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Charlie Rose





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Colin Powell 6, Wayne Lapierre 5, Apple 5, Joe Biden 4, Joe Scarborough 4, Us 4, Samsung 4, Gabrielle Giffords 3, Roger Mcnamee 3, America 3, Steve 3, Msnbc 2, Google 2, George W. Bush 2, New York City 2, North America 2, Michael Bloomberg 2, Michael Scherer 2, Washington 2, Christine O'donnell 2,
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  WHUT    Charlie Rose    News/Business.   
   (2013) New. (CC) (Stereo)  

    January 17, 2013
    10:00 - 11:00am EST  

>> rose: welcome to the program. today the president announced his initiatives on gun control. we'll have an assessment from joe scarborough of msnbc's "morning joe" and michael scherer of "time" magazine. >> for a week or two after newtown more americans were against banning assault weapons than were for banning assault weapons. now a month later you actually have that becoming a 64/40 issues. the numbers haven't looked like this in decades. they didn't look like this after kohl bib. they didn't look like this even after the '94 bill was passed. i think there's some great opportunities politically now and the only question is whether my republican party, especially in the house of representatives, is going to recognize the political reality before them and realize that newtown changed everything. >> rose: we continue this evening with a look ahead at the
the host of msnbc's "morning joe" and a former congressman. michael scherer joins us from washington. he wrote this week's "time" magazine cover story called "the gun fighters: can a billionaire, a vice president and a shooting survivor stop the violence?" i'm pleased to have him on this program as well. let me go to you first, michael. tell me what the president said and what do you think is politically possible? >> i think actually the most remarkable part of today's event was thee xwrat ricks surrounding the announcement. it's very different than the events you saw on the first term. you had the president on stage with students, young kids who wrote him letters about guns and he was pulling at heart strings all through the speech making clear this was not something he was going to get done inside washington but that would only happen with the american people coming together and demanding it. he knows and the white house know that the most controversial parts of his proposal: banning
certain gun magazines, reinstituting the assault weapons ban and universal background checks are going nowhere right now in congress. and what the white house has done over the last four weeks is to begin building what they hope will be a movement that pressures congress over the coming months and coming years to try and force this issue in the future. i think it's a model for what they're going to do. in the short term he has a number of executive actions that run the gamut from improvements to the way background checks are run, more education for -- around the issue of mental health, more money for putting police and armed security in schools, something the n.r.a. has supported in the past. but the headlines are really about the reopening of this gun debate which has been dormant since 1994. >> rose: joe scarborough, do you believe that the time has come and that because of joe biden, because of michael bloomberg, because of former congressman gabrielle giffords that there is a possibility of doing something
now or is it simply the possibility of beginning the conversation? >> the it seems like it was the beginning of a conversation that would end in failure even two, three weeks back. if you talked to people that were inside the white house and working with joe biden i don't think there was a lot of hope that they thought they could ever get through an assault weapon ban in the house and the senate. for actually, though, it's not been michael bloomberg's actions over the past several weeks or gabrielle giffords or joe biden's that i think has made the biggest difference. i think the reason why the political landscape is moving as quickly as it is on this issue and why the polls are moving is because the abhorrent behavior of the national rifle association and their reaction not only to newtown but wayne lapierre's press conference, the news of the past few days of a commercial that actually talked about the president's own children and takes their
personal security in and turns that into a political attack ad as well as an app on iphone that originally was targeted for agings four and up where kids could engage in target practice on their parents' iphone using assault weapons. but, charlie, with every misstep that wayne lapierre and the n.r.a. makes, they make the president and joe biden and michael bloomberg's dream of comprehensive gun control all that more possible. look at the polls that just came out this last week, the "washington post"/abc news poll now shows that an overwhelming number of americans and gun owners actually support universal background checks. gun registrations, registration files that the government can follow, the sales of guns is up to 65%, 70%. before newtown and even a week or two after newtown more
americans were against banning assault weapons than were for banning assault weapons. now a month later you actually is that becoming a 60/40 issue. the numbers haven't looked like this in decades. they didn't look like this after columbine. they didn't look like this even after the '94 bill was passed. i think there's great opportunities politically now and the only question is whether my republican party, especially in the house of representatives is going to recognize the political reality before them and realize that newtown changed everything. >> rose: and what did it change for you? >> you know, i got elected in '94 and i'm sure you remember, charlie, in 1993 you had waco, you also had ruby ridge, you had a couple of incidences, tragedies, that really inflamed the right and made gun ownership far more symbolic.
for me, though, over the past year it wasn't just newtown, though newtown was really the final straw for me, the tragedy of that day, it was also the fact that a realization as a parent that it's not safe now to send our children to schools or to send them to malls or even movie theaters or religious services. that what once was the exception is now becoming the rule. we can expect these type of mass shootings as a part of american life and i personally believe it's a combination of many things frfrplt violent american culture to mental health issues to gun issues. i think that's one of three issues. ideologues on both sides will disagree with -- take exception to one or two of those problems, but for me that is not about symbolism anymore, it's about
saving children's lives and if it's true that dick cheney and george w. bush believe in the 1% solution if there was a 1% chance that we could stop another 9/11 they would do what it took to take rid of that 1% chance. the i think if that was our approach after 9/11 it should be our approach in protecting our children at schools and shopping malls and religious services. and society abroad. >> rose: and do you think the experience that you had and the awareness that you have reflected here and on your own program in public speeches has resonated with other republicans? >> it has resonated with other republicans but only because they were thinking the same thing as i was thinking. i can't tell you, charlie. i come from northwest florida, also known as the redneck riviera. some people call it l.a.-- lower
so that's why i'm concerned about the republican party, whether they can really listen to wayne lapierre and follow the most extremist elements of the n.r.a. or whether they're going to listen to hunters and constituents in their own districts. >> rose: the n.r.a. represents gun owners or does it represent corporate interests? >> the n.r.a. is about money. the n.r.a. is about protecting gun manufacturers and retailers and people that, let's face it, they make millions and millions of dollars off of the tragedy in newtown. and if they did -- if they were concerned about their membership they would be very concerned about if fact that their extremist positions are actually going to push voters away from republicans and the greatest threat to the second amendment right now is not an assault weapon ban that scalia didn't guarantee in his opinion in
heller, it's the fact that republicans will keep going so far right that voters continue to elect democratic presidents who nominate supreme court justices that overturn heller and suddenly the second amendment isn't about the right to keep and bear arms. that that right that was guaranteed by scalia in 2009 goes away. extremism is right now the biggest threat to the second amendment. >> rose: i'll come back to that. michael, what can the president do by executive action? >> a lot of things. not the big-ticket items we've been talking about, the magazine clips, the assault weapons ban or making background checks universal but there are a lot of smaller improvements to the background check database. right now more than a dozen states don't really give mental health records to that data base so you won't catch people who have been judged by courts as unsuitable for having guns in the system. other states have problems in getting felony convictions into
that database. there are a lot of pursuing more investigation. i mean, he's opening up something that's basically been closed down for about a decade now, federal research into gun violence and gun deaths to try and find ways to prevent hit in the future. he can do that by executive order. he's going to launch an education program around mental health, he does that through executive order. there's some repurposing of money he already has, like i said, to deal with school preparedness and things like that. but for him, the big ticket items, the ones that are the most controversial, are going to require legislative action. >> rose: joe, do you believe the president has the will today to push this as aggressively as is necessary at a time that it has all these other issues and all these other balls in the court? >> i do. but i actually believe, again,
that wayne lapierre and the more extreme elements of the gun lobby pushed anymore that direction. i certainly know from everything that i've heard today that the first lady and the president of the united states were shocked that their children were dragged into this debate in a tasteless commercial. i also know the white house a week ago or two weeks ago was talking about passing whatever they could pass but not make the mistake that george w. bush made after 2004 an overreach on social security and then have his mandate disappear. i think you saw in the ceremony today it was so moving, the president decided that he had to engage completely and that he could come up short. there was a lot of talk behind the scenes ten days ago about keeping the assault weapon ban out of this comprehensive
legislation. >> rose: right. >> that moved over the past four or five days, they put it back in and i think they put it back in for a couple of reasons. first of all, i think the president decided this was the time to move on comprehensive gun control legislation. but also they saw the polls moving. they saw the mistakes the n.r.a. was making, that wayne lapierre was making, the overreach, the extremeism and they saw that suddenly an issue that was a guaranteed loser suddenly became a 60/40 issue with 6-0% of americans the banning of certain assault rifles, assault weapons. so i think the president's engaged now. he is -- now, if -- you know if he runs into some problems i think he's going to keep going and, you know, paul simon, the former senator, not? the singer, the former senator from illinois, said in politics sometimes when you lose you win. i think this is a case where the president knows if he lose this
is battle to an entrenched interest inside the n.r.a. and house republican caucus i think he knows he gets another bite of the apple after 2014 because remembers taking extreme position after newtown could lead to nancy pelosi becoming speaker once again. >> rose: you have talked about on your program general powell in one colin powell said on "meet the press." does that represent for you the sense that the party is looking inward at all, these issues like gun control, like fiscal issues and like outreach to minorities that it had not done before but is doing it because people like colin powell are stepping forward to say if we don't have a tolerant party we won't l not have a future? >> well, charlie i'm pleased secretary powell still considers himself as a republican. as a republican i wasn't necessarily thrilled that he supported a democratic president
but i understand colin powell believes like a lot of my moderate republican friends that this party left them a long time ago. it's very simple. when colin powell is on your side off much better chance of being elected president. when people like colin powell are supporting you, be it a republican candidate or a democratic candidate, that's a positive. we republicans over the past two three, four years have pushed moderates like colin powell to the side in favor of people like todd akin, richard newshour dock christine o'donnell, sharon angle. and those decisions to run people like senator lugar out of the united states senate, those decisions to go for christine o'donnell instead of mike castle! a guy who was once governor of delaware to go for sharon ang
gel when harry reid was dead man walking politically in nevada, to make one bad choice after another is guaranteed that still a senate majority leader. the republican party is either going to grow up and be responsible and follow william f. buckley's advice that you will elect the most electable conservative or they're going to go the way of the whigs. >> rose: you said a republican will continue the dreadful collapse unless they adopt william f. buckley's view that conservatism is expressed in pure idealism takes into account reality. michael, let me go back to the people on the cover of "time" magazine. clearly what happened in newtown is the driving force and it is a country thinking about the future of its children but it does have allies with resources, the power of gabrielle giffords story and the power of michael bloomberg's meg phone both in terms of money as well as
connections >> that's right, when i talked with david keene, president of the n.r.a., one of the things he pointed to you is his concern that we're reentering the fight that we haven't seen the early '90s the other side has coordination and money like they didn't have at that time michael bloomberg put about $10 million into five races last cycle around guns, ended up defeating in a primary in california a pro-gun democratic congressman and he has said that that was dipping his toe in the water and he's willing to do substantially more and what he's saying now that he wants to force votes on this stuff, even if it doesn't pass so that then he can take that to the people in 2014 in television ads to change this conversation to allow these bigger shifts to happen. the story of gabrielle giffords is also really a direct response to newtown. she had decided with her husband
mark kelly not to play this activist role until that event. she talked to her husband right afterwards and said "i think we have to get involved." mark kelly is already raising lots of money. they had a fund-raiser last week with dianne feinstein in san francisco. they have already a million dollar contribution to what they're hoping to be a $20 million pac, that's a pac that would match the money the n.r.a. spent in 2012 to do very similar things tomorrow provide backup for people who take test votes on guns and to go after people who aren't willing to take the tough votes so it does rescramble this long range fight going forward. it doesn't change the immediate calculus because, like joe said, the real issue here from the white house's perspective is that they have a republican party that's not willing to do anything they really want and so they have to keep putting pressure on republicans in the house from the outside to force change at some point.
>> rose: michael sherrer are, thank you very much, joe scarborough, thank you. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: we'll be right back. stay with us. >> >> rose: roger mcnamee is here, he is one of silicon valley's respected investors and co-founder of elevation partners. among his partners, u2's bono, the private equity firm focuses on the intersection of media, entertainment and consumer technology. it was an early investor in facebook. i'm pleased to have roger mcnamee at this table for the first time. welcome. >> a great honor to be here. >> rose: we've known each other about 25 years. >> long time. when you were here or someone like you is here, not like you sour whole goal is to say cast a light on the future for us. because you are having to do that because that's your business, to understand the future. >> i call it realtime anthropology and the notion is that you're looking at the world
as it is today and understanding how technology both will influence it but more importantly how we will influence the technology. and the thing that's so exciting about this moment is that for the first time technology is not just available to governments, not just available to businesses but the real power is in the hands of the consumer. and if there's a democratizing force that's begun to percolate out of silicon valley, it's brand new. i think of it this way, marl marx used to talk about the fact that the owners of capital controlled everything and he wanted to move to the proletariat. well, thanks to moore's law, which is the law that drives everything in technology about making every 18 months becomes twice as powerful and half as expensive -- >> rose: the processing in computers and everything else. >> everything becomes cheaper over time. like if you made an automobile it would only cost ten cents today. but the notion is that now we've
gone -- we've put the means production in the hands of the consumers and that means that they literally no longer need media companies or big companies. if they have something to say or something they want to create and it basically says people like you who have an audience, who have a brand, no matter how large or small can reach that brand in a way you never could before. you don't need someone else's permission. you don't need to observe the seven words no one can say on television. you can have whatever programming you wish. this is likely, i think, to result in some really important improvements in daily life for all of us. i think it will be transformational in education because essentially this notion that we're going to dogmatically say these books are good to read but most of this stuff is not it's going to be very hard to stop the flow of information. it's why totalitarian regimes
hate the internet. and you look at this, i speak to people all the time and say "it's too complex." and i go "you're absolutely right. it's not only too complex, it's too complex for reasons that are unnecessary." so i think the big opportunity now is to make it so there is no interface. so that it's as comfortable on you as your watch or a pencil. and that the next ten years will be the -- think about it this way. computers today are so dumb. if you have a smart phone it knows what time it is, it has g.p.s. so it knows where you are and it has your calendar. so why does it not automatically tell me how long it will take looking at driving directions -- driving maps, how long it will take to the next destination and tell me when i'm supposed to leave. why doesn't it have the map. when i wake up in the morning why don't i have an itinerary? all of those things are coming the reason they're coming is 300 million people have these incredible smart phone devices which can do all this.
so you have a ready made market of people who were always late, who were always stressed out. who would love to have their lives made easier by technology rather than more complicated. >> rose: let me dig down more on that. what's given power and democratization is the fact that consumers can speak. >> yes. >> rose: individuals can speak. >> correct. >> rose: and therefore we can see in the combinations of how they feel and think, i would say that has weight, too. >> and they can express themselves more than just speaking. >> rose: right. >> you now have all the tools to make music, to make art, to make film, to make photographs. when cell phones first got cameras in them i went to a technology friend of mine and said "i don't understand why this is a big deal." he said "here's the thing, these are terrible cameras, they make horrible pictures. but he said imagine that one thousand people take a picture of teen men square at the same time.
he -- tiananmen square at the same time. he said a thousand low resolution pictures translates into one high resolution of the whole thing. and his basic point was that this was an element of democracy that was going to be impossible to stop once it was in place. and we've gone from no one having smart phones to 300 million people having these smart phones and a hundred million of them in north america, a staggering number of people. and you look at this and go what's going to happen? i don't know the answer exactly but what i do know is that it's empowering to those who have them and it will i think enable entrepreneurship and self-reliance in ways that frankly have been absent from society for a long time. these will encourage and enable forms of self-reliance that will be very help informal this era of underemployment and structural issues in the economy. >> you think the ipad is the most important new development
since the i.b.m. p.c.? >> i do. >> rose: because? >> because it -- i'll start with if you look at the time of day the most common time of day for people to use their ipad is between 6:00 p.m. and when they go to sleep. when what is that known in your line of work? that's known as prime time. and it turns out the ipad isn't the second screen when people are watching t.v. for people over the age of 40, when they're in bed watching t.v. with their ipad, the ipad's actually the thing they're paying attention to and the t.v. is the background noise, if something happens they look up and look at it. why is that important? first of all could you have imagine five years ago that there would be a product that would go from zero to 50 million yunz overnight and the single most common thing to do would be to read in the bed at night? a technology product? that was to me unimaginable five years ago. so i look at this and i wonder what is there anything it cannot do that's useful? the answer is of course there are a million things it can't
do. but there's nothing a computer can do that's useful. there are a million things that a computer cannot do. i'm a musician, if you're a musician the ipad is the single greatest learning tool ever created. >> rose: because? >> because it has all of these things that never existed before where they take a song that you want to learn and they have a video at the time of a person playing and then exactly timed to it they have the chart of the notes going by so they can see what they look like and show it on the fret board where your finger are supposed to be. off video of the fingers and a thing below in case you're not sure. you can go faster or slow. you say that could have existed on p.c.s. i say yes, but it didn't. and i need this when i'm on the role in the hotel room. the i can't bring my p.c. that way. it's not comfortable. so i look at this and read. i use kindle for reading on it and the kindle soft ware and i read magazines, i get my news on it. i do my e-mail.
i run moon alice's facebook page and web site off of chit i have to admit are tough experiences because those experiences aren't perfect yet. but they're getting better. and why does it matter it matters because for as little as $400 or $500 you can get a device that if you really like a personal computer it's better and if you hate add personal computer it's useful and approachable. do you believe the ipad and it manifestations where there is apple or android or whatever the operating system is will be l become the search engine of the future? >> i don't think search engines. i think when history is written we will realize search engines were the result of a strategic era by publishers. if you think about the "new york times", the "wall street journal," when they went online that had this enormous thing called the morgue, of all the past issues. the thing that happened was
people would be reading something in a newspaper and go "who is that guy?" and they'd go to google and search it. the right thing to do was to design those applications so that the "wall street journal" gave you their bio of the person and their financial stuff. >> rose: so if you read a name you could go there. >> just touch it and it pops up. so on the ipad, that's where things are going. there are a whole bunch of people doing that today. publishers, you see this already with the journal, the "times" does it relative to stock prices so that automatically will show you the ticker and the stock price if you're reading this thing on line, the "new york times" has things where you can look up the meaning of words and that's the beginning of it. i'm saying i think the search engine was the result of a mistake that won't be made again so we'll always have search engines but every app on apple's operating system is effectively a search engine of one kind or another. if you go into yelp it's because
you're looking for a restaurant. if you go into skype it's because you're looking to call somebody up. if you go into twitter you're looking for a new -- >> rose: the application you go to is because that's what you're searching for? >> effectively. and that's a much better way than a one size fits all search engine. having search engines optimized for what you're already doing. >> rose: what does that mean for google? >> i think google has an enormous strategic problem. i think of google as a genius company. microsoft anding into rl the most disadvantage bid apple. they were monopolists of the world of wired internet, back on p.c.s. microsoft had 96% share of operating systems five years ago and google had -- >> rose: 95% five years ago? >> yes. 96% five years ago. >> rose: windows was 95% of operating systems? >> of connected operating systems so they were just competing with macintosh. then i.o.s. and the apple products come and today smart phones are half of all connected devices. so microsoft lost half of the market. so it went from 96% to half of
that simply because of not participating in smart phones and in the case of google search went from being the most important application in the wired web to a not very important application on mobile and so even though google's share is higher on mobile than desktop, people are doing fewer searches because frankly on a little screen over 3g it's an awful experience whereas if you use an app like -- any app to do the search it will be a more pleasing experience. so i think about these guys as google has a choice. they can try to compete head to head with apples which what they're doing today and my view isn't s that's not working very well. >> rose: because they're going into businesses that apple is in. >>? >> yes and on the same terms. so if you're look at what they're trying to do with android, their mobile operating system, google is saying we're the alternative to apple and we're going to have every operator making their own device they're doing what basically
microsoft what microsoft did with windows. the problem is that there are no economic incentives to maintain a cohesive platform and the result of some people like amazon have made kindle fires out of the thing. they're incompatible with everything else. and in technology they would say this product has forked. it has all these different versions that don't speak to each other. so you can't write one application on android and have it work across the products. that's a problem. well if i were google i wouldn't be trying that. i'd go wait a minute, my world is the world of the web. and there's going to be a next generation web. there's a new technology called haiti million 5, that's the programming language around which the web is built. so if you think what's the web built in, it's built in h.t.m.l.. there hadn't been a new one for 12 years. if you were google and you dominated the old one i would have thought the logical strategy was to try to obsolete apps by giving people something to -- where the -- gave the
publisher total control. but google isn't doing that. and because of that -- >> rose: does larry page see applications, apps, as his competition? >> i don't know how they look at because they've entered into apps. they're manifestly good at them. apple took out google's map product and replaced it with their own and it caused a big problem. >> rose: and they had to go back and fix it. >> and the google map problem -- >> rose: and fired their executive. >> google makes great application but they're up against goliath in the apple world and in my mind it's not smart to come neat a way that doesn't emphasize your own strengths. and i think the way they look at android there was this experiment that's been run before and it worked this way with unix, the open rating source operating system in the '80s. and why they would expect it to be different this time i don't
know. but now android is samsung there's one guy half of all the units in north america. samsung. >> one company, a south korea company is one half of all the android operating systems in america? >> the same size as apple on a unit basis so if you're an applications developer you look at apple as more attractive because people pay a lot of money for xwraps and not so much on android. part is because there aren't as many apps and they don't work as well because it's harder to make one app work across everything. now that samsung is big i think he developed for samsung only which means google is going to lose control of their own operating system. they've already lost control of the part done by amazon so i would have -- the thing that's so amazing to me is that the big companies have huge opportunities now. microsoft owns skype, the telecommunications, the most important telecom system in the emerging world they have 400 million active users which is
more than the number users of windows these days. >> rose: 400 million -- >> like over a hundred million who pay them to use it. so you look at this and go wait a minute, why are you trying to subordinate this to window which is the is the product most harmed by the ipad and iphones? why wouldn't you sit there and go wait a minute, i'm going make a skype phone. why make a windows phone? make a skype phone, an xbox phone. >> so i think c.e.o.s of microsoft and google, steve ballmer and larry paige respectively, they're one good night's sleep away from getting this right. microsoft has the products it needs to make itself successful. they're just doing the wrong things. the way i look at this is that the ones who have the upside surprise opportunity are microsoft and google. because the potential is totally there and they're very smart people with lots of resources. >> rose: and lots of money.
>> and every incentive to get this right. if microsoft does nothing you can see what's going on with p.c.s. that business is very profitable. >> rose: would it have been different if bill gates had been running microsoft? >> i have no idea. i doubt it. to me i think they got there the honest way, through hard work. there was a professor at harvard named clayton christenson who wrote a book -- >> rose: oh, yes. >> he wrote the greatest business book i've ever read and the basic premise is that if you are supremely successful it's hard to aboon don the things that made you successful and that's all we're seeing at microsoft. windows made them what they are. and it's hard to say good-bye.g. >> rose: search brought them there. >> but ironically taking -- going away from apps back to a web product would reengage search.
it would take them back to their areas of strength. >> rose: the two companies not mentioned so far facebook. what's their future? >> i am a big owner of facebook sand i don't want to be talking about it as a stock but if i sit there and say what is their opportunity? they have one billion consumers who are actively engaged with facebook. they have a tremendous -- >> rose: what's the power of that? >> it depends on what they choose to do with it. right now they're running it as a media property so they're able to sell advertising in various forms and my own experience using the band is that advertising on facebook is enormously cost effective for small business so i think they have an opportunity there. the issue with facebook is that they were horribly mistreated by wall street to say that they were the mark --
>> rose: it's been suggested people responsible for the public offering were almost criminal >> i have said that publicly and would reiterate the point. i think the laws currently today do not adequately protect investors or issuers this is a situation where i can't prove it. >> the problem with that argument is facebook had smart lawyers. they want to do it their way, too. >> i don't dispute that i think if you look at the numbers-- and there's know what to do the forensics du but it looks as though the tradings desks of the underwriters decided that a $160 million fee was chump change and they could do better sharing the stock. every step of the way they said you should be cautious -- >> rose: the amount of money they made from shorting stock was bigger than they might have made from the fee. >> they got both.
so facebook today, its biggest problem is that the stock is taken. never been anything wrong with the business. >> rose: but what's the future of the business? >> they have to figure out mobile. i don't think anybody knows how to do it. i think the most important thing to understand -- >> rose: no one? >> it's a brand new world we're doing all these things for the first time. when people make a mistake, as microsoft did, as google did, as facebook did years ago, it's understandable. with hindsight we can see they were mistakes. now question is what do we do now? so there's an enormous power of a billion actively engaged people. the thing i would love to see somebody do-- and they're one of the logical players-- is enable me to buy things on a smart phone without entering data. i see something i like, i point it out, it has my credit card information and it's done.
right now you have to enter either amazon credentials or apple credentials or you have to put in the your credit dard number. >> rose: every great innovative act and entrepreneurial act start with this: a question like this, why can't i -- why isn't there then you set about to create it. >> correct. >> so somebody has thought about that question. how can you sit down and deliver it without -- >> rose: the answer to the question is facebook connect. >> facebook has a product called connect which is the way when you're loging into a publishing site or any place where you want to not entering your data, you use facebook and it allows you to use your facebook credentials to check into the "new york times," the "wall street journal," whatever. that is a product that would be a portion of the answer. much as apple's transaction system and amazons are different but they would have to rearchitect them to take the data piece out. what i'm saying is it's about
taking friction out of the system. smart phones are with you everywhere. i think if you think of a smart phone in the following incarnations, one is as a set top box to control everything going on on your television and entertainment system. another is a point of sale purchasing thing when you're in a retail place shopping on the web. those two things are clearly coming and -- >> rose: and huge. >> and are going to make an enormous difference. apple has a thing now whether you buy a ticket for a movie or whatever it keeps in the this passbook thing so that you show up at an airport and you can check in with your phone. it's astonishing. >> rose: i use that all the time don't you? >> yes, but i'm saying what a change, right? >> rose: the fourth company is amazon. >> yeah. >> rose: and when i look at amazon, they have already done the things to make their future. so we get to look at it.
they said okay, we're going to extend the store front two different ways. one is we're going to make hardware devices specific to the store front called kindle fire. >> rose: right. >> and we're going to find a way to deliver to you in your town on the day you order stuff and they're going to come at you from both angles. strategically, that's genius. to me, the remarkable thing about amazon, though, is that it reminds me old days of costco and price club where essentially they sold all the products that break even to make the money off your membership fee and i think amazon is essentially playing the same game and it's a good game but it's not a game that would necessarily be worth 70 times earnings which is the way wall street currently values it. i look at amazon and they are an admirable company because they never stop investing. i contrast it with ebay. >> that's the genius of jeff, isn't it? >> totally it's the genius of an entrepreneur who sticks with it. bill gates at microsoft. mark zuckerberg has it.
and they're also, if you will, uncompromiseing in the sense of they have a vision and they're not going to be stopped. >> rose: what's the future of television because apple constantly teases us that coming downstream is the greatest thing since -- >> i'm prepared to believe it. i used to joke the shortest unit of time in the universe was how long it was going to take me to buy a cell phone made by apple. >> rose: (laughs) >> i think second shortest time is how long it will take to buy a t.v. made by apple. once they say it's here it will be there. i think what's happening now it's turning out the iphone is going to become the controller. there are products in -- from traditional media companies two of my favorites are hbo go, hbo the movie channel and major league baseball. i'm a complete baseball nut and i watch every single phillies game all season long on my iphones. and those products are cable
products but delivered right to the edge and you get them on your phone. i now consume all of my hbo on my ipad. i never watch it on t.v., only on the ipad. >> rose: back to apple t.v.. what's it going to look like? what's it going to do? >> to what i think the most important thing is eliminating blocks in distribution so the cable box gives them a point of control that you can't get past in either direction. so if you think of the iphone as a new cable box without that regulator on it so that any video that's available on the web-- which is everything on over-the-air television is available and supported inside the web. so the notion you can get around cable by using an iphone or android as the set top box is something you will see this calendar year from people other than apple. i think steve job's history with pixar had a lot to do with whey they are reluctant. his own thinking became aligned with the people who owned films
their view is to keep things restricted in windows. so apple hasn't subscribed to the free flow of the web. >> rose: so meaning steve wanted to sell you what was in his library? >> no, meaning steve respected the traditions of hollywood of only selling things through stern carriers who have very specific rights. it's the whole notion that you see in the theaters for the first month and then it's in hotel rooms and airplanes for a month and then on t.v. >> rose: everybody says that that's going to move away from that. >> i don't know if it is or isn't. >> rose: well people like jeff say it will. >> well, great. but the reason it will move away is because -- >> rose: in other words we'll have one giant opening of movies >> i sure hope so. >> rose: it won't be here then there then there. >> in the meantime -- >> rose: around the world. >> the interesting thing is that young people no longer get a land line at home, they no longer get a newspaper and the new thing they're not getting is
cable television. >> rose: because they get netflix. >> and they can get a lot of the live stuff on their iphone and watch it on their t.v. and see that i think is the thing going on. we're getting rid of all the monopolies, the controlled distribution of content. which is a democratizing force. and it's -- i think for those who create content this is a greatest thing that ever happened because if you have a brand you're going to be able to find your audience and if you love somebody you're going to be able to get -- >> rose: people who do what i do who are adopting a subscription model. >> one of my favorite blogs is the dish. >> rose: sure, i know him well. >> so on the very first day he moved off site i gave my credit card and said sign me up. >> rose: so you subscribe to what andrew does -- >> for ten times what he was charging because my view is that it's worth more to me and i can afford it and i'm happy to. >> rose: does he have something
that interest you -- >> and i support roughly a dozen other blogs directly who's -- >> rose: so what's the power of that? subscription blogs that become their open. >> rose: let me use music. classical music can't pay its own way so it has people who support it. well, i disagree, i think music is a troubadour business and it's better that the people who like it most pay the most. and i think that that may be the way the world is most comfortable. that this notion that we make a standard product for nerve charge, one price and one way of getting it, that's a '40s, '50s, '60s, concept. the new concept is wait a minute anybody can make stuff and distribute stuff therefore you should only watch the stuff you want. so if you like something you better be willing to pay for it or it's not going to be there. that's the real test is if i want to be sure andrew sullivan is there, i don't want to pay him 20 bucks because maybe he doesn't make as much.
and, you know, the same thing would happen to you for certain. because you have an intense audience and the great thing about this is that media doesn't have to be mass market to be successful. think about the old days of magazines. you know or the "new yorker" maintaining 900,000 subscribers. why? because they were the right. and the best people in the world wanted to advertise and reach that audience. >> and i believe that combination of advertisers who want to reach the audience and people who want to have that personalized experience. i've always tried to persuade the "new yorker." they do this big thing every year for a couple days in new york city and i go this is crazy what you ought to do is auction off dinner with the cartoonists and do it the highest bidder. what's this $200 a day? i'd paytons of money. >> rose: finally there's this, twitter. >> yeah. >> rose: a genius product, you say. >> genius product sadly to this point a horrible disappointment.
>> rose: disappointment? >> i group it with ebay as a company that on the merits is manifestly successful yet if you look at in the relation to what its opportunity was not so good. and i look at twitter and go it is in many ways more genius than facebook does and it's difficulty in figuring out how to make a business out of it is in my mind inexcusable. and you look at this -- >> rose: meaning you could have made a business out of twitter >> i think they could have made a business. >> rose: what would you have done? >> very simply put. if you look at it it's still one column and they insist on interrupting the column with things that are unrelated. and i sit there and go wait a minute, you bought a product called tweet deck that allowed an arbitrarily large number of columns. people manifestly like that since during the tweet deck days that was more commonly used by high end people than the regular site. well with multiple column it is advertising problem goes away because then you have lots of
space on the page to do it without interfering with people's experience. and the think i found with my band is that it's a broadcast system and i believe we're working more towards conversations and away from broadcast and i think -- >> rose: so do i. >> if that's true than twitter has made a mistake because it has failed at least to date to allow for the kind of conversational things that have become increasingly standard on facebook in which interestingly enough didn't exist on facebook two years ago. the whole conversational aspect of marketing on facebook is brand new. and it's totally possible for twiter to fix this so i'm not negative at all i think they have as great an opportunity as ever. look at what marketers are doing. everybody's super bowl thing is going to be twitter oriented but what are they going to get far? i don't know. and i couldn't live without twitter but i could imagine twitter being a lot better. sblup the metrics for measuring the things that we've talked about as the powerful ideas of
the future? >> it's a great question. if i go back and look historically, wufr of the challenges is that between roughly every ten years the world changes in a way that would have been unrecognizable so it's washed out my competitors from the '80s and '90s for the most part. so when you're trying to measure me, the simple thing that i would say to somebody is what have i really told you here snowed from an investment point of view what i've told you is that apple is by conventional metrics a very inexpensive star. it's a below average p.e. multiple it has cash flow equal toll 10% of its stock price which would be high if it were a bank. it's crazy for the largest market cap on wall street. so what i'm saying is, hey, that one is a no-brainer. i think google and microsoft are worth a flier. do i think they have the upside that apple has? well, if they do the right things they have more upside. if they muddle along the way
they are now, they're going to be mediocre stocks. amazon is tough because the valuation is really high. so i look that the and what i like about the market is the three biggest guys, apple, google, microsoft, all are below market multiples. i mean you know i sit there and go they don't have to be right for you to make money. they just have to be not wrong. and so what i try to say to people listen, the problem with tech is there's not much going on at any point in time. there's a lot going on but no many things investors can count on. and the most interesting stuff happening right now is happening with the largest companies and the smallest ones and everything in between is kind of doing the wrong thing. and i think it will be really exciting for all of us. >> rose: thank you. great to see you. >> it was a great honor. >> rose: the band he has is called moon alice. >> www.moonalice.com. we've done an experiment that you may want to look at.
i'm a big believer in doing as opposed to watching. so we've created a thing called moon tunes where we have created a satellite system end to end that we're making available to other bands because we've broadcast every show for free for two and a half years and we figured out how to do it for a few hundred bucks a night and we'll make it available to other people for a few thousand dollars a night and it's -- what i love is it's a democrat tiesing element because we're essentially making it possible for everybody to have their own charlie rose show or their own wayne's world and at a cost -- >> rose: (laughs) two name two. >> well, you've had other people on here, they could have their own show, too. >> rose: thank you. >> my pleasure.

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