Pitaro’s Melting Iceberg, Media War Stories, Apple’s Anxieties

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon crib sheet to Puck’s best new reporting.

First up today, Dylan Byers considers three pressing plotlines at the intersection of Wall Street and the media: Bezos’s WaPo C.E.O. timeline, ESPN’s profit cliff, and Apple’s (somewhat) amicable divorce from Jon Stewart.

Plus, below the fold: Jonathan Handel presents his 10-point plan to resolve the actors strike. Bill Cohan tries to put a price on Jimmy Pitaro’s ESPN. And on The Powers That Be, Peter Hamby and Jon Kelly discuss the final round of the Washington Post C.E.O. sweepstakes, before observing the hazards surrounding media coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.

DYLAN BYERS

News and notes from across the media industry: ESPN’s profit cliff, the Bezos C.E.O. announcement timeline, and Apple’s “clear and present danger.”

JONATHAN HANDEL

With SAG-AFTRA and studios set to restart negotiations, it's time to get real: the union should drop its insistence on a per-subscriber payment and instead propose a supercharged version of the “success” bonus that the Writers Guild achieved.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

In Disney’s “everything on the table” era, figuring out what to do with ESPN may come down to some consensus of what the asset is worth. I have an answer.

PETER HAMBY & JON KELLY

Jon Kelly joins Peter to discuss the final round of The Washington Post C.E.O. sweepstakes. Then the two discuss the challenges facing the biggest news publishers as they cover the Israel-Hamas war.