Morning Brew Daily - The World's Top CEOs Meet at Davos & The Controversy Around Peacock and the NFL

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

Episode 236: Neal and Toby explain what to expect from Davos as the top business leaders in the world come together in Switzerland. Plus, why Texans have to watch how much electricity they use and what a winter storm means for the Northeast. Next, Peacock broke streaming history with their exclusive NFL playoff game but not everyone is happy about it and the guys share their winners of the weekend. And finally, why a new study implies that work initiatives may not work and the heiress giving away $27 million. 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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Good morning for your daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, what you need to know about the gathering of the global elite in Davos. Then it's cold outside. We'll check in on how these polar tents are causing havoc across the country. It's Tuesday, January 16th. Let's ride.

Those delicate white flakes are falling fast outside the office right now, which means that the northeast long snow drought is finally coming to an end. Yesterday, D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia, all recorded at least one inch of snow for the first time in nearly two years, and New York is poised to end its snow drought of 701 days this morning. How are you celebrating, Florida boy? So, snow droughts are not something that exist in my mind because being from Florida, I just live in a perpetual snow drought. So I'm celebrating, this is still exciting for me. I don't think you understand that I did not grow up in this environment. So anytime there's an inch on the ground, I'm making snow angels.

I'm throwing snowballs. Let's have a little snowball fight later. I'm down. Before we jump into the show today, we have a quick word from our sponsor, VIM. Neil, you were telling me that you couldn't help but think of VIM over the long weekend. I kept running into scenarios where VIM for X would really come in handy, like VIM for leftovers where it would protect my pad tie from late night cyber attacks, aka my roommate eating them. Oh, or like VIM for being sick where its commitment to radical resilience would have you

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UN must be 21 to enter. The World Economic Forum Summit has kicked off in the ski resort town of Davos, Switzerland, in the annual conference that brings together top business leaders, politicians, and pretty much anyone else who can afford to wear quiet luxury. This year's theme is rebuilding trust, which applies to our world's rife with geopolitical. political conflicts, but also to Davos itself, a summit intended to promote peace and stability that has come under heavy criticism for being out of touch with the concerns of everyday people. So what are the attendees going to talk about this year? Well, one name you'll hear a lot is Donald

Trump, who cruised a victory in the Iowa caucuses last night to cement his dominant lead for the Republican presidential nomination. The prospect of Trump returning to office and what that means for global trade, Ukraine, and international cooperation is certainly top of mind. And you're going to be shocked when you hear this next major discussion point, AI. Yes, artificial intelligence and the safety risks it poses to the world has become the topic du jour at Davos. And hotshot, OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, will head to Switzerland to speak on a panel about the technology on Thursday.

Everyone is going to be watching that. What caught your eye about this year's Davos? It's just one heck of a to-do list. I mean, climate change, conflict in the Middle East, keeping the world economy stable and steady, navigating Ukraine and Russia still, AI could end all our lives. So just the sheer amount of bullet points on their to-do list is kind of overwhelming. You look at it. I also just the sheer size of Davos is something I want to emphasize.

Over 60 heads of states in government, there'll be over 2,800 attendees. And this is everyone from academics to reporters. It's just a big conglomeration of a lot of important people in one place, so they're talking about a lot of important things. Yeah, there's a lot of participant inflation at these conferences that we talked about with the COP 28 back in the Gulf State, what was it, UAE? Dubai a few weeks ago. One thing that caught my eye is China. China's sending a massive delegation. It wants to kind of repair relationship with the rest of the world.

That's because foreign direct investment in China, which had been one of the major growth stories for the country over the past few decades, it actually declined for the first time in the third quarter. China is sending a huge delegation in force. It's kind of worrying a lot of the U.S. leaders, actually, and we're sending some of our people there to kind of counter the presence of China. But they want to go. They want to open up discussions, especially with those Gulf sovereign wealth funds to say, hey, we're back open for business at a time when a lot of investors are, looking at China and saying, there's a lot going on there. Maybe we should pull back. Yeah, if the theme is rebuilding trust, China wants to do the same thing with some of its world trade compatriots. I also want to talk about how Davos has come under fire recently. A big part of it

is kind of the hypocrisy that a lot of people see at play. It's because they talk a lot about climate change at Davos, and yet all these people roll up in their private jets. 2022 flight emissions were on par with 350,000 cars, between 1,500 private jets come to the surrounding airports during Davos. So it is always this juxtaposition of they're trying to solve the world's problems, starting firstly with climate change, and yet you're rolling up in your private jets with all the CO2 emissions. Right. Whenever Davos happens, you see a bunch of nonprofits and organizations come out with their annual reports, talking about inequality to highlight what's going on at Davos and what's going on with the rest of the world. So Oxfam, the nonprofit, came out with its wealth report yesterday, does this every single year at Davos.

It found that the fortunes of the five richest men have spiked, have more than doubled in real terms since 2020. That's Elon Musk, Bernard Arnaud, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Buffett. And Oxfam also predicted that we'll have the first trillionaire within 10. years. Do you think that's going to happen? We've talked about this on the show before. I'm bearish on the whole trillionaire thing, but I mean... Musk is number one right now at $250 billion his net worth. The first billionaire was John Rockefeller in 1916. Get a little history lesson. So we will keep an eye on Davos and kind of that conference will progress throughout this weekend. I'm sure there'll be more stories to talk about. Let's move on. We created Mori-Rood daily

so you guys would have something other than the weather to make small talk about. But today we got to talk about the weather. Bitterly cold temperatures have descended on the U.S. the past three days, straining electrical grids, postponing NFL games, and breaking years-long snow droughts. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, aka Aircott, is once again being put to the test as the man topped a wintertime record over the long weekend. Remember, this is a grid that often fails under extreme weather conditions in the past. past two nights it has issued statements asking residents to conserve power between 6 and 9 a.m.

to help prevent widespread outages. Sub-zero temperatures in Iowa also made headlines as residents brave the attempts to cast their votes in the first Republican caucus of the year. Heck, even the Buffalo Bills, a fan base who willingly hurls their bodies through flaming, photoable tables, had to postpone their NFL game due to dangerous snowy conditions. Just how disruptive is this recent cold snap? around 2,163 flights across the U.S. were canceled as of 2 p.m. yesterday, and more than 148,000 homes and businesses are without power in five states. It's cold, Neil. Yes, I want to talk about Texas specifically, which is not a state you typically associate with cold, but you have to go back

to 2021. There was a huge scandal, huge crisis when there was a massive cold snap, froze a lot of the power generation, 250 people died at least because that seems like it's a low count. For the past few years, Texas has really tried to put a lot of new measures in place, get a lot of new power generation going to prevent this from happening again. Remember, Texas is on its own grid. Like, it does everything itself. There are three grids in the United States. There's the western one.

There's the eastern one. And then there's Texas all by itself. And that has posed a problem when the weather gets truly terrible, really cold, really hot, which it has been in Texas. So they are predicting that there's going to be record wintertime demand actually this morning, 6 to 9 a.m. So everyone's going to be looking to see how that grid is holding up. Very fascinating.

That demand for power in the winter always peaks. You can bet on it that it's going to peak in the morning when everyone is waking up right before 8 a.m. So that's the time that they're looking at. Yeah. And Texas has been trying to clean up its act in recent years. It's been on this renewable energy kick, buying a lot of different additional. batteries, windmills, solar panels to help alleviate some of the pressure on their grid.

One advantage that they think they have this time around is that this upcoming storm isn't forecast to be as wet and as widespread or as long-lasting as that 2021 one. So hopefully it can weather it really well. If we want to just zoom out a little bit, though, there's serious energy repercussions across the country. Extreme cold caused North Dakota's daily oil production to plunge by 425,000 barrels. Their output of natural gas, which is actually the nation's number one power plant fuel, fell as much as 1.1 billion cubic feet.

So that's down to about a third for both fuel levels compared to October. So this is not just a Texas thing. Fuel production in some of our main hubs across the country is also falling. Meanwhile, it's going to be 50 degrees below zero the windshield in Montana and the Dakotas. I can't even fathom that. I was looking at the map. Someone on Twitter noted that there was a 113 degree difference between Miami, Florida, and Bab, Montana, and a 146 degree difference between the feels-like temperatures. It's just two different planets we're living there.

I don't know what a feels-like temperature is. We have a lot of weather metrics these days. Moving on, it looks like NBC's controversial gamble to air an NFL playoff game exclusively on Peacock paid off in a big way. On Saturday night, Peacock was the only place you could watch the Chiefs play the Dolphins on the frozen tundra of Arrowhead Field in the fourth coldest NFL game ever. And while that gatekeeping irked a lot of fans, they did appear to pony up the $6 monthly subscription. The game earned 23 million total viewers, which Peacock said was the most streamed live event

in U.S. history and was also responsible for the most internet usage ever in the U.S. on a single date, consuming 30% of all internet traffic. The Peacock exclusive game even drew more viewers than last year's wildcard matchup on NBC, which drew an audience of 21 million. If you're worried about more live sports heading to streaming platforms, this is not a good sign for you. With growth hitting a wall, streamers will definitely be eyeing the success of Peacock's NFL play playoff game

as they figure out ways to stand out from the crowded field and acquire new subscribers. The big question we don't know yet, how many subscribers did Peacock manage to add through this game and how many of them will not cancel now that it's over? That's what will ultimately determine whether this investment paid off. Yeah, those churn numbers are going to be very, very closely poured over after this because it made it to number one on the app store.

It made 30% of all internet traffic. I don't know how you actually mentioned that. I don't know what that metric means. These lofty, lofty claims, but I really want to see how many people stick around because the jokes for flying over the weekend, people saying like, this is your uncle asking you, hey, how do you? What even is a peacock? How do I do this?

So I truly don't know if that's going to be a very sticky user base. But you can kind of see the PR push that Comcast has been putting on saying that a lot of people don't know this, but Peacock actually offers the widest variety of sports, of live sports of any streaming platform. So they're really trying to create this vision around themselves that they are one of the hubs for sports when it comes to streaming platforms. I mean, we talk about the streaming wars forever. Every media company now has a streaming platform. They have a lot of content. So it's like, how do you stand out these days? And one of them is one of the major ones that's coming into view is having live sports.

Amazon Prime Video has broadcast Thursday night football exclusively. YouTube paid up for NFL Sunday ticket, billions of dollars. And now Peacock wants to show that it also has live sports, particularly the Premier League. But will this, but the problem with live sports is they're also the most expensive media asset out there because it's the only one that people still watch. I mean, Peacock paid 110. million dollars for this game only. 110 million. One game, it's just truly absurd.

Peacock was expected to lose $2.8 billion in 2020. And the live sports rights are a big reason for that. Live sports are just so expensive, but it makes sense. The only thing that people actually watch. Okay, before we give any parents or uncles flashbacks of trying to download Peacock, let's take a quick break. Hopefully you all had long and relaxing weekend to celebrate Martin Luther King Day. we certainly did. The news, however, did not take any time off. So to catch you up to speed,

we're going to run through our winners of the weekend, which are two people or things that had an especially good Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I won the pre-show Yankee Candle Scent guessing contest, so I'm up first. And my winner of the weekend is Madison Marsh, aka Miss Colorado, AKA Miss America, 2024. Marsh won the prestigious title Sunday night, but that's far from the only prestigious thing about her. Just 22 years old, Marsh is the first active duty Air Force officer to compete, let alone win the Miss America pageant. And that's not all. She also goes to Harvard, where she co-founded a foundation to fund pancreatic cancer research.

As Miss America, she gets 60,000 intuition scholarships, as well as the opportunity to travel the country as a Miss America brand ambassador. Neil, at 22, I still had an AOL email address. Madison, Marsh is doing a lot more than that. when you look at these people's resumes, it makes you feel like you're not doing a whole lot. This is pretty a grueling multi-day competition. There was a fitness showcase, a hot topics discussion round, which is a Q&A.

There's a talent performance. There's an evening gown presentation. So this is like a pretty intense situation going on, but looks like Madison was very well prepared for all of this based on her service at the Air Force Academy. I don't think I would have done well in any of those categories you just mentioned. I do want to break down the difference between Miss America and Miss USA a little bit. Miss America is a scholarship program and a pageant.

It focuses on personal growth and education. Miss USA, on the other hand, is kind of that platform for the Miss Universe competition. That's the competition that Trump owned for a while. He sold it in 2015. So that's the difference, and that's why Marsh kind of won this $60,000 scholarship. That's one of those not stupid questions that everyone's afraid to ask. But thank you for clarifying it. Just cleaning it up.

Okay, my winner is everyone who took home a trophy last night at the Emmy Awards. Yes, you might have been paying closer attention to the Iowa caucuses or the Eagles crashing out of the playoffs. But the Emmys happened last night after getting delayed for four months by the Hollywood strikes. The takeaways, Succession's final season took home a ton of prizes, including best drama and for acting and writing. The Bear won best comedy, dethroning Ted Lassau, which won for the past two years. The Netflix limited series Beef also had a big night. Quinta Brunson won best actress for a sitcom Abbott Elementary, becoming the first black woman to win the award since 1981.

And finally, I have to call out the ongoing outrageous snubs of Better Call Saul by Emmy Voters. The Breaking Bad spinoff that was even better than Breaking Bad, ended its run without winning a single Emmy going 0 for 53 and making it the most snubed series of all time. Over 53. That is some seriously bad batting average. So I have a confession to make. I recently started watching Succession over the long weekend.

I'm almost done with the first season. And I just think it's absolutely hilarious watching just a few episodes that Kieran McCalkin and Brian Cox keep winning these awards over Jeremy Strong, who is Kendall Roy and the other two are his brother and his dad. So I think it's very funny and very fitting and kind of aligns with the show that these actors are winning over him. Don't spoil anything for me, though. Now I'm actually invested in this story. All right.

I'm glad you're watching. one other thing to call out. We have a new member of the Egot, everyone, that very exclusive club that just 24 people have won, the Emmy, the Tony, the Oscar, and the Grammy. That person is Elton John. So congrats Sir Elton. The past few days have brought us a couple interesting findings from studies about the workplace, and I'd love to share them with all of you listening. First, remote work, good for taking care of the dog, bad for getting promoted at your company. An analysis by data provider, live data technologies, found that over the past year, remote workers were promoted 31% less frequently than people who worked in the office,

either full-time or on a hybrid basis. 5.6% of employees who came into the office, at least a few days of the week, received a promotion compared to 3.9% of fully remote workers. People might react to this either with indignation that remote workers are getting discriminated against, or, on the other hand, think, sure, if you come into the office, that shows a level of of commitment that's likely to give you a professional leg up over your remote colleagues. What was your reaction? My reaction is it gives so much ammunition to the remote work haters and specifically bosses who are calling people back to the office. It is tough to see data support some of these things that a lot of people have been kind of not using data to support their

opinions on. I also want to talk about the other kind of survey that's been going around about employee wellness and how one study found that it didn't really work and that this study published Wednesday in the Journal of Industrial Relations claim that workplace wellness initiatives have had little to no impact on employees' actual well-being. That's the kind of things like giving you a call-map subscription or something like that or teaching you how to meditate. These are things that are not really moving the needle when it comes to employee wellness, despite how much these employers are investing resources into them. Right. The Oxford researcher who did that study said that if employers really wanted to make their employees happier, they'd focus less on basically comping them

headspace subscriptions, which has been a very popular thing, and focus more on those core organizational practices like better schedules and higher pay. And so, yeah, that was the other study that I wanted to talk about was the fact that this guy found that those wellness programs that basically all these employers offer nowadays for their workplace. So you call you. come here, we'll give you all of these, we'll give you mental health resources, blah, blah, which sounds great, but this researcher found that they didn't actually work in theory. One of the things that did work was inviting people to participate in the kind of group volunteering sessions.

So when you're doing something alongside your coworker and you're doing something for someone else, that was something that did move the needle when it comes to mental health. So especially as we confront kind of like this loneliness, epidemic, maybe internal things that you have to do by yourself are not as effective as stuff that bring you out into your community and make you feel more connected to your employer. So two very interesting studies that also are digging into the repercussions of remote work four or so years later. We're still talking about it.

I think for a lot of people looking at these studies, it's probably confirming a lot of what they know, but this actually puts some numbers to it. That wellness one has been attacked by some of the people in the industry, Spring Health, the leader of Spring Health, which is a platform that connects. employees with mental health services said that you can't just look at a single snapshot point in time like this particular study did. You have to do a longitudinal study. So there's a bit of back and forth about whether this study was actually accurate or representative. What would you do if you inherited $27 million from a rich family member? Sounds like the start of a wonderful, would you rather,

while an heiress of a European business dynasty is going full Mr. Beas and letting 50 strangers determine what she does with the millions being passed down to her. It's her way of fighting wealth inequality. Marlene Englehorn from Austria believes her government should tax inheritances, but since they don't, she's taking it upon herself to distribute it. She sent out 10,000 invitations to random people in Austria, asking them to complete a survey about helping her deal with the money. From there, she is choosing 50 people from 50 different backgrounds

who she thinks represents the population at large. she's calling them her gutter rat, which translates to good counsel, and will use them to help come out with ideas on how to distribute the 27 million. Neil, are we a fan of guterat? I mean, I wouldn't do it. I don't know if I would send out my $27 million if I got it. However, I got it, and I completely understand her motivation saying, I didn't earn this. I need to, I want to send it back to the people. Personally, I think I would do a better job of distributing it than 50 random people I selected off the street.

That's just me. But I completely understand what she's doing. And she's just doing it to prove a point. What I thought was fascinating is she has no veto power. Like whatever this council decides, it goes. She's just literally writing them a $27 million check to distribute. It's a great gig for the Goudorat, the good council, because she will pay for people's travel to stay during like the conferences where they decide

what to do with them. And she will also compensate them. So you're literally being paid to travel and to make decisions on how. to distribute money. It's a very interesting, I wonder what the dynamic will be and if someone will kind of corrupt the Gujarat and take over the good counsel to try to further some of their agenda. So I do think it's a very interesting study into human psychology. It's just a very different path than what most super rich people do. I mean, most of the wealthiest people have created foundations and they give to particular causes that they care about. Maybe that's what I was

trying to convey with saying that I could do it better than other people. I don't know if I could do it better than other people, but if my family had a lot, like, so much wealth, we probably have some values in my family that, like, I would want to give to some particular causes that mean a little more to me than to the rest of the population. And so I think that's what the Warren Buffett's of the world, the Bill Gates, is they donate to particular causes that mean a lot to them, or they go the effective altruism route, which is like, how can I maximize the most of, most utility out of the money that I have for every dollar that I spend? what is the maximum amount of value I can get from it in improving the world. So that is another particular route that's become a little more popular in recent years. Yeah, it does feel like this approach strips away some of the ego of starting your own foundation or something like that. So I just seem interested in to see what ends up happening with the money and if this is a viable

path forward for kind of distributing inheritances. All right. That is all the time we have for today. Have a wonderful Tuesday. Toby, what is our swing thought for the day? Our swing thought of the day is rule your mind or it will rule you from life. horse. Remember staying disciplined and mastering the selfers will lead to far more happiness than letting your every whim and desire control how you live. So rule your mind or it will rule

you. Rule your mind. Who is that? Horace. Horace. Who's Horace? Horace is a poet. Yeah. Okay. Good job. Horace. As always, you can write in with your thoughts on any of the topics we discussed to our email morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll these credits. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer. Samantha Bellas and Raymond and Lou are associate producers. Yuchinawa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. Hair and makeup was passed up for the promotion.

Gotta get into work hair and makeup. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.