The Fallacy of the Streaming ‘Co-Exclusive’
I probably don’t need to tell you that Young Sheldon is popular. The series was averaging 7.15 million weekly viewers on CBS last March—not bad for a sitcom in its seventh year. Its success on Max is a...
View ArticleThe Philadelphia Story
Back in 2001, in my past life as a M&A banker at JPMorgan Chase, I played a modest role advising Brian Roberts on Comcast’s blockbuster $72 billion acquisition of AT&T Broadband, the cable...
View ArticleA Season of Ackman’s Life
Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager, has spent the past month or so proudly demonstrating to the broader media-cultural elite the sort of activist chops that have underpinned his mostly...
View ArticleJohnson Gets the McCarthy Treatment
Way back in 2018, long before his out-of-nowhere ascent to House speaker, Mike Johnson was just another far-right backbencher, charged by the House Republican Conference with assembling a list of the...
View ArticleWhen Fashion Went to Hollywood
As Hollywood descended on the Golden Globes last weekend, it was impossible to ignore the chatter, suddenly widespread in Los Angeles, that CAA was allegedly in talks to acquire Art Partner, arguably...
View ArticleA Christie Carol
Okay, so we’re here: Finally, just four days away from the Iowa caucuses, and all two of the remaining, minimally viable Trump alternatives are desperately trying to cobble together a functional...
View Article‘Top Gun 3’ Takes Flight at Paramount
Warner Bros.’ Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy got a nice press release out of giving Tom Cruise an office on the lot. But beyond making their boss David Zaslav (and CAA) smile, what did Warners actually...
View ArticleThe Workers of Hollywood See A.I. Fights Ahead
I think most people in Hollywood are hoping to put the crippling labor unrest of 2023 completely behind them. Like Chris Evans with Ghosted or HBO with The Idol, we’ll all just pretend it never...
View ArticleA Surprising Trump Ring Kiss & Schiff’s Amazing Haul
Members are trickling back into D.C. as both chambers gavel in after the holiday break. The next few weeks are expected to be brutal, especially given the simmering angst within the House G.O.P....
View ArticleThe Declaration on the Rights of Ackman
On Friday, Bill Ackman, the voluble activist investor and Ivy League president defenestrator, sat down for an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin. It was Ackman’s first televised conversation since the...
View ArticleEllison’s Redstone Gambit & Ackman’s Endgame
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported, and my partner Matt Belloni advanced, the fact that David Ellison is looking to move forward on an acquisition of National Amusements Inc., the Redstones’...
View ArticleLionsgate’s Long, Long Road to a Lifeline
Lionsgate replaced its film chairman Joe Drake with Adam Fogelson this week, which I don’t think surprised anybody who was paying attention. The small studio—what we used to call a “mini-major” until...
View ArticleHollywood’s Dude Slump
It may or may not be surprising that Mean Girls, the new film based on the 2004 Tina Fey-written coming-of-age comedy and subsequent Fey-written musical, is on track to gross $32 million over the long...
View ArticleA.I. & Its Times
As you probably already know, The New York Times recently sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that their generative A.I. tools—specifically ChatGPT and Bing Chat, now Copilot—have infringed its...
View ArticleSo Farfetch Away
Last week, executives from Coupang, the Seoul-based e-commerce company that bailed out Farfetch in December, paid a visit to the luxury marketplace’s headquarters in the glossy Bower building on Old...
View ArticleA Fugee’s Legal Reunion
Every great song deserves a remix, and legal proceedings are no different. Consider last year’s trial of Pras Michel, the founding member of the Fugees who now faces 20 years in prison after being...
View Article“The Gravity Level”: Israel and the Evolving Question of Genocide
Last week, ahead of the hearing of South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, I brought you a conversation with my friend David Scheffer, the former U.S....
View ArticleThe Mar-a-Lago Ultimatum
Next month, Donald Trump will host a Friday evening reception at Mar-a-Lago that, on the surface, appears to resemble any number of his previous high-dollar fundraisers at Trump Org properties. “Join...
View ArticlePeacock’s Pyrrhic NFL Victory
As we all know, the most whiplash-inducing pivot in media history is currently playing out: After years of inactivity, legacy TV giants are steadfastly trying to nudge their audiences onto streaming...
View ArticleRon & Nikki’s Road to Perdition
For all the inside baseball talk about frigid weather and turnout operations and which Republican candidate “needed” a second-place finish, there’s really only one lesson to take away from the Iowa...
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