TV News' 'Perfect Storm': Brian Williams' Humble Amazon $; Star Exits; Power Struggles as Election Stress Mounts

New scoops out of CNN, NBC, CBS & the 'NYT' on the eve of Nov. 5 as top talent flees, leadership flails and rivalries take hold: 'It's time to get the fuck out'

NEWSIES 2024 From left: Brian Williams, who co-anchored MSNBC’s Election Night coverage in 2016, CBS news chief Wendy McMahon and CNN’s Jake Tapper. (Heidi Gutman/MSNBC/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images; CBS News; CNN)

Lachlan Cartwright writes about media disruption. He last covered CNN’s star-salary “beheadings” and CEO Mark Thompson’s rocky road to reinvention for The Ankler.

This Ankler Feature is an 11-minute read.

On the same set where Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz were filmed in Los Angeles, a star from a throwback era of news has been rehearsing this week for his long-awaited comeback. 

For the TV news business, it’s more the torching of Tara than the Yellow Brick Road.

Brian Williams has not been seen in an anchor chair since he stepped away from MSNBC in late 2021 after hosting The 11th Hour for just over five years. He was an early victim of the talent contract haircuts that are now widespread in the industry. But next week, courtesy of Amazon, he will be returning to helm Prime Video’s first-ever Election Night newscast from an Amazon MGM Studios’ soundstage. 

On-air guests from news outlets including Axios and Politico will appear alongside Williams, who is fronting the endeavor for a mere low six-figure sum, The Ankler has learned. (In the heyday of his NBC News anchor days, it was reported he pulled down $10 million a year).

This is how weird things have become in the news business as this wild election cycle comes to a head. In an increasingly fractured media environment, the 65-year-old Williams has emerged as a fresh — even hot? — commodity with his return to a TV news arena that has forged no notable breakouts this cycle despite wall-to-wall coverage of the Trump and Harris campaigns since Joe Biden’s calamitous debate performance on June 27.

It’s an unprecedented state of play that has agents scrambling to figure out what talent deals will look like in 2025 and beyond, while talent nervously await salary cuts — or worse still, layoffs. Meanwhile, popular podcasters like Call Her Daddy’s Alex Cooper, The Breakfast Club’s Charlamagne tha God and Spotify’s reported $250 million man Joe Rogan — whose will-she-or-won’t-she dance with Kamala Harris is creating its own media mini-storm — are wielding more influence than ever with their massive audiences. 

I spoke with a dozen news stakeholders about their challenges and threats as Election Night looms — and what the industry will look like once the voting and brawling end. In this newsletter, I’ll reveal:

• What Williams’ Amazon turn means for the future of news and events at Prime Video, and an interview with the night’s executive producer, Jonathan Wald

• The paltry fee the Amazon production is offering to guests like Shepard Smith and Puck’s Tara Palmeri and Baratunde Thurston

• The slow motion coup d’état at NBC News, and a tense exec rivalry

• The New York Times’ next multimedia star

• The familiar name in talks to fill the talent chief role at ABC News

• What’s next for Good Morning America’s $75 million star anchor trio

• Campaign reporters’ malaise and “very real PTSD from covering Trump”

• The ongoing cleanup at CBS News after the internal uproar over Tony Dokoupil’s Ta-Nehisi Coates interview

• How podcasters like Joe Rogan and Alex Cooper eclipsed TV journalists

• Which on-air talent complained about his photo from the recent New York Magazine cover story about media power players

• The well-regarded exec leaving a Top 3 agency C-suite