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Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Meta shares collapse in after-hours trading, Norah O'Donnell scores a rare interview with the Pope, NPR boss Katherine Maher addresses her old tweets, Ari Emanuel takes home a handsome pay package, The Gateway Pundit files for bankruptcy protection, Fox News goes a year without Tucker Carlson, Taylor Swift's "Tortured Poets" hits the 1 billion stream mark on Spotify, and so much more. But first, the A1.

THE A1

ByteDance in a Bind

CNN Photo Illustration/Will Lanzoni

TikTok is officially on the clock.

After several false starts, Congress quietly passed divest-or-ban legislation on Tuesday night, which President Joe Biden swiftly signed into law on Wednesday, setting the stage for a high-stakes First Amendment showdown that will have enormous and untold impacts on law, media, and society.

The legislation, which Biden notably did not boast about or even mention during his remarks after signing the landmark bill, raced through the House of Representatives and the Senate after being tucked away in the aid package to Israel and Ukraine. The very-D.C. strategy allowed lawmakers to fast-track the legislation without facing the intense scrutiny a standalone measure would certainly have been subjected to.

Now, ByteDance has 270 days — or until January 19, 2025 — to sell the popular short-form video platform or otherwise face a ban in the U.S. Biden could extend the deadline by 90 days, but regardless, TikTok will ultimately need to be sold to continue operating in the country.

Suffice to say, the move already carries with it seismic ramifications for not only ByteDance, but the media and technology industries at large, which have both been considerably reshaped in recent years by the platform's meteoric rise and dominance in the video-driven entertainment arena.

It's difficult to underscore the far-reaching impacts that TikTok has over life in America — even for those who do not actively use the platform and may not realize the scope of its influence. TikTok curates the music that rockets to the top of the Billboard charts. It influences the products that appear in Amazon's search results. It can determine whether a restaurant is successful or whether it goes bust. On and on it goes. Listing the innumerable ways in which TikTok shapes life around each and every one of us would be impossible.

And now its future is up in the air, leaving a number of pressing questions.

What will happen to the many influencers who use the platform to make a living? Will they stick with TikTok or flee to other platforms now that the app faces the serious potential of an outright ban? Who has the most to gain from TikTok facing this unprecedented peril? Instagram, Snapchat, or YouTube? Will any of these social media companies make an overt play for TikTok creators in the days ahead? Each of these companies have recalibrated their platforms to imitate TikTok, in one way or another.

And arguably most importantly, who might swoop in and purchase the platform from ByteDance, should China actually allow it to be sold off? Steve Mnuchin has publicly thrown his hat in the ring. But who else might make a bid for the app? The current regulatory environment seems to rule out a tech titan like Meta, Amazon, or Google making a play for the platform. But could a legacy media company, such as Disney, enter the mix? What about a smaller e-commerce company such as Shopify?

For its part, TikTok is vowing to file legal challenges to the law. Shou Chew, the company's chief executive, tried on Wednesday after Biden signed the bill to reassure users that the app isn't "going anywhere" and that the company believes it will ultimately prevail in court on First Amendment grounds.

"We are confident and we will keep fighting for your rights in the courts," Chew said. "The facts and the Constitution are on our side and we expect to prevail."

As my colleague Hadas Gold noted to me, it is quite ironic that the Beijing-headquartered ByteDance will now rely on First Amendment protections to battle the divest-or-ban law when China has no commitment itself to free expression and prohibits TikTok from operating within its own borders.

Nevertheless, it sets up a First Amendment case for the ages — and it's not entirely clear which direction the case will go.

TIKTOK IN TROUBLE

The divest-or-ban law also raises political questions for President Joe Biden. Donald Trump, who has done a 180 and now opposes banning TikTok, has started to use the issue to try to win over young voters.
While Biden signed the law into effect on Wednesday, his campaign said that it will still remain on TikTok, a curious move that underscores the power and reach that the platform has. (NBC News)
David Leonhardt explores why "the debate over TikTok has shifted very quickly," writing, "Parts of the debate over TikTok ... are complicated ... But at least one problem with TikTok falls into a different category. It has become a leading source of information in this country." (NYT)
"To many content creators, TikTok is a lifeline," Yiwen Lu points out. "They built their businesses on TikTok, and the app is how their customers got to know them. The uncertainty surrounding TikTok is making many of them worry about their livelihood." (NYT)
Louise Matsakis put it this way: "TikTok's creators economy is staring into the abyss." (WIRED)
A ban "would further deepen the divide between two digital worlds centered around the rival economic superpowers," Laura He writes. (CNN)
"It isn't clear who could afford to buy the app, especially since Meta and Google are almost certainly prohibited because of antitrust concerns," Andrew Ross Sorkin notes. "Could that pave the way for a bid by Microsoft or Oracle, TikTok's data partner in the U.S.?" (NYT)

——— BELOW THE FOLD ———

CNN Photo Illustration/Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

Meta's Market Meltdown: Our deepest sympathies to those who invested in Meta ahead of Wednesday's earnings call. Share prices of the Facebook and Instagram parent have plummeted up to 19% in after-hours trading, wiping out as much as $200 billion in value after the company's quarterly earnings report. The stock collapse came due to a lower-than-anticipated second quarter sales forecast. Compounding the problem, as CNBC's Ashley Capoot pointed out, Mark Zuckerberg focused the earnings call "on all the ways the company bleeds cash," whether it is on investments in A.I. or the Metaverse. That all overshadowed the killer quarter results the company posted Wednesday, in which it beat on both earnings and revenue, with the latter increasing 27% year-over-year. Capoot has more here.

THE INDUSTRY

THE FOURTH ESTATE

CNN Photo Illustration/CBS News

Norah O'Donnell sat down with Pope Francis for an extraordinarily rare interview that aired on CBS Evening News Wednesday, with an extended version airing on "60 Minutes" Sunday. (CBS News)
Benjamin Mullin and Jeremy Peters spent months digging into the "crisis at NPR," asking, "Can America's public radio network turn things around?" (NYT)
NPR boss Katherine Maher spoke to Alexandra Bruell and addressed some of her old tweets that have caused an uproar on the right: "There are many professions in which you set aside your own personal perspectives in order to lead in public service, and that is exactly how I have always led organizations and will continue to lead NPR." (WSJ)
Jim VandeHei spoke to Dylan Byers for a wide-ranging discussion in which he assessed the current media landscape and offered his always candid thoughts on CNN, The WaPo, and The NYT. (Puck)
Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers slapped ITV and ITN with an intellectual property lawsuit, claiming they used video published by The Sun that shows the Prince and Princess of Wales at a farm shop in Windsor. (Telegraph)
Tom Jones looked at how student journalists at the Columbia Daily Spectator "are leading the coverage of their campus." (Poynter)
First in Reliable | The Ankler is pushing deeper into live events. Janice Min will host an event in Los Angeles May 14 with Jen Psaki and Dee Dee Myers. The goal, I'm told, is to reach the influential donor class in Hollywood that subscribes to the publication and is interested in the upcoming election. (Ankler)
Variety refreshed the look of its website. "We are proud to unveil Variety's redesign today spearheaded by our creative director Haley Kluge and design director Dan Doperalski," co-Editor-In-Chief Ramin Setoodeh told me. "Variety has never reached a bigger audience, and we are confident our new look will keep our winning streak going."

ON THE FIELD

Fox's Tubi partnered with DAZN, the streaming platform, to launch free advertiser-supported streaming channels that carry women's soccer, boxing, and MMA. (THR)

TINSELTOWN TALK

💰 It's good to be in the C-suite! Ari Emanuel took home a pay package worth about $65 million last year. (Deadline)
AMC Theaters will expand its film distribution team as it looks to sign more agreements with musicians for concert films. (The Wrap)
Winston Cho explains how the Federal Trade Commission's vote to ban noncompete contracts will impact Hollywood. (THR)
Georg Szalai crunched the numbers to determine which studio posted profit growth in 2023. (THR)

MEDIA MOVES

CNBC welcomed Deep Bagchee to run CNBC International. (TBN)
CNN promoted Gloria Pazmino to correspondent. (CNN)
The NYT hired Maxwell Strachan as a senior editor for Well and hired Leta Shy as an editorial director at Wirecutter. (NYT/NYT)
The NYT also promoted Jennie Coughlin to senior audience editor; promoted Alexa Díaz to deputy social editor; hired Erin Gavle as weekend social editor; hired Avery Hartmans as audience editor; added Greg Mills to the moderation team; promoted Eleanore Park to editorial SEO lead and audience editor; and promoted Anna Schaverien to SEO editor. (NYT)
The Associated Press hired Olivia Diaz, Safiyah Riddle, Charlotte Kramon, Kate Payne, Gabriel Sandoval, Nadia Lathan, and Jack Brook as state government reporters fanned out across the country. (AP)

THE INFO WARS

CNN Photo Illustration/Ben Jackson/Getty Images

Gateway to Bankruptcy: Yet another right-wing media outlet is facing significant repercussions after peddling lies about the 2020 election. The Gateway Pundit, the notorious far-right blog and prolific publisher of conspiracy theories, said Wednesday that it had filed for bankruptcy protection. The shock announcement from founder Jim Hoft comes as the outlet grapples with litigation related to the 2020 vote. In a Wednesday statement, Hoft said the outlet had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection "as a result of the progressive liberal lawfare attacks" and it was "not an admission of fault or culpability." He described the move as a "common tool for reorganization and to consolidate litigation when attacks are coming from all sides." Here's my full story with Marshall Cohen.

🔎 Zooming in: Hoft indicated that the website will continue publishing as the litigation plays out in court, proclaiming the outlet "will not be deterred." Nevertheless, it's another example of a right-wing outlet paying the price for carrying water for Donald Trump in 2020. Fox News, of course, paid a historic $787 million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems. And the network faces another mammoth lawsuit from Smartmatic. Meanwhile, Newsmax faces similar lawsuits. And One America News just settled litigation with Smartmatic.

IN THE BATTLEFIELD

One year ago: Rupert Murdoch fired Tucker Carlson from Fox News. An entire trip around the sun later and we still have no real definitive answer over why Murdoch axed his top-rated single host. But one thing is for certain: Carlson ultimately needed the Fox News platform far more than Fox News needed his ugly and extremist commentary.
The decision to fire Carlson has had enormous impact on media and politics. For instance, it is worth wondering: Would Congress have passed the Ukraine aid package if Carlson were still on Fox News? Would House Speaker Mike Johnson be in far more hot water with the MAGA wing of the GOP if he still had that powerful perch?
On a somewhat related note, Diana Falzone reports that Newsmax boss Chris Ruddy chose not to broadcast part of an interview with Sen. Mike Lee in which he criticized funding for Ukraine. Newsmax denied the reporting, saying, "Our recorded interview went for 11 minutes when typically such interviews last no longer than five minutes. We edited the last part of the segment for program timing reasons and there was never an intention for censorship." (Mediaite)
Weird! Sean Hannity "hasn't mentioned the GOP impeachment probe on Fox in over a month," Matt Gertz points out. (MMFA)
Elon Musk is engaged in a back-and-forth with Australia over free speech and content moderation on X. (CNN)
A group of the country's top legal analysts have been "holding off-the-record sessions to hash out the latest twists and turns in Donald Trump's legal saga," Ankush Khardori reports. (POLITICO)

CURTAIN CALL

CNN Photo Illustration/Taylor Swift

Swiftly Destroying Records: It's safe to say that Taylor Swift's "The Tortured Poets Department" is shaping up to be the biggest album release in modern history. Spotify on Wednesday said that the album had pulled off the remarkable feat of surpassing the one-billion-stream mark in just five days. It's the fastest an album has ever hit the milestone and it also means that "Tortured Poets" is the streamer's biggest album in a single week — ever. THR's Kimberly Nordyke has more here.

OFF STAGE

On the topic of Taylor Swift's "Tortured Poets," Jessica Karl argues that the way "we critique music is broken," noting "there is no way to adequately digest 31 songs and opine on it within hours of its release." (Bloomberg)
I very much agree with Karl! 31 tracks is overwhelming. The first time I listened to "Tortured Poets," I wasn't a huge fan. But after spending some time with it, I have largely reversed my initial opinion and believe it to be quite good. It takes a minute to get your arms around an album of this size.
Matt Healy said he hasn't listened to Swift's new album, but said he's "sure it's good." (Variety)
Switching gears: An attorney for Megan Thee Stallion responded to claims of forcing a worker to watch her have sex in a moving car, calling the allegations "salacious accusations to attempt to embarrass her." (Vulture)
An accident on the set of Amazon MGM's "The Pickup" left several crew members injured. (THR)
The question everyone would like an answer to: "Will 'Shōgun' get a season two?" (Vanity Fair)
"Fallen Idols": A forthcoming docuseries will examine sexual assault allegations against Backstreet Boys star Nick Carter, all of which he denies. The ID and Max project will also take a look at how Carter's late brother, Aaron, supported his accusers. (Variety)
Steve Carell will star opposite Tina Fey in Netflix's "The Four Seasons." (Deadline)
Amy Adams will star in "At the Sea." (THR)

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. You can follow us on Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn. We will see you back in your inbox tomorrow.

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