News Information and Media Site: Byers Market: Paul Singer aims for Jack Dorsey; Ben Smith on NYT

March 2, 2020

By DYLAN BYERS in Los Angeles &

AHIZA GARCÍA-HODGES in San Francisco

Good morning. 🎙️ Coming attractions: This week on The Byers Market Podcast I talk to media mogul Barry Diller about the Hollywood streaming wars, from Netflix and Disney to Apple and Quibi. The episode will be available Wednesday.

🎧 Subscribe to The Byers Market Podcast for free on Spotify, Apple, Google, Stitcher or TuneIn, or listen online here.

Join the Market.

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Bird Hunting

Paul Singer moves to oust Jack Dorsey from Twitter

Moving the Market: Activist investor Paul Singer has bought a significant stake in Twitter and is trying to force Jack Dorsey to step down as the company's chief executive, a source close to Singer tells us, confirming a report by Bloomberg News.

• Singer and his firm, Elliott Management, believe Dorsey has failed to realize Twitter's full value potential and think the company's stock would perform better under a different leader, the source said.

The big picture: Dorsey's future at Twitter is now an open question. Elliott has successfully forced the likes of AT&T, eBay and Softbank to reassess their businesses simply by buying stakes in those companies and calling for changes to strategy or leadership.

• Dorsey is particularly vulnerable. Twitter's audience is so small and stagnant when compared to the likes of Facebook and YouTube that it has stopped reporting user counts altogether. (At last count, it had 321 million monthly users. Facebook has more than 2.5 billion).

• More importantly, Twitter only has one class of stock, which means Dorsey doesn't control his company the way Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Spiegel control Facebook and Snap, respectively.

• Dorsey has also been quite public about his distractions from Twitter. He is also the CEO of Square, the mobile payments company, and has stated plants to move to Africa for six months.

The latest: Elliott's Jesse Cohn and Marc Steinberg held their first meeting with Twitter representatives last week in San Francisco and stressed their belief that Twitter needed a full-time CEO, Bloomberg's Scott Deveau, Ed Hammond and Kurt Wagner report.

• Dorsey was not present for the meeting.

What's next: Elliott has nominated four directors to Twitter's board, which is expected to make at least three new seats available this year. They plan to use those seats to push for Dorsey's resignation and force major structural changes in Twitter's business.

• Elliott will also seek to win the hearts and minds of other investors who can give added leverage to its efforts to oust Dorsey.

Both Twitter and Elliott declined to comment.

Bloomberg/Getty

Rain Check

Jack Dorsey cancels on SXSW

Big in the Bay: Jack Dorsey will no longer attend his keynote interview at this year's South By Southwest conference after Twitter announced that it was suspending all non-critical business travel for employees due to growing fears about the coronavirus outbreak.

• The big picture: Twitter is just the latest American business to halt non-essential travel for its employees. Amazon made a similar decision for its employees last week, and companies like Facebook and Google have cancelled upcoming conferences.

That said... It's a mighty convenient time for Dorsey to cancel his public appearances, given the Elliott action.

🌮 SXSW Alert 🌮

Sunday, March 15: I'll be moderating a conversation on the future of American political reporting with The Daily Beast's Jackie Kucinich, New York's Olivia Nuzzi, CNN's Manu Raju and Politico's Jake Sherman at the Fairmont in Austin.

• What's next: Look for a full slate of new SXSW political programming to be announced later today in collaboration with The Texas Tribune Festival.

Drew Angerer/Getty

Inside the Tent

Ben Smith on The Times

Moving Midtown: Ben Smith, the BuzzFeed News editor turned New York Times media columnist, has published his first column for the Gray Lady. It's about ... The New York Times.

• The big picture: Smith casts the Times as the news industry's equivalent of Facebook or Google, "a digital behemoth crowding out the competition," which may be bad for journalism.

• A.G. Sulzberger, the Times' publisher, argues that The Times is not dominating the market so much as creating one: "What I actually think you're seeing ... is a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats dynamism."

Other highlights:

• Smith reveals that Times "is in exclusive talks to acquire Serial Productions, the breakthrough podcast studio," and that Times execs aspire to build an "HBO of podcasts."

• He reveals that the starting salary for most Times reporters is $104,600.

• He ribs his news colleagues: The Times' Style section is "a more polished Gawker," hew writes, "while the opinion pages reflect the best and worst of The Atlantic's provocations."

What's next: Read Vanity Fair's Joe Pompeo on BuzzFeed's search for its next editor-in-chief.

Market Links

• Pete Buttigieg drops out of the race (NBC)

• Bernie Sanders spooks business leaders (WSJ)

• Donald Trump vows to 'destroy' Comcast's image (PI)

• Steve Burke signs Delta, LA28 sponsorship deal (SBJ)

• Jason Blum gives Universal a box office boost (NYT)

'Judge Judy' ends show after 25 years (THR)

Kevork Djansezian/Getty

The Sports Report

Steve Ballmer eyes The Forum

Big in L.A.: Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer is in "advanced negotiations" to buy The Forum in Inglewood from the Madison Square Garden Company, ESPN's Kevin Arnovitz reports.

• The big picture: The acquisition would advance Ballmer's effort to give the Clippers their own arena in L.A. and grow the team out from under the shadow of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Icon Sportswire /Getty

Ante Up

CBS bets big on Tony Romo

Talk of TV Land: Tony Romo, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who achieved fast success in the broadcast booth, has signed a $17-million-a-year deal to stay at CBS, making him the highest-paid announcer in the history of the game.

• The deal brings an end to a long bidding war between CBS and ESPN, which both saw Romo as key to their future NFL broadcasts.

The big picture: Romo's sky-high salary is just the opening bid in CBS's efforts to renew their lucrative NFL rights deal, The Ringer's Bryan Curtis reports. Existing NFL contracts end in 2022.

• "For CBS, re-signing its NFL deal is no less than an existential imperative for the network," which at $25 billion is worth significantly less than competitors like Disney and Comcast.

• The deal matters so much, in fact, that ViacomCBS chief Bob Bakish "became heavily involved in the elevation of the money," which he increased to $17 million just last week.

• Bakish and ViacomCBS chairwoman Shari Redstone saw Romo "as a must-keep in order to maintain their position on re-upping their NFL rights," says Curtis.

What's next: Romo resets the market; his competition will no doubt be seeking raises. CBS enters negotiations with the NFL on a strong note. ESPN misses out on a flashy new broadcaster, but avoids internal strife with its other big personalities.

• "The great Romo bidding war will be remembered by the networks as a cautionary tale," Curtis writes. "When you don't have a bench, you have to overpay the starters."

🏈 What's next: Smart moves. The NFL more than doubled its Day 1 audience for the combine by moving it to prime time, Yahoo's Charles Robinson reports.

See you tomorrow.