In 1983, 90% of U.S. media was owned by 50 companies. By 2012, that number was 6. Today, it's just 5. Decades of media consolidation made it "a lot easier for authoritarian government to exercise control," consumer advocate Gigi Sohn says. Much more in my new piece: www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

The way I needed this small item of positive news about local media in a city I love...

“Jimmy Fallon did open his first Tonight Show after the news broke with jokes about the suspension and kind words for Kimmel…What was striking about his monologue, though, was how carefully he couched his criticisms of a colleague’s silencing.” — @judyberman.bsky.social time.com/7318971/jimm...

Late-night hosts all spoke out in support of Jimmy Kimmel last night. But one of those monologues was not like the others...

Billionaires' Bunker is bonkers, right down to the finale, as you would expect from the creators of Money Heist. Watch that before you read this. Then we can talk about how it's a better post-apocalyptic critique of extreme wealth than Paradise!

Thanks dear @carlzoilus.bsky.social for sharing this, it's a wow www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c-e...

Now streaming, in case you need a little—not great but definitely diverting—Jude Law fix after the week we've had

One way to think about how far right the politics of pop culture have shifted is to remember that 25 years ago Jimmy Kimmel was The Man Show guy and his other gig was as Ben Stein's sidekick

Even if AI could make journalists' jobs easier without sacrificing quality (it can't), good luck convincing people who have actively chosen to work for low pay and little job security, often in places with high costs of living, while being framed as enemies of the people to do something bc it's easy

Countdown to BI blaming this whole misunderstanding on a memo that was itself generated by ChatGPT

Report: You To Be Fired For Reading This Headline About Charlie Kirk

What a pleasure it was talking with Liza Colon-Zayas TIME's 2025 edition of Latino Leaders. Excited for all she has coming up.

What a rare treat, as a writer, to be so angry and anxious about multiple things outside of your control that you don't trust yourself to articulate any of it responsibly!

More tomorrow, but now might be a very good time to consider subscribing to What’s Alan Watching? alansepinwall.ghost.io

good lord @lisatozzi.bsky.social and @sepinwall.bsky.social are icons, this is beyond stupid (via @status.news)

Scoop: Status has obtained the termination letter The Washington Post sent to @karenattiah.bsky.social, in which it informed her that she was being fired for social media posts "about white men." Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/karen-atti...

fellas is it dorky to want the comedian to do good jokes?

Just wanted to share this very sweet shot from last night's Emmys of the moment Jeff Hiller won Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, and the unfeigned delight from his fellow gay nominees Colman Domingo, Michael Urie, and Bowen Yang. Solidarity!

this is so good

Nate Bargatze was supposed to be hosting the Emmys, not a telethon, i.e. the most insufferable form of television

Said this in the Vulture slack, but this Emmys made me angry. Not because of the results: Lots of great choices from what was a great year of TV. But the show had zero interest in celebrating TV: No montages, no clips (with sound) from the shows, and no interest in anything remotely surprising

COMEDY GOLD

The worst telecast with the best wins. What in the world is going on?

Man, it's going to be HI-larious when that Boys & Girls Club total hits zero. Will we then go into negative numbers, with the kids running up a tab? Thrilling!

Love to see this Britt Lower win. She has carried the show for 2 seasons and didn't even get nominated, while more famous co-stars did, for the first one.

I guess I understand why they might have thought this Boys & Girls Club thing would be funny, but in practice it kind of makes the whole show feel like a telethon?

Looks like the beginning of a Pitt sweep to me

That was the whole monologue? Eesh.

More than any style trend, the big Emmys red carpet takeaway seems to be that Hollywood has reached Peak Ozempic. Like people of all genders who were already quite small looking significantly smaller…

This is obviously not the only society-wide problem contributing to contemporary horrors, but I wish there was more acknowledgment that the accelerating commodification and devaluation of the arts is a major factor in the current empathy crisis. That's the void internet nihilism is filling.

Now that it's legal to bet on anything, I'd like to put some money on who will be the first pundit to both-sides this by equating the endorsement of mass murder with the inconvenience of being asked by progressives to say "people experiencing homelessness" or "unhoused."

I wrote my own Charlie Kirk obituary, and about valuing truth over manners: www.thenation.com/article/poli...

That time Starz paid Gregg Araki to make Melrose Place but with horny alien Godzillas. RIP Peak TV.

I’ve been rewatching the Coen Bros filmography this month and while drawing a Barton Fink illustration, it struck me how much their films feel like Far Side cartoons: funny, strange, clever, yet frequently inscrutable. Anyway here’s a thread!

Each alleged mass shooter is even more On the Computer All the Time than the previous one. Probably nothing to worry about there

I needed this.

Charlie Kirk Was Not Practicing Politics the Right Way 🔗 www.404media.co/charlie-kirk...

Skydance is a funny name for a media monolith, but if it's really going to start eating up every studio in existence, I demand even funnier names for its subsidiaries. Mountdance. Brodance. Maybe someday Cockdance. David, my invoice is in the mail.

Everyone is out of their goddam mind.

Good night, sweet prince

I love an unhinged domestic thriller as much as the next guy, but a show has to adhere to *some* internal logic to work. It can't be entirely random.

Wow, it's almost like he's the candidate who won the Democratic primary in an overwhelmingly Democratic city...

Whether it’s a review or essay, text or video, criticism is seeing what’s in front of your face, using your brain and common sense to see it for what it is, and saying that straight and without euphemism. That’s something journalism always needs, but holy hell does it need that now.

This! Also a great reported profile can provide real insight and pleasure but that takes time, even scarcer than money

I don't think "what critics want vs. what editors want" is the most useful way to frame the conflict driving the criticism crisis, either...

This is from that NY Mag piece on criticism or whatever it’s really about. WTF. Critics have been doing exactly this for a century, alongside making judgments and discoveries. YET AGAIN we are back to the most facile definition of arts writing. 🤯

And neither is this. The audience for the median Q&A is a fraction of the audience for the median arts review, and that has been true for all of the 15+ years I've worked full-time in cultural journalism.

Extremely mixed on the Netflix thriller Black Rabbit, starring Jude Law and Jason Bateman as bad-news brothers, Troy Kotsur from CODA as the most haunted crime boss this side of The Sopranos, and Morgan Spector as a nervy plot device time.com/7313171/blac...

Been trying not to post while on vacation but I just got served a beauty influencer’s Instagram post that identified Chloe Malle as the daughter of Candice Bergen (I guess she reproduced asexually) and Candice Bergen as being famous for her role in Miss Congeniality and idk man I’m only human