CHRIS WALLACE IS CUTTING ALL THE CORDS:

On Monday evening, Chris Wallace, the veteran newsman, CNN anchor, and ultimate Washington establishmentarian, called the network’s talent chief Amy Entelis to inform her that he intended to leave at the end of his contract. Minutes later, to the consternation of his bosses and presumably their P.R. department, he gave a reporter at The Daily Beast the green light to publish a precooked exclusive about his departure. The piece asserted that the 77-year-old broadcaster was walking away from a seven-figure contract to find a new home in “streaming or podcasting,” which, as Wallace told the reporter, is “where the action seems to be.”

The story, with its Onion-worthy headline—Chris Wallace Quits CNN to Build Future in Streaming—described Wallace’s exit as a “watershed moment for cable TV,” a remarkably rare defection by a lifelong TV veteran who had determined he would rather forgo his lucrative salary and test new arenas than continue to suffer through the cable business’s slow but inexorable decline. Indeed, the piece seemed to portray Wallace as the news industry’s own Adrian Wojnarowski, the star ESPN NBA reporter who recently gave up his own $7 million-a-year gig to run the men’s basketball program at his alma mater in rural northwestern New York. As it happens, Wallace was also making $7 million a year at CNN.

And perhaps to offset that sudden lack of cashflow: Chris Wallace lists DC home for $6.4M mere days after announcing his shock departure from CNN.