Skydance’s Brain Trust & Condé After Roger

Jon Kelly (0:02)

Make no mistake about it, Peter, you are right. He is the guy who is gonna be sort of the Jeff Shell 2 person. He's gonna come in there, he's looking at the employee cohort chart, I'm sure, and figuring out how to work through the changes.

Peter Hamby (0:20)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby. It's Tuesday, October 6th, and today it's Media Tuesday. That's right, Jon Kelly joins me for another media episode to examine the new leadership team at Skydance, including co-CEO, Ynon Kreiz, who came over from Mattel and where Kreiz plans to make cuts inside the Hollywood giant.

Jon also taps his Condé Nast experience to examine what outgoing CEO Roger Lynch got right at the media empire and where Condé should go next as they search for a new leader. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Tuesday, everybody. Welcome to The Powers That Be. It's Media Tuesday. Back to back media episodes this week with Jon Kelly. Also a reminder, my new podcast about the 2028 presidential campaign. The making of a president is out today. Every Tuesday, we talk to Iowa Republican Party Chairman, Jeff Kaufman, about whether a non-Trumpy candidate can actually win the Republican nomination in 2028 He's skeptical, but he was unusually candid with me about what it takes to win Iowa with Trump riding off into the sunset, wobbling off into the sunset, however you want to describe it. Jon, let's talk today. We talked yesterday about the big picture, the new Skydance, the movie studios, CNN, CBS, the Barry Weiss question. Let's go a little deeper today on some new leadership at both of these companies. I specifically want to dig in with you on Roger Lynch and Condé Nast, because there's a tandem story here, which is that Ynon Kreiz leaves Mattel. He's run Mattel for years. He's coming over to be co-CEO with Ellison. I think everyone expects that he's going to be finding synergies. He's the boogeyman. He's the boogeyman.

Jon Kelly (2:23)

He's gunner.

Peter Hamby (2:24)

Yeah, absolutely. Ynon is well-known here on the west side of Los Angeles for what he does.

Roger Lynch, who was on the board at Mattel, will be leaving Condé. I want to get your thoughts later in the show about what's next for Condé Nast. Roger's been there for seven years, presided over big changes, some environmental, some of his own making. But first, what do you make of Ynon? What do you know about him and what his role is going to be?

Jon Kelly (2:52)

Dylan did a great job chatting about this, I think, with you and also with Julia on The Grill Room. He's a very well-respected, no-nonsense operator. I think there's some dispute over how to accurately measure his success at Mattel because there was the Barbie phenomenon. I think the stock is down during his tenure. On the other hand, I think he helped transform the company from a situation where it could have been down a lot more during that tenure. The toy business is a tough business, like most manufacturing businesses, but he has a lot of respect and pedigree, and he's also birthed a number of other CEOs, like Richard Dickinson, who is the Gap Inc. CEO. And make no mistake about it, Peter, you are right. He is the guy who is gonna be sort of the Jeff Shell 2 person. He's gonna come in there, he's looking at the employee cohort chart, I'm sure, and figuring out how to work through the changes. And industry observers are obsessed with the people changes, and obviously, for clear reasons, that's the most dramatic part of the narrative. But when you work through a transformation like this and you're synergizing these two assets, these integrations happen across the business, right? Text tax, marketing spend, accounting, legal, real estate. Like, it's extremely detail-oriented through a work. And I suspect that we know that this guy's a pretty tough negotiator because the Ellison's probably went to him and said, hey, would you do this? And he said, yeah, but not as president. I need to be co-CEO. That's just my read on the situation. I think that's a pretty baller move. So, you know, I think I'm sure the biggest negotiating point would be that these people aren't going to take me seriously as president, but if I have that title, I can absolutely accelerate the change. This is one of the, I feel like there is a sort of sang-froid of David Ellison, that people don't always appreciate. Like, when you look at who's around this guy, he's got some serious dudes. So, he is, he's working through it. It's funny, when this news broke, when the Lynch piece broke on, I guess it was Thursday morning. No, Wednesday morning, sorry. I actually, I texted Lauren Dillon. So, I said, this guy is going to be going to WBD, and that's how this happened. It seemed like the whole thing.