Media

1. Paramount’s threat
2. Mixed Signals
3. Letterboxd buyers circle
4. Euractivision
5. Mamdani vs. The View

The left is increasingly finding that it, too, can get ahead with its base by campaigning against the media.

By circumventing the legacy media, Graham Platner’s campaign for a Senate seat in Maine successfully kept itself afloat for months amid a flurry of damaging stories. He defended his tattoo in a friendly interview with Pod Save America, whose hosts had largely seemed to accept his argument that he should be given grace for actions he’d taken when he was in a dark place.

Platner’s allies on the internet dismissed the initial reporting from The New York Times on his treatment of women as a hit from a non-credible right-winger written by a biased, pro-Israel reporter (now the Times is being accused of not going far enough with that first story). The reporting caught up with Platner, but his campaign weathered far more than previous candidates by leaning on grassroots donors and ideologically aligned media.

There are other signs of a left and center-left flank that feels emboldened to directly confront and circumvent a news media that it feels is not treating it fairly.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s team has threatened The View, as we get into later in the newsletter. Maryland Gov. Wes Moore is in open warfare with the biggest paper in the state over its coverage of his military record, sharing correspondence between the governor’s office and the journalists with the goal of embarrassing them. And if Democrats retake power in Congress after the midterms, they plan to make life more difficult for David Ellison’s Paramount.

Picking fights with the media is not new, and what the Democrats are doing right now — mostly complaining about or ignoring mainstream outlets — doesn’t come close to the intimidation tactics of the Trump administration, which subpoenaed Times journalists late on Friday over their reporting on security concerns with the new Air Force One.

But the progressive left is starting to act like it can’t take the legacy media for granted anymore.

Also today: Paramount ups the ante with California’s attorney general, and a surprising potential buyer for Letterboxd.

Paramount’s Sacramento brinkmanship

Ellison’s friends and advisers have been pushing the media executive to consider shifting his business out of California, if state Attorney General Rob Bonta attempts to stop the company’s pending merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, Semafor’s Rohan Goswami reports. No decisions have been made yet, according to people familiar with Ellison’s thinking, and the considerations may just be a show of brinkmanship, given so much of the industry’s production takes place outside of Hollywood already. Under the current deal, Paramount has committed to keeping both companies’ lots operational if it remains in California.

Ellison is reluctant to leave his home state. But several major employers, including Tesla and Oracle, have decamped to Texas in recent years, citing similarly unfavorable regulatory climates. And Paramount does have at least one short-term option: The company last year signed a lease in New Jersey for nearly 300,000 square feet of studio space and could expand operations there.

‘Casuals’ x ‘Mixed Signals’

Katie Nolan is questioning where sports media is headed. On this week’s Mixed Signals, the sports media host and Casuals podcast creator sits down to talk about navigating two decades of upheaval in the industry. Max and Ben ask Katie why she turned down gambling advertising when it was everywhere, how politics keeps inserting itself into sports, and whether the window that opened for women in the space is closing again. They also get into call-in radio, hockey’s underrated chaos, and what it took for her to become a Jeopardy! champion.

Goalboxd

Semafor reported in April that Tiny, the Canadian firm that bought 60% of Letterboxd in 2023, had hired LionTree to explore a sale of the platform. Now, the process seems to be starting in earnest. On Thursday, Puck’s Matt Belloni reported that the company has had early meetings with a series of suitors, including Sony Pictures, Paramount, and Netflix, private equity players TPG and RedBird, and media investor/Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

One other intriguing potential buyer: Play Time, the new VC fund backed by Argentine soccer legend Lionel Messi. Play Time has said it wants to focus on technology and sports, but also has an interest in media, and has been investing in companies catering to fandom.

The fund could also help assuage despondent Letterboxd fans. The platform’s die-hard users are a sensitive and opinionated bunch; when Tiny bought its stake, some lamented that VC money would ruin the site. The reaction to Variety’s aggregation of Thursday’s report was more pronounced, as Letterboxd devotees wondered whether a studio’s purchase of the site would affect what reviews users could write about various movies.

Still, people familiar with the sale process suggested that the studios were less likely buyers than other names on the list. Letterboxd’s CEOs have a right of refusal for any potential buyer, and have regularly expressed a desire to maintain the platform’s independent, somewhat twee ethos.

Euractiv by any other name

The media scooplet I couldn’t get while recruiting in Brussels last week was the new name of Politico’s main competitor in the European Union’s sprawling bureaucratic bubble. The outlet, currently under the unfortunate moniker Euractiv, has picked off a couple Politico stars, like the former Playbook writer Eddy Wax. Euractiv’s outgoing editor spent the last year throwing elbows at the competition, while the outlet lost quite a bit of money, per a new filing. Politico Europe brought back Executive Editor Carrie Budoff Brown for the fight. The challenges facing European governments and enterprises — most of all, the coming China economic shock — will be one of the world’s most important stories, and it seems that the media scene in the European capital will become increasingly competitive. (The chairman of Mediahuis, which owns Euractiv, is an investor in Semafor.)

— Ben Smith

Mamdani and ‘The View’

Last week, Semafor reported that some of Mamdani’s allies were frustrated with The View’s recent political coverage, particularly after right-leaning host Sara Haines’ remarks about New York Democratic congressional nominee and fellow democratic socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier.

“I’m gonna full-blown call her an antisemite. She would proudly call herself that, trust me,” Haines said of Avila Chevalier on a recent episode.

According to two people familiar with the conversations, a representative for Mamdani said he would not appear on The View unless Haines offered an on-air apology for her comments about Chevalier. The team invoked Whoopi Goldberg’s suspension in 2022 over comments regarding the Holocaust, and spoke directly with ABC News President Almin Karamehmedovic to convey the request, though it has so far gone unheeded. A spokesperson for ABC News did not return multiple requests for comment.

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The Atlantic: Rose Horowitch builds a sobering case that “the end of reading is here,” as generations of postliterate students lose the “higher-order abilities of comprehension and synthesis.”

The New Republic: “Everything is always ending in The Atlantic,” replies Tim Noah, pointing to the magazine’s similarly pessimistic stories about the “end” of diplomacy, human rights, and the rule of law.

WSJ: Netflix is looking into adding live channels to its service or bundling itself with its competitors, as a steep engagement drop-off looms, Jessica Toonkel and Ben Fritz scoop.

WaPo: Scott Nover follows the Voice of America diaspora to their post-Kari Lake careers (one broadcaster-turned-Trader Joe’s worker says the benefits are better).

Adweek: Publishers frustrated with AI-driven declines in Google search traffic are given “more agency to consider walking away” from SEO entirely, writes Mark Stenberg.

Semafor: The Daily Wire is selling its razor brand to former CEO Jeremy Boreing, we scooped last week. And don’t miss Mohammed Sergie’s obit for Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, a former Qatari emir who was the mastermind behind news giant Al Jazeera.

• The New York Post is building a personality-driven editorial platform, Semafor has learned. The publication has been seeking a general manager to run a business- and technology-focused platform that would deliver “agenda-setting, personality driven, must read reporting that highlights executives, innovators, and innovations, while providing insights that guide executives and decision-makers.” Sounds a bit familiar! “The New York Post never stands still. We’ve got big things in the works, and when the time is right, we’ll have more to share,” a spokesperson for the Post told Semafor.
• NBC News began quietly paywalling much of its non-breaking news content in recent days.
• Cable may be dying, but Fox News and MS NOW have ballooned to be two of the most-watched channels on YouTube simply by refashioning their cable news hits for the platform. It’s not a long-term solution to their major structural problems, but billions of essentially free views every year sure doesn’t hurt.
• The busy NBA offseason is showing just how much the league has been transformed by new media. Former NBA finals MVP Jaylen Brown’s hourlong Twitch streams have become appointment viewing for fans looking to dissect how his relationship with the Boston Celtics soured, resulting in a blockbuster trade. The Ringer continues to reap the rewards of creating a whole podcast for Rich Paul, who wheeled out a whiteboard for a surreal breakdown of where his biggest client, LeBron James, is thinking of signing with next season. The president of the Philadelphia 76ers, one of the teams James is considering, then appeared on Paul’s show to pitch him on the King joining the team.
• The New York Times is spinning up a local news operation in the Twin Cities, starting with a “voicey” newsletter and collaborations with existing local media outlets (which the Times says it views “not as competitors but as partners”).
• Broadcast news is also dying, but there are still some things that are best captured that way.