Spotify's big plan for podcasting / Where 5G is headed in 2021 / Everything to know about Paramount Plus

Hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn talk with Verge reporter Allison Johnson about T-Mobile bringing back their unlimited 5G plan with no throttling, the results of the C-band spectrum auction, and the state of 5G in America. Ashley Carman returns to the show to discuss Spotify's big event this week announcing their plans for podcasters and artists. Julia Alexander joins to report on the details on Paramount Plus' streaming catalog. Further reading: Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine is effective, FDA confirms One Medical gave COVID-19 vaccines to ineligible people, NPR report says Stretched vaccine timelines re-enter the spotlight COVID-19 vaccines are starting to work in the US MWC insists on holding potential COVID-19 superspreader event in Barcelona What is 5G, and why is it kind of bad right now? Dish is confident in its plan to offer 5G in its first major cities by end of Q3 2021 T-Mobile just brought back a true unlimited data plan with 5G and no throttling T-Mobile has 5G leverage and isn’t afraid to use it Verizon and AT&T spent big in FCC C-band auction for 5G ... The Terrible T-Mobile/Sprint Merger Must Be Undone Spotify CEO Daniel Ek explains how the company plans to help artists (and itself) make money Spotify HiFi is a lossless streaming tier coming later this year Twitter announces paid Super Follows to let you charge for tweets Twitter planning a feature to let you auto-block and mute abusive accounts Apple Fitness Plus review Everything to know about Paramount Plus, ViacomCBS’s new version of CBS All Access Shows based on Italian Job, Fatal Attraction, Flashdance, and more heading to Paramount Plus Frasier revival in development for Paramount Plus Paramount Plus is proof we’ve hit peak streaming Are The Office and Friends bets paying off for Peacock and HBO Max? Marvel’s Loki series will premiere on Disney Plus on June 11th 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.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  Hey everybody. Before we get started today, I want to talk about something I think all of you are really going to like. We are hosting a live event with Senator Amy Klobuchar on big tech regulation, followed by a panel on the future of Section 230 on March 1st. That's next week. It's coming right up. Senator Klobuchar will also be taking live questions from the audience. It's going to be very in-depth, very weedsy, exactly what you would expect from us. If you like The Vergecast, I think you're really going to enjoy it. If you're interested, if you have any questions for Senator Klobuchar, you can register at voxmediaevents.com/theverglive. That's voxmediaevents.com/theverglive. Really hope to see you there.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Lizanne Saunders, Schwab's chief investment strategist, and Colin Martin, head of fixed income research and strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, bring you fresh insights on what's happening in the markets and why, and what the implications might be for your portfolio. Join Colin and Lizanne as they explore questions like, how do you evaluate corporate bonds that look interesting? And what sectors are on the move right now? Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:06Nilay Patel?

  This week on The Vergecast, our new mobile reporter Allison Johnson joins me and Dieter to talk about 5G, where it is, where it's going. Ashley Carmen joins us to talk about everything Spotify is doing, a little bit of Twitter, and Apple Fitness Plus review. And then Julia Alexander comes on to talk about Paramount Plus. That's coming up on The Vergecast now.

• 2:27Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to the first cast, the flagship podcast of dynamic spectrum sharing. That'd be great. Every time I do this, I'm like, maybe we should be the flagship podcast. Anyway, I'm Eli. I'm your friend. Dieter Bohn is here.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  I'm that, I don't know. I won't leave respect. I've, I got nothing. I'm here. Hi.

• 2:45Nilay Patel?

  Great. We, we're gonna have a lot of people join us today. Ashley Carmen is gonna join us. Julie Alexander is gonna join us. And right now, our new mobile reporter, Allison Johnson is here. Hey, Allison. Hello. It's her first time in the Russia. I'm very excited. Yeah, I'm pretty stoked. So we have a lot of 5G and spectrum news to talk about with Allison. But before we start, as always, I want to just give an update on our COVID coverage. Still the biggest story in the world. Lots going on on the vaccine front this week. Johnson and Johnson's single-shot vaccine, only needs one shot, not two, is effective, confirmed by the FDA. There's gonna be some delays in rolling that out and manufacturing it, but that is huge news. It's a big deal. The other vaccines require two shots, and now there's a bunch of discussion over how

• 3:28Nilay Patel?

  long you can go between the first shot and the second shot. Do we have a big story on that on the site? You should go read. The vaccines themselves are starting to work. We are seeing cases and deaths drop across the United States. That is very exciting news. Hopefully, you're coming through it. At the same time, we're still seeing people get a little too, I don't know how you put this, a little too eager, a little too fast. So I keep talking about second order effects of the pandemic. This is like a fifth order effect. Mobile World Congress, which is the cell phone show that we cover every year, canceled last year. They are definitely gonna hold another one in person in Barcelona this year, which just does not seem very smart.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Mobile World Congress was the first big tech event that we went, nope. This was before it became like obvious, obvious. They, they said that they were gonna hold it. We said, we're not going. And everyone's like, you're crazy. How come you're not going? And then, oh yeah, now we, that was the right call.

• 4:23Nilay Patel?

  So Nicole wrote this story about MWC, saying they were gonna do it. The MWC people wrote us an email. They're like, we're gonna be safe. We're testing. And then we, like, they're upset that we said that they were gonna hold it, and they shouldn't yet. I firmly believe that. If you wanna go, that's, you know, you can do, you do you. But we're so close to the finish line. The vaccines are working. More vaccines are being rolled out. Maybe just wait until the finish line. That's my personal view. Anyhow. That's the big COVID update. It's still the biggest story in the world. I want to commend our science team, as I do every week, for covering it as deeply as they do.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Actually, can I add one more?

• 4:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  So, this, uh, this medical services company I use is called One Medical. It's like a really convenient way to get, you know, doctor's appointments and stuff. Uh, they got caught giving vaccines to ineligible people, uh, which is very bad. Um, there's also a thing going around, uh, out here in the Bay Area where there were some early access codes to get vaccines that were meant for frontline workers. And somehow, they started getting spread around as text messages separate from that context. So, people were getting these codes from friends, uh, thinking that they were there as spare vaccines that were going to go to waste. And so, people went and got the vaccines when technically they were ineligible

• 5:38Speaker 02

  and took vaccines away from people that needed them more. So, as like the vaccine rollout continues, it's continuing to be messy. And you should definitely go to official government sources to find out if you're eligible and how to get one and not, uh, random group texts.

• 5:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, I just wanted to get vaccinated. I like, I, I read the story and it's bad. And like, the line jumping and the being connected to a company, like, that's all icky.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:09Nilay Patel?

  But hopefully, like, that ickiness is just a short term.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:13Nilay Patel?

  Cause otherwise, we're gonna, people are gonna be afraid. They're gonna feel guilty and they're not gonna do it.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  No, I agree. But you should, you should not jump the line. But if, but I also, if, if a line jump happens, that's better than not getting the vaccine at all.

• 6:25Nilay Patel?

  That's true. I think a, a difference in our perspectives here is that you live in a city with access to testing and resources and the potential of getting vaccinated. And I, I live in the woods and I, my camera, like, every morning, I get a ring alert. It's like a squirrel ran across the driveway and it's like a moment for us.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:44Nilay Patel?

  Um, so, also, I think every state but New York is doing a better job of this. So, maybe my perspective is a little warped in that I would, I don't have the opportunity to jump the line. Like, if the opportunity to be unethical presented itself to me, I wouldn't take it. But I would, like, I'd like the choice. Make you feel good about doing the right thing. All right. Speaking, speaking of complicated systems that don't work quite as well as they should, let's talk about 5G. They did it.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:10Nilay Patel?

  So Allison, you, you wrote a great piece this week, some state of 5G, why it's a little bit slower than we expect, slower than LTE in some cases. And then there was a flood of news about spectrum. There was a spectrum auction. T-Mobile and Verizon and Dish are all doing stuff. Let's start at the start. 5G, it's been months since the iPhone 12 came out, since it became a very mainstream product, not living up to its potential.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, so basically where we're at now, sort of a mess in the US. There's a, the situation with low, mid and high band and how different networks kind of have different allotments of these things. So Verizon and AT&T are kind of on the back foot. They've got a lot more low band spectrum and are having to kind of make do with it. It's not super well suited for 5G, but the mid-band spectrum is kind of what everybody wants to get a hold of right now. It's a little better than 4G. It's not quite as fast as the, the super fast millimeter wave, but it has like, it's

• 8:21Speaker 03

  like in the sweet spot with good range and all that. So, so that's been kind of the, the focus, getting a hold of that. T-Mobile obviously has a lot of it from its acquisition of Sprint. So they've been in this pretty good position of being able to like go ahead and build out their network. So that's kind of where we are right now. It's just, it really struck me as a weird time because it's been hyped up for so long. There's been so much like, you know, CES after CES where it's like 5G is here. It's amazing. It's the best. And really like this year is when people are gonna start to see it for themselves a lot more.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  They're gonna get the iPhones, they're gonna get the Galaxy S21s. Uh, and they're probably gonna be kind of bummed because it's not.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  It's definitely not the the driverless car, remote surgery, amazing future that we've been hearing about. It's kind of sort of faster than 4G if you're lucky and maybe not even.

• 9:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I tweeted your story and the number of people who replied to me and said, oh, I've turned 5G off my phone because in real life it is slower than LTE. It was astonishing. Like, maybe in some places that would be true, but this was like a widespread reaction. And it, you touched on this and I made the joke at the top of the show. It's related to how they're allocating the spectrum. It's related to DSS. Can you just explain that for people? I mean, I, I realize I started the show with a very complicated, wonky term, but can you actually explain what that means?

• 10:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the slowness people are seeing where it's slower than 4G is kind of related to mostly what AT&T and Verizon are doing to try and make the most of this low band, the low frequencies that they have access to. So that's where a technology called DSS comes in. Sasha Siegen at PC Meg was saying it was like, you know, using the leftover odds and ends of their spectrum and slapping a 5G label on it. Like, it just, it's not suited for that. And people definitely took notice when, you know, they got their iPhone,

• 10:46Speaker 03

  they got on the network, it said 5G, and they were pretty pissed that it was not as good as the 4G they were getting. So, yeah, a lot of people turning it off and, you know, annoyed about it.

• 10:59Nilay Patel?

  What blows me away about, about this is Verizon sort of been the hype master in chief for 5G. T-Mobile's been pushing and they bought Sprint and blah, blah, but like onstage at CES, pushing all the stuff, doing all the keynotes, but they have millimeter wave, which is, you're lucky to get. Everyone knows that I'm not a fan of millimeter wave on phones because like you need to stand in one particular spot. And then their actual offering for 5G.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  5G, which they flipped on, is using this spectrum sharing setup, which is one of the reasons it's slower. And it's mind boggling to me because Verizon always had the reputation as like the most reliable, best wireless carrier across the US. And they're just, they're just shooting themselves in the foot. And what I don't know is it's not a surprise to Hans Vestberg that Verizon didn't have the spectrum that it really needed to do really good 5G for phones nationwide. That's like not a shock. So knowing they didn't have it, why did they do the CES keynotes? Why did they get on stage with Apple and go rah rah? Why didn't they just like chill for just a minute?

• 12:09Nilay Patel?

  Because they need, they want people to churn to Verizon. It's like, right, they, the 5G marketing bonanza. Like, if you work at an ad agency and you didn't get a taste of those 5G dollars, right, like you, you made a mistake. Like, they were available for everyone the whole time. If you are at Apple and you can con Verizon into paying your marketing budget for the year for the iPhone, and all you gotta do is put Hans on stage, you're taking that deal. Verizon's taking that deal. I get it. They like, Allison, to your point, like you, you see the new number on your phone and you expect it to be better.

• 12:49Nilay Patel?

  Like, an absolutely bizarre outcome of this is that because AT&T relabeled their LTE network 5GE, 5GE in some cases is faster than real 5G because AT&T uses DSS. Like, that is nuts. Like, how do you, how do you twist yourself into that outcome? Where your, your fake 5G network is worse, or is better than your real 5G network? And it is all because they were racing ahead on the marketing curve. Now, I think we, we've read reports, like the iPhone 12s are selling really well. Other 5G phones are doing well. I think Samsung's last quarterly earnings were like pretty good. I just think that's all because they look different. Like, I think the entire mobile industry is confused that like 5G drove an iPhone cycle, and it's like, nah, dude, they made them square this time.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Galaxy brain, they did that on purpose. They made sure that the 5G cycle hit the form factor cycle.

• 13:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, that, the whole, I just think this industry got way out over its skis because the 4G cycle was real, right? Like, people were watching YouTube on their phones and trying to do stuff with their phones on 3G they couldn't do. 4G said, you're gonna get to do all the things you want to do. The killer app was very much like video off to the races. There's still not a killer app for 5G that I've heard about or seen really in practice. It's robot surgery and self-driving cars. We'll see. And so like, I think we're just in this period where we're going to talk about the spectrum auction. Like, the networks are actually going to follow the the letters, like, and numbers in a totally backwards way.

• 14:24Nilay Patel?

  So Alison, this week, there was another flurry of news because Verizon, AT&T are behind. They're doing this DSS stuff. Their networks are maybe not performing as well. T-Mobile's like doing OK.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're eager to make the most of what they have right now, I think. So that's kind of maybe a reflection of what we saw in the T-Mobile news this week was they unveiled a new service plan, which is unlimited. It's called Magenta Max.

• 14:54Nilay Patel?

  Of course.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  And yeah, Max Plus will be coming next.

• 14:59Nilay Patel?

  My poor child.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  So the big deal with this plan is that it's unlimited, of course, but they've removed the deprioritization, kind of data throttling that is just common practice across all of their unlimited plans, T-Mobile's included, that when you reach a certain threshold of data uses, you're a pretty heavy user. You get to like 50 gigabytes or whatever and you're on a busy network tower. You'll see your your data speeds deprioritized and slowed down so other people get a shot. So they're doing away with that. They say on this plan, no strings attached. That's not going to happen. You can have as much 5G as you want.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  And they are in a position to offer that right now, which Verizon and AT&T are not so much.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  The other remarkable thing about this plan is it's so there's no deprioritization, and they're also not doing anything with video quality. Like, if you want to stream 4K, go go ahead. We don't we're not going to do anything with that. So most of the unlimited plans had both of those provisos. But there is one, I think, one string attached to this this Magenta Max plan, right?

• 16:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, you there's still a limit to high-speed data you can get tethered on your device. So I think that's capped at 40 gigabytes. So yeah, there there's still those little ways that, you know, they're going to make sure you don't get too much out of it. You gotta you gotta just keep an eye on the five print there.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  There are no 5G like good 5G hotspots for T-Mobile yet, as far as I know, right? Like, one of the promises of 5G was, I'm going to get rid of my home internet connection and just run everything over wireless. It was a promise of LTE, too. Honestly, it was a promise of WiMAX. Like, every new network connection technology, someone tells me that you can disconnect your home broadband and just run it off the cell network. It is not really true for most people. That tethering restriction feels like, oh, man.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  It might actually be true. Like, this network is relatively fast. It's performant. They just don't want you to, like, download PS5 games on it.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah. And they are still piloting the 5G home internet product that they've been talking about for a while. But they couldn't give me any updates on that this week because I asked because, boy, would I love to get rid of Comcast.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Can I just be a huge nerd and say that before the age of app stores for smartphones and everything needing to be approved by big companies that want to have nice cozy relationship with carriers, it was relatively easy to get software for Palm OS or Windows Mobile. The one that I liked was called PDANet. And what it did is you would tether your phone to this app, and then the app would make it look to the network like you were just using your phone. The app would Use the data, not your computer. And so for a bunch of carriers that blocked tethering, because that was like, they would just straight up block tethering back in like 2004, 2006. In those, those days, you could still tether because you could just use PDA net and not have

• 18:09Speaker 02

  to pay the extra fee that you would have to pay for tethering.

• 18:12Nilay Patel?

  I am shocked there isn't an Android app that does this.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  There must be.

• 18:16Nilay Patel?

  There's got to be an Android developer right now is listening to this who's already tweeting at you. It's at Backlon. Just let us know. So Alison, you had a headline this week, kind of pulling apart where T-Mobile is. I thought it was a great headline. T-Mobile has 5G leverage and isn't afraid to use it. And I think this ties into kind of the state of the industry right now. They bought Sprint. They have Sprint's network. They have Sprint's spectrum. They are ahead in that regard. At the same time, they're supposed to be helping Dish build a network or like providing Dish with an MVNO relationship so that Dish can become the fourth competitor. They're not really playing nice with Dish at all. Dish is kind of like nowhere to be

• 18:59Nilay Patel?

  found. But like, Magenta Max is like unequivocally a good thing. So in my like swirl of is there enough competition? Is it working out? I like, I kind of can't read this one. How do you feel about it?

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's sort of like, you know, being, being given some candy and you're sort of like, oh, this is tasty and exciting and you're not a, but there's a, there's a bad man with the candy. No.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  Terrible. Like a terrible analogy.

• 19:30Nilay Patel?

  Strong debut on the Verge.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  I think one of our, one of our joke headlines that we almost like didn't realize was a joke was like, T-Mobile Unlimited is good for customers, but bad for America.

• 19:44Nilay Patel?

  That's a, I mean, that's like, that's like the antitrust zone right now is like, we're mad at Facebook for turning off news, but also like Facebook is making its product worse. And we're like, that's an antitrust violation. Like, we're just, we're all over the place. But it seems like they have the lead. I think maybe they're not, they're betting that not a lot of people are going to sign up for their most expensive plan. So they can offer this thing that makes the other networks look bad that the other networks can't offer. At the same time, Right, like Sprint customers are just T-Mobile customers now. And there's not a fourth carrier to provide low-cost competition because Dish basically doesn't exist.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's kind of, it's a little bit of a distraction, I think. Like, it is a good thing, it's a good plan, and it's sort of like, yeah, jump on it. If, you know, T-Mobile's good for you and you use a lot of data, it makes sense. But it's sort of like, let's not forget, you know, why they're in that position and that we used to have four carriers we could choose from, and now we have three. And things are going to change. Like, these plans are always changing, they're always going to be complicated and difficult to understand. And, you know, you gain something here, but maybe lose something here. And it's, you know, easy to lose sight of, like, they are businesses that are just trying to make a profit.

• 21:07Speaker 03

  And we, we need these services, like, clearly this, this year has shown.

• 21:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's important to keep an eye on those guys.

• 21:15Nilay Patel?

  So, friend of Verge, Hal Slinger, who's an economist, wrote a piece for Wired this week. Pulled no punches. The terrible T-Mobile and Sprint merger must be undone. Hal's not a fan, he hasn't been a fan the whole time. I think he and some other economists actually wrote a submission to the FCC while this merger was going down, arguing against it. So, I know where Hal Slinger's coming from, but here's his quote. So, what was supposed to happen was the government allows T-Mobile and Sprint to merge. Then, we're going to stand up Dish Network as the new fourth competitor. They're going to build from the ground up a 5G network with none of the baggage of 3G or 4G LTE to hold them back. And there's like, a lot of stuff to talk about with that. But like, that is sort of abstractly a great plan.

• 22:00Nilay Patel?

  So, in India, for example, there's a carrier called Reliance Jio, which is a new carrier. They built an LTE network with none of the analog baggage of the previous networks. Undercut everybody on price. India has LTE, like, explosive growth in internet usage in India because of this new LTE-first network. So, maybe you can like, import that strategy to Dish. They're going to build a wholly new 5G network, undercut everybody on price. We've got four competitors again. The world's oyster. We're a long way from that. In the meantime, T-Mobile was supposed to provide its network to Dish, so that Dish could function as a competitor somehow. But instead, they're decided to shut down their 3G

• 22:42Nilay Patel?

  service, which Dish is using for Boost. It's like, where are those Boost customers gonna go? So this is like, the thesis of Hal's piece is, we, like, we, the government made this deal with T-Mobile and Sprint and Dish, assuming everyone would play nice. Why would you believe that they would play nice? And then Charlie Ergen, who runs Dish, said this week, T-Mobile was not playing nice. And he said, their decision to shut down the 3G CDMA network that Boost uses is anti-competitive. And it feels like Dish is just kind of nowhere in this game right now.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they, they did talk about, you know, their plans for 5G in their, in their financial call this week, that they are still on track to roll out 5G in the first major cities, I think by Q3 this year. But yeah, that's kind of a big, like, would be a pretty big setback if they had to deal with a whole bunch of their customers suddenly needing new devices and scrambling to deal with that. So it's really not, you know, like, T-Mobile is sort of within their rights,

• 23:55Speaker 03

  as far as the agreement goes, to do that, but it's not playing nice. And I think, yeah, Ergen's words, or he didn't mince words there.

• 24:05Nilay Patel?

  So then the last piece of the puzzle. So like, in the near term, you've got AT&T and Verizon doing DSS slower 5G networks. You've got this T-Mobile position of like, leverage and power. You've got Dish sort of just stumbling around. That's like the short to medium term of what's happening. In the long term, AT&T and Verizon are going to get more spectrum because there was an auction this week and they effectively won.

• 24:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So this has been ongoing. This FCC auction, kind of known as C-band, is going to make a lot of that mid-band spectrum, the really good stuff, available to the carriers. So it was expected that Verizon and AT&T were two of the big bidders there. And that's what we found out this week. Verizon bid 45 billion and AT&T came in with 23 billion. And T-Mobile really, you know, there was just filling in the gaps of what they already have and they only spent 9 billion. It sounds like, yeah, good deal.

• 25:16Nilay Patel?

  Well, I saw that Dish was like 3 million or something, like they basically were non-existent in this. So maybe they didn't, felt they didn't need it.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know they've kind of gotten their hands on spectrum along the way.

• 25:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, Dish is famous for hoarding spectrum. Yeah. Like, I think if they had, like, been aggressive in this auction, someone would have been like, no, actually, no.

• 25:38Nilay Patel?

  You have to eat your vegetables. You can't just have them all. That sort of makes sense to me. I think that the idea of T-Mobile filling in its gaps while having the strongest network and the other two having to, like, fill huge chunks, that means they're still like a year or two away.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. So there's other providers on these frequencies right now, satellites, and they have some time to clear out before Verizon, AT&T start using them. So that's going to start happening at the end of the year. But it's going to take, well, you know, into the next year for more of those frequencies to become available. And even then, it's, you know, it's not the flip of a switch. It's going to take a while before a lot of people across the country see a big difference from those frequencies coming online for Verizon and AT&T. So. T-Mobile's in a pretty good spot.

• 26:33Nilay Patel?

  Are these bands are our phones now already have support for, or do we need new phones?

• 26:37Speaker 03

  That's another interesting piece of the puzzle. iPhone 12s and Samsung S21s, those support C-band and they're approved to use C-band. But if you're talking about like more of the budget 5G phones in particular, they don't necessarily have support for the right bands. And it's sort of up to the mobile phone manufacturer to apply for that use with the FCC. So there's no guarantee that you'll actually get it.

• 27:12Nilay Patel?

  I just put this together because you said C-band for the third time. C-band is like the old gigantic television dish, right? Like the huge ones. I only know this because my, my friend Jeff in elementary school, his dad had one and he got all the channels. And I was

• 27:28Speaker 02

  I had that friend. Yeah.

• 27:30Nilay Patel?

  I mean, he was definitely like also like a hoarder of like old electronic parts. Jeff's house was cool. Jeff, if you're listening, miss you, buddy. Your dad was cool, but like it's crazy to think that those old gigantic satellite dishes, those bands are being repurposed in our cell phones. Like that's where we are and like LTE, we repurposed all of the old analog TV spectrum. Like in many ways, the story of these next generation networks is we're turning off TV and like repurposing it for digital, which like makes a lot of sense. But it's just funny how like the old days of TVs are, the old day of TV is over. Like at every level, like we've shut down like every way that we used to get TV.

• 28:12Nilay Patel?

  And we're moving it all to the internet. And so we're repurposing not only the networks, but the delivery. There's a piece in there somewhere. There's like a wild, there's a wild idea. Dieter, I'm looking for you, buddy.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, what?

• 28:25Nilay Patel?

  I'm, I'm assigning a hazy idea of a piece.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 28:29Nilay Patel?

  That's what I do on the show.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  I'm gonna write it. It'll be, it'll be totally done. There is one more auction coming. I guess it's only like 100 megahertz of spectrum. I just want to point out that this 3.45, 3.55 next auction that's coming up for 5G is a result of a law that Congress passed called the Beat China for 5G Act of 2020. Because 5G is a race.

• 28:52Speaker 03

  I read that on the internet.

• 28:55Nilay Patel?

  So the problem is not like the spectrum reallocation, like we're good at that. Like the United States is good at reallocating spectrum and running auctions and selling it to Verizon. Like as a, as a government, like we've nailed that. The problem is like, where are you going to get the equipment to build the 5G networks? If you can't buy Huawei equipment and like smaller ISPs, smaller service providers, like they're waiting for funds to rip out their existing Huawei equipment and replace it. The program is literally called Rip and Replace. I think like 18 months ago, we had Commissioner Starks in the FCC on, and he was already talking about Rip and Replace, but before all the crazy happened. And the other problem is actually related to DISH.

• 29:38Nilay Patel?

  So DISH wants to build something called an Open Radio Access Network, ORAN, which is open, not proprietary. So this is like a very exciting idea. You get more vendors, you get, and it doesn't work yet. It just doesn't, like the proprietary systems work and the, the open interconnects don't. So allocating the spectrum, I think, is not as much of the problem anymore as the like, where, where does this stuff come from? And I don't think Congress can like pass a bill to make this, like you can't like order Nokia to be like, be better at being Nokia. I mean, you could try. I mean, I have ordered Nokia to be better at being Nokia for like a decade.

• 30:15Nilay Patel?

  Allison, what happens next here?

• 30:16Speaker 03

  We just kind of hang tight, I think. And, you know, we've, Dieter and I have talked about, you know, whether it makes sense to buy a 5G phone right now. And the guidance, oh, you know, last year certainly was like, don't, don't go out and buy a 5G phone just because it's the next cool thing. Like it's not going to be a big deal for a while. That's sort of shifting this year is like, if you're due for an upgrade and you're shopping around, it's not the worst idea. Especially if you're going to hang on to your phone for three or four years. And in particular, if you're looking at the higher, the flagships that are, you know, ready for C-band and all the, the various flavors of 5G.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  So yeah, I think that's something to, to have at the front of mind if you're looking for a phone. And that's kind of the only thing that we have to worry about right now. It's, it's the networks getting, getting into gear.

• 31:15Nilay Patel?

  If only. I wish I had a 5G e-switch on my AT&T phone. Really, really come full circle. All right, Alice, thank you so much. We're gonna have you back soon. That was great.

• 31:24Speaker 04

  Thank you. It was so much fun.

• 31:26Nilay Patel?

  All right, we'll be back in a minute with Ashley Carmen to talk about Spotify and Twitter. We'll be right back.

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• 32:46Nilay Patel?

  We're back with Ashley Carmen. What's up, Ash?

• 32:48Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 32:49Nilay Patel?

  There's a lot going on this week. Let's start with Spotify. You interviewed Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, this week because they had a gigantic event. What happened with them?

• 32:57Speaker 04

  So Spotify decided to do kind of like the Apple thing where they did a stream on event, their first ever, which they used as an opportunity to really talk about their ambitions in audio. So that includes music. But honestly, 75% of the presentation was about their podcasting ambitions. They made a bunch of announcements that, which were huge, huge, huge, like groundbreaking announcements, but for Virg cast fans, they did announce a hi-fi tier coming, which is exciting for many people, maybe not for me, but for many people.

• 33:29Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I just think it... I put this on Twitter, but like, it's so funny that all we, when people, with all these services, they announce their HiFi to you, and they're like, CD quality audio. It's like, dude, most of the people subscribe to you have never owned a CD in their lives. And the people who did, like, totally forgot what they sound like.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  I don't remember them sounding very good. They were bouncing in the car and skipping, like.

• 33:51Nilay Patel?

  And you're, most people are like, listening to them over AAC on their AirPods. Like, I don't know, like, convenience is one over quality. I'm very excited for Spotify HiFi. I don't mean to, I just think the way that these companies talk about it.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  I definitely went to the, one of the websites that lets you listen to like, the HiFi version versus the regular version. It's actually, they do three, and then there's like A, X, and B. And they play two of them, and you're supposed to like, figure out these two are the same, these two are not the same. Which was, which one is the odd one out? And then you listen to a bunch of them. Just completely whiffed it. Just completely failed it. I can't hear it. I'm old. My ears are shot from concerts.

• 34:27Nilay Patel?

  I think it's time, like, we live in a world of somewhat abundant bandwidth. Like, I hesitate in like, our Zoom society, if there's enough bandwidth. It's like, obviously not true, but somewhat abundant bandwidth, inefficiently distributed. And so it's like, time to like, up the bit rates for all the music and all the videos.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:45Nilay Patel?

  But like, you gotta build in, like, title didn't work. This is what title was trying to sell you. It's like, didn't happen. Anyway, this, that's the smallest bit of news. I'm excited for it. We're definitely gonna do the video where we make a bunch of people try to listen to it and see if they can tell. It's the only thing to do in reaction to it. Like the blind taste test, like the Pepsi challenge. I love making those videos. We'll do it. That time's gonna come. But the rest of their news is a little more interesting. Like, their podcast ambitions are vast. They haven't quite played out. And then like, next to it is Clubhouse, which is like, having a moment. So put that all in the context.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, podcasting ambition wise, Spotify has really tried to position itself as sort of the center of the podcasting universe. It wants to be the place you come for all your shows, but also for Spotify exclusive programming. They've inked deals with some big names. I'm sure everyone has seen, like, Michelle Obama. They announced during this event, a podcast with Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen as co-hosts, which I was like, what?

• 35:41Nilay Patel?

  I truly do not understand that pairing. Is it called Barry and Bruce?

• 35:45Speaker 04

  It's called Renegades.

• 35:47Nilay Patel?

  What? Cause that's a Secret Service code name.

• 35:51Speaker 04

  Wow, I see. That's I didn't know that.

• 35:53Nilay Patel?

  I just read the book. So, okay.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  Uh, so like they announced that and they have the content kind of locked down. They have the listening platform locked down or they want to right now. They're basically competing against Apple for podcast dominance. But like, we don't really know who's winning. It could be Spotify at this point. They've bought a hosting platform called Megaphone. So they are now trying to get into a hosting third party platform, third party shows, as well as selling ads for those shows and letting them use Spotify's special technology to insert ads into shows. And they have this creation part locked down with their acquisition of Anchor, which the idea is to basically get as many podcasters into the space as possible. And in a dream world, help them monetize, which I published a report

• 36:38Speaker 04

  a few weeks ago at this point about Anchor sponsorships not really panning out. And I don't necessarily know that this event proved me wrong. But they what the big announcement at this event was that they are fully launching their ad networks. They will now be able to sell ads for podcasts outside of their network and insert them into their streaming ad insertion technology. So stream them on the fly as people are listening.

• 37:03Nilay Patel?

  There's many layers here.

• 37:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:05Nilay Patel?

  But if you can be where the most money is, you'll win in general. Like, that is the Google advertising story. That is the Facebook advertising story. You can just put it on to Spotify. If Spotify is where it's easiest to buy the ads, easiest to target them to people, and then easiest for people to get paid, they can just be like YouTube for podcasts.

• 37:24Speaker 04

  Yes. I mean, Megaphone right now is mostly enterprise, like big organizations.

• 37:29Nilay Patel?

  I think I have to just, we use Megaphone.

• 37:31Speaker 04

  We use Megaphone. And Box Media is huge. So like, that's an idea of scale. Whereas Anchor was sort of this hosting platform for the smaller creators. And they said, leading quote unquote, anchor creators would be allowed to use this marketplace for ads. So I don't know if they've totally solved the YouTube part of this, where you have kind of the indie smaller people on there. But the one thing they do offer, and this is really the differentiator between any other podcast ad network and Spotify, is the audience targeting. Because all of this leads to Spotify having a ton of data about how people listen audio, why are they doing it, when they're doing it, who they are, their credit card, all that stuff. They have that data and they can use it to target against you in podcast ads. And that's new.

• 38:13Nilay Patel?

  So I'm going to cross promote my other show. So on Decoder, we had Melissa Grady, the CMO Cadillac. And what I had her on because cookies are going away from the web and like, Apple and Facebook are having their cookie fight and Google's like, around it. So what advertisers like her are looking at is first party data. Who has the most data? So you don't have to like, leave a cookie on the website. You can just go to Spotify. Spotify has all the data. It has all the audience segments. So I'm looking for 45-year-old CEOs who've purchased a Cadillac in the past 10 years. I'm going to make them listen to Escalade ads. And then she can just order that up from Spotify and it'll go across all the podcasts automatically as those people stream on Spotify, because Spotify is delivering you a stream.

• 38:56Nilay Patel?

  The part I don't understand, and that's like, that's advertising in the air. I just described the model for all advertising in the air.

• 39:01Speaker 04

  And to be clear, that's probably a ways off for Spotify, but that's the end goal dream.

• 39:06Nilay Patel?

  The thing I don't understand is, that makes sense when you're streaming on Spotify, because they're streaming you the data. And they know who you are, because you're logged into Spotify. For, I'm guessing most Vergecast listeners are not listening to us on Spotify. They just downloaded a file through an RSS feed. And there's no cookie exchange, there's no identifier. Do they explain how they're solving that problem? Because that was a big claim that I don't understand, that like, leads right into the cookie war.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  Cookie war.

• 39:32Nilay Patel?

  Cookiepocalypse, I've heard it's called. It's called Cookiepocalypse. I have many emotions about it.

• 39:36Speaker 04

  They really haven't said how downloads play into this. I mean, obviously, they can insert, so you do have dynamic ad insertion.

• 39:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the reason we don't have chapter markers, everyone always asks us, because I don't know how long the ads will be, because we have dynamic ad insertion.

• 39:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, which makes decisions based off of data that it knows about the listener or based on, well, you could swap out the listener. So if, for example, it's Valentine's Day when someone's listening to Vergecast, they might get a flowers.com ad dynamically inserted because we're running that campaign. Not actually, but theoretically. And then two weeks later, it's St. Patrick's Day, so maybe we're running an ad for Guinness. We swap that into the back catalog. It basically makes it so your ads aren't static. But they haven't talked about streaming versus downloads. They really, I think, believe that they will convert everybody to streaming. I mean, personally, I don't download podcasts. I do stream through Spotify.

• 40:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think that the being able to monetize your back catalog, again, I'm just making the YouTube comparison. Like, we know a lot of YouTubers. Having the huge catalog is like what generates the stable revenue for you. And then you make the next video and like, yep, YouTubers have to be on the grind. And there's a lot of creator economy stuff there. But if you only get paid for the video once, like, you don't have a business. Like, they've all said that to us. If you only get paid for the podcast once, you kind of don't have a business. If your back catalog is making you money, like, now you're, like, able to grow. But like, if you can't target, like, I still don't understand that targeting piece. And it sounds like Spotify didn't explain it at all.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  I mean, Spotify is not claiming that they can target. You know, there's some kind of targeting you can do with RSS, but not a ton. And I'm doubting that Spotify, like, is gonna try and solve that problem. They're just gonna, they're just gonna, they can target people very, very accurately if you're using the Spotify app. But if I'm downloading Pocket, with Pocket Casts via, you know, a feed that Spotify happens to be hosting, I don't think they're that, like, that's a small enough market for them that they probably don't care.

• 41:32Nilay Patel?

  That's the entire iOS market with preloaded, right? Like, that's how they jump on Apple. Because everybody in Apple Podcasts now becomes a Spotify customer or... All the podcasts in Apple Podcasts are now being monetized by Spotify. As opposed to Apple Podcasts Plus or whatever nonsense they're gonna do.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  Spotify really seems hyper focused on this idea of it's really concerned and bringing it. The thing that's gonna bring the advertisers over is the streaming ad insertion. That's why you're coming to them because you can target. You're gonna get it dynamically inserted through streaming ad insertion. If they make money off of inserting dynamically for Apple Podcasts, your show, that's just like cash. Like they're not like, it's okay. Like you're already here, you're part of our system. So there we go.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  How does that play into their like exclusive strategy, right? They have, they have Joe Rogan, he's exclusive. They bought The Ringer, they bought Gimlet. Some of those shows are still everywhere, but they're definitely gonna make more exclusives, right?

• 42:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, seemingly. I mean, this is a question that I posed to Daniel Ek. Just saying basically exclusives to me seem kind of counterintuitive to advertising because obviously advertisers want to reach as many people as possible. Whereas when you're exclusive, you're limiting your audience. He didn't really have a good answer. I didn't really get a good answer. I, I don't know. What I will say is the Michelle Obama podcast, and I don't know why this is the case, but the Michelle Obama podcast did become a non-exclusive after its first season. So what they could be doing is the strategy of like, okay, we're gonna try to get you over and then we'll go open to get the ads out to everybody.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the exclusive strategy makes perfect sense to me. I don't think it's that complicated. Spotify wants you to use Spotify to listen to podcasts. If they can get you to come to listen to one show, they're betting that you're gonna be annoyed at having two different podcast apps and then you'll just switch over to Spotify. So it's all in one app. The end.

• 43:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and then maybe publishers are gonna just be happier with their Spotify monetization. It's just, it makes them the YouTube of podcasts, which is either great. I'm assuming if you work at Spotify, you think that's great or it's horrible. And I feel like the podcast ecosystem, which is very much about open protocols and not tracking and all this stuff, like they are not so happy with this.

• 43:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, this is the whole podcasting dilemma is you have people on one side who are like, it's open and free and amazing. And then you have people on the other side that are like, how dare you make exclusives and not use RSS? That's not even a podcast. And then. You know, you have the whole data tracking aspect of it, which is just like consumers being worried about it. I mean, there's a lot going on here. There's a lot going on here.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  I mean, but doesn't it fundamentally boil down to open is great and RSS is great. Open standards, freedom, hooray. And Spotify saying, money, we've got money, we'll pay you. You'll make money over here. More of it.

• 44:19Speaker 04

  I mean, yes, I don't know how interesting that is to established creators. Like that might, that seems like it's interesting to the big stars who like Michelle Obama. It's like, okay, I don't know how much Spotify paying her, but I'm going to guess it's really good. And then to maybe the Joe Rogans and maybe to the small creators who are like, I'm going to get on anchor and hope I can make my podcast career happen. But for the people in the middle who are like decently sized, maybe can make an income off of podcasting. I don't really know what the sell is there for them.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you talked to, you talked to Daniel for a while. What else stood out from that conversation?

• 44:53Speaker 04

  So he mentioned Clubhouse, which we had to bring up, of course. Everyone knows Clubhouse is a social audio app, super buzzy right now. I just asked him, would this be something Spotify is interested in potentially building? If you want to be the place for audio, this is the thing happening in audio right now. He just said that they're keeping an eye on it.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 45:12Speaker 04

  But to me, the thing that's more that Spotify has to worry about more than just like, oh, people are talking to each other on an app is it is taking people away from podcasts. 100% the time that they are spending in Clubhouse is time they might have spent in a podcast. I've spoken to a few like super users of Clubhouse and they truly are like, oh yeah, I just sit at home and listen to Clubhouse. Like,

• 45:36Speaker 02

  That's wild to me. I will tell you that my, since I got Clubhouse, my routine used to be, I'm going to make dinner, start a podcast, make dinner. Now it's, I'm going to make dinner. Is anything going on at Clubhouse that I care about? No, I'm going to listen to a podcast. And like one or twice, there's been one like, okay, I'll listen to that room.

• 45:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. My routine is we have dinner, but he goes to bed at nine because she's an adult. I open Clubhouse and then I text Ashley, I can't listen to this anymore.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  Because I'm definitely in the room.

• 46:09Speaker 04

  I will say, like, it was really telling to me that I went to go pick up food the other night and my boyfriend's at Clubhouse now and he's like, not tech guy, like, whatever. So he went to go pick up food at a different place. So we were separated for a moment. I immediately pulled out Clubhouse to listen to it. I see he's already in a room. He pulled out his phone to go listen to Clubhouse. And that moment, I was like, wow, there's something to this because both of us, instead of pulling out our podcasts, we were like, you know, we'll just jump into a Clubhouse room. Different rooms, but we're in it.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  There's also the real, like, Clubhouse back channel thing that happens where, like, you're in a room, you see somebody else in the room, and then you start texting each other about what's going on. Yeah.

• 46:44Nilay Patel?

  Clubhouse, more than any app in the world, Clubhouse needs a messaging function. But they need a lot of other things. But so actually, your point about Eck and him being like, our competition is attention. Like, that's also what Reed Hastings says about Netflix. And like, he's like, my competition's Fortnite. Like, at some point, there's only a finite amount of attention. Like, if your business model is, I will capture all of the attention. It just doesn't seem like you can possibly win. Because there's a lot of things competing for everyone's attention all of the time. And I just, I think Spotify and its last earnings call, like, all the analysts were like, is this podcast about even play, like, paying off for you? And they, it doesn't seem like they have an answer yet.

• 47:26Speaker 04

  I don't think we know. It's a question I would love the answer to. I mean, to me, paying off would mean that Joe Rogan comes over to Spotify. He's getting just as many listeners as he was before. He converted all of them or got some new ones. They're making money off of his ads as well. And they're breaking in subscriber revenue and converting some of those people who listen to Rogan to other shows. Like, that, to me, is success right there. I don't know if that's the case.

• 47:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right. Well, speaking of Clubhouse, we should talk about Twitter. Twitter had an event today. They sort of formally announced Spaces, which is their Clubhouse competitor. It's already out. People are using it. Shout out to our friend Sam Sheffer, who's like, rocking on Twitter Spaces every day. They also announced Super Follows, where people can like, pay to get exclusive content, like a subscription Twitter built into the thing, which is why, like, they announced a bunch of stuff. They also announced a bunch of anti-harassment stuff, like auto-blocking and mute.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  What's your sense of Twitter in this moment? Like their, their new products are the OG social network. It feels like the fallback for all these other, can they expand out?

• 48:33Speaker 04

  I mean, I was just shocked. Like, like it feels like they just all of a sudden woke up and were like, oh, you guys have been doing a thing online. We should probably get in on that.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 04

  It's like, where have you been?

• 48:43Speaker 02

  They were like, pretty like self reflective about it. See, like Haven, who like there had a product we know is like, so we're gonna do stuff now.

• 48:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I am, I'm so curious what that meeting was where they're like, hey, guys, we gotta build things now.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  So there's, you know, private communities. They bought Review, a newsletter thing, and now you can do super follows. So they basically are trying to be, and then the spaces. So they're trying to do like a one stop shop thing for creators, which is a really smart strategy. But if you're a creator, do you want to bet a big portion of your community, your parasocial relationship with them and like your career on Twitter's ability to execute on product?

• 49:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:28Nilay Patel?

  Very, very loaded silence.

• 49:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think that's like what you're, the trade off there. And like Casey would make this argument, like, what is Substack really doing? It's letting people monetize their Twitter followings directly. Right? Like most journalists, at least that's what Substack is doing for journalists. Most journalists promote their work on Twitter. People click on the links to Twitter. Something happens and hopefully you get money. With Substack, it's like, you want longer, good tweets from me? Like pay this money and I'll email them to you. That makes a lot of sense. There's no reason that can't just be built into Twitter. And then like something like a super follow is, do you like my tweets? I'll give you more tweets for money. You don't have to leave this app and then maybe you can go to review.

• 50:11Speaker 04

  That I don't get.

• 50:12Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I think that people are gonna go crazy for it and it's gonna go completely sideways. Like the amount of super follow piracy that is about to happen on Twitter itself is going to be out of control. Like, if you think Twitter has a moderation problem right now, can you imagine the like DMCA copyright situation they're gonna find themselves in when people pirate Twitter onto Twitter? Just like. I'm ready for it. I've never been so excited about anything.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  The idea is like, if you, you like have a community of your like super tweet, super fans, right? And so you're like, it's basically like a subsection of Twitter just for you and your fans. But having seen Twitter try to talk about its product as a community and build products towards that, like it's, it's kind of been messy, right? All the like this, this goes back to the famous interview that Jack Dorsey did with Kara Swisher that just went completely sideways. It was meant to be just like an all on Twitter interview, but the threads were so broken, so completely broken that he's like, oh yeah, we gotta, we gotta fix the way that community works. And I don't know, I just, again, I think it's a, actually

• 51:22Speaker 02

  a really smart strategy. Like Twitter woke up and like came up with like, oh yeah, no, we should serve creators. That's a, that's actually a good idea. We should find ways for them to make money on our platform. That's a good idea. I think they should maybe buy Patreon or whatever. Like all these are seen like good ideas. So it's great. I'm happy to see Twitter finally have good ideas. I want to see them execute on them.

• 51:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I will say that right now trending on Twitter is rip Twitter.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Because people.

• 51:51Nilay Patel?

  Great. That's pretty good. Okay. Last piece of the puzzle, somewhat unrelated, but I've got both of you here and you two, along with Becca and Monica did our Apple Fitness Plus review. How'd it go?

• 52:03Speaker 02

  I think it went great. I'm still using it after two months, but only like once, maybe twice a week, which is more than I was exercising before, I guess. But the thing that worked for me was using Apple Fitness Plus made it so that I'm thinking about just exercising more, which means I'm like outside exercising more than I used to. It like created this like habit for me. But that said, of the four of us, I'm definitely the one who does not have a habit of exercise over the course of my life. And so it seems fine to me, but it's also really clear that I'm a noob when it comes to exercise subscriptions and I don't actually. Know enough and I don't need that much advanced stuff.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  Whereas people that use Peloton, people that actually do have a habit of exercise, found that it's very broad, but not very deep. I don't know, Ashley, is that fair? Like broad, but not deep?

• 52:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, you know, I've kind of spanned the gamut when it comes to exercise. I've obviously used to go to the like health club and the class is there and then like followed one of my favorite instructors onto Zoom during the pandemic. And like what I liked there was the connection, like he was able to literally talk to us through Zoom. I've done like beach body MLM, whatever stuff where it's like just super intense. I don't pay for it. I'm not going to out the person who

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Twitter piracy.

• 53:21Speaker 04

  I'm not going to out the person who uses beach body. But I will say I have been privy to a beach body workout and it's really, really fricking hard, but it's a good workout. So you're like, okay, I'm coming to this because it's really difficult. And Peloton has just this magic of having the equipment plus great instructors, top of the line classes, the whole integrated experience. So Apple kind of had to fit in somewhere. I was really amazed with their diversity of instructors. I thought they did a good job, different body types, different ages. That was a huge thing. I wish there was more different body types, but you know, diversity. But the workouts themselves were fine. Like, I don't know, it was sort of very run of the mill to me and they didn't even have filters so you could filter by the body part you want to work, which I still am like, that

• 54:05Speaker 04

  should be table stakes, like truly. I had to read the descriptions for every app, so, or every workout. So at the end of the day, I'm not mad about it. I just wouldn't personally probably choose to use it.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe it's the sort of thing where in two or three years of it, if they keep working on it, it will be really, really good, but they have to actually continue to invest in it in a real way. That time to walk thing is like maybe a good sign. I don't know, Becca really liked it. The thing that got me is, you know, I bought an exercise trainer, a bike trainer for it and then just realized, oh, in order to like have this work, I have to do a lot of extra thinking about how hard I'm exercising because they just tell you match my cadence. Sometimes they'll give you a cadence number. I had to like figure out how to get cadence information out of my bike, which was a whole other thing. And so it's just not having the, the service connected to the equipment actually does

• 55:00Speaker 02

  make a difference. You can feel it, you can see your rings, you can see your, you know, your burn bar that shows that your heart rate is higher than everybody else's because you're out of shape. Like that's it. And it's nice, but it's also, you can tell that it is a little bit like cludgy. It's not very Apple-esque because they, you have to do it in their ecosystem, but they can't control the other parts of the ecosystem. So they just have to like, describe the bike the way they, it's weird.

• 55:29Nilay Patel?

  There were two lines from the video. They wrote, Ashley lines that stuck out. One was, how much Apple stuff do I need to make this work? Because you had to use it on your phone.

• 55:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, it doesn't work on a MacBook, which to me is like, what?

• 55:42Nilay Patel?

  Right. They definitely want you to have an iPad, like, or like an Apple TV. Like, so that to me is like part, part of what you're describing, Dieter. And then you were like, I already have a Peloton and I might be too far gone. Like at once, very true and also very worrisome that you're like, I'm just too deep into this cult.

• 56:00Speaker 04

  Hey, man. I mean, you're gonna be there pretty soon.

• 56:03Nilay Patel?

  We'll see if it ever gets delivered. We ordered it in like, late November, early December. It's still not here. Ashley has a great piece about that, too. Peloton is way behind on making these things. So maybe that's Apple's in, right? You can just buy any bike and get a Peloton-esque experience for much cheaper. But that Peloton community is real big. It is evangelical about, about the product because the product is good. And like, Apple has a long road to go.

• 56:27Speaker 04

  I will say, yeah, if, if I was using just a third-party bike, I can't think of a default app I would go to for cycling content. So if that is what they think the in is, I would probably default to Apple because I'm like, I know Apple.

• 56:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:39Speaker 04

  They probably make good things.

• 56:40Nilay Patel?

  It's also, I will say this, you know, like, Apple TV Plus, they put it in your face. They just like, give it away for free all the time. Fitness Plus is all over the iPhone, right? Like, it's in the Settings menu of the phone. If you open the Fitness app on your phone, it's like a tab right in front of you. Like, they are pushing it as a service, as a paid part of the operating system, in a way that they, they don't even do with the TV stuff. Like maybe like it's like iCloud Fitness Plus in terms of what Apple's trying to get you to buy when you have an iPhone. And to your point, like, will they stay committed to it? Like, Tim Cook, noted fitness buff, says Apple's biggest contribution to society

• 57:25Nilay Patel?

  will be health and fitness. Maybe workout DVDs are the way, but I think that's just an entry point to like, what's next?

• 57:31Speaker 02

  I mean, isn't it, it's pretty weird that Apple is getting beat on by another company on the integration of software service and like happy, shiny, everything is okay culture, right? Like, that's, that's, that's Apple's lane and Peloton is like pantsing them at it. By the way, if you've got your own exercise bike and you're looking for an exercise app that isn't Apple Fitness, it's Zwift, Z W I F T. It's very cool.

• 57:55Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Ashley, thank you so much. We got to take a break. We'll be back with Julia Alexander to talk about the astonishing debut of Paramount Plus.

• 58:07Speaker 06

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• 59:15Nilay Patel?

  We're back. Julia.

• 59:17Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 59:17Nilay Patel?

  You're here.

• 59:18Speaker 07

  Again.

• 59:18Nilay Patel?

  The streaming world has not slowed down. Yeah, last week was like, help me understand. And this week it's like, wait, it all changed again. All right, there is a lot. I don't, I don't know how to feel about this, but Paramount Plus launched. I feel like the last few times we've had you on for a launch were like, Disney Plus is here. The landscape has changed. HBO Max is here. Can AT&T change? And now I'm like Paramount Plus is here. What's up with that? So help me understand what's going on.

• 59:44Speaker 07

  That would have been a great headline. Paramount Plus, up with that. Paramount Plus, yes. So it's here. It's the final of the big streaming launches. Thank God. It is the final of the pluses for now, which is great. It is basically CBS All Access turned up to 10. There will happen with CBS merged or re-merged with Viacom in 2019 and realized they had access to a bunch of stuff like SpongeBob again, and they had access to Jersey Shore and a bunch of other things finally. And they just decided we're going to throw this all into a streaming platform. And the easiest way to think of it for Verge Castle listeners is that it's basically Peacock, but with different types of shows and movies. But it's the same kind of idea. You're going to get some aspect of live sports and live

• 1:00:29Speaker 07

  news on the premium plan for $10 a month. There's an ad free coming in June where you'll get less stuff, but the whole idea is that you're going to have a huge library, some original shows, and then some aspect of linear TV.

• 1:00:42Nilay Patel?

  So CBS All Access has existed for a long time. They have never succeeded in signing me up. Was it a success before this?

• 1:00:50Speaker 07

  We don't know. So they combine streaming, so sorry, they combine subscriber numbers for CBS All Access and Showtime in the United States. By the time they had the Paramount Plus event yesterday, they had 19.2 million domestic across both those platforms. To put that into perspective, Disney Plus globally has close to 100 million, reported about 40 million or domestic US subscribers. So Disney Plus, if that's true, has done more in 14 months than Showtime and CBS All Access did in many years. But at the end of the day. Part of the issue is that CBS and really is still a linear television business. So they've never really put stuff into it. They're like, we have this thing and we want to use it more, but we don't know what we're doing with it.

• 1:01:34Speaker 07

  And now it seems like the CEO of Bob Backish and a bunch of other executives are there saying, we're now a streaming focused company, even if we're not a streaming first company.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Wait, there's another Bob that we have to contend with?

• 1:01:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, so in my ranking of Bobs, Bob Backish comes in third and then Bob Chapek is second. And then Bob Iger is untouchable at number one.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Got it, got it.

• 1:01:55Nilay Patel?

  He stepped down. He's like an honorary number one.

• 1:01:59Speaker 07

  He's still running stuff. He's doing, he has the greatest job. He stepped down, was like, I don't want to deal with all of this like boring business stuff. I just want to hang out with Kevin Feige and figure out Marvel stuff.

• 1:02:11Speaker 07

  And then go to Clippers games. He has the best job in the world.

• 1:02:14Nilay Patel?

  That's true. I mean, he was, he was also thinking about running for president, which I'm glad he didn't do. Cause the, you know, the Marvel, we gotta take care of that. There's a lot of, lot of, lot of dominos being set up that need to pay off at this point. So I'm looking at this list of what Paramount Plus is gonna have. Shows based on the Italian job, on Fatal Attraction, on Flashdance, a bunch of old MTV, VH1 stuff. Like, what's the hit? There's a Frasier revival, which I'm, I'm just proud of our team that we broke out a Frasier revival. It's its own story.

• 1:02:51Speaker 07

  Yeah, that was my decision. The greatest thing that has happened over the last year or so is that Vert editors have very graciously given me the ability to run certain events. And I'm like, oh, Frasier revival, I'm writing about that. That's important to my life.

• 1:03:07Nilay Patel?

  It's like, we gotta bundle up Italian job, Fatal Attraction, Flashdance. Frasier gets its own story.

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  So did Rugrats. By the way, a creepy. 3D animated Rugrats that does not look, does not look good. I made the joke that it looks like Beast Wars. Anyway.

• 1:03:25Nilay Patel?

  None of these things are, I don't know, Netflix like famous like House of Cards, right? Like, um, the morning show on Apple TV plus, uh, HBO Max is still looking for it, but Search Party is very good if you have HBO Max. It's like worth watching. It's completely insane, but it's very good. What's their, what's their hit?

• 1:03:43Speaker 07

  Well, HBO Max is a great comparison because HBO Max is still trying to find its hit. And I think they have some coming up that I'm very excited about. Uh, and on the animation front, they have hits.

• 1:03:53Nilay Patel?

  So I forgot to mention The Mandalorian.

• 1:03:55Speaker 07

  Oh.

• 1:03:55Nilay Patel?

  On Disney Plus, right? Which like obviously drove a ton of that.

• 1:03:58Speaker 07

  And Wandavision, week to week to week. Wandavision is like the biggest thing on Twitter. But so HBO Max is a great comparison because HBO Max is finding its hit. But the best thing about HBO Max is that you get HBO. You don't have to pay extra for it. Like you have everything coming in from HBO and that makes it worth in a lot of ways. Um, and HBO Max is finding its stuff. I watched It's a Sin the other day, which is like a great mini series from BBC that they brought over, which is phenomenal. Everyone should watch it. Um, their whole thing, Paramount Plus is that you are going to be so nostalgic, uh, that you will buy into this to watch, like Criminal Minds. And the thing is, it might work. I don't think people realize how, uh, big Criminal Minds is in the United

• 1:04:42Speaker 07

  States. It remains the most watched Netflix thing almost week after week. Like it is the thing people are watching week after week, according to Nielsen, which has its own issues. But like, that show people want to watch. If you regularly go down what people are watching in the United States, 40 to 50% of the top 10 shows are all ViacomCBS shows. Like they're constantly, it's NCAS, it's Criminal Minds, it's Schitt's Creek, which is pop TV, which is owned by ViacomCBS. Um, and they're hoping that like they want to bring some of this over to Paramount Plus and you will eventually go over because you're like, I want to re-watch Criminal Minds, so I'll do that there. The issue, specifically with Paramount Plus, is that because it's not investing the same amount of money that Netflix or Disney is in sort of streaming section, they have to license out a lot of this stuff still. So last night-

• 1:05:27Speaker 07

  One of the big shows that they announced was an iCarly kind of sequel, which is big for anyone born after ninety nineteen ninety one. That's a very exciting thing for them. And if you ask someone, cool, that's a sequel. Where can I watch the original? The first response would be, well, it's on Netflix. So you can go to Netflix and the same thing with Avatar and Legend of Korra, which are two huge Nickelodeon shows. To the point that they are now spinning off an entire studio to just create more of this for Viacom, CBS and Paramount Plus. If you ask people where they watch these shows, it's on Netflix and they associate it with Netflix. They don't associate it with ViacomCBS. And I think that's the main issue Paramount Plus is gonna have. If you think about Disney, Disney lays out its brand entirely in every single ad. It's Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic.

• 1:06:12Speaker 07

  You want, you have to go to Disney Plus to watch it. There's no other option. And with Paramount Plus, the idea is like, you might have to go to Paramount Plus, but there's a good chance it's also on Amazon or Hulu or Netflix.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  Is that a, is that a temporary until like the licenses run out and they just, they take it all back? Or is it a like a long-term thing? Cause they're, they're not ever gonna put enough money into like own their own IP and not wanna get some residuals from Netflix or whatever. So it's always gonna be kind of messy.

• 1:06:38Speaker 07

  It's, it's exactly that. They, they don't have the money to say, we're just gonna play the exclusively and hopefully people sign up for ten bucks a month and we'll make money and we're fine on that end. Like they still wanna buy NFL rights. They still wanna own a bunch of linear stuff. They, the issue is that they have a TV division and they're like, we have to be able to put our content spend here. So they spent fifteen billion dollars on content in twenty twenty, but about one or two billion was streaming related. And to put that in comparison, Netflix spent seventeen to eighteen billion last year alone. They don't have a TV division. Everything they spend goes to Netflix. Disney by twenty twenty four, when ViacomCBS is gonna allocate five billion dollars on content spending just for streaming, Disney's gonna allocate fourteen to sixteen billion.

• 1:07:21Speaker 07

  So it's just like, you can't compete with those numbers. Whereas Disney's saying, we are streaming first and we are gonna figure out a way to move a bunch of the stuff over while, while dealing with linear and moving away from it. ViacomCBS is kinda like, we have this division. We don't wanna get rid of it yet. We have affiliates. And we have things that we can't give up on that end. At the same time, we want to be streaming focused. And I think what we're going to see over the next few years is companies realize they don't have to be content providers and own distribution. They can just be content providers because companies like Netflix and Hulu, which is Disney, will pay for the licensing. Like they'll just say, sure, we need content to keep people. So like you can win Viacom by just doing what you're doing, which is just sell it.

• 1:08:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but Viacom owned a bunch of channels. I feel like I have to do the the Julia block of disclaimers now. So NBC is owned by Comcast. Allison actually mentioned Comcast earlier and I forgot. But NBC is a minority investor in Vox Media, which is a parent company of The Verge. The Verge is producing a Netflix show. Quibi existed and now it doesn't. It's, is that fair? So compare the strategy, though, to to Peacock, right? So NBC is also a massive provider of traditional television. They also have football and live sports, so like very invested in that. Is Peacock more aggressive than this in terms of shifting the business to streaming? Or is CBS more aggressive?

• 1:08:48Speaker 07

  I think the interesting answer is in the way they're launching. When Peacock launched, this whole thing was ad-supported. We want to focus on ad-supported. If you want to sign up for the $10 premium ad-free, you can do so. But we assume that we're going to bring in cable subscribers who will just start using this and maybe use it more often and we can sell targeted ads and therefore increase ad spending. And they get their stuff that in that regard. ViacomCBS with Paramount Plus is doing the opposite. They're launching with just premium. The ad-free, the ad-supported cheaper tier doesn't come until June. And part of that is, I think, one of the most glaring points that stood out from last night's event. When these companies launch streaming services, the main thing they say is like, our partner is T-Mobile. Our partner is Verizon.

• 1:09:32Speaker 07

  If you're on this, you're going to get this for free. Because that first year of like giving something away for free is super important to get the people to sign up. And then hopefully there's enough that you keep them. You know, I don't think, I think Disney Plus is an interesting one because they had the Mandalorian. They were always going to get signups. But it helps that someone who uses Verizon is like, you know, I opened it up and my kids liked it or I really liked it and I'm just going to keep it. Paramount Plus doesn't have one yet. And Bob Akish was like, we're figuring it out. We're gonna figure like, we're gonna, we'll have more details on that later, as everyone loves to say. But the fact that they didn't have this right at their investor event a week before launch is like somewhat concerning because the best way to get it out there is to have a partner in one of the carriers.

• 1:10:14Nilay Patel?

  Everyone loves preloaded apps on their mid-range Android phones. That's, that's what we've all learned. I want to, I want to come around to AT&T and talk about what they're doing with DirecTV in a minute. But you wrote two, I, I just want to check in on the content strategies of these, these companies for a minute. So you, you mentioned WandaVision, it's having a great run, conceptually just a wild show, but like very good for MCU fans to like have a thing they have to watch every Friday. Great. And really well done. That's going to stop and then Loki is going to start, right? So like Disney's figured something out here, right? We're just going to have a must-watch series that takes you from movie to movies. HBO Max and Peacock still looking for their hits, but you, as you call them snackable television, they have The Office and Friends.

• 1:10:59Nilay Patel?

  How, how is that all playing out, right? Like, is this ecosystem settling down?

• 1:11:03Speaker 07

  Disney knows that the amount that they're spending on the shows, they can't just drop it like Netflix in the way that you drop a show like Stranger Things, um, two weeks later, it's out and no one cares. Like people are over it, they're done with it. Um, and Netflix, it doesn't matter because there's something new every week in terms of a new movie, entirely new TV show, and there's enough library content that you're, you're there, you're not going to leave it. With Disney, which has a very small library and not a great library, they know their whole thing that's keeping people around is either movies for kids, they don't have to worry about families, which I've talked about on this podcast a bunch, but also weekly shows, they want to own Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. And they do every week. It's like you look at Twitter and it's Mandalorian, it's WandaVision, then it'll be Falcon and Winter Soldier,

• 1:11:48Speaker 07

  and then it's Black Widow, and then it's Loki. And then they just keep doing it. And then you put in Pixar shows and a bunch of other stuff, and there's no reason to ever leave because week to week, you feel like you're getting something of movie quality on Disney Plus. But Disney also realizes that they need to bring more stuff in, and we saw that this week, uh, with the launch of Star internationally, which, um, Hyam wrote a really great piece about. And the whole idea with Star was what if we brought Hulu overseas, we could give people more adult shows to watch. Like you can watch Modern Family, or you can watch 24 and Prison Break, or How I Met Your Mother. And we'll just use this and people don't have to leave Disney Plus. And I think, you know, there's, I have this conversation a lot with analysts,

• 1:12:31Speaker 07

  and the idea that you have to ask someone to leave an app, as you guys know, is such a huge thing. Or it's like, if I have to leave, I don't want, I'd like, it's, I don't want to open something else up. So Disney was like, we're gonna put a sixth tile, and you can just hit star, and it's basically Hulu. And you're gonna be able to do this, and there's no reason for you to ever leave. That works for them, because they have the kind of must-watch television that generates that. For everyone else, you have to have snackable content, and that's what they're all banking on. That's Paramount Plus is banking on it, NBC Universal is banking on it with Peacock, HBO Max is banking on it with their library. And at some point, snackable content just becomes replaced. And I think a great example is Netflix. Netflix realized by 2014, 2015, that people were gonna start taking their shows and movies

• 1:13:14Speaker 07

  back, because they realized that streaming was gonna be a thing. And so what they did was just replicated them. Like, they literally made, I think it was like, The Real, The Real Lives of Bollywood Wives, which is just real, like, it's ju, that's just Real Housewives. They made, they made Selling Sunset, which is a bunch of Discovery-type shows. They look at it and it works, and they're like, we'll just do it. And at the end of the day, people are happy with it. They don't need a specific show if they have someone that feels similar, and they don't have to leave an app. And it's like, I can just watch this.

• 1:13:45Nilay Patel?

  I'd like to watch beautiful people yelling at each other now. Right? And you just like, push the button, and it just like, happens.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  It's like the store brand of television.

• 1:13:52Nilay Patel?

  It kind of is the store brand of television.

• 1:13:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:13:55Nilay Patel?

  I will say, they have, like, some of the Netflix reality stuff is so, like, it's so obviously things that would never work on any other network. Like, the glass-blowing show, and like, the blacksmithing show.

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:07Nilay Patel?

  Like, you know that that was a pitch that Discovery was like, this is too much even for us. Like, you want 10 episodes of blacksmith reality television? We can't do this. And Netflix was like, yeah, bring it in. Like, this is great.

• 1:14:18Speaker 07

  Ted's like, I have money, might as well just spend it. But it but it works because people are on the app and they're late. I'll talk on behalf of myself. I'm lazy. I don't want to leave it. Like, there's something here, surface what you want me to watch, and I'll watch it. Uh, like, I'm an ideal consumer in that way. And I think that's the other way to do is you have to just be everything for someone or like something for everyone. Like, that's just, that's the way you have to figure out. And I think Paramount Plus has the library for sure. They have the shows, and they have the movies, and they have the IP, but their strategy is so weird that they're giving it to everyone else. That it doesn't make you ever feel like, oh, I need Paramount Plus, or that I need Disney Plus, or Netflix feels like at this scale, there's, I have to be on Netflix.

• 1:15:01Speaker 07

  And I think eventually, you, we will, I don't think we'll see them give up on it, but I do think we'll see them say, okay, by 2024, we invest five billion. And then by 2028, we're actually going to invest four billion. We're going to go down because we don't think this is paying off for us. And we'll figure out what to do with this, but it's not going to be the life, the game changer that we need. A conversation I come back to regularly is I have a bunch of analysts, and the streaming games feel more like, like satiating the demands of executives at companies who feel like they should be in it because they're reading about it and everyone's telling them about streaming. Like, the the whole streaming war situation, instead of being like, hey, they want content, we make good content, we own amazing content. Uh, let's just sell it off at a higher about at a higher price point.

• 1:15:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but that doesn't get you a promotion. Come on. You want to be the-

• 1:15:49Speaker 07

  I mean, John Stankey is CEO of AT&T, and they've done nothing but lose money.

• 1:15:55Nilay Patel?

  Actually, let's talk about AT&T for a second here because, uh, right before we we started recording, I mean, this is just AT&T. First of all, AT&T owns CNN. The thing I would remind everybody, just a ridiculous outcome of America, American business right now. But they also own DirecTV. They have a an over-the-top cable service called AT&T TV now. It used to be called many other things. And they own U-verse. Which was a straight up cable company and now they've combined them into one thing, presumably to sell that thing, right?

• 1:16:28Speaker 07

  Yeah, apparently I was talking to you guys and very much paying attention to this conversation while also looking at Twitter, uh, cause the AT&T call was happening at the exact same time, uh, and a lot of the tweets I saw from journalists were like, eh, John Stanky is not trying to hide the fact that they merge with Dish, like at this point for DirecTV is out of the question, uh, like they, they realized that at some point before I came on the call, was Stanky, that John Stanky, the CEO of AT&T, said, uh, we did not realize when we completed the acquisition of DirecTV back in 2015 that this, uh, this would be the outcome, which is a ridiculous thing to say when everybody said this is the only expected outcome.

• 1:17:10Nilay Patel?

  I mean, look, some people want their television from satellite, not the internet, obviously.

• 1:17:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Nilay Patel?

  Like, uh, this is like, you know, I know I rail against mergers on this show all the time, but like, this is the argument to not let companies do mergers. Like, maybe DirecTV would have failed as an independent company, they definitely would have tried to not fail, as opposed to AT&T bought them, did a bunch of layoffs from the jump, mismanaged it sideways, got basically no value out of the things that DirecTV owned. Like, DirecTV has Sunday Ticket, right? It was just football season. Is there any AT&T customer to gain any benefit from that corporate synergy? Like, absolutely not.

• 1:17:50Speaker 07

  The best way that I've been thinking about it, maybe not the best way, just the way that, um, is fun for my, like, masochistic brain, is that AT&T bought DirecTV for about 49 billion, if I remember correctly, um, post, the new version of DirecTV is now worth 16.25 billion dollars, and this is the best part, I, I think about, can't stop thinking about this. Which they'll get $7 billion in cash, to which they will then pay down their debt that they incurred buying DirecTV. Like, it's just, it's, it's one of those things where you're like, maybe when people raised questions about certain acquisitions, like, we should listen, because this whole thing can be avoided.

• 1:18:36Nilay Patel?

  I just like, wouldn't have DirecTV have been like, man, we should do internet access. And like, been ahead of Starlink, as opposed to Elon being like, I have an idea for a 45th company, and I'm the only person in America who can execute. So I'm gonna do Starlink, right? Like, instead of AT&T, just like, mismanaged it.

• 1:18:52Speaker 07

  I just like, really want to reiterate for listeners, the satellite business has been steadily declining for several years. Like, it was steadily declining by 2015. And the best part that AT&T can do now, I think, if I remember correctly off the top of my head, they lost like 618,000 customers in their last quarter. So they had 16.2 or 3 million customers left on this satellite business. And the way that they talked about this was by saying, well, it's not as bad as it's been. You only had the company six years. It should not have been bad at all.

• 1:19:26Nilay Patel?

  Amazing. Well, combine that with the universe, combine it with their AT&T TV, which used to be called DirecTV now. They're just gonna sell that to someone, right? Who are they gonna sell that to?

• 1:19:37Speaker 07

  Yeah. So the way it has now, so they have 70% stake in it, 30% stake is now belonged to TPG, if I remember correctly. I don't actually know what the company is. Like, I don't know if it's like an investment thing. But yeah, I think the idea, based on the tweets that I saw, I haven't listened to the call yet, but I'm going to right after this, if it's posted, is the idea is that they're gonna sell it off. I mean, their whole, like, parts, they're not selling HBO Max, this is not part of the deal, they're not giving up the Latin America, they're not getting regional sports. There's a few things that AT&T is going to keep. And I think that's their way of saying, like, this makes sense for what we want to do with our product. And our product is HBO Max, that they haven't tried away from that, it's Warner Media. And I think at this point, they're

• 1:20:17Speaker 07

  just trying to divest as much of DirecTV as they can without it being a total embarrassment.

• 1:20:23Nilay Patel?

  Can I just read this? So TPG is a private equity firm, TPG Capital. I'm reading the press release. The two parties will establish a new company named DirecTV. Parentheses, new DirecTV.

• 1:20:37Nilay Patel?

  18T's US fitnesses consisting of DirecTV. It's like, what did you do?

• 1:20:46Nilay Patel?

  Like, our new company, DirecTV, will be called New DirecTV. It's great. I'm very, uh, very excited about this. I can't wait for my parents to continually be upsold U-verse services. All right, Julie, are you gonna subscribe to Paramount Plus?

• 1:20:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:21:00Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:21:02Nilay Patel?

  Do they have Top Gun? This is my number one question. There's a new Top Gun movie. Do they have it?

• 1:21:06Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah. So, no. Well, no. What they, what they do have, every answer is so complicated. You're like, oh, uh, what they are gonna do, uh, is certain movies will premiere on Paramount Plus forty-five day, thirty to forty-five days after they're in theaters. So, uh, Mission Impossible VII and A Quiet Place Two will be on Paramount Plus forty-five days after they're in theaters. And then other movies, Top Gun Maverick, uh, Bond, will be on Paramount Plus ninety days after they're in theaters. And so the first one means is that they're following in the footsteps of, of, uh, NBC Universal and a couple of other companies who are like, there's no such thing as a theater window anymore. We're just gonna do it ourselves, figure out how we bring this product to our streaming platforms to bring in subscribers,

• 1:21:50Speaker 07

  um, which we know Warner Media totally got rid of when they said, we're just gonna put it on HBO Max Day One. Uh, and their whole thing is like, we'll do that, we'll follow forty-five days and then we'll move it over. Um, and then their big ones which make money in theaters, they're gonna basically make the pay one window, which is the big window that they would usually give to HBO or, or Showtime. Uh, they're gonna put that on Paramount Plus first and foremost.

• 1:22:12Nilay Patel?

  So I'm gonna end up having to subscribe to Paramount Plus to watch the Top Gun movie.

• 1:22:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, like, obviously, I have to, I condemn piracy, but...

• 1:22:21Speaker 02

  Wow. You know, you could, you could just, you just rent it. You just pay, pay six bucks and rent it.

• 1:22:29Speaker 07

  I don't think the renting is six bucks anymore. I think it's like twenty bucks to rent. Like, it's like, it's...

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, once it hits like the lot, the later rental window.

• 1:22:36Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, like on YouTube.

• 1:22:39Nilay Patel?

  Why would I pay in time when I can pay in money? I'm getting older, Dieter. All right, we, we're way over. We gotta stop this. We gotta wrap this up. Thank you to Julia. Thank you to Allison. Thank you to Ashley. What a wild show. This is a good one. You can tweet at us if you want to give us feedback. Julia is at Loudmouth Julia. Allison, by the way, first time on the Vergecast. Allison is great. She is Allison Joe one on Twitter. Ashley is Ashley R. Carmen. Dieter is at Backlon. I'm at Reckless. We love hearing from you. Please tell me if you're going to subscribe to Paramount Plus. I'm dying to know this information. Also, if you can help me figure out how to get my parents off of U-verse, that would be great. Just an ongoing problem for me. We'll be back next week with more Vergecast. We got Decoder coming

• 1:23:23Nilay Patel?

  next week. Austin Russell, he is the 25-year-old CEO of Luminar, which is a LIDAR company. That company just went public. He is now a 25-year-old billionaire CEO of a LIDAR company. The run of 20-something CEOs making me feel old on Decoder continues apace. That's coming up next week. That's it. Rock and roll. Wear a mask.

• 1:24:01Speaker 08

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