November 28, 2025 • 40 mins
To celebrate Black Friday, this week’s Everybody’s Business is all about two staples of this unofficial US holiday: commerce and football. First, New York Times’ Ken Belson sits down with Max and Stacey to discuss his new book Every Day Is Sunday: How Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell Turned the NFL into a Cultural & Economic Juggernaut. Belson explains how the National Football League has managed to grow into the most valuable sports league in the world and why the game is so perfectly suited for television.
Also paying a visit to the studio is Wirecutter’s Annemarie Conte. She breaks down how the popular site manages to dig out and organize such a barrage of deals, and previews what jaded consumers can expect this Black Friday, amid tariffs and trade wars.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
This is Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I'm Stacey Mannix Smith.
Speaker 4 (00:15):
And I'm Max Schafkin and Stacey. It is Thanksgiving. It's
the week of Thanksgiving. Hopefully by the time you're listening
to this, you have survived it and we are ready.
We have an episode covering i'd say the two main
Thanksgiving disciplines.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
For your post turkey meal day.
Speaker 5 (00:34):
Football and shopping.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
We have Anna Marie Kanti from The Wirecutter talking about
Black Friday. She's going to explain how they go about
writing these guides and also like what people can expect
where the good deals are.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
And we will also be talking with Melson. He is
here to talk about his.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
New book about football, of course, a very fitting subject
on Daylight Today.
Speaker 5 (00:57):
And for our Underrated story.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
You know we've heard how Trump is bringing back tariffs,
is kind of maybe canceling, cancel culture whatever. He's also
giving notes on Bunny comments.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
And for my story, I'm just gonna say this, I
hope you enjoyed your turkey because twenty twenty six your.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Entrees may change.
Speaker 6 (01:22):
Not to sound ominous, okay, Stacy, not a lot of
economic news this week, of course because of Thanksgiving, because
you know, I think a lot of offices are sort
of half full or full of people who are kind
of only half works.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Everybody is drifting out the door all week. Let's be honest.
Speaker 5 (01:41):
But we have had.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Some economic news, starting with something you wrote about the
vaunted Bloomberg Pumpkins Spice Index. On this podcast, we follow
a lot of indexes and statistics, and Stacy Vanicksmith, our
own Stacy Vanix Smith has, with the help of Bloomberg economist.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Michael McDonough, Michael McDonough has created her own Yes, Mike
McDonough shout out to he's the chief economist in charge
of products, and he is the auteur of the Bacon,
egg and Cheese Index. And so I was pestering him
for a little while and he very kindly put together
the Pumpkin Spice Index, which includes all the ingredients in
a pumpkin spice latte.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Essentially, so all spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, clovest get
them all.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yeah, very good.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's the PS five, as I've come to think of them,
the Pumpkin Spice five. And then also milk coffee, and.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Sugar okay, And so twenty twenty five first ever Bloomberg
Pumpkin Spice Index.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
What did we learn?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, it was very interesting because most spices are imported.
We don't really grow spices in this country at all.
It's the same problem we have with coffee, where it
has to grow in the tropics, and so we import
all of it. So it's all basically subject to tariffs.
I talked to spice.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Companies which are absolutely dying.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Mc or said it's going to spend one hundred and
forty million dollars this year on tariffs.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
But the actual index didn't move that much.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Because a lot of places are stockpiling spices because they
you know, Trump campaigned on tariffs and so they knew
and spices store quite well, so they have like a
little stockpile. And also companies are hesitant to pass those
prices onto consumers, especially right now. So the spices have
edged up like a tiny.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Bit, but not really.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And also the index tracks global prices, and spices are
a very global trade and so the US companies are
paying the tariffs, but the global spice makers aren't.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Yeah, I mean, and this came up last week when
we were talking about the price of turkey. It's going
to come up in the segment to follow with animar
Conte from the Wirecutter, where you're actually seeing some really
good Black Friday deals even though tariffs have been hitting
a lot of these product categories. Basically, like the economy
is so unsteady that you have a lot of retailers
just kind of deciding to eat the costs, whether at
(04:00):
Starbucks or these spice companies or whoever.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, it's really interesting because consumer confidence numbers came in
really low.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
I think there's a huge worry.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Among companies and economists and all this that people aren't
going to buy as much. And this is such a
crucial season for retailers that if people really hold back
and don't buy as much, it was going to cause
a big effect Stacey.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Of course, pumpkin spice shopping, that's all big right now.
The other thing that's really big, of course is sports and.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
The great coping mechanism of Thanksgiving. Right what can you do.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
To try to tune out your family?
Speaker 4 (04:36):
You can watch sports or log onto a sports betting app.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
And you know, we've been gathering.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Make a little extra gift buying money.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
We've been covering that on this podcast. We've got a
conversation coming up just how big the NFL is. We
thought it would be kind of cool to just hear
from some sports fans about the business of sports and
about how sports and their spending kind of relate to
one another.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
And this year, the Turkey Day game involved the Baltimore Ravens.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Against the Cincinnati Bengals, and we sent our reporter Charlie
Grorivin on the amtrak straight down to Baltimore to spend
the day, spend Monday, hang out at sports bar, and
to talk to people about football and gambling.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
And here's what he learned.
Speaker 7 (05:23):
So I'm here right now in Fell's Point in Baltimore.
This is usually a big spot where fans like to
come drink. I'm looking to find some fans who can
talk to me about how they're feeling about the business
of sports and football.
Speaker 8 (05:39):
What sports do you think you spend the most on? Soccer, Baseball, Basketball?
I like sports, so any sport really, basketball, football is king.
What teams do you sport?
Speaker 7 (05:47):
I'm a Ravens fan, Dolphins, Gators, Magic and Marlins.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
How much do you think you spend as a fan.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I've been a season ticket holder for the Dolphins eighteen
hundred dollars a.
Speaker 8 (05:58):
Year regular season game three to fifty My.
Speaker 7 (06:01):
First ticket last year to a Ravens game, sitting right
at a grand.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
I might only spend like two hundred three hundred a year.
Speaker 8 (06:07):
And are you a sports better Yeah, I do.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
My biggest bit would be like twenty dollars I'll.
Speaker 8 (06:12):
Go to is usually ten dollars.
Speaker 9 (06:13):
Probably fifty Australian toll is a week to eight hundred
and lost everything about.
Speaker 7 (06:18):
The way that sports are becoming so corporate, is there
a certain point where, like in the future you feel
like it could just go too far?
Speaker 8 (06:25):
As a consumer, is not a whole lot we can do, right.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
I think it's just a result of end stage capitalism
in the United States.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Instead of having these like multi conglomerates and like ultra
billionaires like owning football teams, if it was just like
open stock that the community could own, you would probably
have better safety systems, you would have like longer term
fan appreciation.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Okay, Wow, it's a big variety of opinions.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Some really inventive ideas about how to restructure professional sports.
I gotta say one thousand dollars for Baltimore Ravens game.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
That's like a vacation.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Yeah, I guess you're right. I mean we'll get into
this with with Ken Belson. I mean, you know there's
I guess there's an argument to be made that like
football is our national religion and so yeah, I mean,
you can't put a price.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I also would not spend one thousand dollars to go
to a church service, all.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Right, Stacey, I just want to run a couple things
by you. Yes, all right, So if you look at
the twenty twenty five list of the most valuable sports
teams according to Sportico, which tracks these things, any of
them are in the NBA, two are in Major League Baseball,
two are in European soccer leagues and all the others.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
So that's like thirteen our NFL teams.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Like this is globally what teams are worse?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Okay, because there are some like very valuable soccer teams,
very valuable cricket teams.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
And then there's one other thing I wanted to mention,
which is if you look at the most watched TV
broadcast from last year twenty twenty four, that was a
big year. You'll remember there was a presidential election, and
a lot of big stuff happened.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
Joe Biden dropped out.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
It was an eventful There was a.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
Big debate, the Big Debate in September.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
That was the eleventh biggest broadcast in twenty twenty four.
Can you guess what the other ten biggest broadcasts were?
The top ten?
Speaker 5 (08:20):
I mean, is it.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
The football game that was streamed on Netflix?
Speaker 4 (08:23):
So the top ten are all football games, all NFL games. Yeah,
the Oscars, the Oscars, big events, Stacy, you've heard of
the Oscars.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
I've heard of the Oscars.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
Six on the list drew twenty million viewers last year.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
It narrowly, narrowly edged out a random Sunday night NFL
game in September, which was like number thirteen. And I'm
really happy because our guest who we just heard is
Ken Belson. He's here to talk about this, how this happened.
He's the author of every Day is Sunday. How Jerry Jones,
Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell turned the NFL into a
cultural and economic juggernaut. Ken is a reporter for The
(09:01):
New York Times covering the business of sports.
Speaker 8 (09:03):
Ken, how are you very good? Thanks for having me
on Ken.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
How did this happen? It could have been any other sport.
It could have been baseball. Why is the NFL the
one that became this insane cultural economic goliath.
Speaker 8 (09:18):
Well, I'm not sure it could have been baseball. One
feature of football is it can really only be played
once a week, so the scarcity of games is partly
what drives the interest in those games. And there's only
seventeen regular season games, so even an early season matchup
can have massive consequences for later in the season. Early
baseball games in April and may maybe not so much
(09:40):
basketball most people don't pay attention till Christmas. Hockey kind
of the same. So football has always benefited from that
scarcity of games. They've also stuck to the over the
air strategy when a lot of the other leagues went
to cable regional sports networks, and even with MLS going
all streaming, NFL has hung on to CBA, Fox, NBC, BESPN.
(10:02):
Over the air broadcast get them the widest audience, and
although the total audience has shrunk, they are still head
and shoulders above everybody else.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
What is it about football that kind of captures the
American imagination? Because you could have fewer baseball games, you
could make the season more compact, and that's a much
easier game to follow, as is soccer.
Speaker 8 (10:21):
Well, I mean football in the NFL terms. It came
along in mass market ways during the sixties when color
television showed up. It's the strategy of moving down the
field is something that's compelling to anybody. And even if
you're confused, you're trying to figure out what's going on there.
There's eleven players on each side doing eleven or twenty
two different things, and that's kind of like a moving
(10:43):
chess game down the field. And I've spoken to fans,
not just in America because we kind of take it
for granted, but fans in Europe, for instance, just sort
of love this constant strategizing that every play involves the other.
Is the physicality combined with speed and in some cases ballet.
All of those things combined are really interesting. So there's
(11:04):
a lot of elements to the game that make it compelling.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
It's like a violent game of chess.
Speaker 8 (11:09):
Yes, twenty two people playing violent chess.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Part of this, though, is not about the game itself.
It's about the business that underlies the game and that's
what your book is about. If I remember, it starts
around nineteen ninety or just before nineteen ninety, and you
have this kind of explosion of popularity of interest there
just lay out the kind of thesis of the book,
(11:33):
the way that the NFL goes from being popular but
not this kind of global colossus to being where it
is today.
Speaker 8 (11:41):
So it's hard to fathom, really, But in the eighties
the NFL was nothing like it is now. They had
labor strikes, the TV money was sort of growing, but
because of the threat of losing games, CBS and NBC
didn't want to put up as much money, and there
were many teams that were still losing money. And this
lasted all the way to ninety three, which is where
(12:01):
I kind of start the book, because Paul Tagliboo, who
just passed away, they had taken over and he said,
we can't exist like this will never be a modern
sport unless we essentially make peace with the players, and
that happened in a series of lawsuits, and so in
ninety three they cut what is now a sort of
landmark deal. The players get full free agency, the owners
(12:23):
get a salary cap, and then they get revenue sharing
and at that point it's they're fifty to fifty partners,
and so now the owners sort of put down their weapons,
so to speak, and the owners are incentivized because they're
not going to worry about losing games. So that's really
the supersizing of the NFL starts at that point. The
following year, an owner named Jerry Jones been in the
(12:45):
league for a couple of years. At that point, he's
looking at the broadcast contracts coming up, and there's three
bridters for three packages, CBSNBC and ABC, NFCAFC and Monday
Night Football. That's kind of it. And Jerry says, how
do you run a business like that? Why don't we
have bidders? We need an auction. So he invites Rupert
Murdoch to the table. Rupert had tried twice to get
(13:05):
into the NFL. He had the formula in Britain where
he had the English Premier League helped him launch Sky Sports,
and so he needed sports to build up Fox Television.
And he told Rupert, you're not going to be a
stalking horse. Will take you seriously, even though you have
no sports division, no announcers, no name, no jingle, no
no anything, and Rupert brings over his lead producer, David
(13:29):
Hill comes over from England, does a presentation. He says,
here's how I would spice up the NFL. More cameras,
more audiots, the robots, jaunty or music, more bro feel
in the in the pregame show, not to sort of
newscaster feel. And it worked. It was fabulous. They wildly
overpaid and at that point, not only does the NFL's
(13:51):
money accelerate, all the other leagues take note that there's
a network willing to use sports as a lost leader,
and then the TV medium. He really explodes across the
sports landscape.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
I want to bring up the thing that comes up
the most in like sort of my football and sports
related group chats, which is kind of relevant right now
as we're recording this on November eighteenth, having Thanksgivings coming up,
We're gonna have the Thursday NFL games, which I think
for many people in the US is like a bigger
holiday than Thanksgiving. By the way, Stacy, on that list
(14:24):
top ten broadcast number six and seven were the two
Thanksgiving games. Then we're gonna get a game on Friday
that is Amazon Prime game. And the thing that comes
up for me, like with my friends, is like come on,
like do we really need like another The beautiful thing
about the NFL is like it's once a week, like
you said, but it's not once a week anymore because
(14:45):
now we have Monday Night football, we have Thursday Night football,
sometimes we have Friday. And it makes me wonder Number one,
like how close is the NFL to kind of saturate
like create it like sort of damaging that for scarce
anything that you mentioned earlier. And then the other thing
is this is, as you said, like a largely broadcast
(15:08):
sport where we're like even the games, yes, like some
Monday night football games, but for the most part it's
been something that anyone with a TV can watch and
that has worked out really really well for the NFL.
Speaker 5 (15:20):
How are these streaming deals looking for the league?
Speaker 8 (15:22):
So in twenty fourteen, Mark Cuban famously said he thought
the NFL was getting piggy, meaning greedy and filling up
too many slots on the air. This was probably self
interest because he was an NBA owner at the time,
And now it looks ridiculously innocent because we do have
many more games, the Friday game, the Netflix games on
Christmas Days was formerly an NBA holiday, and so yeah,
(15:46):
I think the NFL is very aware of not overdoing it.
On the other hand, they have companies like Netflix, Amazon,
Google just clamoring for content, and so they've been carefully
slicing the onion or garlic or whatever you're gonna call
it super thin to cut off a few games so
they can go on streaming platforms. They know their bread
(16:08):
is still buttered by the over the air model, but
they also realize, as Roger Goodell says, we have to
fish where the fish are, and younger viewers don't have
cable connections or rabbit ears to get the over the
air signals, so that's where their audience is they. I
think they're at roughly eighty to eighty five percent still
over the air.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
How many years are we before TikTok gets a either
an NFL game or I'm not even joking before TikTok
air is a.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
Pro sports game?
Speaker 8 (16:37):
Okay, So this is interesting because I do watch the
Amazon games on Thursday night, the Amazon Prime Games, and
there's that great feature when you log on, it says
pick up the game live or watch the catch up version.
So if you're tuning in the second quarter. You could
basically just watch the first quarter in like four seconds.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Yeah, if you were in traffic or whatever, you don't
have to either.
Speaker 8 (16:55):
They're kind of half there. The technology certainly is there.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
One of the the aspects of football that I think
they'll had the whole world watching was the romance between
Travis Kelcey and Taylor Swift.
Speaker 8 (17:08):
Was that a big deal? I didn't notice.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
It was a rather big deal.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
And I'm wondering if that also was able to tap
into an audience that the NFL hadn't previously really accessed,
and if that will have a last teame.
Speaker 8 (17:22):
I got it. It's funny you say that. I mean
the people were tracking her plane from Tokyo to see
if she'd get pack more entertaining than the game. Yeah, exactly.
I had a friend who called me and said his
daughter in Germany, who could care less about the NFL,
suddenly cared because Taylor Swift was showing up and she
was asking her dad about the rules of the game,
(17:43):
and she bought like the NFL game pass to watch
the games in Germany at whatever one in the morning.
Taylor's sent the NFL into a whole other space of
cool that it maybe deliberately could never have occupied and
sometimes the NFL gets lucky that way. It's the biggest
anet for both good and bad stories. Bad stories resonate
(18:03):
more in the NFL than they do in the other leagues.
Domestic violence, health and safety, all these issues are bigger
in the NFL. At the same time, so are pop
culture phenomena, including the halftime Show, which you know we've
been talking about since October.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Ken Belson, thank you so much for being here. Everyone
should check out Ken's book Every Day Is Sunday. How
Jerry Doones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell turned the NFL
into a cultural and economic juggernaut.
Speaker 8 (18:28):
Ken, thank you appreciate it. Thanks both.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Thanks Ken, so Max.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
It is one of the biggest economic holidays of the year,
Black Friday.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
I mean, it's Black Friday. Like, when do you think
about this? One of the stupidest economic holidays?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Absolutely not all seventy percent of our economies consumer spending,
may I remind you, But I do think.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
It's something we should talk about just because it's a
fun window into kind of where we are are, and
also like just as outside of my role as a
you know, professional journalist like I do kind of just
want to get the best deals, you know.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Well, and for companies, a lot of them earn like
a third of their money or a quarter of their
money in this window of time. It's crucially important to
the economy and also as people who love deals like
umax and so in that vein, we are very lucky
to be joined by an Marie Conti. She is the
deputy editor at Wirecutter and she joins us.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Now, Hian Marie, I'm so excited to be here. So
Wirecutter is.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
The New York Times product review site, and I think
it is safe to say it is a major destination
for Black Friday, right, Like, what is your Black Friday situation?
Speaker 3 (19:43):
At Wirecutter, it.
Speaker 9 (19:44):
Is all hands on deck. We have over one hundred journalists.
Everyone is searching for deals on Wirecutter picks. So what
we do is product reviews, right, So we always have
hands on product We are always testing products, and then
we take that pool of the Wirecutter recommended products and
then we look for deals on them. And we have
a dedicated deals team. There are seven people on our
(20:06):
deal's team. And now, I mean there are so many
economic holidays now like they're practically like covering this every
month and then there's October Prime Day, and but they
have very strict standards about what makes the deal. So
because they are tracking every single day of the year,
they know what they call street pricing of a product,
(20:27):
So if something doesn't meet their deal standards, they're not
posting it.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
So I'm picturing like, you know, like one of those
eighties Cold War movies where you have the big like
Norrid command center and then like with a lot of charge.
Speaker 8 (20:40):
Am I wrong?
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Is it just a room full of people refreshing Amazon
to find the dice and vacuum cleaner stick one, Like
is it.
Speaker 9 (20:49):
It's I wish I could say yes, Like do you
want me to say yes? I would say yes. But
that's the image that you want in your head. It's
mostly a bunch of people on slack, like desperately.
Speaker 10 (21:00):
Talking to each other.
Speaker 9 (21:01):
But we do have so we have our beat experts,
and those are the people that really understand these products
inside and out, and so they are searching sit all
the area you.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Have, like your backpack guy and you're like.
Speaker 9 (21:12):
Scooter woman, Yeah, laptops, luggage, everything you can think of,
baby and kid really important right now, especially for gifts.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
What I think I really know and what most people
use it for our product reviews, when you're looking to
buy anything from like a water bottle to a jacket,
you really have all these product reviews. A lot of
them are just incredibly detailed. There was one very funny
quote on Wirecutter that said you had like a seventeen
thousand word guide for buying a vacuum cleaner, which was
(21:42):
almost as long as Macbeth. So what kinds of products
are you reviewing, especially for Black Friday? Because you do
this all year round. Yes, So what does Black Friday
look like? And what are some of the products you reviewed.
Speaker 10 (21:54):
We're looking at everything.
Speaker 9 (21:56):
We are scanning every guide that we have to really
try to give the most breath of picks and to
really find the best deals. And we will do that
multiple times a day every day leading.
Speaker 10 (22:09):
Up through this whole They call it the Turkey five.
Marketers call it the Turkey five.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
What's the Turkey five?
Speaker 9 (22:15):
Black Friday through Cyber Monday five days? Turkey five or
te five if you're gonna get fancy.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Oh my gosh, So you guys are like, what's going
on for T five? How are t five sales.
Speaker 10 (22:26):
We don't do that, but that is the period.
Speaker 9 (22:29):
And then for us, the deals are starting earlier and
earlier and earlier. So deals started dropping in earnest on Monday,
and so we will have a full week of deals
at this point. And it really is it's just a constant.
We're checking, double checking. When deals expire, we pull them down.
Speaker 10 (22:49):
That kind of thing.
Speaker 8 (22:50):
It is.
Speaker 10 (22:50):
It's a pretty manual process.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
I imagine that deals evolve a little bit every year.
Talk to us about this year, like, have there been
any changes to cutter black Friday?
Speaker 9 (23:01):
When tariffs were announced At the beginning of the year,
we started to do a price tracking program just to
see what was going to happen with the tariffs, and
so we tracked forty wirecutter picks at the beginning of
the year and then we continued it through the.
Speaker 10 (23:14):
October fall event.
Speaker 9 (23:16):
And what we've seen is it took a while for
things to increase, and like the tariffs are so scattershot
and it's hard to blame everything on tar tariffs. Every week, yes,
but at the beginning of the year, things hadn't increased
in the way that we thought they would, and now
they are starting to increase. So what's happening is that
(23:37):
the deals that we are vetting are not best ever
deals because prices have increased. So we had to shift
our goal posts to understand what is a good deal.
Now in this economic environment, you're like.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Watching inflation play out in real time.
Speaker 10 (23:52):
Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
You you wrote a really great guide which is on
the Wirecutter's website basically about out how tariffs are impacting
consumer prices, and it showed that, like prices actually went
for a lot of products, like went up between Prime
Day and the Big Deal Days that's the other Amazon
Prime Day, And so you would think like, oh, you're
(24:14):
gonna get a great deal, like it's it's Amazon's Big
Deal Days.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
But really, now you're paying.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Like two bucks more for an Aero press or one
dollar more for this flat duck nightlike which the Wirecutter
just loves and.
Speaker 10 (24:26):
It makes me all so happy.
Speaker 9 (24:28):
I channeled my sadness into this sad light up duck.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Well yeah, so how did what did you see? Like
what kinds of things did tariff's impact?
Speaker 9 (24:36):
So it's across the board the other thing that we
are seeing and again like is it tariffs?
Speaker 10 (24:42):
Is it other things? Is it components.
Speaker 9 (24:44):
So we can't pin everything on the tariffs, but we've
had to adjust wirecutter picks as well. You know, we
had a Lenovo Chromebook that shot up in price to
six hundred dollars and from I think I think five hundred,
I think it went up by one hundred.
Speaker 10 (24:58):
Wow.
Speaker 9 (24:59):
And then but now during Black Friday it's back down
to three point fifty. And so what happens is that
a lot of these retailers spike prices prior to deal
events to make the deals look better.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
So whatever you do, so like early bird shoppers are
like punished. This actually makes me kind of happy because
I'm always very late in buying gifts. This is why
now I can just say I'm being economically responsible.
Speaker 9 (25:28):
But this is why we really want people to be
educated consumers. And we know it's a lot of work,
which is why we have a seven person team to
do the work for you. Because it's impossible to track
everything that you potentially want to purchase.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
So in the run up two Black Friday, a bunch
of companies raise prices.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
It looks like tariffs are starting to bite.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Now we're actually seeing because I read your story, I
was like Okay, this Black Friday is going to be
a nothing burger because like it seems like Deal Days
wasn't very good. So and then I log onto the
Wirecutter earlier this week and it turns out it's the
headline Early Black Fried ideals are usually mediocre, but this
year we've already found hundreds of gems, which I was like,
of course, the wirecutters found hundreds of gems, but still
(26:08):
it does seem like there's a.
Speaker 9 (26:09):
We were shocked. Yeah, we were shocked. It's like breaking news.
So retailers had a really hard time predicting. Manufacturers had
a really hard time predicting. They didn't know what was
going to happen, So they had a really hard time
planning this year. Yeah, I was changing and they yeah,
and they were bringing they were bringing a lot of
products stateside to hold into warehouses here to try to
avoid the twifs before they took effect. And so what's
(26:32):
happening now is it seems like a lot of them
have saved the deals for now because they know that
people are going to come out and shop now. And
one of my sources told me that they were holding
back on advertising spending in order to offset the discounts
so that they were able to provide the discounts.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
So how many people look at Wirecutter over the Black
Friday weekend?
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Do you guys know? I wish, I don't know, like lots,
hundreds of thousand, it's probably me.
Speaker 9 (27:00):
Yes, it's some of our highest traffic.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, So what are what trends are you seeing from them?
Are they looking for different things? Are they asking different questions?
Speaker 9 (27:09):
So the thing that we're really seeing is that people
are purchasing for themselves, right, A lot of people think
Black Friday gifts, and people are purchasing gifts, this is
the pitfall, but they're also purchasing everyday items, right, water
picks and teeth whiteners. I don't know why everything's dental related, right, razors,
all of those. But yeah, we see a lot of
(27:31):
people purchasing things every day items.
Speaker 10 (27:33):
I just bought poop Dog poop bags on sale.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
So you also do, like, I think a lot of
people use Wirecutter, not necessarily for deals, but for product reviews.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Do you ever do those?
Speaker 10 (27:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Can you like list off some of the things that
you've reviewed.
Speaker 9 (27:48):
So one of the stories that I did recently, so
Ralph Nader is in touch with me a bunch and
the politician m yeah.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
At any speed. He's cutters.
Speaker 10 (28:00):
Eradvocate.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah, so okay, I see this connection.
Speaker 10 (28:04):
So he called us. He called us, and he told you, Yeah,
he called. I don't know how.
Speaker 9 (28:10):
Yeah, he got routed to wirecutter and he was like,
I have been using papermate flare pens since the seventies
and my pens are drying out and its product obsilens obsolescence,
and I want you to look into this, and so
I did. I looked into all the reasons that Ralph
Nader's pens. Well, first we said him a bunch of pens.
We're like, here are our wirecutter picks. You might like
(28:32):
these better, and he's like I hate them all. And
I was like, I understand, be true to yourself. And
so then I looked into all the various ways that
his pens could be drying out.
Speaker 10 (28:42):
Then I did, Yeah, I did.
Speaker 9 (28:45):
It was a deep dive investigation. He's so lovely and
he thanked me and the whole thing. And then a
few months later I get a note and it's like,
you haven't looked into the pencil erasers yet, and I
was like, true, true, He had said he didn't. He
want to know why his pencil erasers were going hard.
He's like that, you know, then I can't erase with them.
(29:05):
And so then I did a deep dive into pencil erasers,
and I now understand why pencil erasers go hard. Why
so light and heat are your pencil erasers worst enemies.
Speaker 10 (29:17):
So a synthetic rubber eraser.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Like a moist dark environment.
Speaker 9 (29:21):
Just leave it in a drawer, Just put it in
a box. Leave it in the box. The true thing
is to use one pencil at a time. I realized
that may not be possible for most people. The other
thing is that a plastic eraser, what they call plastic erasers,
are better and they won't dry out. But generally most
manufacturers put a synthetic rubber eraser and not a plastic
(29:42):
eraser on their pencils.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Okay for those who are not for those who are
not buying pencils for their loved ones. I'm kind of curious,
like there are something like right now already as we
record this on Tuesday, November twenty fifth, and I'm sure
in the next couple of days it's gonna this list
is gonna grow. It looks like hundreds of Black Friday deals.
I'm kind of curious as you look ahead to this season,
(30:07):
like what you think is like the best deal so far?
You're like, wow, like that is that's that's impressive or
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
I'm kind of curious what stands out to you.
Speaker 9 (30:18):
Traditionally, small countertop appliances, there's always like really good deals
on those. And the thing that's weird about this year
is that the Vitamix always used to go on sale
on Black Friday morning at like three am.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Get this is like a very powerful blender.
Speaker 10 (30:33):
People.
Speaker 9 (30:35):
I finally a couple of years ago bought one, and
I would never go back to anything else.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
It's I think it's overrated.
Speaker 10 (30:41):
Oh well, and that is your right.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
I've had it for years and I've used it for years,
but it weighs too much.
Speaker 9 (30:46):
The other thing is that I like the nice, dirty base,
And the other thing is that you have.
Speaker 10 (30:49):
To know how to load it properly.
Speaker 9 (30:51):
You load it differently than you would load a different
kind of mixer.
Speaker 10 (30:55):
There's so much they load a.
Speaker 11 (30:57):
Blender, I'm telling you, but in past years that item
only went on sale for a couple of hours, and
we saw it launch on sale prior to Black Friday,
So that I think just shows a little bit of
the economic environment right now and the need.
Speaker 9 (31:15):
To incentivize people to really purchase, because I think that
people are trying to buy groceries right now and not
a hundreds of dollars worth of Blender right people are
having to make those decisions.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Or maybe companies, it sounds like, are maybe a little anxious.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Are you getting that sense? Or you seeing the deals?
Are there earlier deals this year?
Speaker 3 (31:35):
More deals?
Speaker 9 (31:36):
There are more deals earlier, right, So traditionally things were
launching on Black Friday and then they backed it up
to Thanksgiving, and now they've really got one right.
Speaker 12 (31:49):
Or T one and now we're at like T negative three,
like they've launched on Monday, and so the biggest challenge
for us is about stock and are those deals going
to remain steady and will they sell out?
Speaker 4 (32:05):
We should wrap, but before we do, I just want
to recommend to everyone should check out her advice column.
Ask wire Cutter, probably sender, send them some questions. You've
got any other questions about writing implements And Marie Kante,
thanks a lot.
Speaker 5 (32:21):
For being here.
Speaker 10 (32:22):
Oh this was so much fun.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
Stacy.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
We're going to hit our underrated stories, but we have
a couple of housekeeping notes before we get there.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yes, we do, and very delightful housekeeping notes.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
So we are going to be having our first Everybody's
Business Live show.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
It is a power breakfast.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Our breakfast December fourth, Midtown, Manhattan, Bloomberg Headquarters.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Eight in the morning. Be there, b Square.
Speaker 5 (32:49):
Go to the link in the show notes for details.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
You have to be a Bloomberg subscriber to come, but
you should be a Bloomberg subscriber, so it's a win win. Also,
we are getting ready for our sort of year end show.
We have an awesome end of the year show plan.
We also have an awesome sort of show where you
and I and Bradstone, our colleague, are going to predict
(33:13):
the future. And we would like listeners to help us
predict the future.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah, the magic eight We're breaking out the magic eight
ball and going to town.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
So yeah, send us your predictions for twenty twenty six,
be they business, market, culture, any of the stuff we
talk about. We'd love it if you write an email
or if you want to conceivably hear your own.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
Your very own love this.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
If you can send us a voice memo and you
can just send it to everybody's at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
We would love that, Stacy.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
Let's talk about the underrated story. Okay, are you familiar
with the movie Rush Hour Jackie Chan, Jackie Chan, Chris
Tucker Buddy Cops.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
A cop drama. Okay, I've never seen it.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
I think I saw it when it came out in
nineteen ninety eight. I don't think it's it's a particularly
well regarded movie. There are a bunch of gags that
I think, in maybe even at the time and certainly
in retrospect, rita's racist. Also, one of the stars, Jackie Chan,
has said in a bunch of venues that he hates
the movie.
Speaker 10 (34:17):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Not only did he hate Rush Hour One, he also
said he hated Rush Hour too.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
He said was worse than Rush Hour One.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Was he like, contractually obligated or did he have.
Speaker 10 (34:25):
To be in it?
Speaker 4 (34:25):
No, I think he wanted to make money, but I
think he found it schlocky, and it seemed possible that
he was reacting to this kind of cascade of racial
jokes that the gag is it's a black guy and
an Asian guy in a buddy cop movie and as
you can imagine, directed by Brett Ratner, who was canceled
(34:47):
for a bunch of allegations that I'm not sure it's
worth getting into, but I want to say so. It's
one of the strangest things that's happening in media right now.
Speaker 8 (34:57):
You know.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Donald Trump is you're probably aware, has taken a like
firm hand on the media policy of this country, going
around sort of essentially like threatening news organizations and late
night doing late now, Yeah, doing all sorts of stuff
aimed at what it feels like is just sort of
bringing the media in line with his ideological preferences. It appears,
(35:20):
at least according to an article in Semaphore, that he
is also trying to bring his preferences for cinema to
these media conglomerates, privately lobbying the Ellisons who own who
own Paramount and who may buy Warner Brothers Discovery to
bring back Rush Hour.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
He he likes rush out rush Hour five like it
would be Rush Hour four Russia.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
And I think in general Trump would like to like
a sort of return to nineties action movies or eighties
and nineties and action movies. He's a big fan of
the movie Blood Sports, John Claude, damn kickboxing movie.
Speaker 5 (35:59):
I mean, he just he's it's.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
So weird because you want the original stars or does
he want this to be like a new, updated version.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
I think any Rush Hour fan would probably want the
original series, although I'm not sure. Semaphore did point out
that both Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker have at various
times sent I don't know if they've quite said nice
things about Donald Trump, but they haven't been like openly
hostile to Donald Trump on like you know, obviously many in.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
Hollywood, so that may be part of it. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
But like, while he's like sort of helping to remake
CBS or strongly encouraging the bosses of various networks to
be sort of less left wing, he is also trying
to bring back Rush Hour.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
All right, let me ask you this, If you could
commission a sequel to any movie in the world, what
would it be.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Well, I was gonna say water World, you know, while
we're on your terrible nineties movies. But I think there
was a sequel to water World. I'm not one hundred
percent sure. Even more I ra Donald Trump, I'd be
like water World two.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
We got to bring it back.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Kevin Costner put on the prosthetic.
Speaker 5 (37:09):
Gills and you know, run it back. Yeah, what about you, Stacy?
The piano, the Piano two.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
The Piano two.
Speaker 10 (37:17):
I really want to.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Know what happened when they moved into town.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
It seemed like Harvey Kaitel and Holly Hunter We're going
to be very happy.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
But I would like I would like a I would
like a sequel to the Piano.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
There are people on the Internet who would very much
like a water World too. Let's see if Piano two
is a popular suggestion.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
I think that's a less popular Reddit thread.
Speaker 5 (37:39):
Would be my guest not seeing that one. Stacy, what
is your underrated story?
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Okay, so you know how government data, we didn't have
any for a while, and now it's been kind of
trickling out. So one of the things that just trickled
out is something called the producer Price Index, which is
wholesale prices. So I was kind of looking through to
see if anything stood out, and something stood out that
I found extremely ominous. So you know how Turkey prices
(38:04):
are pretty are down this year except for you who
are somehow paying one hundred and fifty dollars updates.
Speaker 4 (38:09):
It was one hundred and twenty nine dollars. Okay, you
got it all in yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Okay, okay, So the producer price and decks, often prices
will rise there first before we will see them on
store shelves, because this is like when you know, the
big supermarkets are importing things. One thing I noticed was
that meat prices are going nuts, and.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
It makes me really nervous.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
So meat compared to last year is twenty one percent
more expensive overall, which is wild turkeys, processed turkey fifty
five percent more expensive than last year.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
So these grocery stores are just eating the prices for
now for the most part.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Yeah, or it hasn't trickled down quite yet because you know,
like these big whatever warehouses will order them and then
they'll distribute them to the stores and things like that.
So and beef prices up thirty eight percent compared to
last year wholesale. So I think that we could start
to see meat get really and that next Thanksgiving it
may be like a two furky Thanksgiving. You're saying, if
(39:06):
you should start saving for NeXT's turkey now, Max, buy
a second turkey. Yes, I think you should have your
own strategic turkey reserve.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
And you could.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
You could probably arbitrage that, you know, sell it for
a lot next year. We could start a tiny business
like everybody's business, turkey business.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
There's barely enough room in my fridge for this one turkey.
I don't know how I would have a second turkey,
and I don't know what I would do with it.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
I got to look for deep freezers on wirecutter. We
can't afford not to. This show is produced by Stacy Wong.
Magnus Hendrickson is our supervising producer, and Amy.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Kean is our executive producer.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Sam Rogich handles the engineering, and Dave Purcell factchecks. Sage
Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts, especially thanks to Jeff Muscus, Julia Rubin,
Charlie Gorvin, and Maria Ling.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
If you have a minute, please rate and review the show.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
It means a lot to us, and if you do,
Max will create a haiku around your review. And if
you have a story that should be our business, email us.
Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That is, everybody's with an
s at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
Twenty twenty six predictions, Send them and happy Thanksgiving everybody.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
See you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
This is Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
I'm Stacey Mannix Smith.
Speaker 4 (00:15):
And I'm Max Schafkin and Stacey. It is Thanksgiving. It's
the week of Thanksgiving. Hopefully by the time you're listening
to this, you have survived it and we are ready.
We have an episode covering i'd say the two main
Thanksgiving disciplines.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
For your post turkey meal day.
Speaker 5 (00:34):
Football and shopping.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
We have Anna Marie Kanti from The Wirecutter talking about
Black Friday. She's going to explain how they go about
writing these guides and also like what people can expect
where the good deals are.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
And we will also be talking with Melson. He is
here to talk about his.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
New book about football, of course, a very fitting subject
on Daylight Today.
Speaker 5 (00:57):
And for our Underrated story.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
You know we've heard how Trump is bringing back tariffs,
is kind of maybe canceling, cancel culture whatever. He's also
giving notes on Bunny comments.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
And for my story, I'm just gonna say this, I
hope you enjoyed your turkey because twenty twenty six your.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Entrees may change.
Speaker 6 (01:22):
Not to sound ominous, okay, Stacy, not a lot of
economic news this week, of course because of Thanksgiving, because
you know, I think a lot of offices are sort
of half full or full of people who are kind
of only half works.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Everybody is drifting out the door all week. Let's be honest.
Speaker 5 (01:41):
But we have had.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Some economic news, starting with something you wrote about the
vaunted Bloomberg Pumpkins Spice Index. On this podcast, we follow
a lot of indexes and statistics, and Stacy Vanicksmith, our
own Stacy Vanix Smith has, with the help of Bloomberg economist.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Michael McDonough, Michael McDonough has created her own Yes, Mike
McDonough shout out to he's the chief economist in charge
of products, and he is the auteur of the Bacon,
egg and Cheese Index. And so I was pestering him
for a little while and he very kindly put together
the Pumpkin Spice Index, which includes all the ingredients in
a pumpkin spice latte.
Speaker 4 (02:20):
Essentially, so all spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, clovest get
them all.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yeah, very good.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's the PS five, as I've come to think of them,
the Pumpkin Spice five. And then also milk coffee, and.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Sugar okay, And so twenty twenty five first ever Bloomberg
Pumpkin Spice Index.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
What did we learn?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well, it was very interesting because most spices are imported.
We don't really grow spices in this country at all.
It's the same problem we have with coffee, where it
has to grow in the tropics, and so we import
all of it. So it's all basically subject to tariffs.
I talked to spice.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Companies which are absolutely dying.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Mc or said it's going to spend one hundred and
forty million dollars this year on tariffs.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
But the actual index didn't move that much.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Because a lot of places are stockpiling spices because they
you know, Trump campaigned on tariffs and so they knew
and spices store quite well, so they have like a
little stockpile. And also companies are hesitant to pass those
prices onto consumers, especially right now. So the spices have
edged up like a tiny.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Bit, but not really.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
And also the index tracks global prices, and spices are
a very global trade and so the US companies are
paying the tariffs, but the global spice makers aren't.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Yeah, I mean, and this came up last week when
we were talking about the price of turkey. It's going
to come up in the segment to follow with animar
Conte from the Wirecutter, where you're actually seeing some really
good Black Friday deals even though tariffs have been hitting
a lot of these product categories. Basically, like the economy
is so unsteady that you have a lot of retailers
just kind of deciding to eat the costs, whether at
(04:00):
Starbucks or these spice companies or whoever.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yeah, it's really interesting because consumer confidence numbers came in
really low.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
I think there's a huge worry.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Among companies and economists and all this that people aren't
going to buy as much. And this is such a
crucial season for retailers that if people really hold back
and don't buy as much, it was going to cause
a big effect Stacey.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Of course, pumpkin spice shopping, that's all big right now.
The other thing that's really big, of course is sports and.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
The great coping mechanism of Thanksgiving. Right what can you do.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
To try to tune out your family?
Speaker 4 (04:36):
You can watch sports or log onto a sports betting app.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
And you know, we've been gathering.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Make a little extra gift buying money.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
We've been covering that on this podcast. We've got a
conversation coming up just how big the NFL is. We
thought it would be kind of cool to just hear
from some sports fans about the business of sports and
about how sports and their spending kind of relate to
one another.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
And this year, the Turkey Day game involved the Baltimore Ravens.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Against the Cincinnati Bengals, and we sent our reporter Charlie
Grorivin on the amtrak straight down to Baltimore to spend
the day, spend Monday, hang out at sports bar, and
to talk to people about football and gambling.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
And here's what he learned.
Speaker 7 (05:23):
So I'm here right now in Fell's Point in Baltimore.
This is usually a big spot where fans like to
come drink. I'm looking to find some fans who can
talk to me about how they're feeling about the business
of sports and football.
Speaker 8 (05:39):
What sports do you think you spend the most on? Soccer, Baseball, Basketball?
I like sports, so any sport really, basketball, football is king.
What teams do you sport?
Speaker 7 (05:47):
I'm a Ravens fan, Dolphins, Gators, Magic and Marlins.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
How much do you think you spend as a fan.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I've been a season ticket holder for the Dolphins eighteen
hundred dollars a.
Speaker 8 (05:58):
Year regular season game three to fifty My.
Speaker 7 (06:01):
First ticket last year to a Ravens game, sitting right
at a grand.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
I might only spend like two hundred three hundred a year.
Speaker 8 (06:07):
And are you a sports better Yeah, I do.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
My biggest bit would be like twenty dollars I'll.
Speaker 8 (06:12):
Go to is usually ten dollars.
Speaker 9 (06:13):
Probably fifty Australian toll is a week to eight hundred
and lost everything about.
Speaker 7 (06:18):
The way that sports are becoming so corporate, is there
a certain point where, like in the future you feel
like it could just go too far?
Speaker 8 (06:25):
As a consumer, is not a whole lot we can do, right.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
I think it's just a result of end stage capitalism
in the United States.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Instead of having these like multi conglomerates and like ultra
billionaires like owning football teams, if it was just like
open stock that the community could own, you would probably
have better safety systems, you would have like longer term
fan appreciation.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Okay, Wow, it's a big variety of opinions.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Some really inventive ideas about how to restructure professional sports.
I gotta say one thousand dollars for Baltimore Ravens game.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
That's like a vacation.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Yeah, I guess you're right. I mean we'll get into
this with with Ken Belson. I mean, you know there's
I guess there's an argument to be made that like
football is our national religion and so yeah, I mean,
you can't put a price.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I also would not spend one thousand dollars to go
to a church service, all.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Right, Stacey, I just want to run a couple things
by you. Yes, all right, So if you look at
the twenty twenty five list of the most valuable sports
teams according to Sportico, which tracks these things, any of
them are in the NBA, two are in Major League Baseball,
two are in European soccer leagues and all the others.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
So that's like thirteen our NFL teams.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Like this is globally what teams are worse?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Okay, because there are some like very valuable soccer teams,
very valuable cricket teams.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
And then there's one other thing I wanted to mention,
which is if you look at the most watched TV
broadcast from last year twenty twenty four, that was a
big year. You'll remember there was a presidential election, and
a lot of big stuff happened.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
Joe Biden dropped out.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
It was an eventful There was a.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
Big debate, the Big Debate in September.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
That was the eleventh biggest broadcast in twenty twenty four.
Can you guess what the other ten biggest broadcasts were?
The top ten?
Speaker 5 (08:20):
I mean, is it.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
The football game that was streamed on Netflix?
Speaker 4 (08:23):
So the top ten are all football games, all NFL games. Yeah,
the Oscars, the Oscars, big events, Stacy, you've heard of
the Oscars.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
I've heard of the Oscars.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
Six on the list drew twenty million viewers last year.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
It narrowly, narrowly edged out a random Sunday night NFL
game in September, which was like number thirteen. And I'm
really happy because our guest who we just heard is
Ken Belson. He's here to talk about this, how this happened.
He's the author of every Day is Sunday. How Jerry Jones,
Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell turned the NFL into a
cultural and economic juggernaut. Ken is a reporter for The
(09:01):
New York Times covering the business of sports.
Speaker 8 (09:03):
Ken, how are you very good? Thanks for having me
on Ken.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
How did this happen? It could have been any other sport.
It could have been baseball. Why is the NFL the
one that became this insane cultural economic goliath.
Speaker 8 (09:18):
Well, I'm not sure it could have been baseball. One
feature of football is it can really only be played
once a week, so the scarcity of games is partly
what drives the interest in those games. And there's only
seventeen regular season games, so even an early season matchup
can have massive consequences for later in the season. Early
baseball games in April and may maybe not so much
(09:40):
basketball most people don't pay attention till Christmas. Hockey kind
of the same. So football has always benefited from that
scarcity of games. They've also stuck to the over the
air strategy when a lot of the other leagues went
to cable regional sports networks, and even with MLS going
all streaming, NFL has hung on to CBA, Fox, NBC, BESPN.
(10:02):
Over the air broadcast get them the widest audience, and
although the total audience has shrunk, they are still head
and shoulders above everybody else.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
What is it about football that kind of captures the
American imagination? Because you could have fewer baseball games, you
could make the season more compact, and that's a much
easier game to follow, as is soccer.
Speaker 8 (10:21):
Well, I mean football in the NFL terms. It came
along in mass market ways during the sixties when color
television showed up. It's the strategy of moving down the
field is something that's compelling to anybody. And even if
you're confused, you're trying to figure out what's going on there.
There's eleven players on each side doing eleven or twenty
two different things, and that's kind of like a moving
(10:43):
chess game down the field. And I've spoken to fans,
not just in America because we kind of take it
for granted, but fans in Europe, for instance, just sort
of love this constant strategizing that every play involves the other.
Is the physicality combined with speed and in some cases ballet.
All of those things combined are really interesting. So there's
(11:04):
a lot of elements to the game that make it compelling.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
It's like a violent game of chess.
Speaker 8 (11:09):
Yes, twenty two people playing violent chess.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Part of this, though, is not about the game itself.
It's about the business that underlies the game and that's
what your book is about. If I remember, it starts
around nineteen ninety or just before nineteen ninety, and you
have this kind of explosion of popularity of interest there
just lay out the kind of thesis of the book,
(11:33):
the way that the NFL goes from being popular but
not this kind of global colossus to being where it
is today.
Speaker 8 (11:41):
So it's hard to fathom, really, But in the eighties
the NFL was nothing like it is now. They had
labor strikes, the TV money was sort of growing, but
because of the threat of losing games, CBS and NBC
didn't want to put up as much money, and there
were many teams that were still losing money. And this
lasted all the way to ninety three, which is where
(12:01):
I kind of start the book, because Paul Tagliboo, who
just passed away, they had taken over and he said,
we can't exist like this will never be a modern
sport unless we essentially make peace with the players, and
that happened in a series of lawsuits, and so in
ninety three they cut what is now a sort of
landmark deal. The players get full free agency, the owners
(12:23):
get a salary cap, and then they get revenue sharing
and at that point it's they're fifty to fifty partners,
and so now the owners sort of put down their weapons,
so to speak, and the owners are incentivized because they're
not going to worry about losing games. So that's really
the supersizing of the NFL starts at that point. The
following year, an owner named Jerry Jones been in the
(12:45):
league for a couple of years. At that point, he's
looking at the broadcast contracts coming up, and there's three
bridters for three packages, CBSNBC and ABC, NFCAFC and Monday
Night Football. That's kind of it. And Jerry says, how
do you run a business like that? Why don't we
have bidders? We need an auction. So he invites Rupert
Murdoch to the table. Rupert had tried twice to get
(13:05):
into the NFL. He had the formula in Britain where
he had the English Premier League helped him launch Sky Sports,
and so he needed sports to build up Fox Television.
And he told Rupert, you're not going to be a
stalking horse. Will take you seriously, even though you have
no sports division, no announcers, no name, no jingle, no
no anything, and Rupert brings over his lead producer, David
(13:29):
Hill comes over from England, does a presentation. He says,
here's how I would spice up the NFL. More cameras,
more audiots, the robots, jaunty or music, more bro feel
in the in the pregame show, not to sort of
newscaster feel. And it worked. It was fabulous. They wildly
overpaid and at that point, not only does the NFL's
(13:51):
money accelerate, all the other leagues take note that there's
a network willing to use sports as a lost leader,
and then the TV medium. He really explodes across the
sports landscape.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
I want to bring up the thing that comes up
the most in like sort of my football and sports
related group chats, which is kind of relevant right now
as we're recording this on November eighteenth, having Thanksgivings coming up,
We're gonna have the Thursday NFL games, which I think
for many people in the US is like a bigger
holiday than Thanksgiving. By the way, Stacy, on that list
(14:24):
top ten broadcast number six and seven were the two
Thanksgiving games. Then we're gonna get a game on Friday
that is Amazon Prime game. And the thing that comes
up for me, like with my friends, is like come on,
like do we really need like another The beautiful thing
about the NFL is like it's once a week, like
you said, but it's not once a week anymore because
(14:45):
now we have Monday Night football, we have Thursday Night football,
sometimes we have Friday. And it makes me wonder Number one,
like how close is the NFL to kind of saturate
like create it like sort of damaging that for scarce
anything that you mentioned earlier. And then the other thing
is this is, as you said, like a largely broadcast
(15:08):
sport where we're like even the games, yes, like some
Monday night football games, but for the most part it's
been something that anyone with a TV can watch and
that has worked out really really well for the NFL.
Speaker 5 (15:20):
How are these streaming deals looking for the league?
Speaker 8 (15:22):
So in twenty fourteen, Mark Cuban famously said he thought
the NFL was getting piggy, meaning greedy and filling up
too many slots on the air. This was probably self
interest because he was an NBA owner at the time,
And now it looks ridiculously innocent because we do have
many more games, the Friday game, the Netflix games on
Christmas Days was formerly an NBA holiday, and so yeah,
(15:46):
I think the NFL is very aware of not overdoing it.
On the other hand, they have companies like Netflix, Amazon,
Google just clamoring for content, and so they've been carefully
slicing the onion or garlic or whatever you're gonna call
it super thin to cut off a few games so
they can go on streaming platforms. They know their bread
(16:08):
is still buttered by the over the air model, but
they also realize, as Roger Goodell says, we have to
fish where the fish are, and younger viewers don't have
cable connections or rabbit ears to get the over the
air signals, so that's where their audience is they. I
think they're at roughly eighty to eighty five percent still
over the air.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
How many years are we before TikTok gets a either
an NFL game or I'm not even joking before TikTok
air is a.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
Pro sports game?
Speaker 8 (16:37):
Okay, So this is interesting because I do watch the
Amazon games on Thursday night, the Amazon Prime Games, and
there's that great feature when you log on, it says
pick up the game live or watch the catch up version.
So if you're tuning in the second quarter. You could
basically just watch the first quarter in like four seconds.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Yeah, if you were in traffic or whatever, you don't
have to either.
Speaker 8 (16:55):
They're kind of half there. The technology certainly is there.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
One of the the aspects of football that I think
they'll had the whole world watching was the romance between
Travis Kelcey and Taylor Swift.
Speaker 8 (17:08):
Was that a big deal? I didn't notice.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
It was a rather big deal.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
And I'm wondering if that also was able to tap
into an audience that the NFL hadn't previously really accessed,
and if that will have a last teame.
Speaker 8 (17:22):
I got it. It's funny you say that. I mean
the people were tracking her plane from Tokyo to see
if she'd get pack more entertaining than the game. Yeah, exactly.
I had a friend who called me and said his
daughter in Germany, who could care less about the NFL,
suddenly cared because Taylor Swift was showing up and she
was asking her dad about the rules of the game,
(17:43):
and she bought like the NFL game pass to watch
the games in Germany at whatever one in the morning.
Taylor's sent the NFL into a whole other space of
cool that it maybe deliberately could never have occupied and
sometimes the NFL gets lucky that way. It's the biggest
anet for both good and bad stories. Bad stories resonate
(18:03):
more in the NFL than they do in the other leagues.
Domestic violence, health and safety, all these issues are bigger
in the NFL. At the same time, so are pop
culture phenomena, including the halftime Show, which you know we've
been talking about since October.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
Ken Belson, thank you so much for being here. Everyone
should check out Ken's book Every Day Is Sunday. How
Jerry Doones, Robert Kraft, and Roger Goodell turned the NFL
into a cultural and economic juggernaut.
Speaker 8 (18:28):
Ken, thank you appreciate it. Thanks both.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Thanks Ken, so Max.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
It is one of the biggest economic holidays of the year,
Black Friday.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
I mean, it's Black Friday. Like, when do you think
about this? One of the stupidest economic holidays?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Absolutely not all seventy percent of our economies consumer spending,
may I remind you, But I do think.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
It's something we should talk about just because it's a
fun window into kind of where we are are, and
also like just as outside of my role as a
you know, professional journalist like I do kind of just
want to get the best deals, you know.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Well, and for companies, a lot of them earn like
a third of their money or a quarter of their
money in this window of time. It's crucially important to
the economy and also as people who love deals like
umax and so in that vein, we are very lucky
to be joined by an Marie Conti. She is the
deputy editor at Wirecutter and she joins us.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Now, Hian Marie, I'm so excited to be here. So
Wirecutter is.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
The New York Times product review site, and I think
it is safe to say it is a major destination
for Black Friday, right, Like, what is your Black Friday situation?
Speaker 3 (19:43):
At Wirecutter, it.
Speaker 9 (19:44):
Is all hands on deck. We have over one hundred journalists.
Everyone is searching for deals on Wirecutter picks. So what
we do is product reviews, right, So we always have
hands on product We are always testing products, and then
we take that pool of the Wirecutter recommended products and
then we look for deals on them. And we have
a dedicated deals team. There are seven people on our
(20:06):
deal's team. And now, I mean there are so many
economic holidays now like they're practically like covering this every
month and then there's October Prime Day, and but they
have very strict standards about what makes the deal. So
because they are tracking every single day of the year,
they know what they call street pricing of a product,
(20:27):
So if something doesn't meet their deal standards, they're not
posting it.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
So I'm picturing like, you know, like one of those
eighties Cold War movies where you have the big like
Norrid command center and then like with a lot of charge.
Speaker 8 (20:40):
Am I wrong?
Speaker 4 (20:41):
Is it just a room full of people refreshing Amazon
to find the dice and vacuum cleaner stick one, Like
is it.
Speaker 9 (20:49):
It's I wish I could say yes, Like do you
want me to say yes? I would say yes. But
that's the image that you want in your head. It's
mostly a bunch of people on slack, like desperately.
Speaker 10 (21:00):
Talking to each other.
Speaker 9 (21:01):
But we do have so we have our beat experts,
and those are the people that really understand these products
inside and out, and so they are searching sit all
the area you.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Have, like your backpack guy and you're like.
Speaker 9 (21:12):
Scooter woman, Yeah, laptops, luggage, everything you can think of,
baby and kid really important right now, especially for gifts.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
What I think I really know and what most people
use it for our product reviews, when you're looking to
buy anything from like a water bottle to a jacket,
you really have all these product reviews. A lot of
them are just incredibly detailed. There was one very funny
quote on Wirecutter that said you had like a seventeen
thousand word guide for buying a vacuum cleaner, which was
(21:42):
almost as long as Macbeth. So what kinds of products
are you reviewing, especially for Black Friday? Because you do
this all year round. Yes, So what does Black Friday
look like? And what are some of the products you reviewed.
Speaker 10 (21:54):
We're looking at everything.
Speaker 9 (21:56):
We are scanning every guide that we have to really
try to give the most breath of picks and to
really find the best deals. And we will do that
multiple times a day every day leading.
Speaker 10 (22:09):
Up through this whole They call it the Turkey five.
Marketers call it the Turkey five.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
What's the Turkey five?
Speaker 9 (22:15):
Black Friday through Cyber Monday five days? Turkey five or
te five if you're gonna get fancy.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Oh my gosh, So you guys are like, what's going
on for T five? How are t five sales.
Speaker 10 (22:26):
We don't do that, but that is the period.
Speaker 9 (22:29):
And then for us, the deals are starting earlier and
earlier and earlier. So deals started dropping in earnest on Monday,
and so we will have a full week of deals
at this point. And it really is it's just a constant.
We're checking, double checking. When deals expire, we pull them down.
Speaker 10 (22:49):
That kind of thing.
Speaker 8 (22:50):
It is.
Speaker 10 (22:50):
It's a pretty manual process.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
I imagine that deals evolve a little bit every year.
Talk to us about this year, like, have there been
any changes to cutter black Friday?
Speaker 9 (23:01):
When tariffs were announced At the beginning of the year,
we started to do a price tracking program just to
see what was going to happen with the tariffs, and
so we tracked forty wirecutter picks at the beginning of
the year and then we continued it through the.
Speaker 10 (23:14):
October fall event.
Speaker 9 (23:16):
And what we've seen is it took a while for
things to increase, and like the tariffs are so scattershot
and it's hard to blame everything on tar tariffs. Every week, yes,
but at the beginning of the year, things hadn't increased
in the way that we thought they would, and now
they are starting to increase. So what's happening is that
(23:37):
the deals that we are vetting are not best ever
deals because prices have increased. So we had to shift
our goal posts to understand what is a good deal.
Now in this economic environment, you're like.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Watching inflation play out in real time.
Speaker 10 (23:52):
Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
You you wrote a really great guide which is on
the Wirecutter's website basically about out how tariffs are impacting
consumer prices, and it showed that, like prices actually went
for a lot of products, like went up between Prime
Day and the Big Deal Days that's the other Amazon
Prime Day, And so you would think like, oh, you're
(24:14):
gonna get a great deal, like it's it's Amazon's Big
Deal Days.
Speaker 5 (24:17):
But really, now you're paying.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Like two bucks more for an Aero press or one
dollar more for this flat duck nightlike which the Wirecutter
just loves and.
Speaker 10 (24:26):
It makes me all so happy.
Speaker 9 (24:28):
I channeled my sadness into this sad light up duck.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Well yeah, so how did what did you see? Like
what kinds of things did tariff's impact?
Speaker 9 (24:36):
So it's across the board the other thing that we
are seeing and again like is it tariffs?
Speaker 10 (24:42):
Is it other things? Is it components.
Speaker 9 (24:44):
So we can't pin everything on the tariffs, but we've
had to adjust wirecutter picks as well. You know, we
had a Lenovo Chromebook that shot up in price to
six hundred dollars and from I think I think five hundred,
I think it went up by one hundred.
Speaker 10 (24:58):
Wow.
Speaker 9 (24:59):
And then but now during Black Friday it's back down
to three point fifty. And so what happens is that
a lot of these retailers spike prices prior to deal
events to make the deals look better.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
So whatever you do, so like early bird shoppers are
like punished. This actually makes me kind of happy because
I'm always very late in buying gifts. This is why
now I can just say I'm being economically responsible.
Speaker 9 (25:28):
But this is why we really want people to be
educated consumers. And we know it's a lot of work,
which is why we have a seven person team to
do the work for you. Because it's impossible to track
everything that you potentially want to purchase.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
So in the run up two Black Friday, a bunch
of companies raise prices.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
It looks like tariffs are starting to bite.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Now we're actually seeing because I read your story, I
was like Okay, this Black Friday is going to be
a nothing burger because like it seems like Deal Days
wasn't very good. So and then I log onto the
Wirecutter earlier this week and it turns out it's the
headline Early Black Fried ideals are usually mediocre, but this
year we've already found hundreds of gems, which I was like,
of course, the wirecutters found hundreds of gems, but still
(26:08):
it does seem like there's a.
Speaker 9 (26:09):
We were shocked. Yeah, we were shocked. It's like breaking news.
So retailers had a really hard time predicting. Manufacturers had
a really hard time predicting. They didn't know what was
going to happen, So they had a really hard time
planning this year. Yeah, I was changing and they yeah,
and they were bringing they were bringing a lot of
products stateside to hold into warehouses here to try to
avoid the twifs before they took effect. And so what's
(26:32):
happening now is it seems like a lot of them
have saved the deals for now because they know that
people are going to come out and shop now. And
one of my sources told me that they were holding
back on advertising spending in order to offset the discounts
so that they were able to provide the discounts.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
So how many people look at Wirecutter over the Black
Friday weekend?
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Do you guys know? I wish, I don't know, like lots,
hundreds of thousand, it's probably me.
Speaker 9 (27:00):
Yes, it's some of our highest traffic.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, So what are what trends are you seeing from them?
Are they looking for different things? Are they asking different questions?
Speaker 9 (27:09):
So the thing that we're really seeing is that people
are purchasing for themselves, right, A lot of people think
Black Friday gifts, and people are purchasing gifts, this is
the pitfall, but they're also purchasing everyday items, right, water
picks and teeth whiteners. I don't know why everything's dental related, right, razors,
all of those. But yeah, we see a lot of
(27:31):
people purchasing things every day items.
Speaker 10 (27:33):
I just bought poop Dog poop bags on sale.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
So you also do, like, I think a lot of
people use Wirecutter, not necessarily for deals, but for product reviews.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
Do you ever do those?
Speaker 10 (27:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Can you like list off some of the things that
you've reviewed.
Speaker 9 (27:48):
So one of the stories that I did recently, so
Ralph Nader is in touch with me a bunch and
the politician m yeah.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
At any speed. He's cutters.
Speaker 10 (28:00):
Eradvocate.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah, so okay, I see this connection.
Speaker 10 (28:04):
So he called us. He called us, and he told you, Yeah,
he called. I don't know how.
Speaker 9 (28:10):
Yeah, he got routed to wirecutter and he was like,
I have been using papermate flare pens since the seventies
and my pens are drying out and its product obsilens obsolescence,
and I want you to look into this, and so
I did. I looked into all the reasons that Ralph
Nader's pens. Well, first we said him a bunch of pens.
We're like, here are our wirecutter picks. You might like
(28:32):
these better, and he's like I hate them all. And
I was like, I understand, be true to yourself. And
so then I looked into all the various ways that
his pens could be drying out.
Speaker 10 (28:42):
Then I did, Yeah, I did.
Speaker 9 (28:45):
It was a deep dive investigation. He's so lovely and
he thanked me and the whole thing. And then a
few months later I get a note and it's like,
you haven't looked into the pencil erasers yet, and I
was like, true, true, He had said he didn't. He
want to know why his pencil erasers were going hard.
He's like that, you know, then I can't erase with them.
(29:05):
And so then I did a deep dive into pencil erasers,
and I now understand why pencil erasers go hard. Why
so light and heat are your pencil erasers worst enemies.
Speaker 10 (29:17):
So a synthetic rubber eraser.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Like a moist dark environment.
Speaker 9 (29:21):
Just leave it in a drawer, Just put it in
a box. Leave it in the box. The true thing
is to use one pencil at a time. I realized
that may not be possible for most people. The other
thing is that a plastic eraser, what they call plastic erasers,
are better and they won't dry out. But generally most
manufacturers put a synthetic rubber eraser and not a plastic
(29:42):
eraser on their pencils.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Okay for those who are not for those who are
not buying pencils for their loved ones. I'm kind of curious,
like there are something like right now already as we
record this on Tuesday, November twenty fifth, and I'm sure
in the next couple of days it's gonna this list
is gonna grow. It looks like hundreds of Black Friday deals.
I'm kind of curious as you look ahead to this season,
(30:07):
like what you think is like the best deal so far?
You're like, wow, like that is that's that's impressive or
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
I'm kind of curious what stands out to you.
Speaker 9 (30:18):
Traditionally, small countertop appliances, there's always like really good deals
on those. And the thing that's weird about this year
is that the Vitamix always used to go on sale
on Black Friday morning at like three am.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
Get this is like a very powerful blender.
Speaker 10 (30:33):
People.
Speaker 9 (30:35):
I finally a couple of years ago bought one, and
I would never go back to anything else.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
It's I think it's overrated.
Speaker 10 (30:41):
Oh well, and that is your right.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
I've had it for years and I've used it for years,
but it weighs too much.
Speaker 9 (30:46):
The other thing is that I like the nice, dirty base,
And the other thing is that you have.
Speaker 10 (30:49):
To know how to load it properly.
Speaker 9 (30:51):
You load it differently than you would load a different
kind of mixer.
Speaker 10 (30:55):
There's so much they load a.
Speaker 11 (30:57):
Blender, I'm telling you, but in past years that item
only went on sale for a couple of hours, and
we saw it launch on sale prior to Black Friday,
So that I think just shows a little bit of
the economic environment right now and the need.
Speaker 9 (31:15):
To incentivize people to really purchase, because I think that
people are trying to buy groceries right now and not
a hundreds of dollars worth of Blender right people are
having to make those decisions.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Or maybe companies, it sounds like, are maybe a little anxious.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Are you getting that sense? Or you seeing the deals?
Are there earlier deals this year?
Speaker 3 (31:35):
More deals?
Speaker 9 (31:36):
There are more deals earlier, right, So traditionally things were
launching on Black Friday and then they backed it up
to Thanksgiving, and now they've really got one right.
Speaker 12 (31:49):
Or T one and now we're at like T negative three,
like they've launched on Monday, and so the biggest challenge
for us is about stock and are those deals going
to remain steady and will they sell out?
Speaker 4 (32:05):
We should wrap, but before we do, I just want
to recommend to everyone should check out her advice column.
Ask wire Cutter, probably sender, send them some questions. You've
got any other questions about writing implements And Marie Kante,
thanks a lot.
Speaker 5 (32:21):
For being here.
Speaker 10 (32:22):
Oh this was so much fun.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
Stacy.
Speaker 4 (32:30):
We're going to hit our underrated stories, but we have
a couple of housekeeping notes before we get there.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yes, we do, and very delightful housekeeping notes.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
So we are going to be having our first Everybody's
Business Live show.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
It is a power breakfast.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Our breakfast December fourth, Midtown, Manhattan, Bloomberg Headquarters.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Eight in the morning. Be there, b Square.
Speaker 5 (32:49):
Go to the link in the show notes for details.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
You have to be a Bloomberg subscriber to come, but
you should be a Bloomberg subscriber, so it's a win win. Also,
we are getting ready for our sort of year end show.
We have an awesome end of the year show plan.
We also have an awesome sort of show where you
and I and Bradstone, our colleague, are going to predict
(33:13):
the future. And we would like listeners to help us
predict the future.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah, the magic eight We're breaking out the magic eight
ball and going to town.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
So yeah, send us your predictions for twenty twenty six,
be they business, market, culture, any of the stuff we
talk about. We'd love it if you write an email
or if you want to conceivably hear your own.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
Your very own love this.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
If you can send us a voice memo and you
can just send it to everybody's at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
We would love that, Stacy.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
Let's talk about the underrated story. Okay, are you familiar
with the movie Rush Hour Jackie Chan, Jackie Chan, Chris
Tucker Buddy Cops.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
A cop drama. Okay, I've never seen it.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
I think I saw it when it came out in
nineteen ninety eight. I don't think it's it's a particularly
well regarded movie. There are a bunch of gags that
I think, in maybe even at the time and certainly
in retrospect, rita's racist. Also, one of the stars, Jackie Chan,
has said in a bunch of venues that he hates
the movie.
Speaker 10 (34:17):
Oh.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
Not only did he hate Rush Hour One, he also
said he hated Rush Hour too.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
He said was worse than Rush Hour One.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Was he like, contractually obligated or did he have.
Speaker 10 (34:25):
To be in it?
Speaker 4 (34:25):
No, I think he wanted to make money, but I
think he found it schlocky, and it seemed possible that
he was reacting to this kind of cascade of racial
jokes that the gag is it's a black guy and
an Asian guy in a buddy cop movie and as
you can imagine, directed by Brett Ratner, who was canceled
(34:47):
for a bunch of allegations that I'm not sure it's
worth getting into, but I want to say so. It's
one of the strangest things that's happening in media right now.
Speaker 8 (34:57):
You know.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Donald Trump is you're probably aware, has taken a like
firm hand on the media policy of this country, going
around sort of essentially like threatening news organizations and late
night doing late now, Yeah, doing all sorts of stuff
aimed at what it feels like is just sort of
bringing the media in line with his ideological preferences. It appears,
(35:20):
at least according to an article in Semaphore, that he
is also trying to bring his preferences for cinema to
these media conglomerates, privately lobbying the Ellisons who own who
own Paramount and who may buy Warner Brothers Discovery to
bring back Rush Hour.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
He he likes rush out rush Hour five like it
would be Rush Hour four Russia.
Speaker 4 (35:44):
And I think in general Trump would like to like
a sort of return to nineties action movies or eighties
and nineties and action movies. He's a big fan of
the movie Blood Sports, John Claude, damn kickboxing movie.
Speaker 5 (35:59):
I mean, he just he's it's.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
So weird because you want the original stars or does
he want this to be like a new, updated version.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
I think any Rush Hour fan would probably want the
original series, although I'm not sure. Semaphore did point out
that both Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker have at various
times sent I don't know if they've quite said nice
things about Donald Trump, but they haven't been like openly
hostile to Donald Trump on like you know, obviously many in.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
Hollywood, so that may be part of it. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
But like, while he's like sort of helping to remake
CBS or strongly encouraging the bosses of various networks to
be sort of less left wing, he is also trying
to bring back Rush Hour.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
All right, let me ask you this, If you could
commission a sequel to any movie in the world, what
would it be.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
Well, I was gonna say water World, you know, while
we're on your terrible nineties movies. But I think there
was a sequel to water World. I'm not one hundred
percent sure. Even more I ra Donald Trump, I'd be
like water World two.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
We got to bring it back.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Kevin Costner put on the prosthetic.
Speaker 5 (37:09):
Gills and you know, run it back. Yeah, what about you, Stacy?
The piano, the Piano two.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
The Piano two.
Speaker 10 (37:17):
I really want to.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
Know what happened when they moved into town.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
It seemed like Harvey Kaitel and Holly Hunter We're going
to be very happy.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
But I would like I would like a I would
like a sequel to the Piano.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
There are people on the Internet who would very much
like a water World too. Let's see if Piano two
is a popular suggestion.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
I think that's a less popular Reddit thread.
Speaker 5 (37:39):
Would be my guest not seeing that one. Stacy, what
is your underrated story?
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Okay, so you know how government data, we didn't have
any for a while, and now it's been kind of
trickling out. So one of the things that just trickled
out is something called the producer Price Index, which is
wholesale prices. So I was kind of looking through to
see if anything stood out, and something stood out that
I found extremely ominous. So you know how Turkey prices
(38:04):
are pretty are down this year except for you who
are somehow paying one hundred and fifty dollars updates.
Speaker 4 (38:09):
It was one hundred and twenty nine dollars. Okay, you
got it all in yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Okay, okay, So the producer price and decks, often prices
will rise there first before we will see them on
store shelves, because this is like when you know, the
big supermarkets are importing things. One thing I noticed was
that meat prices are going nuts, and.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
It makes me really nervous.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
So meat compared to last year is twenty one percent
more expensive overall, which is wild turkeys, processed turkey fifty
five percent more expensive than last year.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
So these grocery stores are just eating the prices for
now for the most part.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Yeah, or it hasn't trickled down quite yet because you know,
like these big whatever warehouses will order them and then
they'll distribute them to the stores and things like that.
So and beef prices up thirty eight percent compared to
last year wholesale. So I think that we could start
to see meat get really and that next Thanksgiving it
may be like a two furky Thanksgiving. You're saying, if
(39:06):
you should start saving for NeXT's turkey now, Max, buy
a second turkey. Yes, I think you should have your
own strategic turkey reserve.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
And you could.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
You could probably arbitrage that, you know, sell it for
a lot next year. We could start a tiny business
like everybody's business, turkey business.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
There's barely enough room in my fridge for this one turkey.
I don't know how I would have a second turkey,
and I don't know what I would do with it.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
I got to look for deep freezers on wirecutter. We
can't afford not to. This show is produced by Stacy Wong.
Magnus Hendrickson is our supervising producer, and Amy.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
Kean is our executive producer.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Sam Rogich handles the engineering, and Dave Purcell factchecks. Sage
Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts, especially thanks to Jeff Muscus, Julia Rubin,
Charlie Gorvin, and Maria Ling.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
If you have a minute, please rate and review the show.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
It means a lot to us, and if you do,
Max will create a haiku around your review. And if
you have a story that should be our business, email us.
Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That is, everybody's with an
s at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
Twenty twenty six predictions, Send them and happy Thanksgiving everybody.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
See you next week.
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