| | | | | Exec summary: Sunny is sleeping soundly tonight. Thanks for all the advice yesterday! Scroll down for an "Apprentice" update, Facebook's upgrade, "Roseanne" ratings, and more... | | | Wednesday was W.H. communications director Hope Hicks' last full day on the job, CNN's Jeremy Diamond reported. Why is this the lead story? Here's why... | | Daniella Emanuel emails: CBS's Jacqueline Alemany has a must-read about how White House staffers are dealing with Hicks' departure. "Staffers are approaching the post-Hicks era with trepidation, unsure what to expect in a lawless White House with a president who thrives on chaos and resents authority, process and order," Alemany says. "Hicks even used her standing to shield others from the wrath of Mr. Trump's explosive outbursts. 'She's the glue to the entire place,' a White House source said. 'She helps keep the White House from fracturing. I don't think people realize what's about to happen once she leaves...'"
--> Context: Her ally Josh Raffel left the W.H. last Friday... | | Who is comms director now? | | | I guess it's President Trump? There's been no interim comms director named... I tried to ask the W.H. about this on Wednesday night, but there's no comment... | | NPR's Jessica Taylor said it best: "As expected, it's VA Secretary David Shulkin who's sent packing this week on 'The Apprentice: White House.'" Truth be told, I assumed a firing was coming as soon as BI's Josh Barro tweeted, "This is the first slow news week of the entire Trump presidency." And when I saw a headline on The Atlantic titled "Why is Trump so quiet?" I KNEW some news was imminent...
Shulkin was apparently notified by phone by John Kelly on Wednesday afternoon... Which means this was not a "firing by tweet..." But it WAS an announcement by tweet. Reuters' Jeff Mason had the jump on it by just a minute. Then Trump trumpeted the news about Dr. Ronny Jackson's appointment onn Twitter, leading the NYT's Jonathan Martin to comment, "The tweets where he wants to break news of his firings remind that he's as much media figure as biz guy..."
--> CNN's Jim Acosta reported: "Dr. Jackson's performance at the WH briefing where he praised the president's health played a part in Trump's decision to hire the WH doctor for the VA job. WH official said Trump liked the way Jackson handled himself with reporters..." | | "Fox & Friends Weekend" co-host Pete Hegseth was reportedly a candidate for the VA job. But Maggie Haberman tweeted that Hegseth "didn't want to go through the confirmation process." This APM investigation may include some of the reasons why...
BUT: "Hegseth may have missed out on the VA job, but it's possible he'll have more influence with Trump from his current perch: co-hosting Fox & Friends Weekend," Michael Grynbaum tweeted... | | What to expect on the morning shows | | | A whole lotta scrutiny of Dr. Jackson and lots of questions about why he's being nominated. Joe Scarborough teed it up on Twitter on Wednesday night: "Is this the same White House doctor that said Trump weighed 199 lbs, ran a 4.3 40, and was able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? Interesting." | | Us Weekly has a new story saying that Melania Trump is "very, very unhappy with her life." The quote is attributed to a "family insider." The First Lady's comms director Stephanie Grisham responded by saying the story is "false, and I'd challenge the sources saying those things to do so on the record..."
--> Worth noting: Us Weekly is owned by the Trump-friendly American Media... | | -- 🤔 Geraldo Rivera telling Howard Stern about his pal Bill O'Reilly: "The problem is the guy never had a good date. That's his problem. He never had someone who really loved him..." (Mediaite)
-- "Is tech wreck for Amazon and Facebook over," Paul R. La Monica asks, or is it "just beginning?" (CNNMoney)
-- Laura Hazard Owen's latest: "Facebook starts training 14 metro newsrooms this week. What will they learn?" (NiemanLab)
-- ProPublica's latest: Jason Foster, the chief investigative counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, is a "partisan combatant" and a "remorseful blogger..." (ProPublica) | | This Deadline headline really captures it: "'Roseanne' Revival's Huge Debut Stuns Hollywood, Prompts Soul-Searching."
Frank Pallotta emails: ABC's "Roseanne" revival premiered Tuesday to a staggering 18 million viewers. The episode did not shy away from politics -- with Roseanne Barr's eponymous character revealing that she's a Trump supporter while her sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) supports Hillary Clinton.
--> Key point: "Roseanne" performed best with viewers away from the coasts, with the top markets for the show being Tulsa, Cincinnati and Kansas City...
--> John Podhoretz: "Roseanne revival is a wake-up call for Hollywood" | | | Frank Pallotta adds: I think the most eye-popping "Roseanne" stat is that the episode actually topped the number of total viewers for the show's original finale by 10%. And that was 21 years ago. That's just unheard of in this TV climate... | | | On Sunday, Trump-spanking Stormy Daniels attracted 22 million viewers on CBS. On Tuesday, Trump-supporting "Roseanne" draws 18 million viewers on ABC. This shows the enduring power of TV, right? Piers Morgan responded to me: No, it's about the "enduring power of TRUMP on TV..." | | What Channing Dungey is saying | | | "Given the current political climate, there's a hunger for this kind of conversation," she told THR... Re: a second season, she says "hopefully we'll have some news soon..." | | | Lisa Respers France emails: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has concluded its investigation. Its president John Bailey has been cleared after the academy looked into a harassment claim that was made against him... | | Julia Waldow emails: Facebook announced on Wednesday that it is "making data settings and tools easier to find" with the help of a redesigned settings menu, a new privacy shortcuts menu, and an "Access Your Information" tool that lets people manage their posts, comments, and searches (including deleting items from their timeline or profile.)
One line about the third initiative particularly stands out: "We're also making it easier to download the data you've shared with Facebook -- it's your data, after all." True, users do shape their own data, but as the Cambridge Analytica scandal demonstrates, they don't exactly own their data or have full control over how it's used...
--> TechCrunch's Ingrid Lunden adds some additional context to the announcement: "What today's changes do not do is provide any indications that Facebook plans to do anything different in terms of what information it's gathering and using to run its service, and its bigger, profitable business..." | | No more "Partner Categories" | | | Facebook is ending an ad-targeting option called "Partner Categories..." The WSJ says this means FB is "curbing the information that it exchanges with companies that collect and sell consumer data for advertisers..." | | -- A fun read: "A new generation of food magazines thinks small, and in ink..." (NYT)
-- Render Media, the company "behind recipe video publisher Cooking Panda and news and politics site Opposing Views," says "it is planning to close shop, pointing to a combination of factors, including recent changes by Facebook..." (WSJ)
-- Daniella Emanuel emails: Former Obama adviser and U.N. ambassador Susan Rice is Netflix's newest board member... (CNN)
-- A recent study from Adobe "found that about 28% of website traffic showed strong 'non-human signals,' leading the company to believe that the traffic came from bots or click farms. The company studied traffic across websites belonging to thousands of clients..." (WSJ) | | Hadas Gold emails from the courthouse: Wednesday's proceedings were progressing as expected until the very end of the day, when Judge Richard Leon warned both sides that they need to hurry up. AT&T and Time Warner have already extended the October 2016 merger agreement until June 21. If the case is not decided by then, either company could terminate the deal and Time Warner -- parent company of CNN -- could be in line for a $500 million breakup fee from AT&T. (Both sides could extend the date should they choose.)
--> Leon warned that if the trial bleeds into May, he may not issue an opinion before the merger deadline, because he expects it to be 200 pages long...
--> Context: The trial has been moving very slowly and barely getting through two witnesses a day... Leon asked both sides to look over their witness lists this weekend and try to trim 'em down...
--> Read Gold and Jessica Schneider's full story here... | | What to expect on Thursday | | More from Hadas Gold: Before Leon's admonition, Turner CEO John Martin finished his testimony. Key point: He testified that when it comes to advertising, "we at Turner aren't even playing in the same league" as Google and Facebook... He said the AT&T deal would help Turner catch up and target ads more accurately...
COMING THURSDAY: There are three possible witnesses, including Professor John Hauser of MIT, Comcast EVP Greg Rigdon, and TCM and FilmStruck's Coleman Breland...
PLUG: Gold and I will be on CNN's "New Day" in the 8am hour Thursday... | | Turner's newest streaming service: Bleacher Report Live | | "The new Bleacher Report Live service, slated to debut in April, will carry thousands of live sporting events," Variety's Todd Spangler writes.
Of note: "Turner didn't announce pricing for B/R Live but said it will have 'flexible pricing options' for direct access to live games on a per-event or subscription basis. The over-the-top streaming service will be available for iOS and Android devices and on the web..." | | | "Dateline" exec producer Liz Cole will now double as the president of NBC's Peacock Productions division. "Over the past six months I've been looking at how we can best position Peacock for the future and bring it deeper into the fold of NBC News," Noah Oppenheim wrote in an internal memo on Wednesday... He said Peacock, under Cole, "will continue to be its own entity serving external and internal clients, while taking advantage of greater connectivity to NBC News..." | | | For the record, part three | | | By Julia Waldow:
-- The Hewlett Foundation is pledging $10 million to fund research into the spread of disinformation on social media... (Nieman Lab)
-- "For the first time," the NYT is sharing data about diversity within its ranks, both in terms of staffers and those in leadership positions. "Over the past three years, representation of women has increased at every level of the Times," its announcement reveals. But "the trend is not as uniformly positive for people of color..." (NYT)
-- The BBC's annual report reveals the broadcaster is "struggling" to compete with Netflix and Amazon, Andrew Liptak says. So how might the BBC finds its footing? Plans include online video, iPlayer, and new programs... (The Verge)
-- "The President Show" star Anthony Atamanuik is on a promotional tour ahead of his next Comedy Central special... He says he's trying to "satirize the whole system, not just" Trump... BTW, Atamanuik is slated to join us on this Sunday's "Reliable Sources..." (Twitter) | | The right's ridicule of David Hogg | | Oliver Darcy emails: Some right-wing commentators have been zeroing in on Parkland student/gun control activist David Hogg for several reasons. The latest: He's been rejected by multiple colleges. Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and other right-wing media outlets published stories on the topic in the last few days. And on Wednesday, Fox News host Laura Ingraham waded into the waters with a tweet to her more than 2 million followers: "David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates.)"
Ingraham was ripped for mocking the teenager. Even right-wing troll Mike Cernovich tweeted, "Adults are mocking a 17 year old for not getting into college..... Do I need to explain that this is not a good look?" Cernovich is right. Even if you disagree with Hogg's politics, which is totally fair, attempting to embarrass Hogg on the national stage for being rejected by a few colleges is quite low... | | Speaking of Parkland students and college... | | | I was in New Haven, CT on Wednesday afternoon, delivering a lecture and speaking to students at Yale. What a small world -- Rebecca Schneid was there too. Schneid is the student editor from Parkland, FL who joined me on last Sunday's "Reliable Sources." She's visiting colleges with her parents this week. We ended up having an in-person discussion about journalism and activism, elaborating on the story I wrote on Tuesday... If you missed it, check it out here... | | Comey town hall with Cooper next month | | On Wednesday CNN announced that James Comey's book tour will include a town hall moderated by Anderson Cooper on April 25, a week after the book arrives in stores.
Here's an updated but still very incomplete list of Comey's book tour dates:
April 15: ABC prime time special
April 17: "Morning Edition," Colbert
April 18: "Today," "The View"
April 19: Tapper, Maddow, live podcast taping with Remnick
April 25: CNN town hall
April 26: Baier (first Fox interview) | | The origins of "Alex, Inc." | | | Daniella Emanuel emails: Here's a mouthful: A TV show about a podcast that's about starting a podcast company premiered Wednesday night on ABC. "Alex, Inc." is based on the story of Alex Blumberg, who quit his job at "This American Life" and started a podcast called "Startup," which chronicled his journey to launch the podcasting company that is now known as Gimlet Media. The NYT has details here... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... the feedback helps us improve this newsletter every day... Thanks! | | | | | | |
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