Media

1. MSNBC, NOW
2. Mixed Signals
3. Patreon’s patron
4. Football on YouTube
5. News judgment

The media analyst Brian Morrissey wrote recently about Media People. Embodied by the writer Michael Wolff, they are exasperating to manage, reflexively skeptical, mischievous at best.

Media People cut across other categories. For instance, Tucker Carlson is a Media Person. Ben Shapiro is not. Kara Swisher is. Scott Galloway is not. Donald Trump is, obviously. JD Vance is not. (I apparently am.)

Jeffrey Epstein, the latest cache of emails confirms, was certainly a Media Person. And Media People were part of the vast network with whom Epstein traded gossip, advice, and intelligence.

Wolff comes off in recently released emails as “a kind of unofficial consigliere to him — and seem[s] to fulfill some people’s worst impression of the entangled worlds of power players and the press,” per The Wall Street Journal.

That’s not all: As we report exclusively this evening, Wolff sent a long, unpublished profile of the disgraced financier to Epstein in 2014.

I recall Wolff fretting in 2021 about how to publish an essay he’d written exposing his own relationship with Epstein before anyone else could. He buried it, in a way, in a published book of essays, which I covered at the time.

Wolff is perhaps the most disreputable face of a profession that is, generally, in pretty bad repute. And while he is now getting one of his periodic public pilloryings, he argues that he played a morally ambiguous role in exchange for valuable access — something he also successfully did in the past with Rupert Murdoch and with Trump’s circle.

“How do you get inside with these people?” he said to me Friday. “There’s not a lot of mystery: You suck up — and then you spit out!”

Also today: Max’s exclusive reporting on the fast-arriving future of MS NOW.

MS NOW’s brave new cable world

On Friday evening, the cable channel once known as MSNBC turned off the lights for the last time in its old studio space at 30 Rockefeller Center, the iconic palace of 20th-century media. Staff began broadcasting early the next morning from the blocky old New York Times building a few blocks southeast. Onscreen, the cosmetic changes were minor; despite a $20 million rebrand and marketing push, production staff had worked hard to ensure a smooth transition from MSNBC to MS NOW, the name christened by its new parent company, Versant. Anchors appeared in the same time slots, and show graphics were unchanged, aside from a carefully tweaked logo at the bottom of the screen.

But the network is in the midst of its biggest gamble since it launched in 1996, even if its aging viewers are unlikely to notice. Now untethered from NBC News, the test for MS NOW will be whether Versant will follow through on its promise to reinvest profits back into news coverage; whether it decides to spend it acquiring other, more promising outlets; or whether it simply puts the profits towards compensating shareholders while it gradually manages a declining business downward. Shorter-term, the company has been looking into expanding roles for new-media talent like Pablo Torre and collaborating with the likes of Pod Save America.

Thomspon on ‘Mixed Signals’

Is television the final form of all media? Derek Thompson, the co-author of Abundance, podcaster, and Atlantic writer joins Mixed Signals to explain what he sees as the forces behind what Ben and Max keep observing: the way in which podcasts and other forms of journalism appear to be getting their largest audience in an endless, passive feed of videos first observed by analysts of 20th-century television. Derek discusses all that as well as his own turn toward independent media and his personal pivot to video.

Vox patronizes Patreon

On Monday, Vox is launching a membership program on Patreon. Executives from the media company told Semafor that Vox’s Patreon supporters will have access to ad-free content and exclusive videos, including two new exclusive series. The company said it hopes to supplement its flagship franchises like the podcast Today, Explained, with live newsroom conversations and community features such as chats.

The partnership will begin at an interesting time for the two companies: For Vox, it’s a bet that Patreon’s tools and community are worth a cut of subscription revenue. For Patreon, it’s a signal to other media players — and to Substack, its primary competitor — that it can support a larger company with more sophisticated editorial and payment needs.

Google, Disney strike carriage deal

Google’s settlement with Disney Friday after a standoff over carriage fees demonstrated the tech giant’s power: It’s expected to be the single largest TV distributor, and this year pushed around Fox and NBCU as well. All three legacy companies have spent billions securing sports rights, as live sports may be the last sure draw to cable. But even as the legacy players look to launch direct-to-consumer offerings, it’s hard to see any of them outbidding Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, or Netflix at the next round of auctions.

Media executives look at Google’s tried-and-tested playbook — with news, travel, and search — and see it playing out already with TV. And while they may privately complain that Google’s behavior verges on anticompetitive, there’s no sign that they, or antitrust regulators, are moving to do anything about it.

— Rohan Goswami

Whither New York Post?

The New York Post is having a great time in Zohran Mamdani’s New York — its “Red Apple” cover sold out, the editor-in-chief is sending out emails addressed to “comrades,” and the mayor-elect is sure to remain a big target. But the Post has largely been missing out on a big national story: the Epstein files.

The New York tabloid — right-leaning, but also known for its ferocious reporting chops — played a big role in the coverage of Epstein’s depravity, arrest, and suicide. It also used to cover the personal life of New Yorker Donald Trump quite aggressively. But the paper has been strangely squeamish about the relationship between the dead financier and the president, and reacted to the release of new emails from Epstein with a cover echoing White House messaging and calling the story a “hoax.”