Tech Stock Armageddon — With Rich Greenfield

Rich Greenfield is a founding partner at LightShed Partners, and a preeminent analyst in the tech and media world. He joins Big Technology Podcast this week to discuss why companies like Netflix, Snap, Meta, and Spotify are getting crushed in the public markets. Join us for a discussion about tech stocks that digs into the broader story of what's happening to the global economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. I am so, so excited to bring you this episode today because the economy is absolutely nuts. I don't know how to make sense of it, but today we have somebody who does. And Rich Greenfield is here with us. He is the founder and a partner, founding partner, at Lightshed, which is a great group that does analysis on all the most important companies in tech. Rich, welcome to the show.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  How do you deal with a moment like this? Like, is it always this crazy? Or do you, how do you wrap your head around the fact that, you know, there are so many different countervailing factors, so many things impacting? Like, I couldn't imagine being an analyst right now. It must be so tough to look at what's going on and make predictions and figure out how to assess companies.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  Well, I think from a really high level, you gotta take a step back, like, literally kind of step out of your body and try to think from a really high level. Like, no one's ever seen this before, right? And what I mean, you know, we've seen inflation, we've seen recessions, none of that is new, Alex, that's all old news. And there's models and ways of looking at those things that we understand. What we don't understand is, the world has gone through a multi-year pandemic, global pandemic. And things that we never expected to happen, happened, right? Like, we were stuck in our homes for an extended period of time. People are frustrated with not having gone on vacation and gone to see live music.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  And so, part of the challenge with the current environment is, how much has behavior actually changed? Versus, how far have we shot inadvertently up the curve? Meaning, are we just two years ahead of, you know, if you think about, let's just say, streaming video? Has the overall trajectory of streaming video really changed? So the conversion from linear TV to streaming TV, has it really changed? Or we're just two years into the future and it's gonna take time for sort of things to normalize before we begin again, sort of a traditional trajectory or traditional adoption curve?

• 3:35Speaker 02

  And, you know, right now, everybody wants to go on vacation, like, try to get to Disney World. I mean, Disney World has no international visitation, effectively no international visitors. And Universal Orlando and Disney World have record attendance, better, higher than pre-pandemic levels without international travel. Just giving you a sense of like, how insane this desire to get out of your house is after two years. And Live Nation can't sell tickets fast enough. And so- Part of the problem is we're doing things differently because of the situation we've lived through for two years. Now, how much of this never changes and just becomes part of consumer behavior and how much of it normalizes? Ecom companies or e-commerce

• 4:19Speaker 02

  companies, retailers, they're seeing the same types of effects where you blew up far bigger and now you're settling down. I don't think there's a, you know, my guess is you're never going back to where you were before, but the pace, everything looks so screwed up. And then you layer in, you know, a weakening economy, some geopolitical effects that you obviously know well with the Ukraine overseas and the spillover effects into Eastern Europe, and then a slowing overall economy, potentially recession in Europe, maybe a recession in the US coming. Like, all of that together is insanity in terms of trying to actually make sense of it, which was sort of your point. All of those things, we've seen each individually. We've never seen this pandemic overlay. And so

• 5:01Speaker 02

  it makes it really, really hard to understand fundamentals. And I think the companies are having a lot of trouble forecasting and understanding where their business is.

• 5:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And over the course of this conversation, we're going to go into some of these companies and start talking about the factors impacting them. I love how you referenced travel. People are calling it revenge travel now.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's sort of fair, right?

• 5:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  I've done it. I've done it. Yeah.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  No, but it's not even revenge travel. It's just like, you know, like, go to a restaurant in New York City, like even midday. Like, I mean, people want to be out of their houses. Even with COVID rates rising a little bit again, like, people just want to be out. Like, the unlock, to your point, you hit the revenge, the revenge eating, the revenge travel, whatever you want to call it, like, all of these things. Now, you know, a year from now, will we still feel that way? I don't know. You know, it's hard to know how long this lasts and what the impact is. I mean, you can also, you know, what's interesting is you can look at businesses like movie theaters that haven't benefited, right? Like, movie theater business is still 40% below where it was pre-pandemic.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  You know, like, so not everything is benefiting now. Some of that may be just behavior changed over the course of the pandemic and is never fully going back. And so, again, every business has its unique circumstances and it's very, very difficult right now to really understand what the consumers think.

• 6:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So let's try, because I think I want to start with, you know, one of your home territories. I feel like one of the places you're most comfortable with, and that's Netflix. And you mentioned in your opening remarks that there's, there was this feeling in the market that we didn't really know whether people were going to keep these behaviors forever or go back. But the market certainly seemed to believe that Netflix was going to be valued, gonna, you know, be this, this behavior that people were going to keep forever. The hardest thing to do in a consumer business is to change your behavior. We are all inside, we all sign up for Netflix. Stock goes up to $630 a share. All of a sudden, you know, the, the pandemics, you know, starts to ebb and people stop subscribing to Netflix. It's, it's, you know, and it shocked the market and now there's, now they're under

• 7:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  $200. So from six something to under 200, right? They have a third of their value less. Why did the market think that this was going to be a phenomenon? And is it actually that surprising that the subscriber numbers contracted?

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I just want to throw out another one for you. I mean, Disney, which is trading right now in the, you know, I think around $112 a share. Disney peaked at 190, not that long ago, right? I mean, the excitement over streaming, this wasn't just about Netflix. I mean, Netflix subscriber growth has certainly slowed pretty dramatically in the last couple of quarters. Disney's has slowed pretty dramatically. You see both companies now talking about getting into advertising to sort of re-stimulate growth. You know, the, you know, you grew multiple years of growth during the pandemic. The question now is, has the total addressable market changed? So what I mean by that is, what is the global number of households that are going to sign up for a streaming service?

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Netflix has 220-odd million, Disney has over 100 million.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  Is the ultimate number for a diversified, you know, broad streaming service? I think before the pandemic, the view was, you know, there would be six, seven, eight hundred million. Jason Kylar, former head of Warner Media, I think came out, you know, a month or two ago and said, I think there'll be, one of these companies is going to get to a billion global subscribers. So obviously when you're, correct. When you, when you think about, you know, a hundred to 200 million subscribers, Netflix or Disney, those are obviously small numbers relative to even 600 to a billion. That shows much more growth. So the, the fundamental question is, has the total addressable market changed? Like, were we just wrong? Is the price people are willing to pay to get there much lower?

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Or is it just, it's going to take a little bit longer because we sped too far up the curve? And we sort of need to catch up to where we otherwise would have been. And that, you know, sort of work through the pandemic effects. Is there more competition? There is, but, you know, again, the competition is far more domestic. You know, if you think about sort of where we are in the world, you know, Peacock doesn't exist in many places, most places in the world, other than the U.S. You know, Paramount Plus is, you know, only starting to expand overseas. Like, a lot of these services are not truly global, other than Disney and Amazon. So I don't really buy that this is competition outside the U.S.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  I do think, though, the single biggest reason, if you had to look to one that matters, is I think Netflix has done a really good job of providing a broad array of content. I think what they haven't done a good job on the last 12 months is must see, like, zeitgeist content. And I think that's, you know, obviously Squid Game broke through and they actually had a really good quarter when Squid Game came out. But if you were to say, sort of, what shows have sort of really broken out on Netflix and really entered the zeitgeist? I think they've struggled with that. You know, Stranger Things is coming back now, but that's a four-year, a four-season-old show. Like, if you were to say new series with all the money, you know, Netflix is spending $17 billion a year on content.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Their hit ratio, especially their English language content, I just don't think the hit ratio has been high enough. And I think that's a large part of the problem that they're suffering from.

• 10:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. I will say Squid Game, man, that was a great show. I think that's my favorite new show that I've watched in a long time.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  But is it a franchise or is it a one time watch? I think that's what we don't know yet.

• 10:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, felt like a one time watch and it's definitely not enough to carry a company in a way that investors were expecting.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Can you build up?

• 10:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  What I'm saying is like, can you create things that have ongoing lives? And I'm not saying it's easy.

• 10:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  And look, part of the problem is maybe we won't see as many of them going forward because in a world of so much, maybe everything becomes a little bit more disposable than it was in the past. You know, are there fine dining experiences you want on a recurring basis or has everything sort of become fast food? I think we're still figuring that out, obviously, but the the number one takeaway for the near term for investors, right, is the growth trajectory of streaming looks slower. Maybe the ceiling is lower, maybe not, but certainly the trajectory or the pace of growth looks slower. The ability to raise price looks a little diminished.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  And with more competition overall for content creation, cost structures are going up. So usually when revenues come down or revenue growth slows and costs go up, that's not a great recipe for stocks outperforming.

• 11:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Add on top of that weakening consumer sort of global economic pressure. And I think that's sort of, you know, if you think about why Netflix has pulled back where it is. And again, if it was just Netflix, I think people would might even be less worried. They'd go, oh, it's a content issue or it's, you know, but I think the reality is when you see Disney going, you know, shifting to advertising, both companies are sort of signaling that there's a larger issue. And, you know, is it the consumer weakening? It's hard to tell.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  But I think that's one of the fundamental questions that everyone's struggling with right now.

• 12:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And this consumer weakening thing. So I had a number, I mean, we've just blown it right into the episode, which I love. But I had a number of macroeconomic issues I wanted to talk to you about.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 12:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  And one was inflation. I mean, you'd have to imagine that if your money is worth 92 or whatever it is, 8% less than it was, you know, a year ago, then you're going to cut corners in some places. I mean, wages aren't going up commensurate with that. And so now, like, now maybe Netflix is a luxury good that people don't want. How impactful is that?

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, you say that. I mean, look, I think there's probably, look, there's probably some truth to that, especially at the fringes. I mean, you know, I think, remember, Netflix is priced above the competitors, and they still expect to grow subscribers for the year. And so, you know, in terms of like, it's not like people are flooding out of Netflix and there's some massive spike in churn. And I think they said there was like a quarter of a basis point increase in churn. So it's like, you know, we're not talking about a major shift in the churn dynamics. But, you know, I do think from the standpoint of the consumer, you know, when the cost of eggs goes up, when the cost of gas goes up, all of it is playing into what you spend

• 13:34Speaker 02

  on media entertainment. I mean, look at the cable bundle. If you looked at Comcast's results last week, Comcast lost 400,000, 500,000 subscribers. You know, remember, they're paying $85 to $100 a month, not, you know, $15, which is the Netflix average ARPU. But, you know, there are some very big bills. And when you think about the challenge linear TV has is watch time is going down. So you're spending more every year for linear TV and you're watching less and less. That's a problem. That's a big problem for that business.

• 14:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Absolutely. Next thing I want to talk about is Snapchat. Their product is growing tremendously. I think they're up 20% in terms of their users. They have over 300 million a day. A lot of these people watch media, which is interesting. The stock's kind of been a yo-yo, right? They were at 70, they were at, oh, 74, 80 in September 2021. Now they're at 2952. They've lost 50% in the past year, more than that since September. One of the interesting things they said in their most recent earnings call is that they were on track to beat their numbers. I think they ended up missing on profitability. They were on track to beat their numbers. Until the war in Ukraine happened. I'm just curious for, you know, from your perspective,

• 14:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  we could use Snapchat as a lens to look through, look through to see this, but how impactful is, is this, you know, war between Russia and Ukraine on the economy right now? And, and do you buy these?

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Remember, it's not just the US economy, it's a global, global companies and they have European operations and, you know, they have users in Russia, they have users in, you know, the Ukraine and across, you know, Eastern Europe and as, as advertisers pull back as sort of the overall, you know, economic impact sort of spirals out of those countries. I mean, heck, you know, you know, it's not, it doesn't help that, you know, supply chain in China has certainly gotten worse with all the COVID lockdowns. Like there's multiple impacts playing out here. But, you know, I think it's fair to say that, you know, Snap was pretty brutally honest that, you know, growth while still compared to like Facebook or Meta's growth, obviously growing far faster.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  It's valuation is, is substantially higher, but it's growing far faster. And I think, you know, what, what people sort of miss about Snapchat is it's effectively a utility for an entire generation. You know, it's not a media company. I mean, is there media businesses within it? As you pointed out, people are watching content and it, there are, and there always will be. But the reason Snapchat exists, the reason users keep growing, the reason people visit, you know, high teens 20 times a day is that it's a messaging utility, right? It's how you connect with your friend group. It's how you see them where they are on the map. Like that whole piece of what Snapchat is, that, that's what makes Snapchat so powerful is that it really is this

• 16:29Speaker 02

  daily use utility. And I think that's why the business, you know, forgetting about how the market is trading them because you can't fix that in the short term. If you look operationally, I think that's why Snapchat, despite all of the mistakes they made a few years ago, when, you know, you and I were like, they wondering like, is this company going to survive and make it? And, you know, the reality is like, user growth really never, it went down a hair, but like, they actually had very sticky, you know, monthly active users, daily active users because it's a utility. I mean, it really is something that you can't take away from an entire generation of, of consumers.

• 17:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  The penetration among younger kids, I think 13 to 24 or something is unbelievable. Countries like the US, New Zealand, the UK, 90, more than 90%.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Well, I think that's what makes it so interesting to me is that while I think a lot of tech writers and tech industry folks, they spend a lot of time talking about that funny word called metaverse, right? Like, you've probably heard that a few times, Alex. And when they, as soon as you bring it up, like, people look at Mark Zuckerberg, he's like, you know, if you looked at the encyclopedia, I feel like Metaverse would have Zuck's picture next to it. But if you really look at sort of who has presence that lives on a map where everyone's friends and family members congregate every single day, like, you know, if you look at sort of, sort of the AR experiences that Evan and team showed off at their partner summit recently for the Snap Partner Summit, like, the true leader of sort of where the

• 17:57Speaker 02

  world is going in terms of AR, and I think in many ways, sort of like, a tangible metaverse that most people can understand, just pull up the Snap map and look at how 3D bitmojis are living and breathing and interacting with the world around them. I actually think that Snapchat is so much further ahead in a very practical application of this, and the stock gets no credit, Evan doesn't get a lot of credit, but I do think that what they're doing in AR, at least in the next five to seven years, is far more interesting than anything Metas do.

• 18:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  225 million people, I think, use their AR every day, which is larger than the amount of people that use Twitter every day, period.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's pretty impressive.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and you combine that with the map, you know, and, I mean, I look at the way kids use the map, you just sort of observe them, and it's like, they're constantly looking at it, you know, not to see the stores around them, but they want to see where their friends are, what their friends are doing, are they flying, are they driving, you know, are they at a theme park, like, what are they doing? And, and sort of that, the utility of that, I think, just reinforces the power of Snapchat. And then you start to layer on these media businesses with all of these unique advertising experiences. And the way you can sort of interact with a brand on Snapchat is pretty unique versus what you can do on other platforms. You know, advertising is just a different experience because you

• 19:16Speaker 02

  can become part of the actual content creation process on Snapchat. There really isn't that opportunity for brands in the same way elsewhere.

• 19:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and look, we're, we're singing the praises of Snapchat, which, like, it feels kind of weird after, you know, at least I'll say from my standpoint, I was extremely skeptical after Facebook copied stories. They are crushing right now. I mean, their product is, is soaring. However, and I think this is like another macro trend that we should really touch on. Like, let's go back to the stock, down 50% in the past year, down from 80 in September to under 30 now. I mean, it's a huge valuation compression. And I think you had a tweet about this. This is going on all over the tech world. So

• 20:00Speaker 02

  This is not unique to Snapchat. I mean, I think what's unique to Snapchat, and we, you know, probably a couple of stocks I could name where, you know, like, did Snapchat make a mistake? Did IDFA hurt them? Or did Evan make some bad decisions in how they dealt with IDFA and sort of the Apple privacy changes? No doubt about it. There's no doubt mistakes were made. But that's not why the stock is sitting at $30. The stock is sitting at $30 is because there's been a pretty meaningful rotation towards companies that are generating lots of cash, that are higher margin, more profitable businesses. And I think in many ways, sort of Facebook's troubles over the last several months has certainly weighed on Snapchat. They're sort of the less powerful, you know, not that Twitter is, but like, you

• 20:45Speaker 02

  know, the juggernaut is Facebook and Meta. And I think as they get crushed, or they've gotten crushed, I think it's had spillover damage to other names in the sector. And I think that that's very much a mistake, because I think the the user experience and the advertising experience on Snap is very uniquely different. They don't get a lot of credit for that.

• 21:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And I pointed out, because I'm curious what your take is on the overall valuation compression going on in tech. It seems like like it's a rational thing, like, all right, let me read you a tweet from from Dan Ives. I'm curious what you think. He says, this was on May 1, been a brutal sell off in tech stocks that is hard to digest for tech bulls like us. Tech earnings bullish for enterprise slash product driven names. Outside supply chain issues show demand intact. Fighting the Fed thesis we get, but and this is the key sentence, but the sell off magnitude is irrational, in our opinion. And to that I ask, wasn't the buying irrational? I mean, the way that the the money was placed in

• 21:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  these companies, that Apple could take 40 years to go to a trillion, two years to go to two trillion, and then another, like, what, 13 months to go to three trillion? That also seems irrational to me. So isn't this the market just starting to become normal?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  You know, the market usually overcorrects in both directions, right? I mean, let's just be clear. I think there's some valuations, like you mentioned with Snapchat, or I can point to Spotify. Like, I can certainly point to ones that just look like we've overcorrected in too short a period of time. And sort of doom and gloom is sort of at a very high level. You know, I think add in, you know, I know we talked about it already, but like add in a pandemic that maybe made some businesses look better than they are. I mean, you saw Amazon sort of roll over as, you know, you know, e-commerce is certainly slowing and having an impact. I mean, again, I don't want to blame everything on the pandemic, but I do think it has made forecasting and visibility. Has it changed?

• 22:48Speaker 02

  You know, is there a fundamental change in the shift from physical stores to e-comm? Is there a fundamental shift from linear TV to streaming TV?

• 22:59Speaker 02

  The answer is no, there's no permanent change. Is the pacing, the cadence different because of what's happened? Yeah, and I think that's what we're all trying to struggle with. And I think in many ways that sort of screwed up valuations and people over extrapolated sort of the current state versus the reality of what, you know, COVID normalization would look like. And part of the reason for that is no one's ever been through a COVID, you know, pandemic normalization period.

• 23:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  We have no historical context for this.

• 23:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And also some of the money is drying up from the stimulus. So even Roku, in their earnings call, said, listen, one of the issues here is that people aren't getting money from the government anymore. So we're not selling as much. I found that to be refreshingly honest. It was interesting.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, look on, think about what's happened in the smart, you know, part of the streaming problem may just be a smart TV problem. Think what happened. Everybody ran out during the pandemic and got a smart TV. I mean, sales were bonkers of of smart TVs, connected TVs, all brands. I'm not even pinning it to low end or high end, just because everyone was home or everyone replaced TVs, like smart TVs flourished. Now you've got the other side of that, right? Like inflation's picking up, component costs, supply chain issues, costs for TVs are higher. People are getting out more, so they're probably less thinking about it. They maybe they maybe the coming two or three years bought their TV early because of the pandemic and now they don't need to replace a TV. But you know what?

• 24:24Speaker 02

  What's what has a high correlation to new streaming television sales? Streaming services, right? Like, because you get a new streaming television, connected TV. What do you do? You sign up for streaming services and so

• 24:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Get those apps.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Right? So it's certainly just like when you get a new iPhone. What do you do? You download, download like that's, you know, Chris, you go the day after Christmas, right? Like everyone's downloading all of the basic apps for an iPhone. Same thing with a streaming or connected TV. So did it does it fundamentally change the fact that streaming or connected TVs are taking over? No, but right now, between the other end of the pandemic, then add in the supply chain and what's going on in China right now with COVID and how that's hurting the supply chain. It certainly isn't absurd to go, oh, my God, that's part of the reason why all of these companies are struggling is that smart TV business or the connected TV business is struggling more than it has. And you certainly saw that in Roku where growth has slowed dramatically.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  They're talking about a pickup in the back half of the year, but I think until it happens, investors are nervous and rightly so.

• 25:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Rich Greenfield is with us. He is the preeminent tech analyst that you should be following. Rich Lightshed is his Twitter handle. He works at Lightshed Partners, which he founded. And we've talked about Twitter, we've talked about Snap. I've been talking about Twitter like crazy. Talked about Snap, we talked about Netflix, we've talked about inflation. I've talked a little bit about supply chain and valuations. On the other side of this break, we're going to talk about Meta. We're going to talk about Netflix. We'll talk a little bit about Twitter and maybe I can get him to talk some Apple. We'll be back right after this. This episode is brought to you by AVPoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about.

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• 26:55Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 28:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Rich Greenfield. He's the founding partner of Lightshed Partners, great analyst and always insightful about what's going on in the world of tech and media. Why don't we talk about Meta right now? I mean, we should, we should, you know, it is interesting and I think Meta is always a good lens to look at how, how these Apple anti-tracking changes are impacting everyone because, and you mentioned it in the first half, Rich, Facebook is expecting, Facebook Meta, you know, et cetera, et cetera, is expecting to, you know, be down $10 billion. It grew again this past quarter, but it still hasn't made up for it. And I think what it had a 17% in stock increase in one day, but it still hasn't made up for the losses it took, you know, last quarter.

• 28:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so I guess the main question here with Apple, which basically stopped apps like Facebook and Snap from being able to track people once they leave their apps is, is this going to be a persistent change that's just going to last? Or do you have confidence that these companies will figure out a way to tell advertisers whether their ads are working at some point?

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Well, remember, the more first-party data you have, the stronger you are. And so, you know, part of this is building the own internal systems that, you know, give you your own data. But look, they, these companies certainly relied on data from elsewhere and that was, you know, meaningfully helpful to them, especially with, you know, you know, any form of sort of conversion campaigns that they were running, which have been disrupted now. And so it takes time. Look, I'm going to be honest, you know, we don't know what Apple is or isn't going to do in the future. So could Apple make it more difficult? I mean, there's certainly third parties that these companies work with that, you know, are, you know,

• 29:50Speaker 02

  utilizing data to help target advertising. Does some of those third-party companies start to come under pressure in the coming months? We don't know. From iOS changes or, you know, Apple, or even, you know, for that matter, Google and Android making changes and, you know, doing away with certain of the tracking things that they do today would all make my life more difficult. So I think it's pushing all of these companies to think about ways that they can capture more and more first-party data. I think that's just going to be a fact of life going forward.

• 30:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So are you, are you, are you confident that they, I mean, with Facebook, for instance, like, are you confident that it can mitigate some of these changes that Apple is making? I mean, I know that we know the process.

• 30:30Speaker 02

  Look, there's no doubt that effectiveness is going to go down.

• 30:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  It's just reality. Now, should price come down, you know, on a, you know, tie to that and should you have lower pricing? You should. Remember also, if you ask an advertiser, the reason they advertise on Facebook and Instagram is because it works, right? Like, end of the day, the single greatest, the way to answer your question of sort of like what ultimately happens is, you know, are these systems set up to actually move product? Because the beauty of the internet, right, is that you actually can understand attribution. You can understand if an ad actually led to more product being sold in Boston or in New York versus the period last year. Like, you actually can understand user behavior.

• 31:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Unless Apple cuts that off, though.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Sure. But I mean, look, Apple certainly made it more difficult.

• 31:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  But, you know, that's why when you're on Instagram and you go to actually buy on Instagram shopping and you have all of these storefronts creating it, you actually understand exactly. It's no longer being shared from a third-party app. You're getting that directly. So I guess the simple answer to your question is, we're going to see a big emphasis on first-party data as the third-party data dries up.

• 31:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. You know, it's interesting because, so that basically means that these companies, companies like Meta, companies like, who knows, maybe Snap or Twitter are going to try to build, well, Twitter, that's a wild card right now. They're going to try to build the shops inside their, their platforms. They've been trying to do that for a while, but now there's really like a compelling need for them to do it because without it, they're not going to be able to deliver performance data.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or you, well, or you've got interesting ways of sort of coming at it, too. Like, you know, Facebook's doing a lot. You heard Cheryl talk a little bit on the call. Click to, you know, click to Messenger to interact with businesses or click to WhatsApp. Like, as you start to use some of your communication tools to interact directly with these stores, it's another way you can build sort of a relationship with the consumer that you understand and can be helpful.

• 32:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, I one thing I did. So I took a long trip through South America last month and

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Sounds better than staring at the stock market.

• 32:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I was doing it. I was actually doing like the digital nomad thing. So working in coworking spaces and and then just kind of like exploring nights and weekends. And one thing that all the businesses down there do is if you want to talk to a business, there's a link on the website or even like within Google Maps, you just message them on WhatsApp and they respond and it is amazing.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  The key is they actually respond.

• 33:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  They respond.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  When you, you know, when you see a tweet and you say direct message Delta, you get a response back like seven hours later and it's not terribly helpful.

• 33:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Totally crazy. Like I'm like booking restaurants, trying to see if like there's openings and stuff.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Well, but that's what I'm getting at Alex. That's that. That's the type of first party relationship, obviously without without personally identifiable information, but actually understanding, you know, that relationship, it may be someone's, you know, tracking their shipment or having trouble with a purchase, but like there are ways of sort of better understanding consumer behavior, even if anonymized, that is going to be very helpful to these companies as they move forward. And I think sort of the reason why, I mean, think about advertising. At the end of the day, why does any company advertise? Like, I know it's stupid to sort of put it out there like this, but it's pretty simple, right? You advertise because you want to build your brand, either to sell something or to, you know, change the perception. So people buy you in the future. Like you're trying to drive

• 34:01Speaker 02

  cars off lots or products off shelves in stores. Like that is the goal of advertising. And so, you know, to the to the extent that you can actually demonstrate those impacts directly, that's the holy grail that has driven mobile advertising over the last 15 years. And hey, look, maybe it works a little less well than it did. But what are we comparing it against? TV where you're extrapolating 40,000 homes via Nielsen, billboards that you may or may not look at while you're on the highway stuck in traffic like, you know, digital may be getting a little bit worse than it was.

• 34:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  Still dramatically better than a lot of the mediums it's replaced.

• 34:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can't beat podcast ads. You're here for folks. Get in touch with LinkedIn, get an ad on the show. No, I'm kidding. But they do work. You look at every, every company that that advertised on podcasts, add in newsletters. That's my shout out.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  No, I, I look, I don't disagree that, you know, I mean, first of all, I would sort of say that you're hitting the nail on the head from the standpoint of people don't hate ads. They like ads that are contextually relevant to what they care about. Right? I mean, that's why Instagram, remember when Instagram started, everyone hated. Remember Facebook, the original set of Facebook ads, like it was like your mom clicks on a company and all of a sudden you saw the app, you know, your mom clicks on Walmart and all of a sudden you're getting bombarded with Walmart ads because you're friends with your mom and it's like, I don't like Walmart, why am I seeing this ad? And it was because it was this social targeting of ads and it was horrible.

• 35:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  It was bad.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Right. Then they realize that, you know, hey, this is probably not the best way to serve ads. We know a lot about you. Why don't we serve you things that you'll actually be interested in? And lo and behold, the advertising on, you know, Instagram, no matter how many ads they put, I think most people look at the ads almost the way you would look at ads in a fashion magazine, right? Like the ads are content. They feel like they're actually additive, not, they don't distract from the experience. And so, you know, advertising can be a great business. It's just a matter of making it a good experience.

• 36:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  So I'm going to segue into one of my own things that I just mentioned, which is, you know, podcasts brings us to Spotify. What the heck's going on with Spotify? It's not like, I don't think the fundamentals of their business have changed. They're down 56%. I mean, Rich, it's amazing. Every stock that we talk about is down this amount. 56% in the past year and it was 30, it was 300.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  It's carnage. It's carnage. It's literally carnage.

• 36:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's one third of where it was November 2021.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  So it's funny, you know, in, I think it was roughly May of 2020 was when Joe Rogan signed with Spotify and the stock just started ripping. Like it just took off and that was the beginning of the race where investors fell in love with podcasting. Daniel seemed to be a genius, right? He was going from being the leading, you know, music company to, hey, we're not just going to be music, we're going to be everything audio. We're literally going to dominate time spent, much like a tech company. Or think about Netflix, which went from sort of comedies and dramas and all of a sudden they went into documentaries and, you know, movies and, you know, category by category, expanding what the definition of Netflix content was. I think if you looked at Spotify, they were looking to own more

• 37:15Speaker 02

  and more categories of audio, capture more of, you know, Alex and Rich's time spent. And that was a great strategy and people got behind it and believed. We're not in an investment environment where people want to look out and believe. And so they're seeing Spotify, which has had margins profitability that is meaningfully negatively impacted by investing in podcasting. A CEO or founder in Daniel Ek, who literally could care less about investors' near term concerns or the near term need to show profitability, like Daniel has a very clear vision of why he's going to win and how he's going to get there.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Is the stock down? Is it disappointing to people? I'm sure it is, but Spotify is not altering their strategy because the stock is down. I think a lot of companies would, but right, like they are not responding to the stock market. I think if anything, the competitive dynamics have lessened. You know, I think people are generally less worried about Apple Music, less worried about YouTube Music. Like it just doesn't have the same Amazon Music, like it doesn't have the same competitive threat it did several years ago.

• 38:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I'm not touching on any of those services. Spotify is way, way better.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  So that's what I'm saying, like, you know, and, you know, you mentioned inflation earlier. What's the other thing about Spotify? They have really never raised price, right? Like if you've been on the annual regular plan, it's $9.99 and I think it was $9.99 when it started, right? Like it literally hasn't changed. You know, your Netflix bill has gone from $7.99 a month originally to, you know, $15.99 over the course of, you know, whatever, a decade. Like this is a very low cost service that offers an ad supported option as well. I mean, I just think you have a very good kind of model. And if you look at sort of what's happening in advertising, where it's getting harder and harder for people to reach consumers.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Who has incredible first party data, like your listening history is an incredible, says a lot about you. I'm sure if I looked at what Alex listens to, I would know a lot about you. Do you have kids? But you know, like what type of person are you like? Your musical tastes are very, very indicative of your overall behavior. So, you know, I look at Spotify and I guess part of me just scratches my head of like. How has nobody stepped in at this valuation? Why is someone not trying to buy Spotify? It seems like such a structurally important asset.

• 39:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  And if you think about, you know, I always think about the world. There was content, Alex, and there was distribution. We used to sort of fight which was more important. Content is king. Distribution is, you had some to Redstone saying content is king. Had Viacom back in the day and you had like a Brian Roberts saying, no, distribution is king over here at Comcast. And then we sort of went in and said, like, you know what? Neither of them are. The real king is the HBO Max or the Netflix or the Amazon Prime, like, you know, even Facebook, things that ride on top of these Snapchat, to your point just before, like, these things that sort of live on any broadband pipe and who basically can deliver content from anyone. The platform is really king.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  And here you have a platform in Spotify that is not that large of a company anymore, that has global reach, hundreds, you know, reaches and touches hundreds of millions of people, you know, every single day. And yet the stock is just hated. And I think it's just the market is unwilling to look out into the future right now and they're frustrated by their profitability. And it, the stock is just not working. I mean, it's just sort of absurd. I mean, the day Netflix blew up on earnings, Spotify was down sharply. Businesses have nothing to do with each other.

• 40:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. It's interesting that the margins have been compressed due to the investment in original content.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  And, and what's crazy is they're doing it to win. Like, Amazon's not doing that.

• 41:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Apple's not doing that. Like, here's a CEO who is not harvesting cash, not paying himself some absurd amount of stock compensation that, you know who I'm talking about, at many of these big lumbering legacy media companies. But a CEO, and not, and not simply buying back his stock to satisfy Wall Street, but looking at it going, I'm playing to win? You all be damned. I know what it takes to win. I, you know, you didn't think I could get all these music labels to agree? You didn't think I could change the future from downloads to, I mean, you could sit in a meeting with Apple and they were like. No, people want to own music. You're wrong. They would look at Spotify and go, you're wrong. You know that. I'm sure you had those conversations like Apple believed you needed to own music. This goes back to the Steve Jobs days. There was a belief you needed to own the music.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Nope, they were wrong. People don't. It's access over ownership. Spotify is the clear global leader. Apple hasn't even disclosed their user numbers in years. I think it's been three years now since Apple revealed a user number. Spotify has become much stronger as sort of the global leader in this space. I just think you have to be patient. I mean, I always say that this, this job of sort of picking stocks just requires a lot of patience and a very strong stomach.

• 42:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. Well, Elon Musk, Spotify could be yours for the low price of $20.9 billion. Half of Twitter. So, uh, so do you, speaking of Elon, you think that Twitter deal is going to go through?

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Well, look, legally it's going to go through. I don't think the government has much of a, you know, I know there's been some chatter of the government.

• 42:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Elon might bail. That's what people are saying.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Look, that's the fear here, right? I mean, you know, it's obviously a huge number. When you get under the hood and you actually see how difficult, I mean, content, you know, moderation is a mess. And I think unless you work inside of these, one of these companies, you don't realize how much of a mess and how hard it really is to actually do and do it well. And it is a little bit like whack a mole. You know, the reality is we don't actually know what Elon's going to do. He's made a lot of sort of comments, especially before buying it. I mean, you know, like there's articles out today talking about, right, that he wants to find outside investors, but it also sounds like a lot of why he's buying Twitter, sounds a lot like sort of owning a sports team

• 43:29Speaker 02

  and sort of like loving owning the platform rather than actually, you know, the idea of like what it's going to mean. Is it a good business? And how do you raise money? I mean, there's debt on Twitter. I mean, part of the bid is debt on Twitter. It means they have to generate revenue. So you can't just take advertising and shred it off. I don't think Twitter is a business that people will pay to subscribe to. I mean, I pay a little bit for Twitter Blue because I like some of the incremental functionality, but I don't know very many people that pay for Twitter Blue.

• 44:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  I tried and I'm out.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's my point is like, it's just building, if you forced everyone into a subscription for Twitter, Twitter became subscription owned, conversation dries up. Yes, I'm sure a lot of the hate speech or a lot of the things that make it unseemly go away, the trolling and all of that, that behavior goes away. So that's good, but you sort of take away the open nature of the platform and prevent people from just jumping in and making a comment, even if anonymous.

• 44:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  So one of the things that I've been thinking of as we are having this conversation, like, you know, I've looked at a bunch of these stock charts and we've given-

• 44:37Speaker 02

  You have a little indigestion, Alex?

• 44:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I mean, I'm fine because like I don't, I don't invest in tech stocks. Like I'll do like broad market funds, but like one of the things that I think about is, is, you know, we gave some reasons, you know, inflation, Apple, you know, the COVID thing. Is it possible that some of this pullback is just because we might be heading into a recession led by the Fed or, you know, generated by the Fed by the fact that they're going to raise interest rates like by a significant amount and maybe people are just like, I'm out of here.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Well, look, you see a little bit of the bleeding edge on advertising, right? I mean, advertising is pretty economically sensitive, right? Businesses, if their top line starts to slow, they pull back on advertising. Should they really do that? No, they, many of them probably should take advantage of the weakness of others pulling back to double down and take market share. But I think human behavior is top line starts to slow, you start to slow your costs and your spending. And that's certainly what you're seeing in advertising where there is a slowdown in linear television, connected TV, mobile, like all of these categories are starting to see a slowdown. You know, if a full on global recession takes hold, it's going to get a lot worse. I mean, there's no doubt about it.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  If it's really not that bad, in many ways, I think some of it we've already corrected for. And so that could actually create a lot of opportunity. I mean, pessimism is pretty high right now. If you look at sort of where ad dependent stocks are trading, you know, notwithstanding sort of Facebook's or Meta's bounce off the bottom last week, but I'd say sentiment's pretty downright terrible right now broadly market wise. People are concerned.

• 46:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Isn't amazing. Yeah, go ahead.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  I think part of it's the price of gas. I think part of it's the price of like milk and eggs, part of it like it's just, it feels less healthy than it has in quite a while.

• 46:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  For sure. I mean, the I was so I I'm in San Francisco for the week. It's nice to be back. And I came out of the I came out of the airport. Ubers were at one point $120 to go into the city. It used to be 12. So 10x. I mean, that's if you did the pool. And I'm like to the guy. So I eventually like walked downstairs, you know, get it, get a cab. Cab is $45, which is double what it used to be. And the guy's like, take a look around, like go into the grocery store, take a look at, you know, what the food costs here. And, and as we're driving, he points out the the gas and, you know, not even like in a high traffic area is $6 plus in New York right now. Maybe that, you know, in

• 47:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  New York, I imagine it's higher than than, you know, the average and still under five. I mean, so San Francisco is kind of like a crazy place. But, but this is unbelievable.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Look, you're preaching to the choir is is all of this has spillover effects on all of these businesses. And, look, I think part of it's probably, you know, despite the robust attendance at Disney World, I think part of the reason Disney's suffering is people are worried that it is an economically sensitive stock. And if things get really bad over the next 12 months, they're going to get hurt by that, too. Right? I mean, yes, people want to get out of their houses. But if inflation really kicks in and people really, you know, and, you know, supply chain keeps, you know, costs high for the consumer. On basic goods and services, it's going to be a tough 2023.

• 48:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Forget about how we end 22, but it'll be a tough 23 in that environment.

• 48:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  That's what's, I think, spooking people right now.

• 48:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  So for the people sitting at home, you know, maybe they're, maybe they have a portfolio that has some of the tech stocks. Maybe they're working, you know, for one of these companies and trying to figure out what to do. Or maybe they're just in general interested because tech sector is interesting. What do you think they should look at? What do you think they should pay attention to? You know, if they're in, in your seat, Rich, you know, what, what, what would be the things that they should start to take a look at to try to help them get their heads around where this all might be heading?

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Well, I think you have to have a fundamental view of has anything changed, right? Like to your point on talking about Spotify or Netflix, for instance, has the shift to streaming music changed? Has the interest in, I'd say, interest in podcasts keeps exploding.

• 48:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's amazing.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Is there less listening? Is there less listening to podcasts though today than there was a year ago? There has to be, right? Like just, you're not at home as much. You're not stuck like, you know, video game time spent, like all of these things benefited from the pandemic. Streaming television, like there was a whole bunch of sort of categories or subcategories of media that had huge benefits from the pandemic. There's an unwind of that behavior that is certainly problematic. And it's just going to take some time to incorporate that or to understand the impacts on these businesses.

• 49:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, the one thing I'll say about the podcasts, sorry, I shouldn't zoom in on podcasts so much, but.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  No, it's okay. I look, I love podcasting. Has the advertising side of podcasting worked as well as I would have hoped? I mean, in terms of has it scaled as fast? No, I think it's been a little bit slower.

• 49:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  I'm not, you know, not totally sure why. I mean, I think the data and the analytics haven't been there the way they have been in other sort of digital advertising, like whether it's connected TV or mobile. I think podcasting hasn't had all the metrics it really needed to take off. So I think that's been part of the problem. I think now that you have a lot of ad tech built into Spotify and you're really focusing on the advertising side of Spotify, it's actually, I think, the reason to own the stock. Like Spotify, I think, can build a very robust business, not just in podcasting for audio advertising, but also carrying that over into their traditional music business for audio advertising. So I remember when people got really excited about Roku several

• 50:22Speaker 02

  years ago, it was because they thought the ad story could really scale. And I think as you look at Spotify over the next 12 to 18 months, I think people are going to get a lot more confidence and conviction in that advertising business. And I do think the stock will re-rate. Right. How soon? I don't know. So and yet like Netflix also doing advertising like, wow. Well, whoever thought that that was a day. Yeah. You know, that was something I never thought we would see. And I'm still, I don't know about you, I'm still really struggling. And part of the reason I'm struggling is, you know, if you were to ask me, Rich, are there incremental subscribers who, if you lowered the price by, you know, think their low end plan is $10 a month? So I think if you lowered that price by a few bucks, would you get more subscribers into Netflix? Sure,

• 51:06Speaker 02

  you would. What worries me, though, is that, you know, yes, people will have the choice, ads or no ads. But I find very often that even though people think the advertising experience on most of these platforms is pretty terrible, they subscribe anyway to save a little bit of money, like an insignificant amount of money, but they'll save the money because they can. That sounds good until you realize that people who subscribe to streaming with advertising watch less of that streaming company's content. And if your goal is maximizing time spent, and I think every company, you know, if you think about anyone who's listening to this podcast and thinking about who wins and who loses, it's a war for time and attention. I don't care whether you're Google or Amazon or Disney. This is a war for time and attention.

• 51:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  So it's TikTok's world and we're all just living in it.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Well, look, you certainly have new threats that are impacting all of these companies. It's interesting Zuckerberg seemed less concerned about TikTok than he did last quarter, but I still think he's losing share. Like, the growth rate of TikTok is enormous. I mean, if you use TikTok, it is fun, right? Like, the number one thing that comes to mind with TikTok is it's fun.

• 52:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  So it's not surprising that they're gaining time spent. And look, if you look at the big news out of Facebook, right? At a Meta, is there pivoting away from the social graph of your friends? And more towards, quote unquote, an entertainment experience like TikTok?

• 52:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  They are absolutely trying to copy TikTok.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  They are. The difference is unlike Snapchat, where they really cut Snapchat stories is they sort of kneecapped their growth on older people. The problem here is TikTok has, they're too late to kneecap its growth because TikTok is expanding and you just look at the demographics of the people you see when you through the feeds, like, it has expanded dramatically. I think it's too late to cut it off. The question is, is can Facebook simply grow faster on their own? But I don't think there's anything they can do to sort of stop the trajectory of TikTok.

• 53:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, yeah, it'd be tough. Okay, we have a minute left. Last word from you. Are we at the bottom or is there further to drop?

• 53:12Speaker 02

  I mean, look, the economy is certainly getting worse. It is definitely concerning. I think sentiment in the sector feels pretty atrocious. Now, I do think that this is probably starting to get to be a point where, you know, I'm talking to a lot more investors, clients of ours at Lightshed, who are definitely more interested in buying stocks in the sector than they have been in a while. But remember, I'll leave you with this. A lot of these companies are in the sort of traditional legacy media businesses that are struggling. They've all pivoted to the future, right? Whether they're Viacom, Comcast, like, these companies have all tried to pivot to streaming because they got all excited about streaming. And now, all of a sudden, streaming doesn't look so hot. And so, like, we've sort of gone from, like, this souring business to this new business.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  The problem is the new business doesn't look as exciting now. I'd say for your, for your listeners, the big unknown question is...

• 54:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  If Door A isn't so attractive and Door B is less attractive than it was, is there a Door C? Like, what happens?

• 54:13Speaker 02

  NFTs.

• 54:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  No kidding. Maybe.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  I don't, I'm just saying, we don't actually have a Plan C or, you know, like Door C, like, we don't really have that plan hashed out yet. And that's probably the scariest thing about looking at this whole group is that, you know, streaming's probably gonna be fine, and we're probably gonna get back on track. It's just gonna take a little bit of time. If it doesn't, though, like, if streaming really is just a smaller, less profitable business, I would argue a lot of these companies have very big problems that they haven't dealt with yet.

• 54:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, just look at CNN, CNN Plus.

• 54:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can't believe we didn't even get to that.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  You want my pens?

• 54:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  You gotta keep those. Those are collector's item.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  And I could put this on for you if you really wanted my, my CNN Plus.

• 54:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, a CNN Plus mask. Yeah.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  It's gonna be a real collector's item.

• 55:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think you could probably get some money on eBay from those at a certain point in time.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  It was great talking with you.

• 55:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you too. Rich Greenfield, thanks for being here. Thanks Nate Quatney for doing the edits. Thank you LinkedIn for having me as part of your podcast network. And thanks to all you, the listeners, if you made it here, please give us a rating. And if it's your first time, please subscribe. Thanks again to Rich. We will see you all next Wednesday.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 56:00Speaker 04

  In this life, you can't win.

• 56:02Speaker 05

  When the world gets you down.

• 56:04Speaker 04

  No!

• 56:04Speaker 05

  Escape to Pluto TV.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  This is objectively fantastic.

• 56:08Speaker 05

  Relax into the movies and shows you already know and love, all for free.

• 56:11Speaker 04

  Shwing!

• 56:12Speaker 05

  Even our news is uplifting.

• 56:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  You stay classy, San Diego.

• 56:15Speaker 05

  Watch School of Rock, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The X-Files, Wayne's World, and so much more.

• 56:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're not worthy!

• 56:23Speaker 05

  The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.