David Pierce

ESPN’s digital plan is sort of all over the place. It’s building a streaming version of the cable network, it’s part of the “Hulu for Sports” coming later this year, and now it’s offering listings for some local sports — though you’ll still have to subscribe to your network and watch the actual games separately. Odd!

I reread this massive Wired piece this morning on the train, a propos of, you know, things. It’s an incredible tale of antitrust warfare, and it’s wild how much of what the DOJ said and did about Microsoft rhymes with today’s lawsuit against Apple.

From now on, anytime anyone wants to understand the chaotic mess that Amazon has become, I’m just going to send them this TikTok.

There’s a lot in this Wall Street Journal profile of ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro. The switch to streaming; the Hulu for Sports plan; the battle over ever-more-expensive sports rights. But the undercurrent here is pretty clear: if ESPN can make all that work over the next couple of years, Pitaro might get Bob Iger’s office. (But that’s a really, really big if.)

Search Engine has been on a tear recently — last week’s episode about all those text-message scams was one of my favorite pods in a long time. The most recent episode, in which PJ Vogt and Ezra Klein talk about media, generative AI, and the web’s very real collective action problem, has me thinking a lot about what websites I click on every day.