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Thursday, August 31, 2023

Labor Day Weekend is in sight! A quick housekeeping note: We will be observing the holiday on Monday and will be back in your inbox on Tuesday.

The Georgia case against Donald Trump is set to be televised, Margaret Sullivan praises CNN's appointment of Mark Thompson, Barstool lays off staffers, Walter Isaacson publishes an excerpt of his Elon Musk biography, Threads' desktop launch isn't boosting its stats in a big way, Taylor Swift is heading to theaters, and more. But first, the A1.

THE A1

Summertime Sadness

CNN Photo Illustraton/Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images

Summer is coming to a close, but Hollywood is still stuck in strike Hell.

In the nearly four months since the Writers Guild of America, West, went on strike, television schedules have been shaken up, movies and shows have been bumped, once-glamorous red carpets have gone dark, and the laughter of late-night has died.

A few weeks ago, when the pain of the enduring stalemate began to cause a wince, studios moved to reinitiate talks with the writers, eliciting a sense of cautious optimism in Tinseltown. It seemed that after an exhausting summer, rife with endless hours of picketing and rhetoric fueled by inflamed passions, hope was on the horizon.

But those glimmers of hope for an elusive agreement turned out to be a mirage. Now, on the precipice of Labor Day Weekend, a deal is nowhere in sight. Schools are starting back up, the weather is cooling, but Hollywood remains enmeshed in a labor dispute for the ages.

Studio executives believe they have made strong efforts in recent weeks to end the standstill. Represented by the AMPTP, the studios delivered to the writers terms that they had hoped could be the starting point for a negotiation that would ultimately lead to an agreement. But they were deeply mistaken. The writers, represented by the WGA, scoffed at the offer. For them, it was grossly insufficient on a number of fronts.

From there, the AMPTP tried appealing directly to members of the WGA by publicly releasing the terms of their offer. Perhaps, they had hoped, when the WGA membership base saw the offer for themselves, it would lead to a mutiny that could tilt the scales in their favor. The bold move signaled how confident the studios were in the offer they had put on the table.

But it did little, if anything, to move the needle. Instead, it earned the studios yet another scolding from guild negotiators who ripped the studios for attempting to bypass them.

"Despite the AMPTP's attempt at a detour around us, we remain committed to direct negotiations with the companies," the WGA said last week in a note to members. "That's actually how a deal gets made and the strike ends. That will be good for the rest of the industry and the companies as well."

The guild might be committed to direct negotiations, but direct negotiations are not happening. Instead, the two sides are once again playing a game of chicken, waiting for the other side to make the first move. Each side firmly believes the ball is in the other party's court. The negotiations are in such despair that the two sides cannot even agree on the basic state of play.

"It's a waiting game," one studio executive told me Thursday.

That game of chicken is about to get a lot more serious after Labor Day. The window for a deal that saves the winter season of production and gets cameras rolling once again is quickly closing. And panic is starting to seep in on both sides of the equation. As the studio executive I spoke to said, the possibility of a winter season "just evaporates" if the strikes aren't resolved within the next several weeks. And if there is no winter season, there would be little work on television productions until the new year, with or without a deal.

The protracted stalemate — now headed for record territory — raises the real possibility that Hollywood production will remain frozen for many months. That would mean that writers and the many others who depend on the hum of the Hollywood engine to make ends meet, could have to make it through the holidays without work. A summer of picketing will give way to a winter of cold anguish. Bank accounts of the striking scribes are quickly shrinking, film and television show plans are being further imperiled, and California's massive economy is taking a blow.

A failure to strike a deal soon after Labor Day is not a foregone conclusion, by any means. A breakthrough can happen at any point in time. Both the writers and studios do share one common belief: that the strike has gone on too long. But, at this moment, there isn't yet a light at the end of the tunnel. And if it's not resolved in short order, it will be a dark winter for the industry.

HOLLYWOOD HELL

The top studio executives met on Wednesday as the strikes rage on, Dominic Patten and Anthony D'Alessandro reported. (Deadline)
"Insiders for the studios say that Hollywood's executives have spent the last week unsure of where talks go from this point," Jeremy Fuster reported. (The Wrap)
The studios have hired strategic public relations firm The Levinson Group "to manage the message as negotiations heat up," Eleanor Hawkins reported. (Axios)
Three AMC shows have been permitted by SAG-AFTRA to resume production, Gene Maddaus reported. (Variety)
Barry Diller said that the studios should "get out of the room with their deepest fiercest and almost conclusive enemy, Netflix and probably with Apple and Amazon because Netflix is in one business and and they are the rulers of the business." (THR)
Adam Driver ripped the studios, saying at the Venice Film Festival he was "very proud" to be "a visual representation of a movie that's not part of the AMPTP." (Daily Beast)
Jimmy Kimmel revealed that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck contacted him and "offered to pay" his staff during the strike. (THR)
PEN America is hooking young screenwriters up with grants to help them survive the strike. (Deadline)

——— BELOW THE FOLD ———

CNN Photo Illustration/Charlie Riedel/AP

Televising the Trump Trial: Is this about to be the most-watched trial of all-time? It's hard to imagine that it won't be. Judge Scott McAfee, the Fulton County judge overseeing the 2020 election trial against Donald Trump and 18 others, ruled that all proceedings in the courtroom will be live-streamed on YouTube and allowed to be televised. The ruling is a major win for transparency advocates who have pushed to allow cameras in the court. It will allow the public to see precisely how strong the case against Trump really is, with its own eyes. And it will certainly help limit the misinformation that will flow from the trial, by allowing people to watch in real-time and giving newsrooms the ability to instantaneously have access to video that allows them to quickly fact-check claims. That said, as CNN's Jason Morris noted, the ruling "would be subject to change and would not apply to any portions of the case moved to federal court." Morris has details here.

THE INDUSTRY

THE FOURTH ESTATE

"I once was skeptical of Mark Thompson," Margaret Sullivan writes. "But he's a good bet for CNN." (Guardian)
"Thompson, who will come out of retirement to start his new role on October 9, will arrive to a full inbox," Christopher Grimes and Anna Nicolaou write, noting all the challenges the network faces. (FT)
"Former Thompson colleagues said cultivating relationships with stars like Andrew Ross Sorkin at [The NYT] was one of the British exec's strong suits," Lucia Moses reports. (Insider)
🎙️ Dylan Byers talks to Peter Kafka about whether Thompson can push CNN into the future as the linear television model declines. (Recode Media)
The Manchester Mill, a local British newsletter outlet, will expand across the U.K. after it was valued at 1.75 million pounds by investors — including Thompson. (The Guardian)
"The CNN Max dilemma": Natalie Korach and Lucas Manfredi write about how CNN Max will have to pull off the "hat trick" of offering "news on its main subscription platform while preserving as much of its fast-declining linear audience as possible." (TheWrap)
Barstool Sports, now under the control of Dave Portnoy, officially cut 25% of its staff. (TheWrap)
Gannett "has paused the use of an artificial intelligence tool to write high school sports dispatches after the technology made several major flubs in articles in at least one of its papers," Clare Duffy reports. (CNN)
Kristen Welker will receive the Fourth Estate Award, the National Press Club's top honor, in November. (AdWeek)
Tim Gray parted ways with Variety after 42 years at the publication and will head to the Golden Globes as EVP. (Variety)

THE MARKET

Disney's networks have gone dark on Spectrum cable as the two companies face off in a carriage dispute. (THR)

MEDIA MOVES

The NYT moved Sopan Deb from sports to the express team. (NYT)

THE INFO WARS

CNN Photo Illustration/ohn Lamparski/Getty Images

Fox and Fail: Amid a summer of record-breaking heat waves and deadly natural disasters, Fox News continues to misinform its audience about climate change. On Thursday, the hosts of "The Five" — the network's highest rated program — offered a litany of bogus claims about the rapidly warming climate, with Jesse Watters dismissing human-caused climate change as a sinister "pyramid scheme" to secretly enrich elites. "They're all making all this money by telling us something that is not happening," Watters claimed while an on-screen banner blared, "LIBERAL MEDIA ECHOES BIDEN CLIMATE ALARMISM." Jeanine Pirro, apparently hoping to one-up Watters' absurdity, snarked, "One of the first hurricanes reported was in the 1400's. Now I would venture a guess that had nothing to do with fossil fuels."

🔎 Zooming in: These false claims would be exhausting, if they weren't so dangerous, effectively poisoning a large part of the electorate and lawmakers on an issue of paramount importance. Extensive research from scientists and agencies around the world have shown the accelerating change in the climate could not occur without direct human influence. While Fox News pretends it is a credible news organization with editorial standards, it continues to deceive its viewers, leaving its audience with a warped view of reality.

IN THE BATTLEFIELD

Katherine Rosman profiled former Fox News host Geraldo Rivera following his retirement from the right-wing network. (NYT)
Trump fumed at Fox News for having the audacity to interview Chris Christie and Bill Barr. (Mediaite)
I'll let the headline do all the talking here: "Tucker Carlson appears to attack Fox News reporter Jen Griffin in wild rant denying Assad gas attacks on civilians." (Mediaite)
If that was not wild enough, Justin Baragona noted Carlson also claimed the U.S. is "speeding toward assassination" of Trump because "permanent Washington" just "can't have" him as president again. (Daily Beast)
Spot on analysis from Matt Gertz: Carlson "is reaching the bottom of the conspiracy theory barrel." (MMFA)

THE VALLEY

CNN Photo Illustration/Michel Euler/Pool/AP

Isaacson's Insight: We have our first look at Walter Isaacson's biography on Elon Musk. The WSJ on Thursday published an excerpt of the highly anticipated book, offering "the real story" of the erratic billionaire's Twitter takeover. Isaacson sheds light on a number of matters, including how Musk tried to blow up the golden parachutes of Twitter's former top executives by pushing through the acquisition early. "It was audacious, even ruthless," Isaacson wrote. "But it was justified in Musk's mind because of his conviction that Twitter's management had misled him." Read the full piece here.

TOO MANY TABS

Elon Musk — again — said X will roll out a video/audio phone calling feature. Of course, he did not offer a timeline. (Reuters)
Here's a move Musk would zing Mark Zuckerberg for: X wants to collect the biometric data of users, Aisha Counts reports, citing a quiet change to the company's privacy policy. (Bloomberg)
Uh oh. Meta's recent launch of a bare-bones desktop version of Threads didn't have much of an impact on the number of new users or web traffic, Sarah Perez reports, citing data from Similarweb. (Threads)
Meanwhile, Meta is pushing a "For you on Threads" carousel across select Instagram feeds in a bid to boost the number of daily active users on its new text-based platform. (TechCrunch)
TikTok removed 284 accounts that it said were linked to a Chinese disinformation organization. (The Guardian)
Meta released its FACET tool, which will streamline the detection of racial and gender biases within computer vision. (Axios)

CURTAIN CALL

CNN Photo Illustration/Hector Vivas/TAS23/Getty Images

Taylor Hits Theaters: Couldn't get tickets to the sold-out Taylor Swift "Eras Tour"? There is now another way to catch the show: the movie theater. The pop sensation announced Thursday that the popular tour will be made into a movie, hitting theaters this fall. "Eras attire, friendship bracelets, singing and dancing encouraged," Swift said, in announcing the tour with a trailer via an Instagram post. CNN's All Rosenbloom has details here.

🔎 Zooming in: How much will the concert film make in theaters? Justin Bieber holds the record for his 2011 "Never Say Never," which made nearly $100 million. Box Office Pro chief analyst Shawn Robbins told me he believes "the floor" is in the neighborhood of $40-50 million. The final total, he told me, could be "much, MUCH more." Given the hype around the "Eras Tour," I'm personally betting Swift will prove to be a box office powerhouse that surpasses Bieber's figure. We'll see!

OFF STAGE

Jem Aswad reports that Ariana Grande "has parted ways with Scooter Braun and HYBE despite claims to the contrary." (Variety)
The Adam Driver-starring "Ferrari" earned a seven-and-a-half-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. (Deadline)
Maybe this will make it easier to find something to watch? Like Netflix and Amazon, Max will soon feature a top 10 list. (Vulture)
"Hijack" has become the second AppleTV+ series to land a spot on Nielsen's streaming rankings. (THR)
Meanwhile, "Suits" took first place for the seventh week in a row on the Nielsen chart, as it remains the surprise hit of the summer. (Variety)
Netflix's eight-episode live-action adaptation of the long-running anime series "One Piece" dropped and the reviews are largely positive. (Variety)
Netflix also announced the release dates for its full fall film state, which spans 28 titles. (Deadline)
Music Madness: YouTube Music launched a new look for its Now Playing screen which allows users to see the comments attached to the YouTube video of the song they're listening to. (The Verge)
Greg Braxton profiled Gerry Turner, the septuagenarian at the heart of this season's "The Golden Bachelor." (LAT)

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 on Tuesday, after the holiday weekend.