Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LINKEDIN here if ya like or email me at seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on TUESDAY, March 25, 2025.

Where at least that time you hit “reply all” instead of “reply” on that work email with the crack about the boss’ “great notes 🙄” on the latest draft of a script probably looks a lot better today given Trump’s new PENTAGON leader Pete Hegseth’s use of SIGNAL to send out top secret Houthi/Red Sea attack plans to officials.

Er, well, send to mostly government officials . . . as The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to the chat group by a top PENTAGON official and received them as well, hours before the attack.

Hegseth had this 👇 #onbrand classy response while wearing his American flag blazer (blue business on the outside . . . huge red and white stripes party on the inside), trying to discredit both the source and validity of the story, and when you’ve lost the FOX NEWS Chief Political Analyst . . . well, at least Hannity kept things on brand in primetime, calling it a smear “media hysteria” (and yes equated it to Biden’s ‘cognitive’ issues).

PLUS: Add BOEING to the list of American companies trying to weasel their way out of judgments sealed against them in the Biden administration. It doesn’t seem to have paid off for GOOGLE — but BOEING is giving it a shot, seeking to withdraw its guilty plea in misleading regulators in the case around its 737 MAX planes being involved in 2 crashes in 5 months.

THEN: While YOUTUBE took the lead in NIELSEN’s February Media Distributor Gauge chart (video viewing on TVs) with its 11.6% share — the demo bell curve of watching YOUTUBE on TV (which does not include YOUTUBE TV) is now pretty impressive:

2-11 year-olds: 16.9% share of YT viewership
65+ year-olds: 15.4% share
AND:
- 18-34: 21%
- 50-64: 20.4%

THEN: The men’s 🏀 tourney only has teams from the SEC (7 teams), BIG TEN (4) and BIG 12 (4) left among the roster of 16, plus one ACC team (who many are betting to win it all, in DUKE). The previous low for the Sweet Sixteen round was teams from 7 conferences.

BTW: ESPN now has 0 perfect brackets left going into the Sweet Sixteen, out of 24.3M submitted (same for CBS SPORTS and YAHOO).
AND: The Transfer Portal is now oh-so-conveniently open, so college basketball players have essentially 30 days to trade themselves to other schools. Ya know, searching for better academic programs.
- March Madness still has 2 more weekends to go.
KUDOS: To MARYLAND’s Derik Queen who said “Uh, first um, He did pay us the money . . . so we gotta listen to ‘em” in response to a post-game press conference question about what his coach has meant to the team. Pretty sure he took that from a deleted scene in Hoosiers if I’m not mistaken.
- ALSO: Nice work by the women’s MARYLAND team ousting ALABAMA in 2OT yesterday.

FINALLY: Sending a thought out to JuJu Watkins of USC, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in the women’s tourney last night. USC still won big, but certainly a loss of star power going into the Sweet Sixteen.