Welcome to The Addition, where I cover the crossover between culture, media and sport.

Last week, I reflected on the news that Gary Lineker is leaving Match of the Day at the end of the season and will leave the BBC after the 2026 World Cup. Many people noted, quite reasonably, that this means he can focus solely on his very successful Goalhanger Podcasts company. One somewhat overlooked element is that Lineker’s The Rest is Football show is going to be hosted by the BBC. It will be interesting to see how long that lasts, but it does not seem to be quite the parting of the ways that is being sold. (A big shout out to the kind subscriber who flagged this up after spotting the details buried at the bottom of a story from… BBC News.)

Meanwhile, news of more redundancies at major UK publisher Reach is filtering through. Based on what one hack on one of the company’s national papers told me recently about the churn and targets staff there are subject to, some might be pleased to take any redundancy package they can get.

Bluesky Beats its Rivals

In the last couple of weeks, and the last few days in particular, there has been a huge amount of buzz around Bluesky. The social media app looks reassuringly like Twitter in “the good old days”. It is the latest beneficiary of the anti-Elon Musk/Donald Trump backlash, with the number of users shooting up.

A lot of the conversation around this development has been about how much “nicer” the platform is. Well, maybe, but that is not why it is relevant to the media. Bluesky is happy to promote links, and news in particular, unlike many of its rivals.

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