Andrew here. Can you hold two conflicting ideas in your head at the same time? That’s what may be required to fully appreciate the debate over Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension. Disney and its affiliates are clearly trying to placate the Trump administration, which has openly declared war on media companies it dislikes.
However, Nexstar and Sinclair, which threatened not to air “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on their roughly 70 ABC affiliate stations, also have significant audiences that were probably genuinely offended by the late-night host’s comments. This isn’t a simple “both sides” observation: Free speech is obviously being threatened, but real business interests are actively influencing the situation. We’ve got the breakdown of this ongoing story that has become the national conversation.
Fights on all of the media’s flanks
Jimmy Kimmel remains off air. But his suspension by Disney in the wake of threats by the Trump administration is continuing to reverberate.
Disney — and other media companies — are increasingly finding themselves in a difficult spot as they feel pressure from President Trump, from business partners like the owners of local TV stations and from the creatives who produce their programming.
Disney faced growing business pressure before it suspended Kimmel. The company was hearing from skittish advertisers and employees worried about threats they had received, The Times reports.
Perhaps more important, the company was worried about a revolt by Nexstar and Sinclair, which together own about 70 ABC affiliates and which announced that they would stop airing Kimmel’s show. (Their decisions came after Brendan Carr, the chair of the F.C.C., threatened owners of affiliates that aired “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”)
John Chachas, a veteran media investment banker, told The Times that such a move would hurt the program’s economics at a time when late-night shows are on precarious financial ground.
Trump and Carr suggested they might go even further. After supporting Kimmel’s suspension, Trump said Thursday that “maybe” networks perceived as being against him should have their licenses taken away.
Carr told CNBC, “We’re not done yet,” and suggested that he might subject ABC’s “The View” to similar scrutiny. Nexstar and Sinclair “have every right under the law in their contracts to pre-empt” such programming, he added.
But Disney is also under pressure on its left flank. At least five Hollywood unions, who together represent more than 400,000 workers, publicly condemned the company. Damon Lindelof, a writer and producer who helped create “Lost,” said that he couldn’t work for Disney if Kimmel’s program wasn’t reinstated.
Critics of Trump and Carr worry about an industry under siege. “We all see where this is going, correct?” David Letterman said at an event hosted by The Atlantic. “It’s managed media. And it’s no good.”
It’s not clear yet how this plays out. Aziz Huq of the University of Chicago argued in Politico that the Supreme Court had ruled that the First Amendment prohibits the government from “jawboning” private media companies to silence speech.
But it’s uncertain how much appetite Disney, which has already paid a $15 million settlement to the Trump administration, or other media companies have for fighting back. So, for the moment at least, it’s unclear when or whether Kimmel — who met with Dana Walden, Disney’s TV chief, on Thursday, according to Puck — will come back on air.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The F.T.C. and several states sue Ticketmaster. The regulators accused the ticketing giant and its parent company, Live Nation, of illegally letting brokers buy up millions of dollars of tickets for resale at higher prices. Ticketmaster and Live Nation have been under scrutiny — including from federal regulators in both the Trump and Biden administrations — over the power they wield over live events.
The Trump administration takes its Fed fight to the Supreme Court. The Justice Department asked the justices to immediately let President Trump fire Lisa Cook as a governor of the central bank, after lower courts blocked such a move. The request could test a previous ruling by the Supreme Court that appeared to give the Fed more protection than other federal entities from presidential pressure.
Nvidia unveils billions more in investments. The giant chipmaker said it would invest about $2.7 billion in several British start-ups, including the autonomous vehicle software maker Wayve, the digital bank Revolut and the data center company Nscale. It’s the latest in a series of investment announcements by an American tech giant timed to Trump’s state visit to Britain.
A game of telephone
TikTok’s future in the U.S. hangs in the balance as President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China prepare to speak on Friday by phone.
But business leaders, investors and farmers are just as anxious for signs that the two powers can reach a breakthrough on even larger issues: tariffs, antitrust, rare earths and soybeans, to name a few.
The stakes are immense. A November deadline to reinstate bruising tit-for-tat tariffs looms. In the meantime, China is using its regulatory apparatus to clamp down on Nvidia, the chipmaker at the heart of the U.S. artificial intelligence boom. And Chinese buyers have stopped importing American soybeans, a move that has rattled farmers who fear the trade war will push them into bankruptcy.
Trump sees reason for optimism. He gave an upbeat assessment of U.S.-China trade talks that took place in Madrid this week. He also said of Xi: “The relationship remains a very strong one!!!”
A reminder: Trump also offered an upbeat assessment of U.S.-China relations in June after he and Xi spoke by phone. “I think we’re in very good shape with China and the trade deal,” he told reporters then. Beijing described that call very differently: Xi had tough words for Trump about his trade war and about Washington’s close ties with Taiwan, the Chinese government said.
Can TikTok smooth over the differences? The popular video app, owned by the Chinese company Bytedance, faces a ban in the U.S. unless its operation there is sold to American investors. Beijing, which had long resisted such a transaction, now appears to view TikTok as a promising bargaining chip in trade talks. “They know what the U.S. wants, and they understand Trump’s negotiating style,” Li Daokui, an economist at Tsinghua University in Beijing, told The Times.
Even if details on a potential TikTok sale are thin, an agreement there could raise hopes for better trade relations and more deals. U.S. manufacturers, who are highly reliant upon China’s rare-earth minerals, will be watching. And China’s aviation sector will be, too. Beijing needs American airplanes, and analysts see a big order for Boeing planes coming if Washington and Beijing can resolve some of their bigger differences.
Musk’s rocky return to work
It’s been four months since Elon Musk left his gig inside the Trump White House to turn his focus back fully to his business empire.
At first glance, Tesla appeared to be the biggest beneficiary. The electric-vehicle maker’s board has tried to lock in Musk’s focus by offering him a giant compensation package valued at up to $1 trillion, and its shares have rallied.
But Musk seems to be spending most of his time at xAI, the artificial intelligence start-up whose technology he believes will underpin his companies. The more time he spends there, the more turmoil he seems to sow, according to insiders who spoke to The Times and to The Wall Street Journal.
In the Times investigation, Cade Metz, Kate Conger and Ryan Mac found that:
-
Beginning in May, users of xAI’s Grok were startled to see the chatbot responding with highly contentious, and even racist, comments, including accusations that South Africa had committed “genocide” on its white citizens. That came after Musk had told employees that Grok was too “woke,” prompting an engineer to tinker with its code.
-
A later leadership reshuffle, conducted by Musk, was followed by a Grok update that praised Hitler.
-
There’s been a flight of xAI executives, too, including Mike Liberatore, xAI’s finance chief who decamped for OpenAI; and Igor Babushkin, who co-founded the company with Musk.
The Journal also reported that several xAI executives left the company after clashing with two of Musk’s closest advisers, Jared Birchall and John Hering, over the company’s financial health and projections.
Several of those high-level departures also complained that there was no formal chain of command, and they raised questions about how Musk’s family office, Excession, which is led by Birchall, managed some of xAI’s cash and accounting.
Alex Spiro, a lawyer who represents Musk, pushed back on The Journal’s report, saying that suggestions that the company’s financial reports were improper were “false and defamatory.”
What’s next? Tesla shares fell on Thursday after the reports came out. Some investors have been worried that Musk’s attention is still spread too thin.
Talking A.I. With the C.E.O. of BetterUp
Every week, we’re asking a chief executive how he or she uses generative artificial intelligence. Alexi Robichaux, chief of the coaching platform BetterUp, told DealBook that every large team at his company had a full-time “A.I. champion.” His answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
How do you personally use A.I.?
I’ve trained an A.I. on our strategies, our documents, even board decks. We talk about our strategy and vision, and then use it to help with messaging and positioning: How would you communicate this as part of our strategy in an externally facing way for these personas and audiences?
What directives have you given your employees on A.I.?
My direct reports each appoint an A.I. champion from their team. The A.I. champions have been working with my co-founder, who’s our C.O.O., on an end-to-end redesign of our top five critical business processes. The A.I. champion will also act as an A.I. chief of staff to the top leaders from each team.
It was a healthy conversation with the executive leadership team, because it’s a real P.&L. investment. You’re essentially losing an employee from quote-unquote day-to-day work.
Why did you decide to do it that way?
We had a pretty eager and curious work force in terms of adopting A.I. for personal productivity. But the next frontier was unlocking business processes that span functions. Much of the blocker to that is leadership bandwidth. Yes, ideally, they would all do this as they’re also operating a high-growth start-up. We just realized that that was never going to happen as fast as we wanted.
We realized, unless we did something — and we’ll see if this is the right thing to do — we were going to stop at the personal productivity gains and not really see head count savings and optimization of business processes.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
-
SoftBank’s Vision Fund reportedly plans to lay off 20 percent of its staff as it focuses more on major bets on artificial intelligence. (Reuters)
-
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group of Japan agreed to raise its stake in Jefferies, a U.S. investment bank, to 20 percent. (WSJ)
Politics, policy and regulation
-
Hyundai’s C.E.O. called for a new visa system for short-term work travel for necessary workers in the U.S. after the immigration raid on its plant in Georgia. (FT)
-
The Trump administration is said to have considered using a $550 billion investment fund created by a U.S. trade deal with Japan to invest in American factories and infrastructure. (WSJ)
Best of the rest
-
Israel’s attack in Doha this month punctured Qatar’s ambition to become a regional power broker and friends with everyone. (WSJ)
-
“A $35 Chicken Dinner in Mississippi? How Big-City Prices Went National.” (NYT)
We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected].
Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist and the founder of DealBook, the flagship business and policy newsletter at The Times and an annual conference.
Bernhard Warner is a senior editor for DealBook, a newsletter from The Times, covering business trends, the economy and the markets.
Sarah Kessler is the weekend edition editor of the DealBook newsletter and writes features on business.
Michael J. de la Merced has covered global business and finance news for The Times since 2006.
Niko Gallogly is a Times reporter, covering business for the DealBook newsletter.
The post Why the Media Industry Is Bracing for More Blowback appeared first on New York Times.
