Media

1. Perplexity’s ad strategy
2. China influencer mystery
3. Blodget’s Solutions
4. Amazon’s podcast shuffle
5. Mixed Signals

Summer vacation is ending early for Paramount.

While emails to much of the media executive class are getting OOO replies, the leadership team at the newly merged Skydance and Paramount is in the midst of a flurry of activity, readying senior staff hires and negotiating potential acquisitions. The company has been on an executive hiring spree, announcing much of its leadership team last week while it woos others like David Rhodes and former Condé Nast Entertainment chief Agnes Chu, we’re told. It’s also on the hunt for big game, puffing out its chest about a potential future deal for Warner Brothers.

Ben was at Paramount’s hard launch of its new leadership at 1515 Broadway earlier this week. New owners David Ellison and Gerry Cardinale and executives Jeff Shell and George Cheeks dodged the thorniest questions about their relationship with the White House, then gamely broke bread with reporters.

But after months of embarrassing leaks and stories and negative headlines, the company wanted to send a clear message on its first day to the press that it’s going to be on offense.

Also today: Questions about China’s influencer program, a mother-son podcast pitch, and what Perplexity’s CEO learned from MrBeast. (Scoop count: 3)

Guide for the Perplexed

The founder of the newsy AI search product Perplexity — beloved by many users and hated by some publishers — told Semafor’s Reed Albergotti that AI companies will need to resist the siren song of advertising. “AI, like agentic search, will eventually want to be loyal to the user. That’s how you win here,” Aravind Srinivas told Reed.

“You’re not going to win by being nice to the advertiser. And the user will obviously pay once you’re delivering the value. But they’re not going to pay you as much as the advertisers pay you.”

In the wide-ranging interview, Srinivas also shared what the YouTuber MrBeast told him about marketing: “The IQ level on the internet is not that high. So if you’re really going for the masses, if you’re going for hundreds of millions of people, you got to keep it extremely simple.

What happened to China’s US influencer program?

Last week, Ben argued that China’s global influence campaign is succeeding, as Beijing embraces new forms of media while the US pulls back on its global soft-power initiatives. But mystery surrounding a Chinese initiative for foreign influencers suggests those efforts may have their limits. In June, Chinese state media announced it would pay for US creators with more than 300,000 followers to visit five Chinese cities in July and show off the “real China.” But nearly one month after the influencers were set to visit, there’s no evidence the trips happened as scheduled. Searches in traditional Chinese media and on social media platforms turned up no results or content that Beijing would’ve, in theory, been happy to broadcast to the world. It’s unclear who, if anyone, may have been tapped to take part. Asked about the status of the program, the state media outlet that had promoted the trip told Semafor: “This activity has come to an end,” without elaborating.

— J.D. Capelouto

Blodget launches pod

Nearly two decades after launching Business Insider, Henry Blodget wants to return to what brought him to media in the first place: writing and talking about what excites him in business and tech.

On August 18, Blodget is launching Solutions, an interview podcast. The show, produced in audio form and on YouTube in partnership with Vox Media, will center around a conversation with a guest or guests who are proposing solutions to the world’s greatest challenges in science, business, and society.

In an interview on Friday, the Business Insider founder and former CEO told Semafor that he spent years addicted to social media, where much of BI’s content is shared. But over time, he realized that much of what he was consuming was negative information and provocative opinions about the world’s problems, which often made him anxious and upset. Blodget said the realization prompted him to change his approach to his own posts on social media, as well as his journalism. With the new project, he is hoping to emphasize solutions to problems, rather than simply pointing out the problems themselves.

“The whole idea of this show is — we are all very aware of the problems in the world, and there is exceptional work being done every day by journalists and commentators and analysts on the depth of these problems,” he said. “There is also a huge group of people who are focusing their energy on trying to solve the problem, and often that is not rewarded on social or elsewhere.”

Amazon mulls Farrow two-for-one

The deep cuts at Amazon’s Wondery podcast studio rattled the audio industry last week, and raised questions about the company’s future podcast projects. One of those projects could be a podcast that Ronan Farrow had pitched to co-host with his mother, actor Mia Farrow, Semafor is told. Amazon’s Audible announced earlier this year that it had signed a multi-project deal with Farrow, which Semafor is told was in the seven-figure range.

The younger Farrow’s career has shifted in recent years. While his investigative work for The New Yorker helped define the #MeToo era and the first Trump administration, like many journalists he has gravitated towards audio. Earlier this year, Farrow released Not a Very Good Murderer, a true crime podcast investigating a series of cold cases in a wealthy community. He also hosted the Catch and Kill podcast, an adaptation of his book of the same name.

Mixed Signals

Pablo Torre was one of ESPN’s rising stars — a fixture on shows like PTI and Around the Horn. But now he’s building something outside the machine. This week, Ben and Max bring on the host of Pablo Torre Finds Out to talk about leaving ESPN, launching his own show with Dan Le Batard’s Meadowlark Media, and how it recently became part of The Athletic under The New York Times. They also discuss how Torre has broken major stories on his show — including scoops involving Bill Belichick, LeBron James, and the NFL — and how he hopes to reshape the media landscape by bringing investigative reporting to sports podcasting.

The owners of a small pierogi popup at a farmer’s market on Martha’s Vineyard got crisis comms and legal advice earlier this month, after they refused to serve Alan Dershowitz over his previous relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and representation of OJ Simpson. A lawyer and a public relations executive both happened to be standing behind Dershowitz during the initial incident, one person familiar with the situation told Semafor. Dershowitz said in a text message that he is considering legal action against the farmer’s market if they don’t make a rule mandating vendors sell to anyone … A glimpse of the bleak future of AI and politics can be found in Zohran Mamdani’s X replies … Axios laid off staff last week after quietly closing its Pro edition … After moving offices, BuzzFeed is now in the same Manhattan building as Astronomer ...