Big Technology Podcast - X's CEO Speaks, AI's Real Impact On Hollywood, The Streamflation Crisis — With Julia Boorstin

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

Julia Boorstin is a senior media and tech correspondent at CNBC and author of When Women Lead: What We Achieve, Why We Succeed and What We Can Learn. She joins Big Technology Podcast this Friday to break down the week's news. We cover: 1) Linda Yaccarino's message to advertisers 2) X's goal of becoming an "everything app" 3) AI and the Hollywood Strikes 4) Disney's entrance into sports betting. 5) "Streamflation" 6) Julia's book, and the positive financial impacts of female leadership and representation. 7) A preview of the upcoming Code conference. Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [e-mail]

An All-Star CNBC correspondent and author joins us to discuss ex-CEO Linda Yakarino's first big interview, whether AI will really change Hollywood and plenty more of this week's news right after this. Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday edition where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We have an amazing guest joining us today. Julia Borsten is here. She's a senior media and technology correspondent at CNBC

and the author of When Women Lead, What We Achieve, Why We Succeed, and What We Can Learn. We're going to talk about all. that and more. Julia, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's always so fun to talk to you on CBC. Now I'm talking to you on your turf. Yeah, it's so great to have you on the show. It was really great catching up with you at CNBC's CEO summit a few months back. And I think the podcast has like a parade of guests that have come on from that event. So really enjoyed that. And I'm glad to have a chance to speak with you at length here.

I'm so happy to be here, a big fan of the podcast. Always happy to interview you on CNBC. So glad to have the tables turned. Awesome. Great. Well, let's turn those tables then. So to bring everything together, CNBC had Linda Yaccarino, who's the CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter, on for an interview this week. She explained whether, you know, she was actually running the show or Elon was running the show. She talked about the business model. She talked about the strategy. Okay, I came away a little bit confused, not because of Sarah Eisen's questioning, but because of Linda's answers.

And generally, I'm, you know, she comes from the ad world. You know, I started my career in advertising. I'm willing to hear what she has to say. But there was a little bit of confusion in the fact that she talked about X being an everything app and X being this place for real-time communication. And it's like you can be, that's my perspective, you can be in everything up, you can be the real-time app. It's really tough to be both. I'm kind of curious what your reaction was to her comments. Well, I thought the interview was great.

My colleague Sarah Eisen did a great job. And I agree that there are various points of confusion to come out of this. I saw that CNN had criticized Linda's comments as not being effectively accurate. That it's hard to say. It's a private company. We don't have the numbers. We don't know exactly what's going on there. I thought that everything app thing is interesting.

The reality is that we just don't have everything apps in the U.S. the way they have them in Asia. And I think that Elon Musk has made it pretty clear that he'd love to have an everything app. But we don't have a model for that in terms of U.S. use cases. So it's incredibly ambitious. She talked about how the X-Rebrand was part of that ambition. It separates them from their legacy. They're going to be able to do more things if they're not tied to that very familiar brand of Twitter, which, by the way, is an incredibly valuable brand. And that was the question she faced. Like, why ditch something so iconic and valuable? And it really came into this idea of being an everything app. Linda, to me, sent a very clear message to advertisers. Her job is to She had a great run at NBC Universal, CNBC's parent company, my parent company, you know, bringing advertisers on board, infusing the company with technology in the way it targets and measures ads. And her job at Twitter I see is being first and foremost reassuring advertisers that this is a safe, effective platform and a place where they can confidently put their money. And I think she was very consistent in that message.

I mean, Elon is a Musk is a live wire. I mean, he's so unpredictable, and she was speaking very slowly, very intentionally. Even her tone to me was trying to communicate this is, I'm someone you could trust, and this is a platform you could trust. Do you think advertisers are going to hear that message and believe her and respond? I mean, also, like, I'm curious what you think about. Let me ask the two-parter here, because part of the reticence of advertisers to get on board with Twitter is the fact that the tech doesn't work so well.

So it is kind of interesting. I mean, I guess they've lost, they don't really have those bottom. of the funnel advertisers and they had like some success with the branding advertisers so you know now those branding advertisers i don't know if there's been a real pullback or they're just like in their own year of efficiency and trying to spend where the money works best but i am curious how you think this will land with madison avenue everyone's in their year of efficiency right it was yeah totally mark Zuckerberg said it first but everyone's in it you know i was at the can advertising festival in june and i was asking people you know obviously twitter was not there

Lindy Akrona was not there for the first time in over a decade. And I said, are people going to respond to her? Like, what's the word on the street? And I actually asked this question, both of Twitter and also of TikTok, because both have these, you know, different, slightly different concerns. Twitter, to me, the question is brand safety. Is this a place where you want to have your brand? Are you worried about hate speech?

Are you worried about the reported dramatic increase in hate speech? And ultimately, people said, people will spend money on ads if the ads really work exactly and i think there was this period and it doesn't really they're like hate speech yes as problematic but the ads won't work if they're next to hate speech um tick to china concerns if they're working we're going to be on on tic-tok until tic-tok get shut down if it does get shut down so i think fundamentally what this means for for twitter is that there was this question of whether the ads were working and they and especially with brand advertising it's much harder to measure that efficacy. Direct response advertising is so much easier to measure. And I think

that Linda Akrona, who did a lot on measurement at NBC Universal is going to try to do the same. The fact that she announced that they're going to bring back this ad counsel indicates to me that she's really trying to engage with advertisers. So I think that's going to work. I think advertisers did not like that Elon Musk so publicly derided them and said he didn't care about their perspectives and i think that i think that people remember linda's power and mbc universal and would like twitter to work that's the other thing is advertisers want these other platforms there's the digital duopoly one thing i heard a lot about in can and i continue to hear about is that they would love to have more options they're thrilled that tick to be so effective they want to have options

other than meta and google simply because those are the two platforms that have dominated the digital as landscape for so long and it's better for the brands if they have more places to go, especially as TV advertising sees a shrinking, you know, sort of a shrinking market. Yeah, one of the things Twitter's done recently, I think it's been sort of underappreciated is that they've changed the sponsored label

to one that you could hardly find, which is ad. And I know a lot of people who've like come to me and been like, I'm clicking on Twitter ads accidentally now because the ad label is now in the top right corner. And I guess that's one lever that you can pull is you can just sort of high, disclosure yeah but does that does that I don't think it's a wise move you know short-term gain but long-term challenges probably and then also our consumer is going to be frustrated and be less

likely to engage on the platform I mean there's so many times when it comes to Twitter I wish that it would sort of go public again so I could read its S-1 you know I I'm a huge dork who loves to read S-1s and I would love to read the S-1 of this company right now you know obviously yeah the risk factors all of those different things but yeah I think there there are different lever is to pull. And I think right now the one that Lindy Akrono is pulling is like getting the advertisers to sit down with her and making them feel like she's listening to them, which is something that has been gone for the past nine months. So do you think it's going to work? I can't predict. Too many wild cards. Yeah. I mean, do you think that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are going to

fight in the Coliseum? Like, I don't even know how to, you can ask that question, let alone answer it. I'm starting to think that their egos are so large that they, at this point, the one, it's like a game of chicken, right? The one that pulls out is all of a sudden going to be the losers. So I think they're just like their animosity towards each other and the fact that like people are encouraging them to do this. We'll bring them to whether it's the Coliseum or the octagon. They're going to go for it. That's my prediction. We live in an unpredictable world. So if that's happening, it's hard to predict whether or not the Twitter, otherwise known as X, will thrive as a platform. But one thing's for sure, Lindy Akrono, if that does happen, we'll use that cage match as

in marketing opportunity. No doubt about it. You know, one thing that I think is also being underappreciated about Twitter, they have now lowered the threshold to pay creators from 15 million impressions over three months to five million impressions over three months. Basically, it means if you're tweeting and you're getting a decent amount of reach, five million impressions is tough to reach, but not impossible. I feel like we've both done it or do it consistently.

Like, then you will get a cut of the ad revenue coming in. And these platforms, now you see there's Twitter, there's threads, There's, you know, blue sky, whatever. There's, you know, all the ones on the right. And, you know, cutting in creators is, I think, a brilliant move because it's ultimately going to keep people posting on this platform. And ultimately, the platform is all about the people. And that's an issue that Twitter has not really learned, hadn't really learned under

previous leadership. And I don't know, it seems like they're going to have a more vibrant platform because all these people are getting cut in on the deal. I totally agree. I mean, I think this fight for creators is what we're seeing play out, whether it's with YouTube. We'll see it with threads. It's obviously key to what's going on right now with Instagram and TikTok. And I think what's interesting about Twitter is that they hadn't really fostered that crater ecosystem. And now maybe it's in light of the writers and actors strikes or all of these different factors. But I think that's where the attention is shifting. And it needs to be a safe place for those creators also. I mean, I think when you talk about trust and safe. and all these teams that were fired under Elon Musk and now Lindy Akron is trying to bring back, you need a safe environment, not just for premium content, but also for creators. And I think that monetization piece is what will determine which of these platforms succeed. Absolutely.

And I think the threads piece is interesting too. I mean, it was fascinating to see the rush of people onto threads. I was one of those that first night just like watching the threads be posted and feeling like this is a real moment. And then you see the numbers drop off and you have to wonder, what is it going to take to keep people there, not just the big brands, not just following the tweets from the New York Times, but what's it going to take to keep the real content generators there who are maybe doing more than just posting headlines from newspaper articles. Absolutely. So my perspective on this is that it has to be the algorithm. And that's the thing that really confused me about what Lindyakarino was saying in this interview. By the way, I agree.

Great interview. It's like, you know, it's interesting to hear them. kind of come out and talk about what matters to them. And I heard the word real, or the words real time, like maybe 10 times in the first five minutes of that conversation and how, like, you're going to get 24-7 fomo if you're not on Twitter. But the algorithm really has shifted away from news, away from real time and more towards chat GPT influencers, which I'm sure you've seen and other sort of meme content. And threads made a very interesting decision when they said, and I think this is a terrible decision that they made, that Facebook made, when they said, we don't

really care or want news. Actually, the news and real-time information is going to be the way that these companies win. That's just my perspective. They added a following tab, you know, but it's all about how you adjust that for you algorithm that both of these platforms have. And I think the company that decides, okay, we're going to go all in on news, real-time information. We want to be the next platform where there's, let's say, you know, the plane that lands in the Hudson or the assassination of bin Laden. If you find this type of magnitude of news out first on our platform, that's going to be the one that that ends up winning what do you think about that yeah and i think it but it's like an expanded definition of news right i mean i remember um there was like a little earthquake in

la and my first instance and this is years ago my first instance was like i'm gonna go to twitter that's where i go to find out if there was an earthquake or if a bomb just went off what the hell's happening or you go to twitter and i think that my perspective is change over time you know then i started following the u.s geological thing to announce it you know to let me know where the earthquakes actually were and so it actually became a better place to follow expert sources. But then it just became so crowded with other things and this definition, what is news? Like there's only so much that to me feels meaningful as news. And I think the noise that threads is trying to avoid is the opinion and anger that can be attached to pieces of news.

And so there's a big difference between saying like what's actually happening right now to who's angry and yelling about what's happening right now. And I think that Twitter has become a lot more of the latter, which is just a lot less enjoyable to engage with. And I think that Threads is trying to be something a lot more adjacent to Instagram, which is more pleasant and less angry. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The thing is. And we'll see it. We'll see if it works. And either could become more like the other. Totally. And when that earthquake happens, you know, you want to see the news of it. Like you mentioned, you don't want to see like how to be great at chat GPT or the latest stuff that tied. But I actually only really want to follow. I just really want to get.

information from whatever the local, you know, measurement agency is from an actual government agency and not from someone, um, speculating about it. Yeah. So speaking of earthquakes in LA, there's a big labor dispute going on in that part of the world, um, with Hollywood, uh, writers and actors on strike. And you know, you're, you've been covering this, uh, pretty in depth. And I've really been pumped to, um, that we were going to speak about it. And I've been waiting to have you on the show to discuss this first of all the talks are resuming today um yeah perfect timing for us to be talking yeah i wonder if it's like a distraction from like the actual core of what's going on but the undercurrent has been whether a i is going to replace hollywood actors and riders and i don't know

when i hear about that like i kind of think that like it's a issue that the actors and writers are using to sort of uh rally support to say we're going to be replaced and you're going to be replaced if you don't support us and the studios are saying we are going to, you know, use this technology to replace you if you don't cave to our demands. But the technology isn't there yet, not anywhere close, at least from what I've seen. So it seems like they're just, it's a lot of talking about this issue, but the real issues are basically the same as they've always been in every labor dispute, which is pay in working conditions. What do you think? Well, I would actually, I would actually disagree with you on that. I, and I'll address the AI piece, but I think fundamentally, this

writers and actors strike is about technology. And it's about the technological innovation of the past 15 years since there was the last writer's strike, which is in the last 15 years, you've seen the rise of streaming and a total transformation of the entertainment industry really because of streaming. So the first issue that's at the heart of these negotiations, and there are really three main issues for the writers. The first issue is compensation for streaming. A lot of streaming compensation is flat fee payment. And writers and actors do not get paid in success. In TV, it's very different. If a TV show is syndicated and it plays over and over and over and there are ads attached to it, then you get paid more, the more people

see your content. It makes sense, especially if the platforms are making more revenue from advertising. Up until very recently, there was no ads on Netflix. There were no ads on Disney Plus. So it makes sense to me that writers or actors are saying, hey, you profit more, not just on a flat fee basis, but also an advertising basis of our content is more successful and we want to be paid more in success. So I think that the first and key point here is payment based on the technological impact of the streaming revolution and adjusting compensation on streaming to match that. So I think that's the first technological revolution. So that's the last 10 years. Looking at the next 10 years, the question is AI. And I think that it makes sense that this is about how tech is going to change.

people's jobs, consumption of content, and how should you be paid fairly based on that? The AI piece is really interesting to me because, yes, there are so many unknowns. And what they're negotiating over in many ways is to set a regular cadence of evaluation of this, because we don't even know what the capabilities are going to be in two or three years.

And these contracts have an impact, not just on this generation of writers, but even on writers who are just starting their careers right now. go back to the 1988 writer strike, the issues that were negotiated then still have an impact decades later. To me, the AI piece has a couple of elements to it. One is, you know, if you're a studio, part of the AMPTP and you employ writers, you have to employ writer-skilled writers, and you have to pay them based on certain rules. They want to make sure that AI is not being used to rewrite their content and that their content is not being used to train AI.

So this is one of these complex things is they want protections around it. And basically, they're saying until the AI is part of the Writers Guild, you have to treat me as a writer's guilt writer and not let this effectively non-WGA entity, which is AI, rewrite my work. I actually don't think it's totally irrelevant because people are already using AI to brainstorm. So many writers I know use it as a brainstorming tool. If they're trying to, you know, sort of like a thesaurus in many ways, like trying to come up with another word for something or another way of describing something. So I don't think it's totally

irrelevant. And then on the actor's side, I did an amazing story, which I want all your readers to go check out with NBC Nightly News showing it how the visual effects technology is being totally transformed by AI. And this was back in, I think, April. So before the strike started, we worked with these companies that did an AI scan, I did a 3D scan on my face. And then they basically created a mask of my face that someone could wear by standing in front of a camera. So you could clone me, and we were joking about how, like, I wouldn't have to wake up in four in the morning because you've just, someone else could wear my face and do my report. But the reality is that this is great technology that studios want to use for things like

stunt doubles. If you could scan an actor's face, then you could have a stunt double, do the stunt with the actor's face on them and the like. Or we did another demo of turning me with a company called Wonder Dynamics walking, you know, down a movie set. could turn me into a robot or an alien and save literally hundreds of hours of work that needed to be done previously. So I think there's the piece of this where this AI technology is going to accelerate processes and help cut costs, and that is something that's true across many industries. But there is a sort of protection issue where when I was doing this scan of my face, the company

had to reassure me that they were going to get rid of all of the data and not use it or license it out and have them able to profit from it. takes up a lot of space, so they would be happy to delete it after the fact. But writers want to make sure that they're not going to be rewritten without their consent by non-WGA entity, and actors want to make sure that their image and likeness is not going to be used without their permission and without them profiting from it. So I think it's complicated, and no one knows where this is going to all go. But if technology is the driver of change in the industry makes sense that the are key sticking points right now.

Totally. So here's the pushback to the writers and the actors. And maybe there's somewhere in the middle. But I want to at least pose it to you and kind of hear what you think about this, thinking about their perspective. So we've had a number of conversations on this show with, you know, people in the tech world, investors and CEOs talking about the impact on jobs. And almost every one of them says this will lead to net addition of jobs and net addition of creativity. So for instance, Aaron Levy, who's the CEO of Box, was here a couple weeks ago and talked about this from a, you know, a creator's perspective where if you're a director, you waste a ton of time figuring out what shot, what angle, you know, when you're going to do it,

and then you're effectively, your creativity aperture is limited because you spend all this time working on the logistics. And he talks about how maybe generative AI could, for instance, let the director pick from those hundred different shots, and then they go shoot the best one. We also like this week in big technology, and it's going to be syndicated in the Boston Globe, which I'm pretty stoked about. We wrote a story, Doug and I, about how looking at various different industries and how this AI threat has impacted them. One of them is the legal industry, and there's already technology out there that can

scour documents and you can converse with them. It could do basic discovery for you. it can highlight differences and the firms that are using this stuff have not actually you know fired lawyers same with radiologists by the way i mean there's some interesting studies coming about about whether a i is actually helping radiologists but for company for organizations like the mayo clinic which have AI in place detecting different structures within the body um they're actually using this to make up for staffing shortages and they're using this to be more effective as you know in their radiology work So I'm curious, and this is kind of way, and maybe I'm fighting a losing battle here,

but this is why I'm curious about whether this is like, you know, how big of an issue this is going to be in the future, because ultimately it seems like in most industries, this is something that augments versus replaces or even minimizes the amount of work that creative people need to do. What do you think? Well, look, I think what you're effectively talking about is AI being an efficiency tool. And I've been doing a series for CNBC and that, that, um, visual effects story I did for NBC Nightly News as part of it, we're calling it AI impact. And what I fundamentally believe is that separate from the chat GPTs of the world, AI is

going to have an impact on every single industry, whether it's advertising or the legal field or medicine. It will, it will offer new tools. Many times that will be sort of dramatically enhanced capabilities, whether it's for a surgeon in the operating room, looking for real time guidance, or whether it's for lawyers getting the power of a million paralegals at their face. fingers at the touch of a button. So I have no doubt that efficiency is going to be a key benefit of AI. I think the creative fields are a funny thing, in part because of this question of whether, you know, art is all derivative in some way, shape, or form.

And you could go back to sort of those iconic Shakespearean narratives to think about sort of the underlying narratives that inspire every writer or director or creator. But I think there's this question of whether it makes sense to have my content as a creator, train AI to create content at a lower cost. And in debating this with a lot of people, because I love to talk about AI, it's all I think about on many days, I think the shift is going to be away from whether or not it's a good thing or a bad thing, but more towards this question of attribution. And I think that writers and actors would be more okay.

I don't say they would be okay, I can't speak on behalf of them. I'm neither a writer nor an actor. But I think that there is a sense that AI would be more fair if attribution is given. So for instance, you know, for actors, if they license, if they are, if their images and their performances are being used to train AI, why not give them a cut of payment on that? Or for writers, if their script is being used to train AI, they should get a percentage royalty anytime part of their work is used in the creation of content for something else. So I think the rise of focus on attribution is going to be the real conversation in the next

couple of months. And I think that the commentary that we got from News Corp in their earnings yesterday, I don't know how much you caught of this, but the CEO Robert Thompson said that they see AI is a great opportunity, not just in driving efficiency, but also from a monetization standpoint. Barry Diller, he's been leading the charge with a bunch of publishers saying they're going to make sure they get paid if their content is used by AI. I think that yes, it can be a great tool. Yes, all content is in some way inspired by something else. I think truly derivative content that at this point is just created by AI, it's not

going to be as effective as something that has a human voice. I mean, I think the success of something like Barbie or Oppenheimer, which is, you know, really has a human touch and like a clear artistic vision of a person is always going to be, or at least for now, going to be more effective but I think the real question is just if if human content is training AI what is the attribution model going to be so those people get paid yeah that's what I want to ask you about like how do you negotiate this I mean it's such it seems like so much of it is still so far in the future when when you think about these two sides sitting down at the bargaining table like do they kind of like sit down is it kind of like writing a show where they sit down and dream up like the

different possibilities and they're like all right well if this happens like then we'll do this well you mean you mean between the writers and the and the studios and ptb i think this i think this is a broader question just than the writers in the studios i think right now we have a world where you have barry diller leading the publishers you have robert thompson at news corp they're saying if our content goes into any of your AI engines and it is spitting out free answers for people you're going to pay us this becomes a legal battle and i'm sure there's going to be a new generation of lawyers that is expert and these AI issues and they're going to have very very lucrative careers. I think between

the writers and the and the AMPTP at this point, they just want some basic guarantees and probably the promise of a meeting every year and to be able to renegotiate the AI issues every year. Interesting. Yeah, you have to just put it in the future. Exactly. Yeah, we had Matt Wood from Amazon Web Services who runs their, he's VP of product there and he does like a lot of the AI stuff. And I asked him like, well, are you, are you, because they're building their own models. And I'm like, are your models ingesting big technology content? Can you say definitively that you're not?

And he's like, yeah, we probably are. And if so, like, why are you protesting? And that was like kind of high opening for me. Yeah. Yeah. But then attribution is the new name of the game. Absolutely. Julia Birsten is here with us.

She is a correspondent at CNBC and has a great. book out called When Women Lead. We're going to talk about that and more when we come back on the other side of this break. And Julia, before we go to break, I just want to say we got some fans here, Joffrey Khalid, who's watching with us on LinkedIn, calls you the best reporter for media and tech news and what's going on behind the scenes. I agree with that. Thank you for the feedback, Joffrey. We'll be back right after this. Hey, everyone. Let me tell you about the Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news, and original stories to keep you in the loop on what's trending. More than two million

professionals read The Hustle's daily email for its irreverent and informative takes on business and tech news. Now, they have a daily podcast called The Hustle Daily Show, where their team of writers break down the biggest business headlines in 15 minutes or less, and explain why you should care about them. So, search for The Hustle Daily Show and your favorite podcast app, like the one you're using right now. And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast Friday edition with Julia Borsten. She is a senior media and technology correspondent at CNBC and the author of when women lead, what we achieve, why we succeed in what we can learn. It's available and out now. So go pick up a copy. One more media story to go with before we jump into the book

and then preview the code conference, which you're going to be a big part of, Julia. So I think it feels like Disney, and maybe it's a broader question than this, has been floundering a little bit. Obviously, there's leadership issues. We now, there's a story this week that they're going to start enabling online betting. Very interesting also that the Barstall Sports has sort of announced a divorce with Penn Gaming. So I'm kind of curious what you think about that because that was supposed to be the ultimate like content and sort of commerce or gaming partnership. But it seems like with a company like Disney, there's been, you know, obviously the leadership, the strategy. It seems like it's flailing. And I'm kind of curious as someone

who watches this company so closely, can you make sense of what's happening there? or what's going on with the strategy? So I wouldn't say that Disney is failing. I would say that the whole industry is under a lot of pressure. And I think that every media company was chasing Netflix and wanting to be valued like Netflix, i.e. like a tech company, when they were all really media companies. And ultimately, they were chasing subscriber growth.

And at the end of the day, they had to realize that they're not going to be measured on subscriber growth, but on profitability. And I think even Netflix realized that they had to no longer just chase these subscriber numbers, but think more about profitability. And there's been a whole reshaping in the industry as a result of that. The question is how much is broken because they chase these metrics that ultimately are less relevant in the real world and certainly less relevant now and going into next year. Disney is interesting, and I've been covering this industry for 17 and a half years at CNBC. I've been at CNBC for forever. And I remember the moment when Bob Eiger said in an interview and an earnings interview one August that ESPN was having some real issues and that cord cutting was starting to become really problematic.

That was the interview where I was like, now the whole industry is changing. And it really was changing in large part because of streaming. The fact that ESPN is finally making a big sports betting partnership and teaming up with Penn Sports is just the latest iteration of trying to transform the profitability and focus, to transform the company to, focus on profitability and to reinvent itself away from a reliance on linear television. ESPN stayed away from sports betting for so long because of concerns about betting not being family friendly and Disney being a big family company. The reality is that the world has changed. I cannot wait for there to be like a sports book inside the Magic Kingdom. Maybe at California Adventure. They allow alcohol in California Adventure. They might in California Adventure.

Not in at Disneyland proper. To me, it's just that the world, has changed if you have 16 states where you can operate legally and it's just not as big of a thing anymore and i think this is just catching up with culture and it's it feels it feels fine from a brand perspective um but i think there's this bigger question of it's low-hanging fruit they're going to generate 150 million dollars in revenue that's most in profits it's really going to flow straight to the bottom line and then there's more upside from there and then i think this also you know really fits into the other changes that we've seen out of the company also this week disney announced major price hikes for their streaming apps that do not have ads in them.

So if you want ad-free Disney Plus or ad-free Hulu, they're raising the prices by $3 a month for each of those apps. That is a meaningful price increase. What they're really trying to do is drive subscribers towards the ad-supported models, dual revenue stream. They get a subscription revenue. They also get ad revenue. This is like back to the old cable TV days, but they love the dual revenue stream. And this is all part of this trend that I'm calling

streamflation. You heard it here first, streamflation, all the streamers, because they're so focused on profitability, they are going to be raising prices. And I think this is going to push consumers to decide, do they want to watch ads, just like the old days? Or are they going to figure out which of these services are not essential and drop some of them. I signed up for HBO Max this week. Or I guess it's just called Max. Yeah, which is like, I had HBO Max on my phone. And I was like, all right, renew. And it's like, you need to download a new app called Max. Very. confusing. So anyway, speaking of rebrandings going on. And you didn't, and you didn't decide to dump it. They have been having some turn issues because they know that a lot of people will find that friction. Well, I had dumped it. So I, you know, it's expensive. It was like $16 per month without ads. And I hadn't had it for probably like a year or something like that. But I signed up for two reasons. One, the Jets are on hard knocks. So I have to watch that. And then two, my wife and I, we, and I'm really late to the game, but we just started watching Game of

Thrones. Let me tell you guys. If you haven't watched Game of Thrones, my doing to check it out. I thought it was probably a time. She'd read the book and was talking to me about it. I was like, all right, let's watch this show. Great show. But yeah, I'm astonished at how much at how much it costs. And this idea of streamflation really is like, it's so true. I mean, everything's going up across the board. Spotify, raise their prices. And then also NFL just yesterday announced that for their streaming services, they are raising prices as well. Sports. It's It's going to be the only game in town this fall with no new scripted shows coming to the TV because of the strike. So I think there's me a big focus on sports.

And I think everyone's trying to figure out how high prices need to go for profitability, how much consumers are willing to pay. But just this week has been a slew of price increases. Yeah. And so last question for you about this. You mentioned sports. I'm just kind of curious, how big is how big of a role does sports still play? or is it like basically the only thing keeping the bundle intact outside of CNBC? You know, I'm curious, like, because, like, you know, ESPN and Disney, right?

You're already saying that, like, it's kind of leading them to places that aren't traditional for Disney, like, betting. But it's obviously so crucial to the business that it has to be there. So as far as, like, the whole TV ecosystem goes, like, where do sports fit in? And do they even get further solidified now in the middle of this strike? Well, I've always said sports is the glue holding the cable bundle together. If you wanted, up until recently, if you wanted to watch live sports, you paid for a paid TV bundle. You had no choice. That was it. That was your one game in town. And as Netflix started, you know, emerging and all these other streaming services, HBO Max, etc.,

you still needed cable TV or a bundle through Hulu or YouTube or one of these other players if you wanted sports. There was a big shift last year when the NFL took its Thursday. games to Amazon. That marked a change. This is the second year of that. Now you can do NFL Sunday ticket, not through DirecTV, but you could do it through YouTube. So we're starting to see this dispersion of sports rights onto these streaming platforms. On one hand, it's going to be challenging and that consumers are going to have to really know where to go for which games. It's insane trying to figure out what's not blacked out and what's available. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one reason we did see the Thursday night ratings decline a bit, although Roger Goodell and other people,

the NFL have said that they do expect the ratings to inch back up once people get used to the cadence of where to find things. I think what's so interesting about what Bob Eiger has said about ESPN, he has said it is, it's not a matter of if but when they bring ESPN content direct to consumer. That doesn't mean that ESPN content is not going to also be on TV, but they want to negotiate their rights so they have the ability to both stream direct to consumer for cord cutters and cord nevers, a whole generation people have never paid for pay TV. and they also want to have it on TV. They will probably get paid less for those cable TV rights

just because of the fact that it's more ubiquitous. But I think just this question of what happens when ESPN really goes to direct-to-consumer and what kind of negative impact that has on the pay TV numbers, I think that's going to be really meaningful. I'll also point out that David Zaslov, in his Warner Brothers discovery earnings, he said, we have the rights to take a lot of our sports rights

like the NBA direct-to-consumer. And the question is how they do that and how they incorporate live sports into their app, Max, which you just mentioned. Once sports is no longer unique to the bundle, that's when I think we'll see numbers fall even further. There will always be a percent of the population, particularly older people who keep paying for TV. But you mentioned it's hard to find, figure out where things are. That complexity is something that I do think needs to be figured out. But if Bob Eiger can get the leagues to invest in ESPN, which he is trying to do, and he can get the four major leagues to invest, then it'll be an incentivized for the leagues as well as ESPN to take everything direct to consumer as well as on linear and figure out just the best way to monetize. Yeah.

Yeah. Something has to change there because I feel like every Sunday, especially when I lived in San Francisco trying to figure out how to get East Coast football on. I mean, my laptop was halfway out the window. It was very, very frustrating. I bet the NFL has a product for that. They're willing to charge you to make that easier, I'm sure. No, but I was paying, so this was a few years ago. I won't belabor the point, but it was a few years ago.

I was paying like $150, like $200 a month to watch the NFL. And yeah. And it was too much. And if the jets were in California, like let's say they were even down visiting like the Chargers in L.A. And I was living in San Francisco blacked out. So like, I was paying all this money. I couldn't get any of the games.

So, I mean, there is incentive you're right to figure it out. It's just like, anyway, it's been a bit of a slog. I do wonder where it goes from here. But, like, eventually it will get figured out. And then the question is, like, what happens to TV? So, all right, let's... But you go back to the advertising piece, live TV, live sports. It's the most valuable ad time period.

Yes, definitely. So, I don't know. Curious to see where it goes. Let's talk about this book, When Woman Lead. You got it. Got it here. It's been out for a few months. you know, I thought the book was interesting for a couple of reasons.

First of all, like, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but it almost seemed like a manifesto of sorts to people making the hiring decisions at the top of companies, showing all the, like, the positive attributes of like what happens when you have women on your leadership team. You know, am I getting that right? Like, it really, it was. 100%. And, you know, as I was reading through it, I found some of these like amazing statistics that you, that you highlight here.

So, for instance, when it comes to fiscal responsibility, women in leadership tend to be more responsible on the fiscal end, direction of companies, right? When women are in the management teams, companies have higher scores from employees who believe that they know where the company is heading. And then the finance stuff is fairly, is remarkable that companies with women in leadership have 48% higher earnings and they are 1.7% more. their growth on the stock market is 1% more than they would be otherwise and then you look at Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley 3% of VC funding to women and 42% that number is declined now it's less than 2% less than 2 which is wild and you have 40 42% of small businesses are owned by women so you know I just threw out a bunch of statistics there but if people are like who are listening are in are in position to make management hires what do you think?

think that they should make of all of this? And what would you share to share with them after writing the book? Yeah. I mean, you're you're absolutely right. And yes, everyone should go and go out and read or listen to the book. And it is a bit of a manifesto. And it was very much inspired by my reporting at CNBC. I mean, I've been at CNBC for 17 years. And I saw this massive disconnect. And as journalists, whenever we see disconnect, we're always curious about it. But disconnect between the statistics I was reading and finding about how female-led companies perform better. They either go public or sell a year earlier on average. They yield higher returns to their investors.

Public companies led by female CEOs outperform. I was seeing all these statistics, and I was personally meeting all these female CEOs, many of whom are running companies for the Disruptor 50 list, that I helped run. And I was really inspired by them, and there's some balance of long-term, short-term thinking and strategy, particularly. around crisis. So the numbers and my personal experience as a reporter indicated that the female leaders have so many advantages that it didn't make sense to me that at the same time I was seeing all these crazy statistics about how underrepresented they are. The statistic that's stuck in my head that really is irrational is the fact that now it's less than 2% of all venture capital dollars

go to female founders. And so what I wanted to do was highlight how irrational that disconnect. was. And I think that the media narrative has been so much about elevating and celebrating these male CEOs that the pattern matching in the industries to say, who's the next Mark Zuckerberg? And yes, everyone wants to invest in the next Mark Zuckerberg. He's a genius who created this multi-billion dollar phenomenon. But I think that as part of that narrative, the focus on female founders who are just as smart and have just, you know, similarly innovative ideas has been overlooked. So the goal of my book is really to highlight why this disconnect is irrational and how whether it's managers or investors, they need to be stripping out their, the negative

impact and pattern matching. And I don't even use the term unconscious bias, but what's effectively unconscious bias, to see the opportunity that is sometimes right in front of them and very much overlooked. And I actually think that now more than ever, coming out of the pandemic, the leadership skills and strategies that women are more likely to deploy are more important now than ever. You can't lead a company without having a communal leadership style and pulling in perspectives from across an inevitably far-flung and oftentimes hybrid organization. You know, the value of empathy is a negotiating tactic is enormous. So I think it's really about focusing on the data over the patterns that have existed for centuries, and that's where you're going to find the real untapped

opportunity. I think, I was thinking about how I, when you were speaking about how I, I was speaking to a group of male private equity and VC. I mean, I was speaking to a group of private equity and VC investors, the vast majority of whom were male, and they tend to be male. And they were saying to me, two came up to me afterwards and said, it sounds like what you're talking about here is an arbitrage opportunity. I was like, that's exactly how I see it. But it's just, It's been fascinating to talk about the book over the past months being on book tour and also seeing the reaction both from women and also from companies who are now struggling to retain senior talent. Right around when my book came out, there was a study that came out from

Lena and McKinsey that said that women at the VP level and above are leaving their jobs in record numbers. And that has massive ripple effects on the culture, not just on younger female employees but also on male employees and so I think it's really important to understand what where these disconnects are and how to identify them let's talk about horse racing one of the most interesting anecdotes in your story is that horse racing is the only sport where men and women compete against each other or maybe is that's correct yeah male and female jockeys so you have their mixed gender teams like in sailing and tennis but um I love this horse racing study I'm glad to like that one yeah yeah so can you talk a little bit about what you learn from from seeing the study of

it was very interesting i guess a theme today is like betting but like betters get it wrong when they're betting on the female jockeys yeah so the way so for my book i interviewed 120 people and then i sort of went down various rabbit holes reading academic research to try to understand why women's approaches were more effective but also to try to understand why some of these disconnects were happening there are such massive gender gaps. And I found these amazing studies, including this particular one about jockeys, that illustrate why people are underestimated

if they are not seen frequently in a certain role. So this great jockey study that I love so much, I actually led a chapter with it that I loved it so much. It basically explains why. The data was analyzed of people betting on on jockeys, female jockeys versus male jockeys. And what the research found is that the, The fewer women, fewer female jockeys there were in certain types of races, like hurdle

races, the more the betting public assumed that those women were going to be bad in that category. And so the more underrepresented a person or type of person is in a role, the more the natural human instinct is to assume that they're not going to be good in that role. Female CEOs are rare, therefore female CEOs must not be very good. That is the natural human assumption. And what I found so interesting is that it's not malice. People aren't saying, I don't want to like female CEOs. They're saying, I don't see a lot of female CEOs.

So therefore, they must not be good in those roles. And the betting data was so interesting that people are betting against their own best interest because they're so influenced by these longstanding patterns. Yeah. And then this follow-up piece of data was so interesting to me. Just right from the book, the same study found that when female CEO appointees, generated a significant amount of media attention the day of the announcement, the company's stock price declined an average of 2.5% in the immediate aftermath. With minimal or no attention,

that stock price rose about 2%. I mean, holy crap. Speaking of arbitrage opportunities, like when you see a lot of attention toward a female CEO and buy that stock. I mean, it depends on the nature of that attention, but it makes me understand why a lot of female founders are really wary of press attention. There have been a lot of a lot of negative stories about female CEOs, many times for the same behavior that goes unnoticed when it comes from a male CEO. All right. Let's end with the plug. You're going to be at the Code Conference. You're going to be there headlining it with Casey Newton and Eli Patel. Talk a little bit about what people can expect when it is, why they should go. I'm so excited. Code Conference,

September 26 and 27th in Southern California. It's going to be so much fun. We are, Nile and Casey and I are taking over for Kara Swisher. She will be there. She's going to be doing an interview. And it's going to be different. We are not Kara Swisher. She is a legend. We are going to be doing our own spin on things, our own take. We have an amazing lineup, including Lindyakarino. It's going to be her next big interview. So ex-CEO Lindy Akronino. I can't wait to see what happens with X in the next month and a half. So we will surely have a very lively conversation about everything she's dealing with there. We have a range of big names, including Mary Barra, the CEO of GM, along with her head of AI, who they recently hired from Apple.

We're going to be talking about how she's transformed her automaker to really focus on EVs and how they're incorporating AI. We just announced that we've heard from Bumble is going to be joining us. She's going to be talking about how they're using AI and the role of technology and relationships. And as you can guess, AI is going to be a huge theme throughout the conference. So I think it's been a lot of fun. It's going to be a great group of attendees, great, amazing lineup on stage. Nilai and Casey are fantastic. And you don't want to miss it.

You're going to be there, aren't you? Yes, I am. Can't wait for it. Good. All right, Julia. Thank you so much for joining. This was awesome. So much fun to talk.

Really my pleasure, Alex. Having to come back anytime.