named Time person of the year

"For completeness": Time: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro Wins TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year Reader Poll:

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has won TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year reader poll. The controversial leader, who will stand for re-election in 2022, is confronting increased disapproval over his handling of the economy and faced widespread criticism by politicians, courts and public health experts for downplaying COVID-19’s severity and displaying skepticism around the vaccine.

Of the more than 9 million votes cast by readers for whom they think is the person or group who had the greatest influence on the year—for better or worse—Bolsonaro received 24% of the vote.

* * *

Former U.S. President Donald Trump—who incited the Jan. 6 Capitol Riots and has been contemplating another run for the presidency in 2024—came in second place in the reader poll, with 9% of votes.

Second place in the freeperable poll!

[Luke]

This was us and reckon a lot of folks here. Think they are missing the exhaustion factor. After four years of DL2XIT, people are tired of the grind and 24 hour screaming about things that will be irrelevant the next day. Information overload.

News engagement fell off a cliff in 2021
Axios Sara Fischer, Neal Rothschild

Engagement with news content plummeted last year compared to 2020, and given the ongoing decline in interest in news about COVID-19 and politics, it doesn't look like 2022 will be much better.

Why it matters: The Trump era and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic created a one-of-a-kind media moment that will be hard for news companies to replicate. With fewer singular storylines capturing America's collective attention, news consumption was more scattered and diverted to sports.
Data shows that that the Omicron variant is not jumpstarting Americans' engagement in COVID news like it did at the onset of the pandemic.
By the numbers: Primetime news viewership was down 36% across the three major cable networks, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, with the steepest decline during that time frame happening at CNN, per Nielsen ratings.

Broadcast viewership was also down for broadcast networks' evening news shows, but the declines weren't as drastic, the Associated Press notes.
App downloads for the top 12 mainstream publishers dropped 33%, according to data from Apptopia. Downloads to news apps fell most dramatically during the second half of the year.
Engagement on social media with news articles nosedived, according to data from NewsWhip. Interactions (likes, comments, shares) dropped 65% between 2020 and 2021, despite more articles published.
Website visits for the top performing news websites in the U.S. tracked by Similarweb in the first 11 months of 2021 dropped 8%.
Yes, but: As Axios has previously noted, traffic to hyper-partisan and political publishers took a severe hit in 2021, while mainstream news publishers did better.

Be smart: The full-year drop in news engagement would have been even more dramatic were it not for the enormous amount of news traffic driven by the Capitol siege in January. The Capitol riots drove a massive global traffic spike in Jan 2021, according to Bonnie Ray, the head of data science at traffic analytics company Chartbeat. Overall, Chartbeat found that amongst 4000+ publishers globally, traffic declined 8% between 2020 and 2021, but when comparing overall traffic for December 2021 to January 2021, it's down nearly 20%.

What to watch: A few landmark events — like the Beijing Winter Olympics and the 2022 midterm elections — could provide some much-needed traffic boosts for publishers looking to hold on to fleeting subscribers.

But even those big events, in addition to tentpoles like Hollywood award shows, the Super Bowl and other sports championships, look poised to sustain TV viewership declines as Americans migrate to streaming.

https://www.axios.com/media-ratings-tra ... 87677.html

[AndyinPA]

Not a good sign for democracy.

[June bug]

Not a good sign for democracy.

Right now I see few, if any, good signs for democracy.

[Phoenix520]

The Media deserves this. They’re no longer the guardians of democracy because they’ve been bought. There are so many RW “news” organizations that are allowed to flat out lie in the name of opinion. We no longer seem to have common ground with half the citizenry.

Investigative journalism is now a niche. Pack journalism and opinion journalism don’t serve us. There are still a few outlets acting independently but for the most part the Media now comfort the comfortable.

[Kendra]

Award-winning Washington journalist Scott MacFarlane (
@MacFarlaneNews
) has been named congressional correspondent for CBS News. In this role, MacFarlane will join the CBS News Washington bureau and report for all CBS News broadcasts and platforms.

MORE: https://bit.ly/3JDd8pP

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Good for you, Scott!

[Kendra]

Yay! Former Officer Fanone is on CNN right now, first time I recall seeing him on the new job.

[filly]

Yay! Former Officer Fanone is on CNN right now, first time I recall seeing him on the new job.

He was on Don Lemon's show last night. Don showed the new video from the tunnel and him getting dragged out and he was having trouble speaking. Understandably. I hope his therapist knows what he/she is doing,

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2022 ... -cnn-plus/

Audie Cornish Joins CNN

HOST OF WEEKLY CNN+ SHOW AND PODCAST FOR CNN AUDIO
Audie Cornish is joining CNN as an anchor and correspondent for CNN+, the much-anticipated streaming subscription service that is set to debut this spring. Cornish will host a weekly CNN+ show and contribute to CNN+’s slate of live programming. She will also host a new podcast for CNN Audio and will appear on CNN covering national, political and breaking news.
“I am very excited to join CNN and the CNN+ team. There are fresh stories to be told and new ways to tell them,” said Cornish. “CNN has a dynamic system of reporters and storytelling channels. I am thrilled to be a part of it.”

Cornish joins CNN after two decades in journalism, most recently as a recognized and trusted voice on the airwaves as co-host of NPR’s flagship news program, All Things Considered. She joined NPR’s National Desk in 2005, reporting from Nashville, covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and other news in the Southeastern United States. Cornish later joined the NPR politics team in Washington to cover the 2008 presidential race and the historic election of President Barack Obama. Named host of Weekend Edition Sunday in 2011, she earned a George Peabody Award for her work with David Isay’s StoryCorps 9/11 Project, and in 2020, the National Press Foundation recognized her work with the Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism. Her feature reporting on the opioid crisis in Baltimore earned a Salute to Excellence Award from National Association of Black Journalists.

[Kendra]