Channels with Peter Kafka

Chuck Klosterman on Why Football Owns TV (and Why It Won’t Forever)

Football isn’t just the biggest show on TV — at this point, it’s basically the only reason some TV networks exist. So it’s a very worthy subject for Chuck Klosterman, the provocative and prolific writ...

2026-01-21

Zazzage

How to Build a Profitable Media Company in 3 years, with Semafor’s Justin Smith

News is a tough business. So how did Semafor, the news startup founded by Ben Smith and Justin Smith, figure out how to turn a profit in their third year of business? Excellent journalism certainly h...

2026-01-14

Zazzage

Inside Bari Weiss’s Rise: LA, Sun Valley, and the Mogul Network

How, exactly, did Bari Weiss become the head of CBS News? We know that David Ellison, who bought Paramount last year, hired her — and bought The Free Press, the publication she started a few years ea...

2026-01-07

Zazzage

Craig Finn on Friendship, Fans and The Hold Steady’s Second Life

Craig Finn makes music — as the head of the Hold Steady, and on his solo records — about grown-up lives and bad decisions. Back in 2017, we talked about his life as a working rock musician — and how ...

2025-12-31

Zazzage

Podcast Pioneer PJ Vogt’s Second Act: Less Budget, More Control

PJ Vogt helped invent modern narrative podcasting with “Reply All.” Now he’s running “Search Engine” with a much smaller team and a lot more control. We talk through what he gave up this time around, ...

2025-12-24

Zazzage

"Neither Side Is Used to Losing." Lucas Shaw on What’s Next for Netflix and Paramount in the Battle for Warner Bros.

The backstory here is that weeks ago, Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw agreed to join me for my 2025/2026 look back/look ahead episode. And then things got way more compelling, because Paramount and Netflix got...

2025-12-17

Zazzage

Lachlan Cartwright Started in Tabloids. Now He’s a Must-Read Media Gossip.

I chat with lots of media reporters. Lachlan Cartwright is a different beast: An Aussie who started out working for Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids in London and New York, and then on to the National Enquir...

2025-12-10

Zazzage

"Hollywood is Truly Freaked Out." Inside the Netflix/WBD Deal with Lucas Shaw

In 2013, Netflix wanted to become HBO. Now Netflix is going to buy HBO along with the Warner Bros. Studio, in a blockbuster $83 billion deal. Wowza. Here to talk me through this is Bloomberg’s Lucas ...

2025-12-06

Zazzage

PBS Lost a Billion Dollars. Now what? With CEO Paula Kerger

The last time I interviewed PBS CEO Paula Kerger was 2019: Donald Trump was President, and Republicans were trying to defund public media — as they had been trying to do for decades. That didn’t happ...

2025-12-03

Zazzage

What Happens To Media When The Web Goes Away, with Tony Haile

We built the modern media business for the web — for people who visited websites, read articles, and saw ads. What happens when no one does that anymore? That’s been one of the big themes of conversa...

2025-11-26

Zazzage

Kevin Reilly got to the top of the TV heap. Now he's in AI.

If you watched something on TV that you liked in the past few decades, there’s a good chance Kevin Reilly was involved: at various times he’s held top jobs at FX, Fox, NBC, Turner and HBO Max. But th...

2025-11-19

Zazzage

What the Disney–YouTube Battle Tells Us About the End of Cable

It’s not unusual for a big TV network and a big TV distributor to fight about money. But the Disney-YouTube fight is unusual -- at the bare minimum, because it has stretched out for so long. CNBC’s Al...

2025-11-12

Zazzage

The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell on Why Republicans Won the Attention War

In some ways, the Bulwark feels like other small publishers in 2025: it’s found growth and profit by pushing itself out on any platform it can find. But that wasn’t the plan when the company started ...

2025-11-05

Zazzage

The Man Who Fixed The New York Times Wants to Fix CNN

Would you pay $7 a month to stream CNN? Because CNN CEO Mark Thompson would like you to do that. I know, I know, I’m skeptical, too. But Thompson has been here before: At his last job, as CEO of the...

2025-10-28

Zazzage

The End of Mass Media—and What Comes Next

We spend a lot of time on this show talking to people who run media companies. We also spend a lot of time talking to media reporters. So here’s our one-man Venn diagram: Brian Morrissey runs The Reb...

2025-10-22

Zazzage

The PR Guy Who Says the AI Boom Is a Bust

The AI story is changing fast. A few months ago, it was all promise and inevitability. Now even AI boosters are asking if the numbers make sense. Ed Zitron got there early. He runs a PR firm for a li...

2025-10-15

Zazzage

Why the Guardian Doesn't Need a Billionaire to Thrive

In lots of ways Guardian Media Group is facing the same problems as every other news publisher: A tricky ad environment, platform problems, looming AI threats. One big difference: The Guardian also h...

2025-10-08

Zazzage

Almost Everyone is Taking Money from OpenAI. Why is Ziff Davis suing them?

In the future, digital publishers could get run over by AI. In the present, they are deeply concerned about Google, and the prospect that the search giant is going to choke off their last reliable tra...

2025-10-01

Zazzage

The Future of Late Night TV, Jimmy Kimmel, and The First Amendment

When’s the last time you stayed up to watch a late night TV monologue? Months? Years? Decades? I’m not sure, either. But I stayed up Tuesday night to watch Jimmy Kimmel’s return. James Poniewozik, wh...

2025-09-25

Zazzage

I tried Zuckerberg's $800 Ray-Bans. Are they the future? With Alex Heath

A year ago I got try a pair of $10,000 computer goggles from Meta. The tech was super-impressive, but you couldn’t buy them them. You still can’t. Now Mark Zuckerberg is trying a similar idea. But th...

2025-09-18

Zazzage

Channels with Peter Kafka

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