Greetings from Los Angeles and welcome back to In the Room. If you’re in town next week
for Mike Milken’s Global Conference, drop a line. I’ll be at the summit and surrounding events all week and hope to see you there. Plus, don’t miss my partners Leigh Ann Caldwell and Julia Ioffe onstage, talking press freedom and U.S.-Russia relations, respectively.
In tonight’s issue, news, notes, and revelations about Shari Redstone’s push to soothe her 60 Minutes headaches as her lawyers begin mediation over
the $20 billion Trump lawsuit, and Paramount and Skydance seek F.C.C. approval for their deal.
🍸 Plus, on the latest edition of The Grill Room, the one and only Graydon Carter, architect of Vanity Fair’s golden era, joined me for a candid conversation about the magazine industry’s past, present, and future. Fresh off the release of his new book, When the Going Was Good, Carter reflected on his legendary tenure with VF,
the publication’s decline after his departure, and the broader headwinds facing today’s media industry writ large. Follow The Grill Room on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen.
Mentioned in this issue: Shari Redstone, Jeff Bezos, Omeed Malik, Bill Owens, Robert Allbritton, George Cheeks, Scott Pelley, Suzi Watford, David Ellison, David Sacks, Tony Dokoupil, Wendy McMahon, Matthew
Continetti, Daniel Weinstein, and many, many more…
|
Washington’s hottest club is…: Donald Trump Jr. and investor Omeed Malik have found a location for Executive Branch, the $500,000-plus members-only club in Washington that will allow them to do business and talk shop away from the prying ears of journalists and other eavesdroppers at the Ned. Last week, Malik and fellow investor and White House A.I. czar David Sacks christened Executive Branch with a lavish party at the Occidental on
the night of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Now, they’ve found their own venue. I’m told the club will be located on the banks of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in Georgetown, on Wisconsin Avenue, in the cavernous building that last housed the bar Clubhouse, which closed earlier this month.- Good Will searching: Jeff Bezos and his Washington Post chief executive Will Lewis are still searching for a new
editor to lead Post Opinion in its new iteration as an unwavering champion of “personal liberties and free markets.” In recent weeks, I’m told, Lewis has spoken to a number of potential candidates for the position, including Matthew Continetti, the conservative journalist who now serves as director of domestic policy studies at the center-right American Enterprise Institute.
Of course, Continetti’s worldview would align well with Bezos’s own classical liberal
perspective. As the Amazon founder said back in February, when he sent David Shipley packing, if the Opinion editor’s answer isn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” Presumably, if Continetti wants the job, he’s conveying unbridled enthusiasm.
- The Washington Post brunch: Speaking of the Post, one juicy bit of gossip floating around the W.H.C.D. circuit last weekend was that Will Lewis had spent a whopping $1.3 million to host
the Post’s new brunch party at the Ned on Sunday. That’d be well more than twice what Axel Springer and Robert Allbritton spend to host their own Politico-NOTUS brunch at the Swiss ambassador’s residence, and a hard number for Post insiders to swallow after years of buyouts and eight- or even nine-figure revenue losses. And indeed, earlier this week, Status’s Oliver Darcy reported that hefty north-of-$1 million price
tag.
Alas, the economics of the arrangement are a little more nuanced. The Post is working with the Ned on a long-term partnership, which is part of a broader push by chief strategy officer Suzi Watford to improve its events business. The Post won’t comment on the financial arrangement, or whether the Ned picked up any of the tab, but there are some larger incentives involved for both sides. Of course, that town loves to hate on Will—for reasons
warranted and not—so I get it. In any event, the one thing Will and Suzi do not get a pass on is putting journalists onstage at a Sunday brunch. The last thing anyone wants after a marathon 72-hour session of brunches, lunches, dinners, awards ceremonies, and afterparties is to wake up with a hangover on Sunday morning and be forced to endure more programming. Just let the guests eat caviar.
- The new SpinCo: And finally,
Comcast has decided on an official name for SpinCo, the portfolio of cable assets—MSNBC, CNBC, Syfy, E!, Golf Channel, etcetera—that it is spinning out into its own company. My tipster, who got in touch just before I hit send on this email, suggested the name may be Spark Media. But when I put the question to Comcast representatives, they went dark. So, more on Friday.
|
|
|
Amid Trump’s legal torture of CBS, Shari Redstone has played the role of a
spineless placater—a desperate seller eager to settle and liquidate her position in the family heirloom. But her annoyance over CBS News’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict seems to be real—and so are her attempts to meddle with the newsroom’s independence.
|
|
|
On Wednesday morning, representatives for Paramount Global and President
Trump met with Daniel Weinstein, the preeminent civil mediator, to begin determining how much the $8 billion mediaco might pay to settle the president’s $20 billion lawsuit over a regrettable but benign editing blunder at CBS’s 60 Minutes. Most legal experts believe Trump’s case is meritless, while journalists in and outside of CBS have argued that a payment of any kind would undermine freedom of the press and undercut their credibility. But Paramount
owner Shari Redstone, who has been desperate to sell her family business and naturally picked about the worst market conditions in which to pull it off, has long signaled a strong desire to settle the lawsuit. As the Journal reported on Wednesday, Paramount’s leaders have discussed settling the lawsuit for around $15 million to $20 million.
Shari is, of course, on the cusp of selling Paramount to David Ellison’s Skydance
Media—her best-available exit option after wresting control of her late father Sumner’s storied media empire, merging CBS and Viacom, and then bleeding $22 billion in market value. The deal obviously requires approval from Trump’s combative F.C.C. Chairman Brendan Carr, who has said the 60 Minutes matter will factor into his ruling—all of which has made her ownership of the storied newsmagazine a complexifier. In addition to the lawsuit, Trump has
accused 60 Minutes of “unlawful and illegal behavior” and urged Carr to “impose the maximum fines and punishment” over its stories about his proposed takeover of Greenland and the war in Ukraine.
Last week, the show’s executive producer, Bill Owens, announced that he would resign from the network at the end of this season, confiding to colleagues that he had become “the corporation’s problem.” On Sunday, in a remarkable minute of television, 60 Minutes
correspondent Scott Pelley told viewers that Owens had resigned due to editorial interference from the parent company, bringing awareness of this long-running political/media drama to its audience of 7 million.
Pelley’s statement was meticulously crafted to present a string of distinct, indisputable facts that didn’t entirely accuse anyone of
anything, but nevertheless suggested his colleagues’ real suspicions about Paramount’s motives. “Stories we’ve pursued for 57 years are often controversial—lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration,” he said. “Bill made sure they were accurate and fair—he was tough that way. But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill
felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”
Pelley’s statement contained several inferences that hint at the nuances of this whole affair. First, Shari’s concerns about 60 Minutes are not limited to her anxieties about F.C.C. approval. As I have long reported, Shari is a passionate advocate against antisemitism, and she has been incredibly sensitive to her news division’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict. In the past, she has chafed at myriad instances in
which she felt the network was insufficiently fair to Israel.
In October, for instance, she publicly chastised CBS News leadership after its C.E.O. Wendy McMahon decided to reprimand anchor Tony Dokoupil—on the anniversary of Hamas’s attack on Israel, no less—for pressing Ta-Nehisi Coates over his refusal to reckon with the suffering of Israelis. Shari was also irate, I’m told, over a controversial 60 Minutes report in January
regarding internal State Department concerns about the U.S.’s Gaza policy, which drew condemnation from the American Jewish Committee.
Shari’s Israel concerns are integral to understanding her broader approach to 60 Minutes amid the deal heat. Several sources said she feels more emboldened to exert influence over 60 Minutes because of her anger over its coverage of the conflict. “Being pissed off about the Gaza stuff gives her moral permission to get involved,” one
source close to the principals said.
|
Indeed, some people view the 60 Minutes report on Gaza as the catalyst for Shari’s first
encroachment on Owens’ independence. Ahead of that broadcast, CBS C.E.O. George Cheeks had sent an email to McMahon asking if there was any reason to be concerned about the Gaza package. McMahon told Cheeks that she had checked with Owens and confirmed that there was no cause for concern—adding that, if anything, the segment was too pro-Israel.
Once the broadcast aired, however, Shari was pissed—doubly furious at Owens and McMahon for the package, which she
viewed as antisemitic, and their assurances that it would be fair to Israel. (You can read the transcript and judge for yourself.) In the wake of that broadcast, Shari pushed to have former CBS News president Susan Zirinsky immediately reinstalled as interim executive editor
overseeing standards, with an express mandate to review Middle East coverage. Cheeks announced Zirinsky’s appointment the very next day.
From the beginning, Owens viewed Zirinsky’s appointment as an imposition—not because he objected to standards review, per se, but because of Zirinsky’s close ties to Shari. In a move to defuse some of the tension, Zirinsky appointed CBS News veteran Al Ortiz to assist with standards oversight and effectively act as an intermediary
between her and Owens. But many inside CBS News continued to suspect that Zirinsky might be serving as a back channel to Shari.
In mid-April, Shari’s anxieties around 60 Minutes turned squarely toward her preoccupation with the president and the Skydance deal. After Trump put 60 Minutes on blast over the Ukraine and Greenland packages, and urged Carr to “impose the maximum fines and punishment,” multiple people close to the situation told me that Shari called Cheeks to
express her concerns about 60 Minutes leaving her vulnerable to F.C.C. scrutiny. In the process, she told Cheeks she wanted to know what else she could expect from 60 Minutes while she was trying to settle Trump’s lawsuit and win F.C.C. approval for the deal.
Inside 60 Minutes, news of her desire for greater oversight, reported here and elsewhere, struck many as a violation of the show’s long-cherished editorial independence—not just from its parent company, but
even from the rest of CBS News. Regardless, Shari’s attempts to influence 60 Minutes coverage went beyond that. According to those sources with direct knowledge of the matter, Shari also asked Cheeks if it would be possible to delay sensitive stories about Trump or his policies until after she had closed the Skydance deal. Representatives for Shari and Cheeks declined to comment on the nature of those discussions, and representatives for Paramount and CBS News declined to
comment for this story. The current deadline for the Paramount-Skydance deal is July 6.
There is no evidence that Shari’s increased oversight of 60 Minutes has forced the show to alter its programming, nor that Cheeks ever sought to execute her request. Notably, Cheeks, who was aptly described to me as a relational executive, has managed to keep a low profile amid this multifront shitstorm despite being right in the middle of it. Of course, he’s got his own ambitions.
His current boss is selling; his future bosses, David Ellison and incoming Paramount president Jeff Shell, appear eager to close; and he is hoping to remain in the picture—especially while his co-C.E.O. Chris McCarthy is putting Taylor Sheridan to work publicly singing his praises in Bloomberg. And in an orchestra where there is plenty of blame to go around, it would sure seem easier to finger Wendy and Bill.
Indeed, Cheeks may be the only unlikely winner in this totally appalling yet somehow fitting late-stage Paramount saga. On the one hand, Shari has behaved ineptly and avariciously. On the other hand, the blockage of a deal would be a truly existential nightmare, leading to excessive layoffs, litigation,
presumed market pressures, and worse—probably a full-scale dismembering by a firm like Apollo. The Redstones, who are already leveraged, would face fewer and worse options. Some close to the deal have decided to rationalize Shari’s impending settlement by hoping that Ellison and Shell will be even more incentivized to preserve 60 Minutes, a righting of wrongs that one source likened to the Judaic concept of tikkun olam.
In any event, the next few weeks should be
interesting. As Paramount’s mediation gets underway, I’m told that Ellison and Skydance have finally been able to engage Carr and the F.C.C. to walk them through their rationale for the deal. (As my colleague Eriq Gardner recently reported, Carr has been an evasive date.) Meanwhile, there are three weeks left in the current 60
Minutes season. That’s three more Sundays in which Bill and Wendy and the team at 60 will have the opportunity to test their limits with Trump-related segments—including a forthcoming package on the president’s conflicts with major law firms, as the Times reported this week—and three more Sundays in which Shari and David will presumably be mainlining beta blockers. You have to wonder what Shari’s father, Sumner, would have made of all this, and whether or not he’d be
surprised.
|
|
|
Puck founding partner Matt Belloni takes you inside the business of Hollywood, using exclusive reporting and insight
to explain the backstories on everything from Marvel movies to the streaming wars.
|
|
|
A professional-grade rundown on the business of sports from John Ourand, the industry’s preeminent journalist,
covering the leagues, players, agencies, media deals, and the egos fueling it all.
|
|
|
|
|
ERIQ GARDNER & MATTHEW BELLONI
|
|
|
Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news.
You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with . To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.
|
Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St, New York, NY 10006
|
|
|
|
