Channels with Peter Kafka

Brian Stelter and Nilay Patel are both covering big, powerful institutions that are undergoing real change, whether they like it or not.

Stelter, CNN’s chief media analyst, joins me to talk about the mess at CBS News and 60 Minutes: What is Bari Weiss’s rationale for trying to remake Paramount’s news operations? And does owner David Ellison care about the very inevitable stumbles that have followed since she showed up? We talk about Scott Pelley’s public exit interview, what 60 Minutes might look like next fall, and why this has morphed from a media industry story to one normal people seem to care about.

Also discussed: The fact that Stelter could end up working for Weiss in the near future.

Then Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, joins from Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where Apple tried to convince everyone that it has an AI plan — and why that plan is different and better than the one it promised in 2024 and never delivered. A new Siri — if it works as advertised — sounds great. But what’s really important for Apple's AI strategy, Patel argues, is prepping for a future where the iPhone gets displaced by… something.

Also discussed: The fact that Vox Media, the company that owns both The Verge and the podcast network you’re listening to right now, are about to split up.
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Dhar Mann’s videos look simple, because they are simple: Someone acts badly, someone learns a lesson, everyone gets a moral by the end. You don’t have to be a kid to enjoy these, but it helps.The business behind them is complex. Mann has built a scripted-video studio that turns out TV-length episodes in weeks, generating billions of views a month. Now he tells me he’s expanding beyond YouTube and Facebook into places like Samsung TVs and Fox-backed microdramas, and he thinks the assembly line he’s built will work, there, too.
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I think of Dow Jones as The Wall Street Journal, because that’s the part I know — and the part I used to work near/around/inside. But Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour has built a much bigger business around the Journal: risk and compliance, energy data, Factiva, AI deals, and other stuff that sounds boring until you realize how much money companies will pay for it.

So I asked Latour to explain why Dow Jones is doing well while so many other media companies are struggling, howEmma Tucker, the Wall Street Journal's editor-in-chief, is changing the Journal, what he’s trying to do with AI, and what it’s like to run a Murdoch-owned newsroom that covers Rupert Murdoch and Donald Trump.
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Jim Bankoff has spent nearly 20 years building Vox Media. Now he’s selling a big chunk of it to James Murdoch, who is acquiring Vox Media's Podcast Network - the same one that produces this podcast - along with New York Magazine and Vox.com.

We do all the disclosures at the top of this interview, but let’s do it all here too: I’ve worked for Jim for a long time, and I work with the podcast network he’s selling, and I just like him as a human.

So this one’s way more conflicted than a standard Channels chat.Still, I have some straight-ahead questions for him. Like: What does it mean when multiple buyers were interested in his podcast business, but much less interested in the rest of the portfolio he’s been assembling for years? What changes for the properties Murdoch acquires? And why is Jim staying on to work for Murdoch, when he can almost certainly do something else?

And, because it’s Channels, we also gaze backwards a bit, and poke at some of the steps and missteps Vox Media took along the way. But if you’re looking for a wake for a digital media startup, this isn’t it. Jim is very optimistic about what comes next, and I have a vested interest in him being right.
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Versant is the new company Comcast created when it spun off CNBC, MS NOW, USA and other cable networks it no longer wanted inside the mothership. That makes Mark Lazarus’ job pretty simple to describe and very hard to do: take a business built around cable TV — an industry in obvious decline — and use the cash it still generates to build new businesses.I talked to Lazarus on the day Versant reported its first real earnings as a standalone company — and the day its stock bounced after getting hammered out of the gate. He says the early selloff was predictable; that Comcast didn’t “ditch” Versant; and that independence gives him the chance to invest in assets instead of kicking the cash up to the bosses in Philadelphia.We talked about what Versant is supposed to become, whether MSNBC -- now MS NOW -- can build a Fox Nation-style subscription business; why CNBC is getting into investor tools; how long NBCUniversal will keep selling Versant’s ads; what kinds of companies Lazarus wants to buy; and why he’s not buying the Vox Media Podcast Network yours truly works with.The bottom line: Lazarus says he needs about three years to prove this works. Let’s see if Wall Street is that patient.
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