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      in Television

      Sam Rubin, Los Angeles TV Anchor and Entertainment Reporter, Dies at 64

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      Mr. Rubin began at the Los Angeles television news station KTLA in 1991 and became a staple of morning viewing through his interviews with celebrities.Sam Rubin, a journalist for the television station KTLA 5 in Los Angeles whose morning interviews with celebrities became requisite viewing for much of the entertainment industry and who endeared himself to Hollywood insiders with his geniality and knowledge of their work, died on Friday. He was 64.Mr. Rubin’s death was announced by a KTLA anchor, Frank Buckley. A tribute segment that aired on the station said the cause was a heart attack.In an industry known for its changing names and evolving trends, Mr. Rubin was for decades a mainstay for viewers across the city and an interview with him was considered a rite of passage for many stars.His ability to make celebrities feel comfortable as he asked them about their craft spanned generations.Although it was clear that Mr. Rubin was immersed in the minutiae of his beat, part of his enduring appeal came from the antics he himself brought to the studio and his ability to change the pace of what could be a rote interview.“Is it shampoo and conditioner, or just shampoo — what is the hair regimen, Jared?” he said in an interview with the actor Jared Leto.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Disney, Hulu and Max Streaming Bundle Will Soon Become Available

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      The offering from Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery shows how rival companies are willing to work together to navigate an uncertain entertainment landscape.In a rare moment of solidarity, two entertainment giants are teaming up to try to get consumers to stop canceling their streaming services so frequently.Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Wednesday that they would start offering a bundle of their Disney+, Hulu and Max streaming services this summer, a sign of how rivals have become more willing to join forces in order to confront an ever-changing media landscape.The companies said that the bundle would be available to buy on any of the three streaming platform’s websites (Disney owns Disney+ and Hulu; Warner Bros. Discovery owns Max), and that there would be a commercial-free version as well as one featuring ads. The companies did not announce prices or a date when the offering would become available.The monthly retail price for subscribing to commercial-free versions of all three services is currently $48; the plans with ads cost a combined $25. A bundled offering is likely to cost less.Media executives have been vexed in recent years as the extremely profitable cable bundle has come undone by cord cutting, and as viewers have rapidly turned to on-demand streaming entertainment. The transition to streaming has been difficult for the companies, which have been bleeding cash.Disney, for instance, announced this week that Disney+ was profitable last quarter for the first time, though its overall streaming division lost money.Adding to the uncertainty, consumers have shown a much greater willingness to cull and cut streaming services over the last year or so, further confounding executives who have slashed costs and reduced the number of television shows to get closer to making meaningful profits.Disney has introduced a bundle for Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. The company has said it has seen good results from that offering.Executives have been flirting with the idea of cobbling together a streaming offering across media companies to give consumers less incentive to cancel. The Disney+, Hulu and Max offering is a significant step in that direction.Joe Earley, the president of Disney Entertainment’s direct-to-consumer division, said in a statement that the “new partnership puts subscribers first.” JB Perrette, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery’s global streaming unit, called it “a powerful new road map for the future of the industry.”In February, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox said they were forming a joint venture to create a streaming service dedicated to their sports offerings. It is expected to debut in the fall. More

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      in Music

      Eurovision Fans Are Hungry for News. These Superfans Are Here to Help.

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      A cottage industry of blogs and social media accounts, run by Eurovision obsessives in their spare time, satisfies a seemingly endless demand.Magnus Bormark, a longtime rock guitarist in Norway, said his band had gotten used to releasing music with little publicity. So nothing prepared him for the onslaught of attention since the band, Gåte, was selected to represent Norway at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.The phones have not stopped ringing, Bormark said — not just with calls from reporters from mainstream media outlets, but also from the independent bloggers, YouTubers and podcast hosts who provide Eurovision superfans with nonstop coverage of Eurovision gossip, backstage drama and news about the contest.Casual Eurovision observers may tune in once a year to watch the competition, in which acts representing 37 countries compete in the world’s most watched cultural event. But for true fans, Eurovision is a year-round celebration of pop music, and since the winner is decided by viewer votes as well as juries of music industry professionals, fan media hype can help boost those artists’ profiles.The rise of websites and social media accounts dedicated to Eurovision news follows a broader trend in media, where nontraditional media organizations, like fan sites, podcasts, newsletters, new video formats and publications dedicated to niche interests, are expanding in size and influence.Members of the band Gåte, representing Norway at this year’s song contest, have been surprised by the attention they have received from Eurovision fans.Per Ole Hagen/Redferns, via Getty ImagesA report published last year by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism found that TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat users paid more attention to social media personalities, influencers and celebrities than journalists when it came to news.“Someone can sit in their bedroom, being passionate about Eurovision, but suddenly they have 40,000 followers,” Bormark said.One of the most followed Eurovision news sites, Wiwibloggs, was founded by William Lee Adams, a Vietnamese American journalist who works for the BBC.“The fan media is sort of covering this year round, breathlessly, because they recognize that it’s an underserved topic,” said Adams, whose site’s YouTube channel got more than 20 million view last year. “This is the World Cup of music, this is the Olympics on steroids, and it deserves attention.”A lot has changed since Adams founded the site 15 years ago. At the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2012, Adams said he and a friend, dressed in hot pink pants and tight white shirts, were among a small number people in the media room who were not representing traditional outlets.“Things kind of snowballed from there,” he said. Today, Wiwibloggs has a volunteer staff of more than 40 writers, editors, videographers and graphic designers from 30 countries.As a Eurovison blogger, Lucas has attended the competition many times.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesThis year, about 300 members of the fan media, representing nearly 200 publications, social media channels and podcasts, are registered to cover the Eurovision finals in Malmo, Sweden. Another 200 fan journalists have access to the competition’s online media room, according to the European Broadcasting Union or E.B.U., which oversees the event. That’s in addition to the more than 750 journalists from traditional media outlets expected to attend, including one reporter from The New York Times.Alesia Lucas, a Eurovision commentator from the Washington, D.C., area, said she started a YouTube channel in 2015 as a way to find with other people who were passionate about Eurovision — not easy for an American. As her audience has grown, so has the role of bloggers in setting the tone of conversations about the artists, she said.“We start banging the drum earlier than even the E.B.U. to start getting Eurovision back into the zeitgeist and highlight the moments that are notable,” said Lucas, who uses the name Alesia Michelle for her YouTube channel. She records content at 6 a.m., before her daughter wakes up, and edits video after she’s finished her day job of handling communications for a labor union.The Eurovision commentator Gabe Milne produces videos for his YouTube channel when he’s not at his day job at London City Hall. “Often I’ll do eight or nine hours there, come home, and then spend six or seven hours of research, getting everything ready,” he said. Compared to past years, “you’re seeing a lot more professional-style content,” he said.Lucas records content at 6 a.m., before her daughter wakes up, and edits video after she’s finished her day job of handling communications for a labor union. Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesYet fan media has mostly stayed away from a topic that mainstream media outlets have covered extensively: a campaign to exclude Israel from the competition because of the mounting civilian death toll in Gaza.“We’re not journalists,” said Tom Davitt, an Irish physical therapist who records Eurovision YouTube videos on evenings and weekends. “We’re not even amateur journalists, we’re just amateur content creators, so wading into this kind of stuff — we’re just not trained for it.”While reporters from mainstream media outlets tend to be impartial observers of the competition, many fan media are not aiming for neutrality. When USA Today hired a dedicated Taylor Swift reporter who was also a self-proclaimed Swiftie, it raised questions: Is it possible for a fan to maintain objectivity? Would someone who is not a fan understand the subject well enough to cover it?Charlie Beckett, the head of a think tank focused on journalism at the London School of Economics, said objectivity was not the goal in Eurovision.“The whole point of Eurovision is that you’re incredibly biased according to your nationality and which singer you like,” Beckett said. The growing numbers of fan media sites reflected the growth in hype around Eurovision, even nearly 70 years after its first edition. “It seems to ride out any kind of fashion reversal,” he said.Lucas, from the D.C. area, said that while mainstream media outlets report on Eurovision as a circus, it was now more mainstream than people credit. “Yeah, it’s camp, a little bit,” she said, “but you can’t tell me that Katy Perry’s halftime show was not camp either.” More

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      in Television

      Colin Jost Falls Flat at White House Correspondents Dinner

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      The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner has occasionally featured some great stand-up comedy. This “S.N.L.” veteran’s set will not join that list.People in the media have long worried about the impact of the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on journalism. The concern is that it makes the press look too chummy with politicians it’s covering. But what is the impact on comedy?A high-ceilinged hotel ballroom filled with television anchors and network executives is a tough room for stand-up, but no more so than an awards show. Trevor Noah was funnier two years ago at the dinner than he was at this year’s Grammys.A murderer’s row of comics, among them Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and Wanda Sykes, has taken this assignment because it’s one of the most high-profile live comedy sets of the year. And there has been one truly great performance (Stephen Colbert), some very good ones (Seth Meyers, Larry Wilmore) and one so thrillingly biting (Michelle Wolf) that the next year they replaced the comic with a historian.Colin Jost’s set this year does not belong in that pantheon. Without his Weekend Update partner Michael Che next to him, he came off muted, vanilla, less assured than usual. With long pauses between jokes, eyes darting side to side, he occasionally took a drink of water and at least once acknowledged the lack of laughter in the room. His jokes leaned on wordplay more than a specific or novel perspective. “Some incredible news organizations here,” began one of his pricklier jokes, finished by: “Also, some credible ones.”He focused much fire on former President Donald J. Trump. “Now that O.J.’s dead, who is the front-runner for V.P.?” he asked. “Diddy?” Like Biden, Jost has always benefited from low expectations. No one that handsome could be funny, right? But he has grown into his role at “Saturday Night Live,” proving to be an especially strong straight man adept at the comedy of embarrassment. You could see his timing in one of the odder moments when he said Robert Kennedy Jr. could be the third Catholic president and the C-SPAN camera cut to President Biden (the second) clapping. Jost retreated on Kennedy’s chances one beat later: “Like his vaccine card says, he doesn’t have a shot.”For the third year in a row, President’s Biden’s age played a big role in the comedy (“Technology wasn’t invented when he was in high school,” Jost said of Biden), even in the president’s own set. Two years ago, Biden joked that he was friends with Calvin Coolidge. Last year, he referred to his “pal Jimmy Madison.” The president took a slightly different and more confrontational approach this time. “Age is an issue,” he said early. “I’m a grown man running against a 6-year-old.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Book Review: ‘The Rulebreaker,’ by Susan Page

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      In “The Rulebreaker,” Susan Page pays tribute to a pioneering journalist who survived being both a punchline and an icon.THE RULEBREAKER: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters, by Susan PageMuch of the material in “The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters” has been told before, with persuasive narrative control, by the late television journalist herself in her dishy 2008 memoir, “Audition.” Don’t let that stop the reader of this thorough, compassionate biography by Susan Page: It’s a valuable document, sobering where “Audition” aimed for sassy.If anything, the 16 long years between autobiography and biography endow the two books, taken together, with a memento mori gravitas for any student of Walters, or of television journalism, or of the past, present and future of women in the TV workplace — or, for that matter, of Monica Lewinsky. More on her in a moment.Walters called her autobiography “Audition” to emphasize the need she always felt to prove herself, pushing her way to professional success in a world that never made it easy for her. Nearly 80 then and still in the game, she acknowledged that personal contentment — love, marriage, meaningful family connections — lagged far behind. She wrote of being the daughter of an erratic father, who bounced — sometimes suicidally — between flush times and financial failure as a nightclub owner and impresario.She told of her fearful mother, and of the mentally disabled older sister to whose welfare she felt yoked. She wrote of the three unsatisfying marriages, and of her strained relationship with the daughter she adopted as an infant.She breezily acknowledged the ease she felt throughout her life with complicated men of elastic ethics like Roy Cohn and Donald Trump. She leaned into her reputation as a “pushy cookie.”Page, the Washington bureau chief of USA Today, who has also written books about Barbara Bush and Nancy Pelosi, tells many of the same stories. (“Audition” is an outsize presence in the endnotes.) But in placing the emphasis on all the rule-breaking Barbara Jill Walters had to do over her long life — she died in 2022 at 93 — the biographer pays respect to a toughness easy to undervalue today, when the collective memory may see only the well-connected woman with the instantly recognizable (thanks to Gilda Radner’s “SNL” impression) speech impediment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Richard Leibner, Agent for Top Broadcast Journalists, Dies at 85

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      His negotiations led to Dan Rather’s elevation from “60 Minutes” to anchor of the “CBS Evening News” and sent Diane Sawyer from “60 Minutes” to ABC.Richard Leibner, a powerful agent whose firm brokered contracts for many of the biggest names in television news, including Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, Anderson Cooper, Ed Bradley, Morley Safer and Steve Kroft, died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.His son Jonathan said the cause was kidney cancer.Mr. Leibner’s firm, N.S. Bienstock — named for one of its founders, Nathan Bienstock — represented hundreds of anchors, reporters, producers and others in network and local television news.The negotiation that grabbed the biggest headlines was for Mr. Rather, then one of the star correspondents of the CBS News program “60 Minutes.”Between late 1979 and early 1980, Mr. Leibner (pronounced LEEB-ner) parlayed interest in Mr. Rather as the evening anchor from all three network news divisions: ABC News, whose president, Roone Arledge, was trying to raise his third-place division’s profile; NBC News, where the evening anchor John Chancellor was hoping to change to a commentary role; and CBS News, where Walter Cronkite had been the evening anchor since 1962.“The Rather situation was tough and sensitive because CBS News knew something had to happen after Cronkite,” Mr. Leibner told Manhattan, inc. magazine in 1986. “Cronkite had told them, contrary to what anybody had ever inferred, that he wanted off. He was tired of it.”Mr. Leibner surprised Mr. Rather by telling him that he thought it was possible to get him as much as $6 million over five years. In the end, CBS agreed to pay him what has been variously reported as $2.2 million a year and $8 million over five years. He succeeded Mr. Cronkite on the “CBS Evening News” in early 1981.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Betty Cole Dukert, Top ‘Meet the Press’ Producer, Dies at 96

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      She worked as a secretary before being hired as an associate producer at the NBC News public affairs show in 1956. She went on to spend 41 years there.Betty Cole Dukert, who began her career in Washington as a secretary in the 1950s and later became the top producer of the weekly NBC News public affairs program “Meet the Press,” died on March 16 at her home in Bethesda, Md. She was 96.Her late husband’s niece Barbara Dukert Smith said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.In her 41 years at “Meet the Press,” a Sunday-morning fixture on the NBC schedule, Mrs. Dukert booked politicians, diplomats, foreign dignitaries, cultural figures and heart surgeons to be interviewed by a moderator and a panel of journalists; sought out the most capable reporters for the panel; and researched the subjects to be discussed.“She was the main point of contact on Capitol Hill for the show,” said Betsy Fischer Martin, who started on “Meet the Press” as an intern and became the program’s executive producer in 2002. “She worked the phones constantly. It wasn’t an era when you could send off an email to book someone.”As she rose in the “Meet the Press” hierarchy, Mrs. Dukert collaborated with a long list of moderators: Ned Brooks, Lawrence Spivak, Bill Monroe, Roger Mudd, Marvin Kalb, Chris Wallace, Garrick Utley and Tim Russert.“I have never found anyone who is nicer to work with, more intelligent, and whose judgment and tact are so superb,” Mr. Spivak told the Missouri newspaper The Springfield Leader and Press in 1970.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      NBC’s Hiring of Ronna McDaniel, Former RNC Head: What’s the Deal?

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      The deal with a former R.N.C. chair who enabled election deniers risked the credibility of NBC News — and ended up pleasing no one.For the past week the best drama on NBC — apologies to Dick Wolf — has been in the news department.On Friday, NBC News announced that it was hiring Ronna McDaniel, the former chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, as a political analyst. By Sunday morning, Kristen Welker was grilling Ms. McDaniel on “Meet the Press,” after which the former host Chuck Todd told his successor on-air that their bosses “owe you an apology.” By Monday morning, the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” condemned the hire. By Monday night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow likened it to hiring “a mobster to work at a D.A.’s office.”And by Tuesday, Ms. McDaniel was officially out as an NBC News contributor, having lasted not even a half-Scaramucci.Not long ago, a TV news outlet hiring a former political bigwig might have occasioned grumbling from members of the other party, critiques from journalism watchdogs or anonymous griping among the staff. But it happened, and life went on. This kind of full-on, on-air revolt was something else — because Ms. McDaniel’s hiring was something else.The fiasco at NBC was in part a sign of how media outlets are struggling to cover politics in unusual times. But it was also a battle over how willing they should be to normalize ideas and actions that, in the post–Jan. 6 era, go well beyond politics as usual.The staff rebellion over Ms. McDaniel, after all, was not about her views on entitlement reform or health-care policy. It was about her statements and actions around the attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Throughout November and December of 2020, she supported former President Trump’s efforts to throw out the election results to stay in office, and at one point in the effort called Michigan election officials to ask them to delay certifying the state’s results.And although she didn’t back Mr. Trump’s most far-fetched election-theft scenarios, she continued to say, as in a 2023 interview with Chris Wallace, that she didn’t think President Biden “won it fair.” (Doing damage control in her interview with Ms. Welker, she called Mr. Biden “the legitimate president.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More