The 11th Hour Dispatch — Monday, August 6, 2018
YOUNG MONEY
PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi is stepping down after 12 years at the company. She will remain as chairman until early 2019. Nooyi, the first female CEO for the food and beverage giant, is credited with encouraging healthier, more eco-friendly products from the company, as well as overseeing an 80% increase in revenue. Nooyi’s last day will be October 3 (taking the spotlight from Cady Heron there, Nooyi. I see you.) PepsiCo president Ramon Laguarta will take her place as CEO. With her exit, only 23 Fortune 500 companies will have a female CEO at the helm.
BINGE WATCH
Apple, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube have all largely removed Alex Jones and his Infowars brand from their platforms. Jones has become infamous for spreading conspiracy theories, including that the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax and that the U.S. Democratic party runs a global child prostitution ring. Apple was the first of the companies to take a swing at the beef steak tomato of a man on Sunday when it removed five of the six Infowars podcasts that were available. Facebook followed suit by removing four of Jones’s pages for “glorifying violence” and “using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants.” YouTube fully terminated his channel, which had over 2.4 million subscribers, for violating its terms of service and promoting hate speech. Spotify removed some of his podcasts for violating the company’s stance on hate speech. All of the companies involved have faced pressure previously to act, and with takedown of such a bizarre powerhouse in the weird zeitgeist we live in like Jones, their moves send a pretty powerful message.
BIG BUSINESS
MoviePass won’t be raising it’s freaky cheap price, but it will be limiting you to only three movies per month. On the bright side, you’ll still get a $5 discount on any subsequent movies you want to see. According to a press release from MoviePass, only 15% of subscribers saw four or more movies per month, so this was the best way to try to alleviate it’s bleeding bottom line. In a statement, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe said, “We are well aware that during our journey to innovate moviegoing — a form of entertainment that over time has become unaffordable and broken — we’ve encountered many challenges. However, any industry-wide disruption like MoviePass requires a tremendous amount of testing, pivoting, and learning. We discovered over several months of research that our customers value a low monthly price above nearly everything else, so we came together to create a plan that delivers what most of our loyal MoviePass fans want, and one that, we believe, will also help to stabilize our business model.” There’s still a long road to any kind of profitability there, and I would almost place a bet that AMC’s similar Stubs A-List program is about to skyrocket.
NOTHIN’ BUT ‘NET
Jason Alexander is your new Colonel Sanders. He’s no Reba, but he’ll do.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE 11TH HOUR DISPATCH
The 11th Hour Dispatch is your daily dose of all things media without the boredom but with all the snark. We mash what you need to know with what we truly think into one hot mess of knowledge, just for you. Subscribe to get it live and in color in your inbox every weeknight.
