NYT CEO Mark Thompson on subscriptions, platforms and internal Slack fights; IAC’s Joey Levin bets on betting.

Emma Tucker became the Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief in 2023, and she’s been moving fast ever since. For starters, there are punchier, more provocative stories and headlines. Just as important: She’s been making a series of cuts and staffing changes. That approach has its critics, but it also seems to be working: Subscriptions are up 7% in the last year. In our chat, we discuss all of that, plus more: What her background as a British journalist means as stakes out the Journal’s niche of “American capitalism”; why she felt comfortable running a story suggesting that Joe Biden was “slipping” weeks before it became evident to the entire world; and a brief update on Evan Gershkovich, the Journal reporter who spent more than a year in a Russian jail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

23 Loka 202429min

What if you could watch shows and movies on a screen, for free, in exchange for watching some ads? In olden times, we called that “TV”. Now the industry term is “advertising-based video on demand,” and it seems to be growing quite quickly. This is good news for Tubi, the AVOD/streamer Fox bought back in the spring of 2020, and for Anjali Sud, who has been running Tubi for the last year. At the moment, Tubi’s programming is helping it beat services with much bigger profiles, and budgets, including Comcast’s Peacock and WBD’s Max. Sud, who used to run IAC’s Vimeo video service, talked to me live at the NAB NY show. Discussed here: Tubi’s approaching to licensing and programming, why it makes sense for the streamer to make a smattering of its own shows, and what being part of Fox does and doesn’t do for her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

16 Loka 202437min

What do Donald Trump and the video game industry have to do with each other? Nothing! Yet we’re combining them into a single podcast, anyway. First up: A chat with Gabriel Sherman, the longtime Vanity Fair reporter who wrote and produced “The Apprentice.” That’s the new Trump biopic that isn’t what you think it is, and is very much worth your time — and which almost never got released in the U.S. As Sherman tells us, this is a movie that’s a sort of Trump creation myth, centering around his relationship with Roy Cohn, the notorious lawyer/fixer. It’s not an anti-Trump movie in the vein of “Vice”, but it’s also not a flattering story. That makes it hard to understand why Trump-backer Dan Snyder initially backed the production — but less hard to understand why Snyder reportedly wanted to block it once he’d seen it. Sherman walks us through the whole backstory, which is wild even by Hollywood’s standards. And then we switch gears completely, to talk about the surprisingly troubled state of the video game business, with Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. I’m used to seeing conventional media industries struggle in the face of digital disruption — but one of the reasons they are usually struggling is the rise of video games. Yet that industry is undergoing multiple years of brutal layoffs and consolidation. Schreier, whose new book “Play Nice” follows the twisted path of legendary games studio Blizzard Entertainment, tells us how the industry got itself into trouble, and whether it can play its way out of it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

9 Loka 20241h 4min

The last time I talked to Matt Yglesias, we were co-workers at Vox.com, and Joe Biden had just been elected president. Now Yglesias runs Slow Boring, a tremendously successful Substack, and I wanted to check back in. Discussed here: What a policy nerd does in an election that’s awfully light on policy; why hating the media is now a popular pastime across the political spectrum; what it’s like to run a three-person business that’s grossing something like $1.4 million a year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

2 Loka 202444min

Mark Zuckerberg, along with most of the men running big tech companies, has spent many years and tons of money trying to put a computer on your face. Now it looks like he’s getting very close to making it a reality: He’s just debuted Orion, a pair of bulky — but not too bulky — glasses that are also a computer. You can’t buy these things yet - they cost Meta a ton to make — but Meta thinks you’ll buy something like it in the not-too-distance future. The crucial caveat here is that we don’t know if this actually true. And it’s possible we never find out - there could be engineering challenges that mean Meta can never get this thing into mass production. But Zuckerberg certainly seems confident.  I got to try Orion briefly, so I want to share some of my impressions at the top of this episde. Then I talk to the Verge’s Alex Heath, who is both a face computer expert and a Mark Zuckerberg expert, and got to use Orion and talk to Zuckerberg at the same time. We talk about why Zuckerberg is building these things, why he’s showing them off — and why Zuckerberg is spending a lot of time telling everyone that his is a new Zuckerberg, and that he’s done with politics and done apologizing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

25 Syys 202432min

YouTube turns 20 next year, which makes it positively ancient by internet standards. Yet the world’s biggest video site is still incredibly relevant for huge swaths of the globe, even if it doesn’t get the media attention other sites generate. It’s also the only major social platform that routinely shares revenue with the users who create the stuff that powers the site. I think that if Google executives took a truth serum they’d tell me they’re jealous of places like TikTok and Instagram, which also have giant businesses but share much, much less of the wealth with their users - but CEO Neal Mohan insists that’s not the case. In this conversation we spend quite a bit of time talking about that business model, and much more: Like how Mohan thinks about AI; why he’s also in the cable TV business; and how he’s thinking about his company’s role in the upcoming US election, given the possibility of more election denialism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

18 Syys 202448min

When David Remnick got to the New Yorker in 1998, it was very much a capital M Magazine — it existed on ink and paper, and that was about it. Now it’s still a Magazine, but it’s also everything else you need to be to survive as a media company in 2024 — a robust online publisher, a podcast machine, a video operation, conference host and more. Along the way, it also pivoted from an ad-based business model to one that thrives on consumer subscriptions. And it remains one of my favorite publications, hands down. So I was delighted Remnick took time to talk to me about what has changed at the New Yorker under his tenure, and what hasn’t. Also discussed here: Whether the New Yorker still has special status among owner Conde Nast’s roster of titles; the acquisition Remnick should have made but didn’t; and why he invited, and then uninvited, Steve Bannon to speak at the 2018 New Yorker Festival. By the way: Welcome to the first episode of Channels! Feel free to send guest suggestions and (just about) anything else my way: pkafka on most of the socials. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

11 Syys 202444min

What happens when you mash up media, tech and business? You get a million things to talk about, and that’s what we’ll be doing on this show: Talking to people who run big tech and media companies, the people who are doing some of the most interesting work in those worlds, and people who can help us understand all of it. And by “we” I mean “me” - I’m Peter Kafka, and I’m a journalist who has been covering the collision of tech and media for a long time, at places like Forbes, Recode, Vox and now Business Insider. If you want, you can think of this show as a way to listen in on the interviews I do to get smarter about my work. And if you think all of the above sounds like the show that used to be called Recode Media with Peter kafka? You are smart, and perceptive and good-looking. And yup! Same idea, same guy, new name. Coming soon, to your favorite podcast app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

10 Syys 20241min