Ankler Agenda

The tentative deal between the Writers Guild and Hollywood’s major studios has quelled fears of another strike — all while shaking up the major guilds’ contract cycle. Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey break down the key terms, including a $321 million infusion into the WGA health plan (alongside higher deductibles and premiums) and a shift to a four-year bargaining agreement rather than the usual three. The deal — and its limited movement on AI — will shape not just the upcoming SAG and DGA negotiations, but the industry’s broader trajectory. Plus, the trio looks at a rare bright spot: box office ticket sales are up 23 percent year over year, fueled by hits like Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Project Hail Mary and other family-friendly fare. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sean Penn, puffing away inside the Beverly Hilton at the Golden Globes. Kylie Jenner, with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, on the cover of Vanity Fair. Nurse Dana, taking a drag on The Pitt. Smoking is back — both IRL and on screen — just as Hollywood’s shrinking career ladder leaves many millennials feeling stuck and a stressed-out Gen Z, inheriting the collapse, searches for connection and release. Editor, writer and former pack-a-day smoker Degen Pener joins Elaine Low and Sean McNulty to explain what’s driving young Hollywood workers to light up after talking to young industry workers outside clubs across Los Angeles — and what Gen Xers like him and Sean make of it. Plus, Elaine and Sean debate which generation really has it worse in today’s business — and whether boomers are to blame. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Silicon Valley was supposed to be satire. In 2026, it plays more like a warning. In a look back on the iconic 2010s HBO comedy, co-creator Mike Judge and exec producer Alec Berg reflect on how “incredibly intentional” they were in making tech startup life feel plausible. But what’s wilder is how close to reality some of their storylines actually got, from AI to the ruthless capitalism of the real-world Silicon Valley. Judge and Berg recall the real-life tech titans who informed the show, the Stanford math professor who helped them construct academically sound dick jokes, and the making of the series' mockumentary-style finale. As Berg puts it: “It’s beyond satire.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Casting Taylor Frankie Paul on The Bachelorette was supposed to revive the wilting franchise. Instead, a 2023 video of Paul attacking her ex-boyfriend triggered the meltdown of not one, but two of Disney’s biggest reality shows. Paul’s season of The Bachelorette is now sitting on a shelf, and production on The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives — where Paul is a central character — is paused indefinitely. The Ringer’s Juliet Litman, host of the popular Bachelor Party pod, joins Elaine Low, Natalie Jarvey and Sean McNulty to break down how the Paul catastrophe is reshaping the franchise, its fandom and the show’s future prospects. Plus, Lesley Goldberg stops by to unpack Netflix’s new bigger buying spree — and why sources say the streamer may be experiencing a case of “prestige envy.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s the irony: Even in the age of streaming, about 85 percent of profits from a merged Paramount Skydance–Warner Bros. Discovery still would come from linear TV, as Sean McNulty points out. So what do you do with more than two dozen aging cable networks? Spin them off, reinvent them as digital brands or send them to TV’s great dead-brand graveyard in the sky — all while Wall Street watches with a serious stink eye? Enter March Sadness. Sean, Elaine Low and Natalie Jarvey build a bracket to crown the most valuable Warnermount cable asset, with CNN, HGTV, Nickelodeon, BET and more going head-to-head. Which properties are the No. 1 seeds, and which networks are… MTV2? The answers (and the ratings) might surprise you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“It’s a crazy irony that your reward for incredible artistic success in modern Hollywood is that you then get to lay off a bunch of your employees,” Prestige Junkie host Katey Rich tells Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey in the run-up to Sunday’s Oscars, where two Warner Bros. films — Sinners and One Battle After Another — are going head-to-head for best picture right as Paramount Skydance is about to swallow the studio whole. “It really couldn’t be a more perfect metaphor for how backward so many of the industry’s priorities are.” Speaking of which, The Business of Television author and former head of business affairs at Paramount TV and Amazon Studios, Ken Basin, stops by to chat about the current state of dealmaking in television, how much the Paramount-Warner merger is going to weigh on day-to-day business (“Warners is effectively frozen”), and what Netflix should do with its $2.8 billion breakup fee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Talk about whiplash: A week ago, a Netflix–Warner Bros. deal looked likely. Turns out, the winning combo may be… Paramount Skydance Warner Bros. Discovery. (Rolls right off the tongue.) That is — if it survives regulatory scrutiny, with California Attorney General Rob Bonta warning that the merger is “not a done deal.” Still, a swirl of questions remains — all driven by a strategy executives aren’t quite saying out loud: cut billions in costs, merge the streaming platforms (creating clear winners and losers), squeeze what’s left of the cable business for cash and use the scale of a combined studio to survive a rapidly shrinking TV ecosystem. And all that Middle East money? Sure, nothing to see here. Elaine Low, Natalie Jarvey, Sean McNulty and Lesley Goldberg break it all down. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just how much longer can the Netflix vs. Paramount merger madness go on? (Cue the eye rolls.) Paramount made a fresh $31-per-share offer to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, and WBD’s response — which can be boiled down to “We’re getting there, maybe” — is about as close to coquettish as a corporation can get. Meanwhile, Netflix is not-so-patiently waiting in the wings, as co-CEO Ted Sarandos wraps a weeklong press tour to convince Wall Street and Hollywood that his company’s offer for WBD (which, as he’ll remind you, was already accepted in December) is superior. So what happens now? Elaine Low, Natalie Jarvey and Sean McNulty answer your burning questions about the whole saga and read between the lines of Sarandos’ press offensive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What are the odds of another Hollywood strike in 2026? The answer to who has more leverage — the guilds or the studios — may surprise you. With AI, healthcare and streaming again on the bargaining table just three short years after the writers and actors strikes shuttered the town — Elaine Low, Sean McNulty, Natalie Jarvey and Dealmakers columnist Ashley Cullins discuss the talks between SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Plus, who might buy Casey Wasserman’s namesake agency after his tawdry email exchanges with Ghislaine Maxwell came to light and blew up his empire? The team has some ideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly 20 years ago, Spencer Pratt became reality TV infamous on the cover of Us Weekly. In this bonus episode, he sat down with Ankler Media CEO and editor-in-chief Janice Min — the editor who once put him there — to talk about his run for mayor of Los Angeles. Pratt calls Gavin Newsom a “demon” and a “reality star in charge of everything failing.” He slams the city’s response to the 2025 wildfires, argues L.A. isn’t ready for the Olympics — “not even ready for a USC game," claims he already has a Day One “blacklist” of city officials he’d fire and has sharp words for Hollywood unions and the CEOs who run the studios. It’s classic Pratt for those who first met him on MTV's The Hills: provocative, theatrical, and strategically aware of the spotlight. But it’s also a reminder that the machinery of fame and the machinery of politics are now fully intertwined. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“So what do I have to do to see you in a tight leather outfit?” Casey Wasserman — founder of the Wasserman Agency, chair of the LA28 Olympic Committee, and grandson of Hollywood founding father Lew Wasserman — wrote in a 2003 email to Ghislaine Maxwell, later convicted of sex trafficking minors. The message is one of several exchanges included in the millions of documents released by the Justice Department as part of the Epstein files — and it has thrown one of the industry’s most connected executives into crisis. Chappell Roan and Abby Wambach publicly cut ties with Wasserman this week, with others threatening to follow. But he’s not the only major player to appear in the Epstein email archive, as journalist and author Allen Salkin found out. Still, the bigger story may be what the cache reveals about the clubby worlds of media and entertainment, industries built on proximity — who gets invited to the dinner, who makes the introduction, who vouches for whom. Salkin joins Elaine Low and Natalie Jarvey to unpack the boldface names surfacing in the files and what their presence — whether incidental, transactional, or something more — says about the networks that drive the entertainment business. Plus, Sean McNulty breaks down the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics ratings, and Paramount’s latest sweetened bid for Warner Bros. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bell Media President Sean Cohan tells The Ankler’s Elaine Low onstage at NATPE Global/Realscreen Summit in Miami about the pitch process for ‘Heated Rivalry,’ how the show’s creators protected its Canadian authenticity and why so many viewers are “reheating” (aka rewatching) the gay hockey drama. He also charts the growth of Bell-owned Canadian streamer Crave and takes a contrarian view on Hollywood consolidation, including the Netflix-Warner Bros. tie-up. “We run as an industry to a ‘sky is falling’ kind of a place,” Cohan says. While big mergers have undeniably harsh consequences, they also open “lanes of opportunity.” He adds. “It'll be a great time for entrepreneurship, because these distracted, big, lumbering giants are going to get a little slower.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Disney finally did it: Bob Iger has a successor. Parks chief Josh D’Amaro is taking the throne, with runner-up Dana Walden annexing more territory at the Mouse House (and earning a higher base salary than her new boss). Everyone in TV and film knows Walden, but who is D’Amaro? And what does this new era of Disney actually look like? Elaine Low, Natalie Jarvey and Sean McNulty read between the lines and lay out the challenges facing D’Amaro on Day One. Then, Lesley Goldberg joins to share her reporting on Walden’s new remit, while theme park journalist Carlye Wisel discusses D’Amaro’s impact on the parks business. Plus, Matthew Frank is back with a look at the prediction markets ahead of perhaps the biggest sports betting day of the year: the Super Bowl. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

'MeidasTouch' podcaster and progressive media exec Ben Meiselas joins Like & Subscribe's Natalie Jarvey for a fiery discussion of the risks and new rules for American journalists as they report in U.S. cities “that look and feel like Fallujah” and work to cover "a regime that is hell-bent on retribution and instilling fear." Meiselas also reveals his close ties with Don Lemon, now facing federal charges in connection with his coverage of a Minnesota anti-ICE protest, and why he sees the "weaponization" of the U.S. Department of Justice faltering. As Meiselas’ podcast sees explosive growth, he argues that legacy news has lost the plot and audiences — "people who feel, who are struggling, who are being left behind" — and shares the strategy to keep building his independent media empire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Disney CEO Bob Iger is ready to abdicate the throne. Again. Six years after Iger first stepped down as CEO, and 38 months after he regained control of Disney following Bob Chapek’s disastrous two-year stretch, the succession planning committee is expected to announce the winner in “early 2026,” aka now. (Cue the Succession theme.) But even as the frontrunners have remained the same — it’s still a presumed two-horse race between Disney Parks head Josh D’Amaro and Disney Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden — the world has rapidly changed. Disney has to contend with AI, a behemoth rival in a merged Netflix-Warner Bros., and a charged political environment. Which of these heavyweights lands the TKO? Would co-CEOs, à la Netflix, make sense? Elaine Low, Natalie Jarvey and Sean McNulty break it all down ahead of Disney’s next earnings call. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meryl, Leo, Scarlett, Zendaya — every generation produces its breakout stars. But minting the next one has never been harder amid the collapse of monoculture and the rise of social media. Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey predict the top stars of 2026, share behind-the-scenes insights from the casting directors of Heated Rivalry on how they found Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie and that pivotal chemistry test, and explain how Snap is building a path to success for creators. Plus: The latest on the WBD-Netflix merger saga (now with all-cash!), and Matthew Frank’s update on his Netflix earnings call and talk-show bets on the prediction markets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nothing stirred more outrage at the Golden Globes than the integration of prediction market (read: betting platform) Polymarket in the telecast — Katey Rich called it “incredibly tacky,” and Richard Rushfield argued the show “milked opportunities for clickbait and cash grabs into the show like a BuzzFeed headline writer circa 12 years ago.” After years of harmless live-voting on American Idol or Dancing With the Stars, is betting the next frontier of interactive TV? Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey trace the history of entertainment gamification — and the money now pouring in (see: Amazon and FanDuel’s NBA deal). Plus, an inside look at the first-ever Ankler Invitational, Elaine’s smashing new tennis event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One year after the L.A. fires and three years after the strikes — with another round of labor drama looming — it can feel like every creative you know is fleeing Hollywood. Elaine Low, Sean McNulty, and Natalie Jarvey dig into the actual data behind a yes, very real L.A. exodus — but separate panic, perception and think-piece fuel from reality. Then, MoviePass is back — this time as a predictions market. Matthew Frank risks $1,000 of The Ankler’s own money to explain how prediction markets work in 2026, why they’re called a “degenerate economy” and how you can bet on everything from Oscar categories and the ceremony itself (including the monologue) to what show will be #1 on Netflix. Plus: Richard Rushfield lays out the six fronts that will decide whether 2026 is Hollywood’s comeback year — or the start of its final slide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Which business trends are giving the Ankler crew hope in the New Year? Is the 2023 writers’ strike responsible for the current shaky entertainment economy? What streaming service would Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey bring back from the dead? (Spoiler alert: no one picked Go90.) You sent in your most burning questions for Ankler Agenda’s last episode of the year, and the gang delivers. This may be the first mailbag episode, but it’s not the last — send in your questions any time of year at podcasts@theankler.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Netflix, YouTube, horny hockey hunks — even amid rough economic terrain this year, these industry standouts and more not only survived through ’25, but thrived. Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey are joined by a cavalcade of Ankler’s best — including Katey Rich, Lesley Goldberg, Matthew Frank and Ankler Agenda executive producer Shana Naomi Krochmal — to share their winners of the year, as well as the unfortunate losers. (Sorry, but if you’re reading this, Sean has you on the list — and he’s brought receipts.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices