Good morning. ⏲️ Latest on TikTok: "We're going to make a decision pretty soon," President Donald Trump said last night. "I have a high respect for Larry Ellison. ... I heard they're very close to a deal."

🕊️ R.I.P.: Bill Gates Sr., a lion of the philanthropic community, has died at the age of 94. "He was everything I try to be," his son writes. "I will miss him every day."

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Tim Cook | Bloomberg/Getty

⌚ Moving the Market

Tim Cook unveils Apple One

Tim Cook unveiled a new Apple Watch series, new iPads and a new fitness platform on Tuesday, but the most significant development was the announcement of Apple One, a group of subscription bundles intended to boost demand for Apple services. It is already drawing some protest from competitors and antitrust watchdogs.

• The bundles, which start at $14.95 a month, include Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple TV+ and 50 GB of iCloud storage.

• A premier tier, which costs $29.95, also includes Apple News+ and Apple Fitness+, a new fitness subscription service (that should have Peloton sweating), as well as 2 TB of iCloud storage.

The big picture: "The bundle initiative is a major bid by Apple to achieve the same loyalty that Amazon has won with its Prime program," Bloomberg's Mark Gurman writes. "This bundle is the bedrock of Amazon’s success and has been mimicked by other companies before with mixed results."

• "For years, analysts and investors have called for Apple to mimic Amazon’s Prime approach. Some of Apple’s newer services, including News+ and TV+, have started slowly. By bundling them at a discount with more popular services, usage and subscriptions could increase."

The blowback: Spotify, the most outspoken critic of Apple's power after Epic Games, criticized the new bundle as an abuse of power that would disadvantage competitors, and called on regulators "to act urgently to restrict Apple’s anti-competitive behavior."

• "Once again, Apple is using its dominant position and unfair practices to disadvantage competitors and deprive consumers by favoring its own services," it said. (Apple's rebuttal: "Customers can discover and enjoy alternatives to every one of Apple’s services.")

• This comes as Apple is preparing for the resumption of its legal battle with Epic Games over its 30 percent App Store commission. The next hearing is scheduled for Sept. 28.

What's next: As we wrote last November, it's possible Apple could eventually push the Prime strategy further toward an all-inclusive hardware and software subscription plan, with hardware upgrades and the full slate of Apple services. Because the deeper the consumer gets into the Apple ecosystem, the harder it is to get out.

Mark Zuckerberg | Bloomberg/Getty

🏛️ Big in the Beltway

Facebook faces FTC probe

"The Federal Trade Commission is preparing a possible antitrust lawsuit against Facebook that it could file by the end of the year," a potential threat to "the company’s dominant position in social media," WSJ's Brent Kendall, John McKinnon and Ryan Tracy report.

• "The FTC has spent more than a year investigating concerns that Facebook has been using its powerful market position to stifle competition, part of a broader effort by U.S. antitrust authorities to examine ... a handful of dominant tech companies."

What's next: "No final decision has been made on whether to sue Facebook," which is "still in the process" of trying to convince the commission that its acquisitions "aren’t anticompetitive and have improved products and experiences for its users."

🥊 Valley Battle Royale 🥊

We missed this earlier, but MarketWatch's Jon Swartz rightly notes that Silicon Valley's tech giants are increasingly turning on one another as they face heat in Washington.

The most memorable shot fired, of course, was the one Mark Zuckerberg took at Apple, Amazon and Google during this summer's big tech antitrust hearing.

Kim Kardashian West | Michael Cohen/Getty

🌁 Moving Menlo

Facebook 'freeze' for a day

Kim Kardashian West, Leo DiCaprio and several other A-list celebrities say that they will “freeze” their Facebook and Instagram accounts today — and only for today — to protest the spread of hate speech and misinformation on those platforms.

• The protest is part of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, the coalition of civil rights groups that led the monthlong advertising boycott against Facebook in July. More than 1,200 companies joined that boycott, but it did little to affect the company's business.

The big picture: While the cause is noble, the campaign feels like little more than a stunt designed to garner media attention without affecting any real change. The celebrities will presumably return to Facebook and Instagram tomorrow, and the world will go on.

• The message from the celebrities appears to be: “I care so much about the hate and misinformation being spread on this platform that I will be back here in 24 hours to continue using it."

Some perspective: In 2018, Kardashian's half-sister Kylie Jenner drove Snap's value down by $1.3 billion after a tweet suggesting she was over Snapchat. Kardashian and others pledging not to use Facebook's services for one day did not have the same effect. Facebook shares closed up 2.3 percent yesterday.

Market Links

• Satya Nadella considers his next move (WSJ)

• Bob Bakish unveils the new Paramount+ (Variety)

• John Stankey eyes ad-based cellphone plans (Reuters)

• Charles Dolan steps down at AMC Networks (Variety)

• Rob Manfred moves MLB to the bubble (ESPN)

Alan Dershowitz | Bloomberg/Getty

🗽 Moving Manhattan

Alan Dershowitz sues CNN

"Alan Dershowitz has filed a lawsuit against CNN, claiming the cable news network ... intentionally created a false narrative about what the famed criminal defense attorney argued while defending the president during impeachment proceedings earlier this year," Law & Crime's Jerry Lambe reports.

• The suit, which seeks $300 million in damages, stems from CNN's coverage of his argument that a president may engage in certain quid pro quos while in office. The theory was widely criticized at the time, but Dershowitz says CNN intentionally misconstrued his remarks.

Top talker: Dershowitz's lawyers allege that CNN, its hosts and its panelists "falsely paint Professor Dershowitz as a constitutional scholar and intellectual who had lost his mind."

Warner Bros' "Tenet" | SOPA/Getty

🌴 Talk of Tinseltown

Hollywood after 'Tenet'

Warner Bros.' "Tenet" was supposed to mark "the return of the movie theater business in the United States. Instead, it has shown just how much trouble the industry is in," NYT's Nicole Sperling and Brooks Barnes report.

• "'Tenet,' directed by the box office heavyweight Christopher Nolan ... arrived with a whimper: It collected $9.4 million in its first weekend in North America and just $29.5 million over its first two weeks."

• "Theaters remain closed in New York and Los Angeles, the two biggest markets in the United States. ... In the areas where 'Tenet' did play, audience concern about safety ... likely hurt ticket sales."

The big picture: "People aren’t going to the movies at anywhere close to the numbers that Hollywood hoped, and things are not expected to improve in the near term," Sperling and Barnes write. "The longer the pandemic drags on, the more that streaming becomes a threat to theaters."

• What's next: "Studios are postponing big movies again — 'Wonder Woman 1984' retreated last week, prompting at least three studios to convene meetings on Monday to discuss how to proceed with other scheduled releases — leaving theater owners without much new to offer for the next two months."

🏈 What's next: NFL ratings are in, and they're ... mixed. But give it time.

See you tomorrow.