| | | | | Exec summary: NFL officials are catching their breaths. WashPost staffers are celebrating a subscriber milestone. "Fixer Upper" is ending. Fox News is making more schedule changes. And Congress is still waiting to see those Facebook ads... | | Breitbart is calling this "BLOWOUT IN 'BAMA!" | | Steve Bannon's candidate, Roy Moore, beat President Trump's candidate, Luther Strange, in Alabama on Tuesday night.
Oliver Darcy emails: Not surprisingly, Breitbart immediately sought to take credit for Moore's victory. The site ran a story claiming Moore's victory made Bannon and Breitbart the "most feared names in politics." While it's true that Breitbart did put all its chips behind Moore, it's unclear how much its coverage swayed voters. Regardless, Breitbart's narrative is likely to gain some traction. Watch for that in the coming days… | | -- Breitbart's Charlie Spiering: "Establishment just flushed $30 million down the drain. Congrats!"
-- CNN's Steve Brusk: "Pres. Trump just tweeted congratulations to Roy Moore. But in his tweet, the president got the date of the Dec. general election wrong."
-- NYT's Shane Goldmacher: "I spoke to a lot of GOP primary voters in 15-16. A lot were angry. GOP now controls WH and Congress. And those voters still seem angry." | | | Tuesday was a huge day of ratings headlines. Even President Trump was tweeting about ratings. Here's everything you need to know... | | Megyn Kelly's so-so premiere | | | "Megyn Kelly Today" didn't crash on Monday, but it didn't soar either. NBC's 9am time slot was down from the same day last year, when "Today's Take" aired, but still up versus the same day last week. What about the competition? Well the overnight ratings for "Live with Kelly and Ryan" "give it a slight advantage over Megyn," per THR, but we'll have to wait for more reliable #'s. | | The optimistic view about Kelly's show: Viewers didn't reject it. And these things take time. It took a long time for Oprah Winfrey to dominate daytime.
The pessimistic view: Oprah was a generation ago. Times are different now. NBC did a huge marketing push for the premiere, and now it's over, and it's all downhill from here... | | Kimmel #1 in the demo Monday | | | "It was an embarrassing, almost humiliating day for Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell," Robert Costa said on Tuesday's "Charlie Rose." But it was a thrilling day for Jimmy Kimmel, an unlikely face of the opposition to the GOP health care bill. On Tuesday afternoon he found out the bill wasn't going to get a vote, and he found out that he won the opening night of the new TV season, ranking as the #1 late-night talk show with adults ages 18-49. It's just one night, but it's a big deal for Kimmel... | | Kimmel thanks people who "spoke out" against Graham-Cassidy | | | Frank Pallotta flagged Kimmel's tweet: "Thanks to all who stood up and spoke out from this happy guy and his less-fortunate friends." Kimmel included a pic of Billy: | | | -- Bill Carter tweeted Tuesday: "Congrats to Billy Kimmel. He helped untold number of lives..." | | CBS celebrating "Young Sheldon" | | | Brian Lowry emails: Ka-boom. A lead-in from "The Big Bang Theory" -- coming back from a cliffhanging ending -- produced the intended boom for its prequel "Young Sheldon," which premiered to 16.6 million viewers, per Nielsen, the best total-viewer debut by a new comedy in six years. ABC also got off to a promising start with "The Good Doctor," a "House"-like drama starring Freddie Highmore ("Bates Motel") as an autistic surgical resident. The only bad news for CBS: "Sheldon" now takes a break until November, when it moves to Thursdays along with "Big Bang" after CBS' primetime football ends... | | Jemele Hill: "People don't want to hear what this protest is ABOUT" | | All things considered, Tuesday was a relatively quiet day for the NFL. There's some continuing concern among sponsors/advertisers about the effects of Trump's criticism. Concern -- but not panic.
I thought Jemele Hill's comments on "SC6" were noteworthy... She said "People don't want to hear what this [kneeling] protest is ABOUT. They just don't." Simply put: "People don't want to see this protest." | | Big #'s for "Monday Night Football" | | Bright and early Tuesday, POTUS once again claimed that the NFL's ratings are "way down." But they're not. It would have been accurate to say "down a bit" or "down modestly." But we know Trump doesn't do "modestly." Here's Frank Pallotta's full story on the ratings battle...
-- NFL execs were happy to see these "Monday Night Football" #'s... Cowboys-Cardinals averaged 13.7 million... ESPN said it was "the second most-watched MNF game on ESPN in the last two seasons..."
-- Chyron of the day? From "OutFront" on CNN: "TRUMP AFTER 24 TWEETS IN 4 DAYS: 'NOT PREOCCUPIED' WITH NFL." | | Here's a peek at Fox's alternative reality... | | | Joe Concha to Tucker Carlson on Monday night's "Tucker:" "Good thing you watched" the Redskins-Raiders "Sunday Night Football" game, "cuz not a lot of people did." For the record, more than 17 million people watched the game. | | Eye on 9pm: Hannity beats Maddow | | | On night one of Sean Hannity v. Rachel Maddow at 9pm, the heavily promoted Hannity scored 666,000 in the 25-54 demo, while Maddow averaged 591,000. Fox and Hannity have been pulling out all the stops this week... for example... | | O'Reilly back on Fox... for one night | | | Bill O'Reilly was Sean Hannity's guest for the better half of the 9pm hour on Tuesday. O'Reilly was there, he said, to "hawk" his new book... | | | Roger Ailes would have loved to see this. O'Reilly and Hannity, who disliked each other when they were colleagues, acting chummy and commiserating... reminiscing about the good old days... and complaining about the media... | | Oliver's reporting from inside Fox | | | Oliver Darcy emails: Not everyone was happy with Fox allowing O'Reilly back on its air. I spoke with Wendy Walsh, one of the women who accused O'Reilly of sexual harassment, and she told me, "That's how it works at the boy's club." Fox News employees I spoke to were also a bit perplexed by the decision to let O'Reilly use the network as a platform to sell his book. "I question how serious Fox News considers the offenses for which he was fired if they are now giving him a platform to sell his book," one senior Fox News employee told me. "Talk about mixed messages." | | | Another former Fox host is about to go on a book tour: Gretchen Carlson. But I'm told there are no plans for Carlson to appear on Fox to promote the book. Fox did not respond to a request for comment about whether she would be welcome on the air... | | More Fox News schedule changes | | | With Shannon Bream moving to 11pm, Sandra Smith will be Bill Hemmer's new co-host at 9 and 10am ET... Harris Faulkner will take over the 1pm hour, titled "Outnumbered Overtime," following the "Outnumbered" talk show... and Dana Perino will anchor the 2pm hour, titled "The Briefing with Dana Perino..." | | Third quarter #'s came in on Tuesday. This is remarkable: "Even after a big Q3 2016, with massive coverage of the 2016 presidential race, CNN grew its audience in the just-completed Q3 2017." Other highlights:
-- Per TVNewser, Fox News is now up to "63 consecutive quarters as the highest-rated cable news channel..."
-- A historic win for MSNBC: "The Rachel Maddow Show" was the most-watched single show on cable news... both in total viewers and the demo...
-- And on a personal note: "Reliable Sources" was #1 in its time slot in the 25-54 demo... it's the first quarterly win since I started hosting the show... so thank you to all the viewers who are reading this... | | -- An absolutely incredible story by Caitlin Dickerson in this weekend's NYT Mag: "How Fake News Turned a Small Town Upside Down" (NYT Mag)
-- Hadas Gold emails: The press won the "press vs politicians" National Spelling Bee at the National Press Club Tuesday night. Todd Gillman of the Dallas Morning News was the champ!
-- 280 may be the new 140 on Twitter... (CNN Tech) | | WashPost milestone: 1 million digital subscribers | | A big moment for The Washington Post: "Earlier this year, we crossed the 1 million mark for paid digital-only subscribers," publisher Fred Ryan revealed in an internal memo on Tuesday. Here's my story about it. And here's the ranker:
NYT: 2.3 million paid digital subscribers
WSJ: 1.27 million
WashPost: 1 million
LATimes: 105,000 | | "The recent storms of Harvey and Irma, there was a lot coverage prior and during... With Puerto Rico, we were all expecting to see more coverage. In all the shows, the coverage was not as extensive..."
--Dr. Edwin Meléndez, director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, in Hadas Gold's story about the coverage... | | Sandra Gonzalez emails: HUGE news in the world of HGTV: "Fixer Upper" is coming to an end. Chip and Joanna Gaines made the "bittersweet" announcement on their blog, saying the decision was made so that they can focus on their family and Texas-based businesses.
High Noon Entertainment, which produces the show for HGTV, said in a statement that the couple has renovated nearly 80 homes over the course of the show. "We respect and are in full support of their decision to take time to focus on their family and their many projects through Magnolia," High Noon's CEO Jim Berger said in a statement... | | Where will the Gaines go next? | | | The final season of "Fixer Upper" will premiere in November. I assume Chip and Joanna will want/need/have another TV show soon enough. Where? A streaming service like Amazon? Another cable network? Hmm... | | Still waiting to see those Russian ads... | | | "The Senate and House intel committees are still waiting on Facebook to actually hand over those ads," Dylan Byers said just now on "CNN Tonight." Here's his latest story about how the Russian-bought politically themed ads on FB sought to amplify political divisions... | | NFL, Facebook partner to show game highlights, recaps | | | Frank Pallotta emails: The NFL and Facebook have struck a deal that will bring official game highlights and recaps from all 256 regular season games as well as playoffs and the Super Bowl to the social media giant. The move, which doesn't include live game coverage, provides Facebook with content from one of the most popular sports leagues in the world, which will spur more usage of its video platform... | | By Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman:
-- Report for America is calling for applications to send three reporters to rural Appalachia, to work for a year at West Virginia Public Broadcasting, the Lexington Herald-Leader or the Charleston Gazette-Mail... (Poynter)
-- This is an interesting analysis of the new content ventures funded by tech companies and brands, like Casper's Van Winkle, the Dollar Shave Club's MEL, and Snapchat-backed Real Life... (The Ringer)
-- On CJR, Heidi N. Moore draws important lessons from Mic's pivot to video, applicable to all newsrooms... (CJR)
-- Ken Doctorow interviews Tony Haile, the CEO of Scroll, who wants to create a $5 a month ad-free subscription service to "premium news" from different news outlets... (NiemanLab) | | Lauren Williams taking over for Ezra Klein | | | Ezra Klein, who founded Vox three years ago, is handing off the editor in chief reins to his deputy Lauren Williams. Klein told me the EIC job has been one of the "great thrills and honors of my life," but "I feel a deep need to be out reporting on this political era, and to be working directly on the projects we're launching next year." Those projects include a daily podcast and a fresh push into television programming. So he'll be editor-at-large... Williams will be EIC... and Allison Rockey will become executive editor. Here's my full story... | | A shrinking Rolling Stone | | | Melissah Yang emails: Great scoop by VF's Gabriel Sherman: Jann Wenner's sale of Rolling Stone, announced last week, includes a business plan to slash the pub's editorial budget by 30% and turn it into a monthly mag. Ad revenue is reportedly projected to be $10.9 million in 2020. It was $28.6 million in 2015. Sad... | | | An Phung emails: Joyce Tang has been named Deputy Managing Editor at Gizmodo Media. And Fusion TV is tapping into its sibling Gizmodo's editorial brands to produce TV programs. The cable network will roll out Jalopnik's docuseries "Cars vs America" in October. Projects are also in development for Kotaku, Deadspin, The Root's Very Smart Brothas and Gizmodo... | | | For the record, part three | | | -- Three new featured performers at "SNL:" "Chris Redd, Heidi Gardner and Luke Null will help fill the voids created by the departures of Bobby Moynihan, Vanessa Bayer and Sasheer Zamata..." (THR)
-- Vice's Eve Peyser tells Joe Scarborough that his music is "objectively enjoyable..." (Vice)
-- Interesting Tim Goodman column: "Waiting for Television to Catch Up to Anti-Trump Outrage" (THR) | | Lowry reviews the latest "Law & Order" | | | Brian Lowry emails: NBC might be in the me-too business with "Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders," emulating Fox's "American Crime Story," but the sensational drama starring Edie Falco is well cast, solidly made and, based on the first two hours, quite entertaining... | | Steven Tyler suffers "unexpected medical issues," Aerosmith cancels tour dates | | | Melissah Yang emails: Aerosmith canceled the remaining dates of its "farewell" tour after revealing frontman Steven Tyler is suffering "unexpected medical issues." Tyler told fans he's not in a "life threatening condition..." and he promises to be back soon... | | | Sandra Gonzalez reports: Tuesday night marks the return of "This Is Us!" There's a special screening and Q&A with the cast taking place here in L.A. tonight down the street from CNN HQ. I'll be posting coverage overnight. Keep an eye out! | | | For the record, part four | | | By Lisa Respers France:
-- Sarah Jessica Parker is set to lead a walking tour of New York City. She's even going to share some of her favorite shoes -- though not the Manolo Blahnik's so beloved by her "Sex & the City" character Carrie Bradshaw...
-- "Pretty Little Liars" ended its series in June, but now it is getting a spin-off...
-- Meet Cardi B, the rapper who dethroned Taylor Swift from the top of the charts...
-- Here's what's streaming on Netflix, Amazon and Hulu in October... | | | Email brian.stelter@turner.com... I appreciate every message. The feedback helps us craft the next day's newsletter! | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
