On Wednesday night, Puck’s Dylan Byers broke down the fallout from both MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-hosts and married couple Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s attempt at making nice with President-Elect Trump (to avoid his wrath) and Comcast admitting this week it’ll spin off MSNBC and six other cable networks.
The headline and subhead were exquisite: “Mika & Joe’s Excellent Adventure; News and notes on the real ulterior motive behind the Mar-a-Lago pilgrimage. Plus, all the nail-biting and agita unleashed at 30 Rock in the wake of the Comcast spinco news.”
Byers made sure to emphasize off the top that Brzezinski and Scarborough’s trip to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago wasn’t some massive burden but rather a short hop, skip, and a jump from Jupiter to West Palm Beach (so less than an hour away).
He explained their “relatively exalted status in the legacy media firmament” meant the trip “became a minor source of fascination or frustration among their peers at 30 Rock, as well as fodder for the media’s broader introspective post-election soul-searching journey.”
The eyeballs and hullabaloo didn’t translate, Byers explained, with the day after seeing a drop of “38 percent from this year’s average.”
But the real reason wasn’t what they claimed about fostering dialogue, but rather “they feared retribution” from Trump, who would “seek revenge for their criticism of him during the campaign.”
“Specifically, Joe and Mika have told friends and associates they’re afraid that Trump...will resurrect a decades-old, totally bullshit, birther-level conspiracy theory about the death of Lori Klausutis, a 28-year-old intern in Scarborough’s former Florida congressional office who died in 2001,” he added.
He cited a source as having told him the lovebirds “are petrified of retribution” and Trump Justice Department investigating them, not any concern for their network’s future or the show’s ratings.
In other words, they’re selfish political tools. Who knew!
As for the big Comcast spinoff, Byers had some bad news for MSNBC employees:
Comcast cable spin-out, of course, is just the latest Pangaea moment in the cable business—and in cable news, in particular—and the harbinger of a cascading series of subprime future outcomes: tighter budgets, higher margins, inscrutable overlords, lower salaries, less influence, smaller workforces, cheaper real estate, fewer benefits, replacing MacBooks with Acers, and rampant cost-cutting across the board, to name but a few. The maneuver is also likely to liberate other media conglomerates to pursue similar spinoffs and therefore consolidate the industry.
Byers cut through the highfalutin, meaningless corporate talk about Comcast suits insisting everything will be just peachy and drilled down on the simple reality of cord-cutting (click “expand”):
This narrative, while not entirely untrue, has led some observers to anticipate that the new entity will be an M&A predator, not prey. In a meeting with MSNBC staff on Wednesday, NBCUniversal Media Group chairman Mark Lazarus, who is set to become C.E.O. of the new entity, similarly highlighted those opportunities, which would bolster the spinco’s negotiations with cable operators.
But the real rationale for this new arrangement is almost certainly more pragmatic. Like other media conglomerates, all of which are trying to burnish growing and profitable streaming businesses, Comcast’s cable portfolio is an asset in decline— and it’s profitable, yes, but also expensive: a distraction for management and a frustration for shareholders. And the portfolio, in so many ways, represents precisely the profile of a company that entices the financial erogenous zones of private equity. Apollo or Blackstone deal hunters, to name but a few, would delight at the notion of resizing the company, cutting budgets, undoing costly decisions, and managing the business for cash flow. And, presumably, they could do it all with the Roberts family still in a supportive control position.
By spinning off the cable assets, Roberts could then wait for two years until the tax statute passes, and then sell the remainder of the business to their private equity partner, or another acquisitive mediaco buying the dip, without the tax hit. He’d still get a premium on his Class A shares, while preserving optionality in the event that the economic landscape changes, and possibly negotiating many favorable deals to support Peacock along the way.
Byers provided the tea that NBCUniversal Media Group chairman Mark Lazarus spent his “Wednesday seeking to assuage the fears of MSNBC talent through multiple Q&A sessions and direct outreach to anchors.”
Over at outlets such as the New York Post and The Hollywood Reporter, a meeting with MSNBC staff included network pundits/anchors Rachel Maddow, Katy Tur, and Chris Jansing.
Before concluding with the hilarious hypothetical of CNBC being spun off further and bought by Rupert Murdoch with MSNBC being sold to former CNN puppetmaster Jeff Zucker, Byers said the spinoff left “many network employees...flooded with anxiety” with “half a dozen high-level employees” calling him to ask for what he saw out of his crystal ball.
