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

I’m back in Los Angeles after a quick trip to Washington for Puck’s second-annual First Amendment soirée at the French ambassador’s residence, which has fast become one of the truly great, truly enjoyable events on the D.C. social calendar. Thanks to all the senators, secretaries, executives, editors, anchors, agents, and other green room denizens who came out, and thanks to our incomparable events team for putting it together. (A few photos.)

I’ll be back that way next month for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner festivities and look forward to seeing more of you—at a private dinner, a garden brunch, an after-afterparty, or at Puck and WME’s very own Fourth Estate party, where my colleagues Matt Belloni and Peter Hamby will host a conversation with the one and only Aaron Sorkin.

Programming note: Next Wednesday, March 27, at 3 p.m. ET/12 p.m. PT, Puck is hosting the next installment of our popular Quarterly Call series—a subscriber-exclusive, earnings-style event in which our in-house talent, and special guests, will offer professional analysis of the latest convulsions in the media landscape. My partner Bill Cohan will present the view from Wall Street, Julia Alexander will analyze Hollywood’s latest content strategies, I’ll discuss the evolution of legacy mediacos, and BerlinRosen Holdings C.E.O. Jonathan Rosen will share his privileged view from atop an esteemed public relations organization. And of course, our fearless leader Jon Kelly will moderate. I hope you can join us. Click here to register.

In tonight’s email, notes on Ronna McDaniel’s journey to NBC News, and what the size of her deal portends, both for the network and her own diminished prospects. But first…

🌸 Bloom off the Poppy: CNN anchor Poppy Harlow is still pursuing her next, post-CNN This Morning career move, and set off a fury of speculation about a possible crosstown transfer after being spotted at 30 Rock a few days ago. Poppy met with some members of NBC News leadership as well as on-air talent, I’m told, though there was no formal job discussion and certainly no offer. Nevertheless, the visit underscored her abeyant state at CNN following C.E.O. Mark Thompson’s decision to dispense with the morning show. Her former co-anchor Phil Mattingly quickly secured a new role as chief domestic correspondent, positioning him for further growth at the network. Poppy’s next role there still remains TBD.

Of course, if Poppy does happen to land at NBC, she’d be following a well-trod path out of Hudson Yards. Since the Warner Bros. Discovery takeover, a slew of CNN talent and executives have decamped to its rival: Today’s Laura Jarrett (who co-authored a forthcoming children’s book with Harlow), MSNBC anchor Ana Cabrera, NBC correspondents Christine Romans, Chloe Melas, and Ryan Nobles, as well as MSNBC content strategy S.V.P. Rebecca Kutler and Meet The Press E.P. David Gelles.

🏈 Jimmy meets world: You’ve no doubt noticed that the usually restrained ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro is suddenly everywhere this week: on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, in a mostly glowing profile; in a new CNBC documentary about the fate of ESPN—even securing my colleague John Ourand’s coveted Player of the Week award in the latest edition of The Varsity. And sure, that has something to do with the new College Football Playoff deal he just announced, but Disney kremlinologists suspect there’s also something more politically strategic afoot here.

Pitaro’s media tour comes amid reports that Bob Iger has narrowed the Disney C.E.O. succession race down to his four direct reports: Pitaro, Dana Walden, Josh D’Amaro, and Alan Bergman. Now, Bergman isn’t actually a real candidate, but Walden and D’Amaro are certainly viable, even if they have their respective limitations. Pitaro is in a more liminal space. He’s an incredibly capable and well-liked divisional chief who has yet to prove that he could conceivably fill the C.E.O. mold. And while he’s probably realistic about his prospects, he also wants to be taken seriously, to be seen both by Iger and even by others—other mediacos? sports teams? sports leagues?—as a serious executive candidate.

“The point is to be on every list, to be in the conversation, to be in the mix. As opposed to being dismissed or dissed as ‘Jimmy in sports’ who isn’t a realistic candidate,” one source close to Disney told me. “He wants to be in the conversation, he wants to be seriously considered, he wants to be interviewed by the board and to take his best shot. And he wants to be elevated in the process—not diminished or marginalized. And he knows that being on the shortlist is valuable in itself for his future prospects, like the G.E. execs who lost to Immelt in the Welch succession who left to become C.E.O.s of Home Depot and 3M and Discovery, etcetera.”

In many ways, of course, McDaniel had been loyal to Trump—very publicly aligning herself with his MAGA nonsense over her own uncle’s more measured, Bain-by-way-of-Brigham Young philosophy. To wit: McDaniel bent the G.O.P.’s agenda and finances to Trump’s whims; she advanced doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election; and, most memorably, she even stopped using her maiden name at the former president’s behest. Alas, all this still fell short of the requisite obsequiousness, and she was thus forced to make way for Trump’s own daughter-in-law, Lara, a more outspoken election denier who is now trying to use the committee as a slush fund for Trump’s legal bills.

In any event, McDaniel arrived at the end of her six-year tenure atop the R.N.C. with somewhat limited options—too close to Trumpism to be taken seriously in the corporate sector, and yet not close enough to keep a seat of influence in the MAGA kingdom. And so, like many D.C. hustlers before her, McDaniel determined that the fastest and most lucrative path back to mainstream legitimacy was through the green room. With just days to go before being formally discharged, she started asking around for advice on representation, on what kind of salary she might reasonably expect as a network talking head, how the T&E worked in this business, etcetera. Theoretically, I suppose, you should start looking for your next job before you leave your last one—Jen Psaki took her meetings with NBC’s Jessica Kurdali at the Georgetown Rosewood long before she gave up the Brady Briefing Room podium. Alas, sometimes you’re not afforded the luxury.

In a matter of days, McDaniel had secured an agent at CAA, Mark McGrath, and, over the course of a couple weeks, took meetings with the leadership at several networks, including NBC News, ABC News, and CNN, according to sources with knowledge of those discussions. Notably, she did not talk to Fox News, which likely determined that her niche was already filled by Kellyanne Conway and Karl Rove. Then again, that hardly mattered. From the beginning, McDaniel felt that the ideal outcome would be a job with NBC.

Budoff Brown had rolled out the red carpet to secure a debate for the network, bringing both NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt and Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker to meetings. McDaniel and Budoff Brown developed a strong rapport and inside baseball camaraderie that she would not find when she met in early March with ABC News president Kim Godwin, who is about as familiar with the nuances of the Beltway game as she is with the Good Morning America conference room (deep cut, sorry). At the same time, the process of working with McDaniel on the primary debate led editorial leaders at the network to believe that she might one day be a valuable voice on their channels.

In any event, a few days ago, NBC offered McDaniel a contributor gig to the tune of around $300,000 a year, I’m told by two sources. In the world of post-public sector contributor gigs, that’s not bad—far more than the roughly $100,000 or so that many contributors get these days, albeit not as much as the nearly half a million that John Kasich made at CNN in 2019. (That was the high Zucker era, a time when wingnut Trumper Jeffrey Lord was driven in from Harrisburg for hits.) In the eleventh hour, while the NBC offer was being finalized, CNN sent its senior director of contributors, Becky Schatz, to meet with McDaniel, but the network balked when McGrath pulled out the NBC number—or, more likely, a number even higher than the NBC number. In the end, CNN never made an offer.

At the very least, she’s a lot closer to the action than her R.N.C. predecessors Michael Steele, also at NBC, and Reince Priebus, who recently signed on with ABC News as a contributor. As Budoff Brown noted, McDaniel will bring an “insider’s perspective on national politics and the future of the Republican Party,” as well as the key battleground state of Michigan, where she lives.

At the same time, the immediate criticism of this deal from the Mother Jones crowd could be anticipated from a mile away—and indeed was anticipated by Budoff Brown and other NBC News leaders. In addition to her full-fledged endorsement of Trump and her efforts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, McDaniel has also been a vocal critic of the “MSNBC primetime propagandists” (her term) alongside whom she will now presumably sit. And for all the Beltway insiders like Budoff Brown who understand the game and, moreover, would welcome a little diversity of opinion on the air, there are also a lot of people at NBC and MSNBC today who are collectively WTF-ing on Slack over their bosses’ decision to pay a healthy six figures to platform one of Trump’s primary enablers.

Then again, that may say something about the dueling priorities of the NBC News Group in the Trump era. On the one hand, it includes MSNBC, an avowedly, proudly partisan forum for Democratic talking points and liberal therapy, which drives engagement by railing against the Republican Party that McDaniel represents. On the other, the broader news division aspires to be the forum for the Morning Joe- and Meet The Press-approved political establishment. At the very least, however, Cesar Conde’s people also recognize that they aren’t doing God’s work—they’re making television. And, as McDaniel’s salary reflects, it’s a darkening time in the business, and one filled with looming anxieties. But you’ve got to hand it to the guys at 30 Rock: At least they don’t want to be boring.