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Peers discusses the divergent management styles of the two CEO's in a proposed merger of Fox with Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes of TWC and Rupert Murdoch of Fox. Murdoch is known for a management style that involves taking risks, compared to the style of Bewkes that emphasizes fiscal discipline. Because Murdoch's $80 billion offer for Time Warner is 60% stock this raises questions from Time Warner shareholders about the value placed on Fox's performance in future years. This is particularly true after the painful experience in the merger with AOL, which devastated TWC shareholders as AOL's business declined. Another difficulty is that the voting structure for the company uses nonvoting shares that give control of the merged company to the Murdoch family, with TWC shareholders not able to influence the future management- particularly Rupert Murdoch's son James Murdoch, who is co-chief operating officer, as Rupert Murdoch is 83.

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Charlie Rose interviews Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes.

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Since the ouster of Mr. Licht amid falling ratings at CNN and protests by staff, the network is run by Amy Entelis, Virginia Moseley, Eric Shearling and David Leavy reporting to Mr. Zaslav head of Warner Brothers Discovery. CNN will now be run by Mark Thompson who ran BBC and New York Times. It comes at an important time for the country as 2024 is an election year. Mr. Licht was a late show producer, Mr. Thompson brings rare and extensive experience running large organizations that cover news for many decades since joining BBC in 1979. He joined as a BBC trainee and over 24 years by 2004 he headed the  vast BBC British network. 

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Caryn James provides an exceptional account of Robert Altman, iconoclastic director of M*A*S*H*, which came out in 1970, of Nashville, and a British period movie Gosford Park in 2001. His long career involved moments such as the one described in the currrent exhibit and documentary on Altman at the MOMA- he was fired by studio chief Jack Warner because "that fool has actors talking all the time." With M*A*S*H* the Altman style was estalished as anti-authoritarian, boisterous language, and the overlapping dialogue that so offended Jack Warner, irreverent attitude to established ways, and screenplays that invited improvisation. As Caryn James points out much of Altman's style has filtered through to a new wave of cinema directors, and into movies and television, to the point where it seems invisible. Ron Magliozzi, curator of the MOMA series, says of Altman that he comes across as such a maverick that people lose sight of his work in movies such as Gosford Park, a period piece where a story is told about a murder mystery on a English counry estate, a forerunner for Downton Abbey....

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On CBS "Face the Nation" last weekend both Mark Warner and Senator Rubio expressed concern about unknown algorithms targeting 150 million young users in America. The problem extends beyond that into the effects of TikTok and other social media that is harmful to children taking so much of their time that basic civics, reading, sports and exercise, outdoor activities, suffers enormously. No other generation has faced this and the US Congress and the White House have fallen far behind the curve of setting the rules and regulating use of the new information technologies. 

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During question time in the US Congress US Senator Rand Paul stated that the US money was used to fund research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. A ban on gain of function research on virus was lifted by the US in 2018. Following the lifting of this ban which was strongly opposed by scientists at Cambridge, Massachusetts, research was conducted that many of these scientists considered dangerous and risky. This report in the BBC shows Dr. Anthony Fauci. director of the NIAID, the Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases responding to Dr. Rand Paul, Senator from Kentucky. Much of the discussion goes into definition of "gain of function research" and misses the broader implications. Scientists in Cambridge had warned early of the danger of doing research because of earlier mishaps such as the one involving anthrax research from accidents that are always a risk. Epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard Chan School of Public Health warned of just such an "accidental pandemic" in Three Questions, Three Answers in the January 2018 issue of the Harvard Chan School of Public Health journal. He stated that an "accidental pandemic" could result from the lifting of a ban on a risky kind of research favored by some virologist professionals. Most of the medical and scientific community in Cambridge fiercely opposed the lifting of the ban on what they saw as risky research with little benefit in 2018.    ...

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Time Inc. publishes about 80 print magazines, including Time, People, and Sports Illustrated. CEO Joe Ripp says Time Inc. was slow to respond to the digital transformation of media, and revenue is declining for several years. In 2014 Time Inc. ad revenue from digital ads was only 17%. Unlike Meredith Corp. and other companies which have television stations, or cable-television systems which can support its business, Time has little in the way of support, and could be broken up if the transformation into digital fails. Ripp was Chief Financial Officer of first Time Warner in 1999, and then of AOL Inc. at the time of the merger with Time Warner Inc. One of Ripp's recent risky moves not followed by other media companies is merging the media content side with the advertising side in native advertising. Time Inc. has 7000 employees as of Dec. 31, 2014, 800 fewer than the prior year.

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DW.com report by Mu Ciu shows a CATL(Contemporary Amperex Technology) plant in Arnstadt, Thuringia, in eastern Germany. It will not bridge Germany's technology gap. German and US consultants at the microeconomic level of the company and German and US economists at the macroeconomic level of the economy entirely fail to grasp the effectiveness of China's investment driven model. Of its joint partnering with European and American companies and China's single minded focus on technology access. This is why the DJT US administration has warned Europe that it is failing economically. China's macroeconomic and microeconomic model are run by the same authority by the state, and according to goals and plans (which in a socialist economy is weak at the microeconomic company level lacking the initiative and freedom of action). By combining its macreconomic framework run by the state with a micreconomic company level run by the state but on free market lines the Chinese investment driven model has dual advantages and operates at a speed that far surpasses the German and American model. It's society suffers as a consequence, but in few short decades 1990-2009/2020 this is all it could accomplish with a single focus on modernization for what was once a peasant agricultural economy. Where it lacks is in future technology access and as long as weak companies in the US and Germany partner with Chinese companies the technology access for Chinese companies give it the essential ingredient for its investment model to work, as American and European companies can waver in investment Chinese companies backed by the government will not waver in investment and have the clear advantage. DJT's approach is to give a big shock to the entire system of world trade now run by China, so that this is no longer going to work at the macroeconomic level and legislate huge investment incentives for one time depreciation and other moves to get American companies to invest. It wants Europe to do the same, including getting rid of the bureaucratic structures and regulations. German Chancellor Merz is getting the message and is acting quickly first with the trillion dollar investment plan, the meetings with Draghi and Meloni to get Italy and like minded nations on board, and internal efforts to get rid of regulations and bureaucratic structures, and building a new partnership with India to remove an error of Merkel/ Clinton+ Obama in excessive concentration and dependence on China. This requires a steady hand and steady governments, steady policy, and companies in America, Europe and India to work together for the long haul without wavering or delay, to rebuild the world economy along new lines and on a new path. ...

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The Times of London says that it has turned out the way the chief medical officer of England, Mr. Chris Witty,  has warned and predicted. That limited freedoms was as good as it could get, but there is hope for the future. With vaccinations starting by January the third wave can be prevented and more reopening can be done by then. The very fact that cases are beginning to fall shows that the lockdowns work where tiered restrictions did not work. 

The same situation can be seen in the U.S. where new lockdowns in midwestern states are beginning to cause a fall in daily cases.

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Cable television's decline as seen from the experience of CNN. This report in the WSJ says not only is cable television declining in viewers, CNN is falling behind MSNBC and Fox which are also declining. The 24 hour cable news network format is seeing rapid shift to streaming services that generate little profit. Monthly prime time viewers for CNN cable television is down to 568,000 compared to one estimate of 166 million for its website and app streaming services. The result is a search by Warner Discovery, new owner of CNN, for a way to reverse the slide in people watching by showing both sides instead of skewing to one side, which is also not working. 68 million Americans subscribe to cable television packages including CNN down from 72 million in 2022 for which CNN gets $1.25 per subscriber. Advertising produces most of the revenue- $600 million in 2022 down from 900 million in 2020. Smaller audiences and poorer ratings with so many choices for viewers from CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox, etc mean less advertising revenues.   ...

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States in America's Deep South have a much lower rate of people having taken one shot of vaccination, in the 30-40% range by May 2021. This report says states such as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and others in the South are at risk of seeing a new wave of the coronavirus  because people will spend more time in airconditioned spaces in the summer. In contrast to the north with cold winters and indoor heated spaces people in the southern states can spend more time outdoors because of the warmer weather in winter. This may have protected southerners during the winter and spring months. This may reverse with more time spent in airconditioned indoor spaces in close proximity where the coronavirus infections can increase. This report comes as new reports show the Indian coronavirus variant becoming more prevalent in the UK and other countries. This variant spreads about 50% more rapidly than an earlier UK variant, say experts. Another analysis in The Times of London shows that the imperceptible rise phase of the new coronavirus variants is the most dangerous part of the coronavirus as it dulls the sense of danger in the population that makes it take notice and prepare countermeasures early enough. India is an example of how this can happen as the sudden rise actually started with a first imperceptible increase in March and early April 2021 that changed into a rapid escalation of the virus in the population by May 2021. The vaccinations give a strong sense of confidence, however the vaccination rates vary widely state by state in the US. ...

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Natural gas prices are down by about half in the last month after warmer weather and higher inventories in Europe and the US. On January 6 2023 wholesale natural gas prices in Europe eased to 74 euros ($78) a megawatt hour, down from a high of 350 euros in late August. This is a significant development as it means blackouts, industrial closures, recession is less likely in Europe. It also helps bring inflation under control. Prices are back down to where they were before the Ukraine invasion. This is still seven times higher than prices in 2020 reports the WSJ. The lower the price the lower the bill for the German government. Across Europe 706 billion euros were allocated for support on natural gas price by governments since September 2021.

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Adam Bryant interviews Steve Case, founder of AOL online, on the lessons learned from the failure of the AOL Time Warner merger and failures in execution.

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WSJ's CEO council advocates a goal of 10% electric cars by 2020 and upto 50% of the fleet by 2030. Other top priorities of the CEO's from Google, Intel, Time-Warner, Fedex and other companies at a recent 1 day conference were obesity, a stimulus program in excess of $300 billion, and restarting the Doha round of talks for global trade.

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When American literacy levels for civics and history are hitting new lows news channels are instead of building a well informed mindset in people doing just the opposite for profit.  Discovery Communications merged with Warner Media in April 2022 to form a new company that controls CNN. That led to appointing Mr. Licht to run CNN news channel. With the end of the Trump period and the pandemic news ratings had declined for both Fox and CNN. Licht's decision to hold a town hall as Mr. Trump starts his bid for the Republican nomination in 2024 can be seen as a way to improve its television ratings and revenues. At a time when only 20% of eighth graders can pass a national education test in history or civics, it should be seen with dismay that television channels are not only not increasing literacy and better understanding of history and civics- instead they are reducing the level of literacy with the kind of news programming offered by Fox News and CNN. This is also true for Google and its algorithm based news as shown in Movement for Global Literacy in Lyrarc.com. This is deeply troubling for American democracy, and for what Biden call the "struggle for America's soul." ...

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The opening of bars and restaurants risks restarting the coronavirus epidemic in South Korea again after a 29 year old man visited 5 clubs and later tested positive. Contact tracing identified the man but similar cases in the Itaewon neighborhood have led to the conclusion that about one third of 5000 people believed to be involved in bars have not been traced. Over 50 cases have been traced to this one person alone. 

It is now believed that the entire South Korean efort could unravel with the mistakes of a few people. Now president Moon says "its not over till its over," and that it will be a long time before the coronavirus is ended completely. He warned a new wave of infections could happen anytime anywhere.