Spyglass - 'Where to Watch' Works!

Below, find a sliver of what I read and thought about today – most notably, trying to pull together all the various recent reports about what's going on with Microsoft's several irons in the AI fires.

Also, the NFL season kicks off tonight – Ravens at Chiefs. And ESPN's "Where to Watch" service is already coming in handy – the game is on NBC or streaming on Peacock. Unless you're overseas, as I am, then DAZN seems to be the best bet, unless you have NFL Sunday Ticket via YouTube. Of course, it's also on at 1:20am in London, so... I'll watch the highlights on social media tomorrow morning.

The Inner Ring

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Does Microsoft Have an AI Problem?

It’s early, but there sure is a lot of smoke billowing…

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

Some Thoughts...

🕶️ Qualcomm Working on XR Smart Glasses with Samsung and Google – This wasn't exactly a secret or surprise, but the fact that Qualcomm's CEO was willing to talk about these glasses on the record indicates that they're either getting close, or they want to get ahead of Meta and Snap talking about their new glasses in the next couple of weeks (or both). Amon's comments are clearly putting these three players in the wearables-tied-to-a-phone camp (versus, say, the Vision Pro), which is no surprise. [CNBC]

🐉 George R. R. Martin is Big Mad About Blood & Cheese – As he threatened a few days ago (see the quote here), Martin took to his blog to rip into an aspect of last season's House of the Dragon show on Max. The details are honestly a bit silly, not to mention spoiler-y, but they could point to some bigger plot deviations in season 3. And as we're all well aware by now, once Game of Thrones lost the plot (quite literally in that case, as Martin had not – and still has not – written the plot yet), things went south, fast. The bigger element is that it – once again – points to budget concerns as for the reason for the change. That's perhaps most damning of all, but also perhaps why Martin deleted his post rather quickly. Everyone looks sort of bad here. Expect another post soon. Anything so as to avoid writing The Winds of Winter. [Winter is Coming]

📺 The Creation of Time Warner – J. Richard Munro, who spearheaded the merger that led to Time Warner, passed away last month at 93. The backstory of the deal is sort of an interesting parallel to our current day – back then, Paramount swooped in at the last minute to make a hostile bid for Time, but Munro pushed ahead on the merger with Warner, which Paramount then sued to block (and lost). Today, of course, Paramount is about to be taken over by Skydance (after a lot of drama – including Edgar Bronfman Jr. trying to swoop in at the last minute – back in the day, he also tried to buy Time) while Warner, now Warner Bros Discovery, is likely to have to sell soon enough – at the very least some of its parts, like perhaps HBO – which Munro used to run as Time actually owned it, not Warner. The whole M&A history here is a complete and utterly fascinating rabbit hole of mostly mistakes (AOL!) but a few good moves, like Munro's. [NYT]

A Golden "Oldie"

There would appear to be some breaking news around Amazon and a deal with Diamond Sports to let the tech giant stream a ton of MLB and NHL games on Prime. This had been in the works and seemed to fall apart recently, but now it may be back on the table and bigger than ever, if this report from Josh Kosman for The New York Post is accurate. More thoughts to come, but it's also perfectly in line with my previous thoughts from April on Amazon's potential in this space (and would potentially be a blow to ESPN's bid to take over sports streaming)...

Amazon’s Potential “Sportsnight”

The NBA streaming deal seems smart -- I’m surprised Apple didn’t push harder for it.

Spyglass •M.G. Siegler

As An Aside...

• Everyone knows that Bloomberg likes their reports to move the market, which is why they always note the impact of their stories in their stories. But there's a downside to that too, when the stories are wrong. Case in point: NVIDIA is denying that it received a subpoena from the DOJ around a budding antitrust case (linked to here yesterday). Bloomberg now seems to be arguing that it's semantics, but to have a company so clearly refute the report is not a great look in that it, yes, moved the market. [CNBC]
• Once rate cuts begin, where will they settle? Likely between 3% and 4% says Howard Marks. [Bloomberg 🔒]
• Angels pitcher Ben Joyce threw a pitch 105.5 mph. That's the third-fastest pitch ever recorded, only Aroldis Chapman has thrown a ball (fractionally) faster at 105.7 and 105.8. Did I mention Joyce is a rookie? [Yahoo Sports]
• The casting for the new live-action He-Man movie is coming together – though I can't get a read on if it's going to be serious or more like Barbie. Nostalgia will be strong amongst demos like mine, but it's also to see how such a movie is taken seriously in 2026 (targeted release day). Also, it will be hard to top the 1987 cult classic (which bombed at the box office)– and Kevin Smith's newer animated series is pretty good. [THR]
• The Nordstrom family is trying to take the company whose department stores bears its name, private. They're offering $3.8B. If that fails, perhaps there's a future in turning the stores into Netflix experience centers. [NYT]
• OpenAI announced that it has hit 1 million paid users for its corporate products (which includes the version aimed at schools). It would be very interesting to know how this compares to Microsoft's 365 Copilot (GitHub Copilot also has something just north of 1M)... [Bloomberg 🔒]
  • They are also looking at raising prices for non-corporate 'Pro' users once either the next model and/or the "Strawberry" reasoning features launch. Ideally not $2,000/month as is being floated? [The Information 🔒]
• Is Apple about to kill off their 'FineWoven' "luxurious and durable microtwill" accessories? Hope so; the only Apple product I immediately returned. Just a total misstep by the company. [MacRumors]
• Tesla's delayed "Robotaxi" looks finally set to take the stage – the soundstage – in October on the Warner Bros Discovery lot? WBD can clearly use the cash for what is clearly going to be some sort of gimmicky reveal. There is a lot riding on this and all the other puns. [Bloomberg 🔒]
• Intel is dropping their "20A" node and going all-in on "18A" in an effort to save money. That sounds good, but then why weren't they doing this to begin with? They were clearly aiming to learn from 20A and make it sound like they got those learnings despite not seeing it through (now fully outsourcing "Arrow Lake" to TSMC). We'll see... [Tom's Hardware]

And I Quote...

"It is becoming increasingly clear that there is no longer any floor."

-- Analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson writing to Peter Kafka for his Business Insider report on the continued collapse of cable. As Kafka notes, the collapse is slowing a bit, but perhaps only because they're approaching the actual floor, as in the ground.

Also worth noting that Moffett and Nathanson also believe Venu is dead because a legal challenge to revive it would likely shake up other elements of the bundle that the companies behind the service would rather leave untouched, to die in peace.