Strike Up The Band, Con't

 Looks like after almost four months, SAG-AFTRA union negotiators have reached a tentative deal with the studios for a new contract.

After a grueling 118 days on strike, SAG-AFTRA has officially reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract with studios, a move that is heralding the end of the 2023 actors strike.

The SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical Committee approved the agreement in a unanimous vote on Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA announced. The strike will end at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. On Friday, the deal will go to the union’s national board for approval.

The performers union announced the provisional agreement Wednesday, after about two weeks of renewed negotiations. The development came not long before a deadline of 5 p.m. that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers had set for the union to give their answer on whether they had a deal.

The union is so far providing some details of the agreement, more of which will likely emerge in the next few days prior to the union’s ratification vote. In a message to members on Wednesday night, the union said the pact is valued at over $1 billion and includes pay increases higher than what other unions received this year, a “streaming participation bonus” and regulations on AI. The tentative deal also includes higher caps on health and pension funds, compensation bumps for background performers and “critical contract provisions protecting diverse communities.” If the deal is ratified, the contract could soon go into effect, and if not, members would essentially send their labor negotiators back to the bargaining table with the AMPTP.

In a statement on Wednesday night, the AMPTP said, “Today’s tentative agreement represents a new paradigm. It gives SAG-AFTRA the biggest contract-on-contract gains in the history of the union, including the largest increase in minimum wages in the last forty years; a brand new residual for streaming programs; extensive consent and compensation protections in the use of artificial intelligence; and sizable contract increases on items across the board. The AMPTP is pleased to have reached a tentative agreement and looks forward to the industry resuming the work of telling great stories.”

When negotiations restarted on Oct. 2 for the first time since SAG-AFTRA called its work stoppage in July, hopes were high in the industry that Hollywood’s largest union could come to terms with major companies quickly. Just like they had in the final days of the writers’ negotiations, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Disney CEO Bob Iger, and NBCUniversal Studio Group chairman and chief content officer Donna Langley attended the talks at the union’s national headquarters in Los Angeles. But the studio ended up walking out on Oct. 11 over SAG-AFTRA’s proposal to charge a fee per every streaming subscriber on major platforms in a move that the union’s chief negotiator called “mystifying” (Sarandos called the ask “a bridge too far“).

The sides reconvened Oct. 24 after a nearly two-week break. This time, the studios came in with a more generous offer to increase actors’ wage floors and a slightly modified version of a success-based streaming bonus they had previously offered the WGA. The two sides exchanged proposals for much of the week in a tense situation that had the industry on edge. Even as a deal came into sight, progress was slow, especially when it came to putting the contract’s inaugural guardrails on artificial intelligence: The union considers the rapidly advancing technology an absolutely existential issue for members and sought to close any potential loopholes that could lead to future issues. On Saturday the studios presented what the union characterized as the companies’ “last, best and final,” overarching offer (still, the two sides kept swapping offers after).

When the union’s previous contract expired in mid-July and SAG-AFTRA went out on strike, many outstanding issues were left on the table. Setting terms for the use of AI was a major sticking point between union and studio negotiators, as was a proposal to provide casts with additional streaming compensation. Union negotiators sought to institute an unusually large minimum rate increase in the first year of the contract, a host of ground rules for self-taped virtual auditions and major increases to health and pension contributions “caps” that have not been changed since the 1980s. Meanwhile, as the entertainment business continues to experience a period of contraction, major companies looked to preserve some measure of flexibility and cost control.

Looks like another major union scored another big win in the Biden era.  Hopefully we'll get back to production on your favorite shows and movies, and it'll be far more equitable for the people making them.

 

 

Orange Meltdown: LOL U LMAD Edition

The first of Trump's Georgia RICO case co-conspirators has taken a plea deal to turn state's evidence against the rest.

 

Bail bondsman Scott Hall on Friday became the first defendant in the Fulton County election interference case to take a plea agreement with prosecutors, signaling the probe has entered a dynamic new phase.

During an impromptu hearing before Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee with his attorney at his side, Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties.

Hall agreed to testify truthfully when called, five years probation, a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service and a ban on polling and election administration-related activities. He also recorded a statement for prosecutors and pledged to pen a letter of apology to Georgia voters.

Hall was indicted last month in connection with the breach of sensitive voting data in Coffee County in South Georgia on Jan. 7, 2021. He had been charged with racketeering and six felony counts of conspiracy.

The agreement is a victory for prosecutors, who are preparing for at least two sets of trials involving what is now 18 defendants. Jury selection for the trial involving the first two defendants, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, is slated to begin on Oct. 20.

 

This is going to be a bad, bad weekend for Trump, as he'll wonder who else will turn on him.

 

Who else will play Let's Make A Deal with Fulton County DA Fani Willis? 

Like fellow Whose Line? veteran Drew Carey, Wayne Brady has made a 15-year second career filling the legendary shoes of a beloved game show host. He's made thousands of deals with contestants.

 

We're about to find out if Fani Willis can wheel and deal just as well, and I'm betting she can.

Sunday Long Read: Black And White

This week's Sunday Long Read comes to us from Gyasi Hall at Longreads, who takes a fresh look at the six-decade history of Antonio Prohias's iconic, subversive, and surreal masterpiece Cold War comic, MAD Magazine's Spy vs. Spy.

The seventy-first issue of MAD Magazine, cover dated June 1962, contains a noteworthy entry in Antonio Prohías’ Spy vs. Spy, a comic strip depicting Looney Tunes-style espionage between two pointy-headed, monochromatic secret agents. This particular installment isn’t the series’ best strip: it’s not the one with the most elaborate explosions, the most clever ending, or the one that’s most exemplary of Prohías’ precise and peerless art style. But it is, for me, the most Spy vs. Spy strip ever, the one that best distills the already simplified distillate and sums up the whole enterprise.

One spy, sporting a trenchcoat, a wide-brimmed G-Man fedora, and secret service shades—a collection of clichéd noir signifiers, all in stark black—stands out in a field with a bucket of water. The moon is full and beautiful. The other spy, identical except in blinding white, peeks out from behind a tree, trying to suss out what his rival is up to. Black Spy stares at the moon through an elaborate sextant, adjusting various settings and making mental calculations, finally drawing an X on the ground with a compass before setting the bucket down. As he leaves, White Spy sneaks up to it, peers inside, trying to figure out what this could all mean. In the last panel, Black Spy has snuck back around to give White Spy a swift kick in the ass, grinning triumphantly as his enemy falls headfirst into the bucket, soaked and seeing stars.

This is the essence of Spy vs. Spy: delightfully stupid without ever being mean, delightfully simple without ever being dumb. Prohías’ comics are as perfect an example of the medium as you’re ever likely to find—even more so, I’d argue, than other all-time strips like Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes, since its wordless pantomime operates so effortlessly using the mechanics of graphic narrative as its sole language. The above strip works so well because it forgoes high-concept gadgetry to make the petty, low-stakes reality of the spies’ eternal struggle that much clearer. It’s a perfect way to frame the proceeding complexities of the franchise as a whole.

And make no mistake: Spy vs. Spy is a franchise, a bona fide phenomenon, as ubiquitous as comic strips get without the nostalgic momentum of the above GOATs, the “who the hell thinks this is funny?” anti-spectacle of something like Dilbert, or the dearth of basic premise that makes Garfield so ripe for memery. Decades and decades of comics, sure, but also video games, segments on TV shows, T-shirts, trading cards, a board game, action figures, plush toys, Halloween masks, NASCAR promotions, fucking Mountain Dew commercials. The famous image of the spies, shaking hands while holding explosives behind their backs with the tenderness you’d afford fresh fruit, is famous for a reason.

But like the spies themselves, the image we have of something is often what gets us in trouble. As consumers and customers, we are often trained not to see art (or tools or people) as complex things with a story, or the evolving context that informs their continued existence. This not-seeing is often a foundational ingredient of success. The image—the idea of an idea—is what everyone will know, what everyone will buy. I would like to look at Spy vs. Spy in chronological order to tell you the story of a simple, stupid thing. Knowing, after all, is half the battle.

Me, I had all three Spy vs. Spy video games on the C64 (but not the bad 2005 PS2 game, they did the spies dirty on that one) and enjoyed them very much. I also remember the animated Spy vs. Spy cartoons as part of MADtv back in the 90's.

Without a word of dialogue, Spy vs. Spy was arguably one of the best examples of showing a story rather than telling it.

Really do need a 2023 remake of those C64 titles though. 

The Revelation Will Be Televised

Fulton County, Georgia Judge Scott McAfee is confirming that like nearly all legal proceedings in the county, the case against Donald Trump will be televised and steamed on the internet.

 

A Fulton County judge on Thursday said that all court proceedings in the election interference case against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants will be live streamed and televised.

Judge Scott McAfee also said he is following the precedent set by fellow Fulton Judge Robert McBurney; all hearings and trials will be broadcast on the Fulton County Court YouTube channel.

In an order issued Thursday, McAfee said members of the media would be allowed to use computers and cellphones inside the courtroom for non-recording purposes during court proceedings. There will be pool coverage for television, radio and still photography.

The proceedings — especially those involving Trump himself — are expected to attract international attention.

The transparency in the county court stands in stark contrast to federal court. In Monday’s hearing on whether White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows should have his case transferred to U.S. District Court, journalists were barred from bringing cell phones, laptops and cameras into the Richard B. Russell federal building.

 

I think it's well within a national interest perspective to televise and stream Trump's federal cases too, but hey, I'm just a US citizen, what do I know.

 

But man, I can't wait to see Trump sweating at the defense table, knowing he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison.

A Price-Less World

Legendary game show host Bob Barker, of The Price is Right fame, has passed at the age of 99.

 

Bob Barker, who hosted "The Price Is Right" for 35 years, has died, his representative, Roger Neal, told CBS News on Saturday. He was 99.

Barker died at home, Neal said, adding that, "he had a beautiful life."

Barker appeared on national television for over 50 years. Before his time at the country's longest-running game show on CBS, he hosted one of the nation's first televised game shows, "Truth or Consequences," for nearly 20 years, earning him recognition in the Guinness World Records book as television's "most durable performer."

On "Truth or Consequences," Barker charmed audiences with his quips and plainspoken style. Every December 21, show creator Ralph Edwards and Barker would drink a toast at lunch to celebrate the day in 1956 when Edwards notified Barker – who had no previous television experience – that he was going to become the host. He stayed with the program for 18 years, calling it a "fun show," during a chat at the Google headquarters.

In 1972, Barker began hosting a revival of "The Price Is Right," which originally aired in the '50s and '60s, and he stayed in that position for 35 years. Audience members were enthusiastic about their affable host; some participants asked for kisses, which Barker once obliged by smooching a fan square on the lips while dipping her backward. Another fan told Barker she dreamed he was chasing her in a hayloft.

During his career, Barker was honored with 19 Emmy Awards, 14 as host of "The Price Is Right," four as the show's executive producer and a lifetime achievement award. In 2004, Barker was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

Robert Barker was born in Darrington, Washington, on Dec. 12, 1923, to Matilda, a schoolteacher, and Byron, an electrical power foreman. He spent most of his childhood on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota and was a citizen of the tribe.

His mother was a schoolteacher and then a county superintendent of schools. Barker's father died after falling from a utility pole in 1929, and eight years later, his mother remarried and the family moved to Springfield, Missouri.

In high school, at the age of 15, Barker met and fell in love with his future wife, Dorothy Jo Gideon. Their first date was on Nov. 17, 1939, when he took her to see an Ella Fitzgerald concert. Barker said they "were never separated from then on" – until her death in 1981 from lung cancer.

Barker attended Drury College in Springfield, and when World War II started, he joined the Navy as a fighter pilot. After the war ended, he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in economics. The couple tried living in Florida before moving to Los Angeles, where he became the host of his own radio program, "The Bob Barker Show," before moving to television.

His first – and only – feature film role was for the 1996 Adam Sandler movie "Happy Gilmore," in which he throws punches at the star. Barker said during an interview that audience members for "The Price Is Right" would ask him about that scene and say, "Can you really beat up Adam Sandler?"

Outside of his storied television career, Barker was a renowned animal activist who once testified before Congress in support of a federal ban against using elephants in traveling shows and for rides.

Barker made headlines for his passionate support of animals during the 1987 Miss USA pageant when he refused to host if contestants wore real furs during the televised event. Producers acquiesced and contestants wore synthetic furs that year, but the following year – after 21 years of hosting - Barker resigned when producers refused to stop giving fur coats as prizes.

Barker gave large endowments ranging from $500,000 to $1 million to the law schools of numerous universities, including Harvard, Duke, Columbia, University of Virginia, Northwestern and UCLA, for the study and support of animal rights law.

In 1995, he started the DJ&T Foundation in honor of his late wife and mother to give to free or low-cost clinics or voucher programs to spay or neuter pets in an effort to control animal overpopulation. After nearly 30 years of donating to clinics and supporting animals, the foundation stopped activity in 2022.

For his final "Price Is Right" show that aired on June 15, 2007, Barker ended his run with his familiar plea: "Help control the pet population. Have your pet spayed or neutered!"

 

To this day, the Zandarparents will tell you that I grew up watching Bob Barker as a baby and never really stopped as a kid through college. I think my entire younger Gen X/elder Millennial cohort tuned in whenever we were home sick from school. Drew Carey has made the show his own now after more than 15 years, but the OGs remember Bob, announcer Johnny Olson, and Barker's Beauties teaching us about California's retail economics.

Bob's right up there with Fred Rogers and Levar Burton for me.

Thanks for all the memories, Bob.

Striking Out In Hollywood

The Writers Guild of America is continuing to strike against Hollywood studios and streaming giants in order to secure benefits and pay, and with no end to the conflict in sight, it's looking like the Screen Actors Guild will be joining writers on the picket line at the end of the week.

 

EARLIER THIS MONTH, members of the Screen Actors Guild voted to authorize a strike if their negotiating committee doesn’t reach an agreement on a new contract with major Hollywood studios by June 30. SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher released a video message this week with an update on the negotiations, telling members, “We are having an [sic] extremely productive negotiations that are laser focused on all of the crucial issues you told us are most important to you. We’re standing strong and we are going to achieve a seminal deal.”

But the message didn’t sit right with a lot of actors who are urging SAG not to settle for a deal that doesn’t represent all of their demands. More than 300 actors signed a letter addressed to the SAG-AFTRA Leadership and Negotiating Committee that’s circulating and was allegedly sent to leadership expressing their concern with the idea that “SAG-AFTRA members may be ready to make sacrifices that leadership is not.”

“We hope you’ve heard the message from us: This is an unprecedented inflection point in our industry, and what might be considered a good deal in any other years is simply not enough,” the letter, obtained by Rolling Stone, says. “We feel that our wages, our craft, our creative freedom, and the power of our union have all been undermined in the last decade. We need to reverse those trajectories.”

The message was signed by hundreds of members, including Hollywood stars like Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Rami Malek, Quinta Brunson, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ben Stiller, Neil Patrick Harris, Amy Schumer, and Amy Poehler.

Representatives for SAG-AFTRA didn’t immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.

With just days left to make a deal before their contract with Hollywood studios, streamers, and production companies runs out, everyone who signed the letter says they’re “prepared to strike if it comes to that,” even though it’s not preferable because it “brings incredible hardships to so many, and no one wants it.” The members addressed a number of issues that are important to them when it comes to negotiations, including minimum pay, residuals that consider the growth of streaming, healthcare, pensions, and regulation around how self-tapes are used in the casting process.

 

The elephant in the room of course is AI.

 

It's already possible for folks to use AI to copy voices and likenesses of actors. as well as using it to write dialogue, scripts, and stories. Hollywood's entire creative industry is headed for a cliff as people can increasingly bring their fanfiction stories to life. What was a cautionary tale four years ago and a warning siren two years ago is now a full-fledged red alert in 2023, especially as more and more media giants are burying old shows to avoid paying license fees and residuals to creatives.

This all points to Hollywood studios going virtual across the entire industry and very soon, taking likenesses and voices of famous actors and making movies without actual people in them. Hell, we already have at least one Marvel show using an entirely AI-generated opening sequence.

This is going to be a hell of a fight in the months and years ahead.

I'd go on strike too.

The New Village Chief

With the firing of Tucker Carlson from FOX News and CEO Chris Licht from CNN, it seems the Villagers have elected a new chief.

 

Fox News's years-long streak of weekly rating dominance has reportedly ended, with new data showing it ceding the top spot to its rival network, MSNBC.

Nielsen data regarding the week ending this past Sunday was shared on Twitter on Tuesday by A.J. Katz, a reporter specializing in the cable news business. According to the data, Fox's primetime 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET viewership averaged 1,504,429. The average viewership for the more left-leaning MSNBC over the same time frame averaged 1,520,857, narrowly beating out the conservative network that has long been a leader in cable news viewership.

As Katz noted in a tweet, the data from last week marks the end of a lengthy streak of rating dominance for Fox News.

"Barring a last-second data reporting change, Fox's 120-week-long winning streak in primetime appears to be over," Katz wrote.

This development comes as Fox News continues to bleed viewership after the abrupt firing of host Tucker Carlson, one of its biggest ratings draws, in late April. The network has yet to name a permanent replacement for its 8 p.m. ET primetime slot, opting in the meantime for a rotating cast of guest hosts for the hour. The timeslot has, according to Media Matters, seen viewership drop by half since Carlson departed, with viewership declining across its entire lineup as a whole.

 

You'd think MSNBC would be ready to meet this moment. So far, they are, and even CNN has learned a thing or two. 

As the Trump circus continued into Tuesday evening, so too did anchors’ decisive monitoring of their broadcasts. Neither CNN nor MSNBC carried Trump’s speech live from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he was holding the first fundraiser for his 2024 campaign. MSNBC anticipated that the address would be “essentially a Trump campaign speech,” just as his speech was following his first arraignment in April, Rachel Maddow explained to viewers as Trump began his public remarks. “Because of that, we do not intend to carry these remarks live. As we have said before in these circumstances, there is a cost to us as a news organization to knowingly broadcast untrue things,” said Maddow. “We are here to bring you the news. It hurts our ability to do that if we live broadcast what we fully expect in advance to be a litany of lies and false accusations—no matter who says them.” She added that “this is not a glib decision” and that MSNBC would “monitor the speech…if he says anything newsworthy, we promise we will turn that right around and bring it back to you.” On CNN, Anderson Cooper made a similar point, noting that CNN would monitor the rally for news and share anything noteworthy with viewers. Tapper said that they would not be carrying Trump’s remarks live “because frankly he says a lot of things that are not true and sometimes potentially dangerous.”

CNN’s Oliver Darcy, in his Reliable Sources newsletter, noted that the move “notably represented a departure from how the network handled Trump's post-New York arraignment speech. In that case, under former boss Chris Licht, CNN aired most of Trump's remarks.” I’m told that Licht, who left the network earlier this month following a disastrous Trump town hall and brutal Atlantic profile, saw Trump’s reaction as a key part of the story to cover and had communicated as much to staff. On Tuesday, though, anchors appeared newly empowered to do otherwise.

Meanwhile, Fox News and Newsmax carried Trump’s speech live. A chyron on Fox claimed, “TRUMP’S REMARKS IGNORED BY OTHER NETWORKS,” and, before Trump began speaking, Fox News Tonight host Brian Kilmeade referred to Trump as the “president of the United States.” Later, airing footage of President Joe Biden speaking at the White House side-by-side Trump speaking at Bedminster, a Fox News chyron read: “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.” Asked for comment, a Fox News spokesperson told Vanity Fair, “The chyron was taken down immediately and was addressed.”

 

MSNBC and even CNN are learning.

 

FOX News...is not.

 

The Broken Licht Theory

CNN head Chris Licht is out after his multple failures of the Donald Trump and Nikki Haley "town halls" and the devastating takedown of Licht in The Atlantic over the weekend.

 

Chris Licht, the former television producer who oversaw a brief and chaotic run as the chairman of CNN, is out at the network.

Mr. Licht’s 13-month run at CNN was marked by one controversy after another, culminating in his exit earlier this week. He got off to a bumpy start even before he had officially started when he oversaw the shuttering of the costly CNN+ streaming service at the request of its network’s new owners, who were skeptical about a stand-alone digital product. The cuts resulted in scores of layoffs.

David Zaslav, the chief executive of CNN’s parent, Warner Bros. Discovery, informed staff on Wednesday morning that he had met with Mr. Licht and that he was leaving, effective immediately.

“For a number of reasons things didn’t work out, and that’s unfortunate,” Mr. Zaslav said, according to a recording of his remarks. “It’s really unfortunate, and ultimately that’s on me. And I take full responsibility for that.”

“This job was never going to be easy, especially at a time of great disruption and transformation,” he continued. “Chris poured his heart and soul into this job. Like all of you, he was in the line of fire and he’s taken a lot of hits. We appreciate his efforts, his passion, his love for journalism, and his love for this business.”

Mr. Zaslav said that an interim group of leaders — the CNN veterans Amy Entelis, Virginia Moseley and Eric Sherling, as well as the newly appointed chief operating officer, David Leavy — would take over before a permanent leader was installed. He said the process could take several months.

Mr. Licht’s departure represents a dramatic fall not long after he departed as an executive producer of Stephen Colbert’s top-rated late night show and vowed to bring a middle-of-the-road balance to CNN’s journalism. When Mr. Licht took the job, he told friends it was a “calling.”

The job would prove much more difficult. Ratings plummeted during Mr. Licht’s management and a series of programming miscues — including an ill-fated morning show co-anchored by Don Lemon, as well as organizing a town hall featuring former President Donald J. Trump that was subject to withering criticism — did little to shore up support with his colleagues.

Things deteriorated last week when The Atlantic published a 15,000-word profile extensively documenting Mr. Licht’s stormy tenure, including criticism of the network’s pandemic coverage that rankled the network’s rank-and-file.

Further worsening matters was CNN’s financial performance. The network generated $750 million in profit last year, including one-time losses from the CNN+ streaming service, down from $1.25 billion the year before.

 

Now, Zazlav has been running around WB Discovery with a chainsaw anyway, axing reams of content from HBO, Cinemax, Cartoon Network and more, and now his blade has fallen on Licht's neck at CNN. I had honestly forgotten about Licht first move last year, the ill-fated CNN+ streaming disaster that lost the network millions.

 

Turns out the network has now lost over a billion dollars, and that was the end of Licht.

 

The White Guy Upward Failure Rule means Licht will probably end up Vice President in 2024, just saying.

Last Call For Press The Meat, Con't

Chuck Todd is leaving NBC panel show staple Meet The Press later this year, with NBC News White House correspondent Karen Welker replacing him.

 

Chuck Todd said on Sunday that he’ll be leaving “Meet the Press” after a tumultuous near-decade of moderating the NBC political panel show, to be replaced in the coming months by Kristen Welker.

Todd, 51, told viewers that “I’ve watched too many friends and family let work consume them before it was too late” and that he’d promised his family he wouldn’t do that.

Todd has often been an online punching bag for critics, including Donald Trump, during a polarized time, and there were rumors that his time at the show would be short when its executive producer was reassigned at the end of last summer, but NBC gave no indication this was anything other than Todd’s decision. It’s unclear when Todd’s last show will be, but he told viewers that this would be his final summer.

“I leave feeling concerned about this moment in history but reassured by the standards we’ve set here,” Todd said. “We didn’t tolerate propagandists, and this network and program never will.”

Welker, a former chief White House correspondent, has been at NBC News in Washington since 2011 and has been Todd’s chief fill-in for the past three years. She drew praise for moderating the final presidential debate between Trump, a Republican, and Joe Biden, a Democrat, in 2020.


Her “sharp questioning of lawmakers is a masterclass in political interviews,” said Rebecca Blumenstein, NBC News president of editorial, in a memo announcing Welker’s elevation on Sunday.

Now Welker, 46, will be thrust into what promises to be another contentious presidential election cycle.

 

Welker will be the first Black host of MTP, and has filled in for Todd a number of times already. She also moderated the second 2020 presidential debate between Biden and Trump and managed to keep a leash on The Donald...to an extent that anyone can.

We'll see how she fares.

Trump Cards, Con't

CNN's Kaitlan Collins is being rewarded with her own 9 PM show on the network after her performance in last week's Trump town hall production, where she played her role as frustrated moderator to a T against Trump's lunatic ride. 

 

CNN has selected Kaitlan Collins to host a new weeknight show at 9 p.m., elevating her to one of the most coveted time slots in cable news a week after she moderated a contentious town hall with former President Donald J. Trump.

The new role for Ms. Collins was announced by CNN’s chairman, Chris Licht, on Wednesday, just ahead of a presentation to advertisers in Midtown Manhattan hosted by Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company.

Her show, which does not yet have a title, is set to begin in June. “She is a smart and gifted journalist who we’ve all seen hold lawmakers and newsmakers accountable,” Mr. Licht wrote in a newsroom memo. “Kaitlan will expose uncovered angles and challenge conventional wisdom to make sure viewers are seeing a story from every side.”

The promotion of Ms. Collins, 31, a co-host of the network’s morning show, amounts to a major bet by CNN leadership on a rising star who has impressed colleagues with her interviewing and reporting chops, but remains relatively untested as a solo anchor.

It is also Mr. Licht’s latest attempt to revive his network’s sagging ratings.

The 9 p.m. hour at CNN — once its highest-rated time slot — has effectively been vacant since Chris Cuomo was fired in December 2021. Mr. Licht’s recent attempt to fill the hour with a variety of interviews and news specials fizzled with viewers. On weeknights, CNN lags behind Fox News and MSNBC, and on Friday, two days after the Trump town hall, it even lost to Newsmax, a fledgling conservative network that is available in fewer homes.

Ms. Collins, who joined CNN in 2017 as a reporter covering the Trump White House, brings a youthful jolt to a programming block that for years has been hosted by middle-aged male anchors.

An Alabama native who cut her teeth at the conservative news site The Daily Caller, Ms. Collins is prized by Mr. Licht for her perceived ability to connect with viewers outside of coastal liberal enclaves. She became the network’s chief White House correspondent in 2021 at age 28, the youngest person to hold the role, and covered President Biden before moving to New York last year as a co-host of “CNN This Morning.”

She is also well respected in the political media and had been slated to serve as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association beginning in 2024. (She had to forgo the role after relocating from Washington.)

In April, Ms. Collins did a weeklong stint as temporary host of CNN’s 9 p.m. hour. She drew favorable ratings, with executives taking notice that she was able to retain much of Anderson Cooper’s lead-in audience from 8 p.m.

Last week, she was in the national spotlight as the moderator of the New Hampshire town hall with Mr. Trump. Ms. Collins remained composed in the face of Mr. Trump’s barrage of falsehoods, repeatedly interrupting to correct baseless claims. Mr. Trump mostly talked over her and was applauded by some audience members when he derided Ms. Collins as a “nasty person.”

 

There's no better proof that the supposedly "disastrous" town hall wasn't planned meticulously from the start, and than CNN boss Chris Licht wasn't counting on this from the beginning. He now has a reliable right-wing face for the network's shift towards the Republicans they want to both cover and watch, and returning them to power is not the network's number one goal.

Expect more normalization of authoritarian fascism through political kayfabe for years to come.

Sunday Long Read: The Woman Who Won

More than 35 years ago in 1986, a woman named Barbara Lowe became a five-time winner on Jeopardy! and then she vanished from the program's massive archives. The episodes were considered lost until recently as our Sunday Long Read from Claire McNear at the Ringer details, and the story of Lowe is a byzantine tale of quiz show drama. Well, partially.

 

For decades, whispers have circulated among game show aficionados about a mysterious Jeopardy! contestant from 1986. She went by Barbara Lowe and won five games in a row, which at the time—in just the second season of the reboot hosted by Alex Trebek—was the upper limit for returning champions. Later that year, when the show aired its Tournament of Champions contest with the best recent players, for which five-day champs automatically qualified, Lowe was nowhere to be found. Then, bizarrely, her episodes seemed to be wiped from the face of the earth.

In the 1990s, Game Show Network re-aired Season 2 of Jeopardy!; eagle-eyed fans noticed that the five episodes featuring Lowe were unceremoniously skipped. When the show launched a 24-hour streaming radio program and a Pluto TV channel that broadcast old episodes, Lowe’s episodes still failed to appear. In markets where affiliate stations play reruns on the weekends, Lowe’s episodes are omitted, again and again.

But the why of that matter, and what exactly happened during those games to incur the enduring wrath of the nation’s foremost quiz show, has long proved elusive. This is particularly bedeviling to Jeopardy! superfans, for whom detailed knowledge of operas, world capitals, and even television ephemera looms large. There are few corners of pop culture where facts and certainty are as celebrated as they are on Jeopardy! Yet one day in 1986, something happened—and nearly 40 years later, no one could say what. For the show’s most devoted fans, hunting for clues about Lowe—Jeopardy!’s biggest mystery and, some claimed, its greatest villain—became a calling unto itself.

Now, for the first time, Lowe is ready to open up about what happened, having caught wind of her place in Jeopardy! lore when one of those superfans tracked her down to see whether maybe, just maybe, she might have recordings of her games. She says she didn’t have the heart to tell him that when she’d moved a couple of years earlier, she’d thrown out a stack of VHS tapes that included her Jeopardy! appearances.

“He said that my episode is regarded as the holy grail of episodes,” Lowe tells The Ringer. “I was absolutely hysterical about it. I thought, ‘That’s insane.’”

And yet Lowe’s episodes were finally found late last year. The discovery of the lost tapes and Lowe’s first interview addressing her experience answer some questions and raise a host of new ones for the people who spent decades looking for the footage. Why were her games shrouded in secrecy for almost four decades? Was there really bad blood between the show and the five-time champ? What transpired during her time on set? And how did this saga come to take on a life of its own?

 

This one's not quite as mysterious as people make it out to be, but it's still a good story.

Lots Of Strike Through Text

The Writer's Guild of America authorized a strike Tuesday after months of fruitless negotiations with Hollywood Studios, and the immediate effect is that late night TV will be on reruns until further notice.

 

Nightly talk shows including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, are set to go dark starting on Tuesday after writers agreed to strike.

Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Daily Show, which had correspondent Dulcé Sloan host this week, also will be hit. The Late Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show and Late Night will officially be in re-runs now, waiting on what Comedy Central will do with The Daily Show.

Weekly shows as Saturday Night Live, Real Time with Bill Maher and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver will be similarly impacted. The two HBO shows will shut down, although a final decision on SNL is expected to come later in the week. UPDATE Monday 1:30 PM. SNL has officially canceled this week’s show, which was supposed to be hosted by Pete Davidson. Repeats of the late-night program will air until further notice.

Colbert was set to have Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Chita Rivera on Tuesday’s show, with Chris Hayes, Zach Cherry, Michael J. Fox and Shonda Rhimes lined up for later in the week. Fallon was set with Ken Jeong and Emma Chamberlain on Tuesday, with the likes of Jennifer Lopez, JJ Watt, Elle Fanning and Bowen Yang among guests for later in the week. Kimmel was welcoming Dr. Phil, Gina Rodriguez and The Pixies on Tuesday, with Melissa McCarthy, Will Poulter, Ricky Gervais, Anthony Carrigan and Smashing Pumpkins set for later in the week. The Daily Show was set to welcome authors Vashti Harrison and Jason Reynolds and former NFL All-Pro Brandon Marshall.

Seth Meyers, speaking on Late Night this afternoon, said: “I love writing. I love writing for TV. I love writing this show. I love that we get to come in with an idea for what we want to do every day and we get to work on it all afternoon and then I have the pleasure of coming out here. No one is entitled to a job in show business. But for those people who have a job, they are entitled to fair compensation. They are entitled to make a living. I think it’s a very reasonable demand that’s being set out by the guild. And I support those demands.”

Pete Davidson, whose Peacock comedy series Bupkis starts this week, was set for his SNL return on May 6. We hear that there are a number of possibilities for the Lorne Michaels-created show if there is a strike and that a decision is set to be made closer to showtime.

Speaking on The Tonight Show, Davidson joked that he was taking it personally. “It sucks because it just feeds my weird story I have in my head, like, of course that would happen to me.”

Two of the nightly hosts, Kimmel and Colbert, went through this situation in 2007-08, the latter as the host of The Colbert Report. Meyers was at Saturday Night Live during the last strike, and Oliver was on The Daily Show. Maher’s Real Time was also hit, with its season finale replaced by a rerun.

One of the issues in this year’s negotiation between the writers guild and the studios is also, in fact, surrounding late-night shows on streaming. As it stands, writers who work on “comedy variety programs made for new media,” such as Peacock’s The Amber Ruffin Show, do not qualify for MBA minimums, something the WGA has been fighting for.

Late-night showrunners have told Deadline that they will stay in touch with each other as the strike progresses to give a unified approach to the situation, something that didn’t happen in ’07-’08.

“I have been and will continue to talk to the other shows to see what they’re up to,” one showrunner said. “We’ve got to support the writers — our writers are amazing. That said, the rest of the staff is amazing, and I don’t want to see anybody lose their jobs or lose a paycheck. What’s the happy medium there? Figuring that out, it’s not been easy.”

 

We haven't really had a writers' strike in the era of pervasive social media, and this is where I think this will be a shorter strike, because the studios are getting torched on Twitter, Instagram, and yes, even Facebook. 

Oh, and you know which late night show is breaking the strike?  Gutfeld! on Fox News.

They couldn't afford WGA writers anyway, I guess. It's not like the guy is funny.

Tucker, Not Everlasting

Apparently the head that FOX News decided to roll in the wake of the network's $788M defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Services is none other than Tucker Carlson's cranium.

 

Tucker Carlson, the top-rated host at Fox News, is leaving the network.

The abrupt departure of the controversial prime time figure comes a week after Fox News reached a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s promotion of former President Donald Trump’s false 2020 election claims.

That bombshell settlement — the biggest media payout in history — prompted many to question if Rupert Murdoch would make major changes at the network.

Carlson found himself embroiled in serious controversy throughout his time at Fox News. In recent weeks, a lawsuit from a former booker at the network, Abby Grossberg, accused Carlson’s staff of making anti-Semitic jokes, liberal use of the word “cunt” in the office, and casual misogyny.

Read Fox’s statement below:

NEW YORK — April 24, 2023 — FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.

Mr. Carlson’s last program was Friday April 21st. Fox News Tonight will air live at 8 PM/ET starting this evening as an interim show helmed by rotating FOX News personalities until a new host is named.

FOX News Media operates the FOX News Channel (FNC), FOX Business Network (FBN), FOX News Digital, FOX News Audio, FOX News Books, the direct-to-consumer streaming services FOX Nation and FOX News International and the free ad-supported television service FOX Weather. Currently the number one network in all of cable, FNC has also been the most watched television news channel for more than 21 consecutive years, while FBN ranks among the top business channels on cable. Owned by Fox Corporation, FOX News Media reaches nearly 200 million people each month.

 

Holy. Crap.

 

Ahh, but it wasn't the trial Fox News just lost that was the final nail in his coffin.

 

It's the next trial they were going to lose. 

A source familiar with the situation told Axios that the firing was not part of the settlement agreement. A slew of material was uncovered during pre-trial discovery that implicated Carlson. More information could be out there that could be legally damaging for Fox as it stares down more defamation cases.

A former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, who is suing the network for allegedly trying to manipulate her testimony during pre-trial discovery for the Dominion case, said in a legal filing just before the trial that there were Fox News tapes showing Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies admitting they had no evidence to support their claims about Dominion election fraud.

In private text messages with other Fox News hosts, Carlson pressed to get a fellow Fox News reporter fired for accurately fact-checking a tweet from Donald Trump that praised Fox News' coverage about the voting machines and referenced Dominion Voting Systems.

Carlson did not immediately respond to an Axios request for comment.

 

He's gone, he didn't even get his goodbye show.

Things just got seismic.

Last Call For Dominion Takes The Win-ion

Dominion Voting Services has settled its defamation suit against Fox News for just short of half what the company was asking for, minutes before the trial was scheduled to begin today.

 

Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems reached a $787.5 million settlement agreement Tuesday afternoon, the parties announced, narrowly heading off a trial shortly after the jury was sworn in.

“Fox has admitted to telling lies,” John Poulos, Dominion CEO, said at a news conference after the trial ended.


"Money is accountability," said Stephen Shackelford Jr., the attorney scheduled to give opening statements for Dominion on Tuesday.

Fox News, in a statement, said it acknowledged "the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false."

"This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards,” the network said. “We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

 

Some observations:

 

One, it's not over yet.  Fox News still faces a similar defamation case from voting machine manufacturer Smartmatic over the same Big Lie claims for an even larger sum, $2.7 billion.

Two, we don't know the full terms of the settlement. It's entirely possible that Fox News personalities may have to say, publicly apologize. We'll see about that. You can bet Fox will drag their feet on that as long as they can and issue an apology at 4:30 AM on a Sunday.

Three, you can bet Fox will quietly raise cable TV fees on providers as it remains the second-most watched cable network behind only ESPN. Your cable bill is going to go up even if you never watch the network. Financially, this isn't going to hurt Rupert Murdoch one bit. Fox News is still a $16 billion company, and it'll make the settlement and more back off of American cable customers in the years ahead.

Four, Fox News will continue to lie about, gaslight and attack Democrats, liberals, Black, Latino and Asian folk, LGBTQ+ folk, Muslims, Jews, and pretty much everything else in the future. That won't change one bit.

So, we'll how how this shakes out, but yeah, both sides are going to claim victory here, and both sides are correct to do so.

Outfoxed And Outnumbered, Con't

Fox News is in dire trouble as the judge in the Dominion Voting Services defamation case will allow the lawsuit to go to trial later this month.

 

A judge denied granting summary judgment to Fox News in its attempt to get Dominion Voting System's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit thrown out Friday, meaning the case will go to trial in mid-April.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis handed Dominion a major win, too, when he agreed that the challenged statements are false.

The ruling spares the voting machine company from having to litigate baseless conspiracy theories about its role in the 2020 election during the upcoming trial on Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp.

“The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” wrote Judge Eric Davis in his 81-page ruling.

The jury will be asked to consider whether Fox News journalists acted with actual malice — knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth — in publishing the claims, and whether damages are due. They will also be asked to weigh the involvement of Fox Corp. in the publication of the alleged defamatory statements.

"We are gratified by the Court’s thorough ruling soundly rejecting all of Fox’s arguments and defenses, and finding as a matter of law that their statements about Dominion are false. We look forward to going to trial," a spokesperson for Dominion said in a statement.

“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news. FOX will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings,” a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement.

Dominion alleges Fox damaged its reputation by promoting phony claims that it was tied to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, paid kickbacks to politicians and “rigged” the presidential election by flipping millions of votes for Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

Jurors will be instructed that those claims are not true — a position Fox News did not challenge in the otherwise hotly contested case.

Dominion argued the claims are defamatory because they accuse the company of “a serious crime” and damaged its reputation, turning it into “one of the most demonized brands in the United States or the world.”

It also contended the claims were made with “actual malice,” which is defined as being made with “knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

The judge said he was leaving that up to the jury to decide.

 

For the defamation case to be allowed to go forward to trial is extremely bad for Fox News. For the judge to then issue a partial summary judgment that Fox News made numerous false statements, and the jurors will be told to consider those statements to be false from the start...

...There's no reason for Dominion to settle. They're going to win.

Sure, Fox News will tie this case up in court for years on appeals, but they are going to lose those appeals too.

It's going to get hideous for the Murdochs, and I can't wait.

Last Call For Ron's Gone Wrong, House Of Mouse Edition

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis's plan to stick it to Disney over "being woke" by putting his flunkies in charge of the company's special taxation district board was a resounding victory as I said last month...right up until Disney's lawyers found a way to neuter the board completely.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ handpicked board overseeing Disney World’s government services is gearing up for a potential legal battle over a 30-year development agreement they say effectively renders them powerless to manage the entertainment giant’s future growth in Central Florida.

Ahead of an expected state takeover, the Walt Disney Co. quietly pushed through the pact and restrictive covenants that would tie the hands of future board members for decades, according to a legal presentation by the district’s lawyers on Wednesday.

The Central Florida Tourism Oversight District’s new Board of Supervisors voted to bring in outside legal firepower to examine the agreement, including a conservative Washington, D.C., law firm that has defended several of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ culture war priorities.

“We’re going to have to deal with it and correct it,” board member Brian Aungst Jr. said. “It’s a subversion of the will of the voters and the Legislature and the governor. It completely circumvents the authority of this board to govern.”

Disney defended the agreements.

“All agreements signed between Disney and the district were appropriate and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law,” an unsigned company statement read.

DeSantis’ office could not immediately be reached for comment.

The previous board, which was known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District and controlled by Disney, approved the agreement on Feb. 8, the day before the Florida House voted to put the governor in charge.

Board members held a public meeting that day but spent little time discussing the document before unanimously approving it in a brief meeting.

The agreement allows Disney to build projects at the highest density and the right to sell or assign those development rights to other district landowners without the board having any say, according to the presentation by the district’s new special legal counsel.

 

Whoops.

 

Seems like Disney's got better lawyers, even if their recent profit streams have been hitting the skids and their subsidiary cash machines are now in a fair amount of trouble. 

Isaac Perlmutter, the famously frugal Marvel Entertainment chairman who unsuccessfully worked to shake up the Walt Disney Company’s board in the past year, has been laid off as part of a cost-cutting campaign.

Disney confirmed the move. Mr. Perlmutter, 80, was told by phone on Wednesday that Marvel Entertainment, a small division centered on consumer products and run separately from Marvel Studios, was redundant and would be folded into larger Disney business units, according to two Disney executives briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive personnel matter.

On Monday, Disney started to eliminate 7,000 jobs, about 4 percent of its global total, as part of $5.5 billion in cuts intended to improve Disney’s financial results and position the company for streaming-fueled growth.

Mr. Perlmutter, known as Ike, could not immediately be reached for comment.

An irascible and unrelenting executive, Mr. Perlmutter has been seen as a distraction inside Disney for more than a decade — most recently when he pushed for a friend, the activist investor Nelson Peltz, to join the Disney board.

Mr. Perlmutter contacted Disney board members and senior Disney executives six times from August to November to push for Mr. Peltz to join the board, according to a securities filing. When he was rebuffed, Mr. Peltz started a proxy battle to put himself on the board, saying he would cut costs, revamp Disney’s streaming business and clean up the company’s messy succession planning.

 

Seems Disney is cleaning house in a number of ways.  We'll see what this means for Marvel, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Pixar and more in the months ahead.

Insurrection Eradication

Having been given full access to thousands of hours of January 6th security footage, Tucker Carlson and the GOP propagandists at FOX have created a gaslighting masterpiece that even Goebbels would appreciate.

 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday released security video from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, using footage provided exclusively to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to portray the riot as a peaceful gathering.

Carlson acquired the tapes as part of a deal for McCarthy, R-Calif., to win the speaker’s gavel. When McCarthy was struggling to gather the votes to lead the House, Carlson used his program to list two “concessions” he could make to win over far-right Republicans.

“First, release the January 6 files. Not some of the January 6 files and video — all of it,” Carlson, the most-watched host on cable news, said after McCarthy faced three failed votes. “So that the rest of us can finally know what actually happened on January 6, 2021.”

In the two months since McCarthy won the gavel, he has granted both. Carlson announced in late February that McCarthy had given him exclusive access to 44,000 hours of security video from the deadly riot before he unveiled some clips of the video on his show Monday night.

Carlson focused Monday’s segment on promoting former President Donald Trump’s narrative by showing video of his supporters walking calmly around the U.S. Capitol. He asserted that other media accounts lied about the attack, proclaiming that while there were some bad apples, most of the rioters were peaceful and calling them "sightseers," not "insurrectionists."

“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” Carlson told his audience Monday. “Instead it shows police escorting people through the building, including the now-infamous ‘QAnon Shaman.’”

He continued: "More than 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from in and around the Capitol have been withheld from the public, and once you see the video, you’ll understand why. Taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that Jan. 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim."

Video that Carlson didn’t air shows police and rioters engaged in hours of violent combat that resulted in injuries to hundreds of police officers. Two pipe bombs were also planted nearby but were not detonated.

Nearly 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack. About 140 officers were assaulted that day, and about 326 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees, including 106 assaults that happened with deadly or dangerous weapons. About 60 people pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement.

Carlson also said on his show Monday that Democrats lied about the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. He played video that he said showed Sicknick walking around inside the Capitol after the mob attacked him. “They knew he was not murdered by the mob, but they claimed it anyway,” he said.

Sicknick died of natural causes on Jan. 7, the day after he engaged with rioters outside the Capitol. An autopsy report determined that he died of a stroke at the base of the brain stem caused by a blood clot. Capitol Police have said Sicknick returned to his office after the riot and collapsed. Two men have been sentenced to prison for spraying him with a chemical irritant during the melee, and Sicknick’s family has contended that the fighting with rioters contributed directly to his stroke.

 

Tucker Carlson's job is to create a false narrative in order for Trump to run on pardoning all the insurrectionists, and he will if he ever gets back into office.  The're no doubt left that in the wake of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit, that FOX News is truly the propaganda arm of the GOP and they no longer care who knows.

The Big Lie, FOX Edition, Con't

 Hey look, Democrats are starting to push back on FOX News not being a real news organization and some Dems even want to get rid of it as such.

The thunderclap of stories showing Fox News’ role in pushing 2020 election fraud conspiracies and aiding Donald Trump’s campaign has intensified calls among Democrats to black out the network.

The revelations, made public as part of a $1.6 billion lawsuit brought against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems, showed that some network hosts and executives endorsed lies about Trump’s loss, hosted conspiracy theorists whom they thought were unhinged, and overtly prioritized the company’s profit over truth. A related deposition of the media empire’s chair, Rupert Murdoch, revealed that he shared private intel about Joe Biden’s campaign TV ads and provided debate strategy with top Trump advisers.

For years, Democrats have been engaged in a debate over whether the party should shun the cable news giant or grudgingly use its airwaves to run counterprogramming. But in the midst of the latest saga, a newer type of reaction has emerged: that they should sever all ties, including any money spent advertising on the network.

“There is nothing in those documents to show they operate like a real news organization,” said Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist. “If you are running a campaign in 2024, how do you in good faith hand your ads to Fox when you know they handed them over to Republicans? If there are any general election debates, how do you let Fox be a moderator?”

There is no indication, at this juncture, that major Democratic entities are ready to halt their ad buys on Fox News, let alone its many affiliates. But that is partially because few Democratic campaigns or causes are currently spending ad money. In the interim, the Dominion lawsuit revelations have led to louder calls for the party to make a firm break from any involvement with the cable channel, whom they view as functionally a campaign arm for Republicans. Democrats spanning the ideological spectrum have even started calling on the White House Correspondents’ Association — the group of news reporters advocating for press access — to boot Fox News reporters from the briefing room.

“They are arguably the most important entity of the American right and the Republican Party,” said Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, suggesting that The Associated Press include in its stylebook that Fox News is not a news organization. “There needs to be a serious conversation now about whether Fox can continue to be a member of the White House Correspondents Association. Keeping them there seems not to be OK.”

Even with its reputation for airing reliably conservative content, Fox News remains a major player in Democratic politics. More self-identified Democrats consistently watch the network than any other cable channel, according to Nielsen MRI Fusion. And a faction of Democrats sees value in both reaching those voters and trying to persuade the independents and Republican-leaning ones who tune into the channel.

The White House at least is following Greg Sargent's "Use FOX To get your own message out" theory plan. 

In the 2020 campaign cycle, the network hosted a presidential debate, accepted some $7.4 million in advertising from Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to Fox News, according to the tracking firm AdImpact, and held town halls with Democratic primary contenders. While Biden administration officials have selectively chosen to appear on Fox News for interviews, the president’s aides have also sought out opportunities to use the network as a cudgel against Republican lawmakers — whether on economic issues or matters of public safety.

White House officials, for their part, describe their relationship with Fox employees who cover them closely as combative but mostly cordial. But they also view the Dominion lawsuit revelations as a cover of sorts to treat Fox News with a bit more frostiness than other media outlets. Biden aides have privately bristled at news reporters who just weeks ago piled on criticism of the president for side stepping a customary Super Bowl interview with Fox.

“Regardless of any new revelations of media bias and hypocrisy during the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden won the most votes of any candidate in American history because of his vision for the middle class, his message, and his record,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “And anyone who is surprised by such revelations hasn’t been paying attention to — or watching — Fox News lately.”

 

Let the Dems fight back as long as they fight.

Last Call For The Big Lie, FOX News Edition, Con't

Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent argues that with the recent revelations involving the network's defamation case, it's well past time for Democrats to stop treating FOX News as anything other than the propaganda arm of the GOP.

 

For years, Democrats have been deeply conflicted about Fox News. At times, they’ve shunned the network as an irredeemable source of disinformation, boycotting it or banning it from covering Democratic presidential primary debates. But such efforts have been temporary: They have tended to resume appearing on the network and have reverted to treating it as more or less a news channel, albeit a hostile one.

Now, however, it’s becoming clear that interacting with Fox News as a news outlet in any sense is no longer an option for Democrats. In light of the news that network personalities knowingly deceived viewers about the 2020 election for cynical pecuniary purposes, Democrats plainly have to take on Fox News in a new way. And some of them know it.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had a moment like this, where a major news network has been exposed as deliberately deluding its viewers or readers,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told me. “This is a seminal moment in the history of mass media. And we need to treat it that way.”

But what should that look like?

This week, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries signaled an aggressive posture in a letter to Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch. The two New York Democrats demanded that the network get star anchor Tucker Carlson and others to recant their lies about the 2020 election on the air. The letter said:

Though you have acknowledged your regret in allowing this grave propaganda to take place, your network hosts continue to promote, spew, and perpetuate election conspiracy theories to this day.

This might be the first time that the Democratic congressional leadership has formally labeled Fox News content “propaganda.”

The term is entirely apt. As newly revealed texts from Carlson and other on-air personalities and executives demonstrate, they feared that telling their audience the truth about the 2020 vote could cost them a disastrously high number of viewers. Instead, Fox News personalities kept lying about it while executives looked the other way.

Carlson even rage-texted that a Fox News reporter who fact-checked President Donald Trump’s lies about Dominion Voting Systems and the ballot count should be fired for “measurably hurting” News Corp.’s “stock price.” The texts, which emerged in Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox, also show that Carlson and host Sean Hannity agreed that the channel’s accurate call of Trump’s loss in Arizona threatened its “brand.”

Murdoch himself admitted in a deposition that Fox News had failed to do enough to prevent its personalities from pushing lies about the election. In short, the network deliberately sought to keep its viewers captive in its propaganda bubble to keep ratings up — and revenue flowing.

Given these revelations, doesn’t that oblige Democrats to adopt an approach commensurate with the reality that Fox News is systematically and concertedly deceiving millions of people about the most fundamental workings of our governing institutions?

 

It does, and Democrats should stop going on FOX News completely. The White House should boot FOX News from the White House Press Room, and the White House Correspondents' Association should toss FOX to the wolves.

None of this will happen of course, so We go back to trying to beat them at their own games instead of dismantling the problem.

Should Democrats again refrain from appearing on Fox News? They have long been conflicted about this, with some arguing that Democrats shouldn’t forgo the opportunity to reach right-leaning voters wherever possible. But in light of the new revelations, there might be a better way to think about it.

Dan Pfeiffer, who was senior communications adviser to President Barack Obama, says Democrats should remember that their appearances on Fox News will never reach many conservative voters in unadulterated form. A Democrat’s quotes will inevitably be diced into incriminating bites and fed to a larger conservative audience via high-rated opinion shows and right-wing social media.

However, Pfeiffer says, because a Democrat’s appearance on Fox News will intrinsically generate media interest, party members should appear if they want to — but with eyes wide open, expressly to create viral moments that will reach the Democratic base and independent voters.

“Go on looking for a fight,” Pfeiffer advises. “The press will cover what you say on Fox.” As a result, he says, this will facilitate “reaching people outside of the Fox audience.” Similarly, strategist Simon Rosenberg is urging fellow Democrats to confront Fox News’s mythmaking by “getting loud” themselves, to displace right-wing agitprop with Democrats’ own media-conscious messaging and theater.

Such ideas seem more in tune with the realities of today’s media ecosystem than other tactics Democrats have toyed with. For instance, it has been suggested that Democrats consider steps such as trying to get Fox News expelled from the White House press corps.

Ultimately, that seems trivial and small. Democrats should proceed from an enlarged understanding of the network’s role as a kind of Death Star in the broader universe of right-wing and GOP information warfare. As Brian Beutler notes, when House GOP leaders granted Carlson exclusive access to Capitol riot surveillance footage, this constituted a clear declaration that the party fully endorses Fox News’s efforts to swamp our politics with propaganda, and sees the outlet’s interests as synonymous with its own.

The real lesson from the revelations is that this Fox-GOP synchronization will remain fundamental to Republican and right-wing politics for the foreseeable future. Like it or not, Democrats are in an information war. As they work through their response, specific tactics seem less important than internalizing this baseline realization and allowing it to shape everything they do.

 

I'm loathe to admit it, but loud shouting on FOX in order to throw red meat (blue meat?) to Dems is better than letting FOX draft Dems in their information war. We'll see if any Dems are up to the challenge, and the few who are wouldn't get on FOX for precisely that reason. It's still FOX's network, you see.

Trying to use FOX against the GOP is...a...strategy. I'm not sure if it's the best one. On the other hand, it's certainly better than the current "I'll go on FOX to make my case to right wing white rural voters" strategy, because rural white right-wing voters want everyone involved in liberalism dead or in prison because they don't consider Dems or their voters as human.

So, there's that.

The Big Lie, FOX News Edition

Another court filing in the Dominion Voting Services defamation case against FOX News finds that under oath, FOX chairman Rupert Murdoch admitted some particularly nasty stuff in a deposition last month.

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the conservative media empire that owns Fox News, acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, and that he could have stopped them but didn’t, court documents released on Monday showed.

“They endorsed,” Mr. Murdoch said under oath in response to direct questions about the Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs and Maria Bartiromo, according to a legal filing by Dominion Voting Systems. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” he added, while also disclosing that he was always dubious of Mr. Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.

Asked whether he doubted Mr. Trump, Mr. Murdoch responded: “Yes. I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up.” At the same time, he rejected the accusation that Fox News as a whole had endorsed the stolen election narrative. “Not Fox,” he said. “No. Not Fox.”

Mr. Murdoch’s remarks, which he made last month as part of Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox, added to the evidence that Dominion has accumulated as it tries to prove its central allegation: The people running the country’s most popular news network knew Mr. Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were false but broadcast them anyway in a reckless pursuit of ratings and profit.

Proof to that effect would help Dominion clear the high legal bar set by the Supreme Court for defamation cases. To prevail, Dominion must show not only that Fox broadcast false information, but that it did so knowingly. A judge in Delaware state court has scheduled a monthlong trial beginning in April.

The new documents and a similar batch released this month provide a dramatic account from inside the network, depicting a frantic scramble as Fox tried to woo back its large conservative audience after ratings collapsed in the wake of Mr. Trump’s loss. Fox had been the first network to call Arizona for Joseph R. Biden on election night — essentially declaring him the next president. When Mr. Trump refused to concede and started attacking Fox as disloyal and dishonest, viewers began to change the channel.

The filings also revealed that top executives and on-air hosts had reacted with incredulity bordering on contempt to various fictitious allegations about Dominion. These included unsubstantiated rumors — repeatedly uttered by guests and hosts of Fox programs — that its voting machines could run a secret algorithm that switched votes from one candidate to another, and that the company was founded in Venezuela to help that country’s longtime leader, Hugo Chávez, fix elections.

 

Kinda hard for Rupert to throw Trump under the bus when he's admitting to FEC violations in the process, too.

 

Dominion details the close relationship that Fox hosts and executives enjoyed with senior Republican Party officials and members of the Trump inner circle, revealing how at times Fox was shaping the very story it was covering. It describes how Mr. Murdoch placed a call to the Republican leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, immediately after the election. In his deposition, Mr. Murdoch testified that during that call he likely urged Mr. McConnell to “ask other senior Republicans to refuse to endorse Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theories and baseless claims of fraud.”

Dominion also describes how Mr. Murdoch provided Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, with confidential information about ads that the Biden campaign would be running on Fox.

 

I'm pretty sure Dominion's going to get every dime of that $1.6 billion and then some. Oh, and just maybe people go to jail?

 

At any rate, if there still remained any doubt that FOX is not a news organization but the corporatized media arm of the GOP, and therefore shouldn't be subject to journalistic protections in any way, that died this week. 

Good luck with your new owners, FOX.