 Tom Steyer |
Fox News is being accused of breach of contract by billionaire political activist and donor Tom Steyer over the network’s Oct. 31 decision to pull a 60-second TV spot that calls for President Trump’s impeachment. The spot, bankrolled by Steyer, was part of what Politico reports was an ad buy of over $10 million. The spot accused the President of bringing the U.S. “to the brink of war with North Korea” as well as potentially obstructing justice by firing former FBI director James Comey in the midst of the Federal probe into possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russian political operatives. The decision to pull the spot was called “baseless and unethical” in a memo sent to Fox News president Jack Abernethy by Brad Deutsch, a lawyer for Streyer, on Nov. 3. In a statement, Abernethy said that the spot was pulled due to the “strong negative reaction to their ad by our viewers.” But he may have been most influenced by one high-profile Fox News fan. “Wacky & totally unhinged Tom Steyer, who has been fighting me and my Make America Great Again agenda from beginning, never wins elections!” Trump tweeted soon after the ad aired on "Fox & Friends," a program that is a Presidential favorite.
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CNN has announced plans that it says will help to turn the digital side of its operations into a bigger moneymaker. Starting as soon as the second quarter of next year, the network will offer premium subscriptions that will give users access to special content on such topic-specific verticals as CNN Politics and CNN Money, as well as a less specialized package that provides content from across CNN’s sites. Establishing direct-to-consumer subscriptions would reduce CNN’s reliance on ads that run before videos as a source of revenue. While CNN expects its digital properties to bring in $370 million this year, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the new initiatives are part of what the company says is a five-year plan to develop additional revenue streams, and raise digital revenue to $1 billion annually by 2022.
 Jillian D'Onfro |
CNBC Digital is adding two reporters, Alex Sherman and Jillian D’Onfro, to its technology team. Sherman comes to CNBC from Bloomberg News, where he covered telecom and media. In his new post, he will be on the mergers and acquisitions beat, focusing on tech and the Silicon Valley venture capital world. D’Onfro spent three years at Business Insider as senior technology reporter, covering the tech industry with a concentration on Google, Facebook and startups. At CNBC, she will cover companies such as Alphabet/Google as well as writing human-interest features.
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
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