Good tuesday morning. Welcome to squawk alley. Im carl quintanilla. From one market, the information founder and editor in chief, jessica lessing. Good morning to you both. Our top story is one weve been following since the election. That is, controversy over facebook and how it plans to handle fake news. Jessica has an oped and why facebook shouldnt fact check. From the piece she says i simply dont trust facebook or any one company with the responsibility for determining what is true, saying such editorial power in fa facebooks hands would be unprecedented and dangerous. Jessica, lead us to what led you to write this piece. Thanks, carl. So, obviously, misinformation on facebook and elsewhere is a huge problem that so many people have been thinking about this election cycle. And i was, frankly, pretty shocked how many commentators have reached the conclusion that the answer is facebook hiring journalists, editors and Fact Checking. As a journalist now with the wall street journal for a long time, the idea we trained the public to think that facebook was Fact Checking the information on facebook is very, very dangerous. Thats what i was writing about today in the new york times. You definitely know how to light up a room. Thats for sure, jessica. Eric, slippery slope is generally the peoples first take on this, right . Give them an inch and who knows who will take a mile. Theres that. You definitely dont want facebook to be telling you whats true and whats not true. However, they do have an obligation to check whether some of the news is, in fact, factual. They used to do that with a curation team, editorial team. Things have gone really badly since they dismissed that particular team. I believe they have an obligation to do that. Its in their own best interest. If you dont trust what you see on facebook youll get off the service sooner or later. It should be up to users to flag when content is suspicious. People will say theres already inherent bias, people only follow what they already believe to be true. How can you trust the users to be Effective Police . I think that one thing facebook can do and has started doing is getting these totally fake news reports that proliferated during the election off the site. Not by hiring humans to do it. They did that. It was a disaster with trending topics, facebook was accused of bias against conservatives, huge outrage about that. I dont think you can win with human editors. Yes, technology, users flagging things, metadata facebook has can help them get this content off the site. But theres a very theres a lot of gray area in whats true these days. Its very easy to say the pope didnt endorse donald trump. But every day misinformation is being reported. And is it facebooks responsibility to fact check all of that information . Theres no way they can do it. And i think that this is, frankly, happening because news organizations are very frustrated at whats happening to their own businesses. It is a problem happening on facebook, absolutely. But theres a lot of finger pointing when it comes to why basic information isnt accurate. And facebook is only part of the story. Eric, theres also been a question of whether facebook should legitimize or enlarge or verify so that users can more easily see what is legitimate and what is not. Companies like mike and buzz feed that got their start on facebook, would they have been shut out . Would there have been a Chilling Effect for new media if facebook were choosing who got the prime space there . No. It would be very easy for facebook to say buzz feed and some other companies do legitimate reporting. Whether we agree with it or not is not the question. Theres a more fundamental issue going on here. In il con valley they dont want to be in the Media Business. They want to be in the tech business. Thats always the case of the big platforms, a gray area. You can see the downfall of yahoo came because they didnt want to be in the Media Business. A lot of the ills at twitter right now is because they also refuse to be in the Media Business and Mark Zuckerberg recently said were in the tech business i think he needs to also consider that hes in the Media Business. That leads us to one last point, jessica. A lot of cynics argue platforms like facebook and twitter deal they want volume, right . They want things to be engaged with, sent, tweeted and posted in volume and having any kind of curation sort of limits that. Right . Potential ly. I mean, these Companies Like facebook and twitter thrive off engagement. They want us to use their product more. As a society, that raises a lot of interesting questions about how we get our information. I also wrote in the information recently that i think its tilting those platforms more toward entertainment than information, which creates a huge hole for, okay, how do we get new facts and new perspective as opposed to sort of a tv replacement. Right. That is sort of leaned back. I think these platforms are going in that direction. I think thats why theyre in business. And at the end of the day, they can say that they do care about these bigger issues. They have reputations to maintain. A company cant optimize in 30 directions. Im okay with a world where theres companies that optimize toward entertainment and companies that optimize toward information. Were just entering a period where facebooks and twitters have been dominant but there is room for new sources of information and new businesses. And i personally am excited about that. Somebody who has experience with that. Sticking with social media, a lot of talk about president elect donald trump taking to twitter last night and raising issues like voter fraud, flag burning and cnns coverage of him. We had a long discussion with r cramer about whether theyre distractions from more important stories. We have no pattern recognition. What jessica said, thats entertainment. He wants to be in the news, in the media. He obviously must know there hasnt been 2 million fraudulent votes out there or i dont know why hes doing it. He wants our attention and hes got it. Hes still tweeting from the realdonald handle. He hasnt switched over to pepotus or potus handle. Does that bring with it any allowance for the content that he can get away with tweeting versus doing it under the official handle of the president of the United States . This is unchartered waters. The potus twitter handle was established by president obama. He established the rules. We dont know what president elect trump will do with those rules. I suspect he will want to continue to tweet on his own account simply because its so popular. Erics question about whether or not he believes this or how do we know what the motivations are behind each tweet . We dont. And, to me, this is a great spamp of what we were talking about before. Is it twitters obligation to figure out if there were millions of fraudulent voters just to bring it back to this Fact Checking point . Its being said on twitter. If we want a world where what we believe we see on twitter and facebook is real, what people are arguing is that twitter is responsible for the accuracy of that information. So i think that we have to look at it not as information but as, you know, what this man is saying and people are going to have to decide for themselves based on educating themselves in a lot of different ways. Yeah. One outlier scenario mentioned earlier this morning, what if it gets hacked, right . You have trade iing. It just magnified the Downside Potential of a tape bomb as they like to call it. There again, twitters responsibility is to tell us, is this a real account or not a real account . The real donald trump account is real for now. If it gets hacked you have to tell us, whatever is being said is not being said by president elect trump. Jessica, by the way, the disclosure you included in your article that your husband worked at facebook from 2010 to 2014. Cant let you go without talking about streaming media and at t. Of course, we got details of the directv now service which launches tomorrow. We have an argument this morning as to whether or not this is a new chapter in cord cutting, if this is a game changer or not. Is it . I think it is. Its another nail in the coffin of the classic you have a box and you pay me 200 a month and ill give you all these channels. People dont want that service anymore. In addition to the fact that the box dont work that well anymore, people want to be able to stream their video on any device and are willing to pay a certain price. The price that directv, 30 moving to 60, is a very attractive price t doesnt include cbs at the moment, a lot of the nfl games, including the big package you get on directv. Those things will come. At the beginning of hulu, not every big company was part of it but wanted to become part of it when it became popular. Apple tv never got its own bundle together because they wanted it all, every Single Network under the umbrella before launching. What does it say to you that at t directv is willing to go forward without binge bang theory, survivor, and very highly watched properties . Its risky. Frankly, i was a little underwhelmed by the news. So much was missing. If you include the fully loaded of what they offer, it was more expensive than people were expecting. We are seeing that tvs holding its pricing power, the rights holders and that, yes, were seeing incremental offerings but nothing that i think is a major, major cable killer just yet. It sounds like eric, jessica, you think its a continuation in the death by a thousand cuts, right . Its not like something is going to come in here and turn night into day. Absolutely. I think the trends are clear. I think that you can get, you know, many of these bundles are appealing to niches as well. Thats an area that is really interesting. Youre seeing big subgrowth. When it comes to at t direct, verizon, you know it, what hulu is going to come out with, whi not seeing a lot of products that are really better than what we can already get. At some point the new entrants will have to clear that bar. Three months, you get a free apple tv. One month, free amazon fire stick. How many people do you think will take them up on that . How many devices end up in american households . Its hard to say. If you run on the at t network you dont pay for your broad band cost which is quite substantial. I think enough. These are all first steps, bundles, pricing. The whole product is going to get better. This company just wants to get into the game. A lot of streaming services coming that are already in existence, coming down. I think it will be a race and prices will be better. And the content will get better. Cbs will come to these bundles. They have no choice. Is there one player, you think, that has threaded the needle better than most . At the moment, no. But at t is powerful because of direct tv and their existing relationship with content providers. Good chance verizon i think youre going to start to see hulu does a really good job with Network Television. Theres no reason Network Television cant get on netflix and amazon. Thats where it gets interesting for sure. And we want to see cnbc. Thats universal. Of course. Lets get a check in on the markets at this hour in positive territory after a mix open today. Positive read on q3 gdp. S p 500 up 4. Nasdaq composite up 19 despite reports that potentially iran would be backing down from a coordinated production agreement with an opec deadline moving. Saudi arabia walking away, crude nearly down 4 . Energy is the worst performing sector. Unrest from coast to coast as thousands of fast food workers, baggage handlers and uber drivers participate in the first fight for 15 protest since trumps Election Night victory. Uber reportedly cracking down on drivers who advertise for other hailing Ride Services while on the clock. Sales topping early estimates from cyber monday. Were drowning in information. Where, in all of this, is the stuff that matters . The stakes are so high, your finances, your future. How do you solve this . You dont. You partner with a firm that advises governments and the fortune 500, and, can deliver insight person to person, on what matters to you. Morgan stanley. Like cologne. Y things you dont want in industrial strength morning but theres one thing you do. gags its called predix from ge. The cloudbased Development Platform thats industrialstrength strength low wage workers across the country, including uber drivers, pulling in for a fight for 15 protests in more than 300 cities this morning, including right here in manhattan. Susan lee is on the scene in Lower Manhattan with the latest. Susan . Kayla, the First Nationwide protest for the fight for 15 since donald trump was elected. We saw hundreds of workers from fast Food Industry from airports, health care, education and, yes, taxi and even uber drivers. They stood together this morning to stop traffic to fight for higher wages, union rights, Better Benefits and really to send a message to the countrys newly elected officials and leaders that they want a fair wage for fair work. Were working for 10. 10 an hour. I make 9. 75 an hour and i have four jobs so im a father of four. Im going to college. Its hard because sometimes, you know, you have to decide or even downgrade which college you want to go to. Bernie sanders, vermont senator, tweeting his support for the actions today. Tweeting change always happens when millions of people demand it. When the American People stand up and fight, they win. Its been four years since the fight for 15 movement started. Speaking to the groups National Director this morning, he told me that the movement has actually grown since election day. Workers are even more concern about their future under a republicanled government. Now, many nationwide protests will end at a Mcdonalds Restaurant as you see behind me. This is where the protests in Lower Manhattan ended. Its not just the fast Food Industry. Its health care, airport workers and, yes, for the very first time uber drivers joining in as well, unhappy that theyre seeing a smaller percentage of their salaries without getting Better Benefits from the company. Ill send it back to you in studio. Thank you so much, susan lee in Lower Manhattan. Not just protests that uber has to worry about. According to reload, the company has begun deactivating driver accounts advertising for the competition, namely juneau. Number of drivers have received Text Messages saying, quote, weve received reports that you are still displaying advertising of other Ride Sharing Companies while on uber trips and your account is on hold. We spoke with juneau cofounder about the companys controversial strategy. If you think about it, the best place to find potential user for a service is in the car. And juno is working much closer than any other service with drivers. We treat drivers much better. Therefore, drivers are motivated to help juno. So its sort of its a cycle. Were nice to drivers, drivers are nice to riders. Riders get something extra and it keeps on going. Although it is hard not to see, carl, an issue with finding your user base in another products main backyard. I was in an uber last night on the way back from an airport and they were advertising juno. Imagine going into a restaurant and finding help wanted for burger king at mcdonalds. Unique Business Model where competition for labor is fierce. Nfl firing back against reports its planning on dialing back its thursday night football schedule. First, we sat down with walking dead executive producer on binge. We talked to her about everything from the Silver Screen to Virtual Reality. To me, right now, there are a lot of limitations. Biggest limitation to me is i put on the vr goggles and i get so disoriented that, really, within six seconds im ready to throw up. Is it a force of nature . Or a sales event . The season of audi sales event is here. Audi will cover your first months lease payment on select models during the season of audi sales event. bing new episode of binge is streaming now. Produced everything from terminator franchise to walking dead. We asked her the differences of working on film and television. I grew up knowing your name from the abyss and terminator. I heard you say you dont get dumb notes in tv the way you used to get from studios . Well, being a producer, television is fantastic because its a producers medium. Feature films its very much a directors medium but were not really were not in charge. And in television, the directors cycle through and the producers are left, you know were raising the baby. Youre the constant . Yes. So thats very different. Not only that, but lets say a twohour feature will take two years to make. During that time just on one series, just on, lets say the walking dead ive told 32 hours of characterdriven storytelling. Because of that, the studios, film studios are at a disadvantage. Season two, of course, of binge streaming now on cnbc. Com binge. Hulu. This notion of who really holds the cards in the creative decisions strictly because of the distribution pipes and the way theyve been built, interesting. You would think someone whose whole career has been based on zombies would be the first to test new technology. I think she will get there eventually but its not quite where she wants it to be. 32 hours of content she was able to produce in the time she would have otherwise only been able to produce one film. On one hand you think it must be gratifying to have less end up on the cutting room floor. On the other, thats a lot more work. I think its movies that will have to work more in a fast fashion kind of way. I mean, theres room for pictures, which too do take years to do. They have to move faster if they want to keep up with tv. The dust is still settling from cyber monday and black friday. One thing is clear. The future is happening on mobile. Well discuss that, up next. And take a look at shares of apple. Ubs says they see downsides risks to apple sales. Is a mobile trading desk so that i can take my Trading Platform wherever i go. You know that thinkorswim seamlessly syncs across all your devices, right . Oh, so my custom studies will go with me . Anywhere you want to go the markets hot sync your platform on any device with thinkorswim. Only at Td Ameritrade smash like an administrativeyou dont assistant. Dustrial strength your 3 oclock is here. But theres one thing you do. Its called predix from ge. The cloudbased Development Platform thats industrialstrength strength good morning once again, everybody. Im sue herera. Here is your cnbc update at this hour. Police release a vedio showing the aftermath of a plane crash in colombia. 75 of the 8 on board were killed. No word on what caused that deadly crash. Wildfires are forcing hundreds to evacuate in tennessee, resort towns near the great smoky mountains. Nearly 30 homes and businesses burned to the ground overnight. Those blazes are now threatening the famous dollywood resort owned by music legend dolly parton. Investigators believe arson may be behind the fires. Authorities killing 300,000 chickens in northern japan after two avian bird flu cases were detected. Highly contagious strains. The French Farm Ministry saying the same strain has been found in wild ducks in northern france. Vice president elect mike pence arriving at trump tower for more meetings as the search continues to fill cabinet positions. Mitt romney meets with trump today amid reports of a massive fight within the trump camp about whether romney should be picked for that position. We will keep you posted. Thats the news update this hour. Back downtown to squawk alley. Carl . Meantime well keep you posted on the close in europe and the uk. Focusing on two upcoming events. Opec meeting tomorrow and sundays y titalian referendum. Italian shares are rebounding from yesterdays decline, specifically the banks. A lot of this has to do with source telling reuters that the ecb is ready to temporarily step up its purchases of Italian Government debt if the result of sundays referendum sharply drives up borrowing costs, the eurozones biggest borrower. All the italian banks staging a nice rebound here. Broad perspective, italia bank share index still down 50 year to date, just highlighting some of the troubles and financial distress that the banks are under. As for the italian tenyear yield, it fell to a oneweek low on the ecb reports. Were seeing a little bit of buying of italian debt. The other story, of course, in focus, is the opec summit. Among the biggest losers on these worries, mounting skepticism of whether ministers will be able to agree on an output cut production tomorrow. Statoil, Royal Dutch Shell and bp the biggest loser the bigg. As you know, russia not an opec member but still the Worlds Largest oil producer, weighing on the price of oil right now and moscow index. On that note, take a look at the currency of the russian ruble, falling against the u. S. Dollar by . Kay kayla, back to you. 3. 4 billion in sales on cyber monday, a new record high for the retail holiday. Lets bring in usef scully and john kernen at cowan and company. Well start with you, usef. You generally think of black friday and thanksgiving as apparel and electronics heavy. What about cyber monday this year . I think cyber monday saw basically the same trends. In fact, whats interesting is that every day of this week will be cyber something. Cyber tuesday tomorrow, cyber wednesday. What started before as one day where you can get the best deals has transformed itself into a week, maybe several weeks of periods where were Getting Better and better deals. Relative to last year where if you look at the last five days from thanksgiving to monday, were up in the mid teens. And thats very similar to what we had last year. So, on much, much higher numbers, which basically tells you that consumer remains very, very strong. John, you talk about this weeks activity as leftovers. Just this morning, macys was running a commercial calling it cyber week. How much fatigue is setting in for u. S. Shoppers . Sure. Promotions have been going on for a long time. All month pretty much. Massive growth in digital, particularly mobile. Mobile spending was up over 33 . Total online sales. Its been all about mobile, digital. With that being said, brick and mortar was better than we thought it would be, down 1 on friday and down 13 last year. Overall, were in a Good Environment right now for a lot of retailers. Hey, john, whats the best number to look at when it comes to inventories . Is there any possibility that the deeper we get into the Holiday Season we get a lot less promotional rather than more . A lot of these promotions have been planned nine to ten months in advance. Eco is in the best place its been in several years. Inventory levels have come down significantly, big boost to gross margins, largely been the driver of upside to consensus expectations. Inventory is in a very good position in general in retail right now. Thats part of the reason youre seeing better numbers out of the retailers. Youssef, what about margins and overall markdowns . It comes down to what the retailers announce in january and neb in what they did in terms of how profitable they were. What should we be prepared for . Look, we cover primarily the digital side of the business, not the retail side of the business. In our environment, were accustomed to seeing amazon continuing to run their business on razorthin margins which clearly is something that the street has got accustomed to. Investors continue to accept. Not necessarily true in the offline environment. But the space continues to really trade on top line growth. Not as much and on the promotional activity, we think that as long as digital, as swron said earlier, is growing in the mid to high teens so far, continues to gain market share from the overall, driven by mobile, et cetera. And the value continue to accrue to the larger players like amazon, like walmart with their omni channel strategy, i think were fine. What would you say about promotional strategy, john . You did ontheground research, hitting the malls over the weekend. What did you see . Sure. A lot of promotions have been planned for quite some time. Everybody plans to be promotional this time of year. Some of the brands and retailers that were more promotional than last year were under armor and nike. Thats the success that adidas is having. Well see what they bring for the rest of the Holiday Season. For now, youssef scully, john kernen, thanks to both of you. Thank you. Thank you. When we come back, nfl throwing cold water on these reports that its cutting back on thursday night football. First, Rick Santelli, what are you watching today . You know, im watching markets like the treasury market. Prices go down, yields go up. How many times have we talked about or others have talked about be careful, this market might be oversold . In the next segment, oversold, overbought, maybe overrated. If youre on medicare, remember, the open Enrollment Period is here. The time to choose your Medicare Coverage begins october 15th and ends december 7th. 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In fact, our Medicare Advantage plan members saved an average of over 4,500 last year. Now is the time to look at your options. Start getting the benefits of an aarp medicarecomplete plan insured through unitedhealthcare. Unitedhealthcare has been helping Medicare Beneficiaries for over 30 years. Well connect you with the right people, help schedule your appointments, and with renew by unitedhealthcare, you can learn about Healthy Living and earn rewards, too. Remember, medicare open enrollment ends december 7th. Call unitedhealthcare today about an aarp medicarecomplete plan. You can even enroll right over the phone. Dont wait. Call unitedhealthcare or go online now. Coming up on the half time report, the great debate. Is this rally ending or just beginning . Winners and losers in health care and how one of our traders made a stunning comeback in the portfolio challenge. Half time starts at noon. See you in about 20. Okay, thanks. Lets get to john harwood with the latest. Reporter outside trump tower, just got confirmed that donald trump, the president elect, has selected elai elaine chao to be transportation secretary, Second Service in a president ial cabinet. She was george w. Bushs labor secretary. She is also married to the Senate Majority leader, mitch mcconnell. As transportation secretary she would have a big role in trying to push through the Infrastructure Program that donald trump has talked about. He has pledged a 1 trillion Infrastructure Program. Dont know what form that will take. It that elaine chao, first asianamerican woman in the transportation cabinet, will be appointed. Lets get to Rick Santelli and get santelli exchange. Thanks, carl. Overbought, oversold, serious dynamics that many Pay Attention to, especially the technicians, but even those have been subscribed mostly to fundamental arguments and dont bring in the charts. Still get the notion like stocks today. Is it overbought . Are treasuries oversold . The one thing i can tell you is there is a lot of times where those conditions mean something. Usually reversals. But there are very special times when overbought, oversold conditions following big trend changes change everything. Let go to the chart, shall we . Tenyear yields. Well start this chart mid june around july 1st, we saw a little bit of congestion. All of a sudden on july 8th of 2016, we made a very significant double bottom. This goes back to the same yield right around 136 that we made in july of 2012. Treasuries and ive talked about it on many exchanges just love double tops and double bottoms. So what happens here . If you identify this as an important trend change now the condition of oversold in prices, which push yields up, really does change. And the key is distribution. So the month of august, i talked a lot about, wow, 150s. Basically the entire month settle at 150s. Then we move to october and pretty much the entire month traded in the 170s. Here is the key. Then Something Big happened. Remember, many of these moves were already locked in place, locked and loaded before the Election Results were known. Now all of a sudden, fast forward to november. Here we are, with potentially the ninth session in a row thats settling in the 230s. Im talking about a very narrow range from 230 to 236. 236 being that half session on friday. That was a High Water Mark on a closing basis going all the way back to the summer of 2015. When you get this monster breakout, the monster breakout slices like a hot knife through butter to 227. The settlement for 2015, which gives it an added priority after the double bottom. All these things become big footprints of distribution that you need to be aware of. What does this mostly mean . All the times ive seen it ive been looking at bonds since theyve been trading price of the long bond is, what, in the 160s . Long bond prices in the futures were in the low 50s. Theres been a lot of moves. What this means to me is that the trend higher is getting more aggressive. And the distributions are getting smaller and the breakouts in between them may be getting bigger. Does this mean its just going to keep running up . Probably not. I still say the key to everything is 227. I think well revisit it. That might be a very Good Opportunity to reassess how well see the next distribution most likely near the 260 level. Kayla, back to you. Well keep our eye on 227. Thank you, rick. When we come back, a report that the future of thursday night football is in question. What that would mean for the league up next. Nasdaq hitting another record high intra day as stock there are many things you dont want in industrial strength like coffee. But theres one thing you do. You guys okay . its called predix from ge. The cloudbased Development Platform thats industrialstrength strength the nfl is denying reports it plans to wind down thursday night football as the league continues to deal with a season that has been dogged by ratings. Forbes Media Executive editor mike ozaney and host of forbes sports media. Gentlemen, good morning to you both. Good morning. Mike, report came out of nbc sports that they were looking to trim, possibly do away with it once this contract was up. Do we know anything more . I wouldnt be surprised if they kept it only because theyre not paying that much. 225 million a year. So though the ratings havent been that good, theyre not paying that much. So i think its worth it for them to keep it. And i think they will. Lee, theres been a lot of criticism about the quality of the matchups. Players have occasionally said its a little exhausting to have a few days rest between games. Is there something wrong with a thursday night game just on the face of it . Well, i think you have to keep in mind that all of these ratings for nighttime games are still among the leading programming on all television. The nfl is monday night football gets a good game and then its like this little stepsister comes thursday night. The package has one more year to run after this, and there are tonlz of reasons why football is down this year, and one of the major ones in the polls is showing the reaction to Colin Kaepernick and the flag. What if any, material or otherwise, do you think twitters partnership on thursday night has had . It seemed like the league had been interested in experimenting with new places for viewers to watch the games. Did that lead viewers outside of Traditional Television . I think youre absolutely right. It does. I think to a large extent thursday night football and you mentioned twitter, yahoo has experimented with some programming as well, as you know, on streaming. I think its an experimentation going on, and that is younger audiences dont sit in front of a Television Like lee or i did growing up. Theyre watching it on their iphone. Theyre streaming. The nfl is experimenting with how to capture that audience, and theyre not quite sure yet. As the experiment continues, youre going to see blips in the road where viewership goes down. Sometimes consuming the content, streaming isnt going to be as successful as it is watching it on television, but its all part of the process. I think what the ratings are telling us in the big picture this year is that the nfl still has the bluechip content out there of any kind, but because ratings are going down, look, you cant blame it on the election where are we just saw the overnights for the sunday night game, which was a marquee mashup, right . They went down significantly. 27 . No election. Whats going on here. This is an experiment in process. I dont think youre going to see the increase in rights fees that weve seen in the past, but youre not going to see rights fees go down. Lee, im thinking of the ways were in this era of, obviously, splintering media, but the league has to grow, right . They can do it through expansion of teams. They have thought about adding games to the season. Certainly international is a component. Were talking about spreading it across the week. Which of those options do players have the least problems with, if any . Expansion certainly. It creates more new jobs, and it doesnt affect their pocketbooks very much. Its just another way of splitting the re new. I think that michael raised a very valid point, which is that to capture the millennial generation that is so used to youtubing and tweeting, everything comes off a screen, the problem is that televised format and even going to games is just too long for how theyre used to experiencing entertainment. Yeah. And so remember the hut levels for television in general are down because ad generation doesnt follow the format. This hasnt been the most exciting of nfl seasons. It just hasnt we havent outside of the Dallas Cowboys with two hot rookies, we havent seen a whole group of stars emerge. We havent seen a number of sterling games. A couple of weeks ago there were 12 extra points missed. Now, this will change as we get into the playoffs, but football has some people argue its the offseason lack of offseason hitting in training, but this is probably not the most spectacular of all seasons. Mike, this morning our coanchor david faber said he just starts the game 45 minutes late. Time shifts. He can collapse all the commercials, all the space in between plays. I wonder if lees point about millennials Attention Spans will apply to football the way it has long applied to baseball. I think thats probably exactly part of the big point. I think if you capture it in one sentence, says it would be that the nfl has shifted or is shifting from an audience of real die hard team fans. People that follow the teams. Even when its not a compelling matchup, youll watch the entire game, even if your team is winless like the cleveland browns. Youre going to watch the whole game like i did as a kid versus today where with the millennials, youre not so much a fan of a team. Youre a fan of a player. Youre driven by fantasy sports. How is my player doing . I dont have to watch on tv. I can then go to my iphone afterwards and just see how many catches did Odell Beckham have, how many yards did he have . Thats what the nfl is dealing with now, and this is why you are seeing things like Virtual Reality start to be experimented with. Things to make viewing compelling. Yeah. Not to mention the red zone effect and a whole bunch of other things. Guys, its going to be an interesting conversation to continue. Well see you soon, i hope. Lee steinberg. Talking the nfl. Thank you. As we go to break, take a look at where we stand almost three hours into the trading day. Were just about 25 points or so away from a new intraday high on the do you. Back after a break. Welcome back to squawk alley. Arca Airline Still off a half a percent. This as oil drops ahead of the opec meeting. Spirit airlines, jetblue all up nearly a percent so far. American airlines seeing a 52beak high. Many of these names. The dow transportation index fresh 52week high just this past friday. Certainly, carl, stocks to watch. Back to you. All right, tom. Thank you very much. Yeah, transports yesterday, it was the twoyear anniversary of the last record high, so they are 3. 7 away, but up 20 for the year. Its double what the russell has done. A key component of any broadbased market rally. Well see where the afternoon takes us. Lets get over to scott wapner and the half. Carl, thanks. Welcome to the halftime report. Im scott wapner. The state of the trump rally and whether its simply pausing or ending. With us for the hour joe terra nova, stephanie link, pete najarian, josh brown. Want to begin with the major averages, which after hitting more records, a bit of a spinning your wheels motion today. Dow jones industrial average up 31. S p picking up a little bit, adding 7. The nasdaq up twothirds of 1 . The russell after he wanteding its 15day winning streak is back at it today. The question, pete, is whether some of these