The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - The Future of Cable TV, How to Market a Humanities Degree After Graduation, and Should I Become a U.S. Citizen?

Episode Date: October 9, 2024

Scott discusses the cable TV industry, specifically what has led to its structural decline and what that means for major sports leagues and the consumer. He then shares how to market a humanities degree, explaining why storytelling is the core competence. He wraps up with advice to a listener considering U.S. citizenship.  Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Buy "The Algebra of Wealth," out now. Follow the podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This and other information can be found in the Innovation Fund's prospectus at fundrise.com slash innovation. This is a paid advertisement. Welcome to the Prof G Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursatproptgmedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatproptgmedia.com.

So with that, first question. Hey, Professor. Jack from Austin, Texas here with a question about professional sports and cable cutting. I can tell you that someone in their mid-20s, and I'm going to speak for my whole generation here, TV and the NFL Sunday ticket and everything cost over $1,000 a year just to watch the games that we want to watch, and none of us have cable. It's all subsidized by our parents, and as our parents age out and cut the cord themselves or unfortunately pass on, do you think that these leagues are in for a rude awakening,

especially when I can tell you right now, the tech savvy of us in our 20s, there's lots of free alternatives out there on the internet. And I hope no one from the FTC is going to come for me for that one. But what do you think that these leagues are going to do? Thanks. It's a really thoughtful question, Jack, from Austin, Texas. First off, congratulations being in Austin,

probably the hottest city in the world right now. And I don't mean weather-wise, I mean just everybody's there, everyone's moving there. By the way, it's the podcast epicenter. I didn't know that. Isn't that strange? I love going to Austin. Amazing how it can turn everything to me, isn't it? The cable industry is in full-throttle structural decline. A Pew Research Center survey shows that fewer Americans are watching TV through cable or satellite, dropping from 76 in 2015 to just 56% in 2021. Think about that. Just in six years, it's declined by 26%. According to New York Times, now around 5 million people abandon cable TV every year. Think about that. Leaving about 75 million Americans still in the traditional TV world, but it's losing. What is that? It's declining. What is that? About 7% of its base every year? I mean, that is a business in serious structural decline. Here's the joke. The cable person doesn't want to let the advertiser know who they're reaching or not reaching. Their job is to keep you purposely stupid such that you will advertise

to 200,000 people on Fareed Zakaria on GPS 360, which in my opinion is the best show in politics. I think Fareed's probably the clearest blue flame thinker on geopolitics. Anyways, because they want you to pay for the 200,000 people, even if maybe only about 1,000 are really interested in opioid-induced constipation medication. So they had an incentive to keep you in the dark. Meanwhile, commercials also kill it because they interrupt the storytelling. In addition, the clock kills broadcast or cable because some days AC's 360 with Anderson Cooper should be three hours, some days it should be one hour, and instead it's got to be exactly two hours. You have these big folks have moved in

and said, okay, we have deeper pockets. And slowly but surely, we're going to take over original scripted television. And we're going to have storytelling that's uninterrupted and really high production values and just sheer tonnage. There is something always to watch on Netflix. Anyways, and also the only people watching TV are ridiculously fucking old. You want to know something crazy? The median age of TV viewers on MSNBC is 70. The median age on CNN is 65. I mean, that's fucking crazy. On MTV, that hip,

young place, it's 52 years old. And I have here, my producer said, do you watch live television? I don't. I watch so little of it. And I love CNN. Now, what's happening here, back to your question, effectively, by offering free distribution, which is effectively what net neutrality does, it says to Netflix, you might be taking up billions of dollars of infrastructure investment, but we're going to offer it to you effectively for free. Whereas the cable companies invested billions of dollars to put a cable or a wire, a fiber optic wire into your house, and then they got rights to basically command higher and higher fees through the cable bundle where you woke up and realized you were paying $200. So you could have Bravo 5, Bravo 6, and whatever it was, Home and Cooking Channel 5. And they had the best business ever. And then in comes the internet.

And laws that say you've got to offer internet over that cable, and any content producer has access to the full stack and can pump as much through as they want, essentially they can now spend more money on content and they have deeper pockets. So just as they conquered original scripted television with just massive investments, I bet Netflix this year will spend more money on original scripted programming than all of cable and all of TV did in the entire decade of the 80s.

You have, now they're going after the next thing, they're going after sports. So the price is going to come down for the consumer. You're not going to have this NFL ticket bullshit where you end up paying a hundred or 200 bucks for 12 games or whatever it is. The price is going to come down for the consumer. I mean, think about the model here. I'm charging every household 200 bucks such that I can pelt them with ads that I'm also charging for. I mean, there's no business like the cable business. I think the big losers here are going to, again, be ad-supported cable who spent a ton of money to buy these franchise live events and are no longer going to be able to justify those payments because more and

more people are watching it for free. I think HBO is going to start running CNN clips. I don't see why they wouldn't. Just a little bug that says CNN, or you see a thing that says Israel goes into Lebanon, click here for seven minutes, and you'll get the best seven minutes from Anderson Cooper instead of having to wade through all the bullshit and the ads. I think the leagues still have enough bidders that they will register an increase in value. And the guys who just get killed are the ones that were just printing money, charging a lot of money to watch NBA games or the Super Bowl and also running Pepsi ads all day. Really thoughtful question. I need to think this through. Anyways, thanks, Jack from Austin.

Question number two. Hi, Prof G. This is Robin Collian from the land down under from Melbourne, Australia. Big fan of the show and your crew jokes remain an essential part of my daily routine. As part of the PropG tradition, let's talk about me. I've recently graduated from an English degree with honors, and alongside my coursework, I built a media business around teaching literature-slash-philosophy on YouTube, and through my newsletter, which is now sitting at over half a million followers. And along the way, I've noticed that this is not how the humanities are traditionally marketed. In the English faculty, it seems to be the case that most people are having a hard time defining their value,

leaving graduates with the same question, how are the skills acquired in the humanities transferable after graduation? More specifically, as an academic yourself, what do you think the future of a humanities degree is, and how should humanities graduates market themselves after graduation? Thank you for all you do. If you're ever in Melbourne, drop me a line. First off, congratulations on living in Melbourne. You have clearly the core competence I would want to bestow on any person. What I hope my boys can do, and I'm trying to figure out ways to do this, in that core competence that survives is directly reverse engineered to our competitive

advantages as a species, which is cooperation. But how do we cooperate? By looking at each other and winking? No, we cooperate through communication. So storytellers are key to the species survival. And by the way, the reason Mick Jagger at the age of 80 gets to sleep with 30-year-old ballerinas is because he's an amazing storyteller. And we're really drawn to great storytellers. By the way, by the way, the greatest or the easiest example of how powerful storytelling is, if you're in the mating market, especially as a dude,

and you can make someone laugh, you're gonna procreate. Here's my impression of all women. I'm laughing, I'm laughing, I'm naked. That is storytelling. If you can make someone laugh, you can get a job with them, you can be their friend, or you can kiss them. Storytelling is the core competence. Jeff Bezos, Maya Angelou, Alex Karp at Palantir. What is their core competence? Is it technology? Is it vision? No, it's fucking storytelling. Read the 1997 letter, investor letter from Jeff Bezos, and you just want to buy shares. Watch Alex Karp on Bill Maher, and you think, oh, I'll you have a good gift of gab, is just incredibly

powerful. So what would I hope for anyone in humanities? Look at a sector that you think has some sort of relevance to relationships or the markets or personal or family dynamics and become a great storyteller. And more importantly, once you figure out how to become a great communicator, and by the way, there's a ton of mediums. I teach this in my class. Pick a medium and commit to being the top 1% in that medium. Texting, speaking to large crowds, PowerPoint, TikTok, X, whatever the fuck it is.

Find a medium that means posts on medium, for God's sakes, writing books, writing short stories, writing articles. You have to learn how to be a great communicator if you want a disproportionate amount of opportunity or be able to produce it, if you will, shape it. That's what my producers do. That's what the people behind the camera here are doing is they're great storytellers and they know how to craft the story. I'm just the person, like, I'm just the quote-unquote, I don't know, puppet, the marionette here. But that is the core competence and you have learned how to do it. So what do you want to do? You want to figure out something you're super interested in that you're great at. Do you

understand evolutionary biology better than anyone else in the world? Do you understand the intersection between human capital and the workplace? Do you understand organizational behavior? Whatever it is, do you understand the correlation or the relevance of the gods or Greece or ancient Greece or the Stoics? Also, I do think academia is underrated as a career. Going, if you're a really good student and you want to be kind of the best in the world at a very narrow thing, and also you're a bit of a lone wolf,

I think academics are generally speaking not very social and they like to do research. I think academia is a fantastic profession, a ton of flexibility. You get to be on campus, which is a wonderful place. You get to be around young people, which is inspiring. And your job is just to damage the muscle in between the ears of a young person such that it grows back stronger. I think it is a noble mission. It can also be quite good money if you're really good at it. Now, the business school is a little bit different, but I bet the top 10%

of faculty at the business school make seven figures plus a year. If they're not, they shouldn't be at a business school, in my view. If you can't make a shit ton of money at an elite business school outside of the business school, it probably means you shouldn't be teaching. Hmm. Can't wait for the feedback I get on that one. But anyways, I do think that professional relevance outside of the classroom is key to being a great professor.

Is that fair? Probably not. Anyways, the humanities, there's always a way to make money in storytelling. You got to figure out your medium. Academia is a great career. I wouldn't be scared off by the humanities. And you are a fantastic role model for your colleagues, whatever they go into. If you don't have the ability to communicate it in a compelling fashion, whether it's to your students, to your readers, to subscribers of magazines, to book buyers, to people on TikTok, you're not going to get very far, regardless of how knowledgeable you are. It's about storytelling. Really appreciate the question. We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.

Welcome back. Question number three. Hi, Scott. Thomas here from Belgium. Long-time listener of the podcast. I think you're a great role model for young men, and I love your views on politics and business. Here's my question. My wife and I, both from Europe, moved to the United States about four years ago. It turned out to be the best financial decision of our lives. We moved almost with no savings, starting in Austin, Texas. We built a bit of wealth, bought a home, and we went from a visa to a Greek card. Now we're living in New York City, enjoying everything this big city has to offer. While we're planning to move to Europe at some point to be closer to our family, we now have the option to potentially become U.S. citizens. I'm curious, given the tax implications and the potential lifelong impact, do you think it's worth pursuing U.S. citizenship as a hedge for world economy and the benefits of a second passport?

Thank you for the question. Bye. Thomas from Belgium. First off, congratulations. And we are, what makes America great is that really impressive people who are willing to take risk continue to come to the United States. That is the secret sauce, and I'm glad that it's paying off for you. I've always said, I've basically been molesting the earth for the last 30 years. What does that mean? I was always in the services business, meaning that if the CMO of Samsung wanted me to come present to management, I'd be like, sure, I can do that. And I'd be on a plane the next day for Seoul, or Audi was my biggest client when I started a strategy firm at the age of 26 in my second year of business school. And when Audi would call and say,

hey, would you like to come talk? Of course I do. So I get on a plane for fucking Ingolstadt, Germany. By the way, Ingolstadt should not be on your list of cities to see before you die. And it took a huge toll on me personally, professionally. Anyway, I don't know why I'm going there, but I feel as if I have a decent sense of different cities and different countries around the world.

And my reductive analysis, what it all distills down to, my assessment of the world, the U.S. is the best place to make money. Europe is the best place to spend it. So while you're still trying to make progress, you're in your earning years, you're in your making years, not your spending years, I say don't leave the U.S. Now, as it relates to being a citizen, there's some real benefits. And I immediately want to pound my chest and say congratulations, and having U.S. citizenship is an unbelievable asset. Go for it. There are some benefits, voting rights and political participation. According to Pew Research, naturalized citizens make up about 10% of the U.S. electorate. Unrestricted right to live and work in the U.S. You can't underestimate that. I know so many people, the INS, our immigration department, quite frankly, is just

exceptionally crude and aggressive and makes a lot of people's lives who are trying to do it legally miserable. It does not do a good job of rewarding the people trying to play by the rules and does a totally ineffective job of undocumented workers, who, by the way, are the most profitable part of immigration. But that's a longer talk show. I wrote my entire post on No Mercy, No Malice last week on immigration. Why don't we solve the immigration problem? Because it's too goddamn profitable. Anyways, what would I do?

Look, I'm not going to tell you not to become an American citizen. stay on resident non-dom visas or whatever in the U.S., and you decide to move to Dubai one day where there are no taxes, if I move to Dubai, I continue to pay U.S. federal income tax. You might not as Belgian citizens. So what am I suggesting? You are the secret sauce to our success. I'm not going to get in the way or discourage you from becoming an American citizen. The only thing I will say is that there are sometimes some benefits to not being a U.S. citizen should you decide to move to a Hong Kong or a Dubai that has 0% tax rate to take advantage of those types of low tax rates.

Because once you're a U.S. citizen, in exchange for the unbelievable prosperity, rule of law, and great nightlife that the U.S. offers, U.S. taxes are going to follow you everywhere. I feel really shitty pointing this out because the U.S. needs a strong tax base, but I would probably just check in with a talented tax person before both of you hit the bid and become citizens. Having said that, there is no passport, there is no citizenship that is more powerful and is more noble and does more for the world than American citizenship. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursatpropertymedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatpropertymedia.com. Again, that's officehours at propertymedia.com. This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Prop G Markets Pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.