Good morning. 💰 Breaking overnight: The White House and Senate have agreed to a $2 trillion spending bill aimed at alleviating the economic impact of coronavirus. It is expected to include $350 billion for small businesses and $500 billion for corporations.

🎙️ Episode 5 of The Byers Market Podcast is now live. New York Times media columnist Ben Smith and I talk about journalism in the time of coronavirus, Facebook vs. Fox News, and the long-term economic effects of the pandemic.

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State of the Media

Traffic is up; ads are nowhere

Moving the Market: The economic uncertainty brought about by the coronavirus pandemic is forcing businesses and brands to cut their advertising budgets, a development that could upend the media industry — even as traffic and user engagement soars.

• The big picture: Digital platforms and news outlets that rely on ad revenue are seeing record levels of engagement. But for perhaps the first time ever, its not translating into ad revenue.

The latest: Facebook has seen a surge in user engagement, but says it has "seen a weakening in our ads business in countries taking aggressive actions to reduce the spread of COVID-19."

• Twitter says it expects to miss financial expectations for Q1 2020 because of the pandemic, even as its average daily user base has grown by 12 million users since the start of the year.

• The New York Times says its expects advertising revenues "to decline in the mid-teens for the current quarter," with digital ad revenues "expected to decline 10 percent."

• City and regional newspapers around the country are being forced to lay off staff or suspend publishing, which could be the death-knell for a local news industry that was already in trouble.

What's next: "Expect to see [this] story unfolding throughout the media business in the months to come," Recode's Peter Kafka warns. The tech giants will be ok, "due to their enormous size." But traditional media companies "are in real trouble."

• And TV?: "While big TV networks are more protected, in part because advertisers make commitments to buy from them many months in advance, they certainly aren’t shielded."

Amy Osborne/Getty

Free Messages

Facebook's other revenue miss

Moving Menlo: There's one other reason that increased Facebook usage isn't translating into increased ad revenue. Much of the new activity is taking place on the company's private messaging apps, NYT's Mike Isaac and Sheera Frenkel write.

• "While Facebook’s usage is soaring, that may not translate into financial gains. Most of the increase in traffic has occurred on the company’s messaging services — like WhatsApp and Messenger — which bring in relatively little revenue."

The big picture: The messaging activity is ultimately good for Facebook's business, in that it keeps people in the ecosystem. "In many countries, messaging on Instagram and Facebook [has] soared by over 50 percent," Isaac and Frenkel write.

🇺🇸 Foreign Affairs 🇨🇳

The publishers of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have written an open letter to the Chinese government protesting its decision to expel the papers' journalists from the country.

• "The media is collateral damage in a diplomatic dispute between the Chinese and U.S. governments, threatening to deprive the world of critical information at a perilous moment," they write.

Bloomberg/Getty

Brave New World

Gen Z Zooms the quarantine

Sign of the times: The video-communication app Zoom has fast gained popularity among people who are stuck at home and need to communicate with friends, family and work colleagues. It's also become a new kind of party, The Atlantic's Kaitlyn Tiffany writes.

• "In a pandemic, this is what a college party looks like: 69 people log on to a Zoom call at 11 p.m. on a Friday night" and add songs "to the collaborative quarantine-themed Spotify playlist playing in the background."

• "The vibe of the group is one of careful chaos, though after hours it is slightly spicier. ... In the chat running down the side of the screen, teenagers who do not know each other are amicably exchanging Snapchat handles and attempting to break off into cliques."

The big picture: "None of this is particularly novel internet content or novel teenage behavior, yet it’s comforting to be reminded that Generation Z is so prepared and ready to take their lives online."

• "Their impulse to congregate and post constantly may be often mocked by older adults, but now that impulse is serving them well."

Keep going. It's a fun read.

Market Links

• Tim Cook may start reopening stores in April (NBC)

• Susan Wojcicki limits YouTube video quality (Bloomberg)

• Adam Mosseri raises bar on coronavirus posts (Reuters)

• Jack Dorsey donates $1 million to journalism (Axios)

• Steve Ballmer buys The Forum (LAT)

Wang Zhao/Getty

Quarantine Content

John Stankey sees HBO spike

The Streaming Wars: WarnerMedia says viewership across its platforms grew by 20 percent last week, while time spent on the HBO Now streaming service was up 40 percent.

• The big picture: It's further evidence "that streaming and linear viewership are big beneficiaries of the current coronavirus crisis," Deadline's Denise Petski writes.

What's next: It's unclear whether the coronavirus quarantine has impacted the number of HBO subscribers, but the company says it expects to see continued "elevated traffic."

Bloomberg/Getty

🥇 Tokyo Watch

Jeff Shell hits Olympics delay

Talk of TV Land: NBCUniversal chief Jeff Shell has been forced to scramble the network's 2020 Olympics plans after the International Olympic Committee decided Tuesday to postpone the games until 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

• The big picture: "The postponement... will have a dramatic impact on the TV industry," Variety's Patrick Frater writes.

"NBCUniversal has already sold more than 90% of its ad inventory for the Tokyo Games, valued at more than $1.25 billion."

• NBC had also scheduled weeks of programming across its family of networks and was planning three daily shows on its new Peacock streaming service and four daily Snap shows.

• The deal is also a blow to Discovery, which paid $1.45 billion for European rights to the Olympics from 2018 to 2024.

What's next: NBCUniversal has insurance, according to Comcast chief Brian Roberts, and doesn't anticipate losses. But it won't turn the profit it was expecting to this year. It must also now come up with weeks of alternate programming.

NBCUniversal is the parent company of NBC News.

🎭 What's next: RIP Terrence McNally. The Tony-winning playwright has died of coronavirus complications. He was 81.

See you tomorrow.