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May 19, 2020 
By DYLAN BYERS in Los Angeles & AHIZA GARCÍA-HODGES in San Francisco Good morning. 📚 Bill Gates' top 5 summer reads: "The Choice," by Dr. Edith Eva Eger ... "Cloud Atlas," by David Mitchell ... "The Ride of a Lifetime," by Bob Iger ... "The Great Influenza," by John M. Barry ... "Good Economics for Hard Times," by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo ... Plus, bridge!
🛍️ Watch this space: Mark Zuckerberg will announce new Facebook "commerce tools" today to help small businesses, he said yesterday. Sheryl Sandberg also previewed an e-commerce launch. Sounds like... a platform for an online marketplace?
Join the Market: 🗞️ Newsletter | 🎙️ Podcast
Jesse Grant/Getty The 5 to the 10 What Kevin Mayer will and won't do at TikTok
Moving the Market: Kevin Mayer, the head of Disney's streaming unit and a close ally of Bob Iger, has resigned from the company and will become chief executive of TikTok, the wildly popular social media network owned by the Chinese firm ByteDance. He will also serve as ByteDance's chief operating officer.
• The big picture: Mayer won't run all of TikTok. His mandate as CEO will be limited to two areas: business strategy (which is his bailiwick) and public policy, sources familiar with the company's plans tell us. Product will continue to be run out of Beijing.
• On the business side, Mayer joins TikTok as it is experiencing explosive growth, with 2 billion downloads globally and 172 million in the United States. It is expanding its advertising business and even has plans to launch a new paid music service.
• On the policy side, Mayer will be tasked with keeping up positive relations with Washington, where TikTok faces scrutiny from lawmakers over ByteDance's handling of U.S. citizens' data.
• "This is really a figure head role about deflecting a lot of the incoming fire over all things China/policy,” a source who spoke to ByteDance chief Zhang Yiming about the CEO role said.
Why Mayer works: A 27-year veteran of Disney, Mayer has built a reputation for executing on business strategy and growing advertising businesses. He is a known quantity in American business and will give ByteDance a charismatic emissary in Washington.
• "Kevin is a trusted, successful, minted executive who executes within the mandate given," one of the sources said. "That mandate is to execute in the lane given, be presidential, assure Congress they are above board and trustworthy and operating well."
• But Mayer's tenure at Disney was not without its misses. He oversaw the $675 million acquisition of Maker Studios in 2014; three years later, after failing to meet growth targets, Disney laid off 80 Maker employees and folded the company into another division.
What's next: Mr. Mayer goes to Washington. "TikTok previously told me they couldn’t attend hearings and testify because executives were located in #China,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., tweeted on Monday afternoon. "But this new executive lives in the USA. I look forward to hearing from him. Under oath."
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Disney shakeup Rebecca Campbell takes DTC
Talk of Tinseltown: Disney chief Bob Chapek has tapped Rebecca Campbell, the president of the Disneyland Resort and former head of Disney's Europe, Middle East and Africa division, to take over Kevin Mayer's job as head of the direct-to-consumer unit.
• The big picture: Mayer was one of the most influential streaming executives in Hollywood, helping bring Disney+ to 54.5 million subscribers in less than five months. Campbell is a lesser-known quantity in Hollywood, so the verdict is still out.
• But as Bloomberg's Tara Lachapelle notes, "the streaming-TV business has never been more important to Disney than it is now, and... it’s letting its most important streaming executive flee the Magic Kingdom. Time will tell whether that was a mistake."
• Get to know: Deadline's Dade Hayes has the backgrounder on Campbell, who spent "the bulk of her 23 years at the company... focused on local broadcasting."
Meanwhile, Chapek also announced that Josh D’Amaro, the former president of Walt Disney World Resort, would take over Chapek's previous role as chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products.
🚗 Layoff watch 🚗
Uber chief Dara Khosrowshahi is cutting 3,000 additional jobs, closing 45 offices and "re-evaluating big bets in areas ranging from freight to self-driving technology" as it struggles to cope with the coronavirus pandemic, WSJ's Preetika Rana reports.
The big picture: "Stay-at-home orders have ravaged Uber’s core ride-hailing business, which accounted for three-quarters of the company’s revenue before the pandemic struck. Uber’s rides business in April was down 80% from a year earlier."
Toshifumi Kitamura/Getty HBO Max Jason Kilar to hire 200 more
The streaming wars: WarnerMedia is planning to hire 200 more people to help with the rollout of HBO Max, the new streaming service that launches on May 27, chief technology officer Jeremy Legg tells The Information’s Jessica Toonkel.
• The additional staff, which includes 150 engineering positions, will help HBO Max build "an ad-supported tier of the service next year, launch internationally and eventually release some live television."
The big picture: "Getting a new streaming service like HBO Max off the ground is a technical feat under normal circumstances, but the coronavirus pandemic has added wrinkles no one could have anticipated,” Toonkel writes.
• HBO Max is joining a crowded streaming space where it faces “consumer expectations for reliability set by Netflix” and cheaper offerings from competitors, including Disney+ and NBCUniversal's Peacock (owned by the parent company of NBC News).
• While the pandemic is a prime time to debut a new content option for audiences stuck at home and hungry for new content, it’s also forced customers to tighten budgets and strained resources necessary to pull off the launch.
What's next: HBO Max is set to launch May 27 at $15 a month. It will include social features like real-time chats, which have become popular for platforms like Netflix and Spotify as a way to help people feel connected while streaming.
Paul Ellis/Getty ⚽ Sports report EPL moves closer to return
Talk of TV Land: 🏴 The English Premier League will return to small group training sessions today following a unanimous vote by its shareholders. The move brings England's top-flight soccer league one step closer to its planned return on June 12.
• The big picture: The return of the EPL would be a major boon to rights holders NBCUniversal (in the U.S.) and Sky (in the U.K.), both of which are owned by Comcast (which owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News).
• Prior to the March 12 suspension, EPL games were averaging 451,000 viewers on NBC and NBCSN, putting it on track to be the most watched season in four years, per NBC Sports.
🇮🇹 Elsewhere: Italy's Serie A has moved its earliest possible start date back to June 15. ESPN holds the league's U.S. broadcast rights, and has historically broadcast one game a week on ESPN while airing the rest on its ESPN+ streaming service.
• ESPN sources tell us they will likely broadcast more Serie A games on ESPN and ESPN 2 once the season resumes, in order to bolster ad revenue amid a dearth of live sports.
🌁 What's next: A tale of two cities. WSJ's Jim Carlton and Alicia Caldwell explain why Los Angeles is having a harder time battling the coronavirus pandemic than San Francisco.
See you tomorrow.
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