Harris Postmortems, Media M&A Murmurs, Gala Season Dish

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon download of Puck’s freshest reporting.

First up today, Lauren Sherman digs into the latest corporate intrigues inside Gap Inc., where C.E.O. Richard Dickson has been rapidly pruning the current leadership structure, exiting executives, and doubling down on his Zac Posen experiment. (Even Posen, himself, might not be safe…)

Plus, below the fold: Peter Hamby offers a bracing prescription for the Democrats’ dark night of the soul. John Ourand teams up with LightShed’s Rich Greenfield to assess how the sports media business could transform under Trump. And Scott Mendelson previews the pre-Thanksgiving box office trifecta of Gladiator II, Wicked: Part One, and Moana 2.

Meanwhile, in Puck’s podcast universe: Matt Belloni reunites with Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw to discuss the latest WBD earnings and Zaslav’s M&A euphoria. Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei joins Dylan Byers on The Grill Room to chew over the most pressing media plotlines following Trump’s victory. On Fashion People, Lauren Sherman and stylist Kate Young explore the fall gala season, the state of luxury, and the Taylor Swift of it all. And on Somebody’s Gotta Win, Tara Palmeri and pollster Evan Roth Smith re-examine Harris’s most lethal campaign missteps.

LAUREN SHERMAN

When Gap Inc. chief Richard Dickson landed at the company, he was goaded by a former executive to “fire everyone.” Now, just over a year into his tenure, he’s stripping management layers and acting on long-anticipated exits. Plus, updates on Behnaz Ghahramani, Zac Posen, and more San Francisco treats.

PETER HAMBY

After the heartburn of 2004, Democrats rebuilt their party through a new set of candidates in the House, winning the midterms and paving the way for a generationally talented, constituency-realigning outsider to claim the presidency four years later. Rahm Emanuel, who helped engineer the party’s comeback, has a few ideas about what the Democrats need to do now in order to reclaim the presidency—with no #Resistance in sight.

JOHN OURAND

Media C.E.O.s are hoping against hope that Trump 2.0 will usher in a new M&A permission structure allowing them to, among other things, finally offload those linear TV assets they should have bailed on 10 years ago, like Rupert did. But, as LightShed Partners’ Rich Greenfield argues, nothing is easy and everything takes forever.

SCOTT MENDELSON

For the first time since ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’ opened days before ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet,’ in 2018, this year’s mid-November box office slate will mimic the pattern from the prior two decades. Everyone should win.