The World's Top CEOs Meet at Davos & The Controversy Around Peacock and the NFL

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0:27Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, what you need to know about the gathering of the global elite in Davos. Then, it's cold outside. We'll check in on how these polar temps are causing havoc across the country. It's Tuesday, January 16th. Let's ride.

0:50Those delicate white flakes are falling fast outside the office right now, which means that the northeast long snow drought is finally coming to an end. Yesterday, D.C., Baltimore, and Philadelphia all recorded at least one inch of snow for the first time in nearly two years. And New York is poised to end its snow drought of 701 days this morning. How are you celebrating, Florida boy? So snow droughts are not something that exists in my mind because being from Florida, I just live in a perpetual snow drought. So I'm celebrating. This is still exciting for me. I don't think you understand that.

1:26I did not grow up in this environment. So anytime there's an inch on the ground, I'm making snow angels. I'm throwing snowballs. Let's have a little snowball fight later. I'm down. Before we jump into the show today, we have a quick word from our sponsor, Veeam. Neil, you were telling me that you couldn't help but think of Veeam over the long weekend. I kept running into scenarios where Veeam for X would really come in handy, like Veeam for leftovers, where it would protect my pad thai from late night cyber attacks, aka my roommate eating them. Oh, or like Veeam for being sick, where its commitment to radical resilience would have you back on your feet in no time.

1:59You get the picture. Petition for Veeam to leave the data protection game and just take over protecting various parts of my life. I'm here for that. Head to Veeam.com today to discover more. That's V-E-E-A-M.com today. Tonight on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozema St. John host a highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not play play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you.

2:36May the best idea win! On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere tonight on NBC. The World Economic Forum Summit has kicked off in the ski resort town of Davos, Switzerland in the annual conference that brings together top business leaders, politicians, and pretty much anyone else who can afford to wear quiet luxury. This year's theme is rebuilding trust, which applies to our world rife with geopolitical conflicts, but also to Davos itself, a summit intended to promote peace and stability that has come under heavy criticism for being out of touch with the concerns of everyday people. So what are the attendees going to talk about this year?

3:13Well, one name you'll hear a lot is Donald Trump, who cruised a victory in the Iowa caucuses last night to cement his dominant lead for the Republican presidential nomination. The prospect of Trump returning to office and what that means for global trade, Ukraine and international cooperation is certainly top of mind. And you're going to be shocked when you hear this next major discussion point, AI. Yes, artificial intelligence and the safety risks it poses to the world has become the topic du jour at Davos. And hotshot OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will head to Switzerland to speak on a panel about the technology on Thursday.

3:48Everyone is going to be watching that. What caught your eye about this year's Davos? It's just one heck of a to-do list. I mean, climate change, conflict in the Middle East, keeping the world economy stable and steady, navigating Ukraine and Russia still. The AI could end all our lives. So just the sheer amount of bullet points on their to-do list is kind of overwhelming when you look at it. I also just, the sheer size of Davos is something I want to emphasize. Over 60 heads of states and government. There'll be over 2 ,800 attendees. And this is everyone from academics to reporters. It's just a big conglomeration of a lot of important people in one place.

4:26So they're talking about a lot of important things. Yeah, there's a lot of participant inflation at these conferences that we talked about with the COP28 back in the Gulf state. What was it? UAE? UAE. Dubai a few weeks ago. One thing that caught my eye is China. China sending a massive delegation. It wants to kind of repair relationship with the rest of the world. That's because foreign direct investment in China, which had been one of the major growth stories for the country over the past few decades, it actually declined for the first time in the third quarter. China is sending a huge delegation in force.

5:04It's kind of worrying a lot of the U.S. leaders, actually. And we're sending some of our people there to kind of counter the presence of China. But they want to go, they want to open up discussions, especially with those Gulf sovereign wealth funds to say, hey, we're back open for business at a time when a lot of investors are looking at China and saying, there's a lot going on there, maybe we should pull back. Yeah, if the theme is rebuilding trust, China wants to do the same thing with some of its world trade compatriots. I also want to talk about how Davos has come under fire recently. A big part of it is kind of the hypocrisy that a lot of people see at play.

5:38It's because they talk a lot about climate change at Davos. And yet all these people roll up in their private jets. 2022 flight emissions were on par with 350 ,000 cars. Between 1 ,000 and 1 ,500 private jets come to the surrounding airports during Davos. So it is always this juxtaposition of they're trying to solve the world's problems, starting firstly with climate change. And yet you're rolling up in your private jets with all the CO2 emissions. Right. Whenever Davos happens, you see a bunch of nonprofits and organizations come out with their annual reports talking about inequality to highlight what's going on at Davos and what's going on with the rest of the world.

6:18So Oxfam, the nonprofit, came out with its wealth report yesterday. It does this every single year at Davos. It found that the fortunes of the five richest men have spiked, have more than doubled in real terms since 2020. That's Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Buffett. And Oxfam also predicted that we'll have the first trillionaire within 10 years. Do you think that's going to happen? We've talked about this on the show before. I'm bearish on the whole trillionaire thing, but I mean... Musk is number one right now at$250 billion, his net worth. The first billionaire was John Rockefeller in 1916.

6:59Getting a little history lesson. So we will keep an eye on Davos and kind of that conference will progress throughout this weekend. I'm sure there'll be more stories to talk about. Let's move on. We created Maury Brew Daily so you guys would have something other than the weather to make small talk about. But today we got to talk about the weather. Bitterly cold temperatures have descended on the U.S. the past three days, straining electrical grids, postponing NFL games and breaking years long snow droughts. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, a.k.a. ERCOT, is once again being put to the test as demand topped a wintertime record over the long weekend.

7:36Remember, this is a grid that often fails under extreme weather conditions. In the past two nights, it has issued statements asking residents to conserve power between 6 and 9 a.m. to help prevent widespread outages. Sub-zero temperatures in Iowa also made headlines as residents braved attempts to cast their votes in the first Republican caucus of the year. Heck, even the Buffalo Bills, a fan base who willingly hurls their bodies through flaming floatable tables, had to postpone their NFL game due to dangerous snowy conditions. Just how disruptive is this recent cold snap? Around 2 ,163 flights across the U.S.

8:11were canceled as of 2 p.m. yesterday, and more than 148 ,000 homes and businesses are without power in five states. It's cold, Neil. Yes. I want to talk about Texas specifically, which is not a state you typically associate with cold. But you have to go back to 2021. There was a huge scandal, huge crisis when there was a massive cold snap, froze a lot of the power generation. 250 people died at least because that seems like it's a low count. For the past few years, Texas has really tried to put a lot of new measures in place, get a lot of new power generation going to prevent this from happening again.

8:49And remember, Texas is on its own grid. Like, it does everything itself. There are three grids in the United States. There's the western one, there's the eastern one, and then there's Texas all by itself. And that has posed a problem when the weather gets truly terrible, really cold, really hot, which it has been in Texas. So they are predicting that there's going to be record wintertime demand actually this morning, 6 to 9 a.m. So everyone's going to be looking to see how that grid is holding up. Very fascinating that wintertime, that demand for power in the winter always peaks. You can bet on it that it's going to peak in the morning when everyone is waking up right before 8 a.m.

9:25So that's the time that they're looking at. Yeah. And Texas has been trying to clean up its act in recent years. It's been on this renewable energy kick, buying a lot of different additional batteries, windmills, solar panels to help alleviate some of the pressure on their grid. One advantage that they think they have this time around is that this upcoming storm isn't forecast to be as wet and as widespread or as long-lasting as that 2021 one. So hopefully it can weather it really well. If we want to just zoom out a little bit, though, there's serious energy repercussions across the country. Extreme colds cause North Dakota's daily oil production to plunge by 425 ,000 barrels.

10:04Their output of natural gas, which is actually the nation's number one power plant fuel, fell as much as 1.1 billion cubic feet. So that's down to about a third for both fuel levels compared to October. So this is not just a Texas thing. Fuel production in some of our main hubs across the country is also falling. Meanwhile, it's going to be 50 degrees below zero, the wind chill in Montana and the Dakotas. I can't even fathom that. I was looking at the map. Someone on Twitter noted that there was a 113 degree difference between Miami, Florida, and Bab, Montana, and a 146 degree difference between the feels-like temperatures.

10:44It's just two different planets we're living on. I don't know what a feels-like temperature is. We have a lot of weather metrics these days. Moving on, it looks like NBC's controversial gamble to air an NFL playoff game exclusively on Peacock paid off in a big way. On Saturday night, Peacock was the only place you could watch the Chiefs play the Dolphins. on the frozen tundra of Arrowhead Field in the fourth coldest NFL game ever. And while that gatekeeping irked a lot of fans, they did appear to pony up the$6 monthly subscription. The game earned 23 million total viewers, which Peacock said was the most streamed live event in U.S.

11:19history and was also responsible for the most internet usage ever in the U.S. on a single date, consuming 30 % of all internet traffic. The Peacock exclusive game even drew more viewers than last year's wildcard matchup on NBC, which drew an audience of 21 million. If you're worried about more live sports heading to streaming platforms, this is not a good sign for you. With growth hitting a wall, streamers will definitely be eyeing the success of Peacock's NFL playoff game as they figure out ways to stand out from the crowded field and acquire new subscribers. The big question we don't know yet, how many subscribers did Peacock manage to add through this game, and how many of them will not cancel now that it's over?

11:59That's what will ultimately determine whether this investment paid off. Yeah, those churn numbers are going to be very, very closely poured over after this because it made us the number one on the App Store. It made 30 % of all internet traffic. I don't know how you actually mentioned that. I don't know what that metric means. These lofty, lofty claims, but I'd really want to see how many people stick around because the jokes were flying over the weekend. People saying, like, this is your uncle asking you, hey, how do you, what even is a peacock? How do I do this? So I truly don't know if that's going to be a very sticky user base.

12:31But you can kind of see the PR push that Comcast has been putting on, saying that a lot of people don't know this, but Peacock actually offers the widest variety of sports, live sports of any streaming platform. So they're really trying to create this vision around themselves that they are one of the hubs for sports when it comes to streaming platforms. I mean, we talk about the streaming wars forever. Every media company now has a streaming platform. They have a lot of content. So it's like, how do you stand out these days? And one of them is, one of the major ones that's coming into view is having live sports.

13:08Amazon Prime Video has broadcast Thursday Night Football exclusively. YouTube paid up for NFL Sunday ticket, billions of dollars. And now Peacock wants to show that it also has live sports, particularly the Premier League. but will this but the problem with live sports is they're also the most expensive media asset out there because it's the only one that people still watch i mean peacock paid 110 million dollars for this game only 110 million one game it's it's just truly absurd peacock was expected to lose 2.8 billion dollars in 2023 and the live sports rights are a big reason for that live sports are just so expensive but it makes sense the only thing that people actually watch okay before we give any parents or uncles flashbacks of trying to download Peacock.

13:53Let's take a quick break. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of 130 million of them. In fact, you can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills, and did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real.

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15:02EbGliss can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EbGliss. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EpGliss. Before starting EpGliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about EpGliss and visit epgliss.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Hopefully you all had a long and relaxing weekend to celebrate Martin Luther King Day. We certainly did.

15:34The news, however, did not take any time off. So to catch you up to speed, we're going to run through our winners of the weekend, which are two people or things that had and especially good Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I won the pre-show Yankee Candle Scent Guessing Contest, so I'm up first. And my winner of the weekend is Madison Marsh, a.k.a. Miss Colorado, a.k.a. Miss America 2024. Marsh won the prestigious title Sunday night, but that's far from the only prestigious thing about her. Just 22 years old, Marsh is the first active-duty Air Force officer to compete, let alone win the Miss America pageant.

16:09And that's not all. She also goes to Harvard, where she co-founded a foundation to fund pancreatic cancer research. As Miss America, she gets 60 ,000 in tuition scholarships, as well as the opportunity to travel the country as a Miss America brand ambassador. Neil, at 22, I still had an AOL email address. Madison Marsh is doing a lot more than that. Definitely, when you look at these people's resumes, it makes you feel like you're not doing a whole lot. This is pretty a grueling multi-day competition. There was a fitness showcase, a Hot Topics discussion round, which is a Q &A. There's a talent performance.

16:43There's an evening gown presentation. So this is like a pretty intense situation going on. But it looks like Madison was very well prepared for all of this based on her service at the Air Force Academy. I don't think I would have done well in any of those categories you just mentioned. I do want to break down the difference between Miss America and Miss USA a little bit. Miss America is a scholarship program and a pageant. It focuses on personal growth and education. And Miss USA, on the other hand, is kind of that platform for the Miss Universe competition. That's the competition that Trump owned for a while.

17:14He sold it in 2015. So that's the difference. And that's why Marsh kind of won this$60 ,000 scholarship. That's one of those not stupid questions that everyone's afraid to ask. But thank you for clarifying that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just cleaning it up. OK, my winner is everyone who took home a trophy last night at the Emmy Awards. Yes, you might have been paying closer attention to the Iowa caucuses or the Eagles crashing out of the playoffs. But the Emmys happened last night after getting delayed for four months by the Hollywood strikes. The takeaways? Succession's final season took home a ton of prizes, including Best Drama and for acting and writing.

17:49The Bear won Best Comedy, Dethroning Ted Lasso, which won for the past two years. The Netflix limited series Beef also had a big night. Quinta Brunson won Best Actress for her sitcom, Abbott Elementary, becoming the first black woman to win the award since 1981. And finally, I have to call out the ongoing outrageous snubs of Better Call Saul by Emmy voters. The Breaking Bad spinoff that was even better than Breaking Bad ended its run without winning a single Emmy going 0 for 53 and making it the most snubbed series of all time. 0 for 53. 0 for 53. That is some seriously bad batting average. So I have a confession to make.

18:26I recently started watching Succession over the long weekend. I'm almost done with the first season. And I just think it's absolutely hilarious watching just a few episodes that Kieran McCalkin and Brian Cox keep winning these awards over Jeremy Strong, who is Kendall Roy. And the other two are his brother and his dad. So I think it's very funny and very fitting and kind of aligns with the show that these actors are winning over him. Don't spoil anything for me, though. Now I'm actually invested in this. All right. I'm glad you're watching. One other thing to call out. We have a new member of the EGOT, everyone, that very exclusive club that just 24 people have won.

19:02The Emmy, the Tony, the Oscar, and the Grammy. That person is Elton John. So congrats, Sir Elton. The past few days have brought us a couple interesting findings from studies about the workplace, and I'd love to share them with all of you listening. First, remote work, good for taking care of the dog, bad for getting promoted at your company. An analysis by data provider Live Data Technologies found that over the past year, remote workers were promoted 31 % less frequently than people who worked in the office, either full-time or on a hybrid basis. 5.6 % of employees who came into the office at least a few days of the week received a promotion, compared to 3.9 % of fully remote workers.

19:44People might react to this either with indignation that remote workers are getting discriminated against, or on the other hand, think, Sure, if you come into the office, that shows a level of commitment that's likely to give you a professional leg up over your remote colleagues. What was your reaction? My reaction is it gives so much ammunition to the remote work haters and specifically bosses who are calling people back to the office. It is tough to see data support some of these things that a lot of people have been kind of not using data to support their opinions on. I also want to talk about the other kind of survey that's been going around about employee wellness and how one study found that it didn't really work.

20:23And that this study published Wednesday in the Journal of Industrial Relations claimed that workplace wellness initiatives have had little to no impact on employees' actual well-being. That's the kind of things like giving you a Calm app subscription or something like that or teaching you how to meditate. These are things that are not really moving the needle when it comes to employee wellness, despite how much these employers are investing resources into them. Right. The Oxford researcher who did that study said that if employers really wanted to make their employees happier, they'd focus less on basically comping them headspace subscriptions, which has been a very popular thing, and focus more on those core organizational practices like better schedules and higher pay.

21:04And so, yeah, that was the other study that I wanted to talk about was the fact that this guy found that those wellness programs that basically all these employers offer nowadays for their workplace work. So you come here, we'll give you all of these. We'll give you mental health resources, blah, blah, blah, which sounds great. But this researcher found that they didn't actually work in theory. One of the things that did work was inviting people to participate in the kind of group volunteering sessions. So when you're doing something alongside your coworker and you're doing something for someone else, that was something that did move the needle when it comes to mental health.

21:40So especially as we confront kind of like this loneliness epidemic, maybe internal things that you have to do by yourself are not as effective as stuff that bring you out into your community and make you feel more connected to your employer. So two very interesting studies that also are digging into the repercussions of remote work for four or so years later. We're still talking about it. I think for a lot of people looking at these studies, it's probably confirming a lot of what they know, but this actually puts some numbers to it. That wellness one has been attacked by some of the people in the industry.

22:12Spring Health, the leader of Spring Health, which is a platform that connects employees with mental health services, said that you can't just look at a single snapshot point in time like this particular study did. You have to do a longitudinal study. So there's a bit of back and forth about whether this study was actually accurate or representative. What would you do if you inherited$27 million from a rich family member? Sounds like the start of a wonderful Would You Rather. Well, an heiress of a European business dynasty is going full Mr. Beast and letting 50 strangers determine what she does with the millions being passed down to her.

22:48It's her way of fighting wealth inequality. Marlene Engelhorn from Austria believes her government should tax inheritances. But since they don't, she's taking it upon herself to distribute it. She sent out 10 ,000 invitations to random people in Austria, asking them to complete a survey about helping her deal with the money. From there, she is choosing 50 people from 50 different backgrounds who she thinks represents the population at large. She's calling them her Guterat, which translates to good counsel, and will use them to help come up with ideas on how to distribute the$27 million. Neil, are we a fan of Guterat?

23:25I mean, I wouldn't do it. I don't know if I would send out my$27 million if I got it. However, I got it. And I completely understand her motivation saying, I didn't earn this. I need to, I want to send it back to the people. Personally, I think I would do a better job of distributing it than 50 random people I selected off the street. That's just me. But I completely understand what she's doing. And she's just doing it to prove a point. What I thought was fascinating is she has no, she has no veto power. Like whatever this council decides, it goes. She's just literally writing them a$27 million check to distribute.