An ESPN Shocker, Prada Liquidity Murmurs & Zaz’s HBO

Good morning,

Thanks for reading The Backstory, your weekly review of the best new work from Puck.

It was another fabulous week at Puck: Tara Palmeri spilled on Trump’s latest Mar-a-Lago policy summit; Julia Alexander analyzed HBO under Zaz rule; Lauren Sherman parsed the Prada M&A murmurs; Tina Nguyen reported on Ronna McDaniel’s unpleasant return to the G.O.P. crying room; and Dylan Byers surveyed the post-mutiny scene inside the NBC News bunker. Meanwhile, Bill Cohan spoke with Leon Black about his other scandalous relationship; John Ourand got to the bottom of an ESPN ouster; and Teddy Schleifer revealed Larry Ellison’s pick for V.P.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan chats with Leon Black about the affair from hell.

SILICON VALLEY:
Teddy Schleifer reports on Larry Ellison’s favored V.P. contender and Trump’s Palm Beach collection plate.

MEDIA:
John Ourand digs into Norby’s ouster at ESPN and Adam Silver’s streaming dreams.
and…
Dylan Byers annotates the various olive branches and vendettas inside NBC News.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni interviews Adam Aron about the future of movie theaters.
and…
Julia Alexander reviews year one of the “HBO”-less “Max.”
and…
Eriq Gardner unearths one of the wackiest Hollywood accounting examples in modern memory.

WASHINGTON:
Peter Hamby considers the fatal flaw of No Labels.
and…
Tina Nguyen chronicles Ronna McDaniel’s unpleasant homecoming.
and…
Tara Palmeri identifies a distinctly Mar-a-Lago twist in the Trump veepstakes.
and…
Baratunde Thurston offers a novel carbon solution.

PODCASTS:
Matt and Imax C.E.O. Rich Gelfond discuss the complex theatrical business model pickle on The Town.
and…
Tara and Teddy discuss Nicole Shanahan, R.F.K.’s billionaire running mate, on Somebody’s Gotta Win.
and…
Peter and I weigh into Ari Emanuel’s most recent deal on The Powers That Be.

Around that time, Pat McAfee, a former NFL kicker and YouTube star turned ESPN broadcaster and host, had blasted longtime Bristol executive Norby Williamson during a segment of his semi-structured, eponymous chat show. Shockingly and discomfitingly, McAfee accused Williamson of leaking his recent unspectacular TV ratings in the media. It was a surprisingly unprofessional move, even by the evolving standards of the industry, accented by McAfee’s description of Williamson as a rat. John knows everyone at the network, starting with its affable C.E.O. Jimmy Pitaro, and so I relentlessly drilled him on the topic.

The Norby-McAfee episode, on many levels, seemed to be a microcosm of the larger secular trends reshaping the media and the broader economy—the rise of singular talent, the funny things that happen on the way to the forum when the pay TV business model is upended by streaming, and a general insecurity in the marketplace. And yet, this clash was so palpably jarring. Williamson, after all, was a long-serving talent whisperer who had cut his teeth on the iconic Patrick-Olbermann SportsCenter and returned to the show years later to clean up the SC6 mess. He was the fixer, not the person used to seeing his name in the paper.

A generation ago, ESPN would have responded to a public scrape or unpleasant on-air soliloquy by banishing those responsible to Siberia. Bill Simmons, a singular and generational talent, was excommunicated after his harsh criticism of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell—a guy who doesn’t even work at the company. Simmons got the last laugh, of course. Spotify acquired his media company, The Ringer, just before the pandemic set in. (Puck and The Ringer currently produce a pair of podcasts together.)

But this time, ESPN sided with the talent. Last week, it turned out to be Williamson’s time in the barrel. The ostensible catalyst was a growing rift between Williamson and his boss, Burke Magnus, a more future-forward executive who preached ESPN’s manifest destiny in a streaming, multiplatform world. And, yes, that’s a world where Pat McAfee is quite valuable.

In Norby or Not to Be, John lays out the complex dynamics, consequences, and stakes as only he can. And, indeed, an executive shake-up atop ESPN has never been more relevant. In the next year, the business will roll out both its new streaming service and its “Spulu” joint venture with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery as Pitaro will openly (though quietly, and with dignity and tact) compete with three colleagues to succeed Bob Iger as the C.E.O. of Disney. Bristol kremlinology, always a favorite media parlor game, is now market-moving intelligence.

The Williamson kerfuffle, of course, was only the second-most compelling example of recent and highly public media infighting. Last month, NBC News hastily jettisoned former R.N.C. chair and newbie contributor Ronna McDaniel after Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow, Joe & Mika et al. criticized her hiring on their shows. In Cesar Salad, Dylan Byers reports on the post-Ronna landscape within NBC News, where much of the irritation has coalesced around chairman Cesar Conde, a sophisticated yet striving corporate player, who seems to have quelled the unrest in a manner befitting the no-drama style of his bosses at Comcast in Philly. And Tina Nguyen elegantly captured McDaniel’s chilling homecoming on the right in Ronna in No Man’s Land. The story is filled with mesmerizing bon mots, but perhaps the most compelling came in the form of a quote from fellow former R.N.C. chairman Michael Steele. “It’s not about money; the power is your relationships. And she didn’t have the relationships,” he told Tina. “She was always on the bubble with Trump. People don’t get that. The man told her to stop using her family name, and she fucking did. If she had the relationships, he never would have told her to do it.”

The changing dynamics of the television business are also on display, of course, at HBO, perhaps the most storied brand in the history of the business. Julia Alexander’s excellent story It’s Not HBO, It’s Max artfully explains the complications of being a quality player in a scaled world of never-ending choice—a reality that will compel the industry leader to evolve once again.

But if you only have time to read one piece this weekend, I’d urge you to curl up with the second and final installment in Bill Cohan’s chilling and brilliant diptych on former Apollo C.E.O. and Epstein pal Leon Black. In Leon Black From the Ashes, Part II, Bill reports on the affair that led to Black’s departure from the firm he founded. It’s an astonishing story about money and power dynamics that features Paul Weiss attorneys, Four Seasons lunches, a hidden wire, an N.D.A., and the most startling negotiation you may ever come across—along with various definitions of justice and self-preservation. Indeed, in so many ways, it is the story of our time, and precisely what you should expect from Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon