Spyglass - We're All Doctor Doomed

Charles Barkley feels terrible that TNT is set to the lose their NBA rights because of the fans. But, of course, once those rights are gone, he can take his talents elsewhere and the fans will follow. Like, say, Amazon. Which is not a part of Venu, but that might actually be a good thing.

In general, not a great week for celebrities, as they also saw their Meta-made AI chatbots laid to rest after only a few months of life. Perhaps they can take that ridiculous money pocketed from the (zero) effort and buy up some movie theaters? At the very least, Robert Downey Jr. should after his upcoming Doctor Doom payday. It makes Deadpool vs. Wolverine money look like chump change.

Or maybe those celebs can take their transcendent artificial beings and port them into a new AI companion pendant? To quote Mark Zuckerberg, "nah, fuck that."

He said that in conversation with Jensen Huang, who has had his own roller coaster of a week, stock-wise. Of course, that's nothing new for NVIDIA. And that's going to continue in our AI frenzy as they're seemingly working with everyone – except Apple. You know, the tortoise of AI to Meta's Llama. Apple just wants to move slow and make sure everything works. Which seems... reasonable? Certainly Wall Street seems to agree, for now.

How much of the AI spend Microsoft that is bringing in is coming from TikTok, or other Chinese-adjacent properties? It seems like enough that they should be worried about it going away depends how the political winds shift...

Xitter killed Twitter for Mac. Yes, again. Yes, it was still alive. Perhaps it's time to kill Xitter? With a lightsaber, perhaps?

Remains of the Week

🍎 Apple's Q3 2024 Earnings Call – Jason Snell always does a great job with getting these full transcripts up, and an even better job with the charts! This was a pretty boring earnings call, IMO. There's always the usual Apple spin to try to make it seem that even mundane quarters are amazing – but the analysts asking questions this cycle really sort of crapped the bed, including one asking if there would be a staggered roll-out of AI features, which literally every other person on the planet knows the answer to because Apple has said as much many times. It was interesting that basically every question was about AI or China and there were none about Vision Pro. Zero. Even though it just launched outside of the US for the first time in the quarter. Yikes. [Six Colors]

📺 Venu Has a Tough Marketing Challenge to Find an Audience – Alex Sherman says the new sports streaming service is going to have to call in Don Draper, pronto. He brings up a number of good points about Venu (here are my own) – namely that SlingTV is already in market with a similar offering, and actually a better one because it includes NBC (and a host of other non-sports channels) for just a bit more money. And after some momentum out of the gate (in the earlier days of virtual television packages) it has stopped growing... So yeah, Disney is going to have to market this like crazy. [CNBC]

🏀 How Zaz Lost the NBA – Great, full tick-tock from John Ourand as to just how David Zaslav gambled, bungled, and ultimately lost the NBA rights for Warner Bros Discovery and, critically, TNT. Well, unless he can sue to get them back, which seems problematic at best. To be fair to WBD, it does seem like the NBA was driving a hard bargain, but Zaslav clearly misjudged the market for the rights. [Puck 🔒]

🤺 Microsoft Says OpenAI is Now a Competitor – They added the company in which they've invested some $13B to this category in their latest 10-K filing. Microsoft, of course, says "nothing to see here", but well, there wasn't anything to see before, now there is literally something to see! Yes, yes, SearchGPT, but still! If nothing else, it just continues the trend of awkwardness if not outright tension here. At least Microsoft is no longer in board room, I guess? [CNBC]

🌪️ Hollywood’s Message to Red States: Our Movies Are for You – It does feel like Twisters, a movie about a certain type of natural disaster which sure seems to be occurring more regularly and with greater force, would carry with it a message about climate change. Nope. Republicans buy sneakers too, after all. But really, this would seem to be a backlash against escapist entertainment being "too preachy" which I think is generally okay. Not everything needs to be a statement. [NYT]

⭕️ The Inner Ring ⭕️

This week's Spyglass columns sent to members of The Inner Ring. Sign up here for full access and for future emails...

Move Slow and Make Sure Everything Works

Apple’s approach to their AI roll-out is in stark contrast to others…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

Nah, Facebook That

Zuckerberg is walking (and talking) a fine line with open vs. closed…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

The Sports Bundle is Expensive, Incomplete, and Incoherent

Who is Venu actually for?

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

Potent Quotables

"The mark of a good C.E.O. is not how many punches you can throw, but how many you can take. She is the Muhammad Ali of C.E.O.s."

-- Ari Emanuel, CEO of Endeavor, talking about Linda Yaccarino, who got not one, but two different feature articles in two different publications this week detailing her struggles to run Xitter under Elon Musk

The Quick & the Read

• It sure seems like Apple is gearing up to launch ads within Apple TV+ [The Telegraph]
• OpenAI has finally started rolling out their new voice capabilities within ChatGPT's mobile app – no 'Sky/Scarlett' voice though [TechCrunch]
• Bennett Miller – director of Capote, Moneyball, and Foxcatcher fame – is finally gearing up for his next movie after a decade away. The topic: AI – yes, really [World of Reel]
• Former Cisco CEO John Chambers joined the board of Humane, which seems all kinds of weird unless a deal is about to go down of some sort... [The Information 🔒]
• I had no idea there were two versions of the Super Nintendo system (and I'm not talking about the remodeled version) back in the day, but one apparently had much better graphic output – not that we could tell on our old CRT TVs, but it's pretty easy to see on modern TVs – this chip fixes it if you happen to have one [The Verge]
• Amazon has hired Scott Stuber, the former head of Netflix's film division, to reboot the United Artists banner, which they got as part of the MGM buy. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with its actual origins as an actual artists-centric studio (started by Charlie Chaplin and co), just branding [Variety]
• Did you know that your AI boyfriend/girlfriend may be from China? [WSJ 🔒]
  • Could be worse though, they could be hoovering up your views on gun control, abortion, religion, etc. OR MAYBE THEY ARE [WSJ 🔒]
• The US Commerce Department has endorsed "open weight" AI models, which is obviously great news for Meta and not great news for others like OpenAI, Google, and the like... [TechCrunch]
• Did you see the offer "Apex Capital" made to buy Paramount – notable because it's within the 45-day "go shop" period of the Skydance offer? Turns out, it may have been a hoax because this story needs more twists and turns. [The Wrap]
  • Edgar Bronfman Jr. is still actually trying to put together a competing offer though, it seems – he has 19 days [Axios]
• Intel is going to cut 15,000 jobs (and its dividend) in the continued effort to turn itself around. Yikes. [NYT]
• Mark Zuckerberg casually dropped the notion that Llama 4 will need about 10x the compute resources to train versus what the just-released Llama 3.1 version needed. Yikes. [The Verge]
  • Alex Heath also casually the notion that Meta will release a cheaper version of the Quest headset next month at their Connect conference...
• Meanwhile, others are coming for OpenAI's "Strawberry" pickings fast, it seems. Sorry, that is AI that can "reason". [The Information 🔒]

One More Quote...

"Probably the most fragile platform. When was the last time you heard of a big outage at Apple?"

-- Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Air Lines when asked about the company's relationship with Microsoft (and Windows) after the massive computer outage – which, yes, was caused by CrowdStrike. Harsh!