Semafor: “While Trump’s team has privately made it clear that they viewed the CNN town hall as a success and would welcome others, the networks do not want to repeat CNN’s apparent mistakes, and are only seeking one-on-one live or pre-taped interviews with Trump.”

“The fallout from Fox News’ $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems continued on Friday, with the network dissolving its investigative unit,” Rolling Stone reports.

ABC News is hiring The Economist’s G. Elliott Morris to be the editorial director of data analytics for the news division, a post that also oversees FiveThirtyEight, Deadline reports.

CNN is getting more Republicans on the air as it seeks political diversity, the chief executive of parent company Warner Bros Discovery said on Thursday, adding he and CNN chief Chris Licht have told Republicans “they’re not going to get one more vote on Fox News,” Reuters reports.

New York Times: “Supporters and detractors alike say Tucker Carlson’s political power was rooted in his ability to place people and ideas from the vanguard of right-wing politics in front of the largest conventional conservative audience in media.”

“Whether he can play a similar role as a conduit between the far right and the mainstream without Fox is perhaps the biggest question raised by Mr. Carlson’s hints about his next move.”

Several Fox News stars have let Tucker Carlson know they’re interested in ditching the conservative cable news channel to join his upcoming endeavors, Variety reports.

“Nearly a week after CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump, CEO Chris Licht has acknowledged internally there are some things he wished the network had done differently,” CNBC reports.

“Licht continues to stand by the concept of the town hall, telling people both inside and outside of CNN that history will look kindly on the network’s decision to interview Trump in front of cheering supporters in a live town hall format.”

“But there are several production elements that he would have liked done in a different way.”

Variety: “On April 26, Carlson spoke by phone with one of Fox Corp.’s eight board members, who told the host that his recent benching was a condition of Fox News’ settlement with Dominion Voting Systems.”

“The unnamed board member told Carlson that the condition does not appear in any of the settlement’s documents, and instead was a verbal agreement. If Fox didn’t comply, the settlement was off, Carlson was told. Dominion had plenty of leverage given that the $787.5 million deal to settle Dominion’s defamation suit against the network wouldn’t officially close until late-May.

“Two days after the network pulled in more than 3.3 million viewers for its widely criticized town hall with former President Donald Trump, CNN found itself in fourth place among cable news networks in primetime,” the Daily Beast reports.

“Worse yet, it finished behind MAGA channel Newsmax, which until recently was barely nabbing a nightly audience of 100,000.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer and outside cybersecurity experts continued Sunday to scramble to restore systems after an apparent cyberattack disrupted operations over the weekend, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

Donald Trump ripped CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last night, saying she was “not exactly Barbara Walters” and blaming her poor performance for the subsequent firestorm of criticism.

Said Trump: “It’s really amazing to watch the head of CNN get absolutely lambasted for asking me to do a so-called Town Hall. In all fairness, nobody had any problems with what he wanted to do until after the show started, when they quickly realized that Ms. Collins was not exactly Barbara Walters, or even close.”

“Vice Media Group, popular for websites such as Vice and Motherboard, filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday to engineer its sale to a group of lenders, capping years of financial difficulties and top-executive departures,” Reuters reports.

Wall Street Journal: “The bankruptcy filing marks the latest downfall in the wave of digital media platforms that once threatened traditional news outlets.”

A New York news anchor was suddenly fired this week, reportedly after making an off-color remark on a hot mic, the New York Post reports.

Details of the comment were not made public.

CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy was scolded by CNN chairman Chris Licht over his critical coverage of the network’s Trump town hall, Puck reports.

Licht “summoned” Darcy and his editor “to a meeting with himself and top executives in which they told him that his coverage of Trump town hall had been too emotional and stressed the importance of remaining dispassionate.”

The Guardian: “He was interested in doing it on CNN because the campaign reached an understanding – which a spokesperson denied – that it would book more Trump surrogates.”

Daily Beast: “A source close to the former president indicated he and his team buzzed about the town hall performance on their flight back to Florida—with music blasting on the sound system.”

“The former president is even open to doing another CNN town hall, said the source close to him.”

Trump on Truth Social: “People are criticizing CNN for giving me a Forum to tell the TRUTH. I believe it was a very smart thing that they did, with Sky High Ratings that they haven’t seen in a very long time. It was by far the biggest Show of the night, the week, and the month!”

“CNN’s prime-time broadcast of a raucous town hall with Donald Trump propelled a tsunami of criticism from inside and outside the network Thursday — and renewed questions about how the news media will handle the challenge of covering the serial falsehoods of the Republican Party’s leading candidate going into the 2024 election,” the Washington Post reports.

“At a time when CNN has been struggling to turn around viewership decline, the telecast proved to be a ratings disappointment, with Nielsen reporting just 3.1 million viewers overall. That was a big boost over CNN’s typical 8 p.m. telecast, but a smaller audience than CNN’s town hall with President Biden last summer (3.7 million) and six previous Trump town halls carried by Fox News — calling into question both CNN and Trump’s drawing power.”

For members: CNN Tried to Make News, Not Cover It