☀️ PSKY NETFLIX Pitches: Money First, Strategy Later, Layoffs 💯
What resonates on Wall St. as pitches become political campaigns, and the huge jobs downer both agree on
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, December 9, 2025.
Where I hope everyone has gotten the same Albanian army joke out of their systems by now (I think the tally of NETFLIX BROS. pieces I read that opened with that is up to 6?).
I look forward to the new lede paragraphs on the PARAMOUNT offer analysis — maybe there’s a good undiscovered TV Everywhere quote from 2014 out there somewhere.
But overall — who’d have thought we’d have wistful nostalgia for the notion that the media punditry December 2025 creative agenda was going to be pretty much just DISNEY succession hot takes?
PLUS: Jimmy Kimmel extended his JKL contract another year through the 2026-27 TV season. Typically, he has extended it in 3-year tranches in prior agreements.
AND: Add Anderson Cooper to the list of WBD folk who have re-upped their deals before whatever happens, happens.
ALSO: CBS NEWS will name Tony Dokoupil the new anchor of the CBS Evening News, according to Status.
Matt Guttman is also coming over to CBS NEWS from ABC NEWS as a Chief Correspondent, for people keeping a big Bari whiteboard at home.
Sheinelle Jones has been named the official new co-host of the 10 a.m. hour of Today alongside Jenna Bush Hager.
OH: SPOTIFY has now added music videos to its US/CAN app, so you can feel like it’s MTV 1986 on your TV again . . . I guess with just maybe AI VJs?
THEN: As NETFLIX adds live primetime programming 2 nights a week with Star Search in January (on top of WWE RAW on Mondays) — it’s now adding a daily live combo of Jeopardy! and the Lotto drawing!
Meet Best Guess Live, a daily, mobile-only NETFLIX trivia show streaming daily at 8 p.m. ET hosted by Howie Mandel and Hunter March, which, yes, sounds a bit like HQ Trivia . . . but who cares. The more you play, the more your odds increase to win up to $15k.
AH: Gotta love Take Your Kids to the Office Day in the NBA. Hey, just because you’re a pro ball player doesn’t mean that sometimes the sitter doesn’t show up.
SO: WAYMOs are being programmed to be a bit more aggressive in their driving tactics — take your side on this one (do you want to stay stuck behind that double-parked car?)
YAH: CHATGPT is showing the power of traditional first-mover advantage, at least according to new SENSOR TOWER data . . . which doesn’t show a dramatic shift in AI bot usage after the release of GOOGLE’S GEMINI 3 at the end of November.
#Funfact: 90% of mobile app user sessions among chatbots involved CHATGPT the week of Nov. 24, according to SENSOR TOWER data cited by The Information.
Obviously, still early days . . . but GOOGLE reportedly bringing ads to GEMINI in 2026, according to Adweek, probably won’t help.
WELL: An understandably light day on industry moves . . . so I’ll just say kudos to Amy Baer up here today on the new gig at ARTISTS EQUITY as the new head of TV & Film, reporting into Ben Affleck and Dillon West.
FINALLY: Here was the 60 Minutes piece that Trump didn’t rant about yesterday — the one about kids and AI use, i.e., the one that affects the children of this country significantly more than Marjorie Taylor Greene’s status.
It’s also a matter that the Trump administration is actively preventing states from enacting protections for whatsoever — with Trump issuing a new Executive Order soon to codify. Eh, who needs Congress anyway?
OH, FWIW: Don’t expect COMCAST to come back in with a new PSKY offer — Mike Cavanagh said COMCAST’s deal was weighted more toward stock/equity than cash at the UBS Media Conference yesterday.
The gist was to combine WB and NBCU into a publicly traded spin-off company of COMCAST, with WB shareholders receiving “a substantial” amount of the company’s equity.
But hey — no hard feelings! Mike said, “We walked away feeling great about our business and our strategies.”
The WBD Auction: All Dollars, Few Specifics . . . and Layoffs Everywhere
It’s always nice when themes from my dating life dovetail with media mergers — Zaz, will you please stop ghosting PSKY?
They sound distraught that you haven’t called them back since they offered $108B to buy your company on Thursday. If you need the Saudi country code, it’s +966.
So, yes, if you somehow didn’t have a chance to read the updates across 32 different news bursts yesterday . . . or want to understand precisely what’s going on here between the lines and what this all likely will come down to — I figured that’s the best use of my time here today.
Basically — who knew VERSANT would become the most important company in the 2026 media business? Always nice when cable TV gets the last laugh.
Although the cable TV business (aka DISCO GLOBAL) is definitely the laughing stock of this deal process, the former backbone of Hollywood is now being referred to simply as “a stub” in all conversations.
And given how both companies are valuing the WBD linear TV business 👇 . . . you can see why. These numbers are something to behold.