Halftime: TikTok's Carriage Deal Skeleton

Everything encompassing the TikTok ban is unprecedented. The reason it feels so familiar is because of a familiar TV negotiation strategy

One Critical Story: Did He Actually Do That? — Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic

I’ve read so much about Elon Musk’s hand gesture that I feel like I’m Barbara Streisand Effecting myself. In times of uncertainty, I come back to the king, George Orwell. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” I’m going to assume that if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, well, you know. 

Charlie Warzel over at The Atlantic argues that what matters is how people saw it. White supremacists felt empowered. Fearful Americans felt their blood run cold. Diehard defenders of Musk and Trump wrote it off by comparing his gesture to other politicians raising their arms in acknowledgment of crowds. And this is all that matters. If white supremacists feel emboldened, they’ll act in an emboldened way. If supporters of Trump and Musk want to disregard it, they will. The thing about giant trolls like Musk acting as giant trolls — showing they’re untouchable because of their new powerful position — is they become cataclysmic moments for people who do want to commit harmful acts, who do want to see harmful ideologies rise. 

As Warzel writes, “What is undeniable is that watching Musk do that onstage while thousands stood on their feet cheering was more than ominous. Across the internet, Wired reports, neo-Nazis are thrilled at what they believe is a direct signal from the centibillionaire. 

In many ways, it is a fitting spectacle to begin the second Trump administration: a bunch of people arguing endlessly over something everyone can see with their own eyes.”

Never forget Orwell’s warnings.

 Data!

1. Home Economics: Living in Brooklyn on a $466k joint income. I’ll just say that as someone in a household not making $466,000 a year, looking at what those in somewhat better positions can afford in my favorite borough of this city was an enlightening (and slightly upsetting) read.  — (The Purse) 

2. Are LLMs making StackFlow Irrelevant? — (The Pragmatic Engineer) 

Three Important Arguments 

1. Attention —  Democrats are Losing the War for Attention Badly (The Ezra Klein Show)

2. Identity — Why Letterboxd Became the Go-To Platform for Film Buffs — (Variety VIP) 

3. Platform — The Playlist Power Broker Who Makes or Breaks New Artists. I thoroughly enjoyed this feature on the human people behind the algorithms at Spotify. It’s always reassuring to know that in our continued loss of control to the machines, humans remain the undeniable beating heart of culture.  — (Wall Street Journal)

Seven Must Reads of the Week 

1. A federal website  on reproductive issues has disappeared from the internet (CBS)

2. Instagram hid searches for “Democrat” on night of inauguration (BBC)

3. Hollywood’s Gen Z War: Win By Any Meme Necessary (Or Get Dunked On for Trying) — (The Ankler) 

4. Music is becoming more and more of a nostalgic driven business in huge genres like rock, pop, and hip-hop, according to new Luminate data — (Honest Broker)

5. Infighting. Panic. Blame. A Special Report from Inside the Democratic Party’s Epic Hangover — (Vanity Fair)

6. How ratings are ruining the future of college football, even after a perfect season — (New York Magazine) 

7. Decentralized Social Media is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy — (404 Media) 

Three Fun Stories

1. Funny One — ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith brought his nephew onto the show to help break down the Bills game, and it’s quite frankly the greatest 30 minutes of television you’ll watch. I love when Smith goes off on tangents that are mildly related to whatever sport his co-anchors are talking about that day. See also: Lightning McQueen and Pokemon — (YouTube)

2. Wild One — No, Elon Musk Didn’t Reach Top Video Game Status on His Own — (Bloomberg) 

3. Endearing One — New Orleans is my favorite city in the United States (and home to my terrible Saints). The city got a rare blanket of snow thanks to this cold front hitting the East coast, and the photos are truly joyous. I love seeing my favorite city somehow look even more beautiful — (Nola) 

A Movie, a TV show, a Podcast, and a Book 

1. Movie — My Old Ass (Prime Video)

2. TV show — The Pitt (Max) 

3. Podcast — Mormonism: The Last Podcast on the Left — (Spotify)

4. Book — The Hundred Years’ Wars on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi 

Halftime Thesis: TikTok Feels Like a Carriage Deal 

TikTok’s disappearance and re-emergence over the weekend was downright theatrical, wasn’t it? ByteDance chose to preemptively cut off access to TikTok for more than 270 million people in the United States before the ban went into effect on Sunday. Trump pumped his fist in the air as he vowed to bring it back despite being the catalyst who set the whole thing in motion years ago. Democrats caught in the middle of a war they didn’t want to wage in the first place. Tens of thousands of small business owners begging their followers to migrate with creators to other platforms like RedBird (another Chinese app) or oversaturated spaces like Instagram and YouTube. 

Wild doesn’t even begin to describe how those 48 hours felt — and yet they were also extremely familiar to anyone who’s watched, reported on, or participated in a carriage dispute. Carriage disputes are a part of television that almost everyone has experienced even if they don’t know it. When Optimum or Comcast tell you that certain networks like regional sports carriers including MSG or Bally Sports are unavailable due to contract negotiations expiring, that’s a carriage dispute. It is literally a fight over the ability to carry (or transmit) content. Both the carrier (cable companies) and the content provider (MSG, Bally) launch public relations wars, focusing on talking to the client about the evils of the other guy.

“We want to show you the game on the network you’re paying for, but the content providers are asking for too much money and they’re already paid way too much,” the cable company might cry out. 

“We want you to have access to your favorite teams, but the cable companies are holding us hostage, and that means you’re being held hostage too,” the content provider may rebut. 

None of it particularly matters to the customer. People either hate the cable provider or they hate the network. But the goal isn’t to avoid pissing off the customer, it’s to rise out of the dark abyss as the eleventh hour hero. Both the carrier and the supplier intrinsically know the partnership will be restored in some capacity, but playing it out in public allows both sides to gauge ongoing interest in the content (assess value), talk to customers (targeted marketing), and reestablish their “good guy” positioning (public relations). They are not fighting in lieu of fandom; they are fighting on behalf of fandom. 

Consider these strategies in the context of TikTok. The carriers are effectively the government and the courts. They control whether or not TikTok has legal standing to operate in the United States and, upon declaring the company does not, indirectly applies the process of restricting access through the physical access points like the App Store or Google Play. The content provider isn’t just ByteDance, though: it’s also Trump now. Trump’s stance reversal doesn’t matter. All that matters is Trump wants to bring back the people’s app — his people’s app — and the Biden government doesn’t. Trump positions his fighting on behalf of fandom, not in lieu of it. 

Seems silly to point out the obvious differences between a carriage dispute and the current Trump TikTok scenario, but it’s important. One is an argument between two private companies that usually resolves on its own. Government officials don’t typically get involved other than to call for a blackout period to end. This just happened last week with New York State attorney general Letitia James calling for Optimum and MSG Networks to end their ongoing battle. There is no illegality in question. Trump deciding to go against a vote by congress and a secondary decision by the Supreme Court borders, if not outrightly is, illegal behavior. There are questions of national security and unconstitutional behavior to consider. What is happening between Trump, the federal government, and TikTok is nowhere close to Optimum and MSG Networks. 

And yet although it perhaps feels lazy or pathetic or pathetically lazy to keep comparing aspects of Trump’s governance to television strategies, my mantra is that I’ll stop doing so when the comparisons stop being so apt. See, the real spicy thing about carriage disputes is they’re timed to the most opportune moments. Examples include before the start of the NFL season, before the finale of a big show, ahead of something like the Olympics. They’re designed to grasp at their most primal emotions — fear, anger, and hatred — and exploit those in the name of getting the deal done. One could argue it is, in fact, the art of the deal. Typically, the disputes always benefit the content creators. They hold the valuable goods, yes, but they also hold the key to customers’ — those people who are now riled up over fear of losing access to their favorite team, anger over their inability to watch, and anger at cable providers — hearts. 

I often think about Trump in one of two ways. I understand this is as deceptive as it is dangerous. But I either study him through the lens of what’s come before politically, or I study him through the lens of what has worked in television. The former is his newish arena. The latter is the colosseum he’s reigned as champion in for so many years that it’s hard to imagine the victor before.

Carriage disputes are practically seen as an expected evil within the industry. They play out once or twice a year, and parties learn from those negotiations — from what is considered valuable to a company or a customer tomorrow instead of what was valuable to them yesterday — to prepare for the next one. TikTok was a lesson for Trump. It’s likely not the last. Trump understands that he can either champion the content of the people, for the people, putting him in the role of hero in the eleventh hour, or stop the content from being accessed. These are complex, large scale fights. They’re also, effectively, carriage disputes overseen by one judge: Donald J. Trump.

A decade ago, Vox’s Emily St. James noted that Trump is “aware of the storylines, and he reacts to various challenges to his authority as if they’re just weird turns the producers came up with behind the scenes.” I noted last week that Trump’s supreme command of television news comes from his ability to filter everything through the lens of what would work on reality television.

Trump, however, is also a business magnate, and one who worked in television, learning from the best in television, for decades. He isn’t just aware of how ratings play when used as weapons in arguments; he isn’t just aware of how vital it is to have a common, cartoonish villain to pit the public against to make himself look better. And he isn’t just aware of how the skeleton of a carriage dispute is made up. He may have never been directly involved in one, but he and his team have seen plenty, and analyzed those situations enough, to weaponize the same tactics. 

Understanding whatever Trump does next (instead of trying to predict what a deeply unpredictable person will do) requires a combination: political history, sure, but it’s paramount to also include some of the most deeply rooted strategies in TV. Trump is an attention merchant first and foremost. No one understands that fight better than TV moguls.