Channels with Peter Kafka

Jeff Bezos used to be the savior of The Washington Post. He bought it for $250 million in 2013, and then invested money and energy into turning it around — and it worked.Now the Amazon founder is decimating the Post’s staff, and his managers are telling the ones who are left that things have to change.So what happened, and what happens next? Erik Wemple is the right person to ask: He spent years covering media at the Post, and now he’s at the New York Times, where he’s covering the collapse of his old home.
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In February 2020, Disney CEO Bob Iger finally announced his successor: Bob Chapek, who ran the company’s parks business. That didn’t work out.Now Iger is running it back: This time around he’s announced that Josh D’Amaro, who runs the company’s park business, is going to succeed him.So: Who is Josh D’Amaro, and what has he done to prove himself CEO-worthy? Why does Iger (and the Disney board) think this one will work? And what happens to all the Disney businesses D’Amaro doesn’t have any background in - you know, the movies and TV shows you think about when you think of Disney?We have an excellent guest to walk us through all of this: Puck’s Julia Alexander, who has been covering Disney for years — and also worked there for a year doing strategy stuff.Julia’s argument in a nutshell: Disney doesn’t know what’s going to happen to the business of making things like movies and TV shows. But it knows people are going to keep coming to its parks and cruises, so it hired the guy that knows that business. Is that the right call?
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In an ideal world, I wouldn’t be bringing you an interview with the editor of the Minnesota Star Tribune about her paper’s coverage of the killing of Alex Pretti in the same episode where I interview the man behind HBO’s newest Game of Thrones show.

But we’re not in an ideal world right now.

So here’s a conversation with Star Tribune editor Kathleen Hennessey — who left the New York Times to take the gig less than a year ago — about the challenges of covering the chaos in the Twin Cities, and how the paper tries to distinguish itself from the many, many competitors it has on this story. From the NYT itself to citizens posting their own videos.

And then I chat with Ira Parker, whose “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is HBO’s newest GOT extension. But this one differs from the others in ways you can see onscreen — it’s lighter and more fun, and doesn’t require viewers to understand things like the Targaryen family tree — and in offscreen ways you can’t necessarily see — namely, that it’s much cheaper to make.
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Football isn’t just the biggest show on TV — at this point, it’s basically the only reason some TV networks exist. So it’s a very worthy subject for Chuck Klosterman, the provocative and prolific writer, to tackle in his new book, which is called… Football.

The big Channels idea here is to talk about football’s dominance in American media and culture, and What That Means — and how that might end, one day. And we most definitely get into that.

But when you have Chuck Klosterman in studio, you talk about as much as you can. So in this this one, we also get into:

Why football is a “completely mediated,” made-for-tv-even-if-accidentally experience — and why “the only seat” is basically your couch

How video games helped rewire the way fans understand (and even play) football

How gambling created a “fake game” that sits on top of the real one

Why the concussion panic faded even though the hits didn’t

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News is a tough business. So how did Semafor, the news startup founded by Ben Smith and Justin Smith, figure out how to turn a profit in their third year of business?

Excellent journalism certainly helps. But it’s really because the company made two key decisions: Focusing on events — and focusing on events in Washington, D.C., where companies will pay a lot of money to reach a relatively small crowd of influential people.

There’s more to it than that, as Semafor’s CEOJustin Smith explains to me in our conversation. But it’s not a coincidence that Semafor is doing well in the same market that’s been quite kind to other news startups in recent years, including Axios and Punchbowl.

So one big question I had going into this conversation — and one I still have — is whether you can adapt the Semafor playbook if your media company isn’t oriented around the C Suite/K Street set. But take a listen and let me know what you think.
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