Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong is credited with being the first to coin the phrase “Trump Always Chickens Out” in March of 2025. Mockingly abbreviated to “TACO,” it quickly became part of the popular political lexicon. Armstrong was referring to Wall Street trades based on market dips caused by the threat of—and then the rapid retreat from—new tariffs on trade with other nations.
However, the term “TACO” has expanded to encompass the administration’s pattern of softening its initial, often outrageous demands to arrive at slightly more reasonable policies.
Like the one that insisted that Denmark had to hand over the whole of Greenland to the United States.
We continue to wonder whether the Federal Communications Commission and its Chairman, Brendan Carr, might follow with his own TACO-like move in his much-touted rush to repeal existing rules on broadcast TV station ownership.
It has been over five months since Nexstar Media, led by Chairman and CEO Perry Sook, announced its intent to acquire rival station group owner TEGNA for some $6.2 billion. The deal would expand Nexstar, the nation’s largest owner of local television stations, to control approximately 265 stations. Any transaction that results in a change of ownership for a broadcast licensee must be reviewed and approved by the Federal Communications Commission, aside from potentially owning more than two local TV stations in a single market, which isn’t permitted under the FCC’s present rules. Adding TEGNA’s existing portfolio of stations would give Sook’s company control of television stations covering 80% of the country’s television households. Nexstar, like other broadcasters, uses a series of so-called “discounts” included in the FCC’s rules to arrive at a figure that would cover only 56.4% of U.S. TV households post-transaction.
That calculation relies in part on a long-standing “UHF discount,” which reduces the coverage figure for stations transmitting in the Ultra High Frequency band (channels 14-36) by 50%. Since the 2009 transition to digital television, about three-quarters of all local TV stations now use the UHF band (even if they still refer to themselves by their legacy VHF channel numbers between 2 and 13). So this discount, that dates back to the analog television era, when UHF stations didn’t cover nearly as much area, is pretty much a legacy loophole.
That discounted figure of 56.4% would exceed the national “cap” that limits any one entity from owning local TV stations covering more than 39% of the country. The “cap” was written into law by the United States Congress, first in 1996, with a national cap of 35% in the Telecommunications Act passed that year. The cap would later be raised by Congress to its current level of 39% in the 2004 Consolidated Appropriations Act.
Although FCC Commissioner Carr has suggested that the FCC could approve Nexstar's acquisition of TEGNA, some believe that Congress would have to enact any change to, or elimination of, the national ownership cap. For its part, the FCC began to “refresh the record” on the issues of a national ownership cap and the UHF discount last June. It’s conducting a congressionally mandated “quadrennial review,” an every-four-year review of the rules governing local station ownership to determine whether they should be retained or modified in light of current competition.
That last bit is the hook that supporters of deregulating broadcast ownership are hanging their hopes on. Their position is that because of the challenges of competition from the largest tech companies (think Amazon, Google, Meta, etc.) the broadcasters need the freedom to grow bigger to survive their new competitiors and continue to deliver their “vital local services” to communities across the country and fulfill their license obligations to operate “in the public interest as a public trustee.”
The deadline for public comments on the FCC’s quadrennial review passed back on January 16th.
As you might imagine, the deal is facing opposition from a wide range of stakeholders, with much of their rationale contained in a detailed white paper authored by the DC law firm KressinPowers. We encourage you to click the link and download and read their 48-page analysis, which concludes that “the deal would deepen media consolidation, drive up consumer costs and further erode local television news.”
Nexstar has publicly stated that it expects the transaction to close in the second half of this year. To meet that timetable, the FCC needs to establish a framework for its review of the Nexstar acquisition of TEGNA and set a 180-day “shot clock” for approval or rejection of the acquisition.
Consider for a moment what might happen if the FCC came out in the next few weeks and said that it was “rethinking” its previous position on deregulation. Or what if FCC Chairman Carr said that he has been convinced that some regulation may still be needed for group ownership in the broadcasting industry?
To be very clear, we aren’t predicting this will happen for certain. (If we had any inside knowledge, we’d be calling our broker.) However, there is evidence that the current administration in Washington, DC, tends to propose extreme measures as its opening salvo in any situation and ultimately moves away from those positions after facing opposition, adopting more moderate or somewhat reasonable measures. (The best example we can point out to you is the roller coaster of implementing trade Tariffs on nations around the world.)
Like everyone following the broadcast industry, we are awaiting any word from the FCC on its deregulation decisions. We don’t think it is excessive hyperbole to describe the industry as “nearly paralyzed,” waiting for some signal from the Commission on what it will ultimately do and when it might do it.
As we were writing this column, FCC Chair Carr followed another chapter from the administration playbook: When you can’t deliver on one promise, distract everyone with something else.
In this case, Carr continues to pursue his goal of making the Commission something akin to “The Content Police.” At yesterday's monthly press conference, the Chairman explained how the FCC’s “equal time” rule will now be administered. The original rule requires that broadcasters provide equivalent airtime opportunities to all political candidates for the same office if they provide airtime to any of them. There is an exemption from the rule for all “bona fide news programs.” In 1996, the FCC granted exemptions for talk shows (the first was Jay Leno’s “The Tonight Show”) to be considered “news programs,” with the appearance of a candidate in such a setting usually treated as a “newsworthy interview.”
Carr states that the FCC will determine, in its sole judgment, whether talk shows such as “The View” or “Jimmy Kimmel Live” qualify for an exemption from the equal-time provisions. What this means is that if you happen to be an ABC affiliate, could airing an episode of either of those shows bring your FCC-issued license into question because your network’s programming was found to violate the equal time rule? Make no mistake, this was Mr. Carr firing back specifically at Jimmy Kimmel, who had raised his concerns about FCC pressure in a recent monologue.
Kimmel noted that it isn’t the 1950s anymore, when there were only three television networks. The media landscape has transformed to include cable, satellite, streaming, and social media. The only outlets required to follow the “equal time” provisions are broadcasters, “because we use the public airways.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Carr addressed Kimmel’s point by saying, “This is one respect where I really agree with Jimmy Kimmel. Part of what he said was that this rule applies uniquely to broadcast, because it’s not cable, it’s not a podcast, it’s not other forms of distribution,” Carr said. “Some people have said that, because of the rise of cable channels and other distribution means that it doesn’t make sense anymore to have unique broadcast rules, and to that, I would say a couple things: One, that’s ultimately up for Congress to decide, it’s not for us to ignore the law. And two: I think it actually may cut the other way, which is to say, if you don’t want to comply with the public interest standard with your programming now, you have so many other ways of getting it out there, whether it’s a podcast, a cable channel, a streaming service, that if you want the unique privilege of distributing over this one type of thing, broadcast TV, then we should really make sure that you’re actually complying with the rules of that distribution mechanism.”
Funny how on this point, “that’s ultimately up for Congress to decide.” But Carr then proceeded to “slice his bologna a little thinner” by later stating that this newfound focus on ensuring such balance for political candidates applies only to television. Responding to a question about whether the FCC’s review of qualifying for an exemption would also apply to talk radio programs, which are overwhelmingly considered conservative. The Chairman said:
There wasn’t a relevant precedent that we saw that was being misconstrued on the radio side, as that wasn’t part of anything in that decision. It was focused on the potential misreading of precedents on the broadcast TV side…” So the likes of Hannity, Levin, Loesch, et al., will not have to worry about any pesky requirements to provide equal time to all political candidates, nor will the stations that air their daily shoutfests.
Why? Fellow FCC Commissioner, Democrat Anna Gomez called it out in her own remarks to the press: “As if there was any doubt, the last few weeks have shown that this FCC is no longer independent and it is no longer primarily interested in acting in the interest of consumers. The FCC is now a political arm of this administration.”
Back to whether or not the FCC might go “TACO” mode on the matter of changing the broadcast ownership rules, the Nexstar-TEGNA deal isn’t the only transaction pending at the moment. Other smaller deals that have been announced are also pending the FCC’s decisions on what might be permitted in the months and years ahead. Additionally, there is the potential for an explosion of new deals, with multiple parties awaiting a clear signal akin to the starting cannon round that signaled the start of the Oklahoma Land Rush in 1889.
At that time, there were two groups known as “Boomers” and “Sooners.” The first group, the Boomers, campaigned for the federal government to open the “unassigned lands” in what was then called "Indian Territory" to settlers. Sooners was a pejorative term for those who didn’t wait for the official start of the land rush and who skirted or cheated the system to secure an advantage in acquiring the best plots of land. It will be interesting to ultimately see if a “broadcasting land rush” comes to reality in 2026, and who will be known as “Boomers” or “Sooners.”
Aside from the proud alumni of the University of Oklahoma, of course.
For our part, we just hope that a modern-day “land rush” for broadcast signals isn’t triggered by an innocent lunch order to a Mexican restaurant.
Stranger things have happened in the past twelve months.
One of our “must follow” sources for industry news is The Desk, run by our friend Matthew Keys. (And that’s not just because he carries some of our columns from here at The Topline.) Matthew’s breaking news emails are always solid, and today was no exception when he pushed out an item that immediately caught our eye:
We could almost feel the grumpy old men inside of us feeling the need to yell at some kids to “get off our damn lawn,” but seeing as there is nothing but snow and ice currently outside—we decided to supress that reaction and read on.
It seems the future expansion teams of the Nexstar Nation aren’t sitting around waiting to be conquered; they're actually doing some new stuff, like launching a new app focused on content personalization and vertical video. Well, color us intrigued, so we immediately checked in on our hometown TEGNA station, only to be disappointed to learn that they weren’t one of the first stations to roll out this new app.
As The Desk reported, only four TEGNA stations were in the first round of this deployment: WXIA in Atlanta, KUSA in Denver, WTHR in Indianapolis, and KING in Seattle. (We’ll leave it up to you to speculate on why those four markets in particular, we have our own suspicions.)
So we downloaded the nifty new app for Denver’s 9 News after realising that the station doesn’t use its KUSA call letters much, and searching for that in the app store turned up some confusing results. Once we located the correct app, we installed it on our iPhone. We began to check out what was in “the new mobile experience...tied directly to TEGNA’s ongoing transformation of its local stations into around-the-clock, story-first newsrooms.”
The new apps feature a sign-up process, forgive us, that should have read, “a localized onboarding,” that asks about setting up where you live and want weather information for “customizable forecasts” along with those content categories each user might find of most interest. Frankly, it was no more odious than any other local station app we have signed up with in the past year.
We found it amusing that the app touted “Better Journalism, Supported by Ads” as a reason to allow their activity to be tracked across other companies’ apps and websites. This is something that all apps in the Apple ecosystem must present users with the option to enable, and, like every other app we install, we did not allow 9 News to track our activity. We suppose we will have to live with less than “better journalism.” Of course, you may choose whichever option you are comfortable with. You can also sign up to give the station even more information about yourself and enable location tracking so your weather information is tailored to your precise location.
Adrienne Roark, who is TEGNA’s Chief Content Officer, told The Desk that the apps “reflect how local journalism is increasingly consumed, with audiences expecting immediate access to reporting on the devices they use throughout the day.” And that might be true if your consumption of news is more likely to be from the “doomscrolling” of short vertical videos on TikTok, Instagram’s Reels, YouTube’s Shorts, or Snapchat. Hold that thought for a moment.
For some reason, the Denver 9 app is strangely labelled on your iPhone screen as “Denver Newsf…” We’ll leave it to you fill in just what the “Newsf…” word might be. Opening the app, you see a clean presentation of the station’s top news stories in a vertical scroll on the first of just four “buttons” at the bottom of the app. The next button gives you a scrolling feed of those vertical videos from the station’s reporters and anchors, Each video is of the typical “snackable” variety, be it a reporter talking into a camera as if they were “vlogging” or a clip from a traditional newscast, with the anchor being shown in one box, stacked on another with the relevant b-roll of a news story.
We were disappointed when the morning meteorologist began giving us a “conversational style” chat about the local weather forecast, only to turn her smartphone’s selfie camera to shoot the weather graphics off of the computer she was using to prepare her broadcast presentation. We can only hope that the workflow of a business that is built on video presentation can figure out a way to get graphics into a vertical video format other than shooting them off the screen like an influencer living in their parent’s basement.
(Maybe that was the look they were going for?)
Listen, it would be easy to snark all over this idea to present the news in a different way on screens other than regular television ones. TEGNA told The Desk that they saw “a 40% increase in use” in terms of video in this new app, and increased engagement overall. We hope that those test results hold up and improve going forward. Every local TV station’s news programming should be exposed to as many viewers as possible, especially as audiences for traditional linear broadcasts have gone downhill faster than racers on Pike’s Peak.
That problem isn’t just a local news one. While we promised ourselves that we would go at least a week here without mentioning the name Bari Weiss, the media industry complex was overrun yesterday with the details of Ms. Weiss’s all-hands meeting in the NYC newsroom of CBS News. We concur with the editors of the new “Mediaite One Sheet” daily newsletter, who pronounced that Oliver Darcy on Status had the best all-around coverage from inside the meeting.
Aside from presenting herself to many of the CBS employees gathered for the very first time (even though she has been in her post as “Editor-In-Chief” since last October) and trying to address the unease that she is turning the news division of CBS towards a much stronger “tack to starboard” as the late Walter Cronkite would have said aboard his beloved 64-foot Hinckley sailboat named “The Wyntje.” (For the less nautical amongst us, that means she would be turning hard to the right.)
Weiss answered some tough questions and presented her vision for what she wants the storied news organization under her leadership to look like. She announced the addition of some social media “celebrities” as new contributors to CBS News. The content history of the new contributors suggested they would be comfortable appearing on FOX News, so those big reveals didn’t exactly elicit applause. Nor did morning anchor Gayle King’s bemoanment of leakers in the newsroom, speculating on King’s contract renewal under the Weiss administration.
But Weiss did deliver some remarks that sounded like they might have come from anyone taking a new job to lead a newsroom over the last decade. She addressed the biggest questions facing every one of those newsrooms, namely, where did our audience go and can we get them back? Stating flatly that the news business has “changed more in the last decade than in the last 150 years,” she added that “the transformation isn’t over yet.” According to Oliver Darcy’s account of the meeting, Weiss “served up clichés about being digital-first and meeting audiences where they are on social platforms.”
Just like every local TV news director has been preaching for more than the last decade or so.
Maybe Weiss should call Adrienne Roark at TEGNA and talk about this new app and embracing vertical video, as if they were trying to turn their local news content into something more like TikTok? While it is easy to deride the effort, it isn’t the worst idea to attract folks who aren’t watching much news on broadcast television that we have seen.
Plus, at this point, Roark may know the names of more folks in the CBS Newsroom than Weiss does. After all, Adrienne was in that same newsroom for nearly four years before Bari’s arrival.
Certainly, you know of the weekend’s tragedy on a street in Minneapolis. We’re not going to debate here the issues of what happened and whether or not it was justified. We believe, as we have for many years, that each individual has to choose to be informed, evaluate all the facts and make their own determinations about what they believe to be the truth.
That is exactly why a free press matters and why the nation’s founders put the guarantee of a free press in the First Amendment.
Last Saturday, local newsrooms across the Twin Cities swung into action to cover the major breaking news of another shooting by federal agents of a person on the scene of a protest in South Minneapolis. (The third in 17 days.) The four major network affiliates entered continuing coverage of the story, which would evolve over the next 10 hours. Those hours were, at times, truly troubling. Televisions across the market could tune in to vital coverage provided by each station.
Right up until 7pm that evening.
At that hour, all four stations would end their news coverage and join their respective networks for their normal primetime schedule. Was the story over by this point? Hardly. By 7 pm, there were still thousands of people on the streets around the scene where 37-year-old Alex Pretti’s life was ended by nine or more bullets fired by US Border Patrol agents. At the same time, impromptu neighborhood candlelight vigils were popping up all over the Cities.
Clearly, the story wasn’t over. And it likely won’t be for days and weeks to come.
To be fair, we completely understand the choice that local TV station leaders faced at the time: Continue their coverage or allow viewers to watch what was scheduled to air. We’ve been in that position countless times, and it is often a difficult choice that has a definite “lose-lose” feel.
If only there were a way to serve both audiences at the same time.
Actually, there was.
Aside from the now all-too-generic promise of additional coverage via digital platforms like each station’s website or app, we wondered why not one station had taken advantage of the digital television technology they had access to since 2009?
If you remember back to then, it was in June of that year the transition to digital television was made. Every television station instantly had access to multiple channels, known as “subchannels” of its digital broadcast signal. This is when stations could deploy the technology to “multiplex” their broadcast signals and add a .2, .3, and the like to their main channel number.
This digital “subdivision” of each television station created the rough equivalent of adding four green houses to a property you owned on a Monopoly game board. Where you once had only one tv signal to broadcast, you now had three, four, or even more to work with.
So, on this important Saturday night in Minneapolis-St. Paul, did a single local network affiliated broadcaster continue their local news coverage on their broadcast platform by utilizing one of their 28 total digital television subchannels? Or did any choose to move their network programming to a digital subchannel so they could continue their local news coverage on their main channel?
No, they did not.
Instead, each station kept its scheduled programming not only on its primary (or “dot one”) signals, but also on the vitally important programming of non-stop courtroom replays, endless old TV reruns, home shopping offers, and whatever else could be found on your fancy digital-capable television set.
Certainly, you wouldn’t want to interrupt any of those offerings.
Wondering why that would be the case? Well, as is almost always the case, it comes down to money.
To begin with, some stations now use their second digital signal, their “dot two,” if you will, for carriage of another major or near-major network. This can range from a CW or MyNet operation to, as in Miami, the ABC Miami signal now carried on WSVN’s 7.2 signal.
Beyond that, many stations have sold off their added digital real estate to carry the so-called “digi-nets” that populate many of those decimal spots on your TV dial. The deals can put cold, hard cash in the pockets of local station owners, be they small or large groups. (We’ll also note that some stations lack the infrastructure to originate programming to each of their digital subchannels, which does have some expense associated with creating that capability.)
Thus, the decision to preempt any of a station’s digital channels is more complicated, to the point that many stations don’t even consider it an option.
Then there is the option of putting breaking news coverage on an alternative outlet, such as the much-touted “FAST” channels or a streaming TV app. But those all require internet access to view them, so they aren’t really equivalent in terms of serving the audience. A precious few stations do carry a news-centric offering as part of their digital broadcast “payload.” This can range from broadcasting a so-called “Plus” outlet of the local station to carrying something like the nascent “Fox Weather” offering. But these are still few in number.
We keep hearing the argument that the industry’s proposed mega-mergers are absolutely essential for “local” broadcasters to survive the onslaught of the tech giants with whom they compete for ad dollars. That’s why it is so imperative (supposedly) for owners to be able to have two or more stations under one roof, so they can keep providing their “essential local news coverage” to the markets they hold federally-issued licenses to operate “in the public interest.”
If each broadcast television station can originate up to eight different subchannels (as one station here in the Twin Cities presently does), then an owner with two full-power, full-spectrum stations could (in theory, at least) have up to 16 different digital TV signals covering a market. Those would, as the industry likes to say, all be “free TV” channels.
Sure would be great if even one of those could be used to support local breaking news coverage that truly is essential in situations like this past weekend, not just in the Twin Cities, but in each of the many markets across the nation that ended up dealing with a major winter storm on Sunday.
And to quote all those late-night infomercials, “But wait, there’s more!"
The long delayed new digital standard for broadcast television, called “Next Gen TV” (technically known as ATSC 3.0) promises to allow broadcasters to slice up their signal even further. They’ll also be able to encrypt their signals and use them for subscription or “pay TV” services, should they wish. And they could even use part of their “Next Gen” signals to deliver wireless data to various “internet of things” devices, via a consortium that already includes the four largest broadcast groups.
Maybe they can use some of that new technology to keep delivering that essential local news whenever, say, an NFL championship game is on.
Based on how things have gone to date, we won’t be counting on that either.
We’ve tried to start writing this week more times than we can count. It isn’t like there is a lack of things to write about in the television business. But every time we get about a paragraph in, we start to veer off course.
Because what’s happening outside our door and across the Twin Cities here in Minnesota is more chilling than the -18 degree temperature we woke up to this morning. (And for you weather purists, that was the actual air temperature, not the oft-maligned wind chill reading. At this point, we refuse to even look at the wind chill figure.)
It’s hard to write about what’s happening here without quickly descending into the kind of rhetoric that we spent an entire career trying to parse through and report on--without the bias that many people now assume pervades anyone with the arrogance to call themselves “a journalist.” As a society, we have systematically devalued this once-noble profession, making it less respected than the personal injury lawyers whose commercials dominate our local news.
You can watch this drama unfold through the lens of whichever outlet you prefer to bring you the news. But it is imperative to remember that what you are seeing is limited by the inherent constraints of any lens used to document what is happening on the ground.
As it is in any news story.
The lens sees only what its focal length allows. A number measured in millimeters, the focal length determines the width and focus of the picture passing through the lens. It determines the limit of what the camera attached to the lens can “see” and record. The human eye always sees so much more than a lens, no matter how skillfully used by the person holding the camera.
And there has been so much skill and professionalism on display from all the local journalists who are working this story. Not those who have parachuted in from wherever to cover the story for newsrooms based far from here. Even worse? The rush of “influencers” who have descended on Minneapolis and St. Paul, looking to find something to go viral and pump up their social media follower count.
In the midst of what can only be called something resembling an occupation of a major American metropolis by thousands of federal agents in paramilitary gear and unmarked vehicles, the daily documentation of their “targeted raids” that often lead to the detainment, arrest, and ultimate release of both U.S. citizens and those legally permitted to be in this country continues to dominate the headlines. In turn, the daily maneuvers of “Operation Metro Surge” are themselves the focus of determined citizen groups, who warn their neighbors of the actions while protesting, mostly peacefully though always loudly at each scene.
It would be hard enough to report on this in a factual, unbiased way in normal times. This is a human tragedy playing out on the streets of our home. The feelings are all too familiar. Not just from the events of 2020 but from so many points in the history of what we call the North Star state, and as it has been for every other of the 49 states and countless territories that make up the union of our states, it has rarely felt less united.
We know our colleagues and friends who are working in newsrooms across "the Cities” (as we refer to it in local shorthand) have been working long hours and in challenging conditions, trying to cover what each new day brings. Their work has never been more essential, and they keep rising to the challenge, even as the rest of the news that will normally fill each day’s agenda tries to proceed as it normally would.
Somewhere along the way that has led us to this moment in history, the disregard and denial of simple facts documented by pictures and video captured by the countless cameras at every scene has become the most disheartening development for those of us who watch the coverage with a critical eye. Even when a lens captures a moment of reality of what is happening here, the official denials of what is clearly visible to the viewer are breathtaking in their audacity.
The use of one seminal quote from George Orwell’s classic novel 1984 has appeared in so many places that it feels too easy to paste it here. But the relevance of the words is too crucial to omit them. "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
That is the backdrop against which local journalists are working to go out and do the work they are expected to do.
Today in Minnesota, a general strike has been called for to protest the Federal Government’s actions on the streets of our cities. Many businesses are closed, schools are shut down, and signs ranging from handwritten scrawled notes to professionally printed placards are all displaying the same simple two-word message: ICE Out
That message has a bit of typical Minnesota irony to it. It is the same thing said when the typically harsh winter conditions are finally over for another year and the frozen surfaces across “the land of 10,000 lakes” have turned fully liquid once again. For anyone who has ever called this place that experiences all four seasons every twelve months, the official word of the day when “ICE Out” is declared is always greeted with a sense of relief and pride that another winter has been survived and the promise of rebirth in a new spring has arrived.
One group that will not be on strike today is the local journalists who will be covering the news stories here. Not just the ones you’ll see on the national news outlets tonight, but the many other ones that will also matter to the people who are proud to call this place home. We urge you to support their work by visiting their websites to see the truly local coverage of what is happening here.
Because, for better or worse, that’s still the job we need them to do.
We’ve spent the better part of the morning of the MLK holiday reading all the “postgame” analysis of the decision over the weekend by CBS News, or more specifically, of its Editor-In-Chief, Bari Weiss, to air the delayed “60 Minutes” segment titled “Inside CECOT” from correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi and producer Oriana Zill de Granados.
The segment, detailing the horrific conditions inside the El Salvador prison where the United States deported over 270 Venezuelans to in March and April of 2025, was initially announced for broadcast back on December 21st of last year, but was pulled by Weiss at the last minute after it had been scheduled and even promoted. The decision came so late in the process that it was accidentally released by the Global network in Canada, which carries the CBS program there. Apparently, the full broadcast had been sent to Global, which, in turn, released it on its online app in error. It was picked up by various social media accounts, where it can still be found.
The segment that finally aired last night appears to be substantially the same as the one that Global posted, according to a Monday report in The New York Times. The only changes were evident in Alfonsi’s on-camera introduction and postscript to her segment, in which she seemingly included more detailed responses from the Trump administration, which paid over four million dollars to the country of El Salvador to take in Venezuelan deportees to the notorious CECOT prison.
What was evident to us is that despite Ms. Weiss’s famed contact list of who’s who in Washington’s power circles, there were no additional interviews added to the “60 Minutes” story that would have justified the abrupt December decision, which at the time Weiss said was necessary and stated, “I held the story because it wasn’t ready."
The story in the Times by Michael M. Grynbaum adds that Weiss still didn’t feel the story was ready, and that there were “tense negotiations” between the Editor-In-Chief and correspondent Alfonsi over additional changes that Weiss wanted in the main story. Alfonsi reportedly stood her ground and refused to make any further changes to the edited segment, which had been vetted and cleared back before the original December airdate.
For its part, the network released a statement Sunday about the CECOT story that said, “Tonight, viewers get to see it, along with other important stories, all of which speak to CBS News’s independence and the power of our storytelling."
On the same edition of “60 Minutes,” there was a segment from Cecilia Vega on the ongoing situation in Minneapolis. During it, the Chief of the Minneapolis Police Department flatly said that “it pisses him off,” after he was shown video of ICE agents forcibly removing and dragging a disabled and autistic woman from her car when she was trying to get to a doctor’s appointment on a blocked off street. The nationwide head of arrests and deportations for ICE, Marcos Charles, defended the incident (as well as everything ICE agents are doing), saying the woman was given repeated warnings before being arrested.
We’ll note that both of these stories from Vega and Alfonsi aired on a Sunday night that “60 Minutes” was airing opposite an earlier-than-usual Sunday night NFL divisional game featuring the Los Angeles Rams and Chicago Bears. That probably diminished the total audience watching the news magazine by a significant amount.
This all occurred on the same Sunday that saw CBS News’ Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and “Face The Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan grill Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over the tactics federal agents under her command were using in Minneapolis. While Noem denied that the agents were using the very tactics that a Federal judge ordered them not to continue using in Minneapolis, Brennan played video that proved her denial was utterly false. Noem then pivoted to dismissing the video by repeating her claim that “violent protestors” were impeding law enforcement operations and that innocent people wouldn’t be “caught up in the situation” if "protesters had been acting peacefully and law enforcement was able to do their job without being threatened."
All of this leads us to ask: Is Bari Weiss really in charge at CBS News? And if she is, what is she trying to accomplish?
If she and her newly installed anchor acolyte, Tony Dokoupil, are trying to move the network’s news division into being something far more palatable to the audience that finds the non-stop editorializing-posing-as-journalism on Fox News to be their preferred way to be informed, then frankly, she is doing a piss poor job of it.
Seems a bit telling to us that when the President of the United States demands, through his precocious mouthpiece of a press secretary, that CBS News better air the entire interview he did with anchorman Dokoupil last week or “we’ll sue your ass off” in her reciting of her boss’s words, and then you do exactly that? But you defend the move with this weak-ass statement to the New York Times: "The moment we booked this interview, we made the independent decision to air it unedited and in its entirety."
To quote the timeless wisdom of TV’s Marcia Brady: “Sure, Jan."
If the leader of CBS News can’t get changes made to a story before it airs that she feels are necessary, or even order it kept off the air for a second time until those changes are made, then we have to wonder aloud who has the last word on editorial decisions.
If the New York Times report is accurate, we don’t understand why an argument by a reporter (Alfonsi) that making changes would "set a poor precedent for the program’s editorial independence” would be accepted as an answer.
Did Bari Weiss fold in this standoff with the notoriously self-righteous and isolated team at “60 Minutes”? Did she not review or offer any notes on the lead story from Minneapolis by Cecilia Vega? Is she even aware of what Margaret Brennan was doing the same Sunday down in Washington during “Face the Nation” in pushing back on Secretary Noem’s vomiting of excuses?
If the Editor-In-Chief of CBS News, who only reports to the Chairman of Paramount-Skydance, in the form of one David Ellison, can’t tell the people who work at CBS News what to do and when to do it, then just what the hell is going on over there?
When she started in her new position leading CBS News, it was widely reported that Bari Weiss was traveling in public with a group of bodyguards and that some of them stood outside of her newsroom office whenever she was in. Apparently, they are no longer as visible inside the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street.
Maybe she has already been completely co-opted by the “too woke” culture there.
In this all-too-critical moment for truth, justice, and the American way, we can only hope for that improbable outcome.
As you are probably well aware, one week ago, on the morning of Wednesday, January 7th, an encounter between local protesters and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents operating in the Central neighborhood of Minneapolis would end with the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old woman behind the wheel of her SUV by an ICE agent who had placed himself in front of the vehicle.
In less than one minute, the fateful moments recorded from multiple cameras at the scene would become a defining moment for the nation.
It would be a much-too-familiar moment for local journalists working in newsrooms across the Twin Cities. The first reports of a fatality at the hands of law enforcement would be followed by an official account that, in turn, would be immediately contradicted by the multiple videos made by witnesses on the scene.
The scene, ironically enough, was less than one mile from where a man named George Floyd would die at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers in May of 2020. That scene was also documented on video, primarily by the cellphone of a young woman named Darnella Frazier. That video, first seen on social media and then broadcast by local TV stations, would also contradict the initial police narrative of what actually happened.
Once again in 2026, Minneapolis becomes the scene for a news story that has reverberated far and wide. And for many of the local journalists working to cover the story as it unfolded in the minutes, hours, and days that followed, this is a moment that feels all too familiar.
Last Wednesday, when the first reports came in, we saw strong coverage from all the local newsrooms across the Twin Cities. In those first hours, the local television stations quickly moved to air extended live coverage. While all did admirable work, of note was KMSP-TV, known locally as “Fox 9.” The Fox-owned station produces over 12 hours of local news each day, and on this day, its experience and depth in covering an unfolding breaking news story were on full display in its continuing coverage. Recognizing the importance of the moment, Fox 9 was the only station to keep its coverage going all day, not returning to regular programming until Wednesday evening.
Another newsroom that moved quickly to cover the story, with both immediate coverage and in-depth reporting in the hours and days that followed, was the Minnesota Star Tribune. The newspaper, which won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News, delivered an unmatched depth of coverage and analysis of all the unfolding elements in the story via its online platforms and ultimately in its printed editions.
Given the recent announcement that a major city the size of Pittsburgh will soon be without a major daily newspaper, we admit to thinking that we’re fortunate to still have the resources of “The Strib” during a news event such as this.
But the outstanding news coverage was not limited to just the major outlets in the market. Smaller, reader-supported online news outlets such as the Minnesota Reformer and AlphaNews were the first to bring videos from the scene that would ultimately be seen by millions, as well as delivering strong coverage from their small but dedicated teams of reporters. The online news outlet Sahan Journal, which focuses on covering news “for immigrants and communities of color,” has been uniquely covering the growing number of ICE raids from the perspective of those groups most directly impacted by those actions.
In the same week that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would close its doors, Minnesota Public Radio’s news team would blanket the story with extended breaking news coverage throughout the day of the shooting and the aftermath in the days that followed.
Of course, this story would attract the national media, who would “parachute” in to cover it over the last week. From newly installed CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil to longtime Fox News Channel anchor Laura Ingraham, they, along with countless reporters from other various networks and outlets, would come into Minneapolis to report for a day or two before most would head back to their respective newsrooms in New York or wherever.
But this story is far from over. The protests over the presence of a growing federal law enforcement force continue daily. As we write this, a vigil is being held at the spot where Renee Good’s life ended. The Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota are in Federal court seeking a temporary restraining order to limit ICE’s ongoing actions. Six of the veteran federal prosecutors who were leading multiple investigations into fraud and waste in social programs resigned yesterday in protest.
As we noted earlier, this all feels similar in some ways to what happened here in 2020. But in other ways, it seems so much worse. Obviously, it is a story that is far from being over.
We’ll express our gratitude here for all of the working journalists who call Minnesota home and cover it every day. This past week, all of their work has been an invaluable asset to the community. We appreciate that they are still on the job and seeking to deliver the facts in this difficult time that definitely seems all too familiar.
We’ve noticed lately that our current worldview is perhaps best captured in the portrayal of Tommy Norris, the lead character of Taylor Sheridan's show “Landman,” which is currently in its second season on Paramount+. Brilliantly brought to life by actor Billy Bob Thornton, the combination of “he has seen it all” delivery, along with each new plot development registering as “what fresh bit of hell is this,” is just pitch-perfect. The show works in large part because Sheridan has acknowledged that he wrote the lead role specifically for Thornton to play.
For our money, “Landman” is the best thing on television at the moment. And it’s not even close.
Aside from a strong cast and an even stronger production in every aspect, the show seemingly captures much of the life around the oil business, which is at the very heart of life in East Texas, throughout the region known as the Permian Basin. The majestic, vast panorama shots showing the endless flat brown horizon dotted with countless oil wells and the ruthless business dealings that play out around them do bear some strong similarities to the current state of the broadcast television business.
At least to us, anyway.
Take this rumor that came across our desks yesterday: Could the CBS Owned and Operated Stations be up for sale?
Sure, it would be easy to dismiss this as implausible at best. However, thinking about the idea further underscores why it might be more possible now than ever before.
The roots of this fantasy seem to lie in the idea that CBS and its owner, Paramount, a Skydance Corporation, would want to unload its standalone, non-CBS-affiliated stations—namely, the ones in Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida (WTOG) and Seattle, Washington (KSTW). The most likely buyer for those two stations was said to be the Fox Television Stations group, led by CEO Jack Abernethy.
The idea certainly makes sense. Fox would gain an instant duopoly in both markets, where it already owns at least one station (WTVT in Tampa and KCPQ in Seattle). Paramount would be picking up some cash for properties that don’t really fit with the rest of the CBS-owned station group.
But this forecast gets a little cloudier when you consider Paramount’s move in Atlanta last year. The state capital of Georgia is where CBS suddenly moved its affiliation from Gray-owned station WANF to what was then the other standalone station in the CBS/Paramount group, WUPW—now known as CBS Atlanta. Couldn’t CBS replicate the same idea in Tampa and Seattle?
Sure, but standing up a successful new local news operation in those markets is neither an easy nor a cheap proposition, as CBS discovered in Atlanta.
And that’s where this larger idea about connecting the CBS O&Os with the FOX O&Os begins to make more sense. The idea that we have heard from multiple sources is that combining the local news operations in the major markets where both groups have stations that produce a ton of local news would be very attractive from a financial standpoint. The high cost of acquiring local news each day (think Helicopters, Live Trucks, and “feet on the street”) could be significantly reduced while still producing distinct news presentations for each station.
(Or not, as the case might ultimately be.)
The way that might work would be for the FOX-owned stations to provide “operating services” to the CBS-owned stations via a “share services agreement” that has been common in duopolies in other markets for quite some time. CBS would retain ownership of the stations and their FCC licenses so that this arrangement wouldn’t require federal approval.
The other version of this idea would be for Paramount to sell the CBS O&Os to FOX outright, but that, of course, would require the FCC to finally make good on the kind of deregulation that Nexstar and the NAB are pushing for, so it can close on acquiring TEGNA. If FOX acquired the CBS stations group outright, it would create a “quadopoly” of four different owned stations in places like New York City and Los Angeles, while delivering a significant chunk of cash to Paramount’s CEO, David Ellison, to further fund his pursuit of the Howard Stern-esque goal to become “The King of All Media.”
Again, we stress that this is all speculation, that is just a notch above wishful thinking. That said, we know that FOX stations CEO Jack Abernethy is a smart and aggressive executive who gets things done. We wouldn’t ever bet against him when it comes to making a deal.
Even in the current, crazy and uncertain climate gripping the broadcast television industry. Which, come to think of it, is not unlike the oil business, at least as it is portrayed in “Landman."
To quote that show’s Tommy Norris: “A wish in one hand, is shit in the other. See which one fills up first."
We have to admit up front that we have always had a soft spot in our hearts for the song “Manic Monday,” released by The Bangles in December of 1985. Not just because it is a classic 1980s pop tune, which it most certainly is, but also because it was written by a songwriter who was identified under the pseudonym of “Christopher.”
In reality, “Christopher" was Prince Rogers Nelson, who you may know better by just his first name, Prince.
“Manic Monday", which features the sultry lead vocals of Susanna Hoffs, was on the Billboard charts for much of the first half of 1986, peaking at number two in April. The week it peaked as the second most popular record in the land, it was second only to Prince and The Revolution’s rendition of “Kiss.”
The song’s opening verse has the words that we find relatable on this first Monday of 2026: “These are the days when you wish your bed was already made."
In the first five days of the New Year, during a time when the news is usually mostly about football, both on the College and Professional levels, there has been just a bit of other big news.
The surprise mission by U.S. forces to capture and remove the President of Venezuela and his wife, and deliver them to a federal courtroom in New York City for a first appearance this Monday, is either a law enforcement action or an act of war, depending on one's political point of view. But certainly, the move over the weekend to arrest and extract the leader of another country was a major news story with global implications. Then there was the stated position of the American President that “We’re in charge,” meaning the United States is now in charge of another nation's affairs.
It is this kind of story that exposes the strengths and weaknesses of our largest news organizations in real time. And that has been on prominent display in the first days of this new year.
The weekend’s events accelerated the installation of Tony Dokoupil as Bari Weiss’s new anchor for the CBS Evening News. He scored a one-on-one interview with Secretary of Defense (or War, if you embrace the new branding) Pete Hegseth. Various outlets are reporting that the interview was arranged by Weiss herself, meaning her job description as Editor-In-Chief of CBS News now also includes serving as the chief guest booker.
Before the big story broke, Dokoupil was ingratiating himself with both colleagues and the general public by announcing the journalistic principles he would be following. He chose to do so via a video on social media. Just like Murrow or Cronkite would undoubtedly have done back in their day.
But as Tony said at the beginning of his video from the CBS newsroom, “A lot has changed since the first person sat in this chair."
We can’t say just how much, but we do know that Douglas Edwards (the first anchor of the CBS Evening News) never resorted to asking people in Grand Central Terminal how to say his name. Ironically enough, Edwards' first news broadcast originated in the CBS studios that were then in the very same Grand Central.
Meanwhile, no newsroom thrives on covering a breaking global news story more than CNN. When the first Gulf War broke out in 1991, it was literally the network’s defining moment. And CNN was flexing its coverage muscles throughout this past weekend, flanked by the political polarizations of its cable news rivals at FOX and MSNBC. The hours of coverage across all of cable quickly became the “full employment act” for any talking head who could weigh in on events in Venezuela and their repercussions on the world political scene.
Struggling as CNN may be for the newswatching audience, these are the kinds of stories when the network can demonstrate its strength as an international news organization, rivaling world giants like the BBC, NHK, and Deutsche Welle. And it's precisely this kind of journalistic infrastructure that Paramount CEO David Ellison wants to get his hands on in bidding to acquire all of Warner Bros. Discovery, rather than just the movie studio and streaming business that Netflix is pursuing.
While the Venezuelan situation dominated the first weekend news cycle of 2026, the domestic news agenda was set by the continuing fallout from the growing fraud investigations centered on the state of Minnesota, specifically focused on that state’s Somali population, the largest in the nation. On the heels of an investigation and prosecution of massive fraud during the pandemic focused on government funds that were paid out to feed children, comes new allegations of questionable spending on child care facilities in Minnesota.
Even though local news outlets in the state have been reporting on the story since last January, a recent YouTube video from right-wing creator Nick Shirley claimed he had found “widespread fraud” at Somali-run daycare facilities he visited in Minnesota while his camera was rolling. Despite the claims being quickly challenged, the video gained traction after being promoted by various public figures, including Vice President JD Vance, FBI Director Kash Patel, and Elon Musk.
The Trump Administration then moved to block $185 million in federal funds for many child care facilities across Minnesota last Tuesday. Then the Small Business Administration announced it was suspending funding in Minnesota while it “investigates $430 million in suspected PPP fraud across the state.” The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has been a troubled pandemic-era program intended to help keep small businesses afloat. The implementation of the PPP and the forgiveness of loans to some companies, including those owned by members of Congress, has been the subject of growing questions for months.
But the collective weight of the growing issues around millions of taxpayer dollars fraudulently paid out in Minnesota had become too heavy to ignore, especially as the state enters an election year for the Governor’s office. By Monday morning, Governor Tim Walz reversed course on seeking a third term, which he had announced just last September, by declaring, "I’ve decided to step out of the race and let others worry about the election while I focus on the work."
It is a stunning reversal of fortune for the man who was chosen to run for Vice President alongside then-VP Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket back in 2024.
And it was in large part the result of news coverage following a “viral video” posted on December 26th. “Independent Journalist” Nick Shirley, as he now identifies himself, took to X/Twitter to post on Monday: “I ENDED TIM WALZ."
It should be noted that we can’t find any “victory lap” type of statements from journalists like Woodward, Bernstein, or even Cronkite, after the Watergate cover-up finally ended the Presidency of Richard Nixon.
But then again, it is clear that we are a long, long time from that Friday back in August of 1974.
Just as the heartwarming glow of Christmas cheer was beginning to fade, we came across this morning’s edition of TVNewscheck.com, which featured a collection of their “columnists” with their end-of-year predictions. We get it, the “year in review” wrap-up is a staple of publishing, in both the printed and electronic kind. The idea of summing up what happened before the calendar rolls over into a new year is irresistible.
Plus, you can add in a few bold predictions for the next twelve months might hold--even if they will surely be forgotten in the next twelve days, at most.
This briefly stirred our interest until we read on and got this answer to that question: “A Mission Statement."
(Frankly, this was as immediately disappointing as not finding a Red Ryder BB gun under the Christmas tree for about the 50th consecutive year.)
We have learned over the years not to judge a story by its headline, so we clicked on to read what wisdom awaited us from the 1980s when mission statements were all the rage, along with Pac-Man, Cabbage Patch Dolls, and Rubik’s Cubes.
Here’s the article’s opening paragraph: "2026 is going to be a year of change. Newsrooms are going to be sold and merged at a record pace, and local newsrooms cannot afford to just sit back and wait for broadcasting groups to outline the new path. Some groundwork must be laid now.” (We were now looking up the contact info in our iPhone for Captain Obvious.)
Now? You mean like not waiting for whoever will be your new corporate overlords to close on your station and tell you what they want? Well, sure, because under the new owners, you are going to have way more freedom to do what you want if you have spent the time and trouble to write out an entire mission statement.
The new folks are going to take one look and go, Whoa. A mission statement! This station knows what it should be doing, and we’ll just leave them alone to keep pursuing “Truth, Justice and the American Way."
Unless, of course, your new owners have other thoughts about how they want the news to be done.
Take the folks at Sinclair Broadcast Group. The ones who own about 185 local television stations across the country right now and would like to grow to nearly 250 stations, should they ultimately acquire or merge with Scripps, as they have announced they would like to do. (Even if Scripps isn’t a fan of the idea.)
Last Friday, FTVLive’s Scott Jones published what he claimed was an internal email from Sinclair’s Senior VP of News, Scott Livingston. The undated email outlined how all Sinclair stations were to proceed when reporting any story concerning the “Epstein Files” (the email’s quotation marks). The email states: "The gravity of the allegations, combined with the lack of meaningful verification, makes these documents insufficient for responsible reporting."
Livingston’s email goes on to state the company’s position thusly, "If there is a legitimate, verified development tied to this topic and confirmed through reliable sourcing and supported by facts, we will pursue.” The email concludes with the direction that "Moving forward, any story on this topic must be vetted by a corporate news leader and/or legal."
Given that this email broke on Jones’ FTVLive.com website on the day after Christmas, and it appeared behind a Patreon paywall, we assume many people may not have seen it. But reading it gave us chills that rival the sub-freezing temps outside our window now.
Whatever your political point of view might be, the idea that a corporate TV news leader would order the newsrooms of the 185 local stations under his direction to hold off on reporting one of the largest political stories of the year, and only carry “approved” coverage that meets some “litmus test” of the company—well that really shouldn’t come as a surprise. This is the same company that, back in 2018, forced all of its local news anchors to read on the air a corporate-mandated script on the issue of “fake news."
At least what constituted it in the company’s view.
There was no option for journalists at local stations to determine whether the sentiments applied to their communities or even themselves. Just read the words as written and sound as sincere as possible. The move garnered a fair amount of press attention from the likes of The New York Times and “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver."
But no worries if you happen to be in any local station’s news operation that Sinclair might acquire in the coming year! In her TVNewscheck column, Beth Johnson has given you the advice that will save your independence. Better get to writing that “mission statement” right away.
We don’t know Ms. Johnson personally. We do know from her LinkedIn page that she worked for about 8 years as a producer and executive producer up until 2006. A half-dozen years later, she began working as a career coach, talent agent, and workflow analyst for individual employees, emerging leaders, and newsrooms. She co-founded the company “TopNewsTalent” in late 2021.
Given that it's been nearly 20 years since she worked at a local TV station, she may be unaware that the local TV business has changed just a tiny bit. Maybe she never received a corporate mandate for how, or even whether, a news story might be presented.
The reality in 2026 is that a smaller number of large companies will likely own more local TV stations than ever before. And those companies will continue to operate those stations under a single, corporately mandated playbook. Industry talking heads like Nexstar’s Perry Sook and Sinclair’s Chris Ripley will pontificate in the press about the survival of local media in a world dominated by “evil” tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Netflix. The only way forward (in their view) will require more local stations to band together under corporate ownership, so they can continue to bring you the local news that “you have come to rely upon."
It is unlikely that they will mention how much of that local news will be ultimately controlled by—and, in some cases, dictated by—people who work in the headquarters of the company names that flash by for a few seconds at the very end of each local newscast. Because no matter what “mission statement” has been written at the local station, it is the senior executives in the offices in places like Hunt Valley (MD), Irving (TX), Cincinnati (OH), Tysons (VA), and others, who will likely be writing the rules governing the news you will be seeing.
Because what could possibly go wrong with the idea of allowing local stations' on-air people to have an online content business on the side? Perhaps they could do that over on OnlyFans?
Our prediction for 2026? Nobody has a real clue as to what’s going to happen in the next twelve months. But to quote an infamous tweet from 12/19/2020:
Everyone who has ever led a newsroom has faced the moment. It is never easy and usually results in a strong reaction. Over the course of our decades leading newsrooms, we received a variety of responses on those mercifully few times that we had to do it. They ranged from shouting to crying, and typically would involve the use of some language that you wouldn’t repeat in front of your mother.
While never particularly fun, it is a part of the job, and when it is necessary, you do what you have to do.
The “it” we’re talking about is making the decision to tell a reporter that their news story isn’t ready to go, whether that means it's not cleared to be published or broadcast as scheduled. This is usually referred to as “holding” a story or, occasionally, “spiking” it. The latter term is typically used when the story’s ultimate future is uncertain.
While never any fun to do, the decision that sometimes a story just isn’t quite ready and needs more time “in the oven,” so to speak, is just a part of the process in any diligent newsroom. There are a myriad of reasons why a story may not be "ready to go,” and there is often a spirited debate about why any of those reasons should keep a story from the public. Those who work on researching, reporting, writing, and producing news stories, especially ones that might be weeks or even months in the making, well, those folks can be a bit passionate about defending what they have put so much time and effort into.
As the person in charge and ultimately responsible for deciding whether a particular story can be aired, you try to be as thoughtful and helpful as possible in explaining why you have decided to hold the story. Often, you will point out any particular part of the story that might not meet the standards of the newsroom, whether that is a lack of sources, imagery that doesn’t support the claims made, or any of an endless list of issues that may need to be addressed. Depending on the nature of the story being considered, a review with legal counsel may be necessary to determine whether it meets the standards to avoid legal issues arising from publishing or airing it.
Typically, the higher the stakes of reporting the story, the more complicated this process can become. And the more emotional the arguments can become.
There is a scene in the movie “All The President’s Men” where Ben Bradlee, as Executive Editor of The Washington Post, (brilliantly portrayed by the late actor Jason Robards) meeting with the reporting team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein after reading one of their drafts of a story during their reporting of the Watergate scandal. He tells them very simply: “You haven’t got it.” Meaning that the story isn’t ready to be published. Woodward and Bernstein (played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the movie) start to argue their case with Bradlee, who, in turn, shoots them a look that, without another word being spoken, conveys that his judgment is not open to further debate. The reporters immediately go silent.
If only it were that simple in real life.
On this Monday, we have the developing story of the latest kerfuffle (as one of our colleagues loved to say) at CBS News. Specifically about the decision over the weekend to pull a story that was scheduled for Sunday night’s edition of the storied news magazine, “60 Minutes.” The gist of the situation seems to be that correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi’s story about horrific conditions experienced by men from Venezuela, deported by the United States, faced during their time in a notorious El Salvador prison known as CECOT.
The segment was scheduled to be broadcast and was already being promoted on social media. According to reports from numerous sources, the sudden decision on Saturday morning to hold the story came from Bari Weiss, the recently installed Editor-In-Chief of CBS News. She assumed the position after the takeover of CBS parent Paramount Corporation by David Ellison and his Skydance company.
The details of this unusual move, which came very late in the rigorous editorial process that every “60 Minutes” story goes through, were made public on Sunday. That’s when several news outlets, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, obtained an internal email by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi. The email put her view plainly. She believes the decision by Weiss to hold the story was made for “political reasons."
Alfonsi shared with her colleagues that her “60 Minutes” story had been subjected to extensive review, including five different screenings and receiving clearances from both CBS’s lawyers and the network’s Standards and Practices unit. She stated in her note to her colleagues, "In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
For its part, CBS News issued a statement about the change to “60 Minutes” on Sunday, saying that the segment “needed additional reporting” and would air at a later date. The New York Times reported that Bari Weiss had requested numerous changes to the story before deciding to pull it from the broadcast. The Times’ story states that Weiss first screened the story last Thursday and then asked for “a significant amount of new material to be added."
The new material requested by Weiss included an interview with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller or another high-ranking Trump administration official to address the story's subjects. Alfonsi stated in her email to her colleagues that her team working on the piece had requested comment from the White House, the U.S. State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security. All had declined to participate in the story.
Correspondent Alfonsi went on in her email to state a significant concern about this apparent reason for pulling the story: “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient."
By Sunday afternoon, Bari Weiss had released a statement defending her decision, which said: “My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready.”
It’s worth noting that Alfonsi claimed Weiss would not have a call with her over the weekend about the decision, made on Saturday morning, to hold the story from its scheduled airing.
Weiss addressed the matter during the news division’s regular morning editorial call on Monday morning, according to a recording reviewed and reported on by The Wall Street Journal. She stated, "The only newsroom that I’m interested in running is one where we are able to have contentious disagreements about the thorniest editorial matters and do so with respect and crucially where we assume the best intent of our colleagues. And anything else is absolutely unacceptable to me and should be unacceptable to you.”
The backdrop to all this is that the last-minute decision to hold the story comes against the backdrop of continuing stories that the editorial direction for CBS News is being driven to make the network’s news coverage more acceptable to President Trump, who sued CBS over claims that “60 Minutes” misleadingly edited an interview with then Vice-President Kamala Harris, who was running against Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Ultimately, that suit was settled for millions so that Skydance’s acquisition of CBS owner Paramount could be completed, which happened earlier this year.
Now, Paramount is making a bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. Aside from the legendary movie studio and HBO Max streaming service, the deal would include WBD’s portfolio of television channels, including CNN, which CEO Ellison has promised officials of the Trump administration would be combined with CBS News and that organization’s “new vision” under Editor-In-Chief Bari Weiss, who coincidentally reports directly to Ellison.
For its part, Warner Bros. Discovery's board of directors rejected Paramount's initial bid for the company, favoring an offer from Netflix for just the movie studio and streaming assets. (The television channels would be spun off to a new company.) In rejecting the Paramount offer, the board cited that there was no financial guarantee for the offer from David Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, who is backing his son’s effort to acquire WBD, as he did with Paramount.
In a related development, Monday morning, the elder Ellison announced that he was personally guaranteeing the $40.4 billion in equity that Paramount had offered Warner Bros. Discovery.
It is safe to say that, taken together, all of this suggests we haven’t heard the last of what’s next for this “60 Minutes” story and the future of the network it was scheduled to air on.
We now return you to your last-minute Christmas shopping, already in progress—or hopefully already done.
The media-industrial complex’s East Coast division, based in New York City, has been mesmerized by the ascendancy of Bari Weiss as Editor-in-Chief of CBS News. We can understand why that would be the case — she represents an easy target, having been given ultimate control of the legendary “House that Murrow built.” In her role, she reports directly to Paramount (A Skydance Corporation) CEO David Ellison.
This, despite a resume that did not include any experience working in Television News.
So we wonder whether the past weekend revealed Ms. Weiss’s primary interest in the opportunity Ellison offered her?
Was it the opportunity to shift the perceived editorial and political direction of the network (and also help placate the "critic-in-chief" in the Oval Office)?
Maybe.
But we wonder if the main appeal of her new job might be a little simpler? Perhaps just wanting to be on television herself?
We now know, and indeed could have predicted, that last Saturday’s CBS News “Town Hall” with Erika Kirk would be no ratings blockbuster. The widow of the assassinated Charlie Kirk was definitely a newsworthy person to interview. But rather than turn the moderator’s role over to any of her experienced anchors and reporters, including Tony Dokoupil, her newly announced anchor for “The CBS Evening News,” Weiss decided to take the on-camera assignment for herself.
Ostensibly, this move was intended to signal CBS News's new political posture. A posture more aligned with Weiss’s own politics, which she once described to Joe Rogan as being a “left-leaning centrist.” Other observers would label her positions as being mainly Conservative.
Whatever the characterization, Weiss’s politics have been on display since her very public departure from The New York Times in 2020, where she had been an opinion page writer for three years. That post followed a four-year stint at The Wall Street Journal as an op-ed and book review editor. She left the WSJ to follow her deputy editor, Bret Stephens, when he moved to the Times. Weiss and her spouse, Nellie Bowles, launched The Free Press on Substack in 2021.
Paramount would pay $150 million for “The Free Press” to install the 41-year-old Weiss as the head of CBS News.
Some 75-plus years earlier, a young New York City native was leading a start-up journalism enterprise in the very medium that Bari Weiss is now trying to master. At 20 years old, he would go from being an intern to becoming the first news director and on-air anchor for Florida’s first television station, WTVJ.
His name was Ralph Renick.
From the station’s debut in 1949 to his final newscast in 1985, Renick would become not only the anchor of South Florida’s top-rated newscast for over 35 years, but also assume the position of the station’s news director in 1953. That dual role wasn’t unprecedented in the early years of local television news departments, but what was highly unusual was that, as News Director, Renick didn’t report to the station’s General Manager, but directly to Colonel Mitchell Wolfson, the Founder and President of Wometco Enterprises, the owner of WTVJ, then the CBS affiliate in South Florida.
When the station began doing nightly editorials in 1957, it was Renick who wrote and delivered them on the air. In historical hindsight, many of Renick's editorials could be considered conservative. After Col. Wolfson died in 1983, Wometco was acquired by the investment firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) for $1 billion, then the largest leveraged buyout in U.S. history. Under KKR, Ralph Renick saw his authority slowly diminished and his ratings superiority ultimately toppled by cross-town rival WPLG and Ann Bishop, the first female to co-anchor the 6 & 11 pm newscasts in a major market.
To his credit, Ralph Renick was not only a TV news legend but also an innovator. In 1967, he would hire the nation’s first female sportscaster. A year later, he would hire the first black reporter to work on-air in the Miami market. He would push the station into the electronic news age, making WTVJ the first South Florida station to shoot videotape instead of film and later deploy the market’s first live ENG truck. He was also a long-time supporter of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, serving as its President in 1959, and was a regular at the association’s annual conventions until the 1980s.
In 1984, the association honored Ralph Renick with its Paul White Award, named for the man who would become the first news director of the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1933 and lead CBS News for the following 13 years.
Renick stunned colleagues and viewers alike when he suddenly announced his immediate departure from WTVJ at the end of an edition of “The Ralph Renick Report” in April of 1985. Six weeks later, Renick announced he would be a Democratic candidate in the upcoming 1986 race for Governor of Florida.
Six months in, after reportedly spending $100,000 of his own money on the effort, he pulled out of the race.
Renick briefly returned to television in 1988, this time for WCIX (now WFOR) as a commentator on that station’s nightly newscasts. Two years later, Renick would retire as his health began to fail. He would pass away in July of 1991, from complications of hepatitis and liver disease. His death was the lead story on every local newscast that night.
After his brief foray into politics, Renick said in a 1986 interview with The Sun-Sentinel, "News shouldn’t just be the day’s sensation, it should be a chronicle of events. All those stories that news consultants call ‘boring government stuff’ are important.” He would add this bit of wisdom from leading a TV newsroom for so many years:
“Journalists tend to feel they know more than the people they’re reporting on."
We figure it’s a safe bet that Bari Weiss has probably never heard the name Ralph Renick or his famous nightly sign-off that graced the airwaves of South Florida for over three decades: “Good Night, and may the good news be yours.”
At the end of his final newscast in 1985, he would add three more words: “...and hopefully mine."
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One quick note about our holiday publishing schedule: We plan to take next week off for our holiday break. Should major news about the news warrant, we’ll follow the old radio proclamation of “When news breaks out, we break in.” Otherwise, we wish you all the best no matter which holidays you celebrate. And as is our tradition, a special thanks to all of you who will be working and keeping the news covered while your colleagues are off on holiday. We appreciate you.
We are betting that you did not have “The Oscars® Telecast Moves Off ABC” on your media news bingo card for 2025. We are doubling down on that same bet that you absolutely, positively did NOT have “The Oscars® Telecast Moves to YouTube” on that same bingo card for 2025.
Not even for 2029, which is when it will actually happen, according to today’s breaking news.
This headline is now going to play out a couple of different ways; you just watch.
One version will be that the audience for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual award show has been eroding over the years, and Disney/ABC was probably not too willing to swallow a bigger price tag to carry the show past its 100th edition in 2028 (which would be the final year it would not be on ABC). The details there are that the Oscars® telecast drew about 20 million viewers in the US this year, up about 1% from 2024. The show has been slowly recovering from its low-water mark in 2021, when it garnered only 10.4 million viewers during the pandemic.
Even if you give the “Covid exemption” for the 2021 ratings, the Oscars are still far below the 30 million or so viewers that watched on average during the 2010s. (But then again, so is most everything on broadcast television—except, of course, for live sports events.)
Still, a single program that attracts the largest non-Sports audience is nothing to sneeze at. The Oscars® telecast usually has some newsworthiness beyond its typical three and a half hours on a Sunday night in late February or early March. Why would Disney/ABC pass on continuing to air a significant annual television event, one that it has had for decades?
Which brings us to a second version of how this story plays out: That streaming is now eating up everything on TV.
That premise isn’t wrong in our book. But it might be a bit too narrow a viewpoint.
YouTube and its owner, Google/Alphabet, have very deep pockets. It dropped $2 billion in 2023 to take the NFL’s “Sunday Ticket” package away from DirecTV, which had carried that premium pay-TV package (sorry for the alliteration) since it began. Streaming rivals Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Peacock have all scored the rights to individual NFL games on their streaming platforms. (Remember that, when you can’t find the NFL games on your TV on Christmas Day. They will be on Netflix.)
A big-ticket item like The Oscars® is a solid get for YouTube. And actually a good partner for the Academy who puts on the event. The Oscars® are just one of a series of awards programs that the Academy puts on each year. YouTube will carry all of those, with no worries about how long they might go or how many commercial breaks can be crammed into each show.
And did we mention that YouTube will deliver these to a global audience? One deal, one platform, and the Academy gets exposure wherever it might want.
Plus, you don’t have to take a host from whatever broadcast network might be carrying your marquee event(s). (To be fair, we thought Jimmy Kimmel was just fine as the host of The Oscars®. Not in the league of Carson or Crystal, but who else would be?)
Another storyline that is likely to play out is whether the departure of The Oscars® from broadcast television signals the watershed moment when streaming surpassed the place in our culture that the legacy medium of television once held. We aren’t jumping on that bandwagon because we see too much behavior that suggests, for many viewers, YouTube is just another channel that appears as an icon on the home screen of their big-screen television.
Is this a big deal? Of course it is. Much will be written and speculated about the move long before the first presenters say “and The Oscar® goes to” on YouTube in 2029. That is over three years away at this point.
Just think of how many bingo squares will get filled in between now and then. We hope you have one of those paint markers that the seasoned bingo pros use down at the local senior center.
They are as ruthless as any media executives working today.
If this were a couple of decades ago, we’d be yelling for someone to jump on the desk over at “the live satellite breaking news center” (typically a spot in front of a couple of technical-looking racks of outdated equipment) and stand them by to do an insert into the evening newscast. But that was back when business news might actually earn a few seconds on a local newscast.
Which leads us to ask, when exactly did we abdicate the whole business news category over to the CNBCs and Fox Business channels of the world? Probably a question best tackled another day.
Because late today, it was clear that this wouldn’t be just any Tuesday in the media biz world. No, this was headed to be known as “No Thank You Tuesday!"
After the closing bell on Wall Street had rung, there were no fewer than three significant developments in the various mega media deals to consider.
The first was a surprising reversal in the case involving Nexstar and DirecTV, where the U.S. Court of Appeals basically told the lower court in the matter, “No Thanks” on the lower court’s dismissal of the antitrust action brought by DirecTV against Nexstar and its two so-called “sidecar” entities of Mission Broadcasting and White Knight Broadcasting. The appeals court ruling reinstates DirecTV’s case, claiming that it faced an anticompetitive situation when Nexstar, Mission, and White Knight coordinated their demands in retransmission consent negotiations with the satellite MVPD.
The lower court had tossed the case from DirecTV, claiming that because the company never paid what it called “allegedly inflated fees” to Nexstar and its two co-defendants. The court added that DirecTV lacked standing in bringing an antitrust action against Nexstar because it madeoice” not to accept new retrans agreements and ultimately blacked out the local Nexstar stations on DirecTV since October a “voluntary ch 2022.
Today, we learned the Appeals court said in essence, “No Thanks” and ruled that DirecTV can indeed proceed with its claims against Nexstar, Mission, and White Knight. In a separate decision back in February, DirecTV won a court order requiring Nexstar to pay some $26.6 million for overcharging the direct-to-home satellite provider to carry Hagerstown, MD-licensed station WHAG-TV (now known as WDVM) after it stopped being an NBC affiliate. Nexstar moved the station (which was based in a subsection of the Washington, DC market to become an independent local news-focused outlet, branded as “DC News Now.” Nexstar is appealing that decision, and today, its Chief Communications Officer said, “We look forward to the next phase of the legal process” in the reinstated case.
So what had been a dismissed matter is now something more for Perry Sook and his lawyers to deal with as they continue to work toward closing its multi-billion-dollar deal to acquire Tegna.
Speaking of billion-dollar deals, there is another one making news on this Tuesday, as Warner Bros. Discovery’s board is saying “No Thanks” to ParamountSkydance’s hostile takeover bid for the company. Bloomberg News reports that the WBD board will tell shareholders to reject the $30-a-share bid from David Ellison, backed by his dad, Larry, and a bunch of foreign investment funds. The board is still supporting Netflix's bid to acquire the movie studios and streaming assets portion of the Warner Bros. Discovery empire.
There is a smaller “No Thank You” element in this story. Bloomberg is also running an exclusive story that says that Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners is exiting the Paramount side in the battle for Warner Bros Discovery. Kushner, who is also President Trump’s son-in-law, had been part of the firms lined up to financially back Paramount’s $108.4 billion deal (including debt) for WBD. Now Kushner’s firm tells Bloomberg that It now believes the dynamics of an investment have changed since it became involved in the process in October.
And as every late-night infomercial has proudly proclaimed: “But wait, there’s even more!"
From Cincinnati came word that the entire board of directors of The E.W. Scripps Company found their spines and delivered a rejection late on this Tuesday. Their response was to the offer from Sinclair, Inc. to acquire the outstanding shares in Scripps (SSP) for $7 of cash and stock each. A press release on the Scripps website quotes Kim Williams, the chair of the Scripps board, as saying, "After careful consideration, Scripps’ board determined that Sinclair’s unsolicited acquisition proposal is not in the best interests of Scripps and its shareholders."
Sounds like another “No Thank You” to us.
Of course, none of these situations is over and done. Today’s “No Thank Yous” can always become tomorrow’s “Yes Of Course” answers when there are billions at stake and business people determined to do a deal.
But three major stiff-arm type moves in the same day seemed enough to warrant getting out this developing story update. And while some readers might never have seen NBA great Walt “Clyde” Frazier and NY Mets great (and occasional “Seinfeld” character) Keith Hernandez delivering their classic “Reeee-jected!” line in this classic “Just For Men” TV commercial, we think it pretty much applies in all of these cases.
At the very least, as Hernandez puts it: “Clyde, that’s gotta hurt!"
So we will see if “No Thank You Tuesday” is followed up by “What’s Next Wednesday.” After all, there are two more weeks left in 2025—plenty of time to take another shot.
Even if it's just one with rum for that holiday eggnog.
In recent days, we here in the newsroom at “The Topline” have had to face an inconvenient truth. Or two.
(No, not that one from Al Gore’s extended relevance phase of his cinematic career by turning a long PowerPoint presentation into a full-length film,)
Our revelation is that we may have, from time to time, made light of the intensity of the problem popularly known as "writer’s block." Perhaps we were a tad too dismissive of the nature of the comments from some authors--who have used terms like “daunting" and “scary.” As well as others with a more dramatic flair, who countered with evocative, extreme words like “crippling” and “debilitating.”
You know, those words you’d expect to see in the arts section of The New York Times.
The thing is, that we may have been—again, only on a few occasions—truly dismissive, leaning towards the incredulous end of whatever scale might measure levels of skepticism. And it turns out that we may have been slightly misguided on the topic.
Put perhaps, more simply: Karma is indeed...a bitch.
We do have some justification for appearing to run into some "difficulties of inspiration”, as the scholars might put it. Last week, we were dealing with the first (and hopefully last) truly miserable cold of the winter season. Yes, we know it isn’t officially winter until the 21st. Still, when your local TV meteorologist displays the current temperature, and it features a minus followed by two digits, that means it is as cold as that “b” word we just casually used in the last paragraph. So in our book, winter has definitely arrived, checked in, and is already having a drink at the bar.
A cold one, naturally.
That reminds us that we really want to go back through our notes and find the info for that irate viewer who called the newsroom we were working in years ago and berated us for a solid half-hour over their firm conviction that the “wind chill” number we were reporting during our weathercasts was, and we quote:
“Some completely random bullshit concocted by the climate-denying, so-called “scientists" you got working over there at the f——’n television station."
We promise, you could hear the guy (of course, it was a guy) making air quotes into the phone when he spat out the word “scientists."
By the way, the wind chill was in the 20s, and we had the nerve, the audacity, mind you, to say there were “sub-freezing wind chills” in the forecast. Of course, we made this claim during a primetime news promo.
We want to go back and find that viewer and tell him that we now live in a place where “sub-freezing wind chills” would be thought of as “a warming trend."
Alas, we digress.
Our cold, in this case, the actual illness, was the really nasty kind. Bad enough that we lost the ability to speak for a few days and were close to losing the will to ever feel well again. No worries, after a long week, we are finally on the mend and doing better. (Despite some people definitely wishing the total laryngitis thing had gone on a bit longer.)
During our recovery, we sat down to write at one point, and it hit us as LA Chargers Safety Tony Jefferson’s hit on KC Chiefs Wide Receiver Tyquan Thornton this past Sunday. (OK, maybe not quite that hard.)
We were getting over the cold, but we had picked up a giant old case of writer’s block.
Stared at the blank laptop screens for a few minutes that felt like a whole second half plus overtime. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
And yes, it was a little intimidating. So on Saturday, we tried to plug into some football watching, interspersed with some panicked online shopping for a few last-minute gifts. That is when the second major breaking news of the day would shock us back into reality.
We’d already woken to the truly horrific details of what had happened in Australia, where a pair of gunmen opened fire on a crowd gathered for a "Hanukkah On The Beach” celebration by the Jewish Community in Bondi. Fifteen people, including a child, were killed in that nation’s second-deadliest mass shooting. It is worth noting, as some news reports did, that this tragedy comes 29 and a half years after that nation’s deadliest mass shooting. That event occurred in 1996, in the town of Port Arthur, within the state of Tasmania. The massacre of 35 people led to the enactment of some of the strictest gun laws anywhere on Planet Earth. Australia banned shotguns, assault-style weapons, and most semiautomatic rifles.
Details continued to come to the Western Hemisphere as last Saturday progressed. Perhaps, as others may have done, we turned our focus away from the continuing story in Australia because it seemed all too familiar, yet all too distant at the same time. A majority of the news coverage we saw couldn’t resist having a tone that seemed to imply “it can even happen in a place with many more restrictions on people having guns."
By late Saturday afternoon, the first headlines came that there was an active shooter situation on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. While many viewers were likely focused on the hour of pseudo-drama over who would be awarded the Heisman Trophy in New York City, just three hours north, an Ivy League campus was locked down, with a manhunt underway for the gunman who had killed two students and wounded nine others.
Those two developing stories would continue into Sunday. In the afternoon, the news came from the Los Angeles Fire Department of two bodies being discovered at the home of famed Hollywood director Rob Reiner. The LAFD would only confirm minimal details about the two victims and would not name them. In a moment of notable restraint, press outlets only reported that a 78-year-old man and a 70-year-old woman had been found. Even TMZ.com held off on confirming the two victims were indeed Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner. (The names were first reported by People.com, at least that we saw in real time.)
By Monday, the story of the dual murders in the Reiner home had continued into another news cycle, with the growing outrage over a bizarre Truth Social posting on Sunday from the account of President Donald Trump. The post stated that the Reiners' deaths were connected in some fashion to the director’s liberal politics and his outspoken opposition to the administration, classified as “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” By late Sunday night, Los Angeles Police had arrested Reiner’s 32-year-old son Nick Reiner, who, according to multiple news reports, had a long history of personal issues, including multiple stints in drug rehabilitation and periods of homelessness.
To be clear, there is absolutely no factual evidence that politics of any kind caused this tragedy. The President stood by his comments on social media when asked about them on Monday, though he no longer referenced the earlier “Trump Derangement Syndrome” remark. This, as a growing number of Republican figures were openly criticizing the President’s comments attacking Rob Reiner, in light of his murder and the subsequent arrest of his son for allegedly committing the crime.
And at the time of this writing, now Tuesday morning, there is the blistering commentary of late night hosts ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, CBS’s Stephen Colbert and perhaps most especially NBC’s Seth Meyers, each taking considerable time on their Monday night programs to point out the hypocrisy from the Oval Office, especially in the wake of the recent outcry over any remarks that were critical about conservative figure Charlie Kirk, following the horrific assasination that took his life while speaking on the college campus of Utah Valley University.
So what was the inconvenient truth of this past weekend?
Over a dozen people died, and nearly fifty more were injured on an Australian beach, seemingly just for being Jewish and practicing their faith.
Then two more people died, and nine more were injured, seemingly for just being on the campus of an Ivy League school and wanting an education.
And finally, two more people died--stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home--seemingly as they were trying to be parents to their very troubled son.
For its part, the news media covered all of this as if it were rational to chronicle these events in a typical fashion.
Because in the final month of 2025, to quote the signoff of the legendary news anchor Walter Cronkite, “that’s the way it is."
We’ve waited a bit before weighing in on the latest twist in the saga of who will eventually own Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). By now, you have likely heard that the guy who started this ball rolling, David Ellison, CEO of ParamountSkydance, launched a “hostile takeover bid” for all of the WBD empire. This came after David Zaslav and the Warner Bros. Discovery board did not select Paramount’s initial bid. They favored a bid from Netflix for just the movie studios and streaming assets. That offer allows WBD to continue its plan to spin off all its cable networks (CNN, HGTV, Discovery, etc.) back into a standalone Discovery Global. That move is much like what Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has just orchestrated for NBCUniversal, which spun off their cable networks to the newly christened Versant.
Hey, speaking of Comcast, does anyone really think they are going to sit out this big dance for Warner Bros.? If so, you may want to check in with Disney’s Bob Iger, who in 2018 had to pay a boatload more money for 20th Century Fox's movie studio and library when Roberts kept raising the Comcast bid in that contest. Roberts then turned around and sold Iger and Disney the remaining stake in Hulu that Comcast held, for just over $9 billion.
Paramount’s Ellison was on CNBC this morning, and he tossed out the standard talking points about how his company is a much better potential owner of Warner Bros. and Discovery. Plus, he has the ear of the White House, and his bid may be less onerous in terms of potential monopolies. (What that loosely translates to is that young Ellison’s father is a good friend of, and has the ear of, the President of the United States.)
The numbers break down like this: Netflix offered $27.75 a share for WBD (that is $23.25 in cash and $4.50 in Netflix stock). Paramount is offering $30.00 in cash for each share of WBD. Those offers break down to be $82.7 billion from Netflix and $108.4 billion from Paramount. So the Paramount bid is $25 billion more. But that's for all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including the cable assets such as CNN, which Mr. Ellison really wants, to combine with CBS News and give recently installed Editor-in-Chief, Bari Weiss, a global news operation so she can learn the television news business in real time.
Out of all the hot takes we’ve seen on the race to land Warner Bros. Discovery, we’d give the “must see” label to today’s episode of the Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. They have a spirited back-and-forth about the whole situation and some interesting takes on who is really to blame for this new round of media consolidation deals. Definitely worth your time to listen to their informed and clear-eyed analysis.
You’ll note that we linked to their podcast on YouTube. And that was intentional because, in the aftermath of the bids for WBD, we haven't heard much about the fact that, for all the talk about streaming monopolies and potentially combining Warner’s HBO Max with either Netflix or Paramount+, neither will create the biggest streaming player. That crown still belongs to YouTube (the original, rather than the separate YouTubeTV offering.) It would still have a bigger share of eyeballs than would result from either proposed acquisition, at least based on current viewing numbers from Nielsen’s “The Gauge."
Of course, we get that comparing YouTube, which is free to watch if you are willing to sit through the ads before, during, and after each video, with the paid subscription offerings of Netflix, HBO Max, Paramount Plus, and others, is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. But viewers are viewers, no matter how they access your offerings. To that end, and we’ve said before, it is still the case that if we could only pay for one streaming subscription, it would be YouTube Premium, which lets you watch everything there without commercial interruptions.
We had the opportunity to speak yesterday before a couple of hundred students in a college class titled “Media In A Changing World.” We titled our lecture with what we thought was a clever and provocative title, “Television: Past Its Prime Time?” Early in the presentation, we asked the room for a show of hands on how many had watched anything on traditional “linear” television in the past week. Four hands went up. We then asked how many had watched anything via streaming in the past week.
Nearly every hand in the room was raised.
For the generation about to enter the coveted 25-54 demographic, the question really isn’t whether linear Television is past its prime(time)? The streaming audience has left the schedule behind—so that now, whenever (and wherever) they choose to watch is primetime.
And the fight over who will control just what those eyeballs can watch is far from being over.
In other words, the “hostilities” in the fights over media consolidation are far from being resolved. And it is unlikely they will end on friendly terms, whether in Hollywood or Washington.
We’re dropping this column over the weekend because the tsunami of words written about the blockbuster deal in which Netflix has emerged as the leader in the backstretch of the race to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) for $72 billion. (If you’ve seen a larger number elsewhere of nearly $83 billion, the difference is that the latter number includes the WBD debt that Netflix would assume. We’ve chosen to focus on the number that Netflix is actually paying rather than the total value of the deal.)
While we expected that there would be many who would not look favorably on what is essentially a giant tech company (Netflix) swallowing up a legendary movie studio (Warner Bros.) that also happens to have a huge portfolio of cable media brands (HBO and Discovery) we admit being surprised by the deluge of disdain from so many corners, so quickly.
Even Jane Fonda has weighed in, saying that allowing this transaction (or any proposed deal for Warner Bros. Discovery to have new owners) is not just bad for Hollywood but also bad for democracy itself. She puts it in no uncertain terms:
"Consolidation at this scale would be catastrophic for an industry built on free expression, for the creative workers who power it, and for consumers who depend on a free, independent media ecosystem to understand the world. It will mean fewer jobs, fewer opportunities to sell work, fewer creative risks, fewer news sources and far less diversity in the stories Americans get to hear."
That’s pretty much the drumbeat from Hollywood, as a growing number of political figures.
We’ve read a lot of the writing on the reasons why this deal is such a bad one for the movie business. The theater business. The streaming business. The news business. The television business. Heck, pretty much any business. We won’t be surprised if the popcorn growers of America come out against this deal.
So to read a coherent and thoughtful defense of the idea that Netflix would be a good owner of a suddenly treasured institution like Warner Bros. was truly insightful.
And that is precisely what M.G. Siegler has delivered in his take on the deal, posted on his Spyglass newsletter website. (As we said in the headline, we wish we had written it.)
We’ve followed his writing about the tech industry for longer than we can remember. If you have never heard of him, here is his bio.
Siegler does a fantastic job of explaining the position of each of the major Hollywood studios, and he accurately points out that only one movie studio has never changed hands—and it isn’t Warner Brothers. In fact, Warner’s (as it was once called) has changed hands four different times since an actual brother named Warner ran the place in the 1960s.
And a reminder that Netflix is only paying for the movie and TV studio and its streaming assets. That last part may be the thing that really draws the most scrutiny, because combining the #1 streamer in Netflix with the #3 one in HBO Max, does begin to smell like the kind of monopoly that the federal government has been putting a stop to since President Teddy Roosevelt was trust-busting the railroads in the early 1900s.
Warner Bros. Discovery still plans to split itself before selling to anyone, with the cable networks from CNN to HGTV to Discovery ending up in a standalone company called Discovery Global.
As we said in our Friday report, there is a long way to go before this deal possibly crosses the finish line. The current estimates now suggest it could be 18 to 24 months. A lot can happen in two years, including the midterm elections.
Should the Netflix/WBD deal never get done, Netflix is on the hook for a 5+ billion-dollar “breakup fee."
And unlike the mega deals pending in the television business, namely Nexstar-Tegna or Sinclair-Scripps, the Federal Communications Commission has no role in saying whether the Netflix/WBD can happen. That’s not to suggest that there won't be other parts of the government that will have something to say, both on the federal and state levels. Probably quite a bit, judging from the reaction in the first twenty four hours.
As movie legend Bette Davis said in the 1950 cinema classic, “All About Eve”: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”
Last night, while you may have been watching the weekly streaming-only exercise of the National Football League, Amazon Prime’s “Thursday Night Football” matchup between the Cowboys and Lions, an even bigger game was playing out--well off any football field.
UPDATE: As of this Friday morning, that game was over—at least in the first playing of it. We’ll insert the new details as we go along in this updated edition of our early morning dispatch.
Just two days after this past Tuesday’s deadline for the big money bids to buy Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) came the evening dispatch from Oliver Darcy in his excellent “Status” newsletter. He detailed the bad blood that has developed between “the two Davids,” those being David Zaslav, the CEO of WBD, and his would-be acquirer, David Ellison, the head of ParamountSkydance (PSKY). According to Darcy’s reporting, the problems began when Ellison backed out of a handshake deal with Zaslav that would have kept Paramount’s “South Park” on WBD’s HBO Max streaming platform, after each new episode initially aired on PSKY’s “Comedy Central” network.
Ellison decided, in the days before his Skydance finally closed on acquiring Paramount, to pay South Park’s creators, the uber-talented Trey Parker and Matt Stone, a cool $1.5 billion over the next five years to both keep new episodes of South Park airing first on Comedy Central and bring the entire library of past South Park episodes from HBO Max over to Paramount+. There was more antagonism between the two media giants earlier this year. In that case, over negotiations to keep two of Warner Bros. television properties on Paramount’s “Nick at Nite” schedule, specifically “Friends” and “Two and a Half Men.” A last-minute deal averted that problem, but it didn’t serve to heal any wounds between “the Two Davids.”
There is no truth to the rumor (that we are starting here) that Zaslav quoted South Park’s Eric Cartman after these dealings with Paramount, saying, “Everything is a lie, we are all pawns.”
Zaslav would find himself in a position to return the favor to Ellison just a few months later when the latter decided he would launch a bid to acquire the whole of Warner Bros. Discovery. After Ellison’s unexpected move seemingly put WBD in play, Netflix and Comcast expressed interest in acquiring at least part of the WBD empire, including the movie studio and streaming assets. (For his part, David Zaslav had already announced plans to split his company into two parts, one part holding the studio and streaming outlets, the other holding the cable networks, including CNN, Discovery, etc.)
If this plan sounds familiar, it’s because it is pretty much what Comcast just did in cleaving off its cable networks to the newly formed Versant.
On Wednesday, December 3rd, Paramount’s lawyers sent a letter to Mr. Zaslav, accusing his company of “failing to conduct a fair auction” in considering any sale and that WBD “isn’t acting in its shareholders’ best interests.” The letter charged that WBD was favoring the competing bid to Paramount’s offer from Netflix. Needless to say, the combination of Netflix and HBO Max would be the 600-pound gorilla in the streaming video marketplace.
Then Thursday Night, December 4th, by the time the Lions had beaten the Cowboys by a score of 44 to 30, Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw and Michelle F. David were reportingtheir exclusive that Warner Bros. Discovery had entered into “exclusive negotiations” to sell the studio and streaming half of itself to…Netflix.
By Friday morning, December 5th, it was done. Netflix will pay $72 billion to acquire the Warner Bros. movie studio and streaming assets, following the previously announced spin-off of the cable networks and digital properties as Discovery Global. The transaction is expected to be done by the 3rd quarter of 2026. Netflix’s offer was $23.25 in cash and $4.50 in NFLX stock for each share of WBD.
Looking ahead, this Netflix deal for Warner Bros. faces significant hurdles.
First of all, there is much speculation that Paramount’s Ellison will appeal directly to the company’s shareholders to accept his offer to buy the whole company rather than Netflix’s cherry-picking deal for the best assets. (At one point, it was believed that PSKY was also going to bid for the studio/streaming half of WBD, but that was probably before David Ellison began considering the union of the other assets that are in the WBD networks portfolio, and the possibility of a CBS-CNN marriage.)
Ellison is also positioning his company as the only one that can secure the necessary approvals from the current federal government to close a deal. The Bloomberg report notes that Ellison has been making the rounds with various officials to make his case. Not surprisingly, Utah Senator Mike Lee, a Republican, expressed his feelings on social media that a potential Netflix deal for WBD “would raise serious competition questions—perhaps more so than any transaction I’ve seen in about a decade.”
Of course, David Ellison’s financial backer is Larry Ellison, who also happens to be his father. The senior Ellison is also friends with (and a major political contributor to) the current President of the United States.
And now we know that Netflix has committed to a $5.8 billion “breakup” fee if the deal falls through.
What all of this leads us to wonder most about is the long-term financial health of all the cable networks that could potentially end up in the control of just two companies by the time the holidays roll around at the end of next year? Suppose Discovery Global is one, and Versant, mentioned above, is the other. Can those two newly constituted companies, each holding large portfolios of cable networks and associated digital properties, be successful? Even in a world where “cutting the cord” is happening way faster than folks are signing up to get those same networks via yet another streaming subscription?
It is worth noting that Comcast, which shares the title of the largest cable TV provider in the United States with Charter, decided it would be better to set its cable networks off on their own and spin them off to the new Versant. And as of January 2nd, 2026, when the tax-free pro rata distribution deal that creates Versant as a separate, publicly traded company is completed, Comcast will own no equity stake in it.
Talk about an odd vote of confidence in that new venture.
Once again, we’d remind readers that a deal for all or any part of Warner Bros. Discovery is a long way from being settled. But we can’t help but wonder if David Ellison now wishes he hadn’t stiffed David Zaslav on that deal to keep “South Park” streaming on HBO Max.
And what if “Zaz” channels his inner Eric Cartman at some point and says, “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”
And in that case, “home” could be Discovery Global, who would not only be the home of CNN, TNT, TBS, truTV, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, ID, Animal Planet, Magnolia, Cooking Channel, Travel Channel, Science Channel, HLN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Boomerang, TCM, and Discovery. It would also be the very business Zaslav came from in 2022, when he orchestrated the merger between Warner Brothers (which was being spun off by AT&T) and Discovery Networks, where he was then CEO.
With apologies to Bon Jovi, who says you can’t go home? If he chose to, Zaslav could continue channelling Cartman and say “Respect My Authority” to anyone who might still be listening.
On this first day of December, the television business finds itself in the traditional holiday period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, with the arrival of the New Year close behind. There will be the usual collection of holiday events to cover, from Christmas tree and menorah lightings to fundraising efforts to make sure there is some good cheer for all.
Inside the local stations, there will be the typical signs of the season, ranging from managing those pesky schedules when everyone wants to be off at the same time, to the rush of advertisers looking to get last-minute spots on the log to let folks know about all their sales to help stuff Santa’s sleigh bag. (At least the sales department sure hopes so.)
Forgive us for stating the obvious: This year, the sprint to the end of the year seems a bit different.
The news cycle shows no signs of slowing down amid the ongoing political and financial landscape at both the federal and state levels. The early numbers suggest that consumers are spending over the long Black Friday-to-Cyber Monday shopping weekend at a notably higher level than last year. Whether that is a sign of rising consumer confidence or increased chaos is still to be seen.
The sense of chaos isn’t limited to spending on the retail level. Spending on media ownership is also running at an overdrive level. The billion-dollar deals for local stations that we have been chronicling here are still moving toward their ultimate fates, to be decided by the markets or by government regulators who will have to clear the way for the concentration of more outlets into fewer ownership entities.
You know things are running a bit overheated when companies are adopting so-called “poison pill” moves under the guise of the more supportively named “shareholder rights plan” that Scripps announced last week, just before the Thanksgiving holiday. While the plan is purported to enable the company’s board of directors to evaluate any proposal to acquire the company and ensure that all shareholders receive full value in connection with such a proposal, Sinclair's recent announcement of just such a proposal makes this more than a hypothetical exercise in corporate governance.
As we first wrote back in the summer, this game of musical chairs is fully underway. It shows no signs that the music will suddenly stop before the local radio station playing holiday music 24/7 returns to its regular musical genre. And we keep hearing that there may be more players than have even been mentioned to date, still looking to secure an open chair before the tune is interrupted.
While this is all going on for control of local TV stations across the country, there is also the high-stakes game being played out to control Hollywood’s major player in the chase for Warner Bros. Discovery. That drama seems to be headed for another turn this week, as second-round bids are due today. Then David Zaslav and Company will decide if they will enter “exclusive negotiations” with any bidder.
Or not as the case may be. WBD’s board could say “no thank you” and proceed with its own plan to split into two in 2026.
Meanwhile, who knows what else may drop in the whole saga of Bari Weiss’s remake of CBS News for her boss, Paramount-Skydance head David Ellison. We presume he has been busy getting in his second bid to acquire WBD. (We were surprised to see that Ms. Weiss had some free time to send out an email with details of the Black Friday sale on paid subscriptions to “The Free Press” newsletter.)
And speaking of 2026, let’s not forget that the battle to reopen the government only resulted in an agreement that lasts until the end of the first month of next year.
One of the Christmas movies we watched with our family unit over the long holiday weekend past was “Bad Moms Christmas.” It is definitely NOT a Hallmark Channel movie and not intended for the kiddos. In the film, actress Mila Kunis, who plays one of the lead characters, asks the proverbial question that often gets abbreviated into the three-letter acronym, “WTF?” (To be precise, she asks it a time or two with the additional word “absolute” squeezed in between the “T” and the “F.”)
Don’t be surprised if you find yourself asking that very same question in the next 30 days or so.
Just be careful about exactly who might be listening if you happen to ask it out loud, as we often do.
We assume that most of you will be involved in either preparing a Thanksgiving meal for family and friends tomorrow or travelling to attend such a gathering. We were thinking it would be fun to prepare a menu for some of the notable names we have been writing about for the better part of this year, inspired by suggestions from one of our faithful readers.
So with that as a backdrop, here’s what we would propose serving our honored guests, were they invited to our imaginary table:
For all of our guests as they arrive, a glass of champagne, especially one for FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, so he can be peppered with questions about what he is going to do now, since his boss seems to have changed his tune on the whole plan to deregulate the television business. (Note to the servers, he may need more than one glass during the cocktail hour.)
Some of our guests may need something stronger. Say, an old-fashioned for Scripps’ Adam Symson, and a Kamikaze for Sinclair’s Chris Ripley.
Let’s make sure to pass out some fine caviar to Versant’s CEO, Mark Lazarus, now that the always-fascinating Status newsletter has unearthed his pay package to be worth $35 million, should the Comcast spinoff hit all its performance targets for the newly rechristened MS NOW, along with the other unwanted, or rather, the underappreciated cable networks of NBC. Comcast head Brian Roberts seems anxious to move away from Lazarus in the growing crowd.
Speaking of not only hitting your targets, but definitely exceeding them, get whatever Status.news founder Oliver Darcy is drinking and pour us one too.
Let’s get the canapes passed out to everyone, including those ones with the cucumbers that CNN’s Mark Thompson probably likes. You’ll find him over in the corner, furtively checking his iPhone to see what the latest CNN “All Access” subscription numbers look like. Or maybe he is checking whether the job posting for the Executive Director job at the BBC is online yet.
Looking around the room, we note with some resignation that Warner Bros./Discovery chief David Zaslav has definitely stiffed us this year. He did say he was a “maybe” on his RSVP. Probably looking over those bids for WBD and figuring out how he will be spending his 2026.
Well, let’s ring the bell that we borrowed from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to invite everyone in for dinner. It’s a sound that many of our guests will be looking to hear in the weeks and months to come.
We do have place cards set on the table, directing everyone where to sit, but we notice that Nexstar’s Perry Sook has smartly moved his so he can sit next to the aforementioned Brendan Carr. Can’t imagine that they have anything to talk about over dinner.
Let’s get those food items started being passed around, as we know everyone is famished.
David Muir of ABC News, could you pass the mashed potatoes? We put them in front of you since your nightly broadcast can seemingly “mash" more stories into the headlines off the top of your show than anyone else. NBC’s Tom Llamas will try to put as many on his plate as he can. Sitting across from them, CBS’s Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson are passing on the mashed potatoes; they seem to be waiting for the au gratin variety.
Their new boss, Bari Weiss, is passing the gravy boat around, because if anyone should appreciate the gravy this year, it should be the person who got a gig running a major television news operation—with absolutely no experience in the TV business at all. We do wonder whether we need plates for the number of burly bodyguards standing behind her chair at the table.
Sitting near her are the Fox News primetime anchor trio of Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham. The candied yams are in front of them, because if anyone should know about yammering on, it should be these three. We note that Bari seems to be trying to talk to each of them as much as possible about their holiday plans—and beyond.
But given that News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch is sitting on the other side of them, they do not appear to be engaging with Ms. Weiss while they eat. For his part, Mr. Murdoch is seemingly tickled that we have some Vegemite on the table as a condiment.
Thankfully, Gray Television’s Hilton Howell is now passing the cornbread stuffing out. We hear him say that this looks like the original southern recipe with bacon that's served at almost every home in Atlanta. (Well, of course it is, sir. What kind of heathens do you think we are?)
Speaking of Atlanta, Weather Channel owner Byron Allen is grabbing the green beans and talking about how he could use some more green on his plate, since the deal from CBS to air his “Comics Unleashed” isn’t generating quite enough “green" to save the rest of his media empire. And who put Circle City Broadcasting’s DuJuan McCoy across the table from him? Does no one know what happened when they were together in the lobby bar at Encore in Las Vegas that one year during the NAB Show?
Fortunately, NAB Chairman Curtis LeGeyt is keeping the peace next to the two of them. We knew that sitting him there could put his always-diplomatic charm skills to excellent use.
We are wondering if it was a mistake to seat Disney’s Bob Iger and wife Willow Bay across from Paramount’s former chairwoman Shari Redstone and current chair David Ellison? We thought seating that foursome closest to the turkey platter seemed smart, after their networks paid off the chief pardoner of turkeys, but now we aren’t so sure.
Of course, Merit Street Media’s Dr. Phil McGraw is asking if we will be having pie for dessert? Yes, Phil, of course we are, because no Thanksgiving meal would be complete without it. CNN’s Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer are having an increasingly loud debate over the merits of Apple versus Walnut varieties, while Brian Stelter is obnoxiously advocating for Pumpkin as the very best. (Fools, everyone knows that coconut cream is the best selection for discerning pie fans.)
Surveying the scene, Liberty Media titan John Malone says that this is definitely the last time he is coming to our Thanksgiving dinner, and who can blame him, really? We think we need a better guest list next year. One that would include the real people who make this business work each day, like you, our faithful readers of “The Topline.” (We definitely know you would certainly be a much more fun crowd to have at our table.)
Wherever you may spend this Thanksgiving, we hope you all have a Happy and safe one. We’ll be back with you next week after we have scoured the Black Friday sales to see if anyone is unloading a station or a network at a price we can afford.
And yes, everyone at our fictitiously large Thanksgiving table just laughed at that outrageous notion as well—clearly ingrates, every last one of them.
From 34,000 feet at 419 knots aboard Delta flight 2119, heading west. We’re trying are writing this on our trusty iPhone rather than our usual laptop keyboard, so spelling and punctuation may suffer throughout…
We really thought that the holiday week would be on the slow side when it came to TV industry news, given that everyone would be trying to sort out what they were truly thankful for. But we should have known that once the Truth Social “pothole” popped up on the road to getting the Nexstar-TEGNA deal to its destination of success, then the speed limit for developments would be off, much like on the autobahn in Germany.
(Sorry, we are not sure why we are stuck on the whole automotive theme this week, but you’re just going to have roll with us for now.)
After the President of these United States seemed to be supporting Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy’s objection to Perry Sook and Nexstar’s plan to hook up TEGNA’s assets and barrel down the Mass (Media) Pike like one of those tandem-trailer trucks as the biggest, baddest owner of local TV stations, now Monday brings word that Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley has presented an “actionable offer” to acquire E.W. Scripps by buying up the 90% of the latter’s shares that Sinclair doesn’t already own.
In other words, Ripley is going to drive a bulldozer from his HQ outside of Baltimore down to the Scripps Tower in downtown Cincinnati. While this seems like an unwelcome, if not downright hostile takeover, there appears to be some key differences in Sinclair’s approach for Scripps from Nexstar’s play for TEGNA.
The biggest being that Ripley seems to acknowledge that Sinclair may not end up with all of Scripps’ local TV stations. Variety reports that in its SEC filing Sinclair states “We are confident that under existing rules, including the national cap, the transaction can be completed in a timely manner with limited select divestitures.” That suggests a combined Sinclair-Scripps would not own 225 total stations, but a smaller figure.
We have to believe that means that Sinclair is planning to have to live with a 39% ownership cap staying unchanged by the FCC or ultimately Congress, despite whatever Commission Chair Brendan Carr ultimately does about deregulation. Of course that doesn’t mean the new Scripps (yes, Sinclair claims it wants to keep the name for the new entity) couldn’t keep using the old Sinclair playbook of having some stations from the transaction spun off to friendly “sidecar” companies like Cunningham, Deerfield, etc.
The Sinclair (SBGI) offer is for $7 a share of outstanding stock in E.W. Scripps (SSP). But in the SEC filing the details are that the offer is $2.72 in cash and $4.28 in shares of the newly combined company. The cash figure is better than where Scripps shares were trading before the news of Sinclair taking a stake in the stock of Scripps.
But this is still another merger to create a bigger local television owner. And that is just the thing that Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy was taking Nexstar to the PR “woodshed” last week. Plus, the name Christopher Ruddy is well known to the executives of Sinclair.
Back in 2017, during the first Trump administration, Sinclair launched a $3.9 billion dollar offer to acquire Tribune Media (remember them?) Much like his objections to Nexstar’s bid for TEGNA, Ruddy became a vocal critic of Sinclair’s plans, claiming the deal would hurt “media diversity and squeeze smaller (and conservative) networks like his Newsmax channel.
Ultimately, the Sinclair bid for Tribune collapsed under regulatory scrutiny in 2018, giving a victory to Ruddy and the oddly aligned public interest groups who also opposed the deal. Ironically enough, Nexstar would come down the same “highway” not long after and acquire Tribune Media’s stations, making it the largest owner of local TV stations and giving it important major market stations like New York’s WPIX, LA’s KTLA and Chicago’s WGN. (Though Nexstar plays the “sidecar” game too, as WPIX is technically owned by Mission Broadcasting, to help keep Nexstar under the 39% cap.)
So far, we haven’t seen word of Christopher Ruddy going after Sinclair’s offer for Scripps with the same objections that he went on his Newsmax to lobby against Nexstar. The question is whether he will and if he does, will the man who has the desk in the Oval Office inside the White House agree with him?
We’re reminded about that road that was “paved with good intentions.” And at the moment, there may not be a lot of “Happy Motoring” to found on the highways of the merger maps being consulted by the nation’s biggest television station owners.
As for us, we’re up to 425 knots and it’s been a pretty smooth ride.
There was a time when the only political news that happened on a Sunday was whatever the various partisan talking heads managed to say on the Sunday morning network news shows. Every weekend newscast producer knows the drill: you pull a soundbite or two from each of the party faithful who said the most interesting things on NBC’s "Meet the Press", CBS’s "Face the Nation", ABC’s "This Week", CNN’s "State of the Union" or "Fox News Sunday.” If one of your state’s members of Congress were on, that might even warrant a mini-package.
That was before the nation started receiving policy positions from social media posts made at any hour of any day.
And because the President of these United States has his own social media platform, in the form of the Trump Media & Technology group-owned “Truth Social,” the reality is that whatever gets posted to the Commander-In-Chief’s “official” account between Friday and Sunday is as likely to be a story in the Sunday night newscasts as anything said on those Sunday morning shows.
This Sunday was no different. While much of the nation was focused on the Dallas Cowboys' improbable comeback to defeat the Philadelphia Eagles in the second half of the Sunday afternoon doubleheader, the account of [@realDonaldTrump](https://micro.blog/realDonaldTrump) posted this:
"If this would also allow the Radical Left Networks to ‘enlarge’ - I would not be happy. ABC & NBC, in particular, are a disaster - A VIRTUAL ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY. They should be viewed as an illegal campaign to the Radical Left. NO EXPANSION OF THE FAKE NEWS NETWORKS. If anything, make them SMALLER! President DJT"
The Truth Social post linked to a story on the Newsmax website, in which last week, that network’s CEO, Christopher Ruddy, went on the air to blast the proposed Nexstar-TEGNA merger, claiming it would “give the big TV networks massive reach.” The headline of the web story on his appearance makes the point even sharper: “FCC lifting TV cap a ‘disaster’ for Conservatives."
But he didn’t stop with just his previously expressed distaste for the 6-plus billion dollar deal that would unite Nexstar and TEGNA to create the largest single owner of local television stations. Ruddy went on to chastise Nexstar in particular, citing a statistic that claims that 78% of Nexstar employees donated to Kamala Harris in the last election.
(We find that claim, which wasn’t attributed to any source, a bit incredulous—given that the majority of the company’s 13,000-plus employees probably don’t make ANY political contributions, given their positions, not to mention the size of their paychecks. Well, at least those in non-executive positions.)
Ruddy wasn’t done “dropping bombs” (as the kids used to say) on all things Nexstar.
He labelled the company’s “NewsNation” as a “liberal news network”— headlined by former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. But perhaps his most substantial challenge would come in the form of this quote: "The answer to Big Tech consolidation is not to give left-wing TV broadcasters massive consolidation and power, too...You don't fix Big Tech consolidation by creating another industry with massive left-wing consolidation.” The challenge of “Big Tech” to local broadcasters has been a key argument Perry Sook has used to justify the merger, which would require raising the FCC-mandated cap on the number of local stations any one company can own, so that no one company reaches more than 39% of the nation’s TV viewers.
If the merger between Nexstar and TEGNA were allowed with no restrictions, the company would own stations reaching more than 80% of U.S. Households.
Finally, in a moment that was reminiscent of anchorman Howard Beale’s on-camera meltdown in the 1976 movie “Network.” Ruddy suggested that people who agree with him should "call their Congressman and call their Senators” to let them know that they "oppose lifting the 39% cap and the Nexstar merger."
Apparently, the occupant of the Oval Office seems somewhat swayed by Mr. Ruddy’s opposition.
And that’s despite Nexstar’s Chairman and CEO heaping praise on the President and his FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, during his appearance with Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo last week. We detailed what he said in our dispatch from last Friday, which you can read here if you missed it.
This would be where we channel our inner Keanu Reeves to quietly exclaim to ourselves: “Whoa."
Of course, the contention that the Nexstar-TEGNA deal would “allow the Radical Left Networks to enlarge” is a bit misguided. In reality, the proposed deal doesn’t change the reach of either ABC or NBC in any meaningful way, because the number of stations each network airs on wouldn’t change—just who owns those stations would. And that isn’t either one of those “VIRTUAL ARMS OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY” as the President called the two networks in his Sunday afternoon post.
So that runs a bit counter to the massive deregulation push the FCC Chairman has been promising for most of this year.
We would be remiss if we suggested here that this was anything more than a pesky speed bump on the road to getting the Nexstar-TEGNA deal done. But it is notable that within an hour after the initial Truth Social post from [@realDonaldTrump](https://micro.blog/realDonaldTrump), the social media of some conservative influencers picked up the theme. Over on Facebook, the account for “Conservative Twins” headlined a post with “President Trump has ordered the FCC to STOP a massive media merger that would super-charge the left-wing legacy networks."
Come to think about it, maybe this is more of a pothole than just a speed bump. How big a pothole? That remains to be seen.
We can but hope that Perry Sook has a good spare in the trunk of his company car.
We have just cracked into Andrew Ross Sorkin’s bestseller “1929” here at the TVND World Headquarters. We plan to make it our Thanksgiving-week read while traveling to see family, as we assume most everyone will be doing in some form in the days ahead. (We’ll note that we may be a bit sporadic in publishing anything new here, assuming that even the “always be dealing” types will take a break from the action.)
But the week that is just ending has had us thinking more about the premise that the business events of the roaring 1920s could be recycling now in the 2020s. And as we end this year, which marks the mid-point of the decade, the stop signals on the tracks ahead couldn’t be any more red in color.
And for our purposes here, we are not even considering the never-more-improbable landscape that is anything remotely political, either globally or just here on our shores. And pretty much everywhere in between.
No, we are still very much focused on the television business. Or at least whatever is set to be left of it when all the dust settles.
We started this week writing about the odd courtship between Sinclair Broadcasting Group (Stock Ticker: SBGI) and The E.W. Scripps Company, widely known by its surname, Scripps (Ticker: SSP). The week has progressed with suggestions that Sinclair is continuing to increase its stake in the publicly traded stock of Scripps, which continues to play its “reluctant bride” role about potentially heading to the altar to enter into an unholy union.
Tim Hanlon, one of the principal scribes over at TVRev.com, just wrote a fascinating look at a potential Sinclair-Scripps deal. He called it a 'reality check,” and we’d certainly suggest it is well worth your time to read his take. Tim doesn’t mince words (which is why we always enjoy his writing). He calls the situation "a tangle of structural, regulatory, and reputational hazards."
He proceeds to dissect the various challenges to consummating the marriage, and zooms in on the specific market challenges in Baltimore (where Sincalir is based), Cincinnati (where Scripps is based), and Nashville (where country music and its countless songs about bad relationships are based). Tim concludes his analysis with this bit of clarity about the Sinclair-Scripps deal: "Combined with a corporate culture prone to political activism, financial overextension, and regulatory brinkmanship, it represents a high-risk consolidation of US local television."
(Don’t feel like you need to hold anything back, brother Hanlon.)
Forgive us, but we do have to ask precisely what isn’t "a high-risk consolidation of US local television these days?"
And is anyone actually worried about those “hazards” you mentioned? Certainly not the regulatory ones--because those seem to be as illusory as those perfect marriages we kept getting told about by the never-ending stream of “trad wives” pontificating from the front seat of their cars on seemingly every social media platform available.
The amount of sucking up to the power brokers in Washington and the money brokers in New York City isn’t too hard to follow. As mega-billion-dollar bids were submitted to acquire either all or part of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), the business press is running at full speed with speculation that the Father-Son duo of Larry and David Ellison of the newly minted Paramount-Skydance (PSKY) has the inside track on that deal because they have the ear of the POTUS. And they may have already tipped their hand: if they were to get their hands on WBD's assets, they would be kicking out those pesky CNN anchors--who aren’t beloved in the White House these days—right to the curb to join the ever-growing legion of unemployed journalists turned Substack authors. (No, that irony isn’t lost on us--at all.)
That is assuming that the Saudi Royal Family’s Investment Fund doesn’t just say to David Zaslav and the WBD board of directors: “name your price."
Meanwhile, Nexstar Chairman and CEO Perry Sook was making the rounds this week to friendly haunts he knew might be an important screen or two, somewhere in the District of Columbia. Sook told Fox Business anchor (and best female impersonator of the hyperbolic Jim Cramer) Maria Bartiromo, that his proposed deal to acquire rival TEGNA was “thanks to President Trump and his administration that is focused on eliminating unnecessary rules and unshackling businesses to compete in the current environment.” He went on to hail FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s determination that this is “a break-glass moment for local television”. He praised Carr’s promise to “review and we hope eliminate the outdated rules that govern the size and scope of a company like Nexstar."
Host Bartiromo declared that Sook was “absolutely right” and ticked off the shopping list of supposedly great things that the current administration wants to do. She then played a clip of Chairman Carr talking about the questionable relationships where unlicensed national programmers like Disney, Comcast, and Paramount put pressure on local television broadcasters.”
You know, to carry all that evil programming from the likes of Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and Stephen Colbert. (The latter only until next May.)
Chairman Sook then defended his projected synergy figure of $300 million in savings from taking over TEGNA, when Bartiromo noted that at least one industry analyst said that figure might be “light by 50% or more.” He responded that they are into the “second round of diligence” with TEGNA and that while there could be more costs to be cut—or rather more “synergies" to be discovered—and those might allow for even more to be invested in local news, though probably from one building rather than two in the “9 or 10” overlap markets they have identified where each company already has a station. And presumably a building and people working in it.
But lest you fear all that coming consolidation, Sook was quick to remind Bartiromo and her viewers: “We need strong companies that have the ability to scale and preserve local journalism…because as you know, we face an existential threat from big tech in an era of disinformation and fake news. And we, at the local level, we believe we are anti-fake news, maybe the last bastion of that serving local communities.”
Don’t worry about those local communities, because Perry put it plainly: “You need big companies that have the ability to, have the financial wherewithal to support local journalism and grow it over time. Otherwise, I fear we kind of go the way of the newspaper industry."
(Hopefully, that puts all your concerns to rest, because there certainly weren’t any big companies in the newspaper business before it was decimated in the changing media landscape of the previous decade. Of course, you may also remember that there were many more newspapers back in the 1920s. Don’t get stuck on those troubling details.)
There was another figure from Mr. Sook that we thought worth noting. He said, “We see growth from expanding the amount of local news. If you look at the acquisitions we’ve done to date, and we’ve done about 40 of them over the nearly 30 years since I founded the company, we’ve increased the amount of local news serving those communities by about 30 percent over what they were producing at the time of acquisition.”
He did not mention any figures on how many journalists or resources were added to produce this additional percentage of local news on the acquired properties.
Obviously, many players in the television business are hoping the FCC will put a big package of deregulation under the Christmas tree before the end of the year. And if they want that, they have to do the adult version of sitting on Santa’s lap and saying that the economy is definitely growing and the focus on “affordability” is definitely lowering prices for consumers. If you aren’t seeing that at the grocery store, don’t worry--they will come down even more in 2026. If that is what they have to say, then that is just what they will have to do.
After all, nobody wants to be on the naughty list at this time of the year.
The history of television would not be complete without the name of Monty Hall. Mr. Hall was the original host and co-creator of the classic TV game show “Let’s Make A Deal” from its birth in 1963 through various incarnations on various networks and in syndication until 1991. The game show was revived in 2009 by CBS for its daytime schedule, with Wayne Brady filling the role that Monty Hall was synonymous with for nearly three decades. When Hall passed away in 2017 from heart failure at the age of 96, Wayne Brady took a moment on the show to recognize Monty Hall for being a big supporter of the show up until the day he died. He acknowledged him for raising “hundreds of millions of dollars for charity."
It is true that Monty Hall was quite the philanthropist, and his name is on hospital wards in both his native Canada and in his adopted United States. He was a regular for years on Jerry Lewis’s annual telethon for Muscular Dystrophy and lent his name to many other charities. His name appears on various honors, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
And as anyone who has ever watched “Let’s Make A Deal” can tell you, in either the original or current versions, Monty Hall created and perfected the show’s ultimate climax in each episode where a contestant from the audience is offered “the big deal of the day.” In the game, the contestant must choose one of three large “doors” on the studio stage. Behind one door is a fabulous prize, another has a lesser consolation prize, and the third has a gag prize worth nothing, or what is known in the show as a “Zonk."
The fun is in watching to see if the contestant selects the correct door and wins the biggest prize.
This very dilemma is at the heart of a probability puzzle conceived by a statistician in 1975 and detailed in a journal called The American Statistician. The puzzle was dubbed “the Monty Hall Problem,” and it addressed the probability of what happens after a contestant in the game-show scenario learns what is behind one of the two doors they didn’t pick. The host offers the contestant the opportunity to switch their choice or sometimes to take a cash amount in exchange for walking away from their choice.
This brings us to today’s story from the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Flint and Lauren Thomas, which reported that Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBGI) has taken a significant 8% stake in the stock of broadcasting rival E.W. Scripps Company (SSP). The value of the stake was estimated at just over $15 million. The news turbocharged Scripps shares, sending them over 30% higher in midday trading on this Monday, even as Scripps quickly said it would “take all appropriate steps to protect the company and the company’s shareholders from the opportunistic actions of Sinclair or anyone else."
For its part, Sinclair said that it has “been in talks for months" about a deal that would combine the companies. You will recall that the WSJ’s Flint reported on August 19th that Sinclair was going to merge with TEGNA. It was a blockbuster story until Nexstar’s Chairman and CEO, Perry Sook, did his best impersonation of ESPN’s College Football legend Lee Corso and said, “Not so fast, my fine friend!” Sook then rolled out his 6-plus-billion-dollar offer, in which Nexstar would acquire TEGNA, and remain the nation’s largest owner of local television stations—assuming the current FCC will relax its ownership rules to allow the transaction to proceed. (The just-ended government shutdown slowed things down a bit on that front.)
Apparently, Sinclair then set its sights on a more affordable partner to merge with. And that was the Cincinnati-based Scripps, which currently owns 61 television stations—though it has announced plans to sell its Indianapolis station, WRTV, to DuJuan McCoy’s Circle City Broadcasting, which already owns and operates WISH-TV and WNDY in that market.
Adding Scripps' 60 TV stations, across some 40 markets, to Sinclair’s 185 “owned and operated” stations in 85 markets would make the combined entity the second “mega TV group” after a combined Nexstar-TEGNA. And that total station count doesn’t include the 100-plus stations owned by so-called “sidecar” companies such as Cunningham Broadcasting, Howard Stirk Holdings, and Deerfield Media. Those companies have agreements that have allowed Sinclair to operate their stations as if they were owned by Sinclair, without running afoul of those pesky FCC rules limiting one owner to no more than 39% of local TV stations.
So Scripps now knows what is behind “Door Number One,” and that is an eager Sinclair with an “urge to merge.” And that leaves the fate of Scripps CEO Adam Symson and his entire team in the Scripps tower in Cincinnati a bit uncertain if that deal were agreed to. Scripps is the smaller of the two companies, with a market cap of nearly $365 million, compared to Sinclair’s about $1.2 billion. The “enterprise value” of the two companies is closer, with Scripps at $3.40 billion and Sinclair at $4.84 billion. But Sinclair has a larger amount of debt of the two, which is probably what triggered it to begin ”a strategic review” of its operations earlier this year.
The question now for Scripps is what would be behind “Door Number Two or Door Number Three,” as Monty Hall would have put it. We can deduce that door number two would be to tell those Sinclair folks from Cockeysville, Maryland, to “go pound sand” and keep running Scripps as the noble enterprise that still professes it strives to “Give light and the people will find their way.” To accomplish this, Scripps likely needs to unload some stations to bring in some cash that would give Symson & Company some “dry powder” to work with in rebuffing Sinclair’s advances.
Then there would be door number three. What might be behind it is anyone’s guess. Another suitor better suited to Scripps’ legacy as a “higher calling” rather than treating journalism merely as a for-profit business. After all, the company still hosts the National Spelling Bee each year, a tradition that dates back to its days as a major newspaper publisher. Another complicating factor is the significant control still held by the descendants of the Scripps family through their ownership of a special class of voting shares in the company.
Door number three could have just about anything behind it. And thus the “Monty Hall Problem” comes into play. In the “Let’s Make A Deal” game, a contestant would pick one of three doors, giving them a 1-in-3 chance of winning the largest prize available. If the host, who knows which door has that prize behind it, showed them what was behind one of the doors they didn’t pick, then probability suggests that the contestant’s chances are now one in two, or basically 50/50. But in an interview in the New York Times in 1991, Monty Hall explained that because he controlled the game and knew what was behind each door, he could play on the psychology of the contestant and make a tempting offer for the contestant to switch their choice to the other remaining door, which raised the drama of that moment in the show.
But the secret was that he didn’t have to do so. He could play the moment out however he wanted to because there wasn’t a rule that required him to make an alternative offer. The contestant just had to live with whatever door they originally selected. And hope that there wasn’t a “Zonk” waiting for them behind it.
So it is a pretty tough decision for Scripps. Whether to take what it now knows is behind Door Number One, a merger with Sinclair, or Door Number Two, which is staying on its own through whatever means necessary, or then again, whatever solution might await behind Door Number Three. One that hopefully isn’t one gigantic “Zonk."
Of course, in the game show, there would always be another contestant playing for “the big deal of the day” come the very next episode. In the real world of the television business, as it stands in late 2025 — nothing is nearly that certain.
There can be no argument that we live in challenging times.
For working journalists, we know those challenges seem greater than ever. And we get why that is the case. Over the last five years, we have seen more polarization and change in attitudes than in the fifty years prior. And whether you have been working for just the past few years or for decades, covering the news in some situations has never been more challenging.
Take, for instance, the assignment that you may be confronted with seemingly any day now—covering a public protest.
The size and frequency of public protests have grown in the past year. Given that law enforcement officers may be involved in these events, either in their traditional role of maintaining public safety or as the object of the protest itself. All working journalists and those who manage them need to be current on the legal “rules of the road” before engaging in covering these situations.
Given the potential for such situations to develop in Minnesota, as in nearly every place these days, we were encouraged to see the Minnesota Journalism Center at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communications host a free online training event yesterday. The session, titled “Know Your Rights: Protest Safety and Police Interactions for Journalists,” featured a presentation from Jennifer Nelson, who is the Director of Pre-publication Review and Journalist Support at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Nelson did an outstanding job of covering the key points every journalist should know to protect themselves and their work in the midst of these unpredictable, volatile assignments. No matter how experienced or knowledgeable about the law you might be, a refresher on this information can only help when you need to know what your rights are and how best to exercise them. (Yes, even newsroom veterans like ourselves learned a thing or two in the session.
Major kudos to the Minnesota Journalism Center for being proactive and holding the session. We would strongly urge you to consider having your state broadcasters' association, SPJ chapter, ownership group, or any other professional organization follow their example and schedule similar training as soon as possible.
Speaking of the RCFP, they are a vital resource as the leading pro bono legal services organization for journalists and newsrooms in the U.S. Their 24-hour hotline for journalists on media law and press freedom issues is a number every journalist should have in their pocket. They are a non-profit that could use support from everyone who values freedom of the press and strong journalism.
They didn’t ask, but we will strongly suggest that you consider donating to support their incredibly valuable work. Even a small contribution helps keep them doing what they do, so you can keep doing what you do. Donate by clicking right here. (That will take you directly to their webpage to do so.)
We’ll wrap this up by channeling the character of Sgt. Phil Esterhaus from the 1980s TV classic, “Hill Street Blues,” who ended every roll call with:
“Hey! Let’s be careful out there."
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(Allow us to suggest that you take a moment to share this edition with your colleagues and friends who could benefit from this reminder to be smart and stay safe.)
Long before his career in politics, which would ultimately lead him to the White House, Ronald Reagan found fame and fortune as an actor. This fact leads to one of the biggest laughs in 1985’s “Back To The Future” for Christopher Lloyd as “Doc Brown."
One of the roles he would be best known for was not on the big screen, where he played George Gipp in the 1940 film “Knute Rockne, All-American.” But instead, it was on the emerging smaller screen of Television. Reagan was the longtime face of the General Electric company, both as host of the series General Electric Theater and as the commercial spokesperson for the company, where he would deliver the company’s post-World War II advertising messages, which typically ended with him saying: “At GE, Progress is our most important product."
The messaging was very intentional. General Electric, like many large industrial companies after World War II, had to convince the buying public that the booming market for products and services to make life easier, ostensibly, was one that they should embrace and support with their money. Everything from electric refrigerators replacing the iceboxes found in most kitchens to the electric-powered locomotives replacing the steam engines that pulled trains across the nation.
GE made both of those innovations, along with many more of that era. But as always, human beings are often reluctant to embrace change, even when it is in their best interest to do so.
Throughout our time in television news, we have witnessed many changes in how the news is gathered, produced, and delivered.
In our earliest years, during the mid to late 1970s, we were part of the first generation of television news journalists who would move from shooting 16mm film to gather news footage to using small-format cameras and videotape that didn’t require the time-consuming process of developing the film before it could be edited and projected. This change was dubbed “Electronic News Gathering” and given the acronym “ENG." In the 1980s, we saw typewriters and carbon-paper script sets replaced by computers on every desktop, and eventually into the hands of reporters in the field. The 1990s? Graphics systems that enabled high-resolution typography and graphics across every market. By the 2000s, early control room automation systems reduced staffing from at least a half-dozen people down to just a couple.
And today, we all carry devices in our pockets that can nearly match the production power of an entire television station.
Those were just a few examples of the significant changes that come to mind. Like any industry, progress comes with the promise of making things better, faster, and perhaps most importantly to those who own television stations, more economical. Note that we consciously avoided using the word cheaper, because the impetus is not universally to do things “on the cheap” — even if some owners might be more willing to do just that.
Which brings us to the current debate we have been hearing more about lately—the growing adoption of artificial intelligence tools in the newsroom.
Along with that is the ancillary argument over whether or not the use of such tools should be disclosed to the audience and, if needed, just how that should be done. (Yes, we can definitely imagine some station in the future promoting the fact that their news is “100% human-powered.”)
Putting it another way, “progress never happens without some pain in the process.” (Overwrought alliteration notwithstanding.)
Let’s be clear, fear is typically the biggest hurdle to progress. The arrival of AI as a newsroom tool would certainly trigger some uncertainty about the status quo. After all, the changes we detailed a few paragraphs ago created a significant learning curve for doing things differently. And each led to the loss of jobs made superfluous by technological advancements.
The fear of advancing AI in nearly every walk of life is understandable. The rise of artificial intelligence has been depicted throughout science fiction as always the root of humanity's decline, if not its outright destruction. So it is not too surprising to hear that there are those in the newsroom who would see the arrival of A.I. tools as being the equivalent of the moment where Skynet becomes sentient in the plot of “The Terminator."
Unless someone has a super-secret AI implementation in their newsroom that we are totally unaware of, we have to say that, while we completely understand the uncertainty, we do find these fears a bit overblown.
We’re not yet fans of any "virtual anchor" examples we’ve seen, so let’s put that nascent technology aside (at least for the moment) and focus on the editorial tools that are now in place or being planned. Whether arriving in TV newsroom computer systems like ENPS and iNEWS, along with newer challengers like Ross Inception, Octopus Newsroom, and Cuez, or in “outboard” tools, such as Magid’s Collaborator and even Grammarly as a grammar and spell checker, these new tools are at the heart of the battles we are hearing about.
The one thing all of these tools have in common is that, like all current artificial intelligence, the process is not automatic. They start with human input. While you can ask AI to do everything from producing story ideas to writing online versions of broadcast scripts (and vice versa), it does not do any of these things without being asked, or in the current parlance, prompted.
We’re writing this very article with the help of Grammarly, the AI-powered grammar and spell checker. We will accept some of the program's suggested changes—others we will dismiss “with prejudice,” as our lawyer likes to say. Ultimately, we control what the tool does in our editorial process. As a minimal staff, we are reminded of our days as a newscast producer on a weekend shift, when we mostly worked alone for much of the shift, until the anchor, who also did some reporting each day, got back into the newsroom and could read over the scripts we had written.
We haven’t felt the need to attach a disclosure about the use of an AI tool in our writing, no matter how minimal it might be. We are aware that this is a point of contention in some newsrooms, where there has been debate over whether to include language acknowledging that artificial intelligence has been used in the editorial process. Some stations have chosen to attach such language to their online stories when this has been the case.
Obviously, this practice is more difficult to practice during a live broadcast. We have heard the argument that, because AI seems to be in everything these days, the audience either assumes it is used in preparing the news or doesn’t care if it is. Some would argue that the more transparency, the better, especially in an age when many believe in “fake news.”
As of this writing, there are no specific FCC rules regarding the use of AI in broadcasting. The closest corollary might be the rules that have been in place since the early days of radio regarding the use of “mechanical reproduction.” Live music was a staple of early radio broadcasting, be it singers, orchestras, or everything musical in between. Recording technology was very primitive at the time. But as that technology improved, there were concerns that radio stations would try to mislead audiences into believing that all musical performances were live, when they were not. By the end of radio’s first decade in the early 1930s, the FCC required the use of the “mechanical reproduction announcement” on stations to prevent any confusion. These announcements would be along the lines of “portions of today’s programming were reproduced by means of electrical transcription or magnetic tape.”
When first adopted, the FCC required such an announcement to be aired every half-hour during any recorded programming. By 1956, the FCC amended its rules so that such announcements were only needed on programming "in which the element of time is of special significance and presentation of which would create, either intentionally or unintentionally, the impression or belief on the part of the listening audience that the event or program being broadcast is in fact occurring simultaneously with the broadcast.”
That said, we recall having to air such an announcement at the start of each broadcast day during our early career stint as a master control operator.
We would offer that having an “AI Creation Announcement” at the end of each newscast could serve much the same purpose. An on-screen graphic stating “Portions of this newscast created with the assistance of artificial intelligence writing tools” (or something along those lines) would seem a solid step towards complete transparency with viewers.
(At least until the adoption of "virtual anchors” requires that disclaimer be a bit more extensive.)
Newsroom purists, we’re sorry, but we don’t see the use of AI-powered tools going away in the future. We also don’t see a time when human-powered journalism will be replaced entirely in the editorial process. Sure, AI is still very capable of making mistakes, typically called by the interesting terminology of “hallucinations.” Humans, particularly in the still-vital review phase of the editorial process, are still the last line of defense.
Just as they have been with every form of automation that has come to the business.
A reminder that, before his years in acting and politics, Ronald Reagan was a broadcaster. First with WHO Radio in Des Moines and later as the play-by-play voice of the Chicago Cubs. (A screen test while in Southern California to cover the Cubs’ Spring Training led to his career as an actor.) While at WHO, “Dutch” Reagan, as he was known, gained notice for his “live play-by-play baseball broadcasts.” He created these broadcasts by reading the details off the wire services as if he were watching the games.
There is no record we can find as to whether he told listeners that he really wasn’t.
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(Errata: The original version of this article referred to “the war to end all wars” in reference to World War II, when in fact that quote was actually about World War I. We regret the error and thank those readers who alerted us to it.)