Candle Media’s strategy is crumbling as we speak and it is shocking and unexplainable given how many intelligent people who knows the ins and outs of content are involved.

Think of Candle Media as the sun. A multibillion dollar backed entity that came onto the scene in 2021 to buy production companies and content in the name of brand building and supplying content.

Orbiting the sun are two planets.

BlackRock is a multi-trillion-dollar asset controlling entity. They have their hands in every important player and company in the world. They are highly selective about the people they put their money behind and they don’t back losers. They provided much of the funds to bring Candle Media into existence. They are also publicly held. (side note: there are possibly two other funds who invested in Candle Media: Ares and HPS).

Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs. Co-founders of Candle Media. Both are Disney lifers with impressive backgrounds and experience who rose through the ranks. Mayer launched Disney+ and was instrumental in the acquisitions of Marvel, Pixar, Fox Studios, and Lucasfilm. The man knows about delivering content so much so that he is still on the Disney payroll as Iger’s strategic adviser. Staggs was the Chairman of Parks, Experiences and Products and then the CFO. Also, a smart guy on the business side, he consults Iger as well. Per an article in the Wrap by Sharon Waxman in 2019, neither man is known for their creative intelligence. They are numbers guys and they know the streaming/distribution/brand landscape more than just about anyone else in the business.

Put all of these smart numbers guys with billions of dollars together and surely the first big moves right out of the gate and immediate PR announcements would be a series of purchases of established brands that generate the kind of cash flow that can offset the riskier low revenue growth company acquisitions that are not over-reliant on smooth sailing and could be neutralized by union strikes and otherwise. It’s business 101.

Instead, Candle Media did the exact opposite. They led off the PR game by negotiating against themselves and wildly overpaying for an early-stage not even close to global company called Hello Sunshine (co-founded by Reese Witherspoon) with not a lot of cash flow, no ownership of IP (it did have a book club), and a brand that wasn’t bulletproof. Price paid? Enough for Hello Sunshine to have a reported valuation of $900 million (other reports say $500million worth of Blackstone equity was put into the pot, but we’ll never know what the exact number was because Candle Media is a privately held company).

To this day, when asked, Mayer insists it was a good long-term acquisition (even though we don’t believe that he believes that). The evidence clearly shows that the acquisition wasn’t and isn’t and won’t be justifiable because the company does not have enough money-making ancillaries to weather any particular storm.

Ok, then. Question: how did Candle Media and Hello Sunshine come together aka what was the negotiation process between Candle Media and Hello Sunshine that ended in such a high investment/valuation? Kevin Mayer has curiously never been asked. Were other companies in the mix to buy Hello Sunshine? Apple dipped in their toe according to Hello Sunshine’s CEO Sarah Harden (formerly CEO of Otter Media which owned Hello Sunshine before Candle Media bought them) on CNBC the morning after the announcement…but, we do not buy this claim. First, Apple is not in the business of buying companies like Hello Sunshine. Apple acquires companies involved with technology and software and content and anything else that fuels the products they make. Second, Apple wasn’t mentioned in any other media outlet or by Kevin Mayer, so we will assume it was just Candle Media as the lone interested party…which makes Sarah Harden’s claim a curious one.

Next question: Who did Candle Media negotiate with? Was CAA involved in any way because they rep Reese Witherspoon and former CAA agent Jim Toth who was also an equity partner? Was it with AT&T who bought Otter Media who initially funded Hello Sunshine? Was it WarnerMedia who oversaw Otter Media for AT&T? Was it several of these entities working together to negotiate with Candle Media? It’s strange that the selling entity has never been mentioned given how large the deal was.

Why are we drilling down so deep into this Hello Sunshine situation? Because it has to be asked whether Candle Media negotiated against itself and overpaid by design. Sounds crazy, but consider their other questionable acquisitions/investments to date…

Candle Media curiously bought a 10% stake in CAA-repped Overbrook Entertainment when Will Smith was on the back nine of his career and his company didn’t own any IP or film rights or otherwise. What did it cost for the 10%? Why not a higher percentage? What’s the valuation of Overbrook as a result (99% of the time, the announcement tells us. Why not here as well?). On a related note:  10% is a very interesting percentage in the agency commission world (we’ll get to that below)…not to mention Candle Media is not in the 10% ownership business. They are in the ‘buy the whole enchilada’ business. This transaction made zero sense then and negative sense now. It feels like there was something else going on there.

Candle Media also spent at least $100 million (and it could be $150 million if certain targets are hit) acquiring ATTN (social change content provider) which was a content provider funded by TPG/Evolution Media Capital/CAA. ATTN: wasn’t profitable as of five years ago and while it’s a nice story about a socially conscious company done good, where does ATTN: fit into everything else that Candle Media does? Moonbug doesn’t need it. Does Hello Sunshine? Was there any interest in synergy? Who knows?

Candle Media’s arguably smartest buy (but again at too high a valuation) is the only one that sort of makes sense. Moonbug has tons of ways to make money. Tons of Youtube channels and subscribers. Checks all the investment boxes…BUT, setting this aside…

It just seems like money has flowed directly or indirectly in a certain direction thanks to indefensible deals and it begs the two-part question: What’s this all about and why if the acquisitions aren’t logical? Maybe, it’s about increasing the valuation and/or lining the pockets of entities who benefitted directly or indirectly from the buyout/investment action? Is something about Hello Sunshine benefitting the entities getting paid not just for the specific deal but for something else unrelated to the subject of the deal in some way? It’s strange. It’s hard for Not Deadline to explain…but, there’s something interesting here (that 10% of Overbrook deal sort of dangles in the wind). An entire article can be written about deals made for one thing that are not just about that deal, but for other things as well…we might do that for fun.

Quickly, what if we go the other way? What if the truth is that Candle Media paid low nine figures or high eight figures for Hello Sunshine and simply padded the value with a publicly announced value that wasn’t real? This would be a smokescreen to inflate the valuation of certain companies who benefit from the sale. Why inflate valuation? Maybe, it again benefits the companies when they are in turn negotiating with other companies interested in buying a piece of them? It sort of becomes this weird circular cycle of peacocks strutting their feathers to make themselves more attractive to other peacocks who want to spend money.

Lastly, everyone would ask: Why would Candle Media do this? What’s in it for them? Obviously, money, but from where? Unclear. They have untold billions of dollars behind them. They have three different equity funds to choose from. They have relationships all over the place and probably do all sorts of stuff that is never announced nor will it ever be known because they are privately held. Maybe, they move money from one company to the other, almost like a messenger. We may never know unless a nugget of gold rises to the surface from the muck over the coming months and years. Let’s see…

Sure, critics of this article can toss out phrases like “conspiracy theorist nutjob” and “wears a tinfoil hat” and “wild speculator”, but there is no disputing that Candle Media’s rationale for the companies they bought and the prices they paid are indefensible no matter how good or bad the economic times were…which means that any and all speculation is fair game. What is said versus what actually happened does not reconcile at all.

Which brings us back to Candle Media’s crumbling empire. It has been swift and unrelenting and no one is posing alternative reasons beyond what we hear on the surface…so, Not Deadline has. Why not?

If anyone reading this article disagrees wholeheartedly with the thesis, then come up with something more plausible and write about it…but, please don’t tell us the tale about a bunch of really smart guys who made a bunch of really dumb short sighted decisions. Even Kevin Mayer would find that naïve.

In recent interviews for his new film TRAP coming out next month, M. Night stressed the importance of being ‘original’ and not relying on IP (other source material) …which is a rather curious thing for him to say given how many of his films were shall we say at the very least ‘inspired’ by existing IP. For example:

Sixth Sense arguably borrowed plot and the twist ending from an episode of ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? The Village arguably borrowed plot and the twist ending from the novel RUNNING OUT OF TIME. The Servant arguably borrowing from THE TRUTH ABOUT EMANUEL. Old was an adaptation of a graphic novel titled OLD. Last Airbender was based on an animated series of the same name. After Earth was based on a Will Smith idea that M. Night co-wrote with someone else. Knock on the Cabin was based on an existing script based on the novel of the same name.

So, perhaps when M. Night refers to ‘original’, he’s talking about the story behind the source material for THE WATCHERS, the recently released film produced by M. Night which was adapted and directed by his daughter, Ishana.

The film was adapted from the book of the same name, but the true author of this book feels like a riddle in search of an answer.

Let’s start with the credited author of the book–A.M. SHINE.

A.M.’s first novel Coldwood: the Haunted Man and Other Tales was published by Dark Hall Press (located in Rhode Island) in 2016. In interviews, A.M. spoke of how proud he was to have a book published in the same part of the world where Edgar Allen Poe and HP Lovecraft toiled.

And yet, when you search for the Dark Hall Press website, up comes darkhallpress.blogspot.com with the most recent blog dating way back to 2013, and then when you click on Darkhallpress.com below the blog, the IP address belongs to a bizarre Singapore related website called kudatogel…and when you try to order the book on Amazon, the landing page says the book is out of print. It’s bizarre that the book is not available for purchase in any format given it would get a huge sales boost thanks to The Watchers. And even more strange, the book is not mentioned in A.M.’s bio on the Bell Lomax Morgan agency website that reps him. It’s as if either the book was never written OR all copies were destroyed.

And what about A.M. SHINE’S explanation for how the novel for The Watchers came together. A.M. said in a Zoom interview with Forbidden Planet TV that it derived from an unpublished short story he had written over the past ten years (he’s not clear on when during that ten year span he wrote this specific short story). The ‘pre-The Watchers’ short story was about a dealer of rare birds who enjoys having them in cages and he stumbles upon a cabin and looks out the window and these creatures start to attack before they are held back by the older creature and so on. A.M. then reiterates during the interview that he never sent the short story to anyone even though he found the idea compelling. The idea might be compelling, but what’s even more compelling is that, as an aspiring author, he didn’t at the very least self-publish the short story. It would have attracted a lot of attention. And given his short stories were allegedly published by Dark Hall Press in 2016, one would think this could have been part of that.

How about all of the ideas and characters in THE WATCHERS? A.M. said in the same interview that the only character he had in mind was Mina and that the rest of the book came to him ‘on the fly’. That’s amazing. So much for outlining or doing much of anything before telling the story…and on a side note: it appeared to Not Deadline that A.M. did not have a firm grasp of his characters or storyline when he was being interviewed. It was all about ‘making shit up as he went along’ and he seemed uncertain and at a loss for words at times when probed for deeper meanings behind the characters and otherwise.

And how about the creative content in the THE WATCHERS novel? There are plot elements that bump up against THE VILLAGE which bumped up against the novel RUNNING OUT OF TIME which bumped up against CABIN IN THE WOODS. Instead of ‘those we do not speak of’ in THE VILLAGE, we have ‘those who are shapeshifting fairies’. It’s fascinating to see a riff on a riff on a riff. M. Night loves things to happen in threes so there’s that.

Speaking of M. Night’s love of trilogies, The Watchers is touted as the first in a potential trilogy of films. That’s equally interesting.

So, we’re pointing out all of these loose threads. Why should anyone care?

Answer: Because it could be that M. Night is an original, but not in the way we could have ever imagined…and that’s fascinating.

Let’s hypothesize. This is just Not Deadline’s opinion. Let’s say in the early days of M. Night’s career, he creatively ‘borrowed’ from others because internet searches were not as expansive and exhaustive for research and information…let’s say that plausible denial of access was harder to disprove.

And let’s say that overconfidence caught up with M Night. on THE VILLAGE when it became clear that borrowing from an established author was not the smartest move. He learns his lesson, but, at the same time, knows his best works borrow from other people’s work. So, he pivots and publicly acknowledge (and/or option) existing scripts and books if he has any concerns about crossing the copyright line…until he gets cocky again later on and resumes unacknowledged borrowing (our opinion…not fact)—this time from an existing film called THE TRUTH ABOUT EMANUEL upon which his Apple tv series THE SERVANT is arguably based. He gets sued and might very well lose at trial. We shall see…

Which brings us to a really cool conspiracy theory. Supposing A.M. Shine was more of a transcriber than an author? What if the Shymalans fed him the characters and the story? You might ask yourself: why would someone create IP if they could theoretically just say it’s made up? Answer: Wrapping ‘borrowings’ in self-generated source material provides an additional layer of creative protection against others who claim their work was ‘borrowed’.

For example, THE WATCHERS could be a West of Ireland version of a very famous paper written in 1973 by a renowned scientist named John Ball who suggested it was possible that extraterrestrials were observing humans much akin to animals in a zoo, and Mr. Ball went to great lengths to break things down. There was also a script set up at New Line’s parent Warner bros decades ago that had to do with humans being observed by aliens as if they were in a human zoo. And of course, there’s the ‘those we don’t speak of’ book Running out of Time that incorporates limited spaces and isolation and creatures in the night. And there’s ‘Cabin in the Woods’. These source materials are high profile, very specific reference points that no one would ever cop to (especially Running Out of Time)

There’s also another interesting wrinkle here. THE WATCHERS novel was a UK copyright and not a U.S. copyright…and copyright laws in the UK are much tougher to pierce. It would be yet another obstacle for an author in the U.S. who might think their material was wrapped inside another source written in the UK where copyright law violation thresholds are much lower than in America.

Which brings us to M. Night’s upcoming film TRAP. He says in interviews that he got the idea for this ‘Silence of the Lambs at a Taylor Swift concert as a big sting operation to capture a serial killer’ in part from the real life 1985 sting operation by U.S. Marshalls and the Police Department, whereby they invited unsuspecting criminals to a location to pick up Super Bowl tickets and where they were instead arrested (he said this in an interview with Empire online as well). This may be true, but there’s another IP that jumps out just as much…and that is Erik Larson’s amazingly unique novel DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY that tells the fictional tale of a serial killer having some fun at the World’s Fair. Just swap out the World’s Fair with a pop concert—and there you have it…

Long story short: whenever someone suggests that their story is based on public domain true stories, it is worth doing a deeper dive to see if there are fiction inspirations. It might not be the most exciting thing to do, but it will be if you obsess over solving riddles and puzzles like Not Deadline does.

One last question for another time: How might the Shymalans have stumbled onto A.M. Shine if they fed or influenced the story? One way could have been through A.M.’s agent. Maybe, the Shyamalans read something of A.M’s (maybe even a way too early not so good version of The Watchers.). Or maybe they were the only people who got to read A.M.’s Coldwood novel that disappeared into the ether.

We may never know all the answers, but that won’t stop Not Deadline from trying.

(Apologies in advance. The tone of this article will have some bite for reasons that become clear as the story plays out)

November 12^th 2021 was a very important day in the life of Britney Spears. It was on this day that a judge formally terminated the conservatorship that had been in place since Britney’s father, Jamie Spears, petitioned the court and was named co-conservator on February 8^th 2008.

The end of the conservatorship meant that Britney was free to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted with whomever she wanted in her personal and professional life. No longer was she beholden to her father or anyone else. This had to be a great thing. Yes? Not exactly.

In short order, she posted strange Instagram videos of herself wearing skimpy outfits and doing weird dances. She got pregnant by longtime boyfriend Sam Asghari whom she had dated since 2016. She suffered a miscarriage. She tied the knot with Sam. She assaulted Sam (which was reported in TMZ by ‘sources’ as an ongoing problem). She got divorced from Sam fourteen months after getting married to him. She played with what looked like real knives in a video. Her ex-husband got 100% custody of their two sons and fled to Hawaii to get as far away as financially, affordably possible. She cut off all communications with her immediate family. She wrote a book detailing the dark side of her life, which brought on a whole new set of problems for her and everyone that she torched in the book. A video surfaced of what appeared to be Britney in a restaurant talking to herself.

The post-conservatorship era sounds pretty bad. It must have been a lot worse when the Conservatorship was still active. Yes? Not exactly.

Britney still had at least ‘30% of the time’ custody of her kids. She had a relationship, albeit strained, with her family. She had Sam as her boyfriend. She didn’t (wasn’t allowed to??) get pregnant. She released some albums. She appeared as a guest judge on X factor. She did a successful residency in Vegas. She was slated to do more shows in Vegas but canceled because of mental issues brought on her father’s seriously illness. She challenged the conservatorship in 2019 and Jamie temporarily stepped down, but it was not terminated by the judge out of valid mental health concerns as related to Britney.

…which begs the question: Who thought it was a good idea, given Britney’s publicly and privately known mental health struggles, to put her in a position to fail?

In our opinion, it was Matthew Rosengart.

Rosengart is a very successful (former) federal prosecutor and trial attorney. He has represented a lot of high-profile clients who felt they were screwed out of money or defamed (Sean Penn). He has a perfect record when it comes to trials/settlements because he has a ‘burn down the house’ mentality and weaponizes the media to fire bombastic claims at whoever his client is suing.

Britney met Rosengart in 2020/early 2021.  She had expressed a desire to terminate the conservatorship because it was oppressive, illegal, it violated her personal rights, it reduced her to something that wasn’t human. She wasn’t allowed to get married. She wasn’t allowed to get pregnant.  There was also a documentary in the works about this very topic…and someone at some point pushed the two of these people together.

Some backstory on conservatorships in general is important before we circle back to Rosengart.

99% of the time, conservatorships are about family. A family member (usually on the older/elderly side) is incapable of handling his/her own affairs (some or all) and another family member or close friend/business associate is approved by the court to make those decisions. Courts do not approve or terminate these legal relationships without a thorough vetting of every possible fact and medical evaluation because there is so much sensitivity and history between those who are affected.

Invariably, over the course of time, if there is money involved (or sometimes, visitation rights (or both)), the non-conservators want access. The playbook that every litigator follows is to throw the kitchen sink at the conservator in an effort to get him/her replaced and/or the conservatorship terminated regardless of what is true and what is fiction. Words like fraud/negligence/self-dealing/battery/overstepping authority/terrible treatment/dictator/bullying/oppressive/unconstitutional. Do these fighting words sound familiar?

Rosengart loved the playbook because it played to his strengths. Blow up the other side because it’s a white hat fighting a black hat…except that he failed to recognize there were shades of gray all over the place. There was an existing (albeit dysfunctional) family unit still intact. There was an ex-husband/father and children involved. It wasn’t a kid overseeing a parent. It was the reverse. It wasn’t a kid trying to get a piece of the parent’s financial action. It was a kid having the money and the older person managing and paying himself (paying too much? To whom? Worthy of arguments in front of a judge. Agreed). It wasn’t a kid claiming that the parent was being abused. It was the kid claiming to be abused by the parent. It wasn’t a kid being kept at arm’s length from the parent. It was a kid with a dependent need for help from the trusted parent (before the kid suddenly didn’t trust the parent for reasons that only Britney and her inner circle know).

Which brings us to what Not Deadline considers the primary trait of a Hall of Fame litigator. Like a Triple Crown winning jockey, the H.O.F. litigator has several gears at their disposal to not just win the race, but to the keep horse healthily intact. They know when it’s time to sprint, when to run, when to trot, when to walk, and when to not race at all.

Rosengart believed it was always time to sprint and that cost his client (and immediate family and her friends and others) dearly.

He maneuvered to block requisite psychological evaluations. He maneuvered to block anyone in Jamie Spears’ camp from asking Britney questions in a formal setting. He maneuvered to stoke the public’s outrage by throwing gasoline on a spreading fire known as the ‘free Britney’ movement. He publicly accused Jamie Spears of violating every known constitutional right known to man (hyperbole, but you get the point). He did all of this in spite of likely knowing that Britney was not in a good headspace as evidenced by the videos and other eye-raising stuff that she put out there in the world during the 4-month window between the filed petition to terminate and the official date of termination. Did he have a mental evaluation performed on her to be sure that what she wanted was not just achieving her goal, but in her best interest? Did he stop to think at any point that while a full conservatorship might be too much, a limited conservatorship (which does exist in California) might be a more appropriate vehicle so she could ease into a normal life? Or, in the alternative, how about ANY kind of arrangement short of a conservatorship that might give Britney a shot at a smoother transition? Maybe, this was attempted. Maybe, this wasn’t. We’d like to know.

Rosengart’s ‘blow it up’ strategy didn’t end with the end of the conservatorship. Instead of advising Britney to turn off her social media platforms and to disappear for a while so she could find herself again, he negotiated a book deal in spite of knowing all the while that she had serious mental issues to work through and that it might not be in her best interest. He also thought it would be great to draft the prenup when he knew it might not be in her best interest to get married. He could have demurred on both counts given his conservatorship work was done.

Which brings us to the motivation for this article. Last week, Rosengart released a statement to the Hollywood Reporter that his lawyer client relationship with Britney Spears had ended because he had worked with her to achieve her goals, that he had untangled her from all litigation (that had mostly been started by him) and so on. He ended it with a wink and a nod. “As I’ve always said, the credit goes to Britney.” It was also hinted in the Hollywood Reporter article that the intention all along was for Rosengart’s services to have an expiration date. Sure, there was. Just a snarky opinion.

To us, this statement can be perceived as meaning one or more things and none of them are good. The first interpretation is that it’s self-serving promotion. Rosengart is putting himself on the moral pedestal for a case that concluded years prior. That’s weird. The second interpretation is that Rosengart is intimating that Britney’s goals were all that mattered regardless of whether it was in her best interest. Not good. The third interpretation is that Britney was becoming a stage 5 clinger who took up too much of his time and he wanted to publicly end the relationship. If true, not good. The fourth interpretation is that Rosengart was planting a legal defense flag because someone connected to Britney might come after him on grounds we aren’t yet aware of…the old “Yes, I destroyed familial relationships and reputations, but that was Britney’s goal.” Maybe, this is a stretch, but who knows? The fifth interpretation is that he is absolving himself of accountability. “Don’t blame me if she or anyone else thinks her life took a turn for the worse. The credit goes to Britney.”

Bottom line:  Rosengart remained undefeated in the courtroom as of November 12^th 2021, but it was also on that same day he lost his first case outside of it…and it is because of this that his ‘former client’ has to crawl her way out of a deeper hole…in our opinion.

Puck.news was founded upon two principles that Matthew Belloni (and likely all the other journalists) cited in his decision to join. Journalist-owned and independence “to 100% serve our audience, not sponsors”. (https://puck.news/why-i-joined-puck-belloni/).

Less than three years later, Puck is a powerhouse media news organization populated by a murderer’s row of no less than seventeen top-notch reporters with rolodexes that rival (and beat) just about every other competing online news/podcast site. By extension, they have positioned themselves as an uncompromising and authoritative story-breaking group of insiders and it is this combination that has attracted tens of thousands of loyal subscribers who generate millions and millions of revenue for Puck …a number that will only continue to grow.

Seems cut and dry. Puck is what it says it is and what we think it is. Yes? Maybe? Just as with everything in life (and in entertainment news reporting in general), there are competing shades of gray and in the case of Puck, there are two shades. TPG and STANDARD INDUSTRIES (via one of their companies 40 NORTH MEDIA). These two shades of gray put up the $7 million in seed money that birthed Puck in 2021. On a side note: TPG also participated in the second round of Puck.news additional funds raising not too long ago.

What does all of this mean? Why should anyone care? Let’s flesh out the shades first.

Shade #1: TPG is a large multi-billion dollar publicly traded investment company that lists as active entertainment related business investments on their website: CAA (along with one of CAA’s investment arms, Evolution Media Capital…though, it’s unclear why both are ‘active’ investments if TPG sold its stake in CAA to the French company Artemis in the Fall 2023). VICE-MEDIA. STX (until April 2022). AZOFF MUSIC. CINESPACE STUDIOS. DIRECT TV. SLING. SPOTIFY. WINDRVR. On a related note: TPG’s co-founder, Jim Coulter, sits on Puck’s board of directors.

Shade #2: STANDARD INDUSTRIES is also a multi-billion-dollar investment vehicle that owns a lot of sub vehicles, one of which is 40 NORTH MEDIA which owns a globally influential marketing/advertising arm with several heavy hitter entertainment business clients https://www.fortynorthmedia.com/ : ROKU PARAMOUNT PLUTO TWITCH. AMAZON UNIVERSAL MUSIC LATIN ENTERTAINMENT. JLO. THE KARDASHIANS. On a fascinating note: 40 NORTH MEDIA which, interestingly enough, accepts Crypto. We are still trying to get our head around cryptocurrency as a concept.

Between these two investment behemoths, it’s evident that TPG and STANDARD INDUSTRIES have tentacles that run vast and run deep in the world of everything…so vast and so deep that it raises interesting questions about one of the key principles upon which Puck was built and, by extension, the brand it has curated. Call it that fine line where reality and perception get murky sometimes.

The tenet in particular that deserves analysis is one that Matthew Belloni experienced when he butted heads with the company that owns the Hollywood Reporter and left to join a media startup called Puck that 100% served its audience and not sponsors. This mattered because the rumor was that MRC was nixing stories in instances where it might negatively impact whatever relationship or otherwise that the company had with someone…and that was frustrating according to a Deadline article (https://deadline.com/2021/05/matthew-belloni-former-hollywood-reporter-editor-digital-media-startup-jon-kelly-1234757958/)

In the case of Puck, perhaps they aren’t catering to sponsors, BUT is their independent streak and ‘story breaking’ reputation perhaps affected by entities that are much more influential than sponsors…like Puck’s investors?

Example: In a profile of a Puck journalist, Vulture.com cited some stories that the journalist had ‘broken’ ahead of the rest of the entertainment journalists. One of them (a big scoop) was that TPG would sell its interest in CAA to the French company Artemis in late summer 2023. What’s interesting though is that, during this time, the cofounder of TPG was privy to information concerning the deal AND he was also on the Puck board of directors. Granted, the Puck journalist included a disclaimer that TPG was an investor in Puck and that no information could be extracted from anyone at TPG…and we’ll give this the benefit of the doubt. BUT, it does raise an interesting ‘Woodward and Bernstein’ versus ‘Richard Nixon’ debate. Could someone perceive the timing of the release of the TPG sale scoop as in any way influenced by something connected to TPG? The old ‘what did Puck know and when did they know it?” We honestly don’t know how the sausage was made on this one…but, again, content and timing are fascinating mechanisms to study.

And revisiting the Hollywood Reporter dilemma that many reporters likely faced if the rumors were true with respect to the quashing of stories…the perception of a potentially similar problem at Puck is worth assessing as a ‘what if?’

Example: Vice-Media. TPG is a significant financial player in Vice. Not Deadline has been looking for not yet found articles on Puck.news (it will keep looking and admit its oversight when found) that do the deep dive uncovering of important storylines that have gone on for years. The rise and fall of a once powerful online news site that branched into television and film and all sorts of ancillary media. They had a highly controversial CEO whose personal and professional missteps compromised the company’s ability to establish the sort of reputation that Puck and Deadline have. Vice also has consistent money problems. Content problems. Investment issues. Significant gutting of employee numbers issues. They have been a case study of anything and everything that can go wrong. Could this be perceived as something different than the reality? The New York Times even broke a great story about Vice’s attempt to go public in order to keep alive the hope that TPG and other investors could get their money back. We want to see someone at Puck.news doing the deepest dive of all and getting inside the belly of the beast. Surely, there is still some meat on that bone.

And what about TPG’s investment in Azoff Music? Irving Azoff is one of the more, if not the most, powerful players in the music business. He is fearless. He is uncompromising and he stirs up controversy wherever he goes because he has goals and achieves them. No middle ground. He’s a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in a dynamic personality who makes anything happen…and yet, there doesn’t seem to be much controversy to read about him in Puck. Maybe, we aren’t looking hard enough? Maybe the journalists don’t deem Azoff newsworthy enough to justify meaningful coverage? Maybe, he’s not as ripe for bashing as Shari Redstone at Paramount? Who knows? We’ll keep searching for articles on the subject and will provide an update possibly before next Tuesday’s article. Either way, this is all just food for thought. Perception can sometimes invade reality.

At yet another end of things where it’s hard to figure out why someone is willing to die on a hill, in June, alone, why have there been daily, countless articles written about Paramount and Skydance where Shari Redstone gets bashed at most of the turns? The story is simple. Shari trapped herself into a corner (that she wouldn’t…or couldn’t afford to come out of) when she retained too much voting power with (only 20% of the stock) to give a crap about everyone else who owned at least 80% of the shares of stock. Skydance wisely preyed on this wrinkle and enticed her with an offer and revised offer that she had to refuse regardless of her wanting to accept because she would have been sued into oblivion in a class action lawsuit and would have likely been handed her shirt. All the other stuff in between is empty calories. Maybe, the readers want the blow by blow, but if so, hasn’t Skydance made missteps worthy of mention? Why did they keep pressing for a deal that they had to suspect could not come together within the framework they chose? Did they have a different game in mind as things started to unravel? We don’t know. We might never know.

And what about AMAZON (an important client of Standard Industries via 40 North Media)? There is a fascinating, dysfunctional dynamic going on over there from the top down. Jennifer Salke is assigned more and more divisions even though her bread and butter is one division—television. The film division suffers greatly. Even the television programming is spotty at best. And the people hired below her in certain important areas are simply not qualified to shape the future. We understand that relationships usually trump experience, but this is not just some small or medium or large distributor. This is a global powerhouse…which begs the question: why isn’t Amazon taking a page out of Apple’s book and putting people with decades of leadership experience in specific arenas into those specific arenas with some semblance of independence? Want to read a hard-hitting piece about this? Kim Masters wrote one for the Hollywood Reporter in April 2023 about Amazon’s short-sighted executive hierarchy of hires. It’s great. As for Puck, it served up something not necessarily hard hitting along with some advice in an article covering Salke in July 2023. That’s sort of a bummer. Why not do a more critical dive? But, this is just food for thought. Perception can muck up the reality.

Anyways, this could go on and on, but if Puck truly wants to significantly reduce the ‘perception problem’, they should make an arrangement with TPG and STANDARD INDUSTRIES and the latest investor J ROTHSCHILD CAPITAL MANAGEMENT (if it, too, owns or is an investor in certain entities that raise a red flag) that allows the journalists to bring on a brand new single third party investor who buys out the current investors and isn’t perceived  (rightly or wrongly) as being concerned about valuations or other corporate interests or anything other than the story behind the story. This way, everyone gets what they want. Granted, finding these sorts of investors is akin to discovering a unicorn…but, hey…it’s worth a shot. What do they have to lose?