AT&T and Discovery are making a deal; a 'media juggernaut;' streaming at scale; week ahead calendar; Belloni's new perch; global media presses Israel for answers after Gaza airstrike

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Hey everyone, Brian Stelter here at 10:40pm ET Sunday. The media reporting beat is a strange beast: One hour, you might be interviewing an Israel military official about the bombing of a news bureau, and the next hour, you might be calling sources about the impending sale of your parent company. That's what my Sunday was like, anyway! Here's the latest from across the wide world of media...

Max Plus?

Barring some middle of the night surprise, AT&T and Discovery Communications are set to announce a deal on Monday morning to combine two treasure troves of content, including the HBO Max and discovery+ streaming services. CNN will be included in the transaction.

Bloomberg, which broke the news of the impending deal on Sunday morning, calls it a "blockbuster" for the entertainment business. The New York Times says the pairing will be a "media juggernaut." The Hollywood Reporter says it'll be a "TV, film and streaming powerhouse."

But what shape will the deal take, exactly? That's what is still unclear. WarnerMedia will be broken off from the rest of AT&T, but how exactly? Will Discovery CEO David Zaslav run the combined business? Different news accounts have different details. CNBC's Alex Sherman reports that "the likely structure of the deal will combine Discovery with all of WarnerMedia, which will become a new publicly traded company co-owned by AT&T and Discovery shareholders... AT&T is likely to spin out WarnerMedia in a so-called reverse morris trust and merge it with Discovery."

In other words, this is a complex way for AT&T to unwind its 2016 bid for Time Warner, which took effect in 2018, with the assets named WarnerMedia. The WSJ's story says the potential tie-up between Warner and Discovery "would be a surprising U-turn by AT&T." And: "If the transaction moves forward, AT&T Chief Executive John Stankey will have unwound the two biggest deals done by his predecessor, Randall Stephenson, in his 10 months in charge." Stankey recently struck a deal to carve out its satellite business DirecTV at a significant loss from the 2015 purchase price. Long the #2 and presumed heir, Stankey ran WarnerMedia for a while before taking the top job when Stephenson stepped down.

Of course, the media world looks very different today than it did in 2015, or even 2018. Investors are even more laser-focused on streaming than they were three years ago. And that's what this developing story is mainly about. If you're reading this letter after sunrise on the East Coast, click over to CNN Business for the latest updates...

Scale in streaming

Bloomberg News deals reporter Ed Hammond landed the scoop and published it on Sunday morning, sending other reporters scrambling to catch up. Hammond wrote that Warner plus Discovery "would be a formidable competitor to Netflix and Disney."

Indeed, prominent Wall Street analysts have been predicting, and in some cases encouraging, AT&T to spin or sell off WarnerMedia -- partly so AT&T could prioritize its wireless businesses and pay down its huge debt load, and partly to help HBO Max compete in the Streaming Olympics.

Zaslav alluded to this very possibility in an interview with CNBC last December. He predicted consolidation: "I think ultimately a lot of those companies are going to realize, 'I don't have enough.' And then they're going to say, 'Who can we merge with or who can we do a deal with? And if we put together our IP, maybe we can compete with Disney.'"

In the interview, Zaslav also complimented AT&T CEO John Stankey and WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, saying "they're super smart guys" and "they've got a lot of great assets there."

According to Variety, "the valuation under discussion is understood to be well over $100 billion." Brent Lang and Cynthia Littleton report that "Zaslav would be atop the combined venture" and Kilar "would lead the company's direct to consumer charge."

Flashback: Here's what Zaslav told CNN in January

CNN's Christine Romans interviewed Zaslav when the discovery+ streaming service launched in January. He said the nonfiction-focused service is a "great complement to someone who has Disney or Netflix, or HBO, Disney and Netflix." Romans asked how many streaming services Americans will end up having, and Zaslav said, "I think people will have three or four." He emphasized Discovery's global reach. HBO Max is about to make an international push...

Key quotes and notes

-- According to the FT, the AT&T board met at noon on Sunday about the deal. An AT&T spokesman was completely tight-lipped when I inquired, even though I work for the company, which to be honest is exactly how it's supposed to work...

-- Variety says "word of the deal was a head-swiveling surprise for WarnerMedia insiders even at the senior management level..."

-- The Information says "AT&T is effectively throwing in the towel on entertainment" but notes that "antitrust scrutiny will be a potential stumbling block..."

-- The NYT says this pairing "could set off another round of media deals" as companies fight to "compete for audiences increasingly glued to Facebook, YouTube or TikTok..."

-- Axios notes that other telecom giants, namely Verizon, "have struggled to make sense of their media assets. Verizon this month sold its media arm, which includes AOL and Yahoo!, for $5 billion..."

The headline for consumers

Here's how Peter Kafka of Recode put it: "The people that brought you Game of Thrones and the people that brought you 90 Day Fiancé are getting together. This won't affect you, the person who likes to watch those shows, very much in the near future. But it underscores the upheaval in the media industry..."

What about CNN?

Will CNN remain in the mix with the entertainment brands, or could it be sold down the line? The people who know aren't ready to say quite yet. Several stories in the past year have described CNN's value and suggested that AT&T wasn't inclined to sell the iconic news network. Some would-be buyers are likely wondering if that's about to change.

Variety's story notes Zaslav's long history with CNN Worldwide chief Jeff Zucker, and says Zucker "could play a larger role in the combined entity." The story continues: "Zucker had announced his plan to step down later this year but sources say this transaction could change that timetable." The LA Times' story goes further, citing a source who "said Zucker would likely stick around should Zaslav oversee the new venture." The LAT also says that "whatever streaming service that evolves out of a new venture would likely showcase CNN, as news programming is a strong draw for consumers. In addition, CNN also has a global profile and name recognition..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- One of my big Qs assuming this deal is announced: What about NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS? Do they have sufficient scale in the streaming era? There had been chatter about an NBC-Warner combo, but this deal would seem to rule that out...

-- Conversely, could other bidders emerge for these properties once the deal terms are revealed?

-- It's striking to re-read this Tara Lachapelle piece from two weeks ago: "Netflix's First Big Buy Should Be Discovery..."

-- "While this deal makes strategic sense, it comes with an obvious drawback: yet another restructuring," Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw writes...

-- Jennifer Saba of Reuters might have won the prize for headline-of-the-weekend. "AT&T hits on smart strategy: be kind, unwind," she writes...

Corporate bundling as the upfronts begin

Brian Lowry writes: "The Discovery-AT&T reports only fuel what would have been one of the major themes coming out of upfront week, which kicks off with NBC and Fox's presentations on Monday – namely, scale. In the streaming age, companies like Disney, Comcast and Netflix need the portfolios necessary to stock their services, and the resources to acquire and produce all that content. Disney appears to have seen the writing on that wall early with its deal for Fox's entertainment assets. The idea that Discovery and WarnerMedia individually might not be big enough to compete speaks volumes, and will surely fuel additional merger talk going forward – a corporate bundling, essentially, as the cable bundle unravels."

Lowry adds: "As for the upfronts, Variety's Brian Steinberg has a good preview of some of the attempts to change the way business gets done, including the traditional 'demo' standards governing ad sales, which seem increasingly stressed in a pay-to-view environment. As it happens, his money quote comes from Jon Steinlauf, chief US advertising officer at Discovery: 'You buy TV for what it's good at and buy digital for what it's good at. Digital is good under 40 and TV is good over 40.'"

>> Here is Alexandra Bruell's look-ahead to the NBC upfront, depicting NBC as "power broker between celebrities and advertisers..."

Media week ahead calendar

Monday is Tax Day...

Monday: President Biden delivers remarks about Covid-19 and the vaccination effort...

Monday: As mentioned up above, TV upfront week officially begins with NBCU at 12pm ET, followed by Fox...

Tuesday: New book releases include Sebastian Junger's "Freedom," Carol Leonnig's "Zero Fail" about the Secret Service (here's an adaptation) and Barry Meier's "Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube and the Rise of Private Spies" (here's a preview)...

Friday: Tribune Publishing shareholders are set to vote on Alden's takeover bid...

Friday: "The Me You Can't See," a docuseries on mental health from Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey; and "1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything," both premiere on Apple TV+...

Friday: Biden welcomes South Korea's president to the WH and holds a joint presser...

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- Buzzy Cohen is guest-hosting "Jeopardy!" during the 2021 Tournament of Champions, which starts to air Monday...

-- Will Cain is this week's host of the 7pm ET hour on Fox News...

-- The Kennedy Center Honors are being filmed all week long...

-- Just in: Former THR editorial director Matthew Belloni is joining the management team of "the new, as yet unnamed, subscription-based media platform" that Jon Kelly, Joe Purzycki, Max Tcheyan, and Liz Gough are launching later this year. Belloni will be "leading Hollywood coverage and related business development..."

-- So many leaks with so much money at stake: The NYT and the WSJ both dropped new stories about Bill Gates on Sunday evening...

We need a "democracy beat"

More specifically, a threats-to-democracy beat. I brought this up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources," with tips of the hat to Dan Froomkin and Michael Calderone, both of whom raised this concept earlier in the year. Some news outlets, including CNN, have been beefing up coverage of voting rights. ProPublica has been recruiting for a "democracy reporter." Practically every day there are new stories about democratic backsliding and examples of erosion.

"We need more coverage, not less," Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told me. The folks she dubs "democracy deniers" are "counting on us not paying attention," thereby making it "easier for them to continue to deny democracy in future elections." Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman, who's been covering voting rights for years, also joined the conversation...

Wehner: Trump's base is 'addicted' to the big lie

Among some Trump fans, "there was a psychological need or longing or craving to believe that Donald Trump won" the election in 2020, Reagan and Bush admin veteran Peter Wehner says. He likens it to an addiction, and he says media sources are "feeding that addiction, giving them the information they want, playing into confirmation bias." Here's our segment from Sunday's show...

Trump expresses displeasure with Newsmax

Oliver Darcy writes: "Not even the right-wing channel Newsmax can satisfy Trump these days, as the former president wades further and further into sheer lunacy. Over the weekend, as Trump put out deranged statements about the election, he also knocked Newsmax — which, after the election, helped peddle the Big Lie. In the statement in which Trump falsely said the 'entire database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED,' he complained that Newsmax had been 'virtually silent on this subject.' Trump also claimed Fox was 'afraid to cover it.' Maybe that's because the story he was referencing wasn't actually true..."

Todd's blunt question for Crenshaw

Oliver Darcy writes: "Chuck Todd on Sunday asked Dan Crenshaw, point blank, one of the most important questions facing members of the GOP today: 'Why should anybody believe a word you say if the Republican Party itself doesn't have credibility?' During the convo, Crenshaw tried to draw a distinction between his personal positions and those of Trump, but Todd reminded him that he also signed on to an election-related lawsuit filed by the Texas AG. Crenshaw didn't appreciate that much and the convo devolved into him attacking what he characterized as a 'largely liberal' press corps. Todd fired back, telling him there's 'nothing lazier' than resorting to that..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

-- Dan Balz's assessment: "This is about more than the future direction of the Republican Party. It is about the future of the country and its democracy." (WaPo)

-- Liz Cheney, when asked by ABC's Jon Karl if she was suggesting "that Jan. 6 could happen again, or maybe something worse," said: "I think there's no question." Over on "Fox News Sunday," Cheney said Donald Trump is a "continuing danger to our system..." (TPM)

-- Joe Ferullo writes about how his perceptions of Cheney were informed by the movie about her father, "Vice," and notes that it's "good for audiences to remember actual humans can surprise you; they're always something more than caricatures." (The Hill)

-- WaPo's framing about "Biden's America:" While "Democrats see competence, Republicans see chaos." It all depends on what they're watching on TV and seeing on social media, IMHO... (WaPo)

-- Meridith McGraw's lead about Matthew McConaughey's possible run for Texas governor: "Alright, alright, alright … he might, he might, he might." (Politico)

Global media pressing Israel for answers

With a one-hour heads-up and several precision airstrikes, Israeli forces erased the AP and Al Jazeera offices in Gaza on Saturday. The bombing was justified as an attack on Hamas military targets -- hiding, the IDF said, in the same building as the media outlets, using the journalists as human shields. But media advocacy groups say Israel should prove it. The AP says it wants an independent investigation. And Al Jazeera says the attack was "internationally considered a war crime."

About that "war crime" charge, Time columnist and former Army lawyer David French told me the laws of war are "pretty simple" here: The use of a civilian building by a military makes that building a "legitimate military target." But again, that puts the burden of proof on Israel, to prove that Hamas was using the building.

So will the IDF provide proof? And why hasn't it done so already? Spokesman Jonathan Conricus said the evidence is being compiled, but wouldn't commit to a timetable for releasing anything to the public. I also asked about the concerns that the Israeli military mislead the media about a Gaza invasion to trick Hamas, and he cited the "fog of war" in his response: "As soon as we understood that a mistake was made, I corrected it. And we're moving on." Here's our full ten-minute interview...

The AP's position

Sally Buzbee, the executive editor of The AP, told me the newswire is looking for "temporary quarters" in Gaza and and trying to ensure "that this does not disrupt the important mission of telling the world what is happening in this conflict right now."

Regarding Israel's assertions about Hamas operating in the same building, Buzbee said the AP was unaware, and isn't taking sides. She said the outfit would like to see "an independent investigation into what happened..."

>> Related: Read AP correspondent ⁦Fares Akram's account of evacuating the building and watching the bombs fall. "I wish I could say I am safe here, but I can't," he wrote. "In Gaza, there is no safe place."

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

-- According to authorities in Gaza and Israel, Sunday was the "deadliest day of the week-long conflict so far..." (CNN)

-- Back stateside, Anne Nelson writes about how "Christian fundamentalists have quietly built massive propaganda empires that most Americans have never even heard of..." (Flux)

-- Matthew Sheffield's point: "While there has been a lot of attention in recent years devoted to white nationalist and fake news websites, their audiences are dwarfed by Christian fundamentalist media companies..." (Twitter)

-- The WaPo newsroom is heartbroken after beloved editor David Larimer "died suddenly this weekend, at age 47," Elahe Izadi writes. Larimer's wife Terri Rupar is an editor at The 19th. A GoFundMe page for their daughter has been set up here... (Twitter)

-- NBC News is paying tribute to Jay Barbree, the legendary space journalist, who died on Friday at the age of 87. His career pre-dated NASA! He covered more than 160 missions and made it all look easy... (NBC)

Goodbye, "CNN Tonight" *

Pop quiz: What's the sole prime time cable news show with a generic name, lacking the name of the host? Answer: "CNN Tonight." It's a vestige of an earlier era on CNN, dating back to 2014, when a rotating group hosted the 10pm hour before it became Don Lemon's program. Lemon's name certainly belongs in the title, and starting this week, it will be. "Don Lemon Tonight" will premiere Monday; most everything else about his program will remain the same, including his mischievous streak, which was on display Friday night when he mysteriously said goodbye to "CNN Tonight." By Saturday morning he revealed the new name... Jordan Valinsky has the details here...

Scaling the vaccine wall

Sunday's front page of the Green Bay Press-Gazette captured the Covid-19 dichotomy of 2021: A special "summer of travel" section was promoted while the lead story was about vaccinations slowing down...

On Sunday's "Reliable," I talked with Dr. Sanjay Gupta about how the media can and should model the return to "normal" while recognizing that not everyone is vaccinated yet.

Regarding the newly relaxed guidance, Gupta said the CDC "made a critical error here in surprising basically everyone with a very significant change." Alexis Benveniste has details here...

Sally Buzbee previews her plans for The Washington Post

Buzbee was originally booked for a segment on Sunday's "Reliable" because she is becoming exec editor of The Washington Post on June 1. So after we discussed the bombing in Gaza, we shifted gears and previewed her new job -- a real-time illustration of the juggling act that editors often perform. Buzbee said she'll do "a lot of listening and learning" when she joins the Post. She said she intends to "keep it growing" in the United States and expand the publication's "global footprint..."

>> For more, read her Q&A with Politico's Katelyn Fossett...

>> And here is Margaret Sullivan's WaPo media column about Buzbee, saying "her appointment is such a symbol of all that's changing in journalism — and an encouraging sign about all that still needs to change..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE

-- Does "The Devil May Dance" author Jake Tapper find it hard to switch between CNN anchoring mode and novel-writing mode? Here's what he told me about his writing process... (CNN)

-- How to catch up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" telecast: Watch the video clips on CNN.com, catch the entire episode via CNNgo or VOD, or tune in to the podcast via Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your preferred app...

"The hidden ties between private spies and journalists"

Oliver Darcy emails: "This weekend's must-read story was from former NYT reporter Barry Meier who published a story, based on his forthcoming book 'Spooked,' on 'the hidden ties between private spies and journalists.' Meier wrote that 'private spying has boomed into a renegade, billion-dollar industry, one that is increasingly invading our privacy, profiting from deception and manipulating the news.' He examined what happened with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele's dossier and argued that 'in a news business that is fragmented and hyperpartisan, a similar fiasco may lie dead ahead.' Meier concluded, 'To learn from the dossier episode, news organizations would have to examine their ties to private intelligence agents, including why they so often granted them anonymity. But as long as the media allows private spies to set the rules, journalists and the public will continue to lose...'"

FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX

-- A New York Post scoop on Saturday: "Marv Albert will retire at the conclusion of the NBA playoffs," with an announcement expected on Monday... (NYPost)

-- Sizing up Steve Kornacki's latest contribution to NBC Sports: "Underneath the Pimlico Race Course grandstand, a man in his signature khakis, button-down shirt and tie is breaking down numbers..." (USA Today)

-- "How Equinox is transforming into the 'HBO of fitness,'" by Jordan Valinsky... (CNN)

"The man who didn't invent Flamin' Hot Cheetos"

Sam Dean's Sunday piece for the LAT is quite the plot twist. "For the last decade," he wrote, "Richard Montañez has been telling the story of how he invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos. The world has been eating it up." It's a fantastic rags to riches, janitor to C-suite story. He has a second memoir, titled "Flamin' Hot: The Incredible True Story of One Man's Rise from Janitor to Top Executive," coming out next month, and a movie is in the works too. "There's just one problem," Dean wrote: "Montañez didn't invent Flamin' Hot Cheetos, according to interviews with more than a dozen former Frito-Lay employees, the archival record and Frito-Lay itself." Here's the story...

Box office check-up

"Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures' Spiral: From the Book of Saw easily won an otherwise ho-hum weekend at the North American box office, grossing $8.7 million from 2,811 theaters," as the pandemic "continues to take a toll on moviegoing," THR's Pamela McClintock wrote Sunday.

"Wrath of Man" held steady at No. 2. "Those Who Wish Me Dead" opened at No. 3 while simultaneously streaming on HBO Max. "The adult-skewing film is the sort of offering that may be better suited for streaming than the big screen in the post-pandemic era," McClintock wrote...

FOR THE RECORD, PART SEVEN

-- "Money, Explained," and more of what you need to be watching right now, from Lisa Respers France's Pop Life Chronicles... (CNN)

-- "After a year off, the MTV Movie & TV Awards are back and fully relishing the reigning supremacy of television in our lives." Here is Sunday night's winners list... (Variety)