The 18 Winners and Losers of 2024

2024 was another year of transformative change for the media industry.

The Fourth Estate, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood continued to be upended by disruptive forces, testing the leadership and resilience of some of the world's most powerful executives. The relentless pace of technological innovation, evolving consumer behaviors, and the re-emergence of Donald Trump forced established giants to make difficult decisions with vast implications.

Amidst the challenges, new leaders emerged, bringing fresh perspectives and strategies, while others, once towering above the rest, saw their influence wane and/or their dominance questioned.

As we prepare to send 2024 into the history books, we took a look at both the year’s winners and losers.

The Winners

• Elon Musk: The world's richest man grew even wealthier in 2024. But that's not all. In addition to Musk seeing his fortune soar, the right-wing billionaire also saw his political power surge to new heights, thanks to his blossoming relationship with Trump. Musk started the year MAGA-curious and will end it as one of the central figures in the Trump universe, spending his days at Mar-a-Lago and growing so close to Trump that he is often spotted in the family's photos. In 2025, not only will Musk continue to play a key role shaping the public discourse through his ownership of X, but he will also directly help shape policy at the federal level.

• Taylor Swift: There are music superstars, and then there is Swift. After Swift closed out her hit "Eras Tour" earlier this month, her production company revealed that the concert series grossed a record-breaking $2 billion across 149 shows, further cementing her status as an economic force to be reckoned with. Meanwhile, Swift's "Tortured Poets Department" made her the year’s most-streamed artist, according to data from Apple Music and Spotify.

• Bob Iger: The king of the Magic Kingdom has quite a few things to be smiling about as he closes out 2024. Iger commenced the year defeating activist Nelson Peltz in a proxy fight. And he's closing the year counting more than $5 billion in box office receipts, more than any other studio. Indeed, it was a tremendous year for Disney at the box office. The entertainment conglomerate was responsible for the bulk of the year's blockbusters, with hits like "Inside Out 2," "Moana 2," and "Deadpool and Wolverine" sending droves of people to theaters all year long. On the ABC News front, Iger also oversaw the only general election debate of 2024, which proved to be successful. Speaking of politics, Iger did his best to keep Disney out of the culture wars, settling lawsuits with both Ron DeSantis and Trump this year. Whether he is able to keep the Mouse House out of the GOP's culture wars trap during the next four years, however, remains to be seen.

• David Zaslav: The Warner Bros. Discovery boss is certainly one of the least popular moguls in Hollywood, upsetting the normal order of things with unconventional moves. But not only did Zaslav manage this year to exit an ugly fight with the NBA relatively unscathed, the WBD stock price has jumped more than 40% in the last six months after he struck carriage deals with Charter Communications and Comcast. Meanwhile, through his appointment of Mark Thompson as CNN boss, Zaslav traversed 2024 without being confronted with a barrage of negative headlines about his news network. Zaslav's appointment of James Gunn as DC Films co-boss is also starting to pay the earliest of dividends with hype around "Superman" sending the film's teaser trailer flying past company viewing records.

• David Ellison: The year opened with the future of Paramount Global very much in question. But after a wild rollercoaster of a ride, billionaire David Ellison and his RedBird backers finally managed to lock a deal with Shari Redstone. When the deal closes in early 2025, Ellison will be one of the most powerful figures in media, controlling the iconic Paramount Pictures, as well as assets like CBS News.

• Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters: While the traditional Hollywood studios spent 2024 calibrating their streaming services in the hopes of achieving the kind of profits Netflix posts, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters worked on expanding their existing lead, particularly on the live sports front. The streamer's Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson event was a smash hit, nabbing 108 million viewers. And this week, Netflix is scheduled to stream a pair of NFL Christmas games, with Beyoncé headlining one of the half-time shows. Sarandos and Peters will close out the year with Netflix's stock up 94% YTD.

• Meredith Kopit Levien: While most news companies are in a state of disarray, The New York Times in 2024 continued to be a stable enterprise. That is in large part due to chief executive Levien, who has led the newspaper to record heights by doubling down on its efforts to diversify its assets beyond hard news. The Times said last month that it had passed 11 million total subscribers, a number that dwarfs the number of paid subscription from its competitors. Those types of numbers have kept investors happy as well. The company's stock is currently up about 11% YTD. Meanwhile, under Levien's leadership, The Times continued in 2024 leading the charge against A.I. titans, pushing forward in its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI.

• Jay Graber: In the immediate wake of the 2024 election, Bluesky saw a massive surge of users flock to its platform. Graber, the chief executive of the fledging social media service, has — largely speaking — managed to onboard the influx of users with minimal problems. Bluesky’s sudden popularity has unquestionably unnerved Meta, which has since rolled out a number of features aimed at blunting its growth. Thus far, however, the users who migrated to the service appear to be quite happy.

The Losers

• Jeff Bezos and Will Lewis: The Amazon billionaire and his deputy intended to spend the year bringing stability to The Washington Post. Instead, their 2024 actions further destabilized the struggling newspaper. Lewis lost the trust of the newsroom in the first half of the year when he lashed out at its reporters, clumsily dismissed former editor Sally Buzbee, and conspicuously dodged questions on the role that he played cleaning up Rupert Murdoch's phone hacking scandal years ago. In response, Bezos pretty much did nothing, showing a real lack of leadership and demoralizing Posties. But Bezos really cranked up the volume in the latter half of the year when he bent the knee to Trump by blocking the newspaper's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. That led to more than 250,000 people canceling their subscriptions and morale collapsing inside the newspaper. Meanwhile, Bezos and Lewis concluded their search for a top editor with no viable candidates outside acting editor Matt Murray. Outside The Post, Bezos will now enter 2025 with his foe Musk having the ear of the incoming president. It's hard to imagine those being the notes the Blue Origin boss wanted to end 2024 on.

• Patrick Soon-Shiong: The Los Angeles Times kicked off 2024 in turmoil, and it is ending the year in even more of it. Much of the mess stems from the actions of its erratic billionaire owner, who has sent morale inside his newspaper plummeting. Soon-Shiong most notably started interfering when he blocked the outlet's planned endorsement of Harris. Since then, Soon-Shiong — who has morphed from a backer of liberal causes into someone far more MAGA curious — has taken steps to prevent the newspaper's editorial board from criticizing Trump, welcomed dishonest MAGA commenter Scott Jennings to its Opinion section, and announced he will introduce a so-called "bias meter." It has all resulted in the Times losing subscribers and trust with its readers.

• Cesar Conde: It was a rough year for the NBCUniversal News Group chief, to say the least. Conde faced an unprecedented on air backlash from his top stars when he tried to hire Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor to the news group. And he faced questions about why he took inexplicable actions that benefited Trump, such as benching "Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski in the aftermath of the Trump assassination attempt and refusing to allow an immigration documentary critical of the now president-elect from airing ahead of the election. But Conde is on this list because Comcast's spinning off of its cable networks, which will include CNBC and MSNBC, have greatly reduced the size of his news palace. That move has greatly reduced Conde's power, putting him in the much smaller role of simply overseeing NBC News and Telemundo. It will be intriguing to see whether Conde is still in his role by the end of 2025.

• Kim Godwin: Conde wasn't the only news boss to lose power in 2024. After a tumultuous three-year run atop ABC News, Godwin was ousted as network chief in May. The ousting came after morale and performance fell at the Disney-owned network under Godwin's leadership (or lack thereof). During her time at ABC News, Godwin alienated staffers, failed to articulate a strategic vision for the newsroom, and watched as "Good Morning America" slipped in the ratings, to name just a few of her failures. It all was plainly obvious to Disney executive Debra OConnell, who was appointed to a new position overseeing ABC News and quickly determined that Godwin needed to be relieved of her duties. Now OConnell and newly minted ABC News president Almin Karamehmedovic will have to repair much of the damage, including working to restore ratings at "GMA," which has seen "Today" surpass it in viewership.

• Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski: The "Morning Joe" hosts were once amongst the leaders of the #Resistance. But after the insurrection inciting Mar-a-Lago resident won back the Oval Office, the pair of MSNBC hosts chose to kiss the ring, visiting his Florida club to "restart communications." The move marked a betrayal of their audience, which made it abundantly clear that it did not approve of the act of obedience in advance of Trump's return to power.

• Sean "Diddy" Combs: The music mogul faced a number of disturbing sexual assault allegations in 2024, which were made in a flurry of lawsuits filed against him. While Combs settled a case brought against him by Cassie, video published by CNN in May showed him unquestionably assaulting her at a hotel, corroborating claims of abuse he allegedly subjected victims to. Meanwhile, in addition to the civil complaints filed against him, a grand jury indicted Combs over a number of charges, including sex trafficking and racketeering. A judge has repeatedly denied bail for Combs. The allegations have left the music mogul disgraced in a way similar to Harvey Weinstein.

• Alex Jones: The right-wing extremist will eventually lose ownership of his Infowars conspiracy empire after a judge ruled this year to liquidate the company so that the Sandy Hook families he owes more than $1.5 billion in damages to can see some of that money flow to them. An auction was held last month and The Onion emerged victorious, but a judge rejected the satirical outlet’s bid earlier this month. Regardless, it’s only a matter of time before Jones hands over the keys to a new owner.