View in b rowser September 5, 2019 | New York Good morning. 🗞️ Market Scoop: Jack Dorsey will host a conversation on the state of the news industry at Twitter's New York headquarters on Oct. 24. BuzzFeed's Ben Smith will interview Dorsey; other speakers include CBS's Susan Zirinsky, Bloomberg's Justin Smith and Axios' Sara Fischer. 🏈 Tonight: Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth return to your living room. The NFL's 100th season kicks off as the Green Bay Packers take on the Chicago Bears (-3). 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC. Join the Market. Jemal Countess/Getty Market Scoop Why Janice Min left Quibi Moving the Market: Janice Min, the star Hollywood editor and Quibi news content chief, abruptly left Jeffrey Katzenberg's short-form mobile video project yesterday due to conflicts with Katzenberg and Diane Nelson, another Quibi executive, sources with knowledge of the matter tell me. • Min had frustrations with Katzenberg's management style, the sources said. The Hollywood mogul, though widely respected, is also known for being headstrong and relentlessly opinionated. • Min also had longstanding "personality conflicts" with Nelson, the former DC Entertainment president who was brought on last December as head of operations, the sources said. • Min did not respond to a request for comment. Quibi confirmed her departure, adding only: "We thank her for her leadership and wish her well as she embarks on her next chapter." The exact catalyst for Min's abrupt departure remains a mystery to all but a few executives inside Quibi. But while Min's conflicts with Nelson played a role, sources say her chief point of contention was with Katzenberg himself. • In her one year at Quibi, Min helped to assemble a slate of news programming that included deals with NBC News and the BBC. Those deals will now be overseen by Min's deputies, Becky Brook and Ryan Kadro. The big picture: Min's departure raises questions about the health of Katzenberg's leadership team as well as the future of the news product, which he has touted as one of the platform's key value propositions. (The bulk of the programming will be celebrity-driven entertainment). • Min's departure also comes as Katzenberg and Quibi chief Meg Whitman are on their second round of fundraising. The turmoil could spook investors, especially since Min's exit comes just weeks after the departure of Tim Connolly, the head of partnerships and advertising. What's next: Quibi is expected to launch in April 2020. Until then, the Min exit will only fuel speculation about the long-term viability of the platform, which has become a favorite topic of debate among Hollywood insiders. • Meanwhile, Min, the former chief creative officer of The Hollywood Reporter and former editor of Us Weekly, is once again a free agent. Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Market Scoop John Stankey's HBO Max price Talk of Tinseltown: John Stankey, the WarnerMedia chief and newly minted AT&T CEO-in-waiting, has been considering a plan to offer the HBO Max streaming service at an initial price of $14.99 a month ⁠— the same price as a regular HBO subscription, sources with knowledge of his discussions tell me. • Stankey is also eyeing April 2020 as a potential launch date for the service, which will include programming from HBO, Turner, Warner Bros and CNN, and may eventually include sports programming, the sources said. The big picture: By offering HBO Max at the same price as HBO, Stankey believes he can retain existing HBO subscribers and make the service more attractive to consumers who have an increasingly wide array of lower-priced subscription options, the sources said. • Once those subscribers are in the door, Stankey would likely explore plans to raise the price incrementally over time, the sources said. • The strategy, which is not final and subject to change, would be a departure from Stankey's previous reported plan to charge $16 to $17 a month, a price tag he now thinks could turn away potential customers. • A WarnerMedia spokesperson did not respond to a request for confirmation regarding the price and launch date. The big picture: The Streaming Wars are about to go into overdrive as services like Disney+ and HBO Max come to market in the months ahead. Stankey needs to keep pricing competitive long enough to build a loyal subscriber base, and anything higher than $14.99 could be a non-starter. 🇺🇸 Talk of the Trail 🇺🇸 Market Scoop: Former HBO chief Richard Plepler and his wife Lisa hosted a dinner for Sen. Cory Booker two nights ago at their home on the Upper East Side, per sources familiar. • The buzz last night: Joe Biden's eye. Taylor Hill/Getty Susan Wojcicki beats D.C. Big in the Bay, big in the Beltway: The federal government has imposed $170 million in fines on Google's YouTube for privacy violations, including allegations that it illegally collected children's personal information without their parents’ consent. • The big picture: Like the $5 billion fine against Facebook in July, the YouTube fines are a reminder that federal regulators are ill-equipped to punish big tech firms in any meaningful way. • As with the Facebook settlement, the YouTube vote fell on party lines: Republican FTC commissioners voter for it; Democratic commissioners voted against it, arguing that it did not do enough to adequately punish YouTube. The math, via Recode's Peter Kafka: "Google’s parent company Alphabet may generate $161 billion in revenue this year. RBC analyst Mark Mahaney thinks YouTube will generate $20 billion of that." • Meaning: $170 million is "basically a rounding error in terms of profits for Google and YouTube." • The big indicator: "Shares of Google parent company Alphabet were up 1.1% at the end of trading Wednesday," per CNBC. What's next: The FTC will require YouTube to ensure that it doesn't collect data on kids without their parents' permission. But the onus is still on content creators, not YouTube, to flag kids' content. Market Links • Mark Zuckerberg hosts a 2020 security meeting (NBC) • Tim Cook borrows $7 billion on the bond market (WSJ) • Jack Dorsey disables tweet-by-text following hacks (NBC) • Jessica Lessin hires a Spotify vet to head ad sales (BI) • Howard Mittman looks for offline growth (Bloomberg) Mark Wilson/Getty Jeff Bezos in the barrel, con't Amazon aggravation dept.: I wrote yesterday that "Jeff Bezos and Amazon were on the cusp of a new, sustained wave of media scrutiny, one that has the potential to bring about a sea change in public sentiment not unlike that which Uber and Facebook have endured in recent years." • Right on cue, today's New York Times features a massive, front-page investigation into "the human cost" of Amazon's rigorous delivery schedules, which have resulted in deaths and injuries for which Amazon claims to bear no responsibility. In further evidence that Amazon is the media's target du jour, the Times investigation, which was done in partnership with ProPublica, is extremely similar to a BuzzFeed investigation published just five days ago. • BuzzFeed, Aug. 31: "The Cost of Next-Day Delivery: Amazon’s Next-Day Delivery Has Brought Chaos And Carnage To America’s Streets — But The World’s Biggest Retailer Has A System To Escape The Blame" • NYT, Sept. 5: "The Human Cost of Amazon’s Fast, Free Shipping: Amazon directs the destinations, deadlines and routes for its network of contract delivery drivers. But when they crash, the retail giant is shielded from responsibility." Go figure. 🇺🇸 What's next: Talkin' 2020. I'll be spitballing politics tonight with WSJ's Lukas Alpert and FT's Rana Foroohar at the Bard High School Early College in Manhattan. • If you're in New York, swing by. Otherwise, see you tomorrow. Follow Dylan Byers Get the NBC News Mobile App Privacy Unsubscribe