Morning Brew Daily - How The Writers and Studios Finally Struck A Deal & Tinder Goes Bougie

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Episode 154: Kyle Hagge joins the show! Toby and Kyle get into how the Hollywood writers and studios struck a tentative deal over the weekend to end the strike that lasted over 140 days. Plus, why Tinder is offering some users a $499 a month subscription tier, and why Lego is ditching their sustainability promise. The guys also share their winners of the weekend and explain how NASA brought asteroids to Earth. Finally, a glimpse into what we are watching this week. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Toby Howell. And I'm Kyle Hagey. On today's pod, at long last, the rioter strike may be coming to a conclusion after the two sides reached a tentative agreement, which means we can finally watch the Drew Barrymore show again. Yes, Drew Barrymore is back. We're also going to be talking about if you're single, get ready to dole out a little more cash. It's Monday, September 25th. Let's ride. Kyle, as always, good to have you back on the show again.

But before we jump in the news, we have to talk about what went here. down last night. Taylor Swift was officially spotted in the Kelsey's box at the Chiefs game. The rumors of their budding romance are true. Now, there is a small but vocal contingent of listeners to this podcast that say maybe we overindex on our T Swift coverage, but come on, she's everywhere these days. We can't not talk about it. I don't think it's possible to overindex on T Swift. I was a little heartbroken. I thought me and Taylor had a chance, but she's gone with the beautiful NFL player. It's tough. But it's incredible. She's feeling stadiums with her tours tour or heirs to her and then she's also like I'm just going to fill a stadium by

attending like every cut scene was Taylor Swift. They were all there to see her. The means were flowing but the funniest reaction I actually saw was our associate producer Sam came in this morning and she said that this was her version of the Roman Empire. That's how much she's been thinking about it. So the jokes were flowing. She's got our whole mind on lock. Tip Swift does. Absolutely. All right Kyle. Enough to you Swift talk. Let's jump into our top story of the day where after a hundred and four days, hours of negotiations, and lots of think pieces later, it appears the rioter strike is in its final innings. According to multiple reports, the Writers Guild of America and the labor group representing studios and streamers have reached a tentative agreement that could signal

the end of the historic strike. This was a whirlwind of the last seven days, Kyle. All the big studio names were present at a Thursday talk last week, including Disney's Bob Iger, Netflix's Ted Sarandos, and Warner Bros. Discovery's David Zaslap. that reportedly went on for 10 hours. But even after that marathon session, reports emerged that AI was the major hang-up before the deal could get done before the breakthrough was reached last night. Now remember, even though the union leaders have agreed to terms with the studios, the contract still needs to be ratified by WGA members to take effect. But the union's negotiating committee called the deal exceptional and said it provided meaningful gains in protections for riders, so it seems likely that it will be approved. And also, I just want to call out that this deal only involves the Writers Guild, not SAG Afterra, which includes all the actors.

That strike is still going on. But, Kyle, it remains to be seen what exactly is in this deal. But I can't believe this thing is almost over. 14 weeks. It's a long time. There is some unfortunate news in this deal, which is Jimmy Kimmel will be back on air. Just kidding, Jimmy. Yes, I mean, the strike began on May 2nd.

It was actually days away for being the longest work stoppage in the history of the WGA. WJ has over 11,000 members. And it's really interesting. You mentioned AI being a big deal here. We don't know the details, but emerging versions of this tech have already been used in films. And so they really wanted to get this kind of legally set, the constraint set before this continues to go on. They like de-aged Harrison Ford. They've been using Anthony Bourdain's voice in documentaries.

Obviously, he's no longer with us. So the tech is actually being rolled out, and they definitely wanted to get in front of that. Yeah, it is kind of crazy that AI. we weren't even really talking about before this year. And then this was the last thing that was hanging up this massive kind of deal between the writers and the streamers. And this strike, though, definitely has left its mark. Filming in Los Angeles declined 29% between April and June 2023 compared to the previous period last year. And then so many projects were put on hold from, I mean, Venom 3, Gladiator 2, Deadpool 3.

These are all the height of filmography right there. We were like weeks away from more reality TV thrown on us. so I'm glad they could reach a deal. Yeah, you mentioned Jimmy Kimmel, though. So it does look like the late night show hosts are probably going to be the ones to quickly come back the fastest just because their operations

can get back up to speed, unlike scripted television shows, which also is relying on the right, on the actor strike ending. You can't have a TV show if you don't have any actors. And so that's why it looks like, yeah, that five of Stephen Colbert,

Jim and Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Myers will all return probably on the same night, actually. so that's going to be a fun one. They've been hosting a podcast during the strike. Oh, really? It's a really six episodes so far. I don't know where they are on the charts compared to us, but I hope we're above them.

But then, yes, also the daytime talk shows like Drew Barrymore's show will be able to come back as well. So all those tearful apology videos on Instagram, if she had just waited a week, none of this would have happened. It's tough timing. I think the world probably heard Strike Force Five, and they're like, we got to finish this. We've got to finish this.

We got to wrap this stuff. Yeah. We'll move on to our next story, and I have some advice. If you're in a relationship, I need you to stay where you are because the price of dating just went up. No, I'm not talking about inflation, making your coffee date latte a tad more expensive. I'm actually talking about Tinder, which is rolling out an ultra-premium subscription tier called Tinder Select, which is going to charge users $499 a month for access to features like exclusive searching and matching. Now, this has already begun rolling out. It's only been offered to less than 1% of Tinder users

who are among the app's most active. So if you did get this notification, your screen time on Tinder must be through the roof. Maybe check in with yourself first, but their current power users, right? The top 10% of users by time spent on the app contribute to an average of 53% of total time spent this past year on Tinder.

And the company has actually seen declining subscriber numbers in each of the last three quarters, but it has managed to grow average revenue per user. Obviously, this new tier is going to help them continue to do that. Wall Street really likes this move, not just because they can now swipe right after getting off of work at 11 p.m., but analysts at JPMorgan and Chase actually raised their price target because of this new tier. So Toby, are you dropping $500 a month to keep getting ghosted?

I'm certainly not. Luckily, I am in a committed relationship, so I don't know if I will be testing out this feature, Celia. I do think that revenue per user statistic is very interesting because, yeah, it does seem like coming out of the pandemic where, again, we've seen this theme a lot where people are spending less times on their phone. That means less time swiping. And so how do you make money more off your users? And you look to the power users. Also, expensive and exclusive dating apps are definitely on the rise. I mean, in 2022, Match Group, who owns Tinder, bought the league, which was this invite-only dating app that targets ambitious career or in the rise.

singles, and they have a VIP plan that costs $1,000 per week, not even per month, per week. So it's crazy how it is interesting, too, to see that this per week pricing plan is now becoming more and more of a thing. Most usually software's price in month cycles, but for some reason, I think it's because people just oscillates back and forth between deleting. Wanting the app, deleting it. Yeah, deleting it, wanting it, deleting it. And so maybe you want that weekly plan instead of a monthly plan.

And so Hinge just rolled out our premium $60 a week plan as well. So we're seeing this shift into monetizing like the more week-to-week proclivities of people. I also like this because Tinder Select apparently was originally rolled out as invite only for, quote, hoties and celebrities. Maybe if you did get the notification means you're either hot or you're famous, so that's good. I do. I feel like they had to spin it because calling just your power users who just swipe constantly, it's much better to brand them as hot. and celebrities. They got the branding down

and yeah, match group. I mean, they own Tinder, I think, hinge the league like you mentioned. So they're really kind of controlling the dating experience for this generation. So be on the lookout for Tinder

499 premium feature set. Next story, Toby. Let's make this international. We're going to go to the town of Billund, Denmark. Not for its fantastic biking or great Nordic cuisine, but because it is the HQ

of the Lego group, which I do want want to say Lego, the name is derived from the Danish words, Leggot, meaning play well. So that's a fun fact for the audience. But why are we actually talking about Lego? Well, like many companies, it's really sought to reduce its overall carbon footprint. Consumers want companies to be more sustainable, and the earth is literally on fire. So they've tried to do this. However, they actually just abandoned their highest profile effort to ditch oil-based plastics from their bricks. Basically, after finding that if you can count the entire manufacturing process, the carbon footprint would actually be higher.

It really demonstrates, like, the complex tradeoffs you have to make to reach these sustainability goals. And it's not as simple as just subbing out one material for another because it has so many knock-on effects. It doesn't mean that Lego is making no efforts. I want to commend them. They're on track to eliminate single-use plastic bags used in packaging its bricks by 2025, which is very exciting. And they had a great quote from Neil Christensen, who's their chief executive, basically saying, quote, in the early days, the belief was that it was easier to find this magic material or this new material that would solve all our problems. And Lego now realizes it's not going to come down to one material. You have to look at this holistically.

What's sort out to you, Toby? This is such an interesting story to me because the material Lego uses is just so specific. And there's this couple of elements that they look for. They needed to be hard, scratch resistant. they needed to provide that color stability that Lego Bix are known for so they can't be fading they can't be changing colors if you store them in heat or cold and then it's also all about clutch power

which is how the bricks stay together like the friction the the Mew constant actually that allows them to be pulled apart in the right like the apply the right amount of force to pull them apart but they don't come across they don't come apart when you don't want them to so it is so interesting that yes Lego is committed to being sustainable, but they tried to roll out this new, different type of plastic

that was more sustainable, but it just wasn't performing the way they wanted it to. And yeah, and they found that revamping their entire factory system would actually cause it to be less carbon efficient than more. So, so interesting that, like, Lego and sustainability, Venn diagram is so interesting to me. The fact you just said clutch power and Mew Constant, your 10th grade science teacher is like, very happy, I did a great job. Yeah. I also think they're doing a big focus on this replay program, which is basically letting people donate their old bricks.

They're rolling them out to charities, but they do want to get the business model to where they can collect. Users would or customers would actually get paid to bring their Legos back, and then they would resell them. And so their main goal, yes, they want to lower their carbon footprint. The best way to do that is to reuse and not just recycle. So I thought that was really interesting. So it seems Lego is doing a lot in this space. It's also a giant company that $8.7 billion of revenue. revenue in 2022. And so many large companies are kind of facing this sustainability conundrum.

Yeah, I definitely do want to call out that Lego props to Lego because so many other companies they say like, oh, our goal is to be carbon neutral by and then they just insert X date. That is way out in the future. Yeah, the year 3000. Right. Exactly. But Lego said by 2030, they were looking at it. And so for them to put that target that's within our lifetime and then also come out and say, hey, listen, it didn't work. Like our big bet on this new material did. didn't work. I give them props for that because, again, they have, as you said, they're on the hunt for this magic new material that relies less heavily on oil-based plastic. But it's tough, man, that that Mew. That Mew will get you. That Mew will get you. That's the big takeaway from today's

pod. Absolutely. All right, Kyle, before we jump into our next story, we're going to take a quick break. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary.

You in? Must be 21 to enter. We're the Hartford, with decades of experience ensuring millions of unique small businesses when it comes to your small business insurance. Thank you. One size, absolutely, does not fit all. Get a quote or find an agent today at thehartford.com slash small business. All right, Kyle, it's Monday, so let's do our winners of the weekend segment

where we bring you two stories from the news that feature someone or something that had an especially good weekend. I won the pre-show game of who can do the best Neil impression. So I'm up first, and my winner of the weekend is Usher, because he's hosting the Super Bowl halftime show. And a year when Beyonce and T. Swift made all the headlines. it was a man who's been in residency in Las Vegas for the past two years who has landed the prime time show. One nugget I found especially interesting about the Super Bowl halftime show in general

is that Rock Nation, which is the management company founded by Jay-Z, is actually in charge of choosing who performs at the Super Bowl. They've been in a deal with the NFL since 2019, which means they've been behind the J-Lo, the weekend, that big Dr. Dre, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick show from two years ago. And of course, Rihanna, Last year. year. Kyle, I for one, am pretty excited about this. I feel like Usher has been in residency for the past few years, so people have stopped thinking about him a little bit. But all that means were people were coming to see him in Vegas rather than him coming to our cities. So are you excited about this choice? I'm very excited. I think about Usher every day. I will admit. No, I have a fun fact about Usher, and that is, it was my first ever concert. I went through it. It was like in ninth grade. I think that gave him a lot of confidence when he saw me in the audience. And I'm glad that he's ridden that confidence to this. the Super Bowl show.

All the way to the big stage. I do want to talk about how Jay-Z has kind of revamped the process of choosing who performs at the Super Bowl halftime. So one of the big things he did was come in and make the shows reflect the cities that the Super Bowl are hosted in. So remember, J. Lo brought out Shakira in Miami,

so you can see kind of like the synergy there. Also, before Rock Nation, this show never led with a hip-hop musical act before. It was always maybe a supporting act. So that was obviously a big change. And then this is the big thing that Jay-Z came to the end. NFL and say, why are you guys doing it this way? The NFL used to reach out to three artists at the same

time and whoever responded first or like could work into their schedule. That's who they would choose to do the Super Bowl. But Jay-Z was saying, listen, doing it this way, you're alienating two other mega-superstars. And there's only so many superstars in the world. So you guys are blowing through the amount of people who could perform. And so he said, let's reach out to one person at a time. If they say no, then we'll move on. So he's kind of changed the game in terms of relationships, terms of scripting, and just terms of how they choose a show. Very cool. It's very cool.

That seems like common sense. Like NFL emails you at 3 a.m. They're like, first to respond, get Super Bowl. You up? Yeah. Yeah, it's a cold play. Yeah. So my winner of the weekend, we'll go to that, is actually score agammy, excuse me.

And yesterday was Sunday, so that means everyone was glued to their TV for football. And one score in particular really stood out. And that was the Miami Dolphins beat the Denver Broncos 70 to 20. Yes, you heard that right, they scored 70 points. Now, there was a ton of records set in this game, which probably includes the most beer drank from depression in Denver, but the real winner from this weekend was Scorogami. So if you don't like NFL, but you like puzzles, this is for you.

If you're not familiar with Scorogami, there's an NFL Twitter account called NFL underscore Scorogami, which tracks these Scorogamis, which are unique final scores across all of NFL history. For example, let's say the score 217, that's very common. so if a team or a game would finish with that score, it would not be a scoreagami. But the score of 70 to 20 is pretty rare.

So rare, it has never happened in the NFL history before. Thus became a scoreagami, and it was the 1077th unique final score in NFL history. And so this season alone has already brought us two scorogamis. It's pacing quite well because last year there's only four in the entire season. So my winner of the weekend was a scoreagami. Because Taylor Swift was also involved this weekend, I'm branding this as a swift agammy.

Thank you. That word has probably never been uttered in history, so congrats to being the first one. I got the trademark. This is a classic thing. If you are not, I know we have a few people who listen to this podcast who aren't sports fans, but if you want to be involved in the NFL without actually caring about the NFL, definitely follow this Twitter account because it is so popular whenever. So the way it works is that as the game progresses, they give a percentage chance that the game finishes

is Skorigami. So you can see the excitement build throughout the game. And so this one, whenever a Skorogami happens, like the account just blows up, gets retweeted. Like, people are more excited for that to happen than anything actually happening in the NFL. So highly recommend following it. It's a great account. And if you don't like the NFL, this is a way to like it. Exactly. It's very fun. So let's move on to our final story of the day. And Toby, you know when your parents go on vacation and they bring you back like just the weirdest shirt or some odd trinket? There's like the worst gifts of all time. Well, NASA is not like our parents.

In fact, when NASA sends something on vacation to space, it absolutely delivers when it comes to bringing home souvenirs. What I'm referencing is the seven-year Osiris Rex mission by NASA, which just ended on Sunday with the return of space rocks from the asteroid Benu. Scientists who were working on this mission endured many twists and turns. It actually took seven years to get this project greenlit by NASA, but their perseverance paid off. This actually became the first American spacecraft to retrieve material from an asteroid, and it brought back just a staggering amount of matter from space. For scientists from around the world to study, this asteroid Benu is really cool. It's currently million miles away.

But scientists think that there's some kind of hidden hints about how life formed on Earth in this asteroid. So they're going to study it and see maybe how prebiotic life came to be on the planet. Toby, what's the best souvenir you've ever got and does it compete with the space rock? Yeah, it certainly wasn't asteroid dust. I think it was just one of those small baseball cups from a Tampa Bay race game that are shaped like a helmet. Not exactly spaced us. But yeah, it's so interesting that one of the theories about where the elements of us came

from is from asteroids crashing into the Earth. So it's so interesting. We're looking for elements of ourselves in this asteroid that is millions of miles away. One thing I thought was interesting, too, about the mission is that obviously it's super difficult to pull off logistically. you've got to meet an asteroid as it's orbiting through space, land on it, retrieve a sample, and make it back to Earth. And everything was going smoothly.

But when the craft landed on the asteroid back in 2020, it was supposed to kind of punch into the surface and just test it. It was, they described it as like a pogo like stick where it's supposed to just hit and bounce off. But it turns out asteroids are a lot softer than scientists expected. And so it ended up penetrating the asteroid by about one and a half feet, which is deep and it left a crater of around 30 feet big. Again, these asteroids, we thought it would be like a rock. Turns out it's kind of just a ball of dust held together by not a lot of gravity.

And so that's one thing that you wouldn't expect is that we always imagine these asteroids just has these big rocks, but apparently they're coated with this fine surface and we penetrate way too deep. That's really interesting. I love this quote from Bill Nelson, who's the administrator of the space agency. He said, quote, this mission proves that NASA does big things, things that inspire us, things that unite us, and things that really show nothing is beyond our reach. So a big W for NASA. Big W for humanity in general, too. All right, Kyle, let's move on to our final segment of the day, which is a preview of the

week ahead. Usually Neil does this segment, but I'm taking it off for spin, Kyle. Up first, pour one out for those red envelopes from Netflix that used to get our hearts all a flutter when we saw them in the mailbox. On Friday, Netflix is shipping its final physical DVDs. Obviously, it's been a long time since. DVDs have been in style and Netflix's DVD catalog shows it. At its peak, it offered a hundred thousand different titles to choose from. Now it's down to just 4,000. Kyle, best DVD you ever got

from Netflix? I actually was late to the Netflix game. I don't think I ever did a Netflix delivery because I was team blockbuster. I love it. I was supporting that business till its last death. And I still need to make it to the last blockbuster in Bend, Oregon. Thank you for your service, Kyle. All right, moving on tomorrow, President Biden will head to Michigan to support the United Auto Workers' Strike, Biden has billed himself as the most pro-union president in history, but he hasn't yet secured the endorsement of the UAW yet, so he's kind of killing two birds with one stones with his visit to the picket lines. Now, this is not a normal move for a president. In fact, University of Texas at Austin historian Jeremy Surrey told Reuters that Biden is likely

the first president to publicly support striking workers since Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. Big deal, Kyle. Then, as you know, I'm excited for the right. Cup to kick off on Friday. It's a three-day team event in the golf world starting at 1.30 a.m. Eastern. The U.S. team is listed as slightly, slight betting favorites over Team Europe. Kyle, I think Neil would be more excited about this one, but will you be doing it? I'm not going to be tuning in. And Toby, you have to get up at 4.30. So if I see you watching this at 1.30 a.m. Eastern, it's not going to be good. I'm not sleeping. Let's go to the USA. Okay, just a few more rapid fire things to keep an eye out for. Yomka PUR began last night.

so Gimar, Katima, Tova, to all those observing, including Neil. Google turns 25 on Wednesday. Google is a Gen Zier, which makes a lot of sense, I guess. And then the giant Las Vegas sphere at the Venetian resort opens Friday with a U-2 show. And you know I'm asking if we can get the Morning Brew to expense some tickets so we can get out there. We have to go. All three of us, you, me, and Neil, we'll do it, Kyle. All right, Kyle, that's all the time we have today.

Thank you, as always, for jumping on the show. Let's roll these credits. Our email address is Morning Brew Daily at Morningbroove.com if you want to send us your thoughts on the latest Toby and Kyle edition of the show. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer. Sammy V. and Raymond Liu are our associate producers. Eugenio Waua Ogo is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup was also at Arrowhead yesterday in the Kelsey's box, so something to keep an eye on there. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Have a great week, everyone.

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