Morning Brew Daily - Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Episode 586: Neal and Toby dive into Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ that looks to extend a 2017 tax cut policy alongside other economic policies that may or may not increase the US deficit. Then, Netflix just saved ‘Sesame Street’ as the legendary show will now be available on the most popular streaming platform. Also, small college towns that rely on a bustling campus are beginning to become ghost towns as enrollments are shrinking. Meanwhile, Toby examines the trend of cremation – a much more affordable option for families, but also hurting the bottom lines for funeral homes.  Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Visit endthecampaign.com for more Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow 00:00 - 9 to 5 Interruptions  03:15 - Big Beautiful Bill Breakdown 08:00 - Sesame Street Heads to Netflix  11:45 - College Towns Emptying  16:35 - Cremation Rates Rise 20:50 - Headlines  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marketers, tell us if this sounds familiar. You invest in something that seems incredible like millions of views, but then don't see any revenue. Instead, invest in what looks good to your CFO. LinkedIn Ads generates the highest row ads of all major ad networks. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply.

Good morning, Brew Daily. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today we'll dive into the details of the sweeping tax and spending bill Congress hopes to pass this week. Then hope you don't mind Mr. Schuffeluffagus coming to your Netflix in chill sessions because Sesame Street has a new home. It's Tuesday, May 20th. Let's ride. If you don't already put your phone on Do Not Disturb mode during work, you're about to.

A new Microsoft report on the workplace found that the average 9 to 5 employee is into a every two minutes by meetings, emails, slacks, and other pings. And that's not even taking into account non-workplace apps like iMessage or Spotify or YouTube. Toby, one interruption every two minutes. Sounds pretty nice. I know. We were laughing at this because that actually does feel like a blissful little two moments of peace for you. But add in all those messages plus postwork messages.

And we are experiencing 275 interruptions a day. no wonder you can't think some other data points just showing how scatterbrained we are in the modern workplace. 60% of meetings are ad hoc versus scheduled. And then edits in PowerPoint spike 122% in the final 10 minutes before a meeting. So love all you procrastinators out there. Also, the messages do follow you home. Microsoft found that there's been a 15% year-over-year increase with messages outside the 9-to-5 work hours. So anytime you feel like your work is chaotic or fragmented, you're probably right. Now Microsoft tries to position AI as the answer and the solution to all of this, but I say the answer is go outside and take a walk without your phone. And now a word from our sponsor,

Iterable. Neil, I want you to imagine something. Imagine you just jumped into the ocean wearing a full business suit. Full birthday suit? Sounds like that wedding I went to in Pouticana. No, Neil, this is a morning show. I said business suit, uncomfortable, outdated, and wildly impractical for the situation at hand. That's what using campaign-based marketing feels like in 2025. Traditional campaigns are rigid and often totally miss the point. Your customers don't live on a marketing calendar. They live in the now. Iterable helps brands ditch the old playbook and deliver AI-powered, always on personalization that meets people in real time. So instead of waiting three weeks for the Q3 summer sale email, you get a message when you actually need

something. Iterable orchestrates engagement across every channel. Feels kind of like leaving your suit on the sand and diving in with purpose. Neil again with this birthday suit metaphor. Don't let your marketing sink swim smarter and less inhibited. Head to end the campaign.com to learn more. The big Vito. Wireless can feel like a world of traps, but not with visible.

It's one-line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot. Powered by Verizon for $25 a month, taxes and fees included. Plus, for a limited time, new members pay just $20 a month for one year on the Visible Plan. Using the code fresh start. Refresh your wireless with Visible.

Tap the banner to switch today. Terms apply. Limited time offer subject to change. See Visible.com for plan features and network management details. The bill is on the move. Late Sunday night, a congressional committee advanced President Trump's massive spending and tax package with the hopes of teeing up a House vote before Memorial Day weekend. This thing, running over 1,100 pages, is the centerpiece of Trump's legislative agenda.

and would shake up everything from your taxes to Medicare to the electric vehicle tax credit. The primary purpose of the bill is to extend the 2017 tax cuts from Trump's first term in office. Those would expire at the end of the year, so absent an extension, taxes would go up for most Americans by 2026. So that's priority number one. In addition to continuing those tax cuts, the bill also eliminates taxes on tips, overtime, and car loan interest, fulfilling promises Trump made on the campaign trail. All of that foregone revenue is going to be extremely costly for the U.S. government. To pay for the tax cuts, the bill claws back clean energy credits from Biden's Inflation Reduction Act

and would make other cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. But it won't make up the difference, and it would exacerbate a spiraling debt problem cited by Moody's when it cut the U.S. credit rating on Friday. Even with the spending reductions, the bill would add over $3.2 trillion in New Red Ink over the next decade. That's according to the Committee for a response. federal budget. And this double whammy of the Moody's rating cut and the prospect of even higher deficits from the tax bill shook Wall Street yesterday, spurring investors to continue selling bonds

and the dollar. Yeah, four main priorities here. Extend those tax cuts, introduce some of those new tax breaks that he campaigned on, boost some military and border spending, and then fourth raise the debt selling so the government can continue to borrow money. And all of that is super expensive. So a lot of people are going, all right, how are we going to pay for the thing? And the vast majority of it just won't be paid for. We're just kicking the can down the road once more. There are those cuts coming to Medicaid. Are those cuts coming to clean energy, among other areas?

But this has created a problem within the Republican Party who already holds a narrow majority because you have fiscal hawks that are saying, wait a second, why are we spending more? Why are we adding more to the deficit? Let's add some deeper spending cuts to this thing. And then also some Republicans in their own districts are saying, we don't want to cut Medicaid. these are our constituents here. We don't want to do that. And then others don't like to clean energy cuts too because, again, you are increasing costs for, you know, buying an electric vehicle for some of their constituents. And then probably the biggest kind of holdup is one group that really wants

to roll back a Trump tax hike, aka the salt deduction that would hit mainly affluent people living in blue states that came back in 2017. That would be an expensive change because that was one of the big tax hikes that did help offset some of the tax cuts in Trump's previous administration. So a lot of just nitty-gritty things that are still to be worked out in this big, beautiful bill. Yeah, they're trying to pass it or get at least to the House before everyone goes on break before Memorial Day. But as you mentioned, there are a lot of provisions here with a lot of stakeholders from people getting large clean energy tax credits in their states to those people in California, New York, and New Jersey, who really rely on that salt deduction. And then investors,

Wall Street really had a strong reaction to all that's been happening recently. And it really has been one common theme of fiscal deterioration from the Moody's cut on Friday to increasing the deficit with this tax bill on Monday. The investors sent bond yields higher, which means they sold off bonds. Yields are extremely high right now. They're much higher than they were in 2017 with these tax cuts, which could make borrowing a lot more expensive. for the U.S. government. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond yesterday settled in at 4.937%. That's up from 4.786 at the end percent at the end of last year. Let's talk about the 10-year note. That was up to 4.47 percent yesterday, up from 4.2 percent at the end of April. Already nearly $1 in every $7

the U.S. spends goes toward paying interest when we borrow money. Now it's going to be at these much higher interest rates than they were in 2017. And that's what Moody's is setting. That's what these budget hawks are looking at when they're saying, you know, this fiscal picture for the United States is looking more dire than ever. Let's move on. Every Sesame Street episode begins with a theme song, Sunny Day, which features the iconic line, Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?

Now that old question has a new answer. Log on to Netflix. The King of the Streamers announced it had picked up the rights to Sesame Street. Street yesterday, giving the kids show a new home after it had ended its partnership with Max late last year. Despite shaping millions of children's vocabulary and math abilities for decades, Sesame Street has struggled to adapt to the streaming age. After more than 50 years as a PBS staple, the show struck a deal with Warner Bros Discovery in 2016 to make the show available on its flagship streaming platform Max. But as Wall Street soured on the chase for subscribers, the

eye-popping price tag Warner Bros. paid for the right to air Sesame Street in the $35 million a year range suddenly seemed too expensive. So as Sesame Workshop has geared up to work on its 56 season, it's also been shopping around for a new home, one that Netflix was happy to provide

given its broader push into children's content. Netflix already holds the streaming rights to Miss Rachel and Cocoa Mellon to the most popular children's YouTube channels. In 2021, it acquired the role doll story company, company, and now it's got Sesame Street in the fold. Neil certainly seems like it wants to make sure any byproducts of Netflix and chill

sessions from nine months ago have some entertainment as well. Well, this is a huge lifeline for Sesame Street and its owner, Sesame Workshop, who cut 20% of its workforce. They lost $35 million in revenue per year when this max deal ended, and Netflix swoops in, and it's a big win for Netflix, which wants to build its lead over the other streamers with kids programming. It's already number one. 72% of 10 to 12-year-old viewers have watched programming on Netflix recently. That's compared to 57% for Disney Plus, 32% for Hulu, and just 13% of Max, which you can see

these streamers going in very different directions. Netflix is bolstering its kids programming. Meanwhile, Max has just rebranded back to HBO Max, and it's going to rely on that more adult prestige programming that, you know, is its bread and butter. It tried to compete with Netflix by bringing Sesame Street by rebranding as Max. Now it's going back to old HBO and Netflix is just forging ahead in world kid domination. Yeah, it's not necessarily as lucrative for Sesame Street. The actual reports of the deal haven't come out yet, but a lot of people are saying it is well below that $35 million figure. This new deal brings new episodes to Netflix, PBS, and the PBS Kids app on the

same day. The Max deal actually was less advantageous for Sesame Street, especially PBS, because Max would get the episodes months before they would actually air on PBS. It's long time home. So this kind of returns it to the status quo. You can just toss on PBS. You can find these episodes as they air. Netflix also gets them. So it's just broadening the reach of this iconic kids program, making less money, but also getting maybe a better distribution side of the of the equation. So it is good because Sesame Street was kind of lost in the shuffle of this very fast-changing TV landscape. It couldn't compete with Bluey. It couldn't compete with cocoa melon in terms of streaming numbers. Now potentially this wider distribution will help cement it

again as one of the apex shows of the children's streaming era. Yesterday on the show, you heard that major U.S. cities were growing like weeds again after years of stagnation. At the same time, though, other places around the country are facing an existential crisis. I'm talking about the old college town. You know the places I'm talking about the quaint cities in western Pennsylvania or Ohio or Illinois that have a regional college and acute Main Street with bars and coffee shops. According to the Wall Street Journal, they're becoming economically endangered. A Brookings study found that among metro areas that are reliant on higher ed,

75% of them experienced weaker economic growth between 2011 and 2023 than the U.S. as a whole. That's a result of falling enrollment at regional schools. Fewer students means fewer customers for local shops and in turn less tax revenue for the city government to make improvements. Some call it the real estate doom loop you didn't know was happening. Take McComb, Illinois, for example, home to Western Illinois University. In the boom times of the 70s, the school's enrollment peaked at, over 15,000. Now it's just 5,500 and the town is suffering. The city's population plunged 23% from 2010 to 2024. City sales tax revenue has dropped almost proportionally, according to the mayor,

and pizza shops that were once humming at 2 a.m. are struggling to stay open until 9. Toby, this is happening in college towns across the country, and it's probably not going to get any better. Yeah, it is bleak out there because there's also some other forces that are making it hard for these towns to survive. One, federal funding two colleges is like you're going to be cut under the current administration when there's no money that results in hiring, freezes, and layoffs. And then also some of these efforts to cancel student visas from students coming in from abroad also hurts these institutions because those students typically pay a higher out-of-state tuition.

And then just in general, there are less young people flooding into the college system. In 2007, that was the peak of the U.S. birth rate. That's when 4.3 million Americans were born, and that has been falling steadily ever since then. So that's less kids entering middle school, entering high school, and therefore entering these college towns as well. So a lot of just factors converging to make these college towns kind of the center of this big demographic struggle. And it's really a rich get richer separating from the pack, because when you think of college towns,

Yes, maybe you think of McComb, Illinois or Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, these smaller towns, but you also maybe think of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Madison, Wisconsin, and Gainesville, Florida. Well, they're doing just fine. Enrollment at these large flagship state public universities is increasing a lot, and students are filling dorms and bars, and these places are thriving. And, like, let's just go back to University of Illinois, for example. So the flagship university of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, enrollment there, this past academic year was up 36% from 2010.

Meanwhile, at Western Illinois University, enrollment fell 47%. So you're starting to see divergence between these rich college towns, these bigger ones with more public funding and research universities and the smaller towns which are facing an existential crisis. Up next, let's dive into my Toby's trend. 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. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting $179 like the next grill three burner gas grill. Or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together.

Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to home depot.com slash price match for details. On today's edition of Toby's Trends, I want you all to take a moment to contemplate what's next. No, not your next meeting on your Google Cal or what you're having for dinner later. I'm talking about what's really next. Today's Toby's trend is all about what happens right after you die. In the last few decades, the national cremation rate has soared since they are a lot more cost effective for grieving families.

According to the New York Times, the median cost of a direct cremation is $2,750 compared to $8,300 for a traditional package that includes a casket viewing ceremony and burial. The National Funeral Directors Association says the rise in cremation is also tied to things like environmental concerns and less religious customers who don't need or want, heavily ritualized ceremonies. In total, the NFDA thinks the cremation rate will hit 82% by 2045 up from just over 60% last year. It's a trend that has put the whole funeral industry at risk of dying out. When customers opt for cremation rather than a more involved funeral, it hurts their bottom line, leading many funeral homes to start to innovate and move more into the event planning space. For instance, one young Hunter's family, the New York Times profile, opted for his cremated remains to be put into some shotgun shells for one last hunt. A service Hamilton funeral home

in Des Moines helped facilitate. So Neil, there are really two trends emerging here. One, more people opting for cremation and two, more funeral homes are coming up with creative ways to drive revenue to support their business. Yeah, the cremation rate this year, or last year, 2024 was a record 62%. That's up from just 6.2% in 1974. So we've seen a huge boom in. cremation. We're also seeing these funeral homes have to get creative because there are 15,700 funeral homes in the United States. Roughly three quarters of them are all family or privately owned. These are small businesses that can't really adapt to the changing landscape of people paying $2,700 for a service that they used to pay $8,500 for. So you see, some of them, here's a quote from

one saying, we're no longer just a funeral company who does events. We're an event company who does funerals and they're adding plazas and doing things like weddings and other lifetime rituals. So you get the real circle of life at these places because they need to use their real estate to stay alive. Yeah, there's one in Richland, Washington, that has this airy 6,000 foot event center. It's got a patio. It's got this view overlooking kind of the PNW. And they have a menu, a catering menu. It's got a brisket buffet as well. And so rather than a traditional funeral parlor, they actually host 10 to 20 weddings a year at this place. So you are right. Like, it is this odd circle of life moment, but that has proved to be so popular that they're

spending $2.5 million to renovate its next funeral home to also support events like this. So it's interesting how this trickle-down effect of more people opting for cremation because of a variety of factors, not just economic, there is an environmental factor as well, has put these businesses in a much different calculus, and now they have to get super creative with how they can survive. And they are getting creative. I mean, some of the examples of what funeral homes are doing to change up their services are just really, I'm not going to say fun, but interesting. So for a beloved Little League coach, one of these funeral directors turned her funeral home into a baseball field with bases, a popcorn machine, and hot dogs. And for a woman who had been a

model and fashion designer. There was a cocktail hour with a runway and mannequins in her clothing. So they are getting creative. My question for you is, would you get married in a funeral home? I know. It just doesn't seem like the best, the most auspicious start to a marriage, but also, I guess if it was a beautiful space, then maybe you can overlook it. So I did think that was a little bit odd, but maybe just it is the circle of life and there is some good. Well, another thing that's expensive besides funerals is wedding. So if you find a good deal at a funeral home, Maybe you got to take it. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines.

If you're one of the 15 million people who gave their DNA sample to 23 and me, your genetic information is under new ownership. The bankrupt genetic testing company sold its assets, including its massive treasure trove of genetic data to the U.S. drug developer Regeneron for $256 million. It's a steep price cut from the more than $7,23MMe was once worth on the public markets, highlighting its downfall under a business model that was never profitable. Once it went bankrupt a few months ago, the big question was what it would do with its highly sensitive bank of DNA from customers.

Regeneron has pledged to keep it safe with its CEO saying they have a, quote, proven track record of safeguarding the genetic data of people across the globe. But it's not clear whether those concerns will be put to rest. So obviously, it's down massively from its $6 billion valuation in 2021, but also it's up from its current market cap of, $25 million. So what was kind of the purpose of buying this company? Regeneron actually beat out six other bidder. So clearly this treasure trove of genetic data was something that a lot of people did find valuable. I mean, again, it's down 95% from its peak, but it's also up 10x from what

it's currently valued at. So it's just fascinating to see how there is still this very competitive demand for 23 and me's assets, despite the company never actually quite figuring out its profitable business model. Regeneron says we're going to use it to fund our own research because, yeah, genetic data is genetic data. The head of CBS news hit the exit yesterday, marking the second high-profile exec to leave the company as it stares down a $20 billion lawsuit from President Trump and an $8 billion merger. This time it was Wendy McMahon tendering her resignation, writing in a memo, it's become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward. Her words echo those of 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens, who also left in April after feeling he had lost journalistic independence in the face of the merger in lawsuit.

Neil, remember, this merger requires federal approval, so there has been internal pressure from CBS's parent company paramount to not rock the boat too much. And that boat is one that high-level execs like McMahon and Owens don't want to be in anymore. This is a major exodus of leadership from CBS News. They're clashing with paramount ownership, including Sherry Redstone, who's trying to take a more active role in their news decision-making, and that's rankling the top news leadership. So CBS News is kind of chaos right now. Morale can't be good. There was reporting that a new 60-minute segment on executive orders that Trump did targeting

law firms was also perhaps sparking a second lawsuit from the Trump administration, on top of the $20 billion one, I think that caused a lot of urgency on the side of Paramount leadership to maybe take a sterner line with their news executives, which again turned into a major pushback from these news executives. So yes, CBS News, probably the, you know, one of the more iconic brands in news in American history is devolving into chaos right now. Speaking of chaos, Spain's housing market is in Spain without the S. It's staring down an affordability crisis that has caused thousands of Spaniards to take to the streets to protest rising costs. So how do you free up inventory quickly without building new units?

Order Airbnb to block more than 65,000 listings on its platform, as Spain's consumer rights ministry did yesterday. As you would imagine, vacation rental homes are a big business in Spain. About 321,000 homes in Spain had holiday rental licenses, according to Reuters. That's 15% more than in 2020. This is a country in citywide crackdown we are seeing. Last year, Barcelona announced it will shut down all 10,000 short-term rental apartments by 2028 to protect housing for full-time residents. So, Neil, they're really pulling out all the stops here to try to free up some inventory.

These numbers are staggering in terms of how unaffordable housing has become in Spain. Rental prices have jumped 57% in Spain since 2015. mean home prices have soared 47% compared to household income, which has grown just 33%. Barcelona is probably the worst offender. Rents have surged there, 68% in a decade. So whenever you see this happening, it's happening all across the world. And what does the first thing city governments do is they call up Airbnb and say, hey, you guys, we're kicking you out. Airbnb has a playbook because they've been targeted by so many cities.

They say that the root cause of affordable housing. Unaffordable housing is not Airbnb. It's the fact that you're not building more housing. They pointed to other examples of places like Amsterdam and New York City, which instituted restrictions on Airbnb and said this had, this did not have any factor whatsoever in decreasing house price growth. So Airbnb is pushing back back at the end of the day. I think they're outgunned over there in Spain because the knives are out.

Finally, a spate of monkey kidnappings has stunned researchers on Hikaron Island off of Panama. I'm not talking about humans stealing monkeys, it's monkeys swiping other monkeys of a different species. In a study published in the journal Current Biology, scientists said for the first time ever, they saw video footage of young male capuchin monkeys kidnapping infant howler monkeys who often later died from dehydration or lack of nutrition. Calling the behavior viscerally disturbing, the researchers believe that the male adolescent monkeys are taking the howlers simply because they are young. and bored, similar to the way a young human child would capture lightning bugs in a jar.

As animal culture expert Brendan Barrett said, I think seeing this occur in another species is somewhat terrifying because it kind of reflects a mirror on the actions that we do as people. This was kind of scary because you see the footage and it seems so innocuous, but then you realize that these howler monkeys usually end up going on and dehydrating and dying. The trend appears to have been started by a monkey that the researchers nicknamed the Joker which is this young male Capuchin who has a small scar by the side of his mouth, aka the Joker. And other monkeys seem to observe the Joker doing its thing and started mirroring the action back to him.

So it is just this weird part of monkey culture that these researchers have stumbled upon as they've been falling around this troop for a while now. And yeah, they don't think they actually are intending to harm these monkeys. But you are right. It is a uncomfortable mirror staring back at us reflecting some. of maybe the worst parts of human culture as well. So just a fascinating thing. These Capuchans are a very smart and advanced species.

The researchers have observed them using stone tools often throughout their research. So now they have this different and strange behavior that they've also picked up upon. Maybe they just need to get pinged every two minutes so they don't get bored and start kidnapping other monkeys. No, thank you. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. If you have any thoughts on the show, let us know so we can make it better. Send an email with questions, comments, or feedback to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com.

Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lute is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Scoop Starteris is on audio. Hair and makeup is out looking for the fountain of youth. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great.

Show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. 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 Levato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavat Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary.

You in? Must be 21 to enter.