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Wednesday, May 24, 2023

I am back from the Sahara! Apologies for this letter going dark for a few days. It feels good to be back in your inbox, especially after a day with so much media news. Now, let's jump into it. In this edition: Target trembles, Meta layoffs, and Max apologizes. Plus, more warnings about A.I. and RIP Tina Turner. But first, the A1.

THE A1

Failure to Launch

CNN Photo Illustration/Getty Images

Rupert Murdoch must have been all smiles on Wednesday evening.

After some suggestions that the mogul had been dethroned by the erratic billionaire Elon Musk as the king of right-wing media, the Twitter owner humiliated himself on the public stage in grand fashion, unable to host Ron DeSantis and a small audience for a glitch-free audio-only event after the Florida governor declared himself to be a 2024 presidential contender.

DeSantis had granted Musk his first official 2024 interview, snubbing Murdoch's Fox News in the process for the prized media appearance. The move to prioritize Twitter over Fox News, following Tucker Carlson' announcement that he would host a show on Musk's platform after being fired by the Murdoch-controlled network, gave way to the notion that perhaps Murdoch had slipped as the GOP's kingmaker.

But Wednesday's events proved that to be far from the case, with Musk's Twitter Spaces event being marred by embarrassing technical glitches. For about 25 minutes, Musk and venture capitalist David Sacks struggled before an assembled audience of only a few hundred thousand people to get the audio up and running. The sound repeatedly cut in and out, ultimately leading to Musk ending the Spaces event and starting a fresh one under Sacks' account. That ultimately solved the issue, perhaps because an even smaller audience of a couple hundred thousand users showed up to listen to DeSantis.

Regardless, by then it didn't matter. The event had been savaged by commentators from across the ideological spectrum. DeSantis' announcement had become the worst thing a presidential announcement can become: a joke.

The trio claimed that they had effectively "broken the internet" because of mass interest in the event, but in reality that was not the case. The audience that assembled was not even close to epic proportions. At its peak, some six-hundred thousand listeners were awaiting DeSantis' remarks during the initial Twitter Spaces event, which is a run-of-the-mill cable news audience that figures such as DeSantis and Musk would normally mock as being tiny.

And it's also worth noting that functioning social media platforms such as YouTube regularly host large volumes of users — millions, in fact — to simultaneously watch video livestreams without such glitches. The fact that Twitter struggled to host an audio-only event raises serious questions about the platform's capability. Carlson averaged 3 million concurrent viewers on his Fox News show. How will Twitter support an audience like that — especially with video?

Once the second Twitter Spaces finally got going, DeSantis, Musk, and Sacks predictably trained their attention on bashing the establishment press. It was something of great irony to listen to: A Twitter Spaces event centered on attacking legacy media while simultaneously failing horribly at replicating what legacy media outlets do on a daily basis.

"The old system is collapsing," Carlson told Axios earlier in the day, a comment that looked quite remarkable in the wake of the world having just seen Twitter's event collapse in real-time.

Glitches aside, the Twitter Space was billed as a unique event that would allow a diverse set of users to pose questions to DeSantis. But that didn't happen when the event finally got underway. Most of the questions came from people on the right, with conversations devolving into praising Musk as a free speech hero (Musk, of course, has banned journalists and censored voices on the platform on behalf of autocratic governments.)

At the end of the day, DeSantis had to turn to legacy media (Fox News) to reach a meaningful audience to get his message out without it being interrupted by repeated technical complications. "Fox News will not crash during this interview," host Trey Gowdy poked DeSantis at the outset of the right-wing cable network's interview with the governor, making it clear that Murdoch's venue, by comparison, is a well-oiled machine.

"All Presidential candidates are most welcome on this platform," Musk tweeted following the messy event.

There's no question, however, that if any other Republican hopeful were thinking of bypassing Murdoch for Musk, this event will give them second thoughts. And it should.

DeSantis' decision to place his faith in Twitter — which has been rocked by a series of outages and technical breakdowns since Musk's takeover — for such a high-stakes event could now very well hobble his already rough start to become the next president.

THE SIDEBAR

Matt Drudge's 🔥 banner headline: "Don't Say Glitch." (DRUDGE)
"It was the announcement not heard 'round the world," writes Matt Flegenheimer. (NYT)
"Without any glitches, launching the campaign on a Twitter Space would have been bizarre," Ben Jacobs writes. "It was a medium where DeSantis was able to combine all the cliches of a conventional campaign speech with the visual appeal of a conference call. It attracted a cumulative audience that was smaller than he would have gotten on any single cable network, let alone a rollout that would have been covered live by all three and potential network television stations." (Vox)
"You're running for president of the United States but you decide to share the stage with someone who is arguably more powerful and influential than you are — you're casting yourself as the supporting actor when you should be the lead," Kurt Bardella points out. (LAT)
Chris Hayes: "Remember that time Elon Musk unveiled the new Cybertruck, and when he went to demonstrate the vehicle's supposedly bulletproof glass, two of the windows smashed? Today's Twitter rollout of the Ron DeSantis campaign went kinda like that." (Twitter)
"#DeSaster" trended on Twitter after the event. (Mediaite)
"Everyone knows the best way to launch a presidential campaign is via a website where like 2/3 of the technical staff has been fired by the event host," Charlie Warzel quipped. (Twitter)
"Maybe DeSantis should have announced on Truth Social?" Dan Rather joked. (Twitter)
"In the world of traditional media and politics, a glitchy half-hour delay and an audience in the hundreds of thousands rather than millions, Wednesday's Twitter Spaces event might look like a failure. But in Silicon Valley, failure is often spun as positive, even essential in developing new products and improving existing ones," Barbara Ortutay notes. (AP)

——— BELOW THE FOLD ———

CNN Photo Illustration/ARNAL/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

RIP Tina: The music world was in mourning on Wednesday after Tina Turner, the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll," died at 83 after struggling in recent years with her health. Throughout the day, the iconic "What's Love Got To Do With It" singer was remembered by those who knew her and those she inspired. CNN has a roundup of tributes here.

► The NYT obit by William Grimes described Turner as an "earthshaking singer whose rasping vocals, sexual magnetism and explosive energy made her an unforgettable live performer and one of the most successful recording artists of all time."

THE INFO WARS

CNN/Photo Illustration/Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Target Trembles: Target on Wednesday succumbed to right-wing media backlash, pulling some Pride merchandise from its shelves after being forced into the culture wars and targeted by anti-LGBTQ commentators. The move marked the second time in a matter of a weeks that a company has caved to pressure from the right-wing media machine, which professes to be against "cancel culture" while simultaneously pushing for it when it fits its agenda.

The Southern Poverty Law Center warned that Target's move "sends a message that intimidation works." And many on the right were not shy about feeling emboldened. The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh said the quiet part aloud, tweeting, "The goal is to make 'pride' toxic for brands. If they decide to shove this garbage in our face, they should know that they'll pay a price. It won't be worth whatever they think they'll gain. First Bud Light and now Target. Our campaign is making progress. Let's keep it going." His colleague Michael Knowles took it one step further: "Once we make these things culturally toxic ... we've got to bring in the cavalry, we've got to come back in with more political force to ban some of this stuff and to say no."

IN THE BATTLEFIELD

A week after it was revealed to be a hoax, Fox News' "Outnumbered" — one of the shows that pushed the false story about homeless vets being displaced by migrants — finally issued a correction. "We wanted to update you on the story and make sure the record was set straight." (Mediaite)
After Joe Rogan talked about a fake climate change theory on his show, it has gone viral on TikTok, Justine Calma reports. (The Verge)

THE BUSINESS

Missing The Messengers: The anticipated launch of The Messenger is not off to a smooth start. Mediaite's Isaac Schorr reported Wednesday that a third editor has already quit the outlet over frustration with its strategy of churning out cheap aggregated content. Over the weekend, The NYT's Benjamin Mullin reported on tension inside the site. Gregg Birnbaum, a politics editor who has also quit, told Mullin that the "rapacious and blind desperate chasing of traffic — by the nonstop gerbil wheel rewriting story after story that has first appeared in other media outlets in the hope that something, anything, will go viral — has been a shock to the system and a disappointment to many of the outstanding quality journalists at The Messenger who are trying to focus on meaningful original and distinctive reporting." A spokesperson for The Messenger didn't respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

IN THE INDUSTRY

Semafor has raised $19 million from new investors, including Yahoo founder Jerry Yang. The money replaces the investment from the now-disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried. (NYT)
Charlotte Klein reported on how The NYT and the Guild finally struck a deal and ended the months-long bitter dispute. (Vanity Fair)
Fred Ryan said The WaPo is establishing an A.I. task force "charged with establishing the company's strategic direction and priorities for advancing our AI capabilities." (WaPo)
CNN announced it will host another GOP town hall, this one with Nikki Haley and moderated by Jake Tapper. It will take place June 4. (CNN)
The American News Women's Club honored Dana Bash with its annual Excellence in Journalism Award. Wolf Blitzer led one of the toasts, saying, "As you no doubt know, Dana has done many special CNN reports on various badass women – and every time I see one of her badass reports, I say to myself that Dana fits that description as well. She's a real badass."
Al Roker said he expects to return to "Today" next week after a knee replacement surgery. (Deadline)
Shifting gears to streaming: The fully integrated Paramount+ and Showtime merged platform will launch on June 27 — with an increased $11.99 price tag. (TechCrunch)
Netflix officially begun its password sharing crackdown in the U.S. (CNN)

MEDIA MOVES

The WSJ appointed Dave Pettit as its managing editor for strategy and operations. (Dow Jones)
The LAT announced Marisa Gerber moved to its business desk as an enterprise reporter. (LAT)

THE VALLEY

CNN Photo Illustration/Peter DaSilva/Reuters

Meta in Mourning: Meta on Wednesday gave word to a new batch of employees that they were being laid off by the once-invincible tech company. The layoffs are the final round of job cuts that Mark Zuckerberg announced earlier this year and impacted the company's business departments. Meta's team in Ireland was hit particularly hard, losing nearly 500 staffers, Bloomberg's Alex Barinka, Aisha Counts, and Sarah Frier reported. The trio noted that "now remaining staff are hoping an uncomfortable limbo at the company can end." Read their full story here.

TOO MANY TABS

Another chilling warning: Former Google boss Eric Schmidt said at The WSJ's CEO Council Summit that A.I. poses an "existential risk" to humanity. He defined an "existential risk" as "many, many, many, many people harmed or killed." (CNBC)
OpenAI's leaders renewed their calls for A.I. regulation and an international A.I. watchdog in a public statement, comparing the technology to nuclear energy. (WaPo)
Senate Democrats want answers from Google related to how it deletes user data regarding location history. The questions come after a story from The WaPo which found some data wasn't deleted when users visited reproductive health clinics. (CNN)
TikTok employees regularly posted user information on a messaging and collaboration tool, Sapna Maheshwari and Ryan Mac report. (NYT)
YouTube Music is the latest to try to copy TikTok's recommendations tab. (Android Police)

CURTAIN CALL

CNN Photo Illustration/Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Max's 'Mistake': Warner Bros. Discovery on Wednesday apologized after lumping writers, directors, and producers into the generic category of "creators" in its new Max app. The move earned a swift and sharp rebuke from the Directors Guild and Writers Guild, both of which said it was disrespectful to its members. "We agree that the talent behind the content on Max deserve their work to be properly recognized," WBD said in a statement. "We will correct the credits, which were altered due to an oversight in the technical transition from HBO Max to Max and we apologize for this mistake." (WBD is, of course, CNN's parent company.) The WaPo's Herb Scribner has more here.

OFF STAGE

Shawn McCreesh goes inside David Zaslav and Graydon Carter's epic Cannes party, chatting with them both. Zaslav told McCreesh that it is "painful" to be the target of resentment amid the writers strike. (NY Mag)
Endeavor President Mark Shapiro said the writers strike is a "growth opportunity" for his company. (Deadline)
Filming in Los Angeles continues to collapse amid the writers strike, dropping 51.5% last week, when compared to the previous year. (Deadline)
Brian Cox tells the BBC that he felt Logan Roy died "too early" in the final season of "Succession" and that it made him feel "rejected." (THR)
Lily-Rose Depp says she is "super happy" for her dad Johnny Depp after he received a standing ovation at Cannes. (ET)
Margot Robbie talks about the sexualization of Barbie for the cover of Vogue's summer issue: "She's a plastic doll. She doesn't have organs. If she doesn't have organs, she doesn't have reproductive organs. If she doesn't have reproductive organs, would she even feel sexual desire? No, I don't think she could." (Vogue)
Peter Kiefer looks at how Hollywood is "shifting firearms' portrayal" in projects, calling it a "quiet pivot to showing gun safety onscreen." (Ankler)
Disney's "The Little Mermaid" is projected to make a big splash this Memorial Day Weekend, with estimates it will earn $125 million at the North American box office. (Variety)
Taylor Swift is releasing a new "Midnights" deluxe album featuring Ice Spice and Lana Del Ray. (Pitchfork)

Thank you for reading! This newsletter was edited by Jon Passantino and produced with the assistance of Liam Reilly. Have feedback? Send us an email here. We will see you back in your inbox tomorrow.