Welcome back to In the Room. I’m Dylan Byers.

Greetings from Indian Wells, where the tournament’s real final is tomorrow’s semifinal match between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. This tournament is must-watch for tennis aficionados (Bill Gates is here with Larry Ellison, who owns the event), and perhaps after the successful ATP-WTA negotiations to merge their media rights into a $4 billion business, these non-Grand Slam fixtures may soon again find a broadcast partner besides the Tennis Channel. Perhaps Spulu can add it to its offering?

In tonight’s email, news and notes on the fallout from the messy Elon Musk-Don Lemon divorce. Due to the indecision of both his current and former business partners, Lemon is netting himself a nice little payout. The question, of course, is whether he can build a business on his own in the post-linear wilderness.

But first….

💰 Speaking of Ellison…: My partner Teddy Schleifer tells me that the Oracle founder has been spending considerable time of late with Donald Trump, joining him for dinner on multiple occasions. Of course, there’s been a ton of chatter about whether Elon Musk will support Trump’s campaign, but “perhaps it is Elon’s mentor, Ellison, who should be the one to watch in Trumpworld,” Teddy says. “Ellison is an absolute political flirt, though—look no further than the money he promised to Tim Scott and never delivered. People in Trump’s orbit know not to believe Larry until the money hits the bank account.” Teddy has more on this and all the latest from the 2024 money trail in his weekly email The Stratosphere, which you can sign up for here.

🎾 Speaking of Spulu…: The Disney-WBD-Fox triumvirate has finally named former Apple executive Pete Distad as the C.E.O. of its forthcoming sports streamer, more than a month after we broke the news of his likely appointment. It’s a logical choice: Distad oversaw the business and operations side of the Apple TV app and Apple TV+ and helped negotiate the company’s deals with Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball. For him, it’s a chance to be in charge of something—provided it ever actually launches. I’m still not convinced it will make it to market, given the governance and revenue-sharing complexities, as well as the opposition from cable operators. In any event, that’s Distad’s headache now, and I’m sure he is motivated and incentivized.

🤼‍♂️ UTA vs. Kassan, cont’d: My partner Matt Belloni caught up with Michael Kassan and Jeremy Zimmer last night to get their dueling perspectives on Hollywood’s favorite new drama—essentially, far more colorful articulations of their respective lawsuits. Read it here.

The catalyst for Lemon’s unexpected homecoming, of course, was the revelation that Musk had abruptly kiboshed their business deal just a week or so before the show’s planned launch. After a contentious interview with Musk for the inaugural episode—Lemon asked about Musk’s drug use, his antisemitic tweets, the general toxicity on X, etcetera—Musk had texted Lemon’s agent, UTA’s Jay Sures, and declared the contract “canceled.”

Given Musk’s preternatural radioactivity, Lemon’s latest cancellation became a thing, a viral news event, and further evidence of Musk’s erratic governance and antipathy toward scrutiny. And so, Lemon once again found himself in a town car being whisked toward Hudson Yards, for an appearance on Out Front with his former colleague Erin Burnett, in the very same studio from whence he once broadcast his own show. Lemon later said he was so overwhelmed by the experience that he had to leave shortly after the segment to keep from crying.

The peak of Lemon’s cable news career came amid the Trump era, somewhere between Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s 2015 GQ profile, when Jeff Zucker very favorably described him as “a lightning rod,” and the 2020 election, when an even more emboldened Lemon embraced Zucker’s mandate to speak out forcibly against Trump and all his perceived sins. The fall began when Chris Licht was given the mandate by David Zaslav (and, directly or indirectly, John Malone) to exorcize such posturing from the network and thus decided to move Lemon to an ill-conceived and ill-fated morning show alongside two relatively inexperienced co-hosts.

In the wake of Lemon’s very ill-considered “women-in-their-prime” remarks about Nikki Haley, Licht would also call Lemon “a lightning rod,” but this time as criticism. “Don Lemon is a lightning rod because he really came to prominence during an era where that was celebrated and encouraged in primetime,” Licht said at a Semafor event just days before firing Lemon. “CNN has moved on from that, and Don has moved on from that.”

Of course, Don hadn’t moved on from that, and one can only imagine how much Lemon bristled as he sat in the audience listening to those remarks. He subscribed to Zucker’s thesis that the lightning—the outspoken, controversial remarks that generated headlines and irked his more traditional colleagues (remember the “black hole” conspiracy?)—were precisely what was needed to engage the CNN audience. “There’s certainly a lot of interest in Don Lemon, and that’s a good thing for Don and for CNN,” Zucker had said. “Frankly, we needed a little bit of lightning.”

If the years since Lemon’s ouster have proven anything, however, it’s that the Zaz-Malone thesis, while certainly more responsible, and perhaps arguably more beneficial to the long-term strategy, has very much not succeeded in generating ratings, which, as readers of this email well know, are at a nadir after trending down for years.

Meanwhile, Musk’s own handling of Lemon evidenced the same indecisiveness, only in reverse. Musk was willing to pay millions of dollars merely to associate Lemon’s name with X (again, the show wasn’t going to be exclusive to the platform) as part of a broader effort to draw advertisers back in. Indeed, I’m told Musk rushed to reach an agreement with Lemon in time for X C.E.O. Linda Yaccarino to include him alongside Tulsi Gabbard and Jim Rome in a January announcement at C.E.S. (Yaccarino also brought Lemon to several client meetings in New York and was selling ads for the show right up until the moment that Musk pulled the plug.)

As a result of all this, Lemon is left with no quarter on either platform: He is too much of a personality for CNN, too much of a journalist for X, and probably too wealthy and proud to try his hand in the uncertain worlds of true entrepreneurship—like what Bill Simmons pulled off with The Ringer after famously being pushed out of ESPN, or what Megyn Kelly is attempting now in the post-cancellation mediasphere. It’s also unclear whether his skill set would differentiate him in an overflowing liberal digital ecosystem. Or if he even wants to do this. As his near tears evidenced, Lemon still seems enamored with the old world.

In any event, Lemon has quite a bit of money in the bank, and he’s very clear-eyed about his new reality. “I’m in a position where I can, at least for a couple of years, try things, I can experiment,” Lemon said in a post-X-cancellation interview with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway on Friday. “Do I think that my relevance or my income is going to be the same as when I was on CNN? No. … I don’t expect that. I think people start media companies or start streaming, and they think they’re going to be the same as they were on broadcast or cable media. No, I’m not that naive. … I’m realistic about life.”

Lemon continued: “Do I still have another chapter? Absolutely. And I think I’m still relevant. In fact, I think I’m more relevant than people who are on cable news right now.” In this precise moment, in this news cycle, that’s true. The trick, of course, is making it last.