Musk and his memes
The Muck Rack Weekly newsletter includes some of the most talked about stories in the journalism and public relations communities over the past week, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial opinion of Muck Rack.
Media statistic of the week
“Glicked” weekend followed the yellow brick road…and found a big pile of green cash at the end of it. Auzinea Bacon of CNN reports that “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” pulled in a combined $169.5 million at the box office this past weekend. “Wicked” brought in approximately $114 million while “Gladiator II” raked in $55.5 million.?
Good news for fans: back in September James Hibbard and Aaron Couch of The Hollywood Reporter (THR) wrote “there’s already an idea” for a Gladiator III and Wicked: Part Two is also in the works to hit the big screen. Read the full story here from Rebecca Rubin of Variety, but only if you like spoilers: ‘Wicked’ Spoiler Interview: Jon M. Chu on Expanding ‘Defying Gravity,’ Cutting Lines and Splitting the Musical in Two — Plus, Will Dorothy Pop Up in ‘Part 2’?
The next big success for the box office? ‘Wicked’ and ‘Moana 2’ Set to Deliver One of the Biggest Thanksgiving Box Office Feasts Ever says Jeremy Fuster for The Wrap.
This past week in the media industry?
It’s selling season
One move that’s getting a lot of attention (for better or worse) is this one: Comcast Greenlights $7 Billion Spinoff of NBCUniversal Cable Channels by Amol Sharma for The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).?
A little more about the deal from Status, Oliver Darcy’s newsletter: “Mark Lazarus on Wednesday was officially named as the boss of SpinCo, the soon-to-be publicly traded company comprised of the bulk of NBCU's cable channels, including MSNBC, CNBC, E!, Oxygen, SyFy, the Golf Channel, and more. Breaking off networks like Syfy from NBCU shouldn’t be especially difficult or consequential. But extracting the much more high-profile cable news assets from Cesar Conde's NBC News palace will present some knotty challenges.”
MSNBC in particular, will be heavily impacted by this move. MSNBC Faces Potential for Big Changes in Comcast Cable Spin-Off, reports Brian Steinberg for Variety. “Lazarus told an audience that included Rachel Maddow, Chris Jansing and Katy Tur that he was not sure whether MSNBC would have to change its identity as part of the transaction, which will split the cable network and its business-news sibling CNBC from NBC News and NBCUniversal.”
“MSNBC’s newsgathering process may also be ripe for transformation in the coming transaction, with people familiar with the meeting indicating the executive did not have immediate answers about whether a unit for collecting and verifying news separate from that of NBC would have to be "built from scratch,” Steinberg writes.?
“Hey @elonmusk, I have the funniest idea ever!” said Donald Trump Jr. “How much does it cost?” responded Elon Musk, setting off a snowball of comments, feelings, and déjà vu from 2017 when Musk was encouraged to buy Twitter. Read more here: Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk joke about purchasing MSNBC by Filip Timotija of The Hill.? Elon Musk floats buying MSNBC, but he’s not the only billionaire who may be interested, adds Brian Stelter for CNN.?
“Bottom line: Comcast is not looking to sell MSNBC to win favor with the president-elect. All that said, Musk's memes shouldn't be ignored, either,” Stelter says.?
Here’s a good look at what executives are up against as they work this deal out from Brian Steinberg for Variety: Comcast Cuts the Cord: 5 Burning Questions About M&A, MSNBC and More.
Speaking of spin offs, The Department of Justice asks court to force Google to spin off Chrome reports Brian Fung for CNN. “The request by the Justice Department and a group of states opens the door to the most significant antitrust penalties for a tech giant in a generation, targeting not only Google’s illegal monopoly in search but also its growing ambitions in artificial intelligence,” he writes.?
Last, Dominic Ponsford of Press Gazette writes about the Guardian strike: Staff agree 48-hour walkout over Observer sale to Tortoise and in deals gone south, DirecTV Scraps Merger With Rival Dish reports Drew FitzGerald and Alexander Gladstone for WSJ.?
People have feelings about the media
Some viewers still aren’t ready for their “Morning Joe” after learning that MSNBC Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski met with President-elect Donald Trump. A closer look: At the crossroads of news and opinion, ‘Morning Joe’ hosts grapple with aftermath of Trump meeting by David Bauder for Associated Press (AP).?
“Morning Joe” had 770,000 viewers last Monday, its audience — like many shows on MSNBC — down from its yearly average of 1.09 million because some of the network’s liberal-leaning viewers have tuned away after what they regard as depressing election results,” writes Bauder. “That’s the day Scarborough and Brzezinski announced they had met with Trump the previous Friday.”
“By Tuesday, the “Morning Joe” audience had slipped to 680,000, according to the Nielsen company, and Wednesday’s viewership was 647,000. Thursday rebounded to 707,000. It’s only three days of data, but those are the kind of statistics about which television executives brood.”
Even now that the news has settled, there are still two camps. “@MorningJoe did the right, hard thing in opening a line to Trump. It is insane for critics to NOT think all of us in media need to know more so we can share/report more,” said Jim VandeHei of Axios.
“This isn't about opening channels of communications or fair and balanced reporting. This is about the right way and wrong way of doing things,” says retired journalist Hala Arafa. “Going to Mar-A-Lago to kiss the ring, certainly falls under the column of ‘wrong way of doing things.’”
But it’s not just consumers who have feelings about the media, it’s journalists, too. On NPR’s Fresh Air podcast a Veteran news editor expects Trump 'to go after the press in every conceivable way', writes Terry Gross. One way that feels imminent? The fact that Trump has his eye on tossing the PRESS Act. More on that story here: Trump demands Republicans ‘kill’ bill that would protect journalists from government spying by? Brian Stelter for CNN.
A reset for social media
As Bluesky continues to grow, so is the social media app’s business model. Expect a paid pro version of Bluesky next month, writes Jyoti Mann for Business Insider. “The company plans to launch a paid subscription model by the end of this year, which will include features such as customizable aesthetics, avatar frames, and more video uploads or high-resolution images.”
Anisha Sircar of Forbes has an indepth look at the battle of the social media apps in Bluesky Vs. X: Can The Decentralized Platform Dethrone Elon Musk’s Revamped Twitter?
And Sean Burch reports for The Wrap that Elon Musk’s X Offsets Lost Users With 27% Spike in Post-Election Downloads. “X, in the two weeks since the election, has seen U.S. downloads increase 27% compared to the prior two week period, according to data from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm. And those new downloads have been critical for X,” Burch writes.
Instagram is now giving users a chance “to reset the content recommendations they see in Explore, Reels and Feed when they want a fresh start.” You can read more about that here: Reshape Your Instagram With a Recommendations Reset.
Speaking of recommendations…this study published in Nature found that 75% of forwarded links on social media were ‘shares without clicks,’ aka, a large chunk of people share articles (including news and current events) without reading them first. Here’s the study: Sharing without clicking on news in social media.
More notable media stories
From the Muck Rack Team
More than one-third of PR pros find it difficult to track their efforts, according to Muck Rack’s The State of PR Measurement 2024. Yet measurement is an essential tool for PR, especially for understanding the impact of your campaigns and efforts. I had a discussion with Jennifer Gist, senior communications associate at Team Rubicon, Matt Prince, director of brand communications and PR at Taco Bell and Lisa Zahn, director of PR and social for Campbell’s US Meals & Beverages on the best ways to approach measurement and what’s new in 2025 in measurement trends. Read the takeaways here: What’s ahead for PR Measurement: PR pros from Campbell’s, Taco Bell and Team Rubicon weigh in and watch the webinar on-demand.