Puck

6 days ago | puck.news | John Ourand

When it comes to sports programming, the mantra around Netflix has always been to watch what they do, rather than listen to what they say. For instance: While they said they were perfectly content to stick to sports-adjacent docuseries like Quarterback, what they eventually did was acquire a couple nine-figure Christmas Day NFL games. Anyway, with all that in mind, I decided to ring up LightShed’s Rich Greenfield on the day that the streamer released its first-quarter financials.

6 days ago | puck.news | John Heilemann

Thanks to Donald Trump and his ChatGPT-enabled tariff jihad, last week was one of the most tumultuous, tempestuous periods for stocks and bonds and currencies that we’ve ever seen. What happened across those five days, and more importantly, what happens next, is a story that sits at the intersection of Wall Street and Washington, of financial mechanics and political mojo, of conventional plutocratic maneuvering and MAGA-fueled disregard for history, precedent, and institutional coherence.

1 week ago | puck.news | William Cohan

There are so many curious things about the recent I.P.O. of Newsmax, the conservative digital media and cable news company, but it all begins with the prospectus. Newsmax, of course, is the brainchild of Christopher Ruddy, the former New York Post journalist and longtime Trump buddy who is a regular presence at Mar-a-Lago. Ruddy founded the company in 1998, two years after Fox News first hit the airwaves, and built it up into a meaningful player in the ever-expanding right-wing media landscape.

1 week ago | puck.news | Leigh Ann Caldwell

In recent weeks, Donald Trump has again broached a once-unthinkable topic. No, not tariffs on allies or extorting white shoe law firms or threatening a federal takeover of Harvard University. More jarring, from the perspective of Republicans on Capitol Hill, has been the president’s argument for raising taxes on the wealthy.

1 week ago | puck.news | John Ourand

The media business, above all else, is a copycat game. So when ESPN signed lucrative and loophole-laden deals with Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith, virtually every agent received inbound from their roster of clients looking for similar concessions. Perhaps they weren’t agitating for Stephen A.’s $20 million per annum, but they wanted some of the same flexibility to create content on other platforms.