Good evening, good Friday, and welcome to the weekend. Tonight, I talk to my partner, Puck co-founder and editor-in-chief Jon Kelly, about Licht’s return to the CNN control room and the future leadership at Ari & Mark’s TKO. Plus, some notes on the Washington Post waiting game.

Now, after a turbulent year, you’re hearing that Licht’s back in the control room more than ever. What’s changed, and do you think it’s a good thing?

Dylan Byers: Licht’s initial instincts at CNN were terribly misguided. He inherited a network that was reeling from the sudden loss of a hugely beloved leader who wielded near-unilateral control over every aspect of the business, and certainly what appeared on air. Rather than fill that void, Licht tried to lead from a remove, declaring on day one: “I’m not here to get into the weeds of day-to-day editorial decision-making.” He may have been trying, on some level, to empower the executive producers beneath him, but the comment aggravated his new colleagues and got him off to a bad start.

In those early days, Licht believed that CNN's “Great Man Theory” of Zucker was detrimental to the organization, and that his charges should feel entitled to make their own decisions. He may have also feared the shoes he had to fill. And, certainly, he recognized that his boss, David Zaslav, was going to need him to focus his energy on playing a role in restructuring the larger parent company. Licht didn’t initially see the layoffs coming at CNN, though a C.E.O. probably should have. Any enormous newco with enormous debt obligations is always going to turn to the layoff lever. This was a learning curve.

In any event, Licht ran away from his own strengths as an executive producer and embraced a C.E.O. and chairman title for which he was not yet qualified. Meanwhile the newsroom was crying out for leadership and, frankly, reassurances. Never underestimate how much television industry egos rely on validation. And if they’re not getting it from the ratings or from the press—which they definitely were not—they certainly need to be hearing it from the boss. Zucker talked and texted directly with his charges and his talent; Licht declared that everything should be transmitted “through a process and a chain of command.” What struck me from day one was how antithetical this was to Licht’s history and reputation as a wunderkind producer with deep ties to the talent, from Gayle King to Stephen Colbert. (Joe and Mika probably believe Licht took a little too much credit for Morning Joe’s early success, but that’s a story for another time.)

On Licht’s first week at CNN, I predicted that he would try the C.E.O. suit on for a while, find that it doesn’t really fit, and then roll up his sleeves and do what he knows how to do best, which is produce TV. In recent months, Licht has indeed spent a lot more time in the control room, a lot more time watching and shaping the coverage, and a lot more time establishing one-on-one relationships with talent and staff—and indeed, I’m starting to hear a little more praise for Licht’s leadership out of certain corners of Hudson Yards, a welcome if incremental shift from the overwhelming resistance to his leadership that characterized the first nine months or so.

What changed? In Licht’s defense, I think he did have a lot of big-picture problems to deal with in Year One that distracted him from the day-to-day: reviewing the business, refocusing the editorial mission, dismantling CNN+ and CNN Films, and of course the infamous layoffs and cost cuts. But I also think he and Zaz recognized that CNN needed this kind of leadership and that Licht had probably been miscast. That’s not to say he’s not still required to do the business of a C.E.O.—of course he is—but he’s also being asked to take greater responsibility for the on-air product, and get his hands dirty.

Is that a good thing? TBD. So far, a lot of Licht’s programming instincts haven't been great: Jake Tapper’s brief stint in primetime was a failed experiment; the Don-Poppy-Kaitlan show has been beset by obvious tensions between the co-hosts. Did it really make sense to take Lemon, a versatile primetime solo act, and force him to wake up at 4 a.m. for a chummy morning co-host show? (Of course, as I’ve reported, Lemon was never going to be part of a WBD-owned CNN primetime.)

Looking ahead, is a Gayle King-Charles Barkley buddy act really the solution to CNN’s daily ratings struggles? There’s a lot still to prove. Of course, Zucker too had some failed experiments in his first year. But I do find it notable that, with Licht in the control room and Trump back in the headlines, CNN's coverage is starting to feel just a tad more Zuckeresque.

Jon: Let’s stay with cable news for another beat. You also noted on Wednesday that Kaitlan Collins, the excellent White House reporter-turned-morning-TV host, is getting a shot at hosting the 9 p.m. hour—an unspoken gesture toward the fact that the Trump circus, John Malone’s own politics be damned, is coming back into town. Collins is a big talent. How do you expect this experiment to fare? Better than Tapper, I assume?

Dylan: Well, again, it’s a question of instincts. Kaitlin is a supertalented, workaholic, pull-no-punches political correspondent. She thrives in that role. And yes, I understand that at a certain point every talented and ambitious correspondent sees the anchor desk as the next rung on the ladder. Let’s see how she does. In any event, this isn’t quite analogous to the five-week Tapper experiment, since I’m not yet sure that Licht has primetime designs for Kaitlan the way he thought he did for Jake. It is, however, a reminder that CNN still doesn’t have anything consistent at 9 p.m., and is flying by the seat of its pants in primetime. That’s a strategic move, according to the network, albeit one that runs counter to all the conventional wisdom about viewer behavior.

Jon: You had a great piece earlier this week about Ari Emanuel’s play to acquire WWE and merge it with its own UFC, and spin the two into a new Endeavor-controlled public entity under the stock ticker TKO. Wall Street is still familiarizing itself with this deal, but I think it’s fair to say that the two combat sports entities, backed by Endeavor’s muscle, will fare well in media rights deals moving forward, and there will be lots of operational efficiencies in the integration. These will both be big draws for streamers, particularly second tier players, and their bargaining power has accelerated.

I’m primarily interested in the executives involved: WWE chairman Vince McMahon, WWE C.E.O. (and former CAA agent) Nick Khan, and controversial UFC founder and C.E.O. Dana White. Ari has said that they’ll each run their own businesses. But is the ring big enough for both of them? (Disclosure, Endeavor’s WME represents Puck.)

Dylan: Well, these are two very different assets—one is actual combat, the other is theater masquerading as combat—but of course it’s all entertainment at the end of the day, and Endeavor sees a lot of ways to leverage both entities to grow the combined asset. Does it need a single titular leader? TBD. Ari and his partner, Endeavor president Mark Shapiro, know and trust the UFC leadership—White, his C.O.O. Lawrence Epstein, his C.F.O. Andrew Schleimer—and all three are highly valued members of the Endeavor family. In the seven years since Endeavor acquired UFC, for $4.25 billion, these guys have pushed ultimate fighting into the cultural zeitgeist and established it as, by Endeavor’s estimation, a $12 billion business.

Endeavor sees a lot of untapped potential in WWE, as Shapiro made clear in our conversations this week, and they intend to grow it with a UFC playbook, so these guys will play a pivotal role in that evolution. Where Khan fits into all that remains to be seen. For at least the next couple of years, he’ll run the WWE business. And with the 77-year-old Vince in an elevated chairman role, Khan will have more of a chance to lead WWE on his own terms—and, hopefully for him, demonstrate his value to the team at Endeavor.

Jon: I wanted to follow up on your reporting about the morale inside The Washington Post. The other day, you noted a surprisingly defensive corporate communication issued by the Post Company’s P.R. team about the loss of Jeremy Bowers, an executive who left to become Politico’s C.T.O. It noted all the talent that the Post itself had attracted over the years. Yeesh. How are the tensions inside the building, especially now that owner Jeff Bezos seems so focused on buying another D.C. institution, The Commanders?

Dylan: After Bezos visited the Post, nearly three months ago, he left everyone with the impression that he was finally paying attention, fully invested in the paper’s success and that he intended to make some changes to reverse the subscriber churn, revenue declines and general ennui. But he didn’t really give anyone insight into what those changes were, nor how and when he intended to implement them. And so the Post newsroom sort of seems suspended in this pseudo-hopeful, pseudo-depressed state of anxiety, like a kid in timeout who’s been assured he can go out to play, but hasn't been told when. Meanwhile, the Post seems to be losing top-tier people on the business and editorial side almost weekly, all while the ever-dominant, multifaceted Times broadens the already insurmountable delta between itself and its competitors, as I noted last week.

I sympathize with Post P.R. for wanting to beat back the exodus narrative. But the flight is real, especially on the business side: Bowers to Politico, and Beth Diaz before him; Joy Robins, the chief advertising officer, to the Times; Shailesh Prakesh to Google; Kris Coratti to CNN; and so on and so forth. This won’t be stemmed until the leadership articulates a clear and bold strategy for the paper going forward, and then executes.

On the editorial side things feel a bit uninspired at the moment, even on the core coverage areas of politics and policy. I look at the Times’ deep bench of top-tier political reporters heading into 2024, the Maggie-Swan scoop factory, etcetera. I look at Punchbowl cornering the Hill. I look at Axel Springer breathing new life into Politico, where Jonathan Martin has fashioned himself as the new R.W. Apple. Of course, the Post courted both Swan and J-Mart, and couldn’t get either. And how could they? What story are they telling in the post-Baron era that makes them attractive to talent?

As for the fate of Fred Ryan, the long embattled publisher and C.E.O., that, too, is unknown. There’s been ample speculation in Post circles that Bezos is merely giving him the runway he needs to find his next gig. But of course, no one knows what Bezos wants besides Bezos—and, for the Post, therein lies the problem.