Who Had the Worst Week?

• How do you celebrate an acquisition that makes you the largest marketing holding company in the world? If you are Omnicom, you lay off 4,000 employees. And champagne, probably. There’s usually champagne. Those layoffs are in addition to about 19,000 others that Omnicom and the holding company it acquired, Interpublic, made earlier in 2025.
• If you subscribe to Netflix, expect your monthly fee to increase soon. Netflix outbid Paramount and Comcast to acquire Warner Bros. and its extensive library of content. Netflix agreed to pay $82.7 billion, including debt, which amounts to about $276 for each of its subscribers. Interestingly, the acquisition would also include Warner Bros.’ HBO Max streaming service.
• The Denver Post has now missed five straight monthly rent payments to the City and County of Denver for space in its eponymous downtown building that it sold to the city in 2024.
• Rocky the Raccoon broke into a Virginia liquor store, broke several bottles of whiskey, apparently drank some that spilled on the floor, and then passed out in the store’s bathroom. Local animal protection authorities took custody of Rocky, dried him out and released him back into the wild.
• Penn State is the gift that keeps on giving to college coaches. The school was one of the first to fire its head football coach this season when it let James Franklin go in September, and its efforts to sign a new coach have done nothing but secure lucrative contract extensions for the candidates it was considering. The school was rumored to be interested in Indiana‘s Curt Cignetti, who received a new eight-year, $93 million contract four days after Franklin was fired. Then Penn State turned its attention to Nebraska‘s Matt Rhule, who shortly thereafter received a two-year, $25 million extension. Penn State next turned to BYU‘s Kalani Sitake, who just received a new contract whose terms have yet to be disclosed but reportedly make him the highest-paid coach in the Big 12 Conference. Meanwhile, Penn State still has no new head coach.
• Zillow has removed scores rating homes’ vulnerability to extreme weather following complaints from real estate agents who apparently fear it will lower sales prices and their resulting commissions.
• Private employers in the U.S. shed 32,000 jobs in November rather than add the 40,000 new jobs analysts expected, according to data from payroll processor ADP. That data is especially significant given that the Bureau of Labor Statistics still hasn’t issued a new jobs report since the government shutdown.
• A Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office SWAT sergeant resigned before he could be fired after being found to have responded to the recent Evergreen High School shooting incident while intoxicated.
• If you have been waiting for the Colorado Rockies to finally win something, good news! Their seven-year, $182 million contract with oft-injured outfielder Kris Bryant was rated the No. 1 worst contract in Major League Baseball.
• Pantone released its “Color of the Year” for 2026, and it was basically white. But because it’s Pantone, it had to give it a clever name, so technically “Cloud Dancer” is the color of the year.

Who won the week?

• Children’s Hospital Colorado added Shannon Fern as Director of Public Relations and Communications, and promoted Rachael Fowler to PR and External Communications Manager.
• The Fletcher Group is celebrating its 20th anniversary.
• JKD PR has added the Transplant Games of America as a new client.
• Jordan Chavez and Erica Lopez both announced they will be leaving 9News in the coming month.
• Jaylyn Sherrod, a current player on the WNBA‘s Minnesota Lynx basketball team, will receive her master’s degree in Criminal Justice this December from the University of Colorado Denver. She played in college for the University of Colorado Boulder.
• The Denver Art Museum will be the only U.S. venue to showcase “DIVA,” an exhibition featuring objects and costumes worn by Marilyn Monroe, Lady Gaga, Whitney Houston, Rihanna, Prince, Tina Turner, Cher and others. The exhibition will open in October 2026.
• U.S. shoppers dropped more than $11.8 billion online on Black Friday this year, which is a record and a 9.1% increase over 2024.