Wednesday's economy & business stories

Never gonna give you up: Trump's NYTimes tweets
With the addition of President Trump's tweet on the NYTimes this morning, he's now up to 14 since Inauguration Day:
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You can see the full list here (Small Twitter hack: Search "nytimes from:@realdonaldtrump" and click the "Latest" tab to see the tweets in reverse chronological order.)
Related: Trump and the NYT's love-hate relationship.

Scoop: BuzzFeed going public in 2018
With a blinding spotlight on Snap's IPO, viral powerhouse BuzzFeed is quietly making preparations to go public in 2018, industry sources tell me. OMG!
The widely (and poorly) copied BuzzFeed, which began as a "great cat site" and now has foreign correspondents and a massive BuzzFeed Motion Pictures studio in L.A., mastered the art of sharable content and became a defining brand of the Internet age.

Online ad spending going native
Most of the money spent on digital display advertising will soon go to native ads — where the advertising is designed to look like editorial content — according to a new eMarketer forecast. That kind of ad spending has grown to $22 billion, most of it spent on social-media platforms.
Why this matters: A recent survey found that trust in ads is rising while trust in news sinks. Ads that are designed to look like news could confuse readers.
Data: eMarketer; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon / Axios
Why it's happening: Publishers are creating more native ads because other types of digital display advertising aren't working. Advertisers are reacting to the rise of ad blockers and increased frustration with banner ads. And Google and Facebook are eating the digital display market, leaving publishers no choice but to try to monetize through engagement with native ads instead of trying to reach the most viewers with broad display ads.

Trump's public broadcasting cuts would hit rural Americans hardest
Rural Americans would be most affected by Trump's proposal to pull funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the CEO Patricia de Stacy Harrison testified before a House Appropriations Subcommittee Tuesday. That's because more than 65% of the CPB's federal funding goes to keeping rural PBS and NPR stations running.
The rural-urban divide in public broadcasting: "Rural stations don't have a donor base," according to Harrison, and it already costs more to broadcast in rural areas, partly due to infrastructure upkeep.
Why it matters: Rural communities are the most at risk of losing public programming, and 62% of rural Americans voted for Trump. 70% of Americans oppose eliminating the CPB, according to a Quinnipiac poll.
Perspective: CPB gets about $500 million in federal funding annually. That's half of what Trump has requested this year to start the wall. Elmo should be safe, though, as Sesame Street has other funding sources.

Bloomberg terminal users fall for 2nd time ever
Last year the number of Bloomberg's terminals fell by 3145 to just under 324,500, according to Burton-Taylor International, a consulting group that is one of the leading sources of information in the industry, per FT. The distinctive terminals, which bankers, traders, and money managers use daily to access real-time market information, have been cut because:
- Banks are trying to cut costs — each terminal costs about $22,000 a year — and revenues at 12 of the biggest global investment banks dropped 3% last year
- Machines are replacing traders, making it difficult to maintain terminal numbers, according to one of Burton-Taylor's founders, Douglas Taylor
Why it matters: This is the second time ever that the number of terminals has fallen for Bloomberg since it was founded in 1981. Keep in mind, the first time was during the global financial crisis.

Hollywood pushes theaters to release movies faster
Major Hollywood studios are pushing theater chains to let people watch new movies much earlier than usual amid growing pressure from dwindling home entertainment profits, per L.A. Times' Ryan Faughnder:
- "The main studios pushing the initiative — Warner Bros., Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox — want customers to be able to watch select movies in their homes 30 to 45 days after they hit the multiplex, less than half the time it usually takes."
- "Consumers would pay $30 to $50 to watch the movies, and theaters would get a cut of the revenue from the premium video-on-demand offerings."
Why it matters: "The change would represent a significant departure from the way Hollywood has done business and highlights how rapidly shifting consumer viewing habits are forcing studios and theaters to rethink how they've operated for decades."

Google's headache is Facebook's opportunity
Big-name advertisers are continuing to pull their ads from YouTube as the company scrambles to regulate the controversial content being uploaded to its site. While this crisis is a revenue and branding nightmare for Google, it can be a win for advertisers and competitors like Facebook.




