Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon potpourri
featuring Puck’s best new reporting.

First up today, Matt Belloni offers Part 2 of his 25 probably surefire predictions for the entertainment industry in the year ahead: Which of the Big Three talent agencies will Biden sign with once he leaves office? Will Paramount+ merge with another streaming platform? And is ESPN Flagship eyeing a partnership with… Fox
Sports? Plus some details on another big shake-up coming for NBCU…

Below the fold: John Ourand chronicles Diamond Sports’ byzantine emergence from bankruptcy. Tara Palmeri evaluates Trump’s last-ditch efforts to rescue TikTok. And in an Inner Circle-exclusive dispatch, Lauren Sherman scoops Hermès’s somewhat startling plan to expand into
couture. 

Meanwhile, on the pods: Jon Kelly reunites with Dylan Byers on The Grill Room to ruminate on Mark Thompson’s CNN digital transformation strategy and Will Lewis’s fantasy subscriber number for WaPo. On Impolitic, John Heilemann is joined by former Atlantic national
correspondent Jim Fallows to discuss Jimmy Carter’s life and legacy. On The Town, Matt and WSJ’s Robbie Whelan scrutinize Disney’s most popular non-theme-park experience: the Disney cruise. On Fashion People, Lauren asks celebrated designer Christopher Kane about his ascendance on the international fashion circuit. And on The Powers That Be, Sarah Shapiro joins Peter
Hamby for a deep dive into the billion-dollar business of influencers.

Matt returns with the second half of his 25 predictions that are all but guaranteed to
maybe, probably shape the entertainment industry after a tumultuous, knock-down, drag-out year for the Town. How will NBCUniversal orient itself for the post-cable future? Is Mark Thompson going to hoover up smaller media entities to keep CNN off life support? Will Hollywood studios finally start embracing the inevitable ascent of A.I.? And which cancelled directors, actors, and C.E.O.s are plotting a comeback? Matt has the answers…   

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For nearly two years, Main Street Sports Group (f.k.a. Diamond Sports Group) has struggled to
emerge from bankruptcy—a convoluted and excessively complicated process that involved cutting deals with distributors, working out agreements with leagues and teams, and appeasing debt holders. Now that the company is solvent, here comes the hard part: actually running the business. To that end, C.E.O. David Preschlack has made his splashiest hire, convincing his old friend Norby Williamson, who spent nearly four decades with ESPN, to come aboard and run production and programming for the reborn
group of regional sports networks. But is it all too little, too late?

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While Washington braces for Inauguration Day, Donald Trump has become fixated on the day
before: January 19, the deadline for TikTok to find a U.S. buyer or face a countrywide ban. Trump, who once led the charge to ban the app, has recently become enamored with the idea of saving it—preserving a platform that has developed a sizable MAGA-friendly audience while also helping out his friends and allies who have an economic interest in keeping TikTok alive. While the consensus is that Trump wants to save the app, there seems to be less certainty regarding how he might
do it. Is there really a capable buyer out there? Could Trump rescue the app via executive order? Or will he go nuclear and order his attorney general to ignore the ban entirely? 

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In an Inner Circle exclusive, Lauren scoops the news that Hermès, the gold-standard luxury
fashion and leather goods house, is plotting an expansion into couture—a category historically devoid of new entrants. After all, the move requires a substantial initial investment, likely tens of millions of dollars, and the pieces, themselves, must meet the rigorous requirements established by France’s Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. Is this merely a flier—a true why not situation—for the quarter-trillion market cap company? One theory Lauren considers is whether the potential
couture collection is actually an employee retention tool for the highly poachable Nadège Vanhee…

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Jon Kelly joins Dylan to ruminate on a handful of developments across the media landscape: Will
Lewis’s fantasy subscriber number for The Washington Post; Emma Tucker’s stalwart leadership at The Wall Street Journal; the latest on Mark Thompson’s CNN digital transformation strategy; and the impending A.I. newsroom revolution.

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John is joined by Jim Fallows—former Atlantic national correspondent, National Book
Award winner, and author of Breaking the News on Substack—to discuss Jimmy Carter’s life and legacy. Fallows, who served as Carter’s chief White House speechwriter, discusses the qualities that made Carter an initially mesmerizing but deeply flawed and historically misunderstood figure; his long-underrated policy accomplishments; the personal attributes that made him formidable (focus, toughness), those that were his downfall (vanity, naïveté), and those people saw in him that weren’t there at
all (niceness). 

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Matt is joined by The Wall Street Journal’s Robbie Whelan to discuss Disney’s most
popular non-theme-park experience, the cruise line. Matt walks us through his own personal experience on a Disney cruise over the holiday break, and they get into how and why this business is so profitable and important for Disney, and if any other content company has the I.P. to leverage something at this scale. 

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Lauren is joined by Christopher Kane, one of the most celebrated designers of his generation, to
discuss everything from his relationship with late Central Saint Martins instructor Louise Wilson, to his rise on the international fashion scene, to the dissolution of his brand. They also get into his recent collaboration with the London-based Self-Portrait, and what that experience may portend about his next act.

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Sarah Shapiro joins Peter for a deep dive into the wild world of affiliate marketing and the
billion-dollar business of influencers. Sarah discusses the massive impact of creators in the retail space and chronicles an exploding battle between the industry’s perennial leader, LTK, and the bold upstart ShopMy—a rivalry defined by two cultures and starkly different visions for the business.

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