Alix steel alongside me as cohost today. Good to have you here with me. Really ignoring some disappointing news we got earlier about retail sales and business inventories up. Offset theenough to rally because we had the time warner table deal. We will get to that in a moment, but first, the stocks we are watching as we get into the close julie hyman is keeping an eye on them. One of the stocks we are keeping an eye on is facebook. Not really any headlines that have spurred the gains today, but what is notable is facebook is trading at a record high. Track thisteresting stock has gone on. Goodyear tire rubber is the best performer in the s p 500 after it came out with its earnings which Beat Estimates even as revenue fell, missing estimates. Goodyear has managed to to boost its bottom line and they are also boosting its relationship with sumitomo of japan. A lot ofdecline concerns about slowing sales growth at the grocery, cutting its forecast for fullyear sales eatingwith competition into its sales and Gross Margins he cause it is trying to keep its prices down to key people shopping. Onto the big stories Time Warner Cable just ended the love triangle. This is going to create the largest cable operator in the United States of america. The question is will washington give the goahead to the comcasttime warner union . My guest was the first publisher androlling stone magazine ed lee. Tot are the obstacles here see this through . Arent there some significant antitrust issues at play . There could be and thats a big part of what the regulators want to look at. As far as consumers go, it does not change their choice. Cable is a monopoly kind of as it is anyway. It does not change the calculus for consumers and that is what regulators want to look at. They also want to look at how comcast will play with the tv networks. Think about cbs. Moveey lose leverage as we forward . I dont think so. Les mendes is the negotiator and he holds a lot of cards. One of the issues in this transaction was the fact that he cut a terrific deal and doubled the amounts of trends hes getting from Time Warner Cable. He has to renegotiate a deal expiring with comcast. Given that they are bigger, they will be harder to negotiate. He will say ive got a fiveyear deal on Time Warner Cable at two dollars a household subscriber. I want the same deal with you or you will go black once again. Lex is it really going to be just about content . So far, the story we have seen, the headlines is they will go to washington and talk about the fact thatnd they can maneuver here and there. But i think its important to talk about how people use their free time. When this cable consolidation story first came up and john malone was discussing it publicly, he talked about the power of facebook and the size a Global Platform like facebook. People spend a lot of time, just like they spend watching tv. Compared to the small size of the cable industry, it loads me away that if you look at the number of users facebook has, which is more than 1. 2 billion, and you look at this combined Time Warner Cable via subscriber number, which is i guess in the 33 million range, you could argue facebook is 37 times the size. People are not going to make that argument, but it could factor into how they make their case. Forget the apple tv set top box. How does that affect them . Cable is a geographically centric monopoly situation. Its not a National Footprint and broadband is national. The competitors thomas satellite, verizon, at t our national. Here is the problem cable is bad enough. Just dealing with your Cable Provider and getting stuck on the phone for how long isnt this just going to make it worse . John is right. Cable is in the twilight era. It is really all about broadband, and that is where comcast and time warner can they deliver a better product question mark does it matter . That gets very much to the heart of this antitrust issue. Comcast spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Technology Improvements and they are without question the best broadband strippers out there. Watch0 pound gorilla to for is google, which put a beta in kansas city. It isnt 100 times faster than verizon or comcast or anybody. It is very competitively rice. If google makes a move and tries to go national, look out of the how much am i going to have to pay every month . Its not owing to change. Why not . Because they are a monopoly. Y are probably thinking why are antitrust radiators saying they are going to do something about it . If they are saying they are a monopoly thats the heart of the question. Ask its palette these have been given the right to have this monopoly. Comcasterms of what might have to give up, they are no stranger to that. Lex the issue is going to be network neutrality. Comcast would love to ramp up usage fees on broadband and they will concede not to do that for at least five years. Are adamant about preserving it. How they play with netflix or apple, as long as they play fairly, that is what regulators will look at. Fromat about losing out all of that . Down over thee cable business so nobody can accuse them of being a monopoly. Overthetop television is something to look at. Anyone who wants to start selling for broadband lines, nbc is part of comcast. Startompany wants to doing it, nbc will have to sell its content. That could be a game changer. Who gets hurt . A good winner is mike at comcast to negotiated this deal. Cableo of time warner walks away with 50 million and a golden handshake will stop neil smith is a winner. Hes running the Comcast Cable operation and he was the ceo of whener and worked at aol it was in the cable business and also worked at Time Warner Cable. On so may a winner levels. One of the losers is cablevision because they were waiting for comcast to buy them up. That is a good point in terms of other forced consolidation. Cablevision, but the one i think about is erect tv and fish. The companies you really have to watch our satellite players. Look at all of the things dish has been doing. On the factled it that you have key players in broadband. Think people will Start Talking once again about whether dish and directv come together. Lex wait until the broadband auctions this year. You will see comcast that up and try to grab as much broadband as they can. Be possible consolidation on the tv networks as well. They want to negotiate against these as well. What that what might that mean question were amc might write some scripts will stop the hundreds of marginal networks on cable that you never look at anyway, those are going to be the losers. They all cut and they need to be protected. But did charter do anything want they are going to to look at the 3 million subscribers comcast is going to sell. And they may step up and by cablevision will stop a fascinating discussion. I actually read that these are the two most despised Cable Companies out there. In customer satisfaction. Thank you so much. Always great to see you. Jon erlichman in l. A. And edley. We have an amazing show today. Richard branson will be talking about pot. Debating raising the minimum wage and we will tell you why he almost canceled on us. My husband just called me you better not cancel tonight. Or what. Weve already got you hosting the show. The roads are very bad today. Our guest is today is one of our highest rated personalities. Mosts named one of the important influential talkshow hosts for three years in a row. And he is a bit of a loudmouth. Welcome. You guys already did seathing you lowered my so that you guys are in a position of authority and power. Dont they i didnt notice. Thanks for having me. And we are sitting really tall. Was morning, our producer listening to your show and this happened. Respectfully pass. Maybe if are booking producers, i could get on that show. I will go on there. They are talking stocks i dont know anything about it just say i heard elevator stocks are going up and down today. Apparently you are such a wimp, you are going to cancel because of weather . Its snowing. Its not snowing anymore. Lobbyait in the downstairs and you have outoftown visitors from china. Im standing there and i figure someone will come and greet me. No one comes to greet me and now its three minutes after 10 who are you . I brought five kids of me under the age of 14 and they were very excited. Its the guessing game of the whole show we are going to have. Lets talk about your career. How did you get to where you are . Itok over for imus became the number one listens to station in a year. That is incredible. There is a lot of luck involved will stop i was blessed that along the way people look that for me and thought i had some talent. I started in buffalo making 12,000 year will stop somebody in cleveland heard me and then i got to philly, it was just one step after the other. A couple of firings along the when imus got fired, i said there is no buddy no way they were going to fire me no way theyre going to hire me. They boomer and i had never met. We did a practice show on 56th and seventh and after one hour, they said thats the show. On that day on, weve done the same exact thing. Lex you are simulcast on cbssports. We are in 99 million homes. You can watch it illiteracy and listen to at the same time. Im curious why you went with cbs. Is. Nline is what it for what we do for a living, would you rather be on bloomberg were on the internet . You would rather be on bloomberg. Our Parent Company has a lot of great things going on. Announced the thursday night nfl package. If im going to talk words, where would i rather be . We still all have jobs. Lets talk about radio. That has met a lot of challenges with the onset of andorra and spotify goodleave if you deliver content, people will come to listen to it. Providing a Service People want nobody is denying that we have 5, 6, 7 major Music Services but there are not a there is not a talk service. I dont have to worry about a guy on spotify making his own channel. We are talking directly to new k sports fans will stop there is a chemistry between you and your cohost that cannot be replicated. But how do you get me to listen . Someone who is not a sports freak, how do you row your audience into people like me . Someone probably has to tell you to check it out. You should listen to the show or watch the show. Our job, once you check us out is can we do a show that day where its like it doesnt matter if they are talking about boards, i like the guys. Tohard sports fans just like stick with me and boomer. My underwear over their the other day and he brought it to the studio, which is very embarrassing for me. Better radio. It would have been great all book. Tell us about the it came out last may. I dont know if you guys have ever written about yourselves, but its very surreal to do that. The first thought i had was why does anyone want to hear this . Dore is an ego play where people really want to hear me talking about me . Once you decide of course they writing. Tart when you go to barnes noble and see a book with your face on it, it is very cool. Rex very quickly, i do want to show you heather. It will all be ok. It is great to have you here. Are we talking stocks . We are going to talk about the mets and the yankees. Are you allowed to say what stock you have . Elp p. Stock and we are going to talk about derek jeter coming up. If you are in the market for a 2 million car, you are in luck. L trigon is designing volkswagen is designing a car. In todays outlook, we check out one of the sales drives in palm springs, california. Ive never seen anybody get out of this car and say that wasnt what i expected. Its a very positive experience. We introduced the bill got a Dynamic Drive experience late last year. These have been very successful in attracting new people to the brand. We are going to host these events and bring individuals and. 20 to 25 or weekend that they will have a chance to experience the car on the open road and then we will close down the public rose for highspeed drive or have a closed run lap. Today, we have the bugatti grand open topthe fastest car in the world, capable of 260 miles an hour with the top off. It cost about 2. 5 million. Customers have the opportunity to individualize their car. Ive seen it range from 2. 4 up to 3 million. Attract is to individuals who have not had a chance to experience the brand before. Typically these are individuals who are very serious about cars and want to experience it first. We do have some previous owners who come and just want to get back into the brand. Of the 150 open top cars we are going to build, only about 40 remain available worldwide. Be solda test that will out within three months. We will not introduce anything in the next three years. I recently just got my drivers permit. Me want to get my license. Are you serious question were i didnt drive. I think the 2 million car might be the incentive i need. You are such a new yorker. Coming up, Sir Richard Branson. It was a really snowy day in new york and you are probably wishing you were on the island his next project is no Richard Ranson is getting into the crib he and islands in going green. He has helped to create a carbon war room to help you get the a lot get the islands to rely solely on solar and wind power. The first island to comply is the one that he owns. I asked him about the carbon war room ross effort. The man headed up by who used to be the president of costa rica. Hes a formidable person to run it. The 21a is to work with industries that put out the most carbon in the world, the airline industry, the shipping industry, cities, etc. , and to try to get a gig a ton out of the industries without savaging the industries. To sit down with these various companies and come up with imaginative ways to get to the top. How is the caribbean involved . How are these countries involved . There are hundreds of thousands of islands around the world. If you will be effected turn the clock forward 100 years. Therefore, what we are doing is working with these islands to try to show them how they can 75 or 85 of their carbon output. Can live in the islands and lower the electricity bills. The heads of states and various they went away excited. This is an example of creative entrepreneurship. Whats the Business Opportunity in Something Like this . The carbon war room, its the satisfaction of helping the world get on the right track. People, there are enormous opportunities. They, alongside others are pitched to do these bigger islands around the world. The cost of solar has collapsed. Wind is very competitive now. The more projects that can happen, the more price will come down. Is living in the caribbean, they pay and enormous amount at the moment but it has to get shipped to these various islands. There is an incentive. Thing to do this on your island but its another thing to do it in say the country of columbia or other islands. How do you implement it on a biggers gail . On a bigger scale. We started in aruba as an experiment. Its going extremely well. Abi got this wrong, but they are getting close to 50 clean energy. Its actually not that difficult. Down andolar panels pumping the sunbased fuel into the grid, its not that difficult a challenge to do. Peopleortant thing is willing to fund it together with people who are willing to do it and just get on with it. How much have you gotten funding for this . We had 400 Million Dollars committed by the people who came to our islands last week. Sufficient to get the ball rolling in a major way. I doubt much more money than that will be needed. Thats without any of the government putting their hands in it as well. Rex will have more of my interview with Sir Richard Branson in the next hour. He will tell us why the war on drugs has been a complete failure and how he plans to fix it. Plus, it might be snowing outside the baseball season is around the corner. Craig carton is going to tell us about what he thinks about derek jeters last season. Well see you back here right after this. Welcome back. There are two words every baseball fan waits to hear all year pitchers and catchers. Starting thisg is week. Craig carton is back with us as well as our bloomberg sports writer. What is going to be the big upset we will see . The big story for the next month is derek jeter. Sleepl eat derek jeter, eric jeter, walk the dog with eric jeter. He is an iconic figure in the sport. Not wait till opening day, he just decided that 40 years old, social media was the way to announce his retirement. Its part of the new movement. Beyonce. Or tipsters. You i live in brooklyn, you guys all live in manhattan. Some big money is going to be rolled out. Rex yes. Kind of hijacked you dont care about the multiMillion Dollars . Thats a big story as well, but mostly it is eric jeter. For the yankees paying him 12 million where is he going to go after . There is another component, which is for the last month and a half, the only story in baseball was alex rodriguez. This is a good inc. For the sport because youre talking about a guy who laid clean, has done everything the right way on and off the field, which is hard to do in new york. Now you are going to celebrate one of the great players of the generation. I know you tease its good for the mets everybody complains on wall street about these massive bonuses. We complain about it quite a bit and then you look at some of the numbers athletes are making. Nobody seems to have a problem with that. Some fans have a problem because they blame the prices on the ballpark they think they are commensurate with what the ballplayers make. But if you can hit the ball out of the ballpark 60 times a year, there is money coming in. Theres tv revenue, concession revenue they make money. The system works. Rex so spread the wealth around, it is market driven. Players are played with they are worth initially. The problem i have is the length of time. Rex that is unusual for sports. And hl does the same thing. You have contracts with Albert Pujols and the cardinals the angels know hes not worth that. There is a basic reality owners are stupid. Y did not make their money they made their money elsewhere and bought a baseball team. It is a vanity purchase but there will always be the one who says i have to have it. It doesnt matter what it takes robinson go