# Paramount Bid, Gas Infrastructure, and AI Disruption

**Podcast:** WSJ What’s News
**Published:** 2026-02-10

## Transcript

Sag mal, has to be the stewer of these school flashback, and then hopefully.
Yeah, genau.
Stimmt.
Krass fehlt sich gar nicht wie Steuern.
Steuerledigt.
Safe.
This year's breathing temperatures carry risks for US factories that depend on natural gas.
Plus, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik faces calls for his resignation over ties to Jeffrey Epstein that were revealed in the latest batch of the Epstein Files.
And it's almost Valentine's Day.
Would you let a matchmaking algorithm find a date for you?
Thousands of Stanford students are obsessed.
It's Tuesday, February 10th.
I'm Alex Osselov for the Wall Street Journal.
This is the PM edition of What's News?
The top headlines and business stories that moved the world today.
So Paramount's enhanced offer today does address a lot of Warner's concerns, including Paramount has agreed to pay the $2.8 billion breakup fee if Warner terminates with Netflix.
The sweetener they added today.
It's called a ticking fee, which says for every quarter that they do not close that goes past 2026, they will pay what amounts to around $650 million to shareholders per quarter.
The point of the ticking fee is they're saying we're putting our money where our mouth is.
This deal will get regulatory approval in 2026.
So that's their sweetener.
Warner has said we will review it and we'll get back to you, but right now we're not changing our recommendation.
They still are have a deal with Netflix.
Jessica says she's spoken to some Warner shareholders, and there's a sense that the new offer from Paramount isn't going to change minds.
Even shareholders that do want this to change things think Paramount has to up its bid overall right now for Warner's board to engage.
Target is laying off about 500 workers in district offices and supply chain sites and says that'll let it invest in more workers in its stores.
The retailer also named a new head of merchandising and chief operating officer.
Michael Fidelki, who officially started as CEO this month, wants to improve the shopping experience and get sales growing again.
New data out today from the Commerce Department show that U.S.
retail sales were flat in December, disappointing economists who had expected growth and feeding into concerns about a fragile consumer economy.
Speaking of the economy, whether you're hiring or firing or looking for work, we'd love to hear from you.
To share your view on the job market or to ask a question of one of our reporters.
Email a voice note to WNPOD at WSJ.com or leave us a voicemail on 212 416 4328.
Make sure to include your full name and location so we can use your comments on the show.
In U.S.
markets, the SP and NASDAQ both dropped, with the NASDAQ leading the losses and closing down 0.6%.
The Dow edged higher.
And in the latest AI worries, a financial technology firm said it had an AI tool that could interpret financial documents and create personalized tax strategies that weighed on financial firms with big wealth management businesses.
Shares of Charles Schwab, Raymond James, and LPL Financial all fell 7% or more.
In earnings out today, Spotify reported better than expected earnings in the fourth quarter.
Its premium subscribers grew 10% from the same quarter a year ago, beating the company's guidance.
Shares close up nearly 15%.
Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, has a content partnership with Spotify.
And Coca-Cola says it's selling products at different prices and sizes to respond to customers who are financially stretched.
But there's no big shakeup of its pricing strategy in store.
For the fourth quarter, higher prices and sales volumes lifted revenue by 2%, but analysts expected stronger growth.
Its shares fell about one and a half percent today.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says he visited Jeffrey Epstein's private island in 2012.
Lutnik had previously said that he had cut off ties with the convicted sex offender years before that visit.
During a Senate hearing today, Lutnick said he was on the island only briefly.
Several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are calling for Lutnik's resignation.
Lutnick said today that he's done nothing wrong.
White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt says that President Trump supports Lutnik.
And we're exclusively reporting that the U.S.
is sending 200 troops to help Nigeria fight Islamist militants in the coming weeks.
They'll help train Nigerian troops and provide technical guidance.
A handful of U.S.
military personnel were already in the country to help local forces identify targets for military strikes.
Nigerian and U.S.
officials said that the Americans wouldn't be in combat.
The U.S.
has become more involved in Nigeria's fight against Islamist militants.
After sharp words from the White House, President Trump has accused Nigeria of failing to protect Christians from terror attacks.
Coming up, when temperatures fall, why factories are finding themselves frozen out of the flow of natural gas.
That's after the break.
Now, 15 years later, there's record amounts of gas production, but there's a problem.
Manufacturers say they can't get gas when they need it to power their factories, especially when it's freezing out.
Ryan December covers commodities for the journal and joins me now.
Ryan, you write that factories are getting squeezed out when there's a lot of demand for natural gas, like when it's really cold.
Why is this plentiful supply not getting to the factories that need it?
Well, the simple answer is we don't have enough pipelines and we don't have them in the right places.
The country's natural gas plumbing was really set up in an era when we were uh bringing it from the coasts, from the Gulf of Mexico down by Louisiana and Texas.
The shale boom opened up all these gas fields in Appalachia and other places, and we haven't really caught up the infrastructure necessary to deliver it where it's needed.
So we have a ton of gas, and then in periods of high demand, some people, mostly factories, can't get it.
So it's getting to homes, it's getting to the places where it's exported.
Why isn't it reaching manufacturers?
So the problem manufacturers have is that they're sort of last in line.
If you think about utilities or your gas provider, they keep it flowing to your home and to, you know, grocery stores.
You don't want food spoiling, you don't want grammar freezing to death or overheating in the summer.
And then you have the exporters who are taking an increasing share, shipping it overseas.
Because of the nature of their business, they get long-term contracts to match with pipelines and utilities that send them the gas.
Manufacturers can't really guarantee that they're going to sell X amount of products 10, 15 years from now.
They go sort of year by year.
It just doesn't really line up with the contracting system for the pipelines.
And it sort of leaves them squeezed out when demand is high and the pipe is full of gas that's been reserved.
And so manufacturers are getting shut off.
In your story, you quote a trade group executive saying that pipelines restricted the flow of gas to manufacturers more than 40 times last year.
Why is an interruption in their gas supply a problem for manufacturers?
Interruption is sort of two things.
One, where you physically go out, close the valve into your factory.
You're not allowed to have gas right now.
And then there's pricing mechanisms where you're used to getting gas for $3.50 a million British thermal units.
Well, because of the situation, you're going to have to go to the spot market and it's over $100 for the same amount.
So the price goes so high that you can't run your factory profitably that day.
And that's a big problem.
International paper, which makes the cover boxes we get all our deliveries in, they use that to dry the cardboard, the paper that makes boxes.
So without that, they just have to shut down.
Not only do you have the lost sales and production of those days, but you have expense, stopping the facility, starting it back up, making sure equipment doesn't freeze by bringing in like emergency heaters.
That was WSJ Reporter Ryan December.
Thanks, Ryan.
Thank you.
And it's not just investors who are getting pulled into the hype for a SpaceX IPO.
Michael Grimes, the longtime Morgan Stanley Rainmaker and Elon Musk's go-to banker, is returning to Morgan Stanley as chairman of investment banking.
He had left the bank for a job at the Trump administration a year ago.
And the question on Wall Street was if he'd be content remaining in government and missing out on the IPO.
The IPO is expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for banks.
And finally, there's a new obsession taking over the Stanford campus, a matchmaking platform called Date Drop.
Created by graduate student Henry Wang, Date Drop has students answer 66 questions, like what their top five core values are, or whether they think having no social media is a green flag.
These responses are fed into an algorithm that pairs compatible students.
Every Tuesday night at 9 p.m., new matches drop.
And the kids are into it.
More than 5,000 Stanford students have used it.
DateDrop just raised about $2 million in venture capital funding and has spread to 10 other colleges.
Journal reporter Jasmine Lee described Date Drop's appeal to our colleagues at Tech News Briefing.
So what I hear from college students about dating culture on campus is that you're not really going up to people and asking them out anymore.
Some students are on mainstream dating apps, but some students also think they can be a little overwhelming.
When students use a platform like DateDrop, the hope is that if they put in the work, answer all these questions, the algorithm is gonna know them well enough to pair them with somebody that's high quality.
That's gonna be a good match.
These students are crowding around in their dorm rooms, seeing who they're matching with, who their friends are matching with.
It's just a fun social thing for some of these students.
But is DateDrop actually helping students find love?
Students who Jasmine talked to said they'd gone on some dates or gotten a few more LinkedIn connections, but no earth-shaking love stories yet.
To hear more about Date Drop, listen to this Friday's episode of our Tech News Briefing podcast.
And that's what's news for this Tuesday afternoon.
Today's show is produced by Pierre Biename with supervising producer Tolly Arbell.
I'm Alex Ozula for the Wall Street Journal.
We'll be back by the new show tomorrow morning.
Thanks for listening.
Hey, Belline.
Wusstest du, dass du mit deinem Eco-Strom richtig was bewegen kannst?
Denn je mehr den Ökostrom der Berliner Stadtwerke beziehen, desto mehr können wir gemeinsam für unsere Stadt tun.
Denn die Berliner Stadtwerke investieren direkt hier vor Ort in eine saubere Stromversorgung.
Zum Beispiel in Solaranlagen auf den Dächern unserer Stadt und in viele weitere grüne Energieprojekte.
Berliner Stadtwerke.
Gut für dich.
Gut für Berlin.