What's with the streaming price hikes?

0:00This marketplace podcast is supported by Wealth Enhancement, who ask, do you have a blueprint for your money? Wealth Enhancement can help you build the right blueprint for investing, retirement, tax, and more. With offices nationwide, there's an advisor who's ready to listen and craft a blueprint for your future. Find out more at wealthenhancement.com slash build. This podcast is supported by Odoo. Some say Odoo business management software is like fertilizer for businesses because the simple, efficient software promotes growth. Others say Odoo is like a magic beanstalk because it scales with you and is magically affordable.

0:37And some describe Odoo's programs for manufacturing, accounting, and more as building blocks for creating a custom software suite. So Odoo is fertilizer, magic beanstalk building blocks for business. Odoo, exactly what businesses need. Sign up at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Okay, what do you like? Economic indicators? Streaming TV? Fly fishing? We got it all from American public media. This is Marketplace.

1:16I'm Kai Rizdahl. It is Wednesday today, the 24th of September. Good as always to have you along, everybody. Let us talk spending as a way to get going today. Not consumer spending. We do quite enough of that. Thank you very much. No, we begin today with business spending specifically, and I know this is a mouthful apologies in advance, specifically something called new orders for non-defense capital goods, excluding aircraft. In plain English, that's businesses buying new equipment so they can make more stuff to sell to us. We're going to get August figures for durable goods tomorrow from the Census Bureau.

1:56And the thing to know is that those orders have been picking up this year, even with high-ish interest rates and tariffs and a near-term economic future that is basically a black box. Marketplace's Justin Ho starts us off. Mavericks Manufacturing Partners is a company in Escondido, California, that makes specialized metal components for the energy and defense sectors. CEO Chris Blench says over the last couple years, the amount of money it's spent on equipment has gone up fourfold. We're looking for more delivery trucks now. We've bought some new welding positioners. We've bought new welding equipment.

2:29We're buying robots. Blench says the company needs all of this equipment. We've seen a real big uptick in orders. We're expecting a very strong fourth quarter. Blench says a lot of that demand is coming from the Navy. But the company also makes components for nuclear energy. And Blench says that sector is hot now. I would say it's the AI data centers and just the power demands that our current infrastructure can't meet. Durable goods spending has been strong for all kinds of equipment behind AI technology. Electric components, computers. That's Oren Kalachkin, an economist at Nationwide. He says that spending is overshadowing some weakness elsewhere in the economy.

3:09But Kalachkin says even though the broader economy might be slowing down. It doesn't mean that investment stops. It doesn't mean that consumers don't go out and spend. We're going to see the economy continue to move, essentially. For some companies, a slowdown in consumer spending is prompting investment. Because the market's down, there's a lot of opportunity. That's Adam Miller. He's the founder of Revel Bikes, a mountain bike brand based in Colorado. He says consumer demand is weak this year, but that means the manufacturing plants he uses don't have much to do. So Miller says the company's using this time to focus on developing new models.

3:43It takes about two years to develop a new bike. So step one is investing in the design and engineering and creativity of developing the highest-end mountain bike we can, and then doing the R &D and development to make those products. Last month, the company bought several molds it'll use to make new carbon fiber bike frames. Miller says each of those molds cost between$100 ,000 and$200 ,000. So it's a big investment. They're fairly expensive, and they have a two - to four-year lifespan generally in the market. Miller says the hope is that by the time these new models hit the market, the global economy will look a lot more stable.

4:18I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace. Wall Street midweek, not really a winner. We will have the details when we do the numbers.

4:50the agriculturally minded among you don't need me to point this out but we're just about in a harvest time in many parts of the country and the news from american farms well it has been better so we have called our favorite iowa soybean farmer for an update april hammes how you doing I've been doing just lovely as every soybean farmer has. By the way, I'm going to try and see you. You're coming to my state. I just found out. I am. First week-ish of November. And I'm going to try and see you, so will you at least pretend to know me when you see me? If you are there, we will take a picture together.

5:26Yes, indeed. Ooh, party on. Indeed. Okay, good. So, to business. You ready? I got something I want to read you, and then I want you to tell me what you think. Oh, boy. Okay. It's a headline from Bloomberg from a couple of days ago. China seeks trade edge, shunning U.S. soy in first since 1990s. All y 'all are in harvest on soybeans now, right? And you got no China market. Right. Yeah, we haven't. Boy, I have to tell you, my sister who works at St. Olaf College in Minnesota called me this morning at like 630 and goes, you mean China hasn't bought any soybeans? Are you kidding me? I mean, she goes, this is news to me.

6:07I go, well, it's been all over the news. So I said, yeah, it's true. But China's playing the long game with this administration. And if they don't want to do it, they're not going to. So, yeah, we are being totally shut out. What does that mean for you, the humble soy farmer? It means, actually, in Iowa, we're good because we have a lot of demand domestically. We feed a lot of pigs and chickens and make biofuel and things like that. but it's the North Dakota, South Dakota farmer. Most of their soybeans go out the Pacific Northwest. And some of those guys can't even get a bid, can't deliver soybeans.

6:43Or maybe the market's$10. If they deliver it, their basis is like$1.70 under. So, you know, take a, yeah. So they're hurting big time. We're all hurting. Is the market then just, is the China market, which used to be huge for U.S. soybeans. Is that just now gone? Because the Chinese are gone somewhere else and they're not coming back. Well, they've gone to Brazil recently. So it used to be one out of every three rows in Iowa got exported to China. Well, it's far less than that. Well, it's nothing now. But, yeah, they've gone to Brazil lately. And now with the Argentina news just coming. I read that and I go, really?

7:27Another slap in the face to soybean farmers. So, yeah, Argentina took off their export taxes. And so China swooped in and bought a bunch of beans because everybody said, oh, they're going to need us for the fall, November, December for their needs. Well, now they bought from Argentina, you know, export tax free. So just another thing. Just another thing for us to look at. We've talked before, you and I, about how you'd much rather have the markets and sell your product than get government assistance. But, you know, people in the Commerce Department and in ag are saying we have to do something to help these farmers.

8:09You'd rather have it the other way around, right? Just let me sell my stuff. Every farmer I've talked to said that. And quite honestly, if those payments we get, I've been reading and there's a lot of studies on them, over 75 or 80 percent go to my inputs, go to the rent or the fertilizer or the seed. The inputs aren't coming down. And so, you know, it helps. So I talked to my banker about it and he goes, you're right. You know, it's not right, but it'll make refinancing some of these guys a little easier. but in agriculture now it's i call it the everything everywhere all at once our inputs are high our prices have not kept up with inflation you know and and then you have the tariffs on top of it and that's not only going out but everything we buy is tariffed so in and the and the trade disruptions with the wars so and then now argentina it's fun you want to come farm Kai?

9:12I think you should. I did that for half an hour when I drove your combine a number of years ago. Yeah, you did, didn't you? Oh, my Lord. All right. Well, I'll tell you what. Maybe I'll see you when I'm out there in November. How about that? That sounds great. Can't wait. All right, April. We'll talk to you soon. Okie doke.

9:46It's absolutely none of my business, but how many streaming services do you subscribe to? And more important, how much are you paying for them? I'm prompted to ask because Disney is raising prices for its various services. Disney Plus, Hulu, ESPN, and bundles thereof with or without ads are all going to go up$2 to$3 a month starting October 21st. It is the fourth straight year that Disney has done that. All the rest of the streamers are, too, as they move away from chasing subscriber numbers to chasing profits. And as Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carino reports, consumers are responding accordingly.

10:23Jonathan Barnes is as loyal a New Orleans sports fan as you can find. But after this round of price increases, he's decided to turn his back on ESPN's streaming service. It's not like my wife and I are struggling, but on the principle alone, you just get to a point as a consumer where you get tired of it. When we first spoke a couple years ago, Barnes subscribed to seven different streaming services to get access to all his favorite sports. But he's whittled that down to four apps as prices increased. If that's something that I really want to watch, I will find a friend or a family member who has the service that I need to watch it and watch it over there.

11:00Since 2024, consumers have reduced the average number of streaming services they pay for at once, says John Giegengack from Hub Entertainment Research. The increase in any single streaming platform, you know, while that might not be super dramatic if you are stacking four or five of these, like many, many, many people are, the aggregate impact of how much you're spending each month can be pretty significant. But it's actually not the most premium services that users have tended to quit, says Jennifer Kent at market research firm Parks Associates. The churn rate for Disney apps or Netflix, Amazon Prime, and HBO Max has been pretty stable.

11:39Because almost all of these streaming providers have an ad-based option, that's allowed the services to continue to increase prices but have a more affordable option. She says it's the smaller streamers that are the fourth, fifth, or sixth subscription that consumers are more likely to cycle through. You know, the ones with the mysterious names that Cocoa. I sign up for services when there's a promotion and then I schedule an email to myself the week before the promotion ends to cancel it. Analyst Ross Benish at eMarketer says we're likely to see more consolidation and bundling in the streaming industry as price pressures continue to make consumers pickier.

12:23No one has any new ideas. We're just redoing the same ideas that were used in the previous technology. Meet the new TV, same as the old TV. I'm Megan McCarty Carino for Marketplace.

12:59Friday will bring us the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, that's PCE for short, the measure of inflation that Jay Powell and the gang at the Federal Reserve watch pretty closely. Most closely right now, we're all watching to see how much and how fast price levels are going up because of President Trump's tariffs. Included among those watching are small businesses, many of them on the pointy end of the inflation spike. Dylan Demery owns a fly fishing shop in Fort Collins, Colorado. It is called She's Fly. This year, business has been definitely different than last year. Although right now we're running up about 2 % year over year from last year.

13:41I do foresee that we'll probably finish the year about 5 % down in sales from last year. So we have not changed our prices yet. And actually, we just passed our fifth anniversary in business. And so we are running a sale that we anticipate running through the end of the year. We're trying to clear out some of the inventory that we've had and give people some good deals right now because I think they need them. We are not looking at replenishing a lot of that inventory and instead are transitioning our business model to focus more on our She's Fly retreat experiences and reduce our retail footprint slightly.

14:21The challenges right now that we're seeing are that many people are being very cautious with their discretionary spending. And fly fishing is not a necessity for everybody. I mean, for me it is because it is so healing, but it's not something that everybody needs to spend money on right now. They're trying to really pull in their expenses.

14:46Dylan Demery. She's in Fort Collins, Colorado. Her shop, and I kind of love this, is called She's Fly.

15:14Coming up. Undoubtedly, there needs to be tune-up. You need to adjust. Adapt or die, I'll tell you what, television is really tough right now. First, though, let's do the numbers. The Dow Industrial is down 171 points today, 4 tenths percent, finished at 46 ,121. The Nasdaq subtracted 75 points, about a third of 1 percent, 22 ,497. The S &P 500 down 18 points, 3 tenths percent, 66 ,37 there. A couple of weeks ago, an accident shut down a copper mine complex in Indonesia. That's one of the world's biggest. Two workers died, five are missing. Today, the mine's owner, Freeport-McMoran, indicated the facility is going to stay offline until at least next year.

16:00Shares of Freeport-McMoran descended almost 17%. Competitors did get a bump, though. Southern Copper dug up 8.4%. Rio Tinto bagged 1.2%. Mining company Lithium Americas charged up almost 96 % today after announcing it's talking with the Department of Energy about a$2 billion-plus loan for a Nevada mine. It's developing in partnership with General Motors. As bond prices went down, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note thus rose 4.14 % on the 10-year. You're listening to Marketplace.

16:43This podcast is supported by Odoo. Some say Odoo business management software is like fertilizer for businesses because the simple, efficient software promotes growth. Others say Odoo is like a magic beanstalk because it scales with you and is magically affordable. And some describe Odoo's programs for manufacturing, accounting, and more as building blocks for creating a custom software suite. So Odoo is fertilizer, magic beanstalk building blocks for business. Odoo, exactly what businesses need. Sign up at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. You've finally broken loose from work. Three friends, one tea time, and then the text.

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18:31That's dell.com slash deals. This Marketplace podcast is supported by Wealth Enhancement, who ask, do you have a blueprint for your money? Wealth Enhancement can help you build the right blueprint for investing, retirement, tax, and more. With offices nationwide, there's an advisor who's ready to listen and craft a blueprint for your future. Find out more at wealthenhancement.com slash build. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdahl. Television, most specifically the business of television, is changing before our very eyes. Most approximately late night. Stephen Colbert canceled a month or so ago.

19:14Jimmy Kimmel returning to most local airwaves last night. More generally, though, is the longer term move towards streaming. Nielsen reported back in May that the streaming audiences now outnumber cable and broadcast audiences combined. Well, as it happens, I had a conversation yesterday with one of the people making television right now. Warren Littlefield was, once upon a time, the president of NBC Entertainment. This is back in the 1990s, the days of must-see TV, if you go back that far. Now he's a producer behind shows like Fargo and The Handmaid's Tale and, most recently, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox.

19:53We spoke at his offices yesterday out in Culver City. First of all, thank you for having us out here. I really appreciate it. It's my privilege and honor to be here. I'm going to start with a very basic question. Okay. What do you do every day? What do I do? I think I play in a sandbox about the world of ideas and what ideas would hopefully make compelling content. Do you know like that, that you've got something? Like, let's just take The Handmaid's Tale. Did you know when you read Margaret Atwood's book, man, is it going to be TV? First thing I read was Bruce Miller's script. And then I went and read her book after I read Bruce's script.

20:42And that's when I had the full appreciation of his vision. Sometimes you come to things pretty quickly. When Thomas Perry wrote his book, The Old Man, I was like, okay. And and we were only a couple chapters in i was like oh yeah oh yeah i i get this at at the same time though that you you play as you say in the market in the in the in the field of ideas in that sandbox you are known for being a hands-on kind of producer you go out and and you went to uh the set of the handmaid's tale you went to fargo you went to europe for the amanda knox thing yes um why well i i get really good people that i put together and make a team and then i want to make sure that they're playing well together it has to be an orchestra um i try so you're the conductor that's the analogy right maybe and undoubtedly there needs to be tune-up there need to be you need to adjust.

21:56The plan is so detailed for a day. And then you have to live in the moment of, guess what? I know we laid out moment for moment, how we're going to make these 12 hours work and something happens. It happens and you better respond to that. I enjoy that process. It's exciting. A woman I used to work with, uh, here at marketplace said to me once, she was a great field producer said, you know, the art of being a producer is knowing what to do when the plane goes to hell. Yes. Yes. Each day you light a fuse and, and that fuse burns down. And at the end of the day, boom, there you go. All your money's gone.

22:41What have you accomplished? So there's a pressure in that day. That's exciting. It also can be crunch time each and every day. Uh, about the economics of, of, uh, the business you are in, you've said repeatedly over, over the years, but most recently, um, these are the toughest times that you've had since basically been in the industry your whole career. Yes. Explain. Well, there's still a desire for high quality, complex content. However, there's more pressure than ever before to deliver that for a price. Our job is to figure out how to do it better and get it done for a cost. So when we went and did Amanda Knox, we appropriately went to Italy and shot for almost five weeks.

23:39That ain't cheap. That's right. However, then we spent the winter in Budapest. That was driven by the economics and what we were able to accomplish there. You develop this project, you take it to Hulu, and you say it's going to cost X millions of dollars. And does Hulu say, can you do it for X minus Y millions of dollars? Yes, they do. That's very much a negotiation. And so we're fighting for the greatest possible quality to put up on the screen. But that is, without a doubt, a negotiation of what can we make it for. Does it kill you to do those negotiations? Because you've got this vision, and not to get all floofy about this, but you've got this artistic vision.

24:21You want the quality. And these guys are counting the bottom line. That's okay. They're allowed to do that. I want them, and I need them to succeed. So that when we hit audience levels that meet their expectations, that's a win for them. and they have that content across all of their platforms for many years to come. That's the business that they're in. My job is to make it compelling and now more than ever get it done for a price. What's your sense of making content in this pop cultural moment in this country right now? Is it a little dicey for you? Well, so here's the question I want to get to.

25:08and it was awkward getting there. We're going to leave this in the edit because people should understand how I'm working this. I want you to put your network hat on here for a second and I want to ask you about Disney and ABC and Jimmy Kimmel and CBS and Colbert and what you make of that because you're removed from the network stuff but you've got network DNA. I do have network DNA. I was greatly relieved to hear that Disney and ABC had worked out a plan to have Jimmy come back. And Stephen Colbert, yanking Stephen Colbert, was a scary signal. The world of how to navigate politics and broadcasting and then throw into that mix affiliates.

26:06And their years of frustration where they felt not seen and heard in the relationship with networks, it's a really complex relationship. The challenges are standing up for things that we think are essential. And free speech feels pretty damn fundamental to me. and ABC Disney blinked and I like the fact that they recovered. Do you like it better over here in streaming land or do you miss the network days? The network days were different universe. Yeah, different times. It's a very different time. There are more buyers out there and we'll see how many buyers make it. You better be in that top four to five, or I think you're going to have a hard time sustaining.

27:13Are you fearful for the future of your industry? The industry will change as it always has. I think in the world we were in previously, you needed a breakthrough idea. It had to be on the page and your partners had to feel very confident in who was going to make it, deliver it. You needed previously two out of three, two out of three. And you were making content today, without a doubt, it's three out of three, or you're not in business. I'm not afraid of the world we're in. I think I'm aware of the world we're in. And I think that we're valued for what we're able to do at the complexity that is required to do it right now.