| | | | | On MSNBC Tuesday night, Lawrence O'Donnell joked that this graphic is a "copyrighted feature of Rachel Maddow's show:" Her "big board" of Trump admin departures. The list keeps getting longer and the font keeps getting smaller. "We have never seen a graphic like that in any White House at this point," O'Donnell said... | | | The newest name on the list: President Trump's chief economic adviser Gary Cohn. A trio of NYT reporters -- Kate Kelly, Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker -- broke the Cohn resignation news just before 5:30pm ET... | | "Everybody wants to work in the White House" | | President Trump must have known about Cohn's exit when he spoke at a joint presser with the Swedish prime minister at 3:30pm. Right? Cohn was a no-show at the presser. So consider what Trump said when the Cohn news was about to hit: "I read, 'Maybe people don't want to work for Trump.' Believe me, everybody wants to work in the White House. They all want a piece of the Oval Office..."
Trump added: "There will be people that change. They always change." But "so many people want to come in. I have a choice of anybody. I can take any position in the White House and I'll have a choice of the ten top people having to do with that position. Everybody wants to be there..."
--> Haberman tweeted: "What the president is saying about his ability to have his pick of top people for any job is false. Several 'top people' have declined to be interviewed..." | | What's the top story of the day? | | The obvious one: Cohn's resignation. Six other options:
-- NYT: "Adviser to Emirates With Ties to Trump Aides Is Cooperating With Special Counsel"
-- The Daily Beast: "Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Received Inside Info From Russia Probe"
-- WashPost: "Special counsel has examined episodes involving Michael Cohen"
-- CNN: "Scaramucci is going after Kelly with Trump's blessing, source says..."
-- NBC: "Stormy Daniels sues Trump, says 'hush agreement' invalid because he never signed"
-- CNN: "Office of Special Counsel: Conway violated Hatch Act"
Scroll down for more on The Day In Trump... | | Buyers walk away from Weinstein Co. deal | | The Weinstein Company is once again on the verge of bankruptcy. Last week's tentative $500 million deal to sell most of the assets has been terminated, according to Maria Contreras-Sweet, the lead investor who was trying to get the deal done. The investors apparently discovered that the studio was deeper in debt than previously disclosed.
So: Could the company find a new path out of its precarious financial straits? Well, Hollywood loves a happy ending, and if it's a surprise, all the better -- but this situation looks bleak. One source told me "the buyers discovered undisclosed liabilities for the first time today." Another source said the buyers were surprised by "how enormous the debt load was."
With money running out, employees at the studio are fearing imminent layoffs... Here's my latest story... | | | Per the WSJ, the Weinstein Co. board fired back at the investors, saying the company "has been transparent about its dire financial condition to the point of announcing its own LIKELY bankruptcy..." | | Discovery + Scripps is official | | | Discovery Communications has "formally closed its $14.6B acquisition of Scripps Networks Interactive, creating a powerhouse of unscripted programming," Deadline reports. "The new company will be known as Discovery Inc..." | | Paul Bond's scoop for THR: "Univision Communications is canceling a long-in-the works plan for an initial public offering, and it has replaced CFO Francisco Lopez-Balboa, a former Goldman Sachs banker who was hired three years ago to help the Spanish-language broadcaster with its IPO." The company blamed "prevailing market conditions" for the change of plans. Peter Lori is the new CFO...
WHAT ABOUT CEO RANDY FALCO? "Insiders told THR that while investors are disappointed with Falco's inability to take Univision public, there are no plans to replace him. The executive extended his contract four months ago to remain CEO until Jan. 31, 2020..."
--> Bloomberg's headline: "Univision Scraps IPO, Leaving Billionaires Without Exit Plan" | | Fox's newest plan to cut commercial loads | | "Fox wants to shave the advertising on its networks to two minutes per hour," Jill Disis reports. "The company says it hopes to hit that target by 2020. The change would apply to the Fox broadcast network and cable channels like FX and Fox's sports networks.." The WSJ broke this news...
--> Fox Networks EVP David Levy: "The price of attention has gone up..." Four minute long ad breaks are "not properly valuing the consumer's time and attention..."
--> Across the industry: As Disis notes, NBC and Turner are also trimming ad time... | | Megyn Kelly's newsmag will only air "periodically" | | When Megyn Kelly jumped from Fox News to NBC, the plan called for a daily talk show and a weekly newsmag... But now the newsmag will only air "periodically" now. NBC revealed the change while announcing a Friday night special, "Confronting Putin," featuring Kelly's recent exclusive interview with the Russian president.
You'll recall that Kelly's newsmag aired last summer... but when it went on hiatus during football season, some observers wondered if it would return at all. NBC says it will, but the episodes will be "dependent on Kelly's schedule with her weekday morning program," thus "periodically."
Page Six, citing a source, said Tuesday's statement had the "benefit of giving the network a way to scale back the poorly received show without the awkwardness of canceling it..." | | How much is Austin's newspaper worth? | | Hadas Gold emails: GateHouse Media is buying the Austin-American Statesman for $47.5 million from Cox Enterprises. Alarming line in the Statesman's own reporting on the deal: "GateHouse has a reputation for cutting staff at the papers it acquires, often to a point that media analysts said it can be a detriment to the communities served by its newspapers..."
--> Gold adds: Fun fact: I once interned for Cox Enterprises, and the Austin-American Statesman was one of the first major newspapers I had a published byline in... | | -- Actress and activist Cynthia Nixon "has begun the process of assembling staff to lay the groundwork for a competitive campaign" against NY governor Andrew Cuomo... (NY1)
-- The Women's Media Center is out with a new report: "The Status of Women of Color in the U.S. News Media 2018..." (Poynter)
-- A new Bloomberg policy on outside speaking engagements "requires that at least one woman be on a panel in order for Bloomberg journalists to participate..." (Talking Biz News)
-- ProPublica's Nina Martin and NPR's Renee Montagne are this year's recipients of The Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting for the "Lost Mothers" series... (Shorenstein) | | | The banner on "AC360" at the time I'm writing this: "PORN STAR STORMY DANIELS SUES PRES. TRUMP." | | | NBC had it first: "Adult film star Stormy Daniels sued Donald Trump Tuesday, alleging that he never signed the nondisclosure agreement that his lawyer had arranged with her," Sarah Fitzpatrick reported. The civil suit was filed in L.A. Superior Court... It "alleges that her agreement not to disclose her 'intimate' relationship with Trump is not valid because while both Daniels and Trump's attorney Michael Cohen signed it, Trump never did..." | | "That the president's personal attorney appears to have initiated legal action against Stormy Daniels to keep her silent is extraordinary, especially in midst of #MeToo movement," NYT reporter Megan Twohey tweeted...
--> WashPost's Paul Farhi wrote: "Still amazed that a hush-money-payoff-to-porn-star-to-cover-up-an-alleged-affair-with-the-president scandal is really only the 12th or 13th most important story of the day..." | | "There's no denying this is a big loss for the president," Ed Henry said just now on Fox News.
The headline on CNNMoney's home page: "Dow futures tumble after Gary Cohn suddenly quits..." | | Cohn's successor: Larry Kudlow? | | | CNBC senior contributor Larry Kudlow has been mentioned as a possible Cohn successor... But Kudlow has been critical of Trump's stance on trade, and recently called the tariff talk a "bad omen." Still, "some Trump allies are planning to encourage the President to tap Kudlow to succeed Cohn," CNN's Jeremy Diamond and Jim Acosta reported... | | No new TV interviews for Sam Nunberg, but... | | | One day after his epic TV news tour, Sam Nunberg did not show up for two scheduled morning TV interviews on Tuesday. But he did speak with several reporters off-camera, and he told them he's now fully cooperating with Mueller. Per CNN's Jeremy Diamond, Nunberg said "he felt compelled to go on a cable news blitz yesterday to share his frustrations because he 'got very aggravated.'" Huh... Here's my full story... | | Apparently the on-air advice helped him? | | Per the WashPost, Nunberg said he "changed his mind" about defying Mueller "after receiving public and unsolicited advice from Maya Wiley, a lawyer with whom he appeared on Ari Melber's MSNBC show Monday evening." Nunberg said "she made a compelling case to me."
I asked Wiley for her reaction. "I hope that Sam Nunberg has learned to consult with his attorney on legal matters," she told me. "More importantly, I hope the exchange serves to remind all of us that we should not tolerate anyone, not the Congress, not the President and not Sam Nunberg, undermining our legal process and the rule of law. The pressure seemed to have unhinged him and I am glad that he is taking the laws of the land more seriously."
Wiley added: "Personally important to me, is whether or not it changes his view of Black people." You might recall that racially charged Facebook posts got Nunberg fired from the Trump campaign back in 2015... | | | Brian Lowry emails: The debate over Sam Nunberg's Howard Beale-esque media-a-palooza on Monday was completely legitimate, especially the issue of putting someone who might be impaired on air. (Marketplace's Kai Ryssdal, for example, labeled it "irresponsible.") That said, Jim VandeHei's "This is one of the reasons America hates the media" tweet betrays a specific kind of myopia that's fostered by assuming -- as the WashPost's Mike Madden pointed out -- that everyone else spends their entire day with cable news playing in the background... | | CNN responds to Trump's promotion of Fox News | | On Tuesday morning POTUS retweeted Eric Trump's free ad for Fox News. "Congratulations @FoxNews," the tweet said, touting Fox's dominant February ratings for no apparent reason. "CNN has become totally irrelevant, down 19% from last year with only 1 show in the Top 25," Trump wrote.
CNN PR responded with this: "Thank you for addressing the critical national issue of TV ratings. For the record, @CNN had its second best February in 10 years. And @FoxNews was down 11% in total day. #FactsFirst 🍎" | | -- Speaking of the ratings: Thank you "Reliable Sources" fans -- the show has been #1 in the key 25-54 demo for the past two weeks -- topping Fox and MSNBC Sunday at 11am ET...
-- On the Forbes 2018 Billionaires List, Trump dropped more than 200 spots... To No. 766 on the list...
-- Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos has "moved ahead" of Bill Gates for the No. 1 spot... (Forbes)
-- "Greg Greeley, the Amazon VP who oversaw its Prime subscription service, is leaving the company after nearly two decades to take an executive position at Airbnb..." (CNN)
-- The anti-Fox watchdogs at Media Matters spotted this: "Fox News keeps running columns from the same guy explaining, 'I'm a Democrat but [insert agreement with GOP]'" (MMFA) | | ...And they're both by LA Times reporters. Amy Kaufman's book "Bachelor Nation" is out... USA Today says it describes the "unseemly tactics used to produce the reality competition series..." It's #11 on Amazon right now!
Ben Fritz's book, "The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies," is out today too... The NYT's review says it "holds the reader's attention..." | | NYT's new product for students and recent grads... | | The Edit is the NYT's newsletter for college students and recent grads. "In January, we did a callout, seeking to hire five contributors for The Edit, whom we are going to pay," the NYT's Clifford Levy tells me. "The callout page went viral, generating enormous interest. Today, we announced that we've received 20,000 applications for the contributor positions."
The Edit is being led by Lindsey Underwood... Details here... | | | Dylan Byers' morning newsletter PACIFIC officially launched on Monday... Sign up here... | | | For the record, part three | | | -- This summer Funny or Die will move "over to Vox Media's platform..." (Variety)
-- The Athletic has announced a $20 million funding round... (WSJ)
-- ICYMI: "Clinton Cash" maker Peter Schweizer is working on a "new film focusing on technology companies and their role in filtering the news..." (NYT)
-- Tony Maglio is TheWrap's new TV editor... (TheWrap) | | Newsweek's "restructuring" | | | Hadas Gold emails: Newsweek Media Group announced a "strategic restructuring" on Tuesday to invest more resources into Newsweek and spin off International Business Times with its own separate sales and operations teams. Nancy Cooper, who had been acting EIC since the abrupt firing of former editor Bob Roe and several others over the mag's investigation into their parent company's ties to a Christian college, is now officially global EIC... It's not clear exactly what this new structure means... But layoffs have been hitting various NMG properties in recent weeks... | | The next "Bachelorette" is ... | | | Hey, no spoilers here! Chloe Melas has the answer... Click here for her full story... | | The importance of this "Mister Rogers" 50th anniversary special... | | Brian Lowry emails: Beyond being a warm trip down memory lane, Tuesday night's 50th anniversary special "Mister Rogers: It's You I Like" provided a reminder of the unique place PBS has occupied in the broadcast universe, at a moment when public TV, and its funding, is once again under siege.
Read Lowry's full review here... Look for the special on VOD... | | | Brian Lowry emails: Is "The Walking Dead" the walking wounded? Yes, Sunday's episode aired opposite the Oscars, but it's still rather jarring to see that the episode slumped to the show's lowest level since its first season, suggesting that some of its creative missteps the last few seasons have gradually alienated a chunk of its audience, beyond the usual attrition... | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Jennifer Garner totally embraced being a viral Oscar meme and even got in on the fun...
-- Dwayne Johnson graciously accepted his Razzie for "Baywatch..."
-- Could that Carter family tour really happen? Save some of that tax refund for a possible Beyonce/Jay-Z tour... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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