Cable Cowboy John Malone & Ben Shapiro 9/3/25

0:00Bring in show music, please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod, the original cable cowboy, John Malone. We're in the midst, I think, of watching a transition in consumer consumption. The Liberty Media founder has had huge influence on what we watch, read and pay to entertain us. The linear television business of which news is part is suffering from the rapid decline of viewership of the big cable bundle. A story he's telling in a new memoir, Born to be Wired, about the rise and decline of cable television, the revolution of personal technology and what he has seen from a front row seat.

0:47For one thing, the industry, the old media industry, both transport and content, needs to continue to consolidate to get scale to be efficient. There's too many streamers for sure. And new media star Ben Shapiro, the conservative commentator on tariffs, industrial policy and all the White House news of a busy 2025. Are we grading Trump against what would have been, in which case much better than what would have been? Or are we grading him against what I would love to see? And, you know, I think that we can do both. Plus, China putting military power on display, its jobs weak, and Google avoids a nasty breakup in a favorable antitrust ruling.

1:26The government takes five years to do anything. By then, the market's already moved. It's Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand back to bye in three, two, one. Cue it, please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. And here we go this morning, this Wednesday morning. It does come after the worst day for the S &P 500 in over a month, all the way back to August 1st. There were a lot of superlatives yesterday. Maybe he among them golds at an all-time high.

2:04You've got the 30-year at the highest yield since July 18th. And then you've got the 10-year, 2-year spread at its steepest level since April. April 22nd. Shouldn't we be happy about the yield curve steepening? I guess so. I mean, after all the, you know, McDonald's yesterday, a big piece in the journal today about the middle class is totally strapped at this point. And I think the recession fears are starting to trickle back in. You could argue either case. I mean, if you're going to see Fed cuts, they can do it because inflation has not been as high as has been expected. But you've also got a weaker job market and questions about what's happening to the economy.

2:43We'll see Friday. You'll see Friday. But, what,$75 ,000 is what we're looking for. And then I was worried someone else would reference the Moody's economist. I would never mention this guy, but he's calling. I wouldn't. I don't think he's going to mention, you know, because you're fairly fair, and I'm not. But Zandi, if he's ever right, I have a heart attack, but he, you know, now says we're on the cusp of a recession. We'll see. We'll see. I guess I'll cite anyone to talk about it. You look at these ideas of two economies, dueling economies, and that's also what the McDonald's CEOs and other people who told us yesterday talked about some of these issues.

3:21He just said it. We don't see as much, again, because that wealthier consumer right now isn't feeling under a lot of pressure. This isn't like what we saw in the Great Recession where that consumer, everybody was trading down. Right now, again, if you're upper income, you're feeling pretty good about things. And so we're not seeing as pronounced a trade down effect this time around. What Chris Kempchinski said, the McDonald's CEO, is that he's not getting the trade down impact. Normally you would see when there's pressure on the lower end that higher stratas sort of trade down and start eating more at McDonald's.

3:53It hasn't happened. Tale of two cities. But, you know, the most important thing he did say is that the chicken snap wrap is back to stay. For forever. And then there's the big news that happened in court yesterday. Alphabet shares jumping as investors celebrate what they see as minimal consequences stemming from a key antitrust case involving Google and, of course, its search bar. Eamon Javers joins us right now with more. It's more than just the search bar. Yeah, there's a lot to this, Andrew. Good morning. Both Google and the Department of Justice released statements last night highlighting parts of the decision they liked, disputing the parts they didn't, and hinting at future legal wrangling.

4:34Now, remember, appeals in this case can come after a final judgment is issued later this year. So this could still go on for a couple of years. Google said in part in its statement, now the court has imposed limits on how we distribute Google services and will require us to share search data with rivals. We have concerns about how these requirements will impact our users and their privacy. And we're reviewing the decision closely. And Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater posted on social media that, quote, the court didn't order all of our requested relief and we are weighing our options. Now, the court said Google will have to share search data with competitors.

5:14Declined to force Google to sell off its Chrome browser and Android's operating system, though. And it said that Google can continue to pay third parties like Apple for distribution, but can't enter into these exclusive search engine agreements. So Google has said all along that it had planned to appeal this decision so the case could continue well into 2027. Next steps include both parties submitting revised final judgments by September 10th, and appeals can begin after that final judgment has been issued by the court, guys. So we're not out of the woods yet, but a significant win here for Google in that they avoided the worst possible scenario, which is a forced breakup of the company.

5:54Back over to you. Eamon, here's the thing that I'm still trying to figure out. They effectively say you can't have an exclusive deal on another device, but we can't really take your right away, effectively, for paying to be on another device. So, you know, Apple stock moved, Google, the whole idea being that they're going to be able to continue the deal that they currently have with Apple, which makes them maybe not the exclusive provider, but effectively the default provider. And a lot of people therefore say the exclusive provider to a phone like Apple. Does this give Apple some kind of new opportunity not only to get money from Google, but to say, by the way, I know you're going to pay us all this money.

6:41You will be this sort of default thing, but we may make it more accessible for somebody else. We may actually now charge other people to be sort of the like second default version, so that we can, because the court says X. Yeah, I think that's smart, Andrew. I mean, you know, you look at this and the court is saying, you know, you can continue to pay them, but you can't have this exclusive arrangement. And what the court said here was interesting. The judge, Amit Mehta, writing in documents yesterday that, you know, it would just simply be too disruptive to Apple to force them to stop these payments because that would be damaging to Apple's business.

7:17And also, he's talking about the rise of AI and saying that this is a situation where so many AI companies are being started. So much money is gushing into this industry. He said over the five years that this case has been proceeding so far, remember, it was filed at the end of the first Trump administration back in 2020. The AI landscape has changed enormously, even in the last year as they were arguing this case. So his point is so much change is coming to this industry and so many potential new competitors are coming. He doesn't want to disrupt things artificially by saying you have to stop this payment stream, but he does want to open the door to other entrants in the market.

7:56I'm naive about all these things. I defer to Sorkin on this stuff, but I have said I don't think Google's future looks that bright because nobody uses, they do now, and I know there's AI on Google as well, but I use something else. And like so many times, the government takes five years to do anything. By then, the market's already moved. The free market is hard. That's been their argument the entire time. It has, though, hasn't it? It's like, OK, now the horse has left the barn. It's, you know, this is not the problem anymore. Google's got problems at this point because everybody uses generative AI, but does this help Apple, who has lagged with generative AI?

8:39I mean, are they going to ride Google now? No, no, no. The idea actually is... Can't they use Gemini? The benefit is that they're going to use Gemini. Gemini. That's what I mean. Now they can, and no one will say you can't do that, and Google can't. This is why I ask you. You're looking at me like I'm... No, but Gemini, I know you're a perplexity, man. It's just easy. It's on my... But Gemini is basically, I think, long term likely to catch up, if not be better. Some people would say Gemini is way better. Can you help me move, see I have perplexity right on the first thing. Can you move something else to the, can you move that back and put something else?

9:17Well, that's the thing about Apple. All you have to do is go to the browser. You know I know how to do that. It's the default search. You don't even have to, by the way, all you have to do is be in the browser and type anything into the thing and that goes to Google. I know how to move this. I was OK. I just want to make sure. But you understand. I've got like four pages of those things. But when when one does disappear, I do have trouble figuring out how to. These are issues. These are issues. Amy, Joe. Yeah. Go ahead, Amy. Yeah. I was just yeah. I'm just going to make one last point, which is that the judge in this case said kind of exactly what Joe is saying, which is that it's hard to predict the future.

9:52You know, he said you got to approach this with some humility. So this part of the trial requires this part of the legal proceeding requires a judge to look into a crystal ball and predict the future of an industry that he's not an expert in. He said that's not a judge's forte. And so he acknowledged that he doesn't know where it's going to go, but he sees a lot of change coming. And so he seemed to have been more comfortable, sort of more or less standing pat rather than ordering some huge breakup of the company, given all the changes that are just over the horizon. I know there's people that could come up with a better example, but I thought Sirius XM, it's like, okay, we're going to stop the, You know, we got Spotify, but we're going to make sure Sirius said that they can barely survive by getting together.

10:35What about what John Malone told us this week on the program where he said net neutrality? That ruling changed it so that all of the old guys, the cable companies and all of them lost out to these newer companies like a Netflix that are free riders on the cable networks, the Internet. Can you think, or either one of you think of another time where the market moved so quickly that by the time the government's efforts, it was like they were fighting last year's battle. They're fighting last year's battle. Microsoft and Internet Explorer. Because it takes so long. Is this a five year? Did it really take?

11:10But that's what we've been talking to, you know, whether it was Cantor or any of the guys. We've talked to them about this over and over and over again. Microsoft and Internet Explorer, and it not only cost Internet Explorer, it also cost them their ability. Bill Gates will blame it to this day on why Microsoft lost out on the phone. He got beat by the iPhone because he was so busy fighting all of these battles in Washington. Doesn't it argue that the DOJ should let the market work and maybe be less activist? Or would AT &T still be mob bill? And so my question to you is, is it different in a technology space?

11:43So fast. Because it's moving so... If I told you we were talking about the agricultural industry, would you say the same thing? If I told you about supermarkets, would you say the same? I mean, this is this is I would say the same thing with supermarkets. I think it's an outdated view of what they're doing with supermarkets. I want the government to run all supermarkets and all rent control. But that's there's a guy for you. There's a guy for you. You're going to have to move to the New York City. Me and Apple. Me and blah, blah, blah. Both love for you. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to turn I'm going to turn you around on Zoran.

12:13Hey, Eamon, thank you. He's a social Democrat. He's not. That's what I'm hearing now. Everyone say he's not a socialist. He's a social democrat. So take a look at the social democratic platform and then you can get some real ideas about what's coming. Socialist democrat is redundant anyway. Oh. China's President Xi Jinping saying that the world is facing a choice between peace or war as he hosted a giant military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. That parade was meant to project China's military and diplomatic power and featured missiles, tanks, and drones. Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un joined Xi, but Western leaders mostly stayed away.

12:57President Trump fired off a Truth Social post as the parade got underway, saying that he hoped Xi honored Americans' sacrifices in World War II. He said,

13:12Kind of an interesting concept, saying that the world has to be choosing between peace and war as you're standing next to Putin, who is going after Ukraine, looking to expand his empire constantly. Questions about what happens in Taiwan, too. So, sure, it's a choice between peace and war. It's just a question of who gets to make that choice. And I also think it's interesting because you saw him come to, I don't remember, to Davos now a couple years ago, where he basically made this whole argument. This is when Trump didn't. This is back in the old administration. Former administration. And he basically made the argument that China was going to bring the whole world together.

13:49So it was sort of a very interesting distinction between that speech, which was probably now, what, six years ago and today. Peace and war between whether anybody stops their ambitions to continue to spread. Putin constantly lulls you into sort of a, I don't know, He's the most dangerous man in how many decades? Don't you think most brutally dangerous? I don't know about Xi, I guess maybe, but we're seeing it more and more with Putin. I mean, in the minute you forget some of the things that have happened in Ukraine, he reminds you very quickly. Avoid all umbrellas. Cheese will be next. Coming up next on Squawk Pod, our extended interview with media mogul John Malone, an advisor and investor in some of the biggest media and telecom names of the last few decades.

14:45CNN, Fox, Sirius, even Formula One. Malone is looking back at his remarkable career in a new memoir, and he weighs in on the pressures squeezing modern content. I would love for regulators to take a look at live streaming. It's absurd to me that you tie up 40, 50, 60 million channels of internet transport to transport one football game, which can easily be transported on one channel. We'll be right back.

15:21This is Squawk Pod. You're watching Squawk Box right here on CNBC. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin, along with Joe Kernan and Becky Quick. We are joined now by a very, very, very special guest, a legend in the business, media titan, chairman of Liberty Media, and the man behind some of the biggest deals in media of our time, John Malone, author of Born to be Wired, Lessons from a Lifetime, Transforming Television, Wiring America for the Internet, and Growing Formula One, Discovery, Sirius XM, and the Atlanta Braves. It is out today, and we want to welcome John for joining us today. John, it's great to see you.

15:58Congratulations on the book. It's a fabulous, fabulous book, and there's so many stories in it about so many unique characters that make headlines that we talk about virtually every day. I want to talk about the book, and then I want to get into what's going on in the media landscape that we know today. But just take me back to the beginning of even deciding to write this book, why you did. Well, there was a previous book called Cable Cowboy, which really was a misnomer because it was really written, should have been written about my mentor, Bob Magnus. But anyway, it stuck to me. The writer of that book approached me and said, you should do a sequel because it's been 25 years and you're not dead yet.

16:42and so he was going to write a sequel and we started working on it together and it became increasingly my autobiography as opposed to his view of me and that's why it got written. I probably, if I had known how much work it was going to be I probably wouldn't have done it. It felt to me like this was an emotional book because you talk about the various relationships and how important those relationships have been in your life and, frankly, to the business. You go through a great sequence, which I'd love to get your thoughts on today, about Ted Turner and your relationship with him. And, frankly, your hope that you had wished you could have bought Turner at the time.

17:28Yeah. Long history with Ted. He came to us with the idea of his superstation. It took some convincing, but we ultimately launched it, carried it across our cable footprint. When Ted got in a bit of trouble trying to buy MGM, we had to get together. The industry got together. I was proud to lead the effort. And we raised, I don't know, 600 million bucks, which was real money back then, to get him out of the clutches of Kirk Corian. And Ted was on our board for many years. at TCI.

18:14So we had a very long history, and we were pretty good personal friends, too. I traveled with Ted quite a bit. Goodwill Games in Russia, for instance. Great, great stories. Ted was and continues to be quite a character. I've become the godfather of his Atlanta Braves baseball team and trying to nurture it along. I know he's very proud of the team. So we have a lot of things in common. We have ranches that are back-to-back in New Mexico. I went quail hunting with he and Jane a number of times. uh you know all kinds of things great stories great history he's a hell of a character and a very sound businessman well let me ask you about another businessman who i think you respect deeply and there's a fascinating sequence in the book about it and we had actually spoken to this gentleman earlier in the year because he had his own book out which is barry diller and uh you two got in uh maybe a scuffle is maybe too uh too polite a term because you went to court and it almost broke the relationship.

19:33And then you wrote him a letter. Take us back to that moment, because it was an emotional moment, I remember, when we had Barry on the show talking about what had happened. Well, what happened was my CEO at the time at Liberty Media, Greg Maffei, had had a rocky history with Barry. And when Barry decided to break up IAC, Collection of Businesses, and distribute some of the businesses not reflecting our control structure that we had in IAC that had been in place for a number of years, we decided to ask the court how to interpret my original agreement with Barry. It was a very unusual agreement.

20:24Barry was such an incredible talent. The only way I could get him to work with us, I don't think for us, work with us, was to give him a proxy on my control of the company we were going to create together. And I did that. That was, I don't know, 35 years ago, something like that. And he did a fabulous job of building a business, starting out in home shopping, mutating into content, and then once again mutating into Internet services. Really pretty unique performance. But as he was about to split the company into multiple pieces, there was a question, a legitimate legal question, about what the intent of the original agreement was.

21:19And I wanted to go to court and ask a judge to interpret that agreement for us. Unfortunately, the legal situation got out of control, and it became almost a Ted Kozlowski type of set of disputes, which I didn't want any part of. And I was really embarrassed by how far out of control our litigation had gotten. And I wanted to apologize to Barry personally for not having paid close enough attention and kept it on the rails. So that was the genesis of that. Hey, John, as a someone that people follow so closely and obviously a legendary in media and in all different aspects of it. Another kerfuffle was right before Discovery was going to merge with Warner Media.

22:18And I think you made some comments about I think to our own David Faber here about CNN hiring some actual journalists. Now, since then, I know that was quite a moment. And that did result in some changes at CNN. And then, I don't know, even more changes after that. And then we've seen what's happened with CBS and Stephen Colbert and pressure from the Trump administration. I've always said that almost any mainstream media entity you could have almost made the same comments about. John, do you think CNN has changed to the point where you'd like where you are seeing actual journalism now? Do you see it across mainstream media anywhere?

23:05No. And in fact, it's very difficult. I get it. You know, I get I was around when you guys were created. Zaslav and I basically created CNBC. Yes. You know, I was around, I was partners with Rupert when they created Fox News. We used to own McNeil Lair as a public service. We supported that effort on public broadcasting for many years. So, you know, I've been in and around the news delivery game for a long while. And I've always struggled with the question of news, just give me the news, the factual news, and how do you separate news from the impossible bias that the journalist has? They always come to it with preconceived attitudes.

24:09When Rupert pitched Fox News, it was going to be that we're going to have a true news division that will be just the news. And I guess you would say that's Brett Baer today. But then we're going to have essentially entertainment programming focused on news and current events and culture and so on. And that was his formula. And CNN decided to stay and try and be just news, as opposed to news and comedy and entertainment. My view was that you should have—that it was okay for Fox to do what they did, as long as you labeled opinion as opinion, like the newspapers did. You know, you have journalism, you have the facts, and then you have editorial opinions, and then you may have guest editorials.

25:10I mean, and you can make it all interesting and entertaining. But what you're calling factual news, it would be nice to be just factual news. Now, I know how difficult that is. CNN has great journalists. They always have had great journalists. They have a large organization that does the best job of covering breaking news worldwide. That clearly is a big strength for them. The reality is that journalism schools turn out people who tend to be reformers. They tend to want to fix the world from the journalistic perspective. So they tend to be, quote unquote, progressives. personally. And it's impossible to separate that sort of personal opinion structure from the way they cover news, the kind of adjectives that come to their mind when they are reporting a story.

26:16Now, I never had much to do with CNN. You know, I was chair of the governance committee at Warner, I stepped off that board this spring and became executive chairman emeritus, but so that they could keep me tied up and, you know, I could continue to be involved, but not be a voting member of the board. Even during the period, the three years when I was on the board of the combined company, I had zero to do with the governance of CNN. That was David and his efforts to bring in leadership, new leadership. As you guys well know, the linear television business of which news is part is suffering from the rapid decline of viewership of the big cable bundle.

27:22And that's putting a lot of pressure on these organizations, financial pressure. And they're going to have to figure out where it's appropriate to morph to be more relevant in a streaming world. Hey, John. So, you know, I don't think we've had a chance to talk since the announcement of the breakup between Warner and Discovery and what your thoughts are about it, what you think the prospects are for for both businesses. Do they remain independent? Do they ultimately get sold? Does a business like CNN get sold? I don't know if they can, given the debt load. How do you think about the breakup? And does it suggest at all that the original plan to merge them made sense or didn't?

28:14Well, I guess the only thing personally that didn't make sense is I should have bailed out of my discovery shares before we put the companies together. The reality is that all these linear businesses were going to come under enormous pressure as streaming became the favorable way for consumers to consume programming. company. So Discovery, had we kept it isolated, would have faced the same headwinds and probably ended up roughly in the same place that the combined company is. That is, trying to deal with a streaming world while still being heavily encumbered by contractual relationships in the old linear world.

29:09And so, for instance, when AT &T tried to do CNN Plus, it was a streaming service that did not include CNN, which they couldn't include for contractual reasons. So, you know, we're in the midst, I think, of watching a transition in consumer consumption. Right now, you guys, as well as, know as well as anybody, that you are lashed your wagon to a linear business that's losing about 8 % of its customers a year. That is a pretty heavy headwind, and that's been going on now for probably four or five years. and so eventually you're going to have to transition to where you're a random access service now the good news for you guys and for news generally is that you have a stream of live information and content that the public's always going to be interested in god bless you john what what do you what do you make of the prospects for you know that comcast is going to separate from these assets in Versan.