Concerned the deal will lead to job cuts. Alibaba might be coming here for is takingt facebook steps to open a sales office in china. The Chinese Government banned people there from using facebook five years ago. Story, at t is joining the consolidation game as a bid for directv. The change would come as comcast unites with time warner cable. Joining us now is the former ceo of nbc universal. To see you this morning. What great timing on the morning after this news. Does this make sense to you . Complex you have to look at the technology involved and all the activity in media today. Are in at t and directv and comcast, you have land lines , telephones which we have had for a long time. Cellular telephone, towers. One is in the ground and then you have towers. Then you have Satellite Television, which is directv. Then you have the internet. Comcast has three of those. Ground, cable, and telephone. That is look at caber cable at t has half of the cellular business. That is unique to them. Verizon has the other half. Lot of fixedve a phone business. Theyre trying to put fiber down. They are not in that game in a big way. Directv does not have phone, does not have cellular, and does not have internet. It has connections but it is very slow, relatively speaking. The question for at t is, is this a reaction because they got shut out of europe or phone acquisitions in the United States . Vodafone jumped the gun in europe. It is a reaction, what is the ultimate purpose . These are different notnologies and they do necessarily the only ones that are synergistic are cable and internet and landline phones. The other two are separate, cellular. They will combine technology that is not synergistic with what they have. They will operate two technologies, very expensive. I agree. I was talking to media executives last night and they were also struggling a little makeith how this really sense for at t. They will get subscribers. Convert those . To to what . I do not know. The idea of putting that content obviously wireless is their iness biggest this is is their biggest business. They do not have to buy all the satellite systems and everything. Do not forget directv has a big bigness that you business outside the United States. If that is what they want to develop tom a maybe that would help their cellular vid business. We have not heard anything from. T t it takes the pressure off them, i think, saying, you have not been able to do anything in video and now you have got him thing. Right. This make more sense for directv. I think directv has had a really good run over the last few years. Upir growth has picked outside the United States. It is probably a jury if it time for them. You know ironically who the big winner is on this. Warren buffett. He is the largest owner. Gradepoint. Great point. All of this is in reaction there is an urgency to feel youre in the game. The time warner contest thing is really synergistic and makes a lot of sense. It is the same business theyre all in. I do not see the antitrust issue there at all. It is a figment and it is really not there. They made adjustments to get down less than 30 million. Which you do not have to do. I think that is in the corner. Maybe there are some politics. This one is a different animal entirely and i am not sure there is any trust there either. The whole thing down. Clearly, they are related in the sense that, it sounds these ceos are really under pressure to essentially be in each others business and make dramatic moves. Great to see you, the former ceo of nbc universal. Moving and shaking this hour, Christine Lagarde canceled lance to give a commencement address next sunday. They said it has become evident she will not be welcomed at the college. Said the imf hurts the poorest country and that means the oppression of women worldwide. The guard gave a command and speech at the Harvard School of government about two years ago. Another company hoping to make a deal is pfizer. Trying to convince u. K. Lockers that his company is good for the u. K. Economy as he tries to persuade his target to enter talks. Our Bloomberg International correspondent is in westminster outside the hearing. I can be it is raining out. What was the argument . Did he convince anybody this is a good deal . He may have convinced some shareholders this could be going through. You see Stock Holding a little bit up. Here is his challenge. He is facing a skeptical if not hostile audience. Thats to make the case while this makes good this nonsense, and they are talking about reducing the overall levels of r d and having Less Research and development and more synergy, but will that lead to fewer jobs here in the United Kingdom . It is almost impossible to reconcile those two arguments. Without having some sort of inherent tension. He also has to make the argument with one hand tied behind his back because he cannot speak to positively about the benefits of buying it or otherwise he will just drive up the price. Morning that this another author offer will be made, a higher offer. He is in a real predicament, and spent a lot of time answering the question of whether or not he is doing this for tax reasons. The new company would be. Eadquartered in new york taxes are 21 in the u. K. Is what pfizer played paid last year. Less clear of jobs advantages for the u. K. Public. That hearing is still going on. We also heard from the ceo of astrazeneca. Tell us exactly how you responded. The ceo of astrazeneca made an important point saying he could not rule out excepting this bid. They rejected bids but this has not turned hostile hostile yet where pfizer is taking it directly to the shareholders. He made another point, that he cannot vouch for a pfizers promises to keep 20 of the work is here in the u. K. He made his own promises that he would be continuing to invest in they would continue to grow and have more jobs. The promises he and makes maybe more legally binding ban the promises his counterpart makes. It looks like pfizer has had a weult morning and it will see if they have a difficult afternoon. Thank you. Music streaming is so successful, why are radio stations thriving . Plus, the future of gambling online and why sheldon wants to get rid of it. The ceo of the gaming has a waitandsee approach. Were just Getting Started on this tuesday. Radio has sold the airwaves with news, weather, and music. Industry that just will not die. Cristina alescis explains why. Everythings survived. So far, and onslaught of streaming music startup spare 90 of americans tune in at least once a week, unchanged since 1970. Klesko morning. Good morning. Creating radio stations is not so easy. Do you think we are so dumb that we would pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year to Program Radio stations versus playing the music without work . Why pay an announcer 20 million a year . Y are worth it there it nationally recognized personalities are not the only part of radios plan to stay relevant. What is moving past is a 32nd marshall. You see the discharge he as a sponsor of a major event, you see them integrated into that major event. It is a very different way of selling and a different revenue stream for us and a new marketing opportunity for the advertisers. These efforts might help radio hold onto listeners, but ad revenue has yet to recover since the financial crisis. They have to almost abandon some of the National Advertisers and focus on local markets, local programming, and local advertisers there it that is one area where the internet is less powerful. Large companies consolidate at small local stations in the early and mid2000s. Replacing local djs with generic programming for a wider release. It might be too late to revive better theya need to do a better job collecting and analyzing data. To reinventstarting itself that it has not caught up yet with measurement. All eyes are on digital and it is now almost a new standard they have to come to. A new standard and a new reality of sharing ad dollars with competitors. Advertisers are following consumers and their seeing consumers move in droves. Worried. Not there are 200 radio stations in new york and we probably have four of the top five. Welcome to the Media Business and every business is littered with failures where people go, i will get into their business. Good luck. A very interesting piece, christina. Christina joins us now also to take a look at how things state adio stays relevant listening to bob pitman, he makes good arguments as to why radio will continue to survive and thrive. Is there not less and less money he made in radio . I do not know if profits are down. Radio is going through a renaissance right now. Looking for four things as they buy time today. One is scale. As the package indicated, nine out of 10 americans, and that is, when nails all the way to boomers, listen to free local broadcast radio every week. The second thing is local activation. Paul may have alluded to that in the package as well. Advertisers are looking for local activation. How do they drive people into their stores and create traffic . That is what radio does. The third thing is social. We know how important social media has become in this country. Radio was the original social media. The fourth thing is mobile. Very back tole social, it is a recommendation engine. When this doc is gone and advocate on behalf of a client, they are a trusted source and a drive traffic. Radios pitch to advertisers him a you give us a dollar and we will turn it into six. That is impressive. What advertisers like to see in addition to everything just said, is Realtime Data and metrics. That is conversion rates, consumer habits. All the stuff the internet does really well. Streaming services do that really well and that is what advertisers are looking for in addition to everything said here that is where radio needs to catch up. I agree with that. You see now with the ability to start to measure real time, i think what nielsen is doing after the acquisition of arbitron, they will in essence create an end to and platform that grass people. That study actually showed a 61 return, which is very strong. A onemanyalways be advertising platform out there. The super bowl. Radio reaches, as the package said, over nine intent evil in the country every single week. It is very important. I know youre trying to build your media empire and dominate the media lance and from your base in atlanta. You want to take your country print,rands into television, social, digital, mobile, everywhere. How is that going . Very well. The Company Strategy is centered around a horizontal strategy and it is our owned and operated broadcast platform fueled by our network which reaches about 10,000 radio stations across the country. On top of that, because the space is widening, we have a deal in ownership stake in an excellent streaming platform so we could pick up the other side. You mentioned nash. This is where we go after an audience segment. It is fans of Country Music in this case. It is about a quarter of the adult population. People like Country Music. The question i have for you is, what is the industry doing over connected cars . Gm willust announced offer a plan for wifi service in cars. Is the radio industry going to do anything to fight back . I do not think we want to fight that there there will be safety concerns and automakers are aware of that, but a lot of this is to get data and services into the car. Fn namill always be an tuner in the cars. People want to hear the content because it is their local trusted content. That is what they have grown up with. Thank you. We will be back. Is 26 minute past the hour. We are on the market. We and the rallying off of those eyes right now. In a few moments, we will get retail sales numbers. Very important. We will start to see that when her fade away on these numbers. We will give you a more written work for the house number is standing there and we are on the mark again in 30 minutes. Last week, i sat down with geeks use of interview with the ceo of las vegas and. Here are some of the highlights. Collects there is no reason or any compelling reason to put a keynote a casino and everyone everyone posses pocket. Why do we legalize restitution . It is happening anyway. Why not legalize drug addiction . It is happening anyway. Where we can control it, we should control it. I am saying, come on that this is. I cannot tell over the internet who is underage. I cannot tell who has got a natural death subtleties. Financial difficulties. I cannot tell who is not gaming on sibley. I cannot know is if money is being laundered. I can in the casino. Whatever it takes to stop online gambling. Whatever it takes. For more on the future of online gambling, tim. Ands the former is the 00 lived five years in vegas. Miller joins us as well youre the intellectual than his anger about Online Gaming, do you somewhat agree . Collects i do not have a moral issue with online aiming. A businesshow big opportunity is for us. We see it opened up in delaware and most recently new jersey. Numbers have been less than what everyone ought they would eat. They would be. In new jersey, they have columns in the First Six Months trying to get someone to fund their account. They will not get red card transfers into the gaming account. Fund their cannot account. You either have to go down to the clinic did he or provide your checking information. Credit card information is worried about money laundering. Right here one of the reason people are looking at online businesses because many markets outside the u. S. , you see saturation. Think, other than a nontraditional approach . We were fortunate enough in the state of massachusetts. We got that a couple of months ago in 2000 and team. Another state that just opened up, the state of new york. License uping for a in orange county. That will be decided later this year and if we are watching it enough to be selected, that would probably be a 20162000 and 19. Other states do reference opportunities for us and are not as saturated. I always think texas is a market. It is surrounded by gaming. A big piece of florida is underserved by gaming area we know the population there is very strong. See . Let do you want to of you want to make sure that Online Gaming is not cannibalize their that is a can then we all have. New jersey internet of love years will give us enough to nation to give us a level of youth is generated online. The numbers have been very mall in new jersey or the first month. It would take a couple more years to give us evidence. I do not take anything will happen at the row level and the expansion will be a fight and. They will take an approach and see how this evolves. I just want to raise them for of 1 10 ofust one percent. Core retails tales numbers are down euro and one percent, effective a rise of half a percent. Hit withf when we were a snows arm in the us ordered. You own old else. You are in the gaming this. Hese are not great numbers lets were seeing them were results. It is. Customers that have a your days with us then and are actually doing a little better. It is customers who have a tighter aimer budget. We are seeing less and visitation in our market. People are making decisions because of budget decisions. Theyre making a decision because you have other obligations. But maybe we can talk about m a a little bit. Classd like to be let me have is a rich database of customers through our relationship is over or million strong. We know based on my. With the total rewards program, the estimates are going to vegas today. Can get them to restrict property and add value to the top and bottom lines. The price tag is very high. Difference on the strip is more lucrative, but tell me about the big difference. They want to be where the action is. Purchase the end resort. It is a property about eight miles from the strip. And ae had modest excess response back from our research is, we are going to vegas. Life do you have any asked rations of doing any outside the u. S. . Life we have looked at asia and have it over there looking at opportunities in Southeast Asia and the buzz is all around you and and what will happen there. As he said he would love to pour billions in very best guess. Large, integrated resorts area we talked about regional opportunities. Great. Is. Also, think you, brian. Ryan miller, part of our large team of at bloomberg industries. Is evangelizing, mike and he analyzing sales numbers. Interesting word. It may not be as as it looks on the surface. You have two go back on the revision in march and march was economistser than thought. The transition through april when you look at the breakdown of what was sold in april and the toys that did well, most of them were of. We saw a decline of Electronic Stores and a weaker automobile sales. We do not really see a lapse across the board. Internet tells tell sales fell. Did not been quite as much in april. Retailers like combine the march and april figures because of a movement of easter and you do not know when people are ending their cash for the holiday. The retail sales until number is all that rate but it may not be it may not mean the economy is falling, just a elevating. Is other news we did see small business. Theyre finally getting to the point where small does is are no longer taking they are starting to plan for the future. But that is good news. Thank you. Coming up, democratic hope those are hoping the issue of in the meeting on the will win them a seat in the house very we will tell you why that last one might back fire on them. Fries or beans . A special menu is coming to mcdonalds. Stay in the loop. Pharmaceuticals for the six under Million Dollars here the deal is lance expand the portfolio for eye diseases. This ale is part of an ongoing strategy to narrow its strategies of vocus current enough support has been secured to move ahead with lance to integrate the operations and the german automaker, now has shareholders take control of 90 of the sweetest company. Attempt. A decadelong unveiling a new smart on the sleeve or indonesia today. It hopes its touchscreen model will revise sales. Hiphop dancers performing on a laser lit stage. Very cool. In washington, democrats are trying to do in that the majority in a house in november and there was pushing the message that their party is are the ones to address a widening gap. His attic is strategy . Is that a good strategy . If their goal