Channels with Peter Kafka
Kanal Təfərrüatları
Channels with Peter Kafka
Media and tech aren’t just intersecting — they’re fully intertwined. And to understand how those worlds work, and what they mean for you, veteran journalist Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers - and gets them to spell it out in plain, BS-free English. Part of the Vox Media...
Son Epizodlar
557 epizod
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 Londo...
"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.
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 ha...
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 anymo...
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...
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, b...
The Bulwarks'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.
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 skeptic...
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...
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.
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...
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 g...
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 Tues...
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.
How TBPN Made a Tech News Splash
John Coogan knows what you’re thinking: the world does not need another tech podcast. And the world does not need another podcast featuring two dudes...
Patch’s AI Experiment: Thousands of Newsletters, Zero Humans
Everyone agrees that the decline/disapperance of local news is a big problem. No one agrees about the best way to solve it.
So let’s chec...
Oliver Darcy Thinks the Media Doesn’t Get It. So He Built Status
One thing about the internet is that it lets you build really, really fast. A little more than a year ago, Oliver Darcy was an unemployed former CNN m...
Why Henry Blodget is Building Another Media Company
Henry Blodget can’t help himself. The Business Insider founder is starting another media business, knowing full well how difficult the industry can be...
ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro on streaming, the NFL and sports betting
The media industry has been waiting for ESPN to cut the cord for a decade. Now it’s finally happening: This week the sports TV giant will let you star...
A Busy - and Expensive - Summer for AI, with NYT's Mike Isaac
What makes a particular engineer worth $250 million to Mark Zuckerberg?
What does Trump 2.0 mean — and not mean — to people building larg...
Why the Algorithm is Making Comedy Boom, Again
The last time I talked to Jesse David Fox about the comedy boom it was… March 5, 2020.
Since then, some things have changed. But in other...
What is TV’s endgame?
A decade ago, Disney CEO Bob Iger freaked out the media industry by acknowledging something many of us saw coming — his previously unassailable TV bu...
Why Trump is defunding NPR and PBS - and suing Rupert Murdoch
Reporting on the place you work is not fun. But it is an occupational hazard for media reporters — particularly for NPR’s David Folkenflik.
Inside the Rise and Fall of Condé Nast with Michael Grynbaum
Here's one way New York Times reporter Michael Grynbaum described Condé Nast to me in this week’s chat: “A real exporter of American cultural influenc...
Inside the NYT - and Everywhere Else - with Semafor's Max Tani
You’re probably a normal person, so you didn’t spend your holiday weekend talking to people at the New York Times about a local politics story that so...
Black Mirror's Charlie Brooker on the problem with tech - and people
"Black Mirror" creator Charlie Brooker knows that everyone thinks his show is about tech-fueled dystopias. But he says it's really about humans, not...
How to become a Substack Star with Emily Sundberg
What's the best way to describe what Emily Sundberg does?
Substacker? Influencer? Journalist? Brand-builder?
Let's go with "...
Why did Apple ice out the most famous Apple blogger?
If you want smart, nuanced insight into Apple’s products and would-be products, you turn to John Gruber, who’s been blogging about this stuff for more...
On the hunt for media optimism, with Semafor’s Ben Smith and The Rebooting’s Brian Morrissey
Here’s one where we try to do two things at once:
Have a convo about green shoots in media with two smart guys who know media re...
Scott Frank on Netflix, the future of Hollywood, and Dept. Q
Scott Frank used to write great movies, like “Out of Sight.” Now he’s a Netflix guy, and a super successful one: he made “Godless,” a horses-and-every...
Bluesky Wasn’t Supposed to be a Twitter Rival. Now It Is.
I admit it: I most definitely rolled my eyes in 2019, when Twitter announced vague plans to build an "open and decentralized standard for social media...
How to Reinvent a Magazine, with Wired’s Katie Drummond
Today we’re talking about how you take a media property that’s been around for a long time, and find a way to bring in new eyeballs — and new revenue....
Meta's Adam Mosseri explains how Instagram really works - and how he wants to build Threads
Adam Mosseri's official title is head of Instagram, Meta's massive photo and video app. He also runs Threads, the Twitter clone the company launched t...
How Apple trapped itself in China
The iPhone you’re reading this on was made in China.
For a long time, that fact was a huge part of Apple’s success story: W...
Ian Rogers tells me I need a crypto wallet
I wanted to talk to Ian Rogers about his fascinating career. He wanted to talk to me about Ledger, the crypto wallet company he’s working at now.
How to fight Apple and (maybe) win, with Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney
Today's podcast is an in-depth discussion of Apple's App Store rules and how they... wait! Don't leave!
I could try to tell...
Tariffs, Trump, TikTok: What’s going to happen to ads in 2025?
There are all kinds of ways to measure the health of an economy. The one I rely on is ad spending.
One reason for that is simple: I work...
Roblox CEO David Baszucki knows what your kids are doing.
Every day some 85 million people - most of them kids - show up to play, chat and spend money on Roblox. That’s a massive audience just about any tech...
How to make money in Washington, with Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman
Some people don’t want to pay for media. But lots of people are paying Jake Sherman and his team at Punchbowl News: The 4-year-old startup is thriving...
NYT publisher AG Sulzberger on Trump, OpenAi and the economy
The New York Times faces the same challenges every other news organization faces in 2025.
But it’s also in way better shape to take thos...