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      Is It Good to Go Exclusive?

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      The exclusive period for Paramount’s potential merger with Skydance expired without a deal, highlighting the long-debated question of whether exclusivity is a waste of time.Paramount’s proposed merger with Skydance has been the most tumultuous media deal in years. Now it has taken yet another turn after the exclusivity period for negotiations expired without an agreement in hand.A month ago, a special committee of Paramount’s board agreed to enter into exclusive talks with Skydance — a Hollywood studio run by the tech scion David Ellison — even as the private equity giant Apollo Global Management reached out with a $26 billion offer. Paramount shareholders grumbled that granting exclusivity was a mistake, and that the company should have engaged with Apollo instead.This week, the special committee told Skydance that it was letting the exclusivity period lapse. The end of exclusivity doesn’t alone kill the deal with Skydance. But it does allow Paramount to open up negotiations with Apollo and Sony Pictures Entertainment, which joined Apollo’s bid.The so far fruitless negotiations raise a question that deal makers have long debated: Why do companies like Paramount agree to exclusivity in the first place?Buyers often prefer exclusivity more than sellers. Exclusivity is a sign from the seller that it is committed to doing a deal and not just using a bid to drum up higher offers.Sellers generally prefer to negotiate without exclusivity because it limits their ability to shop around for a higher price. And since they’ve already signaled to a buyer they’re willing to make a deal, they’ve weakened their bargaining power.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘I’ve missed it since the day I left’: Dan Rather on life after CBS News

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      Dan Rather said his dismissal from CBS News nearly two decades earlier “of course … was the lowest point” of his legendary journalism career as he returned to his former employer’s airwaves for the first time Sunday.“I gave CBS News everything I had,” the 92-year-old newsman said. “They had smarter, better, more talented people, but they didn’t have anybody who worked harder than I did.”Rather’s remarks came during a contemplative interview on CBS Sunday Morning in advance of the release of a Netflix documentary about his life and work.He spent 44 years at CBS – including 24 as anchor of its evening news program – but lost his place there after a doomed 2004 investigation into the military record of George W Bush, who was in the middle of successfully running for a second term as president.Rather avoided official blame for the report that questioned Bush’s service in the national guard during the time of the Vietnam war. But he introduced the piece in his role as anchor and was inextricably linked to it.CBS later said it could not vouch for the authenticity of some of the records on which the investigation depended, though many who worked on the story maintain it was true.Nonetheless, Rather signed off on CBS’s airwaves as anchor for the last time on 9 March 2005. And he ultimately left the network after his contract expired a little more than a year later.According to the Associated Press, in the Netflix documentary debuting Wednesday, Rather believed he would survive the botched investigation into Bush’s military service and was shocked over his downfall at CBS.But in the film he says that he sobered up to reality when his wife, Jean, told him, “You got into a fight with the president of the United States during his re-election campaign. What did you think was going to happen?”Rather’s career in journalism continued after he left CBS, publishing investigations and conducting interviews for digital cable and satellite television network HDNet. He’s written books, commented on presidential politics and fostered a younger audience on social media.But he had not been back to CBS for years because of lingering ill will between him and the network’s former chief Leslie Moonves, who resigned in 2018 after several women accused him of sexual harassment, assault or abuse going back to the 1980s.He was finally back at CBS days prior to the debut of Rather, Netflix’s biographical documentary chronicling his reporting on John F Kennedy’s assassination, Vietnam and Watergate through his anchor years and beyond, as the AP reported.The AP noted that the documentary addresses odder chapters of Rather’s run as a journalist, including his assault in New York City by someone saying, “What the frequency, Kenneth,” before then going onstage with REM when the band performed a song named after that phrase.“Without apology or explanation, I miss CBS,” Rather said in Sunday’s interview, which was filmed at his home in Texas. “I’ve missed it since the day I left there.”Rather said he has not lost the instinct that made him realize he wanted to be a reporter decades ago.“In the heart of every reporter worthy of their name, … there’s a message that news, real news, is what somebody somewhere – particularly somebody in power – doesn’t want you to know,” Rather said. That’s news.”He added: “I get up every morning, and as soon as my feet hit the ground, I say, ‘Where’s the story?’”Asked if it mattered how big or small the audience was, Rather replied, “No.”
      The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Paramount Chief Executive Bob Bakish Could Be Out Next Week

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      He was once a staunch ally of the company’s biggest owner, Shari Redstone, but the relationship soured in recent months.Paramount is preparing to announce the departure of its chief executive, Bob Bakish, as soon as next week, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, a sudden development even as the company is exploring a merger.The impending move is a result of Mr. Bakish’s worsening relationship with Shari Redstone, the company’s controlling shareholder, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing a delicate matter. Ms. Redstone grew frustrated with what she saw as his inability to get important deals across the finish line, including a sale of the Showtime and BET cable channels, the people said.Two people familiar with the matter said several of Paramount’s senior executives had expressed reservations about the direction of the company to a representative of the board of directors in recent weeks, further eroding Mr. Bakish’s standing with Ms. Redstone.The company is in talks to merge with Skydance, a media company controlled by David Ellison, the tech scion and Hollywood producer. It is also negotiating a lucrative deal to keep channels like Nickelodeon and MTV on the Charter cable system.National Amusements, Paramount’s owner, is contemplating various options to replace Mr. Bakish, 60, who has led Paramount and its predecessor company, Viacom, since 2016 and has worked at the company since 1997. In one possibility, Paramount would be run by an “office of the C.E.O.” led by division chiefs like Brian Robbins, the head of the Paramount movie studio; George Cheeks, the top executive of CBS; and Chris McCarthy, president of Paramount’s entertainment and youth brands. The company could also choose to put an acting chief executive in place.Paramount declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that Paramount’s board was considering replacing Mr. Bakish.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Is there humour left in the White House? – podcast

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      The annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner returns this Saturday for a night of comedy ‘roasting’ – where the great and the good are ruthlessly mocked in celebration of the freedom of the press.
      In recent years, however, the night has taken on a different tone, with the atmosphere of warm self-deprecation and bipartisan bonhomie replaced by something more scathing and serious.
      This week Jonathan Freedland is joined by Jeff Nussbaum, a former senior speech writer to Joe Biden, to discuss the art of writing gags for presidents and whether there is still space for humour in US politics.

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      in Elections

      Voting equipment company Smartmatic settles defamation lawsuit with far-right network

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      The voting equipment company Smartmatic has agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit with the far-right One America News Network (OAN) over lies broadcast on the network about the 2020 election.Erik Connolly, a lawyer for Smartmatic, confirmed the case had been settled, but said the details were confidential. Attorneys for Smartmatic and OAN notified a federal judge in Washington on Tuesday that they were agreeing to dismiss the case, which Smartmatic filed in 2021.Smartmatic sued OAN in November 2021, saying the relatively small company was a victim of OAN’s “decision to increase its viewership and influence by spreading disinformation”. Smartmatic was only involved in the 2020 election in a single US county, Los Angeles, but OAN repeatedly broadcast false claims that its equipment had flipped the election for Biden. Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell played a key role in advancing the outlandish claims.Defamation cases are difficult to win in the US, with plaintiffs having to clear a high bar of showing that defendants knew the information was false and published it anyway. The settlement comes months after OAN lawyers apparently accidentally turned over documents showing that the network had obtained a spreadsheet with Smartmatic employees’ passwords. It’s not clear if the passwords were authentic, but Smartmatic lawyers said in court filings that the network may have committed a crime.The settlement also means that internal documents from OAN showing how the network weighed and evaluated claims about the 2020 election will not become public. Before the voting equipment company Dominion reached a $787.5m settlement with Fox last year, those kinds of internal documents offered smoking gun evidence that key personnel at Fox knew election claims were false.The settlement is the latest development in a series of defamation cases that have sought to hold media outlets accountable for spreading false information about the 2020 election. In 2022, OAN settled a defamation case brought by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Atlanta election workers it falsely claimed were involved in stealing the election. The network issued an on-air report saying there was “no widespread voter fraud” by Georgia election officials and clarifying that Freeman and Moss “did not engage in ballot fraud or criminal misconduct”.Smartmatic still has a pending $2.7bn defamation lawsuit against Fox.Earlier this month, a Delaware judge set a September trial date for Smartmatic’s defamation case against Newsmax. Both Smartmatic and Dominion also have ongoing defamation cases against Powell, Giuliani and Mike Lindell.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLegal scholars are carefully watching the cases to see whether defamation law can be an effective tool in curbing misinformation. More

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      Rusty Foster Tracks Media Gossip From an Island in Maine

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      In a time when the headlines are dominated by wars and a divisive presidential campaign, the magazine-world rivalry between The Atlantic and The New Yorker doesn’t amount to much.So you might have missed it when, on April 2, The Atlantic beat The New Yorker in three big categories at the 2024 National Magazine Awards.But to Rusty Foster, who chronicles the media industry and internet culture in his daily newsletter, Today in Tabs, The Atlantic’s victory was big news.Shortly after the awards ceremony, which took place at Terminal 5 in Manhattan, Mr. Foster tapped out a fanciful report for his audience of media obsessives. Under the headline “Shutout at the TK Corral,” he wrote that David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, “solemnly folded up and ate each of his prepared speeches as he watched The Atlantic win every category.”Mr. Foster then turned his attention to Anna Wintour, the editorial director of Condé Nast, the publishing giant that owns The New Yorker, Vogue and other publications, writing that she “donned an emergency second pair of sunglasses” in reaction to the company’s poor showing.A surprising thing about Today in Tabs — which has a knowing, satirical tone that has made it an enduring hit among media insiders — is that Mr. Foster writes it from the bucolic setting of Peaks Island, Maine, which is where he was when the National Magazines Awards ceremony took place.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      US news organizations urge Biden and Trump to agree to TV election debates

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      Twelve US news organizations are urging Joe Biden and Donald Trump to agree to TV debates ahead of the November presidential vote, a typical feature of an election year and one that can sometimes play a crucial role.“If there is one thing Americans can agree on during this polarized time, it is that the stakes of this election are exceptionally high,” the organizations including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, PBS, NBC, NPR and the Associated Press said in a statement.“Amidst that backdrop, there is simply no substitute for the candidates debating with each other, and before the American people, their visions for the future of our nation,” they added.But the two major candidates have so far resisted debating rival candidates from their own parties, with Trump refusing to participate against the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and others, and Biden resisting calls to set foot on a TV stage with rival Democratic candidates, who have since abandoned their electoral efforts to challenge him in the party.The news organizations said it was not too early for each campaign to say publicly that it will participate in the three presidential and one vice-presidential TV showdowns set by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.In 2020, Biden and Trump debated twice, with a third debate canceled after then-president Trump tested positive for Covid-19.Last week, the Trump campaign called for presidential debates to be held earlier and more frequently so voters “have a full chance” to see the candidates in action. Trump campaign managers have argued that by the time of the first scheduled debate, on 16 September, more than 1 million Americans will likely have already voted, with more than 8.7 million voting by the third debate, penciled in for 9 October.Trump has said he is willing to go head-to-head with Biden “anytime, anyplace and anywhere”, starting “now”. But Biden has been uncommitted to any debate so far, saying last month: “it depends on [Trump’s] behavior.” More

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      Polls show Trump winning key swing states. That’s partly a failure of the press | Margaret Sullivan

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      I learned the hard way to be skeptical about the predictive power of public opinion polls.I remember election night 2016 all too well, as I hit delete on my partially pre-written Washington Post column and instead tried to look into the future of a Trump presidency. It was a future that wasn’t supposed to happen.An entire nation of journalists was doing much the same. Not everyone, but a whole lot of us.Given that searing memory, I reacted to the recent much-trumpeted Wall Street Journal poll about the 2024 presidential race with, well, not exactly a shrug, but not a primal scream either.That was the poll that said Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden in six of seven crucial battleground states, the very ones most likely to determine who gets elected in November. The former president is ahead, according to the Journal’s poll, in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina; the two candidates are tied in Wisconsin.That doesn’t mean anything definitive seven months away from the election. Yet – as someone who thinks another four years of Trump would be a disaster – I believe there’s something to be learned here.Rather than dismiss these findings, think about what they tell us, even if they do so imperfectly and even if they lack any real predictive power.One of the things these numbers suggest is that the journalists are not getting the truth across to citizens on some key points (or if they are, that truth is being ignored).The poll respondents claim that one of their big concerns is the economy. If that’s the case, they should be happy with Biden. Among the factors: low inflation, significant growth and low unemployment. Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate economist, wrote recently: “The economic news in 2023 was almost miraculously good.” (Even the cost of a classic Thanksgiving dinner, he notes, was down 4.5% last year.)If the economy is that strong and that important to voters – and if Biden can take at least some of the credit – why isn’t it coming across? That’s something for the Biden campaign, primarily; but it’s also something for media people since journalists are supposed to be communicating information so that citizens can vote with knowledge. That should be a higher priority than generating profits, ratings and clicks, but one eventually despairs that it ever will be.Another major voter concern, of course, is Biden’s age. He’s 81; Trump will be 78 in June. They’re both old; both have memory gaps and both exhibit confusion at times.Only one of them, however, talks about some migrants as “animals” or predicts a “bloodbath” for the country if he loses. Only one is facing dozens of charges related to crimes including trying to overturn a legitimate election. Only one has promised to be a dictator on day one of his presidency and only one has allies that are meticulously plotting a radical revamping of how America works.A fine Associated Press story carried the headline, “Trump’s plans if he returns to the White House include deportation raids, tariffs and mass firings.” The story notes that the ideas are extreme and the groundwork determined. “Some of his current ideas would probably end up in court or impeded by Congress,” it said. “But Trump’s campaign and allied groups are assembling policy books with detailed plans.”Poll respondents also claim to be deeply concerned about the state of democracy in America.They should be, of course, but what they mean by that differs widely. Do they know as much about Trump’s authoritarian blueprints as they do about how Biden walks these days with a stiffer gait?I’m not quite as dismissive as the media critic Mark Jacob, who scoffed that there’s “only one poll that matters. It’s seven months from now. The rest is just empty calories filling airtime.”And I do take seriously the analysis by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who looked at the Journal poll and several others, comparing them with earlier ones, and concluding that Biden is making slow, uneven progress.That progress, Marshall thinks, may accelerate as more Americans realize that, like it or not, these two candidates are the actual choices. No Nikki Haley or Gretchen Whitmer is waiting in the wings.Polls can’t predict. But they can warn. And maybe a red-alert warning is what low-information Americans – and our horserace-obsessed media – need most of all.
      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More