Hunter’s Smoking Gun, CNN Stealth Layoffs, The Caitlin Snub

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

Today, we lead with William D. Cohan’s masterful reporting on how the Skydance-Paramount deal fell apart: Why Shari knifed the deal in the eleventh hour, the special committee’s Rasputin in her ear, and the next shoe to drop for Paramount Global.

Plus, below the fold: Rachel Strugatz reveals the Shakespearean succession drama playing out inside Estée Lauder Co. Dylan Byers chronicles Will Lewis’s WaPo redemption rodeo and Mark Thompson’s quiet CNN reshuffling. On The Town, Matt Belloni and Rich Greenfield offer their gut reactions to Shari's shocking decision. On Somebody’s Gotta Win, Tara Palmeri and Politico’s Ben Schreckinger unpack the Hunter Biden gun trial verdict. And on The Powers That Be, John Ourand and Peter Hamby chew over Caitlin Clark’s Olympics snub and the latest Zaz-NBA media rights drama.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

Deal chatter around Shari Redstone’s shocking, and yet perhaps not entirely unsurprising, decision to kill the Skydance/RedBird acquisition at the thirteenth hour, and forgo billions in order to preserve her place at Sun Valley and table at Dan Tana’s. As one deal observer put it, “It’s why people shouldn’t inherit companies.”

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RACHEL STRUGATZ

News and notes on the very drawn out succession planning at Estée and the quasi-Shakespearean dynamic underpinning it all.

DYLAN BYERS

News and notes on two D.C. media anxieties of varying proportions: The Lewis redemption rodeo at the WaPo and Mark Thompson’s quiet rejiggering over at CNN.

MATTHEW BELLONI

Matt and Lightshed media analyst Rich Greenfield react to Shari Redstone calling off the Paramount-Skydance deal at the eleventh hour after a sale seemed imminent. They discuss why Shari killed the deal, how one man is potentially responsible for convincing Shari to back out, what’s next for Paramount Global, and much more.