Opposition to this TV merger is now bipartisan

Nexstar cuts a deal in Ohio

Brandon Millman posted the “Yes, but…” to the news over on Bluesky. He noted that Ohio’s Republican AG “just gave everyone a plausible settlement ‘out’ I can only imagine Nexstar is gonna try to reach with all the states.”

Agreed. In Ohio, Nexstar struck a deal to let two Tegna stations in Cleveland and Columbus remain independent until 2031. But the deal with the state AGs has loopholes and is likely not what the Democratic state AGs would accept. We’ll see. 

Last night Nexstar responded to the new states by citing the Ohio agreement and arguing that they’re not the enemy. The company said the “misguided” AGs “should be far more wary of the real drivers of the decline of local news: the unchecked rise of Big Tech platforms, the spread of misinformation on social media, and the economic pressures that have already led to widespread newsroom closures.” Well, many things can be true at the same time…

Consumer lawsuit targets WarnerMount deal

The Clayton Act, the antitrust law at the heart of the Nexstar-Tegna legal action, also allows individuals to sue. And that’s what happened yesterday when five private citizens, some of them Paramount+ subscribers, sued over the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal.

“The lawsuit is believed to be the first legal action targeting the merger,” THR’s Winston Cho wrote. “Consumers represent one of several groups that could pose an obstacle to consummating the deal, which includes the Justice Department, state attorneys general, the European Union and the FCC.”

The complaint cites CNN, arguing that “by placing CNN and other news assets under Paramount’s control as part of a broader consolidation strategy, Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery would reduce the number of independent owners capable of sustaining national television news operations at scale and weaken competitive constraints that protect editorial rivalry, investigative resources, and viewpoint diversity.”

Deadline highlighted the CNN angle here. The filing contained many other arguments against the deal, as well. Paramount said it is confident that the suit “is without merit,” adding, “The combination of Paramount and WBD will create a stronger competitor that is well positioned to serve as a champion for creative talent and consumer choice.”

Newsom’s lawsuit against Fox is being allowed to proceed

Yesterday, a Delaware state judge “refused to throw out California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $787 million defamation claims over Fox News’ coverage of his June 6 phone call with President Donald Trump, ruling that Newsom has plausibly alleged that Fox News knew it was making false statements when it made them,” Law360’s Hailey Konnath reports.

This means Newsom’s suit has passed the motion-to-dismiss stage. “Looking forward to discovery,” the governor wrote on X last night, touting the court win…

Kimmel has lots more to say about Trump’s pressure

Last night, Jimmy Kimmel showed a video clip of his wife and production partner Molly McNearney waking him up in bed with the president’s latest call for his firing. This time, Trump said ABC had “better” fire Kimmel soon while falsely claiming Kimmel has one of the “lowest rated shows” on TV. 

Kimmel’s response: “If incompetently presiding over the lowest rating in history is why I should be fired, we should both be out of a job.”

Kimmel talked at some length about this week’s pressure campaign, saying, “Trump has three wars going on right now: Iranians, Ukrainians and comedians.” He commended the “small handful of Republicans” like Ted Cruz who have “spoken out to support our First Amendment rights.” And he played a montage of Trump clips assailing “cancel culture” and “censorship” and said, “I’m starting to think Donald Trump might be a hypocrite.” Here’s the monologue on YouTube…

No one is taking the FCC’s ‘Disney DEI’ claim seriously

”Brendan Carr is following the president’s instructions to the T,” an FCC source said to me earlier this week. The source didn’t mean it literally. They meant that Trump is publicly broadcasting what he wants to see happen, and Carr is eagerly following through.

Yesterday, Carr told reporters in DC that the challenge to Disney’s ABC station licenses was a natural progression of his probe into Disney’s DEI initiatives. They “weren’t being entirely forthcoming,” he claimed, adding, “maybe they’ll take it more seriously” now.

In the media biz, practically no one is taking this “DEI” explanation seriously, so I’m loath to spend much time on it. But I spoke with a longtime media lawyer who made a couple of crucial points about the process.

Carr indicated yesterday that the FCC requested, and received, an initial tranche of internal documents from Disney last year. The FCC apparently waited many months to follow up and request more info. Then, last week, Disney sent over a second tranche of documents.

If the agency really thought Disney’s latest response was insufficient, they’d normally call up Disney’s legal team, or maybe send a formal notice, the source told me. Sending an early-renewal order for Disney’s licenses makes no sense in this context. “If you’re really interested in DEI, you’re not going to learn anything from that renewal application,” they said.

License challenges are extremely rare and usually reserved for cases of “egregious, regular misconduct, like fraud,” the lawyer added. This case is not that.

But one of Carr’s other comments yesterday pointed to what’s really going on: Once Disney files to renew the station licenses, “then anyone can file petitions to deny,” he said. Pro-Trump groups can submit complaints about Kimmel, “The View” and anything else.

“Disney, as part of the filing, is going to have to come in and demonstrate that they’ve been operating in the public interest,” Carr said.

So: A long, drawn-out administrative proceeding where Disney will have to defend itself. Like I said earlier this week, the process appears to be the punishment.

Trump is already misinformed enough, so it’s really a shame when an interviewer feeds him even more misinfo. But that’s what Greta Van Susteren did when Trump called into her Newsmax show yesterday afternoon. 

“Jimmy Kimmel has apologized,” Greta wrongly said. “Is it a good apology? Do you accept the apology?”

“I haven’t heard him apologize,” Trump responded, accurately, before saying that “ABC is putting themselves in great jeopardy” by keeping him on air and invoking his 2024 lawsuit against George Stephanopoulos and ABC, which the network settled for $16 million to avoid an unpredictable trial…

About that ‘Apprentice’ reboot idea…

Thought bubble: Trump was just reminiscing about “The Apprentice” last week. He (seemingly randomly) posted a picture of an old NYT story about the show’s boffo 2004 ratings. Was he just thinking about the good old days, or did someone mention this Amazon reboot possibility to him? 

The WSJ revealed Amazon’s internal talks on Wednesday night, and on Thursday, Trump said “I’ve been hearing” about it, though he may have only heard it about through the Journal. Donald Trump Jr. “learned about it from reading the paper Wednesday night,” THR’s Steven Zeitchik reports.

Trump Sr. gave Jr. a tepid endorsement when Peter Doocy asked about the WSJ report, saying “he’s probably good” for the host gig. My takeaway remains the same as yesterday: If Amazon started discussing this idea a year ago, and it still hasn’t moved into active production, then it’s probably not going to happen…

Trump taps another Fox News figure…

This time, it’s Dr. Nicole Saphier, whom he’s been watching on Fox News for years. She is an “INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR,” he wrote while nominating her as surgeon general, a position he has struggled to fill.

A Fox rep confirmed to me that Saphier’s contract has been terminated. Fox typically severs its contributor relationships as soon as Trump taps one of its TV personalities for a job — something that has happened many, many times. (Is anyone still keeping a list?)

Sharyn Alfonsi speaks openly about ‘Inside CECOT’

Sharyn Alfonsi got candid about her experience with the “Inside CECOT” story while receiving a journalism prize in DC last night. The Guardian’s Jeremy Barr was there and recapped her comments here. Key quotes:

 >> “I will not linger on the internal mechanics of the dust-up at CBS that led to our CECOT story being pulled, but we have to be honest about what it represents. It wasn’t an isolated editorial argument. In my view, it was the result of a more aggressive contagion: the spread of corporate meddling and editorial fear.”

 >> “Right now, our industry is afraid of the wrong things. We’re afraid of offending power. We’re afraid of losing access. We’re afraid of another baseless lawsuit. But what we should all be afraid of is silence.”

 >> Alfonsi said her home was SWATTED when the “60” controversy was in the news: “I guess they were trying to scare me into silence.”

Rachel Tashjian, CNN’s senior style reporter whose personal Opulent Tips newsletter has a cult following, is launching a new weekly newsletter for CNN, Big Style, which she describes as “a portal into the world where clothing meets culture.” Click here to subscribe.

 >> “I love the idea of something spirited and chatty, and not-insidery but very curious and not cowed by cool clothes, coming out of a media company that operates at the scale of CNN,” Tashjian told Feed Me’s Emily Sundberg.

 >> “Major news organizations, including CNN, NBC and USA Today, have joined an effort to curb the storage of their content in a web archive used by artificial intelligence companies for training chatbots,” Hannah Miller reports. (Bloomberg)

 >> Journalists across McClatchy newsrooms are “withholding their bylines from articles” generated by the company’s new AI tool that summarizes articles and creates “different versions for different audiences,” Katie Robertson reports. (NYT)

 >> “The Onion’s plan to transform Infowars into a satirical conspiracy website faced a major roadblock” earlier this week, “as a Texas Appeals Court stayed the turnover of the far-right site,” Alyssa Ray reports. (TheWrap)

  >> David Roberts, an ESPN veteran who oversees news operations, “SportsCenter,” “First Take,” audio, and more, is retiring from the network this summer. “ESPN did not name a replacement.” (Variety)

 >> Ken Auletta, who’s currently working on a documentary called “The Murdoch Puzzle,” sat down with Lachlan Cartwright for a lengthy chat about the family’s succession drama. (YouTube)

Today’s Musk v. Altman update

“I don’t think Elon Musk is used to being talked to the way he’s experienced the last few days of testimony in this big trial against OpenAI,” Hadas Gold says. Yesterday, the judge told Musk to “stop talking about AI could kill us all,” saying it wasn’t relevant to the trial. Gold, as well as CNN’s Samantha Delouya and Ramishah Maruf, have more details in their latest piece, which looks back on the media mogul’s testimony.

 >> Elsewhere, CNN’s Allison Morrow notes that while Musk and OpenAI’s attorneys “appear to only be considering a limited set of options” of who should get to control AGI, “based on comments from the random group of citizens available for jury selection, it doesn’t seem like it’s a popular list of overlords.”

More of today’s tech talk

 >> “Meta says it may be forced to pull Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp from New Mexico if the attorney general gets his way,” as “the state is demanding a host of changes that the company says are impossible to achieve,” Lauren Feiner reports. (The Verge)

 >> “X is still trying to woo back advertisers — this time with a rebuilt, AI-powered ads platform that started to roll out” yesterday, Sarah Perez reports. (TechCrunch)

 >> “As AI-generated artists and tracks flood music streaming platforms, Spotify is rolling out a new ‘Verified by Spotify’ badge to help listeners more easily identify authentic human artists,” Aisha Malik reports. (TechCrunch)

 >> Reddit shares are surging on the “better-than-expected profit and revenue in its first-quarter earnings report,” Jonathan Vanian writes. (CNBC)

 >> Roku shares are also higher this morning after the company beat earnings forecasts and said Q1 was its “highest quarter to date for premium subscription sign-ups,” Todd Spangler reports. (Variety)

Devilish weekend at the movies

20th Century Studios‘ ”The Devil Wears Prada 2” entered Thursday night with $10 million in previews, Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro writes. Over at TheWrap, Jeremy Fuster writes that the film “will bring a summer box office launch fueled by millennial women.”  

 >> The movie “has engaged in a marketing blitz ahead of the sequel’s release as it looks to create a “cultural moment … to sustain a movie’s lifespan in the conversation,” CNN’s Alli Rosenbloom writes. “The brands that the movie partnered with were chosen … as part of building excitement for what they’re hoping will be the ‘movie-going event of the season,’” Rosenbloom writes. Read more about that blitz here…

 >> As part of her promotional tour for the sequel, Meryl Streep appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last night, where she told the late-night comic, “You’re carrying the banner of freedom of the press.”

 >> “Lucasfilm/Disney’s first ‘Star Wars’ movie in seven years, ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu,’ arrived on tracking in what looks to be an $80-plus-million four-day start over Memorial Day weekend,” the aforementioned D’Alessandro reports. Matt Belloni wrote on X that “compared to previous Star Wars movies, that’d be a disaster,” but that “for a theatrical movie based on a TV show, that’s not bad at all.”

 >> “A three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the filmmakers’ use of a 66-second clip from a character’s funeral was sufficiently transformative to qualify for ‘fair use’ protection” in Netflix‘s “Tiger King” series,” Gene Maddaus reports. (Variety)

 >> “Electronic Arts’ “Battlefield” is “shaping up to be the biggest bidding war of the year,” Umberto Gonzalez reports. (TheWrap)

 >> “After updating its TV experience for the first time in more than a decade last year, Netflix is refreshing its mobile app experience” with a revamp that includes “simplified navigation and a new vertical video feed,” Lucas Manfredi writes. (TheWrap)