State of Play: Streaming, Cable Bundles, and the Media

Tom Rogers, the executive chairman of Engine Media and the first president of NBC Cable, joins Scott to discuss everything concerning media trends, streaming VoD, and cutting the cord with cable. Tom shares why he’s bullish on Netflix, the challenges he sees for Disney, and his thoughts on a new model for news. Scott opens with his election takeaways, Pfizer’s vaccine announcement, and his thoughts on Shopify’s partnership with TikTok. This week’s Office Hours: Apple’s decision to get into search, changing Facebook’s business model, and advice to young entrepreneurs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Scott Galloway?

  Episode 35, the atomic number of bromine. You can run for president in the US at age 35. It's also clear you can run for president at the age of 140. Fucking five, Jesus Christ, enough already. Pop, pop. We have a new president. I don't like to be political, but have we the opportunity? Do we have the opportunity to embrace empathy, science and Jesus? And why would I talk about Jesus as an atheist? Because Jesus started and finished with love the poor. What do I say to Jesus, empathy and science? Go, go and go.

• 0:39Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 35th episode of the Prop G Show. In today's episode, we speak with Tom Rogers, the former president of NBC Cable and the current executive chairman of Engine Media. He is also the founder of CNBC and former CEO of TiVo and an incredibly blue flame thinker around media. Tom and I discuss all sorts of things surrounding the state of play, concerning media consumption and social media. So, okay, what's happening? After days of nonstop news consumption, Joe Biden was declared the president-elect of the United States over the weekend. Senator Kamala Harris will become the first woman madam vice president. That is a nice ring doing, doesn't? And women of color to hold the vice president position. And at more than 74 million votes, Joe Biden received the most votes in any presidential election,

• 1:22Scott Galloway?

  while Donald Trump became the first president to lose the popular vote twice and the first one-term president since George H. W. Bush in 1993. What happened here? What are some of the takeaways? 60 cents. 60 cents cost the president reelection. What costs 60 cents? That's how much cloth there is in a mask. Simply put, COVID-19 delivered the presidency to who I believe is the weakest candidate in 50 years. I think Joe Biden is a wonderful man. I think he's a decent man. Voted for him, worked for him. A terrible candidate. We shouldn't have people in their late 70s running for president. Biology is not politically correct. The Republicans believe that the novel coronavirus listens to them,

• 2:05Scott Galloway?

  that if they say it's disappearing, or if they show leadership and macho, that the virus gets the memo. No, it doesn't. And just as bad, just as bad, we on the Democratic side have decided that biology doesn't get the memo, and we should run seniors for leadership positions. Democrats felt that trying to get to November 3rd was like rushing or driving to an election with a blinking red check engine light. We were nervous, finally got here. Congratulations to everyone. Some other observations: A woman of color played a critical role in Biden's election. And no, it wasn't Senator Harris, it was Stacey Abrams. Also, Representative Jim Clyburn, who basically delivered South Carolina to Biden.

• 2:48Scott Galloway?

  Keep in mind, after the first debate, the odds of Joe Biden winning presidency, according to Beddington House in the UK, was 100 to 1. And then it became very late, very, very early. What do we take away from this election? What is the mandate? There is no mandate. Republicans picked up seats in the House. Democrats basically repudiated, or there was clearly a mandate to get Orange Hitler out of office, but there really wasn't a mandate. If there was a mandate, it was a Green mandate. And it wasn't around the Green New Deal, it was around marijuana, which won ballots kind of across the nation. Look for those stocks probably to have some sort of Renaissance

• 3:30Scott Galloway?

  after taking a beating in 2019 and 2020. But let's hope that we all heal. Let's hope that we all come together. Fuck that. There was a level of criminality in this White House that should absolutely be prosecuted. And I'm not suggesting we prosecute the president for crimes committed during the office. I think that opens a whole ball of wax around political retribution. But no doubt, the Southern District of New York is coming for the mob family that is the Trumps. Anyways, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, we get a mask mandate, and hopefully, we get our arms around this pandemic. Speaking of arms around the pandemic, what else is going on? A COVID-19 vaccine is supposedly on the way.

• 4:14Scott Galloway?

  Pfizer announced its vaccine is 90% effective, though the study is still ongoing and hasn't been peer reviewed. The FDA needs at least two months of follow-up data to make sure there are no harmful side effects, and Pfizer expects to have that data by next week. Not only is this study still ongoing, but it's unclear how Pfizer's vaccine is working for different age groups and whether it is effective in preventing severe cases of the virus. Did the markets react prematurely? Look at what's happening here. Everything related to travel, basically everything that got hit hard in COVID, cruises, Disney is skyrocketing, right? AMC Theaters was up, I think, 60% in a day. Why? Because we think that with a vaccine, we'll take to the roads again, and we'll actually

• 4:56Scott Galloway?

  travel or actually go out and do stuff again, but not so fast. This vaccine is not very stable. It requires refrigeration. It's a two-dose vaccine. It's going to take a while. The distribution and logistics here are not, are not simple. Despite that, hotels, cruise lines, movie theaters, all soared, while the tech stocks that benefited from stay-at-home orders, including Amazon, Netflix, Zoom, and Peloton, all dropped per Pfizer's vaccine announcement. Of course, of course, Mike Pence, Vice President Pence, tried to grab the mic and claimed that it was Warp Speed that did it. Operation Warp Speed? No, no, Pfizer had nothing to do with Operation Warp Speed. They took no money. This was an example of global cooperation.

• 5:38Scott Galloway?

  A company headquartered in some tax haven, the Isle of Man or some such, that's an American company technically, but collaborating with German scientists, came up with this vaccine. You'd think that we would take a lesson from what is one of the greatest gifts to mankind, vaccines, and how we may have developed this vaccine and take our heads out of our asses and realize that we should be coordinating with, I don't know, Taiwan, that has figured out a way to address the pandemic with about 60 deaths in a nation that's the population of New York, where we've lost 20-odd thousand American souls. You'd think that that would set an example, that science and cooperation and coordination are the gangster move. Let's play to our superpowers, the species here. We're good at this shit. We're good at that. Okay, enough of that. We're busting into a partnership that piqued the dog's interest.

• 6:23Scott Galloway?

  Shopify and TikTok. Let's back up for a minute. Remember back in August when Trump signed an executive order that was supposed to ban TikTok from the US if its parent company, ByteDance, didn't sell to a US company? And of all the companies to step forward, Oracle and Walmart made a deal to own 20% of TikTok Global. Well, fast forward to now, the ban that was supposed to take place in November 12th was blocked yet again by a federal judge in Pennsylvania. The Verge reported that this ruling came from a lawsuit in which three TikTok content creators claimed that the ban would prevent them from earning a living. Huh, huh. Who would have thunk it? These creators with their millions of followers can earn anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000 per video.

• 7:07Scott Galloway?

  With my moves, I would easily make between five and 10 cents a video for people would pay me not to see that thing called rhythm. You know who thinks I have rhythm? Vodka. I love that joke. Get used to it. I'm gonna use it a lot more. The judge ruled that the three TikTokers would likely suffer irreparable harm, irreparable harm, if the ban went into effect. Thus TikTok lives on. So why does a TikTok Shopify partnership make perfect sense? Why is this just so gangster with a capital G? We're talking Sopranos like gangster. Just like the dog thought Walmart could leapfrog Amazon with TikTok's algorithm. A TikTok Shopify combination mating peanut butter and chocolate is set up for success.

• 7:49Scott Galloway?

  Shopify helps TikTok expand its e-commerce ability while TikTok helps Shopify merchants reach new audiences that is customers. TikTok has over 700 million users across the globe and over 100 million in the US alone. 50 million of those US users use it daily. And the average person, the average TikTok user spends 52 minutes per day on the app. That's what you call a big fucking asteroid in our attention graph. Shopify reported its Q3 earnings earlier this month and revenue reached 767 million, which is up 96% from 2019. Basically, they doubled the revenue. Wow. Analysts were expecting the company to only bring in around 658 million. Okay, 767 versus expecting 658.

• 8:33Scott Galloway?

  Hello Shopify. Shopify has a market cap of around $110 billion. Mind blown. Do you know how much money that is? That's the value of FedEx. Simon Properties and I don't know, throw in all of specialty retail. That's just nuts. Another Shopify news, a company recently announced that merchants can now sell subscription products and offer post purchase upsells directly in Shopify checkout. Shopify is becoming like the e-commerce cloud. And where's e-commerce going potentially with Shopify and TikTok? A-commerce, a-commerce. They could figure out an algorithm that curates merchandises and presents cool little videos highlighting, highlighting great products from small and medium sized retailers on the Shopify platform.

• 9:17Scott Galloway?

  Can you imagine something you turn on? Well, yeah, I want shipping. Yeah, I want return Shopify. Figure that out for me. Yeah, I want you to, I don't know, buy my keywords for me. What else are you going to do on Shopify? And oh, by the way, click this button, turn this on and an AI, AI driven algorithm is going to figure out videos to highlight my products across the TikTok user base. Oh my God. Mind blown, mind blown. The subscription e-commerce market is expected to reach a half a trillion dollars by 2025. Think about this, this is so, so exciting. This is, this is, this is what Walmart TikTok could be, but it makes more sense to be Shopify TikTok. If Shopify wasn't so goddamn expensive, I'd go buy some stock.

• 10:00Scott Galloway?

  That's one of those things I hate myself for not buying that stock. I've been talking about Shopify for a long time. Anyway, anyway, congratulations to Shopify and TikTok. A-commerce, A-com, A-com for the dog. Stay with us, we'll be right back for our conversation with Tom Rogers.

• 10:22Scott Galloway?

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• 11:08Scott Galloway?

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• 11:36Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Tom Rogers, the executive chairman of Engine Media and the former president of NBC Cable. Tom, where does this pod find you? I'm in Westchester County, outside of New York. Nice, sheltering in place. So, Tom, we've known each other for a while and you're one of the kind of bluest, clear blue flame thinkers in the world of media, having started various successful media companies and continue to be sort of a thought leader around these issues. Give me your sense of cable, which is sort of your end zone or your home, home

• 12:15Scott Galloway?

  field. I spent way too much time watching cable TV last week. I was expecting, I felt like I was taking a three hour SAT and then someone showed up and said, just kidding, it's going to be a four day SAT. You're used to elections where you kind of start watching eight or nine PM and by midnight you kind of know what's happened. And this went four days, or it felt like it just wouldn't end. I think I watched more CNN in the last four days than I've watched in the last four months. And I'd ping back between CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and then I would pull up the New York Times app. And I thought CNN won the week. I thought they won the election. I thought, maybe it's because I'm biased or I just like their anchors, but I thought their anchors were sharper. I thought the writing was more deft. I thought

• 12:59Scott Galloway?

  the graphics were cleaner. I think John King makes better love to a TV screen than Cornacki or Hammer over at Fox. I just, I thought CNN has really had a moment, or at least I thought they had a moment. And where I'm headed with this is the following. News and politics are the only content, scripted television or not scripted, I'm sorry, not scripted television, only television content that hasn't gone behind a wall. Do you see an opportunity? Well, I guess business news hasn't either. Do you see an opportunity for, let's broaden the scope, CNN or CNBC behind a paywall? Because it just feels like we have a melting ice cube here. Don't they have to do something?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Well, it's a, it's a, it's a great point. I do think to your first point that it went on for several days. One thing all media did well is condition people that we weren't going to have an answer on election night.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  The issue of media behind a paywall, in some respects, cable is behind a paywall. You can only get it by buying a bundle, which at the low end, pretty much cost people $50 a month. Which in a world of à la carte television, where you can get the great packages of content for $6 a month. It seems like a pretty steep paywall. I think the issue for news-

• 14:18Scott Galloway?

  That's a great point. I never really thought of it. It's the most expensive streaming video platform in the world is cable television.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  And the point is that as the world goes to streaming services, where all good entertainment program goes, and people disconnect the cable bundle, we're going to be down from 100 million satellite and cable subs, probably in the next few years, to half that. And, you know, there's a lot of implications for live television, both sports and news. But, you know, the view of sports is, well, you know, there are tech companies waiting to figure out how they can become bidders on sports product

• 15:08Speaker 01

  that the traditional players may no longer have the subscriber revenue coming in from cable and satellite to support. And professional sports will just find a way to adapt to that, where viewers may find sports on different outlets than it currently is, but sports will continue on its merry way. But on news, those same subscribers-

• 15:36Speaker 01

  You know, that are discontinuing the bundle. And news is going to have half of the subscriber base that it had. And the question is, what is that model going forward? Because it's a lot less clear how they rebalance their revenue streams when half the cable and satellite world or more disappears on.

• 16:00Scott Galloway?

  So I'm fascinated with what I would call this failed synergy that wasn't realized between the telcos and content. I think AT&T, I'll put this word and tell me where I got it wrong. AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner is a failure. They'll end up writing it off. I think they should spin it again, but I think it was a failure. I think that, I don't think anyone's signing up for AT&T to get Sex and the City or, you know, Bill Maher on their phone. I don't see the synergy, just as I don't see the synergy between Verizon and Yahoo. Well, I think this was a mistake. Would, would AT&T, well, first off, do you think it was a failure? And would AT&T ever consider spinning Time Warner again? And is there a moment? Is there an opportunity?

• 16:45Scott Galloway?

  I look at CNN, tied to the clock. A third of their anchors are outstanding. A third are great. A third are there just to fill the, whatever, the six hours of, you know, to stay tied to the clock. I think the clock is the worst thing about, or the second worst thing about the cable bundle. And the worst thing is I can't get over, because I'm largely immune or shielded from ads, how bad the advertising is on the cable bundle. Which says to me, when I watch cable advertising, it's clear that the only people watching this are old people who are sick. It's just, it's basically a running commercial, nine minutes of every 30 minutes on how much it sucks to be old. And I got to think, and then I look at the economics. I look at it and I say, okay, they're getting somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes to pelt me with ads on opioid-induced constipation remedies

• 17:30Scott Galloway?

  or tell me that my legs are restless. And I think, okay, technology has stepped in and given us the ability to say, okay, here, boss, here's a buck and you keep 50 cents and I get 50 cents. I got nine minutes back. It just feels like the timing is right. What do you think of AT&T potentially spinning Time Warner? And I don't know if they do an auction of HBO, because I think Amazon and Apple would pay just a shit ton of money for HBO and then put CNN behind a wall. It feels like there's just some short and violent reshuffling of these assets or prying them away from the telcos. So Verizon, AT&T, and their ventures in media, what are your thoughts?

• 18:08Speaker 01

  AT&T, I agree with you. That was a disastrous acquisition. Just to put that in some perspective, debt and stock, they paid about $120 billion for those assets. Compare that to Comcast acquisition a few years earlier of NBC Universal, which all in in a couple phases was $25 billion or about one-fifth the cost. And what Comcast got was essentially an equivalent cable bundle of linear cable channels and a movie studio

• 18:48Speaker 01

  like Time Warner did. But Comcast also got a broadcast network, not part of what AT&T acquired, and a huge theme park, also what AT&T didn't acquire. So five times more without those two core assets. And I remember talking to a number of directors of AT&T at the time, who said to me when I questioned the price of the acquisition, oh, Tom, you don't understand. We're going to be able to package AT&T with HBO. And I said, but T-Mobile's doing that with Netflix without $120 billion acquisition. What is packaging

• 19:33Speaker 01

  those two things together have to do with having to make an acquisition like that? And you know, obviously, what's going on is you got a whole bunch of people who are now getting HBO Max through AT&T for free, not a whole lot of value creation there. And only about fifteen or twenty percent of the people, HBO being the key major asset, you know, company redefining element of the media strategy. And this whole HBO Max launch, I think maybe twenty percent of the people who have HBO and have the are entitled to turn on HBO Max as part of their subscription and get the broader offering, only about twenty percent have done it.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  And so you gotta wonder what is going on there in terms of the thought process that led them down this path. And you know, the the amount of money that I think they'd have to spend on programming to really drive that into a major global force that would be transformative as a media property in some way. Forget about the synergies with the phone side. AT&T runs into a bunch of liquidity problems, which begins to question the dividend. And once the dividend on AT&T is put into any kind of question, not that they're there yet, but if it does at some point, you know, then then they're cooked. That's the one thing that's holding up their their stock price.

• 21:05Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I wonder if at some point, I mean, it's twenty seven or twenty bucks. They've already lost the value of the acquisition. Investors have basically written off the acquisition for them. The stock since since they acquired it, the stock, I think, is down by the amount of the acquisition. And you know, when Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Buke's both decide to sell an asset class in the same quarter, that means you want out of that asset class. I mean, those guys, you don't want the other side of a trade for them for those from those two minds. Let me give you a sense of what I see going on. Tell me where I'm wrong and tell me if you were advising Comcast or if you were advising a recently spun Time Warner, what you would do or or you were in charge of HBO.

• 21:48Scott Galloway?

  I see that big tech, let me use a war analogy. The Germans had at the end of the war, towards the end of World War II, they had better soldiers, better machine guns, better planes, better morale, better officers. But we were producing 38 gallons of gasoline because we'd cut off the supply routes. We had 38 gallons of gasoline for everyone they had. We overwhelmed them with gasoline. We could fly around with our tanks. We would tell our Bradley, our shitty Bradley tanks, to just get near the Panzer tanks, but not close, and just harass them until they ran out of gas. We just overwhelmed them with logistics and supplies and cheap gas. And I see Amazon and I see Apple coming into this space and the entire media ecosystem,

• 22:29Scott Galloway?

  this unbelievable business, unbelievable business fueled Southern California, has been a 24-hour, non-stop commercial for Western values, good or bad. An unbelievable business is being featureized because it's being overrun with cheap gasoline out of Cupertino in Seattle. That it is almost, I don't want to say it's impossible, but it's going to be a shitty place to work or invest for anyone in media that's not in big tech. I just feel as if the whole thing is being, this enormous industry is being featureized to sell more handsets or more paper towels and that the traditional guys can't compete because they're not monetizing the Big Bang Theory by selling more paper towels or more handsets.

• 23:13Scott Galloway?

  Is this industry just kind of cooked?

• 23:15Speaker 01

  That is the first time I have heard the World War II analogy as applied to the cable industry, and that's brilliant.

• 23:24Scott Galloway?

  That's how old I am.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  That's brilliant.

• 23:26Scott Galloway?

  I love World War II analogies.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  You're younger than I am, and I would never have thought of it. I think you make a great point. First, let me say, I think the cable industry blew it, really blew it, when they had an opportunity to take linear, traditional channels and take on-demand programming.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  And put it together with Mason streaming services at the time like Netflix and Amazon. And mix in Wild Wild West of video. And put it together under one roof with one interface and distinguish themselves. As the closest video could get to what the music industry ended up being. The music industry was run over by digital well before video was. And what emerged from that was the best possible consumer model. That could possibly have emerged where you can get every piece of music ever produced in the world.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Under one roof where you can personalize it and customize it to your own taste. Carried around in your pocket and you have the entirety for a very reasonable monthly sum. The best possible consumer experience. And cable and video saw that happen. And they basically said, that's not going to happen to us. Because we're not ever going to be in a position where one. Centralizing force like Spotify is going to be able to license all content and put it together under one roof. So they now have set down this path of we have a bundle.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  We have streaming services. We have different devices in the home. You got a, you know, cable box to get some of that. You need a streaming box to get the rest of it. And we still have something that is so far less elegant than the music world has been able to put together. And now it's going to be up to the consumer. To figure out how are they going to vote for a better experience? Now, a couple of things need to happen. Uh, to your point on Cooper and Tino. I don't really think that Apple, at least based on what they're doing so far, is gonna be a transformative video company in terms of the content it puts forward. They are not showing either the amount of money.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  They certainly haven't created a price value perception where people are really stepping up and wanting to pay for Apple TV. Most people still get it for free packaged into a, an Apple device. But if you were thinking of somebody who had leverage through device and other resources to assert enough power over an industry to be the ones that create that elegant interface, that Spotify of the video world experience. That way you don't have to figure out what's on what, when, that you could personalize and customize television in the way Spotify does it for music. If I were Apple, that's where I would aim. And if I were Apple and I did that,

• 26:45Speaker 01

  the power that would flow to you as the uh holder of that interface experience would be great. You know, Netflix has a wonderful interface, but it's just within the Netflix world. Amazon has a pretty good one. It's just within that world. HBO Max does not have a very good one, but still it's just within their, their walled garden. Somebody putting that together into a wonderful experience would really do it. Now, Apple's begun to do that some, Amazon's begun to do that some. Nobody in the tech world yet looks to me as if they're really putting the shoulder behind that that I think uh some form of real dominance would flow to if they did. The player that you didn't mention between Seattle and Cooper Tino

• 27:30Speaker 01

  that I think becomes by far the most envious media company, the one that is going to be beyond anybody's ability to catch is Netflix. And I know many look at it and say, well, you know, Disney has a shot at that. And you know, Disney has a global brand and Disney has great content. Nobody is gonna be able to put together the model for a media company of the future like Netflix.

• 27:58Scott Galloway?

  There's so much there. So if you think about, I mean, let's look, I love the analogy of music because I think about the real innovation that cost the industry in the short run, but may have been the right thing in the long run, was it said, all right, if I'm going to buy Born in the USA, I don't want to pay 15 bucks for the album or the CD. I want to pay three bucks for the two or three songs. They let me disarticulate and get to the white meat. They gave me 90% of the value for 30% of the price. I mean, it was just an unbelievable value accretion to the consumer because there are so few albums, you know, Beck's Morningside, every track is great. That's one in a thousand. Even the best albums

• 28:39Scott Galloway?

  have kind of two or three hits, right? And they let you, they let the consumer take back that surplus, that tax. They unbridled them from the tax. Technology steps in, the entire world in one place. And the thing that you said that struck me is the tax that is now being levied on households with video, all of these different streaming systems now, it's just, it's a shit show. It gets very complicated, very fast with passwords and everything. And it feels like someone needs to come in and be the aggregator. I love the idea of Netflix. I always thought Netflix should buy Spotify, the ultimate subscription bundle, and they just kind of run away with it. It seems to me they have the cheap capital or the cheap gasoline that Amazon has. Netflix, you're bullish. Why?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Netflix is spending 16, 17 billion a year on content and probably on its way to 20 billion in the next few years. And it's the only player, I think, that has clearly developed pricing power based on the level of engagement it gets. Everybody's focused in the sub count number, you know, Disney Plus and all its subs. Yes, it did a nice job when it launched. It's getting subs. But subs alone is really a small part of it. What you gotta do is get engagement. What has two thirds of all streaming engagement put together? Netflix, YouTube and Amazon.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  You get down to Disney Plus, you get down to HBO Max. They got less than 5% of the engagement across streaming. And until you really are a powerful engagement force, where that perception of price value then really begins to take off and give you pricing power. So if you're spending 20 billion on programming with pricing power and you know, there are 200 million global subs on their way in the next few years to 300 million. What is 300 million? That's subs. When you think of the families in terms of the number of viewers they have at 300 million subs, you're over a billion people watching Netflix on the planet.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Then you're at Facebook type proportions in terms of your touch point of viewership. It's gonna be very hard for anybody to get the programming power, perception of value, pricing power and the number of touch points that they bring forward. So they're in a category by themselves.

• 31:07Scott Galloway?

  So I wanna, I'm gonna ask you about Disney Plus, but I wanna outline a vision. I don't think anyone can go toe to toe with Netflix just based on content, content to value, that ratio. And you're right, HBO plus, HBO Max, Disney Plus, or not as much Disney Plus, but Apple, no one's really paying for it. I mean, they're announcing numbers that don't really mean anything, right? Or very few people are paying for it. Is the opportunity for Disney? I look at Disney and it trades it. It's gotten, the stock's gotten hit pretty hard because of COVID and the parks. But could Disney move to what I call a recurring revenue bundle? Where they say, okay, we're gonna give you the Mandalorian, which in my household is a must. We spent three hours setting up Disney Plus. It wasn't easy because we had to see the Mandalorian.

• 31:49Scott Galloway?

  If you have boys at home, you have to, you have to have Disney Plus. And they roll in exclusive access to their theme parks on specific days. Exclusive tours of Galaxy's Edge at the, at the park. Exclusive access to Star Wars themed cruises. And because we know you're watching The Mandalorian over and over, we, we send you the Yoda doll before you even know you want it. And we charge you, any family, Disney Prime, if you will, 50 bucks a month and start leveraging their terrestrial assets, which Netflix doesn't have, which Time Warner doesn't have, and basically force every family over a certain income level in Western Europe and the United States to sign up for a much, much bigger bundle.

• 32:32Scott Galloway?

  And then take Black Widow out of the ecosystem and forego that half a billion dollars in domestic box office that are hoping to get in in China and put it on Disney Plus and start really pulsing the value around this bundle. Is, I, I think Disney could be the one that strikes back. I think Disney has the assets, they just have to string them all together and cross the chasm into sort of an Amazon Prime like mega bundle. Do you think, do you think that works? And do you think they'll do it?

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Um, one, I think they're much better off if they pursue a bundle strategy. You know, when they announced Disney Plus and then Hulu and ESPN Plus, all as separate packages, they said the right thing. Consumers should choose, the whole breakdown in cable was that it was a bundle and people couldn't buy things a la carte. So we're not going to recreate that issue for people who just want Disney Plus and have kids in a household and don't want Hulu and ESPN Plus. I think that's fine as a consumer philosophy, but as a business proposition in terms of maximizing value for Disney shareholders, uh, just, just on the television side, before

• 33:45Speaker 01

  you get to the bigger bundle you're talking about, they are putting very little shoulder behind Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus as a bundle that people should really be focused on as, you know, compared to the other streaming packages out there other than Netflix. A, a, a good price for a bundle at 12, $13. And it's just not being pushed in the way you would think it would be. Part of that is the incentives within the Disney management structure. You know, they made a big deal about a reorganization. And where they ended up with this reorganization that got ballyhooed as a whole bunch of new focus on driving streaming future,

• 34:26Speaker 01

  ended up with the programming people making decisions as to what platform the their content would go on divorcing from the people with the P and L responsibility from streaming, the very content decisions that they need in terms of how to maximize the value of streaming. So, you know, it it it it just sounded like an incredibly awkward reorganization. If your real goal was to make sure the entire company was focused on building future value, which I think goes to your point on the bigger bundle. What you got to do to focus management incentives in a direction that would drive toward that

• 35:10Speaker 01

  is totally different than anything that the company is currently organized to accomplish. And I think that's the problem. And it's the it's it's why Netflix will continue to fly in its own airspace. Because it wakes up in the morning doing one thing. How do we please consumers with a streaming service that puts together as much programming as possible to drive a price value proposition that is gonna continue to fulfill our mission? With a Disney and the traditional side and the new side and conflict in terms of resources, conflict in terms of management organization. It's incredibly hard to compete against a pure play when all those dynamics hit you every day.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  And I am sure Chapek and is is sitting there having to resolve disputes on a constant basis of who does what, to whom, when, and who's gets the call on what. And under that, if you don't take away the incentive for the big theatricals to be released to movie theaters and continue to drive that business. If those incentives still are sitting there for management to have their big near term paydays in terms as opposed to long term growth of a streaming asset, you're never going to course correct on that kind of thing.

• 36:26Scott Galloway?

  Hundred percent. Yeah, I feel as if they're kind of cursed. It's a shareholder problem. I think the one of the better things that's happened to Disney is Dan Loeb. Who he's gone in there and said, cancel the dividend and double down on content and move towards streaming and try and move towards this bundle that that you've got to figure out a way. Now, I believe Disney could could register decline in revenues of 10 to 20% and they would by taking all their content out of typical distribution and double their share price. If they could come out with the most expensive bundle that included all these digital and non digital assets, which I think is their point of differentiation and what is arguably the best library out there, I think the stock would scream. If

• 37:08Scott Galloway?

  they were announcing, yeah, people are actually paying 25 bucks a month, not not pretending to pay 5,999 a month, but actually paying 25 bucks a month and we're signing up hundreds of thousands of minutes a household, I think the stock would take off. But the incentive structure right now is there's some guy or gal running Warner that's going to get a three or five or 10 million dollar bonus based on how well Black Widow does in China in theaters. It it really feels as if the compensation schematic and the shareholders are getting getting in the way. So you have you have probably a better nose for what's next in media. You're credited with the founding of CNBC, MSNBC. What media company would you start now? What would it look like?

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Well, that's a that's a great question. And just to your point on programming, before I go to that, and Loeb, I think you're right in terms of they need to put more money into programming. I think right now, the budget growth that Disney's looking at will get one new show a week on Disney Plus in the next four years or so. That's the pace they'll be doing. And Netflix, with their programming budget, will be introducing a new movie or series every day.

• 38:22Scott Galloway?

  Every day.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  And that's the difference between what their focus is versus Netflix. And, you know, that does Disney have the resource to course correct on that? Yes. But just one other thing on Disney with to just kind of put a point in some of my skepticism. Before Disney Plus launched, there was the Disney Channel. And the Disney Channel had Disney programming for kids. And that Disney Channel, just like Nickelodeon, was losing audience at a twenty percent or so year-over-year clip for a couple of years.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  So before the Disney Plus emerged, you had this issue of were kids really voting for Disney programming being so unique that they would flock to it wherever it was? Uh, no, kids were finding it on YouTube, they're finding it on Netflix, they were finding it elsewhere. And so there is something unique about these big blockbuster, major animation, major Disney films that they produce eight or nine of a year. That does not make for the future of massive valuation that people are expecting out of Disney from a transformative digital strategy.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  And people have to come to terms with that as opposed to getting lost in the magic of the Disney brand being in itself, being able to point to a different distribution outlet and saying that in itself makes massive new value. Uh, onto your, uh, onto your other question. Rogers Media, what is it?

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Well, I've always been partial to news. Uh, not that I don't watch my share of entertainment programming, but I've always been partial to news. And news is gonna need a new model to your earlier point about, uh, where, where does it go? And I, I, I think, um, there is an opportunity to do for news what Spotify did for music and what Netflix did for entertainment. And that is to create something which is an all-encompassing approach to being able to access news and information content. And not just the, uh, the, the live channels which somehow are gonna, you know, it's still

• 40:50Speaker 01

  a crazy thing here that. We're in a world of à la carte distribution of you can buy Netflix for $12 and you can buy Disney Plus for $6. Go out and say you want to get a news bundle of channels. You can't do it still. I mean, the bundle's breaking down. And if I said, you know what, I'm a news consumer and I want CNN and MSNBC and Fox and Bloomberg, I can't get that yet. And T-Mobile just came out with their new fangled package and brought it down to sports and news you can buy. That was the first just to be able to buy sports and news in one place, live television. So we got a long way to go on.

• 41:33Scott Galloway?

  Well, a couple. Bloomberg's announced they're taking, which is obviously a very niche product, but they said they're gonna go behind a wall. And also, is Apple trying to do that with their news product?

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Well, yes and no. I mean, the sorry history of the magazine business, which I spent four years in trying to come up with new models for how a magazine industry, which was clearly gonna face a world of pain as digital emerged and trying to get the industry to do something about that. And they finally, after a number of years, put together an industry-wide consortium of magazines so you could buy the, an entire bundle of a couple hundred magazines for like, like you were buying a cable bundle of channels. But they marketed it in a way that every, all of them were scared that their own magazine was gonna get cannibalized. So the thing, most

• 42:27Speaker 01

  people in the magazine industry didn't even know it existed. And then they sold it to Apple. And I thought, okay, Apple's the one who has the ability to step back and create a industry-wide news bundle that would really make it easy to take glossy information sources and create a Spotify of news access. And it's a very underdeveloped product, given the potential here. And it's mostly focused on textual information without what I'm talking about, which is a, a video bundle for news. You know, think of all the podcasts that are out there.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Think of if somebody was interested in the future of media and did a search today to find future of media.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  You know, this podcast wouldn't come up. There would be no basis for being able to do it. Here's Google, the, you know.

• 43:26Scott Galloway?

  Oh, this one would. This one would.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  If, if, if somebody was knowledgeable enough to know you and I appeared discussing this, they could find it. But if you tried to find

• 43:37Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Uh, the element within a podcast that discussed.

• 43:41Scott Galloway?

  You can't search.

• 43:42Speaker 01

  You cannot, you cannot search video. You cannot search audio. You don't, there is no composite way to really offer the Netflix of news, business news, podcast information, searchable at a micro level to really be able to retrieve in a personalized way, exactly what you want from the information universe. If I was going to create something that was truly about the future of news information media, that's where I would go.

• 44:12Scott Galloway?

  Would it be ad supported or would it be subscription?

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Um, I think it would be subscription or, you know, there's nothing wrong with lowering your subscription price and allowing people who don't, aren't bothered by ads. And you and I are bothered by ads, so it's not for us. But I got no problem in a world of shrinking advertising inventory to people have hybrid models that, uh, do that or, you know, multiple ways to, to view. Uh, so it could be, uh, could be both.

• 44:42Scott Galloway?

  It just, it, it feels as if this industry, there has never been an industry that has so many examples of the innovator's dilemma, where you have an industry that says, we gotta hold on to our current compensation schematic. We have to hold on to our current business model. We have to hold on to our current revenues, even if, even if it means in two, three, five years, we're going to be worth a lot more. We can't pull Black Widow out of theaters in China. We can't take a dip in revenues by going to subscription. We can't reduce the content to 20 minutes instead of 60 minutes on a slow business day because it reduces the ads. But even though that's what, really what the consumer wants, the consumer wants nonlinear content, as my, it just feels as if

• 45:27Scott Galloway?

  every example is, how do we hold on to our legacy assets versus? Embracing the future. Anyways, Tom, last question I always ask this of very successful people. I know you, I don't know you well, but my sense is you are kind of living your best life. You, you know, have a lot of influence. I think you make a very good living and you seem by all exterior measures, you seem pretty happy. What advice would you give to your 25 year old self?

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Take the risk. My, my take the risk strategy, which in the scheme of things wasn't so much taking a risk, but it's the thing I always point to. Came out of law school, went to a Wall Street law firm for a couple of years. And I said, you know what, I gotta be where the action is. I don't want to be a junior associate looking up at a hierarchy where my influence in the world is, is minimal. I wanted to get to Capitol Hill. I wanted to be, you know, at 26 or 27, somebody writing laws, having people from FCC chairman to CEOs of networks, having to sit down with me about things they were interested in. And it was

• 46:39Speaker 01

  the smartest thing I ever did because it at a young age, gave you authority, gave you responsibility. And anything that gives you an ability to, at a, at a, at a young age, sacrifice pay, sacrifice prestige, go where you can make impact, where your influence at a young age is, is felt. That is what is going to give you the best possible opportunity to figure out a path that you're going to be most happy with. If you're a gnome within a big organization, even if it's a big one with a great name, and it's fun to tell people

• 47:20Speaker 01

  you work at XYZ company because everybody's heard of it. Make sure that you're thinking about how you are going to create your own path by having created a focal point for your influence as early as you possibly can.

• 47:37Scott Galloway?

  Tom Rogers is the executive chairman of Engine Media and the first president of NBC Cable. He's also the founder of CNBC and the former president and CEO of TiVo. He joins us from Westchester. Tom, thanks for your time and be safe.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Scott. Always a pleasure to listen to you.

• 48:00Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

• 48:04Scott Galloway?

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• 48:47Scott Galloway?

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• 49:15Scott Galloway?

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• 50:00Scott Galloway?

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• 50:31Scott Galloway?

  It's time for Office Hours, a part of the show where I answer your questions about the business world, big tech, higher education, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. First question.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Hi, Prof. G. Ruben Halper here. I'm an American expat living in Auckland, New Zealand. I know you love Australia and Sydney, but I gotta say, you gotta come check out New Zealand once the borders reopen. So my question is around Apple potentially getting into search. According to a number of sources, Google pays Apple up to $12 billion a year to be the default search engine on iOS. If that's true, that represents about 20% of the net income of Apple in 2019. Getting into the search game would be a double whammy in that they'd be foregoing a significant revenue stream while also increasing OpEx and CapEx in terms of engineering costs, data center upgrades, et cetera. So my question is whether you see Apple getting into search as purely a defensive move with potential government regulation on the horizon, or do you believe that users will essentially

• 51:31Speaker 02

  pay more for a privacy-centric, presumably ad-free, Apple version of search?

• 51:36Scott Galloway?

  Thanks, Ruben, from Auckland, New Zealand, and congratulations on your great judgment. I know I have this cohort of friends who are very successful, and they have their ultimate go-bag, and that is they have been buying places in New Zealand for the last decade and spent a lot of time down there. And basically, in addition to the fact that supposedly the last radiation cloud gets to New Zealand, in addition to it being a little bit of a weirdo survivalist mentality for billionaires, it is supposed to be just a fantastic place to live. So, Apple and its search engine, let's talk about the downside. They lose $12 billion. That's real cabbage. That's real cabbage. But, but, we're talking about a company with a market valuation of $2 trillion, and here's the lesson here.

• 52:21Scott Galloway?

  Think about your value as opposed to your revenues. Revenues is a key driver of value. It's a key driver, but what is also a key driver of value right now? The percentage of revenue you're getting from subscriptions. Specifically, Apple has doubled its stock price in the face of meddling earnings growth and no revenue growth. Why? Because they've gone from 8% of revenue done through subscription to 24%. And what's the other gangster move in their move to subscription? Verticals. Specifically, specifically, their brand positioning is all around. Privacy and what happens? What happens in a mature technology sector, which is search? In other words, it really hasn't innovated a hell of a lot in the last three to five years, as Tom Rogers pointed out.

• 53:04Scott Galloway?

  They can probably get 80% of Google's search for 10% of the price. And then what are they going to do? They're going to say, we're going to take you to the best place, the best source of information based on your query, not to another PLA or ad or another page that we, Google, can further monetize because we have a 93% monopoly. And what's going to happen? More people are going to turn to iOS. More people are going to sign up for the Apple bundle, which will include, which will include an iPhone, an AirPods and an iPad. And yeah, the revenue may go down $3, $5, $8 billion, but guess what? Their stock price is going to go up. This reflects, this reflects where the business world is headed. And that is into recurring revenue bundles, vertical. And for technology, the two greatest brand moves of the last 20 years all came from

• 53:48Scott Galloway?

  the same company. The first was in 2002, when Apple decided to zig while everyone else was zagging and they went into this dying medium called stores because point of purchase or is a lot of branding going on, where you actually have physical contact with the brand is important, is important. And people are having physical contact with phones and shitty distribution to AT&T and Verizon stores with a guy named Roy with a T-shirt, a logo T-shirt and bad carpeting. And instead, they go into these beautiful temples to the brand called Apple. That was the gangster brand over the last 20 years, recognizing branding was moving from pre-purchase to purchase. The second gangster move was de-positioning Facebook and Google by doubling down on privacy. Why was that so genius?

• 54:31Scott Galloway?

  Because if you surveyed people at Apple and say, what is the stool? What is the leg we want to stand on in terms of our brand? They'd say, design or creativity or think different. No, fuck that. We're going to go for privacy because it depositions our competition. Genius. And what's the next leg in that privacy stool? They're going to have a search engine. They're going to be more vertical. It's going to be privacy. You're going to, it's not going to pull data points. It's not going to molest your data. It's not going to give you search returns. It's clear that it's looking at you from every which way and trying to get more money and take you by the heels and shake you upside down like Android does. This is a great move. Apple added, added the value of Airbus when they announced that they were thinking about their search engine despite the fact that they would forgo that $12 billion. New Zealand, oh, my brother Ruben, well done.

• 55:15Scott Galloway?

  I will absolutely look you up when I'm in New Zealand. I gotta get down there. I gotta get back down there. Anyways, congratulations and thanks for the question. Next question.

• 55:24Speaker 03

  Hey, it's Ali calling from the UK. We hear all the time that Facebook mistreats and manipulates users, but that's the result of a business model where you have to sell your users to advertisers. Nobody ever provides a solution Facebook could realistically act on. I've thought about other business models, but considering Facebook already makes roughly $20 per user a year, I don't think a subscription model is the answer. If you were speaking directly to Mark, what business model would you suggest that would allow him to maintain Facebook's scale and dominance without screwing his users?

• 56:02Scott Galloway?

  Thanks very much, Ali. So I can't think of an individual who's less likely to listen to me than Mark Zuckerberg. I think Mark Zuckerberg is the most dangerous person on the planet. I think he's a sociopath and I think he brings to bear all the dangers of technology where you have an individual in his 30s, his upbringing was privileged, dropped out of Harvard. His first professional venture was evaluating women based on their physical appearance. He screwed over his close friends in college and then royally fucked over his best friend just out of college and has a platform that is circulating content that results in people being pulled out of cars in India and hanged on the spot, has absolutely delegitimized the sanctity of our elections and lets hate spread like there is no tomorrow.

• 56:47Scott Galloway?

  So congratulations, Mark Zuckerberg. It's difficult for me to imagine how this guy sleeps at night and yet I'm pretty certain he sleeps really. Really well. So I don't think he's going to listen to me. What's the business model? From a shareholder standpoint, you break up Facebook and shareholders benefit. WhatsApp's incredible. They haven't innovated, in my opinion, around that. I think Instagram is the fastest growing visual platform in the world. I think that would trade strong. And then Facebook is for all the old people who are on social media. I think this company as three separate companies would be worth more. That would be my business strategy or advice. The rest, the rest, I don't know. I don't think, I don't think he's going to listen to me. I think this is an individual who is broken. By the way, anyone heard from

• 57:31Scott Galloway?

  Sheryl Sandberg? She's clearly off trying to manicure her image. I think she's figured out, okay, everyone realizes that I was lying and taking billions of dollars to basically serve as lipstick on cancer. Anyways, let's, let's try to bring the pace up here a little bit, Ollie. Thank you for your question. Love the United Kingdom. Parents, British and Scottish. And I'm thinking about moving to London in 18 months. So let's, let's get together for a pint, Ollie. Anyways, thanks. Thanks for the question. Next question.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Hey, Prof G. This is Chase from Austin, Texas. I'm 34 years old with a wife and a two-year-old. I would love to be an entrepreneur once I find a good idea with a strong product market fit, but I worry that I won't be able to put in the grind you suggest people do in their twenties, as I'm the breadwinner of the family. I don't want to miss my child's life as it goes by. Are the walls closing in on me here at 34? Or do you think there's a way I can still achieve entrepreneurial success?

• 58:25Scott Galloway?

  Chase, thanks for the thoughtful question and congratulations on your wife and two-year-old. This is a stressful time in your life and it's a time that you and your wife will look back on in 20 years and treasure. And my first piece of advice is take a ton of pictures. I have these videos of my oldest running on the beach when he was two and I bring these things up and it just, it gives me just so much. Comfort and I just thank God that I took these videos. They're literally the most important thing in my life is these videos I have of my two-year-old son and then his younger brother running on the beach together. It just, I don't know, it's kind of the first time in my life I ever thought, okay, I get, sort of get why I'm here, but that's not why you dialed in.

• 59:10Scott Galloway?

  Entrepreneurship, a lot of it's situational and a lot of it comes down to economics. And I don't want to be, and I'm not going to be the Hallmark channel luncheon speaker at business school telling you to follow your dream and to take risks. And Tom said, you know, he took a series of non-fatal risks. I think you have to be, I think it's healthy to take economic responsibility for the household. And that is a series of trade-offs and discipline. It's trade-offs around having a discipline to work really hard and maybe spend less time with your family than your others would like. And I don't think there is a, I think balance is a bit of a myth if you want to be successful. And also I think you have to be very sober about the risks involved in starting a business.

• 59:54Scott Galloway?

  You can be a good person with a great idea and lose it all. And it is incredibly stressful. One of the reasons I was able to start a business out of business school is my partner had a full-time job and could pay the rent while I went off and played in traffic. And if you don't have that and you're the sole breadwinner, just ask yourself, what would it mean if the business, like most businesses, small businesses didn't work out? Could you endure that sort of stress? Could you endure that sort of economic strain? And if the answer is yeah, you have some shock absorbers, you have some other sources of income in your life, or you have some money saved and you wouldn't be devastated emotionally or financially if the business failed, then fine, go for it. I'm an entrepreneur. It's been great for me.

• 1:00:39Scott Galloway?

  But there are some difficult moments when you are responsible for others. And I think all men should take economic responsibility for their household. And it sounds to me like you've done that. And that means making sober, honest decisions that involve trade-offs. And I don't know your situation, but be clear, starting a business is risky. And decide if you can really endure that stress or if you have a good job as a breadwinner and you want to double down on that and maybe wait till you have a little bit more money saved up. I know that's not easy, but I think it's situational. And I hate these knee jerk reactions, I should say, where, oh yeah, start a business, take a risk. Life is more complicated than that. Your first job, your first job is to create economic security for you and your family. Thanks for the question.

• 1:01:34Scott Galloway?

  Odds were of happiness. So COVID-19 cost the president the election. And it just seemed as if this total lack of regard for the virus, lack of respect for the virus of the administration, only hammered home just how incompetent and strange these people are and what science deniers they are. Hey, yeah, we don't need a mask. What do you know? I get COVID. Can you imagine how much President Trump's COVID-19 adventures and COVID cost the nation? Can you imagine what kind of, what kind of stress Herman Cain's wife and family feel now that he's dead after catching COVID-19 at a Trump rally? Oh yeah, that was worth it.

• 1:02:16Scott Galloway?

  Or Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, or Ben Carson, or Hope Hicks. I mean, what village fucking idiots. Some people can't avoid COVID-19. Some people have to get in a goddamn Uber car with their diet cokes and their diabetes medication and drive people around. Some people have to head to work. Some people have to be a central worker. Some people have to be on the front lines and hope that their PPE equipment staves off or protects them from the virus. But if you have the luxury, if you have the luxury of taking certain precautions, then for God's sakes, you're being a poor citizen, in my view, when you don't. It's not the fear. It's not that you should be afraid of contracting COVID-19.

• 1:02:58Scott Galloway?

  You should be afraid of contracting it and passing it to someone who is vulnerable. To be a node of despair, a node of despair. We all need to be good citizens and not be nodes on the geometric spread. What we need to be is nodes of hope, nodes of repair.

• 1:03:18Scott Galloway?

  What does that mean? I think a lot of us are gaining a lot of traction in COVID, whether it's we've readjusted our lives, we've reconfigured our commuting, we've made progress professionally. There's some people out there right now who are winning. There's some people who have made progress in their professional life. You need to be a node of prosperity. You need to be a node of empathy. How can you take? If you look at your professional life, if you look at your personal life, if you look at your economic situation, if you look at your currency and the marketplace? We don't like to say this out loud, but there's a lot of people out there who have accelerated through the pandemic, will become a node of prosperity. Share some of that upside.

• 1:04:03Scott Galloway?

  Give people bigger bonuses. Help people, make a connection. Do you know someone looking for a job? Take some time. Express affection and admiration. Be a node of prosperity. Be a node of joy. Super spreaders aren't people, they're events. Joy and prosperity aren't people, they're actions. Take to action, move to action.

• 1:04:30Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Caroline Shager and Drew Burrows. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening. We'll catch you next week with another episode of The Prof G Show from Section 4 and the Westwood One Podcast Network.

• 1:04:51Speaker 05

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