And you all might be thinking: Who are you kidding?

For all the world, I imagined this year’s Power Women Summit to happen in the afterglow of a different outcome in the election.  

If you’re like me, maybe you wake up every day with a strong desire to stay in bed. To NOT reach for your phone. And think: Are we in December? Is the election over?

So – OK. And however old or young you are, the setbacks come as a surprise. It can’t be normal that women in this country don’t have reproductive freedom, I can’t accept that. It can’t be normal that women in Afghanistan can no longer speak aloud in public. It can’t be normal that women face arrest and torture in Iran for showing their hair. And yes, Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to a convicted felon, leaving us to wonder if a woman can ever rise to our highest office.

I’ve been re-setting my expectations for a long time, expecting that the world would come around to a reasonable middle ground in which we just treat one another as equals.

So I’ll tell you what I tell myself, and what I do not.

I’m not going to tell you to be resilient. Though we have to be. I’m not going to tell you to be fearless. Because our fear is not misplaced. The present moment is not what we expected. The future is uncertain. But today is a day of support, of alliance, of optimism. It’s a day to put a first foot in front of another foot. Just today — we are going to continue walking on our path. With confidence. And with pride. 

And there are so many leaders at the Summit to lift us up. Twenty-three-year-old Jordan Chiles, an Olympic champion who led the US gymnastics team in Paris to a gold medal, is opening the event and talking about discipline. Disappointment. And triumph. I’m excited to hear from Stacey Abrams, the political trailblazer who helped flip Georgia to the Democratic Party in 2020 and will speak with Laura Dern about climate change. We will hear from some of our top directors and showrunners, producers, writers, stylists. And two sisters, Dakota and Elle Fanning, will be our spotlight conversation. 

Today is a feast for the spirit.  

We cannot win the fight for equality without setbacks. Advocating for change means being reminded that not everyone is ready for it. It’s OK. We’re on our feet. We’re on the path. It was only 104 years ago that women won the right to even vote. That battle took 70 years.  

So we keep going. We’re not angry. We’re not defeated. We’re not discouraged. We have our eyes open. We’re prepared. And we’re just not going away. The Summit is here to remind us of that.

I’d like to thank sponsors including: South Coast Plaza, Loeb & Loeb LLP, Lionsgate, Whalar, Paramount Global, CLEAR, Universal, Hallmark Media, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Bros. Discovery, FX, Yahoo!, Searchlight Pictures and NBCUniversal, and the Shari Redstone Foundation. 

Thanks to our staff and our community and university partners. 

Onward to the Summit! 

The post Power Women Summit: Advocating for Women When It Feels Hard appeared first on TheWrap.

But you’d be wrong. 

Instead of reexamining its news practices after months of relentless pro-Harris coverage that seems to have wildly underestimated voters’ economic anger, a cultural backlash and Latino surge for Trump, insiders at MSNBC are feeling confident. 

WaxWord spoke to a half-dozen individuals at MSNBC and NBCUniversal and the conclusion was consistent: MSNBC is fine, despite criticism from media observers like Bill Maher or Jay Rosen or myself, and a steep drop in ratings. There is nothing wrong with the brand. The audience is extremely loyal and likes the dog food that is being served. 

The fact that MSNBC’s ratings have dropped like a stone after the election — down 48% in primetime and 38% overall — while Fox News’ ratings have seen a 41% boost in total day viewership, does not seem to be making an impression internally.  

One senior MSNBC insider explained that ratings always fall after the excitement leading up to election, and that viewers would be back. “It was anticipated that (ratings) would drop after the election because of the cyclical nature of the event,” said this executive. “That was not a surprise. And then they come back.”

Said a senior insider at NBCUniversal: “I don’t know that this (drop) is impacted by politics in any direction. It’s a very strong brand. And it’s been growing for some time.” The executive, however, could not really explain why Fox News’ ratings would be up, given a parallel circumstance. 

CNN’s ratings have also cratered, although a little less steeply, and there is some evidence that news consumers disappointed by the election result are tuning out across the board. 

“I pretty much stopped on a dime” after the election, said MSNBC viewer Brandon Wilson, a professor in California. As the Washington Post article for which he was interviewed noted: “It was the Monday-morning quarterbacking he couldn’t stand; he felt it was too early to nitpick about how Harris had run her campaign, and he found ‘the finger-pointing and bashing of the Democratic Party’ to be counterproductive.”

Wilson is not alone. I personally felt like I couldn’t listen to the same so-called “experts” weigh in when they were so wrong in their conclusions, for a second time, as I wrote previously. I have heard from dozens of people who have said they’ve tuned out, each for their own reasons. 

***

But there’s a good reason why the good folks at MSNBC are not worried. In a coincidental move driven by the decline of cable television and divorced from politics and media, Comcast announced last week that it would spin out most of its cable channels, including MSNBC and CNBC, into a standalone, public company. 

And it turns out that the new company, SpinCo, not only will drive about $7 billion in revenue based on current performance of those channels, but – according to a knowledgeable individual – throw off up to $2.5 billion in EBITDA. 

What’s more, $1 billion of that EBITDA comes from the two news channels, about evenly split, this individual said. 

The reason for that cash flow comes from the lucrative business of cable subscribers and carriage agreements. NBCUniversal — and now SpinCo — receives a monthly fee from the likes of Charter, Comcast and other cable providers, for each subscriber. Advertising, which is more susceptible to ratings, is only about 30% of MSNBC’s revenue. The lion’s share comes from massive subscriber fees that are tied to long term contracts. 

A spokesperson for Comcast declined to confirm or deny these figures, but agreed that SpinCo would have low debt, be well capitalized and have a strong balance sheet. This information has quickly trickled through the talent tier of MSNBC, as new CEO Mark Lazarus met with each of them last week.

Lazarus will thus have a great deal of cash to either invest in the cable channels, acquire new companies or create new products. 

So while I was wondering, stupidly, how MSNBC would move forward as a brand given the yawning gap in credibility post-election, and now its decoupling from the NBC newsgathering operation, a more basic reality yanked me back to clarity. MSNBC now has lots of cash, and does not have to send that cash back to any parent company. 

Even with a resource sharing agreement with NBC, MSNBC essentially becomes a group of talking opinionators. People in agreement talking to themselves. I don’t know how that’s a news operation. But as a business, apparently it works.

From a business perspective, there is still risk tied to the inexorably declining number of cable subscribers This risk is that this decline will ultimately atomize the once-mighty cable bundle. And as one expert put it to me, subscriber fees are guaranteed only as long as the bundle stays together. 

The subscriber number that is declining five to 10 percent a year could come undone much more quickly if, for example, ESPN moves to its own streaming service. Which looms as more likely than not. 

Many have suggested that because SpinCo has no real digital presence, the likely investment would be in a streaming product. Fox News has Fox Nation, a streaming news channel that has about 2 million subscribers. And there is no risk of being competitive with Comcast’s streaming service, Peacock, which has no programming tie to the spun-off channels. Lazarus will no doubt pay close attention to that opportunity, along with possible roll-ups of cable content creators like AMC Networks or A&E. 

But there’s zero shade for the news network over at corporate. “We do think there is an opportunity for growth,” said a Comcast executive. “MSNBC, CNBC and the sports programming on USA – these are must-haves.”  

The post MSNBC Stays in Its Bubble and Celebrates SpinCo as Viewers Flee appeared first on TheWrap.

I can’t do it. 

I’m not saying I’ll never watch or listen again. But – am I alone here? – my entire body recoils from listening to more claptrap from the same claptrapping apparatus. 

The media got it wrong. Fatally wrong. And the media can’t just pivot into the next cycle of looking around the room and asking, “What just happened?” as if it had nothing to do with it.  The room is too small. The audience insular. The results were decisively not what was expected. And in some way, the media has forfeited its mandate as a result. I speak as a member of the media and also someone who critiques the media and who believes that the First Amendment – the free exchange of information and opinion – is the indispensable pillar of democracy. 

But we have to step back and look at the wreckage. Our system of information failed for a second time on two major fronts: The media failed to gauge the actual mood of the American electorate, wishcasting the competent, non-felonious Kamala Harris into office. And it failed to speak persuasively to voters who rejected the collective wisdom of legacy media, after being told who Trump is, what bad acts he has already committed and what further bad acts he has promised if reelected. 

None of it landed, it appears. Apparently we are talking to ourselves. 

People, the system needs a total rethink. 

Some of my colleagues have sadly chosen to blame the voters. “We have romanticized the working class and minorities,” wrote a journalist friend who has been in the trenches for three decades, like me. “These are not these innocent lambs who were deceived. Many are racist and misogynist.”

Or blame the Democrats. New York Times columnists Lydia Polgreen invested a couple of thousand words in conversation with Tressie McMillan Cottom to get to the bottom of what happened. The conversation doubled down on the progressive left’s agenda, despite voters’ thunderous rejection.  

“It is still astonishing to me that the Harris campaign invested so much in touting support of Republicans who had clearly failed to persuade their own allies to join their side. Who did they expect would suddenly be persuaded by them?” Polgreen said under a headline about the Democrats: “They Were Wrong.”

As a response, that is not going to work. Polgreen should be asking: Why weren’t those on the Republican side persuaded? Who were they listening to?

“The answer is the right-wing media,” wrote The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky. “Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.”

True. So what do the rest of us do? I’m not yet seeing the self-examination that is warranted. We need a collective brainstorm and a serious response as a profession. We have lost the room. Never in my life did I think that the scarcity of information that existed before the rise of mass media might be less risky for our democracy than an oversupply of information. Nor was I imaginative enough to think that a focused stream of misinformation would present a serious challenge to real reporting and news. 

If people have moved away from network news and broadsheet newspapers to opinionated podcasts and TikTok lies, then that’s one signal of how things need to change. If more people are watching “television” on YouTube than on any given broadcast or cable network, then OK – the table stakes have changed.

I have been reluctant to give up on my bedrock belief that reporters should aim to report facts rather than tell readers how to think. More and more it seems that we are telling people what and how to think. In the last two weeks before the election, MSNBC’s primetime was running Harris and Obama’s rallies nearly end to end. To no end.     

But I do not have the answer for how media and information needs to be reapproached. Here at TheWrap we have pivoted into serving news over our social media accounts in addition to the mothership website, because we know that’s where new readers are. 

Right now there are far more questions than answers. But blaming the voters is lazy and doesn’t address the problem. Our job is to hold power to account. Time to hold ourselves to account. 

The post The Media Needs a Reinvention Not Just a Wake-Up Call After Trump’s Surprise Win appeared first on TheWrap.

It was. Not. Close. Donald Trump won 51 percent of the vote while indicted, guilty of felonies, promising to jail enemies, deport millions and, finally, fellating a microphone. 

Voters did not care. They chose anger over joy. They chose chaos over competence. They chose the wildest wild card over the urgent warnings from the political, economic, cultural and media establishment not to put Trump back in power. 

Understand: This is not a divide between Right and Left. It is a divide between those with power and those who feel insistently disempowered. 

Pay attention while you sit in mourning and shock. Here is an incomplete list of those who warned against voting for Trump, and urged a vote for Kamala Harris. It is, broadly speaking, the power base of the country. 

• John Kelly, former Trump chief of staff
• Liz Cheney, former Republican congresswoman
• Mark Milley, Trump’s former chairman of joint chiefs
• Mark Esper, former Trump Defense Secretary
• Mike Pence, former Trump Vice President
• Cassidy Hutchinson, former Trump aide 
• The New York Times; The Economist; The New Yorker; The Atlantic
• 10 former generals who called Trump “a danger to our national security and democracy.”
• 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists who warned “Trump’s economic plans would reignite inflation” –
• Matt Drudge
• Taylor Swift
• Bad Bunny
• Lady Gaga
• LeBron James
• The cast of “The West Wing”
• Jennifer Lopez
• Beyonce
• Eminem
• Cardi B

All of them, at the end of the day, were rejected. The man won the popular vote. It means that to most people in this country, he’s popular. 

 “This was a conquering of the nation not by force but with a permission slip,” wrote the New York Times’ Lisa Lerer in an incisive analysis. “Now, America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style of governance never before seen in its 248-year history.”

She reminded readers of Trump’s promises: “He would use military force against his political opponents. He would fire thousands of career public servants. He would deport millions of immigrants in military-style roundups. He would crush the independence of the Department of Justice, use government to push public health conspiracies and abandon America’s allies abroad. He would turn the government into a tool of his own grievances, a way to punish his critics and richly reward his supporters.”

And indeed, Donald Trump appeared in Palm Beach last night and said this:  

“I will govern by a simple motto: promises made, promises kept.”

Kamala Harris: 66,455,012 votes (47.5%)

Donald Trump: 71,391,150 votes (51%)

Today, my email inbox and phone have exploded with people, actually all women, asking the same thing: How is this possible?

It is an understandable reaction. The decisive choice of Trump leaves in its wake a feeling of abandonment. A bewilderment that this country could choose someone so resoundingly negative, angry and full of vitriol. Don’t we want someone hopeful? Positive? Able to see the good in our country? 

Don’t the men of this country care about the women of this country? 

“I’m scared,” my 24-year-old niece texted me from Ohio. 

“Racism and misogyny are actually ok with a lot of Americans,” was the grim conclusion of a journalist friend. 

I keep seeing references to “low information” voters – people who voted without knowing very much about the issues or the candidates –  and that seems true. Otherwise we have to believe that those voting for Trump are actively choosing an authoritarian, giving up our hard-won agency to someone who has promised to be a dictator on “Day One.” 

The mind reels. What is it that voters really want? An authoritarian regime to replace democracy? That is what Trump has promised. He keeps saying he wants to save America: but from what? 

Another big factor we must assess this day after is the absolute mess our Fourth Estate has become. The polls, as I wrote a few days ago, were not to be believed. That was even more true as the pollsters clocked a Kamala Harris surge in the days before Nov. 5 that turned out to be totally wrong. Trump swept the swing states by two to three points, all while insulting Latinos and doubling down on his insults of everyone else. 

For all the effort poured into Pennsylvania, that must be seen as an abysmal failure. The anger we identified after eight successful years of Obama in the White House is back, or it never went away, but once again was unseen in the vast reporting on this election. 

After so many months of boosterism, I don’t even know how you can show up on MSNBC today. 

Our information system is broken. Full stop. I am looking at you, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel.  

And I look ahead, with trepidation, to a system increasingly run by the hyper-rich, by tech bros, instead of by the people, for the people.

The post Trump Back in Power: Broken Polling, Tech Bros and a Terrifying Truth appeared first on TheWrap.

This year the colors were particularly spectacular as I drove through the Chagrin Valley with my older brother near the home where we grew up, after visiting my father in the hospital. It was a moment of beauty and nostalgia as we prepared for what turned out to be the end. 

My father, 90, was a businessman and a lifelong Republican in a state that has been solidly Republican for the last two presidential election cycles. He shared a number of traits with Republican nominee Donald Trump – brash, confident, patriarchal. But one of the last political arguments at home during the summer surprisingly pitted my father against my older brother. My Dad had had it with Trump, calling him a serial liar, a lunatic (he used some choice words, more pungent in the original Yiddish), a narcissist and a danger to democracy. 

When my brother expressed skepticism of Kamala Harris’s resume, my father retorted: “What does it matter if we don’t have a democracy?” 

It was the first time I’d ever heard him express concern about the survival of democracy. The first time I’d heard him raise the issue of character as a decisive factor in voting. As a child I remember him dismissing criticism of Richard Nixon, whose foreign policy savvy he admired. Watergate was not a thing to him. I wasn’t yet 10 and far from becoming a journalist, but it still bothered me. 

But Dad’s anti-Trump views are not widely shared in my family, it turns out. The family sat together for the Jewish mourning ritual of shiva and since it was days before the election – no, we didn’t manage to avoid politics. (I did try.) 

An intense discussion with two of my cousins – one only mildly interested in politics, the other very much so – was an exercise in Trumpthink. At the time, Trump’s former chief of staff Jon Kelly had just unleashed a firestorm of debate, giving interviews to The New York Times and The Atlantic warning that his former boss was a “fascist,” and noting that Trump admired Hitler’s generals. 

My first cousin had not heard about the Kelly interviews. He was vaguely aware that Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and former joint chiefs chairman Mark Milley had come out to warn against reelecting Trump. But hadn’t Trump fired all those guys, my cousin asked? Weren’t they just jealous and lashing out?

My cousin was concerned about the border, he said, and 20 million immigrants pouring in. I agreed that the border was a problem (but questioned the number) that needed to be addressed. But I noted that a bipartisan bill to address border issues was killed, explicitly, under Trump’s directive earlier this year, to help him win the election. Todd was skeptical this was true. 

Trump is a lot better on the economy, he stated, another view I heard a lot without much backup. I asked what policies specifically he liked. Todd was hard-pressed to come up with a specific. I noted that The Economist had written a cover story about America’s economy being the envy of the world. I pointed out that Trump favored tariffs, the very policy that helped drive our family’s company to ruin two years ago, because of tariffs on the company’s manufacturing in China. 

My cousin said he didn’t agree with the Republican position on abortion and supported women’s reproductive rights. But he didn’t see what that had to do with Trump. And then he asked if Kamala Harris was really Black. 

His mother quietly fidgeted on the couch next to me, uncomfortable hearing his views. She whispered: “He won’t change his mind.” The women in my family are pro-choice and not otherwise terribly political. But noting that even in this conservative state, abortion rights were ratified into the Ohio State Constitution by November 2023 Ohio Issue 1, and a previous six-week abortion ban was struck down by an Ohio judge in October 2024.

“We just disagree,” he said. I countered: “I don’t think we disagree. I think you are choosing to find justifications for Trump that don’t stand up to common sense.” 

My other cousin was more aware of the political details. He was incensed about illegal immigration. He doesn’t trust Kamala Harris on Israel. He thinks she’s inexperienced. (“What has she done?” I heard from more than one family member.) But when I asked about the risk to democracy and the violence of January 6, his response was this: Why didn’t the Capitol police shoot to kill when the protesters breached the door? I told him this was not an answer to Trump’s role in the violence of that day. He did not respond further. 

These conversations were maddeningly circular as I watched them reel off talking points of Fox News or Trump himself. We weren’t having a substantive argument, or an honest one, I told them. These were positions in search of reasoning to support them. 

I said to my first cousin that his support for Trump seems to be based on feelings, not facts. The sense that Trump – a familiar figure as an older white guy in a suit – makes him feel safe, despite the particulars. He didn’t dispute the point.          

Ohio went for Trump by 8 points in both 2016 and 2020; it’s no longer a swing state, apparently. My discussions with family there were similar to the interviews you see online with Trump supporters, people at rallies, random MAGA folks. It does not come down to facts, which seem fungible. It’s just a feeling. 

My father did not get to vote this cycle, but he used his own eyes and ears to draw a conclusion about this candidate who he believed, as I do, is a clear danger to our democracy. I interviewed Dad in October 2020 ahead of the last presidential election, and he had already turned decisively from Trump; he criticized Trump for demonizing immigrants, for ignoring injustice against Black people, for imposing tariffs. This year he was even angrier. He was not voting his pocketbook.

I am not a partisan or an activist. I don’t belong to any party, and as a journalist I do not advocate. My job is to observe and report. But as a citizen, like so many others, I cannot dismiss the evidence of my eyes and ears. As a woman, it seems obvious to say I want my rights back, and those of my daughter and her future children, and all the women in this country.

My family is precious to me, but it’s hard to wrap my head around these conversations. They’re not just a “weird uncle” at Thanksgiving, as Tim Walz might say. And most of them will not vote for Kamala Harris.  

Except the women. They’re not going back. 

The post Closing Arguments in Ohio – Trump’s All in the Family, Except for the Women appeared first on TheWrap.

Of course it’s the fact that the presidential election is neck and neck, evenly split between a very reasonable Democratic candidate and a terrifying Republican who is a convicted felon, a pathological liar and more cognitively questionable by the day.  

I don’t trust the polls anyway, and neither should you. They got it wildly wrong in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was assured of a win, mildly wrong in 2020 when Trump refused to accept the result and insanely wrong at midterms in 2022 – remember the “Red Wave” that did not happen? That.

But what is giving me stabbing stomach pains is the blow to our free press, which is the one thing we cannot as a country do without. Free speech. Critical voices. Independent inquiry into our government and elected officials.  

A free and vibrant press is the single, indispensable pillar of a democracy. And those institutions are at risk. 

The decision by the Los Angeles Times billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong to quash an endorsement of Kamala Harris, matched by the decision by billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos to end the practice of endorsing any candidate, after the paper’s editorial board had prepared to endorse her as well, is a devastating blow to a free press.

Two of the country’s largest newspapers took their opinions off the table days before the election, even though their editorial boards wanted to be heard. Their doing so sends a terrible signal to other corporate leaders, and to other publishers. If they ducked provoking Trump, so will others.

It is legitimately scary. As historian Timothy Snyder has written, their decision on these endorsements is a kind of “anticipatory obedience,” a caving to Trump’s threats to retaliate against his perceived enemies before anything happens and without Trump even being elected. This is a perilous sign for democracy. 

“Do not obey in advance,” writes Snyder in his seminal pamphlet, “On Tyranny,” which is being widely quoted on social media. “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked.”

Hundreds of journalists in these newsrooms who have pushed back against their owners, thousands of readers who have cancelled their subscriptions in the past three days – are enraged that these billionaires would “bend the knee” to Trump out of fear of what he might do. 

The journalists at these papers have spent years showing their mettle, reporting on both Trump and Joe Biden in a sea of social media noise. They sift through facts, track down sources, try to identify misinformation – all under enormous pressure. Their work is essential at a time when voters do not know what information to trust. 

You trust the reporting of The Washington Post. And the LA Times. And a handful of others. Without them, our democracy is cut adrift. 

I worked at The Washington Post for eight years. And I have covered the ups and down at the Los Angeles Times under multiple owners for 20 years. I admit that I was relieved when Bezos bought the Post from the Graham family in 2013. And I was thrilled to see Soon-Shiong, a local L.A. resident, rescue (so I thought) the LA Times from the muddled mismanagement of Tribune. 

But these latest decisions give the lie to civic duty in billionaire ownership of our news institutions. Bezos has billion-dollar contracts in front of the U.S. government, and Soon-Shiong’s main source of wealth is his pharmaceutical research which depends on federal approval. 

Meanwhile both newspapers are losing massive amounts of money (The Post lost $100 million last year; the Times at least $50 million.) Both billionaires may well regret having bought them. 

The argument for billionaire ownership of newspapers was that the owners were so rich that they were immune from political threat or intimidation. The wealthy individual was making an investment in the community and gaining a tool of influence in the halls of state and national government, business and foreign policy. 

It gave them a seat at the table of power in a way that their money could not. But that ownership also confers obligation. That is a realization that seems to escape yet another billionaire who dabbles dangerously in media, X-owner and Trump booster Elon Musk. 

As I have argued for years, media is different. It’s not like a sports team or a packaged good or a car manufacturer. It brings with it a special responsibility to uphold honest, fact-based inquiry and have the courage to disseminate the results of those inquiries. 

It also means overseeing an unruly newsroom staff of opinionated, educated reporters and editors who will not be cowed or intimidated or bullied. 

Independently-owned media is essential in our age of disinformation. TheWrap remains fiercely independent, as we like to say. And all we do is news. Feel free to support us with a subscription, it’s worth the investment. 

But as for other publications – let us hope our billionaire problem does not spread further.

The post Billionaires, Newspapers and Politics – A Dangerous Mix appeared first on TheWrap.

But they may not be who you expect them to be. 

Start with AI. The arrival of artificial intelligence has moved past the panic phase to where we are now: What does it mean for me? 

At this year’s annual TheGrill conference, held Tuesday at the DGA Theater Complex, experts from Hollywood’s major studios will address where the industry’s biggest content producers are focused. We will hear from AI companies themselves who will talk about the ethics that continue to raise concerns for IP and copyright holders. And we will hear from creatives about how they are using AI to drive efficiency in their work and allowing them to stretch their abilities well beyond where they thought possible. 

At the same time: yes, some jobs will be made easier. But some jobs will be lost.  

This once-in-a-generation technological shift leapfrogs so many other changes that technology has brought to entertainment and media. But it is not the only change that is shifting the macroeconomics of our business, as is evident by the frustrating downward pressure on entertainment stocks.  

The stock prices of Hollywood’s historic major studios — Disney, Warner, Paramount — are down by 40% or more in the past three years. Disney and Warner are celebrating their centennials this year, and shares of Warner and Paramount are down 70% in the last five years. Meanwhile, Netflix, the streaming giant founded in 1997 as a mail order DVD rental service, stands at $701 per share at this writing. 

This is creating its own cascade of changes. 

Thousands of job losses have happened this year alone in cuts at Paramount, Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery and Lionsgate, in a full employment economy. These companies are adjusting to the new economic realities. 

TheWrap has written about independent producers changing careers; below-the-line veterans surviving on unemployment checks; production professionals starting side hustle jobs like Emmy-nominated hairdresser Sallie Ciganovich, who cuts hair in her backyard. 

Some sectors are being hurt more than others. Independent film has been in crisis for some time – even the best movies at Sundance have a hard time finding distribution. There’s the decline in reality TV production, as TheWrap wrote about Monday. And we have delved into what the results of a pivot to streaming five years ago has brought legacy Hollywood companies — and what that portends.

If ever TheGrill’s conversation about the changes technology has brought to the creators of content mattered, it’s right now. 

When we started TheGrill 15 years ago, entertainment looked very different. Netflix had only barely started a streaming service. Twitter was brand new. Facebook was still in its early years. Some guys had sold YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion, which seemed pretty crazy at the time.  

The box office was healthy. Cable television brought in billions of dollars to Comcast, which had just bought NBCUniversal, as well as to carrier companies like Charter, Cox and AT&T, and to Hollywood’s entertainment conglomerates like Viacom and Disney.

The streaming revolution is painful, but these changed consumer habits are here to stay.  

In response to all this, the industry is in the midst of a realignment, and it is what we will explore with our speakers, including Peter Guber, who led Sony and has Mandalay Pictures along with ownership in the L.A. Dodgers and the Golden State Warriors; and Jeff Sagansky, who has not only led CBS and NBC when networks were king, but now is a central figure in the drive for public investment via SPACs (Special Purpose Acquisition Companies), in his case for DraftKings and Lionsgate Studios. 

We’re excited to bring the smartest minds and most dynamic thought leaders to TheGrill this year. Those who will not only survive the shift that’s underway, but find the opportunity and prevail. 

The post TheGrill 2024: Navigating Change for Those Who Plan to Survive the Disruption appeared first on TheWrap.

One is the fear in our own Hollywood community, a microcosm of the pain and confusion that has convulsed in waves across the globe.

Stand with Israel? Or stand with Palestinians? 

It seems impossible to stand with both. 

Stand with a free Iran? Stand with a free Lebanon?

Now it’s become so complicated. 

Believe what you see on TikTok? Believe what you read in the New York Times’ headline #1, revised headline #2 and revised headline #3 with a long editor’s note?

I’m totally confused.

Believe Israeli women? Believe the U.N.?

Listen to Bill Maher? Or Mehdi Hasan? Bari Weiss? Or Ta-Nehisi Coates?

Who can tell us how to make sense of it all?

Better, we think, to say nothing. To take no side. To voice no opinion. For fear of offending someone, Jew or Israeli or Arab. 

I get it. 

Because I am Jewish, and because I am an independent journalist and because I spent years in my early career covering the Middle East, all year long I have heard from people desperate to understand where is the moral line, why are Jews are under attack, whose fault is all of this and why does no one seem to care about the destitute souls held hostage in Gaza. 

I have been frustrated and dismayed to find people with big platforms and no knowledge claiming center stage. And to see people who know the complexities shouted down, or worse still — avoiding the conversation because it’s too hot out there. 

The reductive slogans and performative screaming not only don’t help, but serve a more sinister agenda that is at work. That agenda does not want peace or reconciliation, or a two-state solution, or a functioning Western alliance.

A sign of this is that we have gone from a near-zero on the scale of antisemitism in this country and Europe to a raging Code Red. Why, we ask? 

From the day after Oct. 7, a crisis has reigned among Jews on the left who stand for social justice and equity but feel abandoned by Black Lives Matter and Queers for Palestine, not to mention AOC and the now-ousted Cori Bush. They note the pro-Palestinian rallies that sprung up in many places the day after Oct. 7, including universities like Columbia, even as the blood was fresh on the ground of the Nova Festival, where 360 were murdered, and Kibbutz Be’eri, where 100 were lost.

Others who acutely feel the pain of Palestinian civilians fear they will be punished for speaking out. And some have been, by losing social media followers, or agency representation, or jobs.

As I wrote on Oct. 8 of last year, we were about to confront a period of sad outcomes:

“I worry for the death of hope. I mourn for the dead and wounded, for the kidnapped, the tortured. And I mourn for the suffering that will be visited on so many Palestinians who have no control over their own destiny. I mourn for the despair in the hearts of so many who would dream of peaceful coexistence.” 

It is a rare few who understand both the nihilistic intent of Hamas and Iran’s other proxies, dismay over Israel’s prosecution of the Gaza war and also the agony of Palestinian families and Israeli ones. (And Iranian ones, because now it’s about Iran as well.)

In the past year, I have sought those people out, seeking to learn and understand. Seeking to hang on to a thread of common humanity as so much has unraveled. (If you care to follow them: dissident Gazan Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib; Israeli historian Fania Oz-Salzberger; ex-Hamas Ahmad4 Israel, who does not reveal his last name; Saudi peace activist Loay Alshareef; British didact Douglas Murray.)

And I traveled to Israel, looking to report on the ground — even if entering Gaza is still not possible — to listen, and learn, and share.

But clear information, in context, is scarce. Our elite universities have been revealed to be hornets’ nests of political naivete, slinging the slogans of collective liberation and identity politics onto a burning bonfire set by radical Islam. Honestly, if I hear the string “colonial, oppression, apartheid, ethno-state, genocide” litany one more time while the latest headline is about a Yazidi girl taken as a sex slave in Gaza, released to her family in Iraq… I just can’t. Read a book, I want to say. Or read the article.

It’s no wonder that the average person is confused, and would rather avoid this ugly subject completely. I have many prominent friends in media who for a solid year have studiously avoided the topics of Gaza, antisemitism, radical Islam and Israel, firm in the knowledge that this is a No-Win situation. 

But certain things require moral clarity. A death cult is a death cult. Terror is terror. Tolerating intolerance is not multiculturalism — it’s an invitation to self-destruction. The choices we permit as a democracy may determine the survival of our precious (if flawed) system of government. 

A Palestinian child is an innocent. An Israeli child is an innocent. A civilian is not fair game. Identifying an evil ideology does not make you prejudiced. Islam has a problem of extremism and radicalism, and Muslims or secular Arabs who speak out about that problem risk their lives, which is exactly the heart of the problem.

Hollywood once stood confident in its values, however “liberal” and “woke.” The entertainment and media community as a whole championed social justice and equity, promoted diversity and inclusion, celebrated democracy. This industry created and told the stories that showed the humanity inherent in those ideas — “Will and Grace,” or “Mary Tyler Moore,” or “The West Wing.” 

But I will remind you that the Writers Guild of America for weeks could not manage to condemn the Hamas massacre. On this issue Hollywood is visibly… lost.

We are not yet through the fog of fear or confusion. But that moment will come. So at this one-year mark since the Hamas massacre unleashed the worst impulses of humanity — as it was meant to do — let us hold tight to the knowledge that the best of humanity remains. In the shadows, perhaps, but waiting for us to coax it into the light. 

The post At the Anniversary of October 7, Seeking Clarity in a Sea of Confusion appeared first on TheWrap.

He spoke to WaxWord on Monday on the tumultuous changes happening in entertainment and his tenure running Sony.

“The next 18-24 months are going to be — chaos is one word you can use,” he said. “There’s going to be consolidation, buying, sales, potentially bankruptcies. At the end of which, only thing is very clear: Demand for entertainment is going to be really strong.”

Vinciquerra, who is passing the reins to COO Ravi Ahuja, who will become SPE’s president and CEO in January, said he expects write-downs of cable companies and a merger of Charter Communications with a competitor in Europe. “That’s the beginning,” he said. “At the end of that, cable companies will be on much stronger footing. The business will be good. There will be a rough time in the next 18-24 months.”

The outgoing executive said Sony is better positioned to weather the storm than many of its competitors. “We are probably the most stable company in the business right now, given the strategies we chose many years ago,” Vinciquerra said. “The fact is that we got out of cable networks, [while] everyone else is trying to figure out what to do them” and are facing “significant negative decline.”

Sony has not launched a full-fledged streaming platform to compete with Netflix, Disney+ and others, preferring to focus on being an arms dealer that produces shows it then licenses to streaming networks.

The Japanese-owned entertainment conglomerate operates Crunchyroll, an anime-focused streaming platform which Vinciquerra called “the most-profitable streaming service…outside of Netflix.”

Here is what else Vinciquerra told TheWrap:

TheWrap: Will Sony be protected from the chaos?

Vinciquerra: Absolutely.

We’re not in the businesses that are going to be challenged. We don’t have to restructure to meet that. We haven’t had massive layoffs.

What can you say about Ravi Ahuja?

 The good thing is he’s smarter than I am. Good with people and has good IQ and EQ, I think.

Is he tech focused?

He will be. Our whole company will be technology focused. There is a big push from Tokyo to be – not on the bleeding edge, but we want to be right behind. And to be industry leading. 

Was the streaming pivot by your peers in the industry a mistake?

I don’t think it was a mistake. Eventually they will become significant profitable businesses. If you fell to earth from Mars in 2005, you’d want to get into the cable bundle business. It was an amazingly profitable business and easy to run. Today it’s gone the other way, dramatically. The streaming services will never get to point where they’re as profitable as that, but they will become profitable after this period of consolidation. The business that won’t get better is the cable network business. That business is on a negative path and will have to be dealt with. 

What do you plan to do now? 

I don’t know. I like fixing things. I like fixing companies. Fox was a big turnaround, bigger than this one. This was good-sized turnaround. Experience counts in these things. I will take a little time off too.

Alexei Barrionuevo contributed to this article.

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The impossibly svelte television executive stood triumphant in the middle of a massive post-Emmys fete on Sunday, as Disney took over the entire outdoor plaza of the Los Angeles Music Center downtown and dressed it with a dazzling tent, gorgeous flowers, sumptuous food and chic seating areas. 

CEO Bob Iger hovered nearby like a proud papa, having sat supportively beside his star executive at the Emmy awards earlier in the evening. At his core, Iger is a TV guy – having come to Disney from Cap Cities/ABC in 1996 – and he was very much in his element. 

There was a lot to celebrate. Disney certainly knew it was in for a big night at the Emmys, which aired on the company’s own ABC network. But even so they could not have known the company would take home a record 60 Emmy statues, including a record-breaking 19 awards for “Shōgun,” 11 awards for “The Bear” and a bunch more for Ron Howard’s “Jim Henson Idea Man” and Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.”

FX alone took home 36 Emmys, part of Walden’s television empire which also includes ABC, Disney Branded Television, Disney+, Disney Television Studios (20th Television, 20th Television Animation and ABC Signature), FX, FX Productions, Hulu and National Geographic. 

But it is not Walden’s only win of late. In the wake of the successful ABC News debate last week between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, with moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis winning widespread praise for handling Trump’s lies, and a massive 67 million Americans tuning in, suffice to say that Walden is on a roll.  

The embarrassing dispute with DirecTV got resolved ahead of the Emmys, ending a programming blackout that left ABC and ESPN dark on the satellite giant for 13 days.

Add to that the fact that Walden has a three-decade friendship with Vice President Kamala Harris who may be poised to win the presidency. Though the Disney executive has scrupulously stayed away from anything that publicly acknowledges that friendship – especially because ABC News reports up to her — it’s no secret that the two are tight. 

It certainly would not hurt matters were Harris to win the presidency, and Walden could have the country’s first female president a cell phone call or private text away. 

Walden is of course too savvy a player to comment on any such notion, and her spokesperson declined to say anything either for this piece.

Walden’s main rivals for the CEO position remain Jimmy Pitaro, chairman of ESPN; and Josh D’Amaro who oversees Disney Parks, a massive segment of Disney’s annual revenue. 

But but but. Walden comes from the entertainment ecosphere. As Co-Chairman, Disney Entertainment, she is responsible for what consumers see on television and streaming, overseeing the company’s full portfolio of entertainment media, news and content businesses globally.

That matters because the CEO position requires a solid grounding in entertainment content, in understanding what goes into the recipe for great storytelling, compelling characters and enduring IP. The Emmy sweep is proof positive of that quality, even if part of that is holding on to the legendary FX tastemaker John Landgraf. 

Timeline? Iger’s contract ends in 2026, and he has vowed publicly that he would “definitely step down” at that time. But he has been extremely circumspect about the succession process. 

The job requires relationships with Hollywood talent, and a knowledge of how to manage that talent when tough decisions loom. Does she have passionate love for legacy Disney content, the classic animation of “Bambi” and “Snow White?” Probably not. “The Bear” is way more Walden’s speed, coming from two decades at the edgier 20th Century Fox.  

She also needs to show strategic business chops, and it is here that Walden privately complains that she does not get enough credit. To her, she still gets underestimated for her business savvy in a manner that reeks, to her, of old-school sexism. She has more than proven her business chops.  

And while it’s unclear if Iger sees it that way, he certainly beamed from ear to ear at the Disney shindig.  

Will it last? That remains to be seen. 

Everyone loves a winner. And right now, Dana Walden is winning. 

The post The Emmys, Disney Succession and Dana Walden’s Moment  appeared first on TheWrap.