• Meta's content moderation changes aim to appease Donald Trump and conservative allies.
• Mark Zuckerberg's moves follow efforts to align with Trump, including meetings and policy shifts.
• Meta's new approach includes ending third-party fact-checking and demoting its Trust and Safety team.

Sometimes the obvious thing is the obvious thing.

Which is to say: You can make pro and con arguments for many of the massive changes Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced about the way his company is going to moderate — or not moderate — content. It's a complicated topic.

But the most important takeaway is that all of Tuesday's news has been rolled out specifically for Donald Trump, and the new political regime that officially kicks into gear on January 20.

That includes the language Zuckerberg and his company are using to describe the changes — like when Zuckerberg criticizes "legacy media" and declares that "the recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point" in a video posted Tuesday morning.

It includes the venue Meta used to announce the changes — Fox News, Trump's favorite TV channel. And, of course, the changes themselves. We'll get to those in a second.

But first, some crucial context: Tuesday's news follows a series of moves Zuckerberg and Meta have made to make nice with Trump and Republicans, which began before November's election.

A reminder of that timeline:

• In July, Zuckerberg praised Trump as a "badass" after surviving an assassination attempt.
• In August, Zuckerberg sent Republican Congresssman Jim Jordan a letter where he acknowledged moderation mistakes in the past.
• In November, Zuckerberg traveled to Mar-a-Lago for a postelection audience with Trump, then pledged $1 million to Trump's inaugural committee.
• Last week Zuckerberg announced that he was replacing his head of policy: Nick Clegg, the former British politician, was out, replaced by Joel Kaplan, a longtime Republican.
• On Monday, Zuckerberg announced that he was adding Dana White, the head of the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship and a prominent Trump backer, to his board of directors.

Add it all up and there's no way to see Zuckerberg's moves as anything other than a straightforward attempt to please Trump and the incoming president's conservative allies, who have often complained that Zuckerberg's properties were biased against them. It's crystal clear.

As far as the changes themselves: It's entirely possible that some of the stuff Zuckerberg and his team announced Tuesday reflects what Zuckerberg actually believes. (I've asked Meta PR if Zuckerberg wants to expand on his comments.)

Figuring out the best way to moderate — or not moderate — giant platforms that depend on free contributions from their users has bedeviled all of the Big Tech companies for years. And Zuckerberg has never seemed comfortable with the various moderation layers and rules his company has added over time.*

He has also been signaling that he's particularly unhappy about the way the company responded to criticism and regulation following the 2016 election and subsequent revelations like the Cambridge Analytica data breach.

So getting rid of third-party fact-checking of controversial posts in favor of the "Community Notes" system Elon Musk's Twitter/X uses, might very well be what Zuckerberg thinks makes sense. It certainly fits a Silicon Valley ethos that's much more comfortable using a combination of users and software to make decisions about what people see on those platforms, rather than asking executives to take responsibility for those calls.

The same goes for the demotion of Meta's Trust and Safety team — which is most definitely what Zuckerberg intends by moving those operations from California to Texas, which, at a minimum, is an attrition play. Zuckerberg has long talked about wanting those roles to eventually become automated, and in the meantime, hiring humans to do that work has been difficult, messy, or worse. Simply doing less of it is one way to get at the problem. (Worth noting: In 2023, Meta investor and board member Marc Andreessen described Trust and Safety operations as part of "The Enemy" he wanted tech to fight back against.)

And figuring out how to run a platform that's based in America but subject to regulation around the world is a problem that all US tech companies struggle with. You can imagine the appeal of Zuckerberg's new approach — simply announcing that the rest of the world is anti-growth.

There will be a lot of devil in the details here. For instance, Zuckerberg certainly can't fully adopt Elon Musk's next-to-anything-goes approach for his companies. Unlike Musk, he isn't in a position to scare off users and advertisers who want a clean, well-lit space.

But those are all details to hash out in the future. Tuesday's news is simple: It's Donald Trump's world, and Mark Zuckerberg is living in it.

*Criticisms of Meta/Facebook's moderation attempts don't only come from the right. I always remember the prime minister of Norway, among others, complaining when Facebook took down posts that used a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo from the Vietnam War — a move Facebook first defended, then reversed.

• Disney and partners have settled with Fubo to launch the Venu sports streaming service.
• Venu's launch was delayed over an antitrust suit filed by Fubo.
• Disney is set to merge Hulu + Live TV with Fubo, creating a major digital TV service.

Remember Venu, the sports streaming service co-owned by Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery?

Unless you spend a lot of time focused on the sports media business, you probably don't. That's because the service never launched: It was supposed to go live in the fall but got derailed by an antitrust suit filed by Fubo, a small streaming service.

Now it's again set to launch — after Disney and its partners essentially paid Fubo to drop the suit. Hearings in the case were supposed to start Monday.

Part of the payment will be cash, but there's a more eye-popping, and confusing, part of the deal: Disney plans to combine its Hulu + Live TV streaming service — its cablelike package of TV channels — with Fubo's similar service into a new company, which doesn't have a name yet.

The combined company should have about 6 million subscribers, making it the second-largest all-digital TV service after YouTube TV, which has some 8 million subscribers. And it would be the sixth-largest pay-TV service, period.

(Important note: This deal does not affect Disney's much bigger Hulu subscription on-demand service — the one most people think about when they think of Hulu. That one had 47.4 million subscribers as of September; Hulu + Live TV, which costs much more, has 4.6 million subscribers.)

We can get into a few more details in a moment. But to me, the biggest takeaway is this: It's a reminder that Disney, which is launching its own stand-alone ESPN streaming service this fall, isn't fully confident about that service's prospects. That's why it wanted to be in Venu — to be part of a bigger sports streaming service, in case a meaningful number of people wanted streaming sports from ESPN and other networks as well.

And now that Venu is (very likely) to launch this year, it means that by next fall, ESPN watchers will have a lot of options: They can pay for stand-alone ESPN; they can pay for it as part of a sports-streaming package along with other channels like ABC, TNT, and Fox; or they can pay for it as part of a very big bundle of channels, delivered by a variety of traditional and digital pay-TV companies.

Onto the details: The new, unnamed Disney/Fubo joint venture would be 70% owned by Disney, which would also control its board. But Fubo's existing management team would run the service. The deal also allows Fubo to create a new "skinny" bundle of networks including ESPN and ABC. And people who are already paying for Fubo or Hulu + Live TV via existing apps would be able to keep doing that.

Fubo also gets cash as part of the deal. Disney, Fox, and WBD plan to collectively pay the company $220 million, and next year Disney is set to lend the company $145 million to help pay down Fubo's other debt obligations. Fubo will get a $130 million fee if the deal doesn't get regulatory approval.

Fubo shareholders like the deal, pushing the stock up some 172% Monday to about $4. (Fubo had a brief pandemic-fueled run in 2021 when its shares zoomed up to $49, but since then, the market has mostly ignored it.)

So, when will Venu launch? No one is saying, but my hunch is this spring.

Remember that Venu was originally supposed to launch in the fall, when college and pro football kicked off. But Disney is already planning on launching "Flagship" — its ESPN-only service — this fall for the same football-related reasons, and it wouldn't make a lot of sense to launch both services at the same time.

So I would expect Venu to go up much earlier once the joint venture, which has been mostly mothballed for months, is ready for prime time. Some big sports dates coming up to keep in mind: The Super Bowl is February 9; college basketball's big tournament kicks off in mid-March.

• Nick Clegg is leaving Meta. Joel Kaplan is replacing him as its top policy executive.
• Clegg joined Meta in 2018 to navigate European regulators amid election interference issues.
• Kaplan, with strong Republican ties, is seen as aligning Meta with Trump's Washington.

Seeya, Europe.

Hello again, Washington.

Trump's Washington, that is.

That's the way many people are interpreting a shake-up at the top of Meta: Longtime policy head Nick Clegg — formerly an influential British politician — is leaving the company. Clegg's replacement is Joel Kaplan, who has spent even more time at Meta — and who has extensive connections with the Republican Party that will be in control of Washington later this month.

This one seems pretty straightforward. The history: Clegg came to Meta in 2018, back when it was called Facebook and was reeling from allegations that it had been used by Russia and other bad actors to affect the 2016 US presidential election.

While Clegg had to deal with angry US lawmakers — the company eventually paid a $5 billion fine over the Cambridge Analytica scandal — he was hired at least in part to help Mark Zuckerberg navigate European regulators, who have been more aggressive than their US counterparts when it comes to Big Tech.

But now Zuckerberg will have to spend a lot of time trying to please — or at least not anger — Donald Trump and his allies. You can see Zuckerberg's tacit acknowledgment of the new reality in his postelection visit to Trump at the incoming president's Mar-a-Lago resort and his $1 million donation to Trump's inauguration committee. (You can also see a pre-election version of Zuckerberg's maneuvering in the way he dealt with Republican Jim Jordan's Judiciary Committee this past summer.)

And Kaplan seems like a good in-house option if you want to make nice with Republicans. He spent years working for the George W. Bush administration and has been Facebook/Meta's bridge to conservative politicians and players for a long time. And, crucially, he has been at the company since 2011, which means Zuckerberg trusts him. (Another sign of his in-house status — he got an onstage role at Zuckerberg's 40th birthday roast; see my colleague Katie Notopoulos's analysis of the "heinous form of athletic wear" Kaplan wore for that one.)

Here's the part where I tell you not to read too much into Kaplan's ascent and Clegg's departure, which was first reported by Semafor.

Meta, for instance, is currently battling a federal antitrust suit that was originally filed by Trump's first administration. That's unlikely to go away no matter who heads up policy. Navigating Europe will continue to be important for Meta. And Clegg had been discussing leaving Meta long before last fall's election, according to a person familiar with his conversations.

But this is also one of those cases where what it looks like — one of the biggest companies in the world, setting itself up for years of Trump 2.0 — is probably what it is. And it's going to be seen that way, regardless.

Which is probably how Zuckerberg and Trump both like it.

• Laura Loomer, an Elon Musk supporter-turned-critic, says Musk has demoted her account on Twitter/X.
• Musk has accused Loomer of "trolling for attention."
• It's a reminder: We've seen Musk run Twitter on a whim. Now that he's got an important role in politics: Will he behave the same way there?

Laura Loomer has been kicked off lots of social media sites, including Twitter. After Elon Musk bought the service in 2022, he reinstated her, along with many others who had been booted by Twitter's previous management.

Now, Loomer claims, Musk's service has demoted her by stripping her account's "premium" blue-check status and other benefits. She says Musk made the move because she was criticizing his stance on immigration.

You may be unaware of Loomer — described by Wikipedia as "an American far-right political activist, conspiracy theorist, and internet personality" — and/or the online rock fight about immigration and racism breaking out among different wings of Trump supporters. If so, that could mean you have a healthy relationship with the internet. Good for you.

If you'd like to know more about the latter, my colleague Hasan Chowdhury has an explainer. You could also, at your own risk, consult Twitter/X's own summary of the story.

My point is, you don't need me to tell you about this.

I simply want to remind you that — if Loomer's allegation is correct — this would be par for the course for Musk and his social media company. (Musk hasn't denied Loomer's charges, and has told his followers to ignore her because she's "trolling for attention." I've asked her and Twitter/X for additional comment.)

As I've noted before, the most consistent thing about Musk's management style at Twitter is his erratic, flip-flopping, inconsistency.

Sometimes it's about relatively small stuff, like wooing Don Lemon to start a talk show on Twitter, and then canceling the deal before the show ever started. Sometimes it's about really big stuff — like agreeing to pay some $44 billion for Twitter, then spending weeks in court trying not to buy it.

In any case, the only way you can be surprised by stuff like this at this point is if you never paid attention.

But I do think it's still worth pointing out. Because while Musk's management style at Twitter hasn't changed, his responsibilities have changed.

He's no longer just the richest person in the world, who runs important companies like Tesla and SpaceX, in addition to Twitter. Musk may now be the most powerful unelected person in America, given his importance to Donald Trump and his upcoming administration.

There's his role at DOGE, for starters. And the fact that he appears to be conducting foreign policy for Trump. And that he used Twitter to temporarily tank a government funding bill this month.

We don't know how long this arrangement is going to last, and what kind of impact Musk is going to have. But we do know that for now, a man with the power to affect the way the American government operates is the same man who can change the way he runs Twitter depending on how he feels at any given moment. We shouldn't ignore that.

• Netflix didn't crash when it streamed two NFL games on Christmas.
• Even better for the NFL and Netflix: The streaming-only games got audiences that were only a bit smaller than a TV game.
• Streaming live sports used to be a novelty. Not anymore.

Netflix passed two tests on Wednesday when it streamed live NFL football games for the first time in its history.

First: Netflix managed to stream the games around the world without widespread tech foul-ups that plagued its Mike Tyson-Jake Paul boxing exhibition/stunt last month.

Second: Netflix managed to attract the kind of audience for the games that you'd expect from the NFL, which is continually the most popular thing on conventional TV.

The NFL and the streamer say that both of Wednesday's games — the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Houston Texans — averaged around 24 million viewers in the US. That's a record for streaming NFL games in the country. (Those initial numbers may swell a bit once the NFL, Netflix, and Nielsen scour for additional viewers.)

The biggest audience — around 27 million viewers — showed up for the "Beyoncé Bowl" — a halftime performance during the Ravens/Texans game, featuring, of course, Beyoncé.

For comparison, last year, the NFL attracted an average of some 28 million US viewers for the two games it broadcast on Christmas Day, via conventional TV networks. (Netflix's numbers don't include viewers outside the US; it says it will report back on those on December 31. Netflix says the audience for the Tyson/Paul event peaked at 65 million worldwide and 38 million in the US.)

All of which means that when Netflix streams Christmas games again next year, and again in 2027, it won't seem like a novelty. It will just be the most popular sport on TV, delivered via a streaming service.

This is what both Netflix and the NFL want, for slightly different reasons. The NFL is always looking for another outlet that will pay it top dollar for the right to show its games — Netflix paid the NFL a reported $150 million for this year's games — and Netflix wants high-profile live events as a way to boost its nascent ad business.

Win-win. This is what the NFL has been finding every time it sells streaming rights to digital players over the years, including Yahoo, Twitter, Amazon, and Google.

While we are here, a couple other notes:

• While there was some discussion of Netflix trying to make its NFL coverage unique, I couldn't discern anything meaningfully different about the games from any others I've watched this year. Which, again, is the point: The NFL wants the product to look the same no matter where you see it. (And if there is a desire for something different on the part of fans, I have yet to discern it.)

• Netflix streaming NFL games for the first time is meaningful to the NFL, Netflix, and people who pay attention to the media business. But in my 100% unscientific poll of people in the real world, no one knew Netflix had the games. And when they found out, they didn't care, which makes sense: Neither game was particularly important, or suspenseful. But for Netflix and the NFL that wasn't the point.

• Starting next fall, you'll be able to watch ESPN without paying for other cable channels.
• ESPN hasn't said how much its new streaming service will cost. Analysts think it might go for about $25 a month.
• ESPN isn't sure how many takers the new service will have. It's hoping a new ad campaign will prime the pump.

If you pay attention to the media business, you know that ESPN is going to cut the cord next year. Disney's sports channel is finally going to offer TV viewers a chance to subscribe to ESPN as a stand-alone streaming service, like Netflix or Max.

But ESPN needs to reach a much bigger audience than people who pay attention to the media business if this thing is going to work.

So here's a new ad that's supposed to "set the stage for ESPN's upcoming chapter," per the company's press release. It's going to start airing on Christmas.

This one isn't for me. But I'm not a professional ad critic. And lots of times, the ad campaigns that ad critics swoon over don't really move the needle, so who knows?

But I am old, and I remember the 1990s, when ESPN's SportsCenter was the center of the sports universe. And the winking, mockumentary spots it ran all the time made you feel like you weren't wasting your time watching sports. Sports were fun, but also funny, and you were in on the joke, too.

Anyway. Things are different now. Let's look ahead to the future. Specifically next fall, when what ESPN refers to as "Flagship" is supposed to launch. (This is different than the ESPN+ service it already sells, which shows you stuff that's not on ESPN; Flagship will be a streamed version of all the stuff that's on "real" ESPN.) How much will it cost, and how many people will sign up?

The company has yet to reveal pricing, or audience projections, so outside estimates can vary wildly.

MoffettNathanson analyst Rob Fishman thinks ESPN will sell Flagship for about $25 a month, and projects modest pickup at first: 1 million paid subscribers by the end of 2026, 1.5 million in 2027, and 3 million by 2030.

Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall is way more bullish. He thinks ESPN will sell Flagship for $23 a month, and projects 12 million subscribers in 2027, and 17 million by 2030.

That big spread reflects the uncertainty I've heard coming from Disney and ESPN insiders themselves. They simply don't know how many people will want to pay for a service that gives them a lot of sports, but not all the sports on TV. And they also don't know if the people who do pay are going to be cable TV subscribers who are trading down from a big bundle of channels — or if they will be cord-cutters/cord-nevers who aren't paying for cable in the first place.

That uncertainty was part of the rationale for ESPN's participation in Venu, the "Hulu for sports" streaming service that was going to cost $43 a month, and would include ESPN and other Disney channels like ABC, as well as sports and non-sports programming from Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery. The thinking/hope was that between traditional TV, the stand-alone streamer, and the joint venture, ESPN would end up capturing whatever audience wanted to pay for sports, no matter how they wanted to pay for it.

Venu was supposed to have launched already, but has been held up by an antitrust legal challenge; a trial is supposed to get underway in early January. So if Disney and its partners win, ESPN could find itself launching two different streamers next year.

• College football used to have a regular season and some bowl games you may or may not have watched.
• Now college football has its own playoffs — and this year, it is supersizing them.
• Can Americans invest even more time watching football? It's a good bet.

Are you ready for some college football? A lot of college football?

Doesn't matter. If you live in America and you're going to be around a TV over the next few weeks, it's going to be hard not to see college football.

That's because this is the first year college football is running a supersize version of its playoffs, featuring 12 teams, up from four. That means there are going to be 11 games — from Friday to January 20 — that are going to get a lot of attention from a lot of people.

The commercial calculation here is straightforward: National playoffs draw national interest for what is often a regional sport. So more national playoff games equals more interest.

That's why Disney's ESPN is paying $1.3 billion a year for the (mostly) exclusive rights to the playoffs. (Disney, somewhat weirdly, has sublicensed a few of the playoff games to its frenemy Warner Bros. Discovery's TNT network.)

ESPN's customers think the playoffs will be popular, too. The network says it has added dozens of new advertisers to its playoff lineup and is boasting about big increases in revenue.

But even before the first snap of the first game, the bulked-up tournament seems like it has already been a hit by boosting the pre-playoff games. Nielsen says regular-season ratings for college football were up 6% this fall compared with 2023 — and up 11% for adults ages 18 to 34.

In a world where traditional TV shrinks every year — and even more so with young viewers — that's quite a bump. And it's exactly what the media industry was hoping for.

"There were more games, throughout more of the regular season, that were meaningful and impactful for the playoff race," says Amanda Gifford, who heads up college football production for ESPN. "Almost every weekend, there were games that had impact."

That boost wasn't just confined to games on ESPN. Mike Mulvihill, who heads up analytics and strategic planning for Fox Sports and Fox broadcast, says his team thought about playoff implications as it was planning which regular-season games it would broadcast this year.

Early in the season, when it wouldn't be clear which schools were likely to compete for a playoff slot, Fox leaned on brand-name matchups, like Alabama vs. Wisconsin. But later in the season, when Indiana became a surprising playoff contender, Fox was delighted to broadcast its game against Ohio State.

I've seen the effects of expanded playoffs play out in real life: A couple of weekends ago, I spent the night with a bunch of middle-age dudes who were toggling between multiple college games, none of which featured Notre Dame, where they had all graduated. But they cared deeply about what happened in games like Texas vs. Georgia because the results could affect where the Irish would end up in the playoff. (Notre Dame ended up matched up against Indiana for the playoff's opening game).

So, if college football is winning, who's losing?

In theory, these games could end up competing with pro football, whose end-of-season games and early-round playoff season overlap with the college tournament. But you'd have to be a very brave person to bet against the NFL — the one thing Americans will watch on TV no matter what.

A much safer wager: College football's playoffs will destroy any remaining interest in all of the also-ran bowl games, which have already been steadily downgraded by fans and networks — some of which don't bother to send announcing crews to the games.

So sorry, Myrtle Beach Bowl. You, too, GameAbove Sports Bowl. And I'm from Minnesota, but I'm still not going to watch the Golden Gophers play Virginia Tech in the Duke's Mayo Bowl. Who cares who wins any of those?

But on Saturday, in the first round of the playoffs, Penn State is playing Southern Methodist — a school I vaguely remember being kicked out of college football for paying players. Now it's essentially legal — and encouraged — and whoever wins gets into an even higher-stakes game 10 days later. Truth be told, I'm not a college football guy. But I'm in, anyway.

Correction: December 20, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the matchup for the Duke's Mayo Bowl. Minnesota is set to play Virginia Tech, not West Virginia.

• Donald Trump said he's planning on suing a newspaper over an election poll he didn't like.
• It's in keeping with a flurry of recent threats — and suits — Trump has filed against the media.
• That can create a landscape where publishers will have to be extra careful about what they say.

A pretty good journalism rule of thumb: Someone threatening to sue someone isn't news.

Literally anyone can say they're going to sue someone, for any reason. But many people who say they're going to sue someone don't follow through. So, the argument goes, you should wait until they actually file a suit, for real, to report on it.

Then there's Donald Trump. He also threatens to sue people — and the press specifically — all the time. But sometimes, he goes ahead with the threat. He's also going to be the most powerful person in the world, again, starting next month.

So. When Trump announces that he's going to sue journalists and news organizations — like he did Monday, when he suggested he would sue pollster Ann Selzer, or The Des Moines Register, or both, for publishing a poll that showed him losing Iowa in the 2024 election — should we take him seriously?

I think so.

That's in part because Trump, who has a long career of threatening media organizations, seems to be ramping up his legal energy. Over the weekend, he extracted a $15 million settlement from ABC News over a George Stephanopoulos interview from March that Trump said was defamatory. He's also filed a suit against CBS over the way its "60 Minutes" program handled an interview with Kamala Harris, claiming the network is guilty of election interference.

Plenty of legal experts think Trump has no chance of defeating CBS in court — "The First Amendment was drafted to protect the press from just such litigation," attorney Floyd Abrams told CNN this fall. But that same cohort didn't think much of Trump's chances against ABC.

Just as important: The threats Trump is making— along with those made by others in his circle, like Kash Patel, Trump's nominee to run the FBI, who has promised to "come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections" — seem to be a strategy.

As The New York Times's David Enrich notes, those suits and threatened suits seem like the "latest sign that the incoming Trump administration appears poised to do what it can to crack down on unfavorable media coverage."

It's true that the First Amendment makes it hard to win suits against journalists, and everyone else in the United States, over what they say or write. Even more so when the person filing the suit is a public figure. And Donald Trump may be the most public figure there is.

But fighting lawsuits — even those without much chance of winning — can be very costly. (For its part, The Des Moines Register's parent company has said a lawsuit would be without merit.) And while it's possible for publishers who win suits Trump files against them to charge him for their legal fees — like The New York Times successfully did this year — you still have to have the money, and willpower, for the fight.

Perhaps just as important: It's one thing to fight Donald Trump in court when he's a private citizen. It's quite another when he's the president of the United States and can make life difficult for you or your company regardless of what happens in the courtroom.

All of which is something you now have to think about if you're in the business of journalism. Not just when Trump, or someone in his circle, complains about your reporting — but before you publish or air it. That seems to be what Trump would like.

So yeah. That's a story.

• It's not new for rich people and big companies to donate to presidential inaugurations.
• Something about watching tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos do it seems different.
• That's at least in part because it's so public — the money is less important than the message.

First, Mark Zuckerberg. Then, Jeff Bezos. Now, Sam Altman. They're all donating $1 million to Donald Trump's inauguration fund.

Expect more tech titans to follow. Google CEO Sundar Pichai was reportedly flying to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump this week. I wouldn't be shocked to see a $1 million pledge coming shortly after. (Google declined to comment about any of the above.)

You can see it playing out in real time. Zuckerberg's initial donation was news; each subsequent one just confirms it as the cost of doing business. At some point, the news will be when you hear that some tech giant is not forking over $1 million to help fund Trump's multiday party next month.

Quick context: It is not unusual for big companies and very rich people to donate lots of money to presidential inaugurations, whether via cash, in-kind contributions, or both.

While US elections themselves have (some) rules about the amount of money people and companies can spend on candidates, there's no cap on what they can spend on inaugural committees. The only restrictions are that the money can't come from foreign nationals and that the donations eventually have to be disclosed.

Which is why we can see it's also not unheard of for Big Tech companies to make inaugural donations. Microsoft kicked in $500,000 for Trump's first inauguration in 2017; Google spent $285,000. Those two companies also contributed to Joe Biden's 2021 inauguration, along with Uber, which spent $1 million.

It's also worth noting that the sums we are talking about here don't even qualify as rounding errors for companies this size. Zuckerberg's Meta makes about $174 million in profit every day. Amazon does about $110 million. A million bucks just doesn't register. (The Amazon and Meta donations are coming directly from the companies, not their founders; Altman, who has a reported net worth of $1.1 billion, has said he's making his donation personally.)

So what makes this round of donations newsworthy?

Yes, in some cases, Trump has tangled with the companies or the leaders in question — he famously threatened to jail Zuckerberg earlier this year for theoretical election interference, and he's long railed about Amazon's founder, Bezos, as well as the Bezos-owned Washington Post.

There's also the fact that while Trump and his allies continue to insist that they want to cut regulations, they also insist that they'll be cracking down on Big Tech. That context makes the donations seem even more transactional than other rich person/corporate donations.

But the main reason this is news is … because it's news. News that's out in public, that is.

In the past, these donations would eventually be disclosed in filings, but this time around, the contributors seem eager to let the world know they're doing it.

That's the telling part. The part that tells you that this time around, more tech leaders have decided that the best way to deal with Donald Trump is to say nice things about him in public, and to do nice things for him — in public. And then, they hope, they can get things from him privately.

That is, they are taking cues from Apple CEO Tim Cook, who navigated the first Trump presidency very effectively. As I've noted before: "Cook became an expert Trump manager during Trump 1.0 by letting the president do what he wanted in public, like take credit for things he didn't do, while prevailing on him privately to do things Cook wanted Trump to do — namely, exempting Apple products from tariffs." I'm assuming that will also include a $1 million donation from Apple that will get announced very shortly.

• Are you still paying for cable TV?
• If so, consider that the people who own cable TV networks seem increasingly uninterested in hanging on to them.
• That's the real story behind WBD's corporate maneuvering Thursday — to make a cable TV spinoff or sale much more likely.

Comcast is ditching its cable TV networks. Now Warner Bros. Discovery may do the same.

That's the takeaway from Thursday's news that WBD is splitting up its cable TV business from its streaming and studio operations.

To be clear: WBD is not saying that it intends to ditch its cable networks, like TNT and Food Network.

Instead, it's using hand-wavy language like "a new corporate structure designed to enhance its strategic flexibility and create potential opportunities to unlock additional shareholder value" to describe what it's doing.

But to be super clear: The reason WBD is doing this now is so it can get rid of its cable operations in the future, perhaps by merging them with the cable TV spinoff that Comcast has planned for next year. And, just as important, because it wants to tell Wall Street that a breakup is on the table.

Not coincidentally, WBD shares are up 13% on the news.

Reminder: WBD has floated this idea before, though less formally. Earlier this summer, WBD execs said (quietly) they were looking at the same kind of corporate restructuring, and then decided to back off the idea.

What has changed since then?

On the one hand, not a lot. The structural challenges around a split still remain: Namely, the fact that while cable TV networks are declining assets, they're still profitable ones, and those profits help keep their owners' other assets afloat.

On the other hand: Now that Comcast has announced it is absolutely going to split off its declining cable TV assets, it helps make other splits more likely. That's because Comcast's spun-off cable TV operation will want to find other cable TV networks to add to its collection so it can increase negotiating power. Which (potentially) solves the "who wants to buy a declining asset?" problem WBD was looking at before.

Also of note: Donald Trump's second term in office may be much, much friendlier to consolidation, as WBD CEO David Zaslav noted the morning after Trump's election. (Reminder: The Trump 2.0 merger mania many people expect may not extend across the board. Trump's incoming team continues to make noise about reining in Big Tech, and that scrutiny may also apply to (at least some parts of) Big Media.)

All of which is worth remembering if you still pay for a package of cable TV networks, which means you are continually being asked to pay more for them. (Just Thursday, Google said it was hiking the price of its YouTube TV cable bundle by 14%.) You, the consumer, are being told cable TV is worth paying more for. But cable TV owners want to get these things off their books.

• BuzzFeed used to be a high-flying digital publisher. Now it has shrunk considerably.
• BuzzFeed needed to find a way to pay off a big debt obligation due this month.
• It solved that problem by selling the company behind "Hot Ones" for $83 million to a fund controlled by investor George Soros.

Good news for BuzzFeed: It no longer has a huge debt problem looming over its head.

Slightly less good news for BuzzFeed: Solving the debt problem means the company needed to sell one of its buzziest assets — First We Feast, the production company that owns the "Hot Ones" interview show.

And now Hot Ones — the show where celebrities answer questions while eating increasingly spicy chicken wings — is going to be owned by … investor George Soros and his family.

There's a bit going on here. We can break it down in a minute. But the big picture is that BuzzFeed, once considered a world-beating digital publisher, has staved off a potential extinction event (and, for what it's worth, has likely extinguished a threat posed by investor and political player Vivek Ramaswamy). And in addition, George Soros has added another asset to an interesting collection of media investments he has assembled in the past few years.

OK. Here are the details: As I've noted before, BuzzFeed was on the hook for $124 million in debt and interest payments and was facing the prospect of having to pay it back this month.

But now BuzzFeed has sold First We Feast/Hot Ones to what it's calling a consortium "led by an affiliate of Soros Fund Management LLC" for $82.5 million in cash. Then it took the proceeds from that sale, threw in some cash it already had on hand, and paid back some $90 million of its debt obligations. BuzzFeed says it has $30 million in debt remaining, and that money is due in a year.

"BuzzFeed says its remaining businesses — BuzzFeed, the pop culture site best known for listicles, quizzes, and celebrity news; Huffington Post, the left-leaning news site; and Tasty, its food vertical — will power the company in the future, along with what CEO Jonah Peretti calls "new AI-powered interactive experiences."

First We Feast, meanwhile, says it will now operate as a standalone company. It says the deal and its new ownership structure will let it "fuel existing and new content franchises" and fund "future partnerships and acquisitions with other creators." A press release from the company says "Hot Ones" host Sean Evans is one of the investors in the new company, which suggests he's going to be sticking around for a while.

And while it might seem weird for Soros, who is worth a reported $7.2 billion and whose funding of liberal causes has made him a bogeyman for some US conservatives, to own a celebrity interview show, it's not a total shocker, for a couple of reasons.

For starters, Soros' empire — now run by his son Alex — has been making movies into media over the last few years. In 2022, it acquired a minority stake in Crooked Media, the podcast company best known for its "Pod Save America" show. And earlier this year, Soros acquired a controlling stake in Audacy, a bankrupt radio company with more than 200 stations in the US — a deal that incensed some Republicans.

There's also some connective tissue between Soros and BuzzFeed at play here via media executive Michael Del Nin. Back in 2021, Del Nin put together the deal that allowed BuzzFeed to go public, and he was set to become one of BuzzFeed's top executives in 2022. Instead, Del Nin went to Soros, where he leads the investment company's media unit.

The deal also means that BuzzFeed has reduced its risk that Ramaswamy, an investor and soon-to-be DOGE cochair advising the next Trump administration, will have meaningful influence in its future.

Earlier this year, Ramaswamy bought up a 9% stake in BuzzFeed and told Peretti he should bring a group of conservative media types onto BuzzFeed's board and turn BuzzFeed into a Twitter-style platform. Then he suggested that when BuzzFeed's debt came due this month, the company would be unable to pay it back and that somehow Ramaswamy would end up controlling the company. That doesn't seem like an option anymore.

• Yup, it was right out of "Succession": Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, fighting three other Murdoch children in court.
• Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch have lost that case — for now.
• That means Lachlan Murdoch will need to share control of his father's empire with three siblings when Rupert dies. But we don't know what that will actually mean.

Rupert Murdoch lost a legal case about the future of his media empire. What does that mean?

Real talk: It's too early to tell. At least one appeal is coming, so this could all shake out differently down the line.

But for now: It means that Murdoch's attempt to anoint his son Lachlan as the leader of his businesses once the elder Murdoch dies has been foiled.

And if that holds up, it means the future of Murdoch's empire — which includes Fox News and other Fox TV networks; The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post; and TV and print assets in the UK and Australia — will be that much messier when Murdoch, 93, is gone.

That's because — if the ruling holds up — Lachlan Murdoch will have to share control of the family business after his father's death with three of his siblings: James, Elisabeth, and Prudence. That was the heart of the dispute fought in a closed-door Nevada courtroom this fall. The New York Times got its hands on the sealed ruling, filed by a probate commissioner this weekend.

But beyond that, it's very hard to say what the news means. Rupert Murdoch has argued that it was important to make sure Lachlan Murdoch ran the family business the way Rupert Murdoch ran it. But that doesn't mean that Lachlan Murdoch would keep things untouched once his father died.

Maybe Lachlan would sell some assets that his father didn't want to sell for whatever reason. Maybe he wouldn't run Fox News — a core asset for the family business, in terms of both financial and political power — exactly the way his father did.

Similarly, the winners in the case — Lachlan's siblings James, Elisabeth, and Prudence — now have the ability to out-vote Lachlan. Which means, in theory, that they could force sales of things neither Lachlan nor Rupert wanted to part with. They could also, in theory, change the way Fox News operates.

But just because three members of the Murdoch clan fought their father's plans to make Lachlan more powerful than them doesn't mean they would always work together. The ruling just means they have a chance to weigh in.

Through a rep, James, Prudence, and Elisabeth applauded the decision and offered "hope that we can move beyond this litigation to focus on strengthening and rebuilding relationships among all family members." I also contacted Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch's rep for comment.

I realize that this is shrug-emoji of an explainer may be disappointing to some of you who would like a more definitive answer. Particularly those of you whose interest in the Murdoch family, and its twists and turns, relates primarily to the way it was partially fictionalized in "Succession."

But here's a little bit of a reward for dedicated watchers of HBO prestige dramas: It turns out that the court case, referred to by almost everyone as "straight out of Succession" was literally straight out of "Succession."

The Times reports that the Murdoch family fight kicked off in April 2023 as the HBO series was headed toward its conclusion.

Setting off these discussions was the episode of the HBO drama 'Succession,' the commissioner wrote, "where the patriarch of the family dies, leaving his family and business in chaos." The episode prompted Elisabeth's representative to the trust, Mark Devereux, to write a "'Succession' memo" intended to help avoid a real-life repeat.

Instead, that discussion eventually prompted Rupert Murdoch to amend the family trust later that year to give Lachlan full control.

Which led to this fall's court fight — but not the end of the story. Stay tuned.

• Apple's Vision Pro headsets went on sale in February. They have not taken the world by storm.
• Apple is reportedly looking to Sony for help via a plan to bring Sony's gaming controllers to Apple's devices.
• But unlike other headsets, the Vision Pro isn't really built for gaming. So, this seems unlikely to solve Apple's long-term Vision Pro problem.

Maybe, one day, the Apple Vision Pro — or a future version of the Apple Vision Pro — will end up being a huge hit for Apple.

Right now, it seems anything but.

As we've noted multiple times, there are several indicators that Apple's "mixed reality" goggles aren't a breakthrough product. Most important: There doesn't seem to be a killer app that creates a use case for the Vision Pro, which starts at $3,500.

Apple has always positioned the device, which launched in February, as the first step for "spatial computing" — not the end state. Still, it's hard to imagine it didn't have higher hopes for the initial product.

Now Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that both sales and usage are underwhelming. He says Apple has sold fewer than 500,000 units of the device, and that "a large number of Vision Pro buyers (those who haven't returned it) aren't using the product as much as Apple anticipated, according to internal data gathered by the company."

What could change all of that? Perhaps a cheaper, lighter version, which could hit the market next year. But Apple is also reportedly looking outside the company for help, by integrating third-party controllers for the device.

Gurman reports that Apple is working with Sony on a deal that will let Vision Pro owners use a version of the PlayStation VR2's hand controllers with the device. That's a notable change since, right now, the Vision Pro doesn't use any controllers at all. Instead, users manipulate the gadget using their fingers and eyes.

That's a pretty cool and novel way to use a computer (again, I really urge anyone who hasn't tried Vision Pro to book a free, 30-minute demo at an Apple store). But that choice also means that developers who built something for other augmented/virtual/mixed reality devices — which generally do use hand-held controllers — would have a hard time porting their applications to Apple's new device.

Which makes the killer app problem that much harder to solve.

But even if the Apple-Sony deal does happen soon (I've asked both companies for comment) I don't think it immediately changes the Vision Pro's prospects.

Apple headset rivals like Sony and Meta are positioning their devices as gaming consoles (Meta is bundling a Batman game with its newest Quest headsets). But the Vision Pro just seems too expensive and bulky to support video games at scale. This move seems more like an indicator that Apple knows it has a problem. It's not a solution.

• Brendan Carr, Trump's pick to run the FCC, says he'll be scrutinizing broadcast TV companies, like CBS and NBC.
• What does that mean? Carr is vague.
• That vagueness may be the point: It could cause broadcast TV companies to think twice before running something Carr, or Trump, doesn't like.

The next Trump administration says it wants to get rid of regulations.

But not all regulations.

Brendan Carr, Trump's choice to head the Federal Communications Commission, says he plans to scrutinize broadcast TV operators to see if they are operating in "the public interest" — a requirement tied to the 1934 Communications Act. If they're not, he says, they could lose their license to use the public airwaves.

What exactly does that mean? Carr isn't super-specific. And Carr, who already is an FCC commissioner, didn't mention the issue when he wrote about the FCC for Project 2025, a conservative planning document Trump allies are using to help staff the next administration. But he has been talking about it quite a bit over the last few weeks.

Shortly after Trump nominated Carr to lead the FCC, Carr announced that the agency would "enforce this public interest obligation." He brought the idea up again in a Fox News interview shortly after. On Friday, he talked about it again, via a CNBC interview.

"Look, the law is very clear. The Communications Act says you have to operate in the public interest," he said. "And if you don't, yes, one of the consequences is potentially losing your license. And of course, that's on the table. I mean, look, broadcast licenses are not sacred cows."

Asked to clarify if he meant he was going to target broadcasters he thought were too liberal, Carr said that wasn't the case, and that he wasn't trying to rein in speech.

"At the end of the day, obviously there's a statutory provision that prevents the FCC from engaging in censorship. I don't want to be the speech police. But there is something that's different about broadcasters than, say, podcasters, where you have to operate in a public interest."

Then Carr argued that all he plans on doing is enforcing existing regulations.

"I'm just saying follow the law. I mean, this law has been on the books for a long time," he said. "It's not my decision to hold broadcasters to a public interest obligation. It's Congress. And if they don't like that, then they should go to Congress to change the law."

(It's worth noting the act applies only to companies with over-the-air broadcast operations, like CBS and NBC. But all four of the big broadcast networks are part of larger media outfits. In the case of CBS and NBC, that's Paramount and Comcast, respectively.)

You can see the whole thing here:

I've asked Carr and his office for comment and clarification about where he thinks broadcasters may have acted against the public interest.

But in the meantime, it's worth noting that he's already argued that CBS deserves scrutiny over the way its "60 Minutes" program handled an interview with Kamala Harris — which is also the center of a lawsuit Trump filed against CBS last month. And that Carr also complained about Harris making an appearance on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" the weekend before the election.

Perhaps Carr has also criticized the way broadcasters have treated Harris or other Democrats. But I haven't seen or heard it.

All of which suggests that Carr may try using the power of his agency to affect the way broadcasters treat Trump and his allies. Even if he says that's not the case.

But none of this is super clear-cut. For instance: Carr has talked about bringing up Trump's "60 Minutes" complaint when Larry and David Ellison, who are trying to buy CBS owner Paramount, need approval to transfer the CBS broadcast license. But it's hard to imagine a Carr-led FCC actually holding up the Paramount deal, given that Larry Ellison is both a Trump supporter and good pals with Elon Musk, a Carr ally.

And it's also worth noting that Carr also has carrots available to help get broadcasters on board, in addition to sticks. Most notably: Lots of media owners are hoping that the next Trump administration will make it easier for them to consolidate, and Carr has repeatedly said he's in favor of that. So this could easily get muddy.

But all of it has the potential to cause media companies to think twice, or a third time, before airing something they think Donald Trump has a problem with. Is that what Brendan Carr wants?

• Donald Trump has singled out Jeff Bezos for criticism in the past.
• But Bezos says that was the past. He thinks Trump's pitch to cut regulations in the US is a good one, and he wants to help.
• Also on Bezos's agenda: Convincing Trump that the media — including The Washington Post, which he owns — is not the enemy.

Some people are very worried about the coming Trump administration.

Jeff Bezos is not one of them.

Or, more accurately, the world's second-richest man says he's not worried about Trump 2.0, even though Trump has singled him out in the past. And Bezos says he could be a Trump ally because he wants to help the next president cut red tape.

"I'm actually very optimistic this time around," he said at The New York Times's DealBook conference on Wednesday. "I'm very hopeful. He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view [is], if I can help him do that, I'm going to help him. Because we do have too much regulation in this country."

Bezos also took pains to paint Trump as someone who evolved over the past few years.

"What I've seen so far is that he is calmer than he was first time," he told interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin. "More confident, more settled."

Bezos joins a line of business leaders — including many of his peers in tech — who have gone out of their way to say nice things about Trump in public following his election win. It's a marked contrast from the reception Trump got after his first successful election.

It's possible Bezos really does feel good about Trump's second term. "I've had a lot of success in life not being cynical," he said Wednesday.

On the other hand, Bezos would certainly be happier if he didn't have to spend the next four years worried about problems Trump could pose for many of his interests. That includes Amazon, which he no longer runs day-to-day but still accounts for the overwhelming majority of his net worth; Blue Origin, his rocket company that competes with Trump ally Elon Musk's SpaceX; and The Washington Post.

And Bezos's critics say his decision to have the Post not make a presidential endorsement this year was an attempt to placate Trump. On Wednesday, Bezos insisted that wasn't the case, reiterating the argument he made before the election: Not making an endorsement makes the Post more trustworthy.

But Trump has repeatedly called the media "the enemy." Won't he continue to treat the Post, and its owner, that way once he takes office next year?

"I am going to try to talk him out of that idea," Bezos said. "I don't think he's going to see it the same way, but maybe I'll be wrong."

• A few years ago BuzzFeed was supposedly worth close to $2 billion.
• Now it's worth much less, and it has been scrambling to solve a looming $124 million debt problem.
• That seems likely to come to a head this week, and may require the company to sell assets like "Hot Ones," its interview show.

What's going on with BuzzFeed, the formerly high-flying digital publisher?

This is a good day to ask. That's because today is the day that BuzzFeed could be on the hook for $123.5 million in debt and interest payments — money that it doesn't appear to have.

It is possible that BuzzFeed has a plan to deal with the debt — by selling off assets, or renegotiating a deal with its creditors, or both. And over the past month, public investors have seemed to think there's some kind of good news coming: They have pushed up BuzzFeed shares more than 72% in that time (though shares have dropped by as much as 5% today).

Last month, when BuzzFeed announced its quarterly earnings, it promised investors that "in the coming weeks, we look forward to sharing an update on our debt, balance sheet, Q4 financial outlook, and the results of the strategic review process we initiated last year with our financial advisors."

My educated hunch is that the update-to-be will happen later this week. But right now, BuzzFeed PR isn't commenting. I've also asked Vivek Ramaswamy, an investor and soon-to-be DOGE cochair advising the next Trump administration, for comment. That's because earlier this year Ramaswamy amassed a 9% stake in BuzzFeed and issued a set of demands to CEO Jonah Peretti, which Peretti seems to have ignored. Ramaswamy has not responded to my request.

Earlier this year, BuzzFeed was shopping First We Feast — its business that owns "Hot Ones," the viral hot-chicken-wing interview show (Yup! I just typed that!) — for a reported $70 million. In September, Bloomberg reported that BuzzFeed was in talks with Netflix about some kind of deal. I've asked Netflix for an update on those chats, which it has never publicly acknowledged.

But just selling First We Feast/"Hot Ones" wouldn't be enough to pay down BuzzFeed's debt, and there isn't a lot left for the company to sell. In 2023, the company shut down its money-losing BuzzFeed News operation. Its remaining assets are BuzzFeed, the publishing operation best known for pop-culture quizzes and listicles; HuffPost, a news site; and Tasty, which used to dominate internet food content in a pre-TikTok world but doesn't anymore.

It's also worth noting that BuzzFeed doesn't necessarily have to pony up all $124 million today. Today is just the first day that BuzzFeed's creditors can get that cash, if they want it.

So if BuzzFeed does have good news to share this week, it is likely that it sold one of its content businesses — or at least struck a licensing deal — used that money to pay down some of the debt, and renegotiated the terms of the remainder. I think we'll know soon, either way.

• Some journalists are leaving their jobs and starting one-person subscription businesses.
• Jason Koebler and three other veterans of Vice Media wanted to build something bigger: an actual news site.
• They launched 404 Media in the summer of 2023. Today, it looks like a sustainable success story.

Lots of people dream of quitting their jobs and going into business for themselves. Jason Koebler and three co-workers actually did it. It looks like it's working.

In the summer of 2023, Koebler, who used to edit Vice Media's Motherboard tech section, and three former Vice co-workers launched 404 Media, a tech news site they co-own. Each of them kicked in $1,000 to get it off the ground.

Fast-forward to today, and Koebler says the company is already generating something in the $900,000-a-year range, funded almost entirely with subscriptions. Even after tech and legal costs, that's enough to call 404 a success. And that allows them to write whatever they want: Like this recent piece looking at Elon Musk and Twitter/X's involvement in the Alex Jones bankruptcy case.

This self-funded business model isn't going to work for everyone and everything. But in a grim climate for media in general and journalism specifically, it's great to hear about things that work. You can hear the entire conversation I had with Koebler on my Channels podcast; what follows are edited excerpts from our chat.

It seems like you guys are making a real business here: You can pay the four of yourselves grown-up journalism salaries.

We are. It's going better than I could have ever imagined. We're also at a point where I think we'll be able to bring new employees on.

When you launched, what did you think you'd need to do, at minimum, to keep this afloat? Did you think about a scenario where it's working, but you needed to have side gigs?

When we decided to do this, we launched in August 2023, and we told ourselves that we would do it until January.

And right after we launched, in the first couple of days, we got like 600 subscribers. We fell into this kind of middle ground — enough people signed up that there was clearly an audience, but not enough signed up where [we knew this was] definitely going to work.

It was unclear whether it was going to survive, even though the response was amazing.

But then the really cool thing was every time we had a big scoop or a big story, we got new subscribers.

Your structure is egalitarian. I'm assuming you're all getting paid equally.

We're all the same. We're all 25% owners. The management of the company has been easier than I thought that it would be. I think that if we were to grow, we would probably have to figure out how to manage new hires, and what ownership would look like then.

What happens when you guys have a throw-down and then the vote is two vs. two?

There are no votes. We told each other from the outset that anyone can veto anything. So, if any one person is like "I hate this idea," then we just don't do it.

I wanted to ask you about this great piece you wrote recently: "The Billionaire Is the Threat, not the Solution." It's a personal story about your dad who worked on the printing presses of The Washington Post for decades. And about Jeff Bezos and the non-endorsement story. Your argument is that you're going to continue to have these problems as long as you're looking for billionaires to own your media.

I agree with you. I don't think we can rely on billionaires to fund our media. And this model that you've built works for you and your three coworkers and co-owners. But it can't work for everything. What kind of journalism does your model support? What does it not support?

This sort of subscription, independent model works for us. We've created four journalism jobs. Other independent media companies have created a few dozen more. But it's still like a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket.

My theory is that there can be a lot of them. I really do think that. 7,000 people have subscribed to us. The market can support a lot more of these.

But what are the kinds of stories and projects you can't do because you don't have apparatus, staff, whatever?

I think that there's the "spend three, six, 12 months on an investigative story and then publish it and maybe it wins an award and tons of people read it — or maybe no one reads it" is a model we're not even trying to do. I think that's an important model and maybe one better suited for nonprofits and The New York Times and Washington Post.

I think the reason that it's working for us is we are breaking stories, we are telling stories, that you can't find elsewhere.

• Elon Musk went all-in on Donald Trump this year. Now he has Trump's attention.
• But that doesn't mean Musk can compel Trump to do everything he desires.
• A look at Musk's Twitter feed shows his influence has limits.

Two big, related questions we have about Trump 2.0:

• How much influence will Elon Musk have in the coming administration?
• How much influence will Twitter, the service Musk owns and renamed X, have?

This is a case where predictions don't do us a lot of good. For starters, because both Donald Trump and Elon Musk are unpredictable characters. Past performance — and, in their cases, statements they've made — are no guarantee of future results.

Also, whatever does happen, we may never get clear-cut answers, anyway. For instance: Reuters reports that although Elon Musk has been spending a lot of time using Twitter to promote candidates for Trump 2.0, he doesn't always get what he wants.

In some cases, Reuters' Helen Coster and Alexandra Ulmer note, "Musk backed people who either lost out on the roles or withdrew from consideration, suggesting some early limits to the Republican mega donor's influence even as he has emerged as one of Trump's most powerful allies."

Reuters says Musk has posted about Trump's cabinet picks more than 70 times between November 7 and November 20. That's a small slice of his frenzied Twitter output. But part of the premise of buying Twitter for $44 billion was that the platform was an important way to inform and persuade people. So the fact that Twitter's owner, and most popular user, was using it to stump for candidates he likes is meaningful.

Musk was most enthusiastic about Matt Gaetz, the former Congressman who Trump put forth as his attorney general nominee. But Gaetz, who reportedly faced fierce opposition from some Senate Republicans, withdrew his name for consideration days after Trump nominated him.

Reuters also notes that Musk didn't get his way when it came to Trump's pick for Treasury Secretary, or for who Republicans chose to become their Senate majority leader.

Again, this doesn't mean all the time and money Musk has invested in Trump isn't paying off for him. For starters, there's the DOGE cost-cutting/restructuring commission he's supposed to run along with Vivek Ramaswamy, which Musks says he's still kind of surprised to learn is actually going to happen:

Then there's whatever is going to happen behind the scenes when Musk and his allies are in Trump's ear. But one thing we saw in Trump 1.0 that is likely to happen again is that Trump won't listen to a single person, but to a variety of people in his orbit. And of all the media outlets that could influence him, the one he seems most attuned to is Fox News, where he seems to be sourcing many of his candidates. We'll definitely be revisiting this one.

• Apple, which avoided the ad business for years, might finally be getting serious about it.
• Or will it? Google would like to know.
• You can see how Google strategists are gaming out Apple's ad ambitions in a newly surfaced document.

Apple used to hate the ad business. Now, it looks like it's taking it more seriously. So, how big could Apple's ad business get?

That's a question lots of people in the advertising world have been wondering about. And that includes Google. And now, thanks to documents unearthed during Google's antitrust court case, we can see how Google has been thinking about Apple's potential as it edges into an industry Google has dominated for decades.

Titled "Project Black Walnut," the 2022 report appears to have been assembled by Google strategists to try to imagine what kind of ad business Apple might build out one day.

Apple's current ad business is mostly confined to selling ads on its App Store search-results page. But the report's authors speculate that Apple could eventually start selling ads that run on other people's apps and at some point on the web via its Safari browser. It might eventually become a $30 billion business, they guesstimate.

You can see the full document here:

But while the document's authors were trying to imagine how big Apple's ad business could get, they also wondered whether Apple would really want to fully embrace it. Right now, most of the money Apple says it gets from "ads" is really money it gets from Google, which pays Apple upward of $20 billion a year to make Google's search engine the default on Apple's phones.

"We believe Apple is unlikely to give up search TAC [the annual payments Apple gets from Google] for a $10-$20b Spotlight Search [Apple's own search engine] opportunity, unless regulation or Google disrupts the status quo," the report says at one point.

Then again, one of the commenters on the document points out, those annual payments — which could account for 15% or more of Apple's annual profits — are at risk "by regulation or Google's choice."

Which may very well be the case. In August, Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled that Google had an illegal monopoly in search, and those Google/Apple payments are at the heart of the case. The US government has since asked Mehta to ban those payments, along with other proposed remedies, like forcing Google to sell off its Chrome browser.

A Google rep declined to comment on the document. Apple hasn't replied to a request for comment. The file became part of the public record in August. Jason Kint, the CEO of Digital Content Next, a trade group representing online publishers, brought the document to my attention after I wrote about the possibility that Apple could lose Google Search payments.

The rest of "Project Black Walnut" is useful for anyone trying to imagine what an Apple ad business could look like if Apple decided to build one. While there are a few insights that seem proprietary to Google — the authors say that Apple has been hiring people with ad backgrounds, including "outreach to Googlers" — most of the data points would be available to anyone outside Google, like the fact that Apple has been moving into sports programming.

Back when Google assembled the document, this looked more like a speculative road map. But now that $20 billion a year could disappear from Apple's revenue line, it looks more realistic.

Correction: November 26, 2024 — Judge Amit P. Mehta in August ruled that Google had an illegal monopoly in search, not Apple.

• It used to be that leaving Fox News or other big media outlets was the end of your career.
• Not anymore. Ask two former Fox hosts, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, or Bari Weiss, an ex-New York Times editor.
• Chris Balfe, who helps those stars find audiences and make money via podcasts and YouTube, says there will be more people doing the same thing.

The 2024 election was a podcast election and a YouTube election.

There was also something else new at play here: It was an election where several people who used to have high-profile, influential perches at big mainstream media organizations found new, influential perches on the internet, at companies they built and own themselves. People like the former Fox News stars Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, and the former New York Times writer and editor Bari Weiss.

This was an idea we've heard about for a long time, and one we saw put into practice back in 2011 — when Glenn Beck split with Fox News and started TheBlaze, his own subscription streaming service. But until recently, we hadn't seen many people follow in his footsteps. Now it's becoming a well-worn path.

I wanted to understand why this is happening now, and how it's working, so I asked a man who's directly involved: Chris Balfe, the CEO of Red Seat Ventures — a company that has helped Carlson, Kelly, and Weiss set up their podcast and streaming businesses, and sells ads for them. Not coincidentally, Balfe used to work with Beck at TheBlaze (the duo had a messy divorce).

As Balfe explains, the Big Media-to-the-internet route isn't going to work for everyone. I also don't want to overstate the trend. Even though traditional media like cable TV is in decline, it's going to be with us for some time. See: Donald Trump, who wants to stock his administration with people he's watched on Fox — just like he did in his first term.

But talking to Balfe gives you a good sense of what's happening behind the scenes, and the challenges that still remain for stars who want to make the leap. You can listen to our entire conversation on my "Channels" podcast; here's an edited excerpt of our chat.

More than a decade ago, you were working with Glenn Beck, who left Fox News and started TheBlaze. At the time, it seemed like we would see more people doing what he did — leaving mainstream media, going to digital, and building an audience there. But that didn't happen, really, until the last couple years. Why did it take so long, and why is it happening now?

Two things. One is that the technology and tools have caught up in a big way. When we launched TheBlaze, we had to mail people Roku boxes and say, "Hook this up to the back of your TV. You might need something called an HDMI cable. We'll send you one of those if you want one."

You would literally mail your subscribers Roku boxes?

Yeah. And explain to them how they would download an app and watch it. And so clearly, with every TV in the world having connectivity, and every toaster in the world having connectivity, that technical hurdle and user-behavior hurdle is gone.

Sixty million people just watched Mike Tyson and Jake Paul.

Exactly. The second change is the monetization side. Where are the dollars?

When we think about people who are in both a linear-network space and a digital space, it's easier to scale, quicker to scale, and potentially more lucrative in the digital space.

You're saying it's potentially more lucrative than a traditional big-dollar TV contract?

That definitely depends on the talent. We talk to folks who want to leave traditional media, and we hear how much money they're making, and we say, "Wow, that's a great deal for you. And if I model out how long it's going to take you to make that, if we're successful, it might be three years before you can make that kind of money again. And that's if we're successful — we might not be."

So for a lot of people, we suggest hanging on to those big, fat media paychecks as long as you can. If you're trying to replace a $2 million-a-year paycheck, it's going to take time. Unless you're Tucker Carlson.

Is there a certain kind of person that works well in traditional media that can also succeed in digital?

What doesn't work is someone who's there by virtue of the time period that they're on TV. So if you're a nightly news anchor — no offense to the nightly news anchors — you are unlikely to be successful as a podcaster because you're being paid $5, $10, $15 million a year. And if you were out that night and your "B" host goes in, the [ratings] probably are exactly the same.

But shouldn't the exposure you're getting on mainstream media be enough to bring a portion of your audience to digital?

I'd say mostly not. There's really a fandom component to it, and that's the dark-arts part of this — when each person comes to us, and we try to evaluate [the power of their fandom].

People — agents, in particular — always say, "Is it the number of Facebook followers, or followers on X or whatever?" It's not really any of those things. It's watching the show. It's listening and talking to people about how they react to this person. And would you kind of proverbially walk across broken glass [for them]? Because we're switching you from a push medium to a pull medium. And that means people are going to want to have to pull.

When Tucker Carlson was pushed out of Fox, did you have any concern that his work would not translate to digital?

Definitely not. I felt very strongly that Tucker was going to have the No. 1 podcast in the country. Or No. 2, depending on how quickly Joe Rogan grows.

Why him, compared to any other person who's on TV with a big audience?

The answer is his ability to be at the forefront of the creation of media moments rather than covering media moments.

This is one of the things we talk about a lot in news, and especially in right-of-center news: There are a lot of podcasts, YouTube shows, TV shows, and radio shows where news happens, and they react to it. It's interesting because they're interesting people, but that's sort of the end of it. There are a few personalities who have the ability to create news cycles rather than react to news cycles.

Glenn Beck was a big one of those back when he was at Fox News, in particular, but also on TheBlaze. And I would point to Tucker Carlson, absolutely, and say, "This is a person who's a must-watch — not just for the right but for everyone to try to figure out what the heck he's talking about."

He's intriguing, inflammatory. Both. He's visiting Vladimir Putin.

And Megyn is doing that increasingly right now. The coverage that Megyn is getting across the entire internet for every single thing that she says or does right now is really astounding. I haven't seen anything like it since the Glenn Beck Fox News days, where there is a newsworthy piece of content that comes out of every one of her podcasts these days.

I also think that goes toward this shift that we've been talking about, where for a long time, whatever happened on podcasts happened between the ears of the people listening and didn't make it successfully out into the rest of the world.

And now the top podcasts are making news more often — not because the shows have gotten better but because people are paying more attention and realizing great content is happening there.

How is the money working? There used to be a stigma about advertising on right-wing, conservative spaces in general, and podcasts in general, for different reasons. It seems you're still struggling with that — you're not getting blue-chip advertisers on Tucker Carlson's show.

It's correct that it's rare that we see any Fortune 500 company spending a lot of dollars in any controversial space: news, true crime, right-of-center politics, left-of-center politics. "Brand safety" is still something that big brands are concerned about — obsessed with, in certain cases — and therefore they avoid all politics and all news and all true crime and all other things that people like to listen to.

What's most valuable to you right now, a podcast listener or a YouTube viewer?

A podcast listener, if they subscribe to the podcast feed on Spotify or Apple, is the most valuable because they're the stickiest. They spend the most time with a given show. There's automatic downloads, in the case of those two apps. And once they follow or subscribe, they're going to get every episode. They're more likely to stick with us. They have more lifetime value.

They haven't pulled out a credit card, but it's almost as if they have. They've committed to you in some way.

And then they start making a mental appointment in their own brain about, "How often is this show coming out? When am I going to make the time in my daily life to listen to that show?" There's really more of a commitment to podcast listening.

Whereas on YouTube, it's still super valuable to us. But of the people who are coming and watching on YouTube, 70% of those people are not subscribers to our channel. They're being recommended algorithmically.

And the two concerns that I have about that is one — clearly they're not as big a fan. So they may not be as responsive to advertising. Or they may watch one video and not the next. And two — we've all gone through algorithmic hell in the past with Facebook and every other platform.

The algorithm that brought them there is an algorithm that could not bring them there tomorrow.

For sure.