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

Greetings from Los Angeles, where I’ve just returned from a marathon session of source meetings in Washington, and a little too much time in CityCenter (a welcome upgrade for that part of town, sure, but a little too much like a Saudi mall invaded downtown D.C…). My twice-delayed flight from DCA was perfectly timed for me to catch almost all of Jannik Sinner’s memorable dismantling of Novak Djokovic on ESPN, and for that I’m grateful. In any event, I’ll be back in the District no later than March, so if you’d like to grab lunch or a drink, don’t hesitate to reach out.

In tonight’s email, we catch up with Jeff Zucker and his ongoing quest for The Telegraph and The Spectator amid ample protest from Tory critics and rival bidders. With the timetable for approval in flux, his most paranoid detractors are starting to fear that he may be trying to delay the regulatory review until a more favorable government comes into power. Either way, between that and RedBird’s Paramount pursuit, 2024 promises to be a busy year for the former CNN chief.

But first…

🏛️ Sir Will’s coronation, night two: On Thursday night, less than 24 hours after being fêted by D.C.’s most notable media executives, TV personalities and journalists, newly minted Washington Post C.E.O. Will Lewis returned to Patty Stonesifer’s home for yet another coronation party—this time with government leaders and business luminaries, including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and JPMorgan Chase C.E.O. Jamie Dimon. I’d attended night one of Lewis Fair, and while all was off-record, I will convey one observation: Beyond the all-important challenge of reinvigorating the Post and reversing its financial fortunes, it will be interesting to see how Lewis, a roguish and worldly Brit, fits in with the relatively stuffy and clubby Washington establishment crowd. In any event, this guy is decidedly not Fred Ryan (welcome news for Posties, no doubt) and won’t be found at The GeorgeTown Club.

🤔 Speaking of WaPo…: Post columnist Perry Bacon Jr. published a column this week that was somewhat critical of billionaire ownership of newspapers, including Jeff Bezos’s ownership of the Post. Alas, as CNN’s Oliver Darcy first noted, the piece mysteriously vanished from the site on Wednesday. A Post spokesperson tells me the piece was “inadvertently published when it was still in the writing and editing process,” and declined to comment further. In any event, as of Friday night, it’s still not there. Not a great look…

💨 Waiting on The Messenger: Jimmy Finkelstein, the founder of The Messenger, is expected to make an announcement about the distressed startup’s future no later than next week, per sources familiar. Finkelstein has been looking to raise $20 million in emergency financing after ending last year with a net loss of $43 million and just $667,000 in cash on hand. As recently as last week, I’m told, Finkelstein had been telling associates he’d raised $10 million and was looking for another $10 million. He also allegedly told these folks he was prepared to step down if necessary. Of course, at this point that’s probably not up to him.

🎥 VandeHei goes Hollywood: Jim VandeHei’s Axios has launched a new documentary films and series unit called Axios Entertainment, which has projects in development with Tom Brady’s Shadow Lion, Chrissy Teigen’s Huntley Productions, Guy Ritchie, Mark Wahlberg’s Unrealistic Ideas, Ample Entertainment and Maven, per THR. This is an unexpected expansion of the Axios business into an area that doesn’t obviously map to its core strengths, despite their three-year television foray with Axios on HBO, but clearly reflects the reality that there is a lot of ancillary revenue in the unscripted world. In a world where all the major platforms are making less and ordering more, it’s good to be a producer.

Neil’s cri de coeur was only the latest demonstration in a longstanding revolt among many conservative MPs, journalists and readers who fear a foreign takeover of their beloved media titles—or who are at least weaponizing the provenance of the financing to tut-tut and pout. Last year, Zucker’s RedBird IMI, a joint investment vehicle backed by Abu Dhabi and Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird, had cleverly engineered a $1.4 billion debt-for-equity swap for the titles—repaying Barclay family debts to Lloyds Bank, with a massive assist from Mansour’s IMI, and circumventing an auction contest with U.K. media titans like Lord Rothermere and Sir Paul Marshall in the process. It was a clever bit of financial maneuvering and structure, befitting Cardinale and his operation of former Goldmanites. But even Zucker and his American partners may have underestimated the depth of the reaction in Britain.

In recent months, Zucker has made several attempts to assuage those critics with interviews in the U.K. press, even pledging that he himself would resign if Abu Dhabi ever tried to interfere with his management of the assets. Of course, as Neil’s interview demonstrated, such gestures have hardly quelled the animosity toward the Emiratis, or even toward Zucker himself. “The idea that these two vital vehicles of mainstream center-right thought, the Telegraph and Spectator, should be owned by Arab money and controlled out of New York by a left-wing Democrat beggars belief,” Neil declared on the BBC. Zucker, he said, “knows nothing about Britain, he knows nothing about print, he knows nothing about newspapers, and he knows nothing about magazines.” (Not to split hairs, but Zucker did edit the North Miami Senior High Pioneer, and served one year as president of The Harvard Crimson.)

Of course, Zucker’s true campaign is being waged in the regulatory bureaucracy, not the arena of public sentiment. Earlier this month, RedBird IMI put forward several proposals to Ofcom, the U.K. communications regulator, to guarantee the Telegraph and Spectator’s independence from Abu Dhabi. This included the creation of an editorial governance board overseen by independent British media executives. But this sort of governance, opponents argued, would hardly preclude Abu Dhabi from wielding its influence through capital investments, budget approvals, or even replacing Zucker with a more pliable leader later down the line. “These things are Potemkin villages,” Neil said of the proposed editorial board. In any event, it was an olive branch.

Indeed, Ofcom had planned to submit its initial recommendations on the RedBird IMI deal to Frazer on Friday, after which she would take no more than two weeks to decide whether to approve it, deny it or, more likely, move the process to Phase 2, which would necessitate at least four more months of regulatory review. But after RedBird IMI’s proposed creation of a U.K. holding company, Frazer instead said Friday that Ofcom would need to launch a new review, pushing Ofcom’s deadline to March 11 and delaying her decision until later that month. Presumably, Zucker’s hope is that, over the next two months, Ofcom will determine that RedBird IMI’s proposals adequately address the concerns about editorial independence, and Frazer will greenlight the deal without further delaying the review into Phase 2.

Meanwhile, some of Zucker’s critics have devised a slightly batshit, conspiratorial, Oliver Stone-style interpretation of Zucker’s clock management. Their theory goes like this (bear with me): This year, likely in the fall, Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will call an election that, as of now, looks likely to favor the Labour Party. In addition to presumably being less concerned with the fate of Tory papers, Labour leader Keir Starmer has ties to former prime minister Tony Blair, who in turn has a close relationship with Abu Dhabi via his think tank, which receives money from the Emiratis. If Frazer decides in late March to move the RedBird IMI review to Phase 2, which is quite possible, it will delay an ultimate decision on the acquisition until at least the late summer and possibly the Purdah pre-election period, during which Frazer may be prevented from making a decision at all. In the event of a Labour victory, Starmer would then appoint a media secretary who may be more likely to approve RedBird IMI’s takeover. (How’s that for a conspiracy?)

What’s more likely is that Zucker, fairly or not, attracts player haters who frequently undermine his success, motivations, and interests. And yet such pyretic thoughts also reinforce just how intense the debates of the Telegraph and Spectator’s future has become. (Yes, it’s all very British.) But in the spirit of conjecture, it will be fascinating to see the timeline of this deal, especially as David Ellison’s interest in acquiring some version of Shari Redstone’s heirloom plays out. RedBird, of course, is involved, and might be involved in a subsequent estate sale of the Redstone assets. And if that’s the case, Cardinale could have the perfect adviser in house. Zucker may have been out of the game for a short bit, but it looks like he’s going to have a busy year.