Greetings from Los Angeles. In tonight’s email, the good news and the bad for Mark Thompson following CNN’s historic presidential debate, and the real kernel from The Washington Post’s latest investigation into its own embattled publisher, Will Lewis.

But first…

🇺🇸 Beyond the spin room: Last night, I joined Peter Hamby and John Heilemann on both of their podcasts to discuss the immediate post-debate fallout from Biden’s shaky performance. Perhaps the most important moment in our conversation came toward the end, when John noted that while there’s no mechanism to take the nomination away from Biden, the campaign to get him to withdraw is very real:

“I texted one of the richest people in America, a huge Biden supporter, who has had Biden to his house relatively recently. I asked, How many Democrats, elected Democrats or people in your category of wealth, are texting you tonight talking about needing another nominee? And he said, Everyone. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. I’m on the floor. If we don’t change the nominee, the race is over.

“Now, you can say that’s hair on fire. But I have at least a half-dozen Democratic senators in my text threads, and about 15 members of the House, and a bunch of really, really rich Democratic donors, and all of them are asking, What options do we have? How would this work? This is a complete calamity. The Daily Mail wrote a piece a few weeks ago that said the Clintons, the Obamas, Nancy, and Chuck had a conversation about going to Biden to try to get him to step down if he shit the bed in the debate. I don’t regard the Daily Mail as a credible media outlet, but four or five sources tell me that at least part of that is true.”

📺 John Ourand on cord-cutting blues: ESPN crossed an unwelcome threshold earlier this year when distribution of the network dropped below 70 million homes for the first time since the early days of cable television. ESPN is now in just under 68 million homes, according to Nielsen, a dramatic and expensive drop from its peak a decade ago. Back then, the Worldwide Leader in Sports was in 100 million homes.

Of course, cord-cutting is impacting every pay TV channel: FS1 has dropped to 67.9 million homes, and FS2 is currently in 49 million homes. TBS and TNT have each seen their subscriber numbers shrink to 66 million homes. Meanwhile, the NFL Network has fallen below 50 million homes for the first time in recent memory, to 49.6 million, and NBA TV (36 million) and MLB Network (33 million) have seen their numbers fall even more dramatically than channels run by traditional media companies. These steep drops are a primary reason why ESPN, Fox, and WBD are launching Venu this fall. It also explains why ESPN is moving forward with its plan to launch its main channel as a direct-to-consumer service next year: The business is trying to reach a swath of the 50 to 60 million U.S. consumers who do not subscribe to pay TV. —John Ourand

Sure, somewhere amid the cacophony of the Defcon-1, five-alarm freak-out over Biden’s performance—the calls from his own loyalists to step aside, the rampant speculation of a brokered convention, and the tireless efforts by the MSNBC folks to remind viewers that, despite his relative composure, Trump had repeatedly lied—you could hear the faint din of the Keith Olbermann types blaming CNN for deciding to facilitate the debate, rather than fact-check it. It didn’t matter. There was only one story, and Jake and Dana—and CNN, more broadly—were earning plaudits for their capable moderation. They had made clear from early on that their job wasn’t to insert themselves and challenge either candidate—and, of course, they are not the ones running for office.

In any event, as the sun came up on Friday, and Biden’s most notable pundit friends and loyalists Tom Friedman and Joe Scarborough joined the Time to Go, Joe intervention chorus, a few realities started to sink in for CNN, as well. Indeed, the network had so successfully not been a part of the story that, in the aftermath, it almost no longer mattered that CNN had hosted the debate. In fact, it was hard to recall anything Jake or Dana had said or done. There had been no memorable question, no exchange between moderator and candidate that might have endeared the casual viewer to the network, or made someone watching a simulcast of the debate on a rival network think to wake up the next day and change the channel to CNN to see what Jake or Dana might do next. “These are people who ask politicians questions every day of the week except Saturday,” one CNN insider told me. “Instead, they spent a month learning how to be part of the furniture.”

From an editorial perspective, this was exactly what CNN C.E.O. Mark Thompson had wanted: Prior to the debate, he had said Biden and Trump were the “stars of the show,” not the moderators. And, certainly, the last thing either anchor wanted was to be placed in the pantheon of controversial moderators with Chris Wallace (in 2020), or Candy Crowley (in 2012). From a business perspective, however, nothing about CNN’s handling of the debate seemed likely to translate to long-term engagement across the network’s O&Os. As I’d predicted, there was no marketing of a new primetime lineup, no ads for new CNN Max shows, no new digital subscription product. But, equally significant, there was no attempt to showcase anything particularly distinctive about CNN or its moderators, other than their willingness to disappear.

In many ways, CNN seemed to embrace a new identity as an American BBC of sorts. And perhaps that’s the perfect articulation of the nonpartisan, nonpolarizing, milquetoast programming David Zaslav and John Malone always wanted. Alas, Thompson still has a business to run. And on Friday, after the postgame celebrations at the Atlanta Four Seasons, his challenges once again became obvious. Per Nielsen, 51.3 million people watched the CNN Presidential Debate on television. Once you dug into the numbers, it became clear that CNN had barely drawn a larger audience (9.53 million) than Fox News (9.28 million) or ABC News (9.21 million) to its own debate. CNN also noted 30 million “live starts” on digital properties and YouTube—a significant if complicated addendum that hints at CNN’s future opportunities but doesn’t negate the brutal reality that the network once synonymous with “breaking news” no longer dominates the live news space as it has in the past.

Two things can be true: CNN’s journalists and producers did a great job on Thursday night—a really great job, in fact—but it was not necessarily a great night for CNN. For 90-some minutes, they succeeded in getting their brand plastered across the debate stage and every television news network in America, reminding the world that, despite all the drama they’ve endured in the Licht era, they can still produce and program a very professional and responsible presidential debate. But they did not succeed in leveraging this moment to change the fundamental dynamics of their business.

Now, in light of the Biden wildcard, it’s quite possible the presidential cycle becomes very dramatic, especially around the Democratic convention in Chicago, and CNN and their competitors see a significant and sustained surge in ratings. But it’s also likely that, after the July 4 holiday, CNN returns to a familiar and depressing reality, struggling to assert its value—or even an identity—in a crowded news environment in front of an audience of about half a million viewers. With politics, you never know.

Earlier this week, I reported that Thompson will announce next month his long-awaited plan to grow CNN’s digital and streaming business and, in an ideal world, move the network past its reliance on a declining television business model. Thursday night would have been a great opportunity to unveil such a product to the 51.3 million people who still elect to watch events like this on television. Alas, it wasn’t ready for primetime.

In any event, the more pressing question for Lewis and the Post is what’s to become of all the controversy surrounding his leadership. Earlier this week, I noted a strong suspicion among Lewis’s critics at the Post that all this scrutiny was a precursor to his inevitable ouster, and that Bezos deputy Patty Stonesifer’s frequent presence in the newsroom should make Lewis think twice about closing on his $7 million house in Georgetown. I also noted that this was almost certainly magical thinking, and entirely missed the point. The more likely reality, which his critics seem unwilling to countenance, is that Stonesifer is there on both Bezos and Lewis’s behalf in order to assuage their concerns and very diplomatically encourage them to get back to work.

To wit, the most newsworthy detail in the Post’s new Lewis investigation is a quote from Stonesifer herself, effectively confirming that posture: In a response to a question about what she knew about Lewis’s past life, Stonesifer told the Post that she and a search firm “completed a detailed review of Will’s career, background and references,” and then added: “I can assure you of our deep consideration and complete alignment on Will’s leadership.” Ostensibly, that very obvious signal to staff would mark the end of this whole depressing saga. Alas, given the degree to which the newsroom has been champing at this bit, you can’t be sure.

In any event, on a meta level, perhaps the most notable aspect of the Post’s latest missive is the fact they published it when they did—four days after the Times, and on the morning after a game-changing political event that has eclipsed coverage of every other news story save for some landmark Supreme Court rulings. Indeed, it is precisely those kind of instincts—inward rather than consumer-facing—that led the Post to hemorrhage half its audience and lose $77 million last year, and that no doubt inspired Bezos to hire a guy like Lewis, no matter how unctuous, in the first place.