July 9, 2025

🌞 Greetings from Sun Valley and welcome to In the Room. I’m back in the saddle after a very restorative week in the San Juan Islands, and writing to you from Konditorei, the alpine-themed café on the sidelines of the Allen & Co. conference, where I’ve been meeting with a few of the heavies from the highest echelons of tech and media. The top talker here, of course, is Linda Yaccarino’s resignation from X. Frankly, a lot of these folks are amazed she lasted this long. From the moment she came on board in 2023, Elon made it clear he had no interest in toning down his rhetoric to assuage advertisers. Of course, the platform has only grown more toxic since then, and Yaccarino was effectively layered in the xAI merger. Hard to imagine how she’ll ever work in the advertising or media industries ever again—maybe unless Devin Nunes fouls up at Truth Social.

On the programming front, I’m told that attendees were treated to Q&As this morning with Amazon’s Andy Jassy, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Barry Diller—who, notably, was interviewed by none other than the once-canceled Charlie Rose. Tomorrow’s session features Mitch Daniels, Bari Weiss, Wes Moore, and Glenn Youngkin, among others, while Friday features Sam Altman and Alex Karp onstage together with Evan Osnos. Meanwhile, there’s new deal heat to discuss around the Duck Pond, with Apple pursuing U.S. rights for F1—I’ve got a scoop on Tim and Eddy’s initial offer, below—and Disney and Hearst putting A&E Global on the block. And for today’s main event, the latest on David Ellison’s plans for Paramount and post-settlement CBS News anxieties. Plus, a little color from Konditorei: On Wednesday afternoon, two police officers came into the café and escorted New York Post reporter James Franey out of the building to “talk outside.” I’m told that earlier in the day, Franey had approached Scott Bessent, getting quite close to the Treasury secretary and prompting security to intervene. I’d hoped to ask Franey for a comment about all this, but last I saw him he was walking out deep into the parking lot with the police officers, and he hasn’t returned since. Franey follows in the footsteps of his Post colleague Charlie Gasparino, whose confrontations with conference security a decade ago were the catalyst for Herb Allen’s decision to block all journalists from entering the Lodge. (Thanks, Charlie.) 🍸 Finally, on the latest edition of The Grill Room, The Wall Street Journal’s Josh Dawsey joined me to discuss the Trump–Paramount settlement, as well as Josh’s new book on the 2024 election, the Democrats’ strategic malaise, and why the Journal is well-positioned for this political moment. Follow The Grill Room on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you prefer to listen. P.S.: If, for some reason, you’re still not signed up for Ian Krietzberg’s new private email for Puck covering the multitrillion-dollar artificial intelligence industry, click here to remedy that. The second issue goes out tomorrow. Mentioned in this issue: Eddy Cue, David Ellison, Derek Chang, Steven Swartz, Ari Emanuel, Shari Redstone, Jimmy Pitaro, Jeff Shell, Jon Steinberg, Bari Weiss, Hamish McKenzie, Jon Stewart, and many more… Let’s get started…

Eddy moves on F1: Apple’s Tim Cook and Eddy Cue have made a formal offer to Liberty Media to acquire the U.S. rights to Formula 1, setting the stage for a bidding war with Disney’s Bob Iger and Jimmy Pitaro. I’m reliably told that Apple’s offer came in between $150 million and $200 million per year—far above the reported $85 million to $90 million that ESPN is currently paying per annum, and far beyond what ESPN can rationally afford. As with their other bidding wars against tech giants, Iger and Pitaro will inevitably have to persuade Liberty’s John Malone and Derek Chang to take less from ESPN in order to maintain the reach and marketing that ESPN provides. (Of course, Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber learned the hard way how giving near-exclusivity to Apple can somewhat disappear a sport.)Apple’s formal entry into the F1 negotiations, first reported by the FT, comes on the heels of Apple’s blockbuster F1 film, which has already grossed more than $300 million at the box office. And I’m quite sure that Eddy, an avowed auto enthusiast who also sits on the board of Ferrari, is absolutely thrilled about the prospect of this deal.
A&E Global hits the block: Disney and Hearst are putting A&E Global Media on the auction block, and have retained Wells Fargo to handle the sale process. The 50-50 joint venture includes A&E Network, History, and Lifetime. Obviously, Iger and Hearst chief Steven Swartz see the writing on the wall, after NBCUniversal’s Versant spin and WBD’s decision to split its cable channels from its studios and streaming business. (You’ll recall it was just two years ago, here in Sun Valley, that Iger floated selling ESPN and ABC, as well.)
CNN goes FAST: CNN has relaunched its free, ad-supported streaming channel, CNN Headlines. As with almost all FAST channels—NBC News, CBS News, and others have their own versions—this is a fairly low-stakes move to expand ad inventory. Simple as that.
Substack to the future: Last week, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie published a cryptic post suggesting he may not be long at the helm of his D.I.Y. digital publishing platform: “If I ever become less involved in Substack, I am going to make and contribute to media products (networks, channels, publications, books) built on Substack,” he wrote. “I guess this is a way of saying, ‘If I ever get less involved in Substack, I’m going to get more involved in Substack.’”Hamish’s glib, weird post is notable in light of Substack’s new fundraising, which, as I recently noted, appears to be a marketing plea to sustain a troubled business via a down round. But investment bankers and media analysts I talk to have openly wondered whether new investors may only hop on board with Andreessen Horowitz et al. if the company commits to upgrading its leadership to take advantage of its potential. This would presumably bump fellow co-founder and C.E.O. Chris Best to a board role, and force Hamish to, how do you say, become “less involved.”Obviously, Best and McKenzie would not want to bring these sorts of partners into the tent, and it will be interesting to see how this new round shakes out. (Again, you really must wonder why these guys publicized their fundraise in the digital pages of Newcomer, a Substack newsletter, which hardly projects confidence in the round.) Indeed, future capital will likely be intrigued by the company’s possibilities beyond the insular world of media and journalism and the creator economy. (Let’s hope the age of superintelligence can find a more apt name for self-employed people having WebEx conversations in their living rooms.) In not-unrelated news, this week, Hamish decided to start contributing his own media industry analysis to Breaker, the irreverent, and at times stalkerish, media newsletter run by former Daily Beast and Hollywood Reporter journalist Lachlan Cartwright. That’s not necessarily a great signal to potential Substack investors deciding where to place their bets. And I suppose that’s all the more true given that Breaker is hosted by Substack competitor Beehiiv.
Steinberg to Lazard: Digital media entrepreneur Jon Steinberg has landed at Lazard, where he will serve as managing director for the investment bank’s media, entertainment, and sports group. Steinberg, of course, is the one-time BuzzFeed president and then Daily Mail North America C.E.O. who founded Cheddar, the would-be CNBC competitor that he sold, with perfect timing, to Altice for $200 million. We wish him the best.
And finally…: Happy HBO Max day! Yes, today is the day that Warner Bros. Discovery is finally pivoting Max back to HBO Max, bringing an end to one of the most dismal rebranding efforts in recent memory. But, hey, at least all those McKinsey guys got another bag.

And now, the main event…

All Ellison’s Men

With its capitulation to Trump complete, Paramount’s merger with Skydance can finally proceed, leaving CBS News unmoored, if a little relieved, and questioning if its new owners secretly sweetened the settlement deal. Naturally, there are already rumblings about what David Ellison wants and expects from his news division.

Dylan Byers

Suffering, as Proust once observed, can only be healed by experiencing it in full. In that way, at least, Paramount’s recent decision to pay $16 million to settle Trump’s meritless lawsuit against 60 Minutes was somewhat liberating for the company’s leadership, and even for many of the journalists at CBS News who spent months dreading and protesting this very outcome. Yes, everyone recognized the tragedy of this absurd capitulation, but many also described feeling relieved—as one CBS News insider put it, “this wound is finally being sutured, even if pathetically and with greed as the bonding agent.”

And after Disney’s own payout last year, $16 million is starting to feel like the price of doing business with this administration. Perhaps, in time, history will eventually equate Paramount’s M&A ransom money over a harmless 60 Minutes editing mishap with the decision Disney made to pre-empt a costly, yearslong legal battle, shield George Stephanopoulos’s DMs and close the Fubo deal. To paraphrase Proust again, habitualization normalizes what once felt traumatic. Anyway, now that Shari Redstone has her settlement, Trump’s F.C.C. chair, Brendan Carr, is likely to move fast to greenlight the Skydance deal in the coming weeks, well before the new October 6 deadline extension. (Trump has said the lawsuit had no bearing on the deal’s approval, which you’re welcome to believe.) With that, Paramount employees who once grumbled about Shari have now turned their attention to incoming leadership: David Ellison, the 42-year-old Skydance C.E.O. who is taking over the company, and former NBCUniversal C.E.O. Jeff Shell, the once-semi-canceled executive who seems thrilled with his new lease on life. Shell is set to become the combined company’s president, and serve in a sort of Rasputin meets Cardinal Richelieu role. “Now, we just wait,” another CBS News insider said. “Nothing significant will be done without input from Shell & Co.” The news division seems especially anxious. Ellison’s pursuit of Paramount always appeared to have been motivated by his interest in the film and studios business—“He loves big franchises,” a Paramount source said—as well as the appeal of CBS’s NFL package and other sports rights. His attitude toward the news division is more ambiguous. Meanwhile, Shari’s own adversarial experience with CBS News and 60 Minutes has given him ample evidence of the ways these assets can complicate the C-suite’s larger strategic ambitions. “David actually cares a lot about news,” one source close to the principals assured me. The rank and file have yet to be convinced. Indeed, since the merger, some CBS News sources have harbored suspicions that Skydance may have sweetened the deal for Trump during the settlement negotiations. In the wake of last week’s news, Trump claimed that the settlement was actually worth more than twice the $16 million, once you factored in additional agreements for advertisements and public service announcements for conservative causes. “We did a deal for about $16 million plus $16 million, or maybe more than that, in advertising,” he said. “So it’s like $32 million to maybe $35 million. I think that’s what they did.” Paramount has stated on record that its settlement “does not include P.S.A.s or anything related to P.S.A.s,” but Skydance has declined to comment, spurring suspicions that the new owners have indeed cut a side deal. That, coupled with Larry Ellison’s Trump ties and David’s own courtship of the president during the deal negotiations—he was memorably spotted ringside at a UFC event in April with Trump and Ari Emanuel, who helped broker the settlement—have fostered concerns about an overhaul of the news network’s editorial leanings. So too has a recent report by Status’s Oliver Darcy about a dinner meeting in which Ellison floated a CBS News job offer to Bari Weiss. As I’ve noted before, given the success of her Free Press and general public intellectual celebrity, it’s hard to imagine that Weiss would have the time or interest in CBS. That said, the newsroom’s heightened pique over any sort of reputational damage caused by the heterodox former Times opinion writer explains why owners so often sour on the news business and the dogmas of its constituents. Let’s not forget that Lara Logan wasn’t exactly doing god’s work on 60 Minutes… In any event, the first test of Ellison’s tolerance for dissent is likely to come not from the news division, but from late night. At Comedy Central, Jon Stewart already seems to be tempting termination by openly criticizing the “shameful” settlement on air. Stewart on Monday also interviewed former 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft, who called the settlement a “shakedown.” Stewart’s deal with the network runs through the end of the year. Presumably, any rift between Ellison and Stewart would put pressure on late-night host and frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert, as well. But if Shell is staying true to his role as a master operator and consigliere, he’d be wise to advise Ellison to let bygones pass and reward Stewart with a renewal, which might actually be a small gesture—amid the mass layoffs and restructuring concomitant with a deal of this magnitude—that puts this nightmare behind him and his company.

The industry's go-to source for unflinching reporting on the trillion-dollar business of artificial intelligence - perhaps the single most important technology of our time. Ian Krietzberg, the powerhouse journalist behind The Deep View, delivers twice-weekly insights into the latest dealmaking and breakthroughs in A.I., and how the intersecting worlds of finance, entertainment, media, and politics are being transformed in its wake.

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