The Grill Room

Julia and Dylan dive into this week’s media firestorm: Zohran Mamdani’s social media-fueled campaign to become New York’s next mayor, the prolonged YouTube TV-Disney carriage standoff, ESPN’s latest play with DraftKings, MSNBC’s rebrand as MS NOW, and much more.

Lightshed’s Rich Greenfield joins Dylan and Julia to take stock of the WBD bidding war, as Paramount and Comcast circle the prize while Netflix and Amazon lurk on the sidelines. They game out who needs it the most, what each is willing to pay, how they might integrate their assets, and much more.

Julia and Dylan reunite to chew over Comcast- NBCUniversal’s lukewarm earnings, Peacock’s perpetual stagnation, and what it all portends for the company’s broader media ambitions—especially with WBD sitting pretty waiting for a buyer. Plus, CNN’s way too little, too late launch of its direct-to-consumer subscription streaming service, Elon Musk’s Grokipedia sideshow, and much, much more.

YouTube C.E.O. Neal Mohan and creator Michelle Khare join Dylan at the Paley Summit to discuss YouTube’s sprawling empire: the burgeoning creator economy, the evolving toolkit at creators’ disposal, how the A.I. revolution is quietly reshaping the platform and the media industry writ large, and much more.

Julia and Dylan debrief this week’s most pressing headlines and trends in the media business: the chatter swirling around David Zaslav’s potential sale of WBD, the New York Times’ plunge into short-form video as it takes aim at TikTok and Instagram, YouTube’s next big pivot, and much more.

Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, joins Dylan for a wide-ranging conversation on the media landscape and the evolution of their seven-year-old, never-Trump media company. Sarah discusses how they’re navigating this transitional moment for the industry, what Bari Weiss’ $150 million sale of The Free Press portends for their own exit options, how they’re trying to reach and resonate with new audiences, and much more.

Julia and Dylan chew over the week’s media mayhem: Netflix’s watershed podcast deal with Spotify, the booming industry of athlete-owned media, Gerry Cardinale’s unexpected foray into traditional media, the ominous layoffs looming over NBC and CBS News, and much, much more.

John Coogan and Jordi Hays, co-hosts of The Technology Business Programming Network, join Dylan to discuss how they scaled their podcast from a one-hour weekly show to a five-day live juggernaut pulling in roughly $5 million in ad revenue. They explain how they’ve managed to captivate both Silicon Valley and, increasingly, Wall Street—not to mention the CNBCs and Bloombergs of the world marveling from the sidelines.

Julia and Dylan dig into the uproar over Bari Weiss’s grand arrival at CBS News—seen by some as a journalistic awakening, and by others as a credibility crisis in the making. The duo dive deep into how her appointment fits into David Ellison’s broader media ambitions and debate whether Weiss can lure younger, more affluent viewers without blowing up the network’s buttoned-down D.N.A.

Chris Balfe, C.E.O. of Red Seat Ventures, joins Dylan for a deep dive into the booming independent creator economy—what creators need, how they can scale, the smartest ways to unlock new revenue streams, and more. Balfe also breaks down Red Seat’s growing portfolio of conservative voices, from Tucker Carlson to Megyn Kelly, and its recent acquisition by Fox, which has emerged as the most aggressive legacy player chasing creator talent.