News Information and Media Site: Byers Market: President Trump scrambles to create executive coalition

April 16, 2020

By DYLAN BYERS in Los Angeles &

AHIZA GARCÍA-HODGES in San Francisco

Good morning. 🗣️ Top talker: Weekly jobless claims will be out at 8:30 a.m. ET. "Millions more Americans likely sought unemployment benefits last week, lifting total filings for claims over the past month above an astounding 20 million," per Reuters.

🌴 Big in L.A.: Mayor Eric Garcetti has informed city officials that large gatherings such as concerts and sporting events may not be approved in the city for at least another year, per LAT.

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Camp council

President Trump scrambles to create a COVID group

Moving the Market: President Donald Trump's new COVID-19 economic revival advisory group, which includes Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg and roughly 200 other executives and business leaders, was assembled at the last minute and without the knowledge of many of the people listed as its members, sources familiar with the matter tell me and my NBC News colleagues.

• The big picture: The White House's slapdash effort to create a task force underscores how poorly the president is managing the economic recovery effort and, by the same token, how desperately he needs the council of America's business leaders.

• Thought bubble: Imagine being a Fortune 500 CEO who meticulously manages every public announcement to ensure a cohesive message, then learning that you're on a White House task force when the president reads your name at a press briefing.

Inside the scramble, via NBC News' Stephanie Ruhle, Monica Alba, Peter Alexander and myself: The executives received emails this week asking them to join conference calls where the President would seek their insights. They were not told that the president intended to add their names to any official COVID economic task force.

• Then, on Tuesday, "Trump read names from an exhaustive list as he stood in the Rose Garden, touting the industry titans who would be part of a new advisory group to lead the country's economic revival."

• "While happy to participate, the vast majority of those on the list were not informed that they would be named by the president and not told in advance what their roles might be."

• "Some others, like Mark Cuban... said they were told about the group by phone... just hours before the president spoke."

• Some former CEOs, such as former Best Buy chief Hubert Joly, also received emails, despite no longer being in charge. (Corie Barry, who replaced Joly in 2019, will participate instead.)

What's next: Trump held four calls on Wednesday, organized by industry: Tech and telecom leaders were on a call that also included healthcare and transportation leaders; banking and finance execs joined hospitality and retail leaders, including Jeff Bezos. And so on.

• Banking and finance execs told Trump he would need to "dramatically increase the availability of coronavirus testing before the public would be confident enough to return to work, eat at restaurants or shop in retail establishments," WSJ's Michael Bender and Andrew Restuccia report.

• "During a separate call with technology companies, executives were cautioned that even after lockdowns end, social distancing might continue to be the norm," according to Bloomberg's Jordan Fabian and Jennifer Jacobs.

💸 How to Give It 💸

Bill and Melinda Gates have pledged $150 million to coronavirus relief efforts in Africa and South Asia, brining their total commitment to coronavirus relief to $250 million.

• Mark Zuckerberg and Laurene Powell Jobs are helping to raise $50 million for undocumented immigrants in California, Recode's Teddy Schleifer reports.

Bloomberg/Getty

Cost of coronavirus

Sundar Pichai slows hiring

Big in the Bay: Sundar Pichai has told Google employees that he will "significantly" slow down hiring for 2020 because of the coronavirus outbreak, a stark reminder that even Silicon Valley is subject to the economic toll of the pandemic.

• "The clear lesson from 2008 is that preparing early is key to weathering the storm and emerging in a position to continue long-term growth, as we have done over the past decade," Pichai wrote in a memo to staff.

• Pichai hired 20,000 employees last year, he said in the memo, and had been planning to hire the same number this year.

The big picture: "Google's business relies almost entirely on ad revenue, which is likely struggling given that certain industries, like travel, have cut nearly all of their marketing budgets," The Information's Nick Bastone reports.

• "Still, Google, which sits on top of more than $100 billion in cash reserves, is well-positioned to come out of the crisis relatively unscathed. To date, the company has yet to announce layoffs for its more than 110,000-person staff."

Market Links

• Bob Chapek joins Disney's board of directors (THR)

• Sima Sistani's Houseparty vies with Zoom (Bloomberg)

• John Stankey strikes HBO Max deal with Charter (Deadline)

• Jason Robins will still take DraftKings public (Bloomberg)

• Peter Hamby talks football with Dr. Anthony Fauci (VF)

MediaNews/Getty

State of the media

L.A. Times, THR increase cuts

Big in L.A.: Patrick Soon-Shiong is furloughing Los Angeles Times employees and cutting senior managers' pay, while Valence Media has laid off more than a dozen senior staff at The Hollywood Reporter in the latest round of cuts for a beleaguered industry.

• The big picture: Media companies are suffering severe declines in advertising revenue due to the coronavirus, even as readership soars. In the Times' case, "advertising revenue has nearly been eliminated," Variety's Gene Maddaus writes.

Drew Angerer/Getty

The ratings game

Jeff Zucker gets a COVID lift

Talk of TV Land: "CNN and other cable news outlets'... ratings have soared during the pandemic, reaching levels well above those when 'Russian interference' and 'Mueller report' dominated the news," WSJ's Ben Mullin reports.

• "CNN has averaged 2.2 million total viewers in prime time through the first week of April... 57% higher than its election-season peak, according to Nielsen data."

• "Fox News is up nearly 50% since the end of last year to over four million viewers."

• "MSNBC has seen the smallest lift."

The big problem: "Cashing in has been difficult... as the economic fallout of the pandemic causes ad spending to collapse," Mullin writes. "CNN has revised its ad revenue forecasts downward, people familiar with the matter said."

👪 What's next: Nightly News Kids. My colleague Lester Holt has launched "an experimental version" of NBC Nightly News for children and teens aged 6 to 16, per Variety's Brian Steinberg.

See you tomorrow.