Who Had the Worst Week?

• Ten people are dead and nearly 200,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes due to wildfires in the Los Angeles area. Like the Marshall Fire in Boulder several years ago, these wildfires are fueled by high winds that are growing fires faster than firefighters can respond. The scale of the fires may impact Coloradans as insurers further evaluate their premiums in what they consider areas vulnerable to wildfires.
  • Meanwhile, ABC News anchor David Muir has made his own headlines for using clothes pins to make his flame-retardant coat appear more form-fitting on air as he covered the fires.
• Could the Denver Broncos build a new stadium in Lone Tree? 9News reports the team is considering it.
• The public relations team was among the hardest hit departments from recent layoffs at The Washington Post.
• The Colorado State Patrol is walking back its initial claims that a driver involved in a New Year’s Day crash that killed two people fell asleep at the wheel. The CSP did not explain why potentially inaccurate information was released, but they did apologize to friends and families of the deceased.
• Colorado is expensive and full, a finding underscored by the U-Haul Growth Index that ranks states by the number of people moving into vs. out of states. Colorado ranked 40th. Before you get too excited about the potential for lower rents, 50.3% of one-way U-Haul trips were out of Colorado, while 49.7% were to Colorado.
• 9News traffic and entertainment reporter Erica Lopez is taking some time off to have a cyst removed from one of her vocal cords.
• Denver City Auditor Tim O’Brien has spent the past decade justifying his existence by finding all manner of problems – real and imagined – with numerous city-related programs and departments. This time he has his sights on DIA, and he is threatening to conduct multiple audits if the airport doesn’t bend to his will.
• TikTok influencers who have made a living off the social media platform are bracing for its potential ban in the United States effective Jan. 19. The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing arguments today attempting to overturn the legislative ban.
• States in the Southeast are getting hammered by a rare snowstorm, with cities such as Atlanta and Nashville expected to get 2-4 inches (which affects them the way 12-24 inches of snow would affect Denver – Atlanta doesn’t own very many snowplows).
• Vince McMahon, the founder and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) agreed to pay the SEC $400,000 and reimburse the WWE $1,3 million to settle allegations that he “failed to disclose multimillion-dollar settlements he had reached with two women when he led the W.W.E.”
• ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery abandoned plans to launch Venu, what would have been a new streaming service featuring content from each. The three announced the new network a year ago, but Fubu had sued alleging that the service was anticompetitive.

Who won the week?

• KOSI 101 saw its ratings number nearly double in December as it made its annual month-long transition to Christmas music.
• The University of Colorado Boulder helped launch 35 start-ups over the past fiscal year, a new record. That puts CU Boulder in very good company. For context, Stanford launched 35 start-ups and MIT launched 32.
• The Denver Broncos are in the NFL playoffs for the first time in a decade. They play the Buffalo Bills on Sunday.